Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/402

 396 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

their souroe, whether expressed as the material outcome of science or the spiritual outcome of religion^ must be sought in the creative curi- osity of man operating through the medium of a discipline of thought which has in every age been essentially identical with the now avowed and self-conscious discipline of thought which is most extensively and successfully employed by the scientific men whom we term to-day in- vestigators and inventors. The ascent of man has therefore not been due, as historians would have us believe, to superhumanly wise states- men, conquerors or administrators but solely to science and to the anticipations of its fruition which formed the basis of religions.

The increasing complexity of needs and industries now compelled co- operation, the improYement in the machinery of war, backed by the organization and discipline which sprang up in answer to the oppor- tunities this machinery afforded, rendered extensive conquests feasible and the developments of agriculture rendered possible enormous ac- cumulations of population in especially favorable localities. Hence at the dawn of recorded history we find the great river-beds and deltas of the east inhabited by dense populations loosely welded by conquest into inchoate empires.

The close association and interdependence of interests and infor- mation which these aggregations of humanity compelled furnished a tremendous stimulus to the development of knowledge and the control of the environment which they inhabited. Vaniiy inspired monu- mental architectural undertakings, necessity created intensive agri- culture and vast irrigation enterprises, conmiercial or military neces- sity created ships out of the canoes and cockle-shells of primitive fisher- men, and through the interchange of information and imitation and reapplication of successful devices a comprehensive rearrangement of preexisting knowledge took place, analogous to the modern develop- ment of the card index or vertical file from the bound register of in- flexible dimensions, a rearrangement which without of necessity adding anything to knowledge, rendered existing knowledge very much more efficient.

During the growth of these great empires a people had arisen in the west, who were but little favored by natural environment but among whom the instinct of curiosity attained the intensity of a passion. Their very intelligence and energy, however, forbade their conquest and fusion into large conglomerates, while the absence of natural conditions favorable to the formation of dense aggregates of population subjected them to a wide dispersal and constant conflict with the forces of nature and with each other. Only the example afforded by contact with more favored and therefore more advanced civilizations was required however to bring about a speedy reversal of the relations of master and pupil in the curricula of civilization. The Greeks, whose gift of inspired curi-

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