“I was long ago impressed with the idea that many of those long-past occurrences about which learned historians disagree, could be cleared up by the light of induction; that as like causes have ever produced like effects, any causes, however remote in time, might be deduced from their effects, if only the records were sufficiently full and accurate, and the method sufficiently philosophical and thorough. It seemed, for instance, unreasonable that so great discrepancies should exist as to names and arrangements of rulers, and commencement and duration of dynasties, of those very Hykshos, or Shepherd Kings, of whom I spoke the other night in those sacred precincts. Manetho (according to Josephus), states that they reigned five hundred and eleven years, but cites only reigns amounting to two hundred and sixty years; while Africanus makes the duration of those reigns two hundred and eighty-four years, and Eusebius one hundred and three. Africanus makes the Shepherds consist of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth dynasties, and to have ruled nine hundred and fifty-three years, but gives the names and reigns of only one, which he calls the fifteenth, while Eusebius claims it to have been the seventeenth. Bronsen makes their rule end 1639 B. C.; Lipsius, 1842 B. C.; yet if we place the discovered date of Thothmes III. (1445 B. C.) in his sixteenth year, the close of the Hykshos dominion must have been about 1500 B. C.
“In my early life I set about the task of reconciling these discrepancies by converging lines of testimony; and so satisfactory were the results, so unerringly was each cause deduced from its many effects, that I conceived the idea of not only reconciling historical discrepancies as to occurrences and motives, but reading the future by continuing each chain of reasoning into the time to come. In other words, if by my inductive method, more light is thrown on the occurrences in Babylon, Media, Lydia, Egypt, twenty-five centuries ago, than by the non-inductive method, upon those at Shiloh, but twenty-five years past, it should be safer to predict by it the outcomings of the next generation, than by the usual methods, those of the next spring or summer. I deemed that ‘by labor and intent study (which I take to be my portion in this life) joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to after times, that they should not willingly let it die.’ Each year that I continued my studies, which embraced not only the collection and assimilation of facts, but their classification and the formation of deductions therefrom, the more firmly I become impressed with the idea of turning the electric light of induction along the path of prophecy, rather than merely illuminating therewith the fogs of history.
“‘I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated
To closeness, and the bettering of my mind,’
set about this problem. Ample means, an excellent constitution, and correct and regular habits, have enabled me to accomplish during the past fifty years—for through so long a time have I been striving for my object—much more than is given to most men to do, and more even than I had given myself reason to expect or hope. We now stand in ‘this narrow isthmus ’twixt two boundless seas, the past, the future, two eternities.’ I have explored them both.
“But I detect in your manner an impatience which I cannot condemn, and shall plunge at once into an explanation of my methods, leaving until later a statement of what I have been able to accomplish thereby.
“It has long been the custom of professional engineers to represent graphically on sheets of paper ruled in squares, various properties of matter under regularly-varying conditions. For instance, to show the electric conductivity of wire at various temperatures, horizontal strips represent degrees of temperature, and vertical strips, degrees of conductivity; and if a line connecting points corresponding to conductivity at various temperatures be convexly curved above, it shows that conductivity decreases more rapidly than temperature increases. If the line be straight, it shows that conductivity decreases in the same ratio as temperature increases. The use of several colored lines, or of solid and of variously broken or dotted lines, permits comparison of the conductivity of several metals or alloys.
“This, as a method of recording and comparing experiments, is quite convenient; but it is even more useful. The location of from three to ten points permits the experimenter to deduce accurately what would have been the results of other accurately-performed experiments under similar conditions. Whether the line is a straight one, or an hyperbola, or one expressed by some algebraical equation, the mean can be known from the extremes or one of the extremes deduced from the other extreme and the mean. In other words, in this principle lies the key to prophecy. For, given a mode of expressing social conditions, legal enactments, human emotions, extending through a sufficient period, and known with sufficient accuracy to be properly charted, the present may be made to throw light upon a past too dim, and past and present point with unerring finger to the future, be it near or distant.
“When Byron wrote ‘The best of prophets of the future is the past,’ he ‘builded better than he knew.’
“But that the scientific seer may surely venture on the task of piercing the fogs which screen the past from our curious eyes, or of lifting the veils which hide the future from our anxious gaze, the simple squares and lines of the engineer must be so developed and supplemented as to represent more than two sets of conditions at once. They must show simultaneously several influences which are silently making history. It is to the enlarged application of the principle of graphical representation, that the last ten years of a life, formerly spent in the accumulation and classification of recorded knowledge, have been devoted. How well I have succeeded, I shall shortly show you. But first I must tell you by what means I have triumphed over oblivion and set upon myself the crown of prophecy.