Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/401

 HISTORICAL CONTINUITY OF SCIENCE 395

migratory people, and this would lead to a recognition of the periodicity of their apparent motions. These periodic changes, beginning with those of the snn and moon (leading to the conception of the day and month), laid the rude foundation of a calendar, the utility of which to the political leaders and organizers of mankind speedily became so evident that the calendar has from the dawn of history been regarded as an important preoccupation of government. From this sprang the early importance of the astrologer in the eyes of the state, more espe- cially as the interpretive fertility of man's imagination had from an early period sought causes for the majestic harmonies of the skies, and these causes, so remote and so all-powerful, were well qualified to arouse the awe and veneration of mankind and an acknowledgment of man's impotence before the mighty forces of the universe and his respect for those whom he believed qualified to interpret the manifestations of this supernal power.

Under what circumstances and by what stages arose the primitive methods of isolating metals from their ores, of mixing them in the requisite proportions to form alloys possessed of properties differing from those of either constituent, and of fashioning the fragments thus obtained into instruments of war and agriculture we can not hope ever to definitely ascertain, but of this we may be absolutely certain, that the intellectual labors and expenditure of patience required to elaborate these crude beginnings of metallurgical science must have far exceeded the labor which, with all the wealth of accumulated experience and organized scientific knowledge we now possess, suffices to accomplish the elaboration of the numerous refinements and improvements of the metallurgical arts which are constantly issuing from our laboratories to-day.

During the ages which witnessed these remarkable developments of human control over nature, parallel developments had inevitably oc- curred in the juridical and political institutions of mankind. It may however be safely inferred that these developments rarely preceded but were rather the consequnce of the development of man's control over his environment. From their very nature it follows that these institu- tions are opportunist, and deal with things and men as they find them. For a politician in a pastoral society to frame and enact legislation adapted to an industrial population would be a folly which would speedily and inevitably precipitate disaster. Laws, whether laws of custom, tribal etiquette, or statutory enactment, were necessarily adapted to the people and environment on which they were imposed. Tfothing can be clearer then, than that the formative forces which have created civilization have not resided in these institutions of mankind which have merely crystallized preexisting conditions into avowed and recognized forms. The creative forces have resided elsewhere and

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