Westward empire

by Elias Lyman Magoon

SCIENCE.

If we trace the march of scientific knowledge through the dense strata of departed ages to its root, it will doubtless be found in the remote East, while all prolific growth is toward the West. As often as the storms of conquest have passed over the plains of India, the arts of production continue to be practiced in the very places of their first endeavors. Hindoos of the present day, with no other auxiliaries than their hatchets and hands, can smelt iron, which they will convert into steel, equal to the best prepared in Europe. It is believed that the tools with which the Egyptians covered their obelisks and temples of porphyry and syenite with hieroglyphics, were made of Indian steel. Bailly refers the origin of the arts and sciences, astronomy, the old lunar zodiac, and the discovery of the planets, to northern Asia. Doubtless that was the source of the progressive race, of which science was the chief instrument, and Greek culture the first adequate expression.

As criticism comes naturally after poetry, so science succeeds a great exhibition of art. A close and profound analogy exists between them, and in this order. Genius spontaneously executes great, curious, and beautiful works, before scientific reason pauses to sit in judgment upon the principles according to which the artistic processes were conducted. Expert workers in brass and iron existed long before the chemistry of metals was known, as wine sparkled in crystal and golden goblets before vinous fermentation formed a chapter of science. Pyramids and cromlechs were raised into the air in cyclopian massiveness, before a theory of mechanical powers had been defined. Dyeing was early in use with the Hindoos, from whom the Egyptians learned the art, as they did that of calico printing. That was one of the many varieties of practical science which certainly came from the remote East. Paper making was first known in India, where, for a long time, it was formed of cotton and other substitutes for hemp and flax. In the Himalayas, it is still manufactured of the inner bark of trees, and in sheets of immense size. The invention of a loom, and the common mode of weaving, is alluded to in the Rig Veda, B.C. 1200 years. The Institutes of Manu, say: "Let a weaver who has received ten palas of cotton thread, give them back, increased to eleven by rice-water and the like used in weaving."

But the nurses of infant science on the banks of the Ganges, the Euphrates, and the Nile, enslaved it to their own superstitions, and forever arrested its growth at the immutable boundary of their own contracted technicalities. So little real skill did the Egyptians possess, that it was necessary for Thales to show them how to find the height of the pyramids by the length of their shadows. Osiris was a king of that mummified land, and the historical course of science was foretokened by the fabulous account respecting him. Diodorus states that he passed through Ethiopia, Arabia, India, and Asia; crossed the Hellespont into Europe, and went from Thrace to western Greece, and the nations beyond, teaching them agriculture, and the cultivation of the vine. This was unquestionably invented after the Egyptian priesthood had received much information from the Greeks, and had become ashamed of their own gods, who had always confined their beneficent acts entirely to the borders of the Nile. Nevertheless, the statement is interesting, as it indicates the natural course of improvement.

True scientific progress primarily appeared in those mathematical ideas which first escaped from theological jurisdiction, and have ever since increasingly dispersed the gloom of superstition. The East was all eyes and no sight, when reason was most requisite for practical use; like Argus, whose hundred eyes were found napping when work was to be done. The West was much more effective, because its executive skill was fully equal to its speculative; like Cyclops, whose rugged two hands, co-operative with his vigilant one eye, forged for Neptune the trident which insured him the empire of the sea. The study of natural forces increased in proportion to the necessity for their use as correlatives to manual toil. They were thus made greatly to increase the power of man, at the same time they materially economized his time. It was impossible even to the enduring energies of Hercules, unassisted to cleanse the Augean stables; but by the co-operation of a natural force, in the waters of the Alpheus, the needful end was speedily and effectually obtained. A legend describes how Arachne, proud of her proficiency in needle-work, presumed to challenge Minerva to a trial of skill. But the contest was most unequal, because the latter added science to natural handicraft, and this combination was too powerful for any one to withstand. The discomfited Arachne was degraded from her high position among mortals, and, transformed into a spider, was thenceforth compelled to spin the same web in the same way, alike in summer zephyrs and wintry blasts.

Science exists in the mind; it is nature seen by the reason, and not merely by the senses. The sciences are necessarily progressive in the outward world, because of their internal connection. When a particular fundamental principle is in the process of discovery, it is objective, that is the object contemplated; but when once eliminated it becomes subjective, a new light to act as guide and evolver of kindred principles which lie beyond it, and are of more comprehensive use. The development of man as a race is the unfolding of this inherent dependence of one science upon another, the continuous revelation of that great patrimony of knowledge which is predestined to insure progress, emancipate reason, and entail the highest improvement consistent with a mortal state. When the Greek passed from the outer world of nature in search of wisdom, and descended to the depths of human consciousness, he was no longer traditional; his thought was science, and we can see both its birth and progressiveness. Then only might the world expect that, as Plato says his master once desired, that "Nature should have interpretation according to reason." With Socrates, and the scientific thinkers of his school, philosophy advanced from the realm of nature into the realm of man, and became a moral science. But its early cultivators were copious in abstract principles rather than in practical applications. As Canning said, they were the horses of the chariot of industry, and, going in advance of systemizers, they searched for truth for its own dear sake. Science was indeed beautiful in that serene height of abstract theory it was her first aim to secure, resources so copious and elevated that they might irrigate all lands in their descending flow; as the dove that brought the olive-branch to the ark of man's hopes needed to take a higher and longer flight than the one measured by the tree whence she came.

Strange elements of civilization were gathered by the Greeks on every side, all of which were rapidly assimilated to a lofty type, and subordinated to the noblest use. Providence, with the wisest intent, did not permit them to advance far in the right track of scientific discovery. The time had not yet arrived for that, and their fine endowments were made subordinate to human happiness in more auspicious modes than through the accumulation of physical knowledge. They were fitted rather to self-scrutiny, guided by the mind alone, than to explore the grosser world of sense. To regulate and define common conceptions under the law of observation was not their forte; but they were prompt and facile to analyze and expand them through generalized reflection. The refined children of Hellas were subjective rather than objective in all their habits of thought; and the Good, the Beautiful, and the Perfect, were their favorite speculative themes. Nevertheless, the earliest waking of science was in their schools; with them the speculative faculty in physical inquiries was first unfolded. During the protracted prelude during which practical knowledge was becoming separated from metaphysical, the more sagacious of their leaders were called sophoi, or wise men. Afterward this term was changed, as we shall have occasion to note in the succeeding chapter. The physical sciences, as treated by the early Italic and Ionic schools, embraced numerous great questions, and comprehended the widest field of universal erudition that was ever attempted. But proceeding according to a method radically wrong, they were unsuccessful. Greek scholarship in science, as in every other department, at the outset aimed at universality. Untamed by toil, and undismayed by reverses, they went bravely to their task, and strove to read the entire volume of nature at one glance. To discover the origin and principle of the universe, expressed in a single word, was their vain endeavor. Thales declared water to be the original of all; and Anaximenes, air; while Heraclitus pronounced fire to be the essential principle of the universe. The poetical theogonies and cosmogonies of preceding ages gave tone to speculation in the dawn of science, and a physical cosmogony was the primary result. Preceding nations, as the Egyptians, had no cosmal theories, and felt the need of none; not so the Greeks, they were born with a craving to discover the reasons of things, and to explain somehow the mysteries which duller races had little capacity, and less desire to comprehend.

Astrology bore a high antiquity in the East, and contained within itself some rays of light, but never rose above a degraded astronomy. It prepared the way for science, by leading to the habit of grouping phenomena under the pictorial and mythological relations which were supposed to exist among the stars. Actual truths are gradually approximated, but when once really attained, they forever remain the fundamental treasure of man, and may be traced in all the superadditions of brighter days. Thus, in the dim light of speculative suggestion, the Copernican system was anticipated by Aristarchus, the resolution of the heavenly appearances into circular motions was intimated by Plato, and the numerical relations of musical intervals is to be ascribed to Pythagoras. But so completely at fault as to method were even the latest natural philosophers, that no physical doctrine as now received, can be traced so far back as Aristotle.

Astronomy is undoubtedly the most ancient and remarkable science. Chaldea and Egypt probably gave to it somewhat of a scientific form, before the age of intellectuality represented by the Greeks. The Egyptians advanced one step in the right direction, when they determined the path of the sun; and Thales, who, like Moses, was learned in all the science of that Pharaonic people, introduced what he had gleaned into his own land, and became the father of astronomy. The great advance which he made is indicated by the fact that he was the first to predict an eclipse. This science, moreover, profited by the authority with which Plato taught the supremacy of mathematical order; and the truths of harmonics which gave rise to the Pythagorean passion for numbers, were cultivated with great care in that school. But after these first impulses, in the opinion of Dr. Whewell, the sciences owed nothing to the philosophical sects; and the vast and complex accumulations and apparatus of the Stagirite, do not appear to have led to any theoretical physical truths.

As intimated before, Thales of Miletus, was the father of mathematical science, as of Grecian philosophy in general. The discoveries of that early period were of the most elementary kind, but of sufficient importance to give impulse to more dignified researches. His pupil, Pythagoras, made great advancement, and introduced music into his explanations of scientific phenomena. Democritus and Anaxagoras, the friend of Pericles, improved upon the attainments of their predecessors. The latter employed himself in his prison on the quadrature of the circle. Hippocrates, originally a merchant of Chio, became a geometer at Athens, and was the first to solve the problem of a double cube. Archylas, the teacher of Plato, and Eudoxus, one of that great man's scholars, measured cylindrical surfaces, and attained important results by means of conic sections. Thales is reputed to have introduced the sun-dial into Greece, to have observed the obliquity of the ecliptic, and taught that the earth was spherical, and in the centre of the universe. The cycle of nineteen years, called the golden number, invented for the purpose of making the solar and lunar year coincide, was the most important practical result which the astronomy of the Periclean age attained. Meton and Euctemon proposed it for the adoption of the Athenians, by whom it was adopted B.C. 433 years, and is still in use to determine movable feasts.