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A History of Science, Volume 1

H >> Henry Smith Williams >> A History of Science, Volume 1




Without further elaborating the argument, it seems a justifiable
inference that the first conception primitive man would have of
his own life would not include the thought of natural death, but
would, conversely, connote the vague conception of endless life.
Our own ancestors, a few generations removed, had not got rid of
this conception, as the perpetual quest of the spring of eternal
youth amply testifies. A naturalist of our own day has suggested
that perhaps birds never die except by violence. The thought,
then, that man has a term of years beyond which "in the nature of
things," as the saying goes, he may not live, would have dawned
but gradually upon the developing intelligence of successive
generations of men; and we cannot feel sure that he would fully
have grasped the conception of a "natural" termination of human
life until he had shaken himself free from the idea that disease
is always the result of the magic practice of an enemy. Our
observation of historical man in antiquity makes it somewhat
doubtful whether this conception had been attained before the
close of the prehistoric period. If it had, this conception of
the mortality of man was one of the most striking scientific
inductions to which prehistoric man attained. Incidentally, it
may be noted that the conception of eternal life for the human
body being a more primitive idea than the conception of natural
death, the idea of the immortality of the spirit would be the
most natural of conceptions. The immortal spirit, indeed, would
be but a correlative of the immortal body, and the idea which we
shall see prevalent among the Egyptians that the soul persists
only as long as the body is intact--the idea upon which the
practice of mummifying the dead depended--finds a ready
explanation. But this phase of the subject carries us somewhat
afield. For our present purpose it suffices to have pointed out
that the conception of man's mortality--a conception which now
seems of all others the most natural and "innate"--was in all
probability a relatively late scientific induction of our
primitive ancestors.

5. Turning from the consideration of the body to its mental
complement, we are forced to admit that here, also, our primitive
man must have made certain elementary observations that underlie
such sciences as psychology, mathematics, and political economy.
The elementary emotions associated with hunger and with satiety,
with love and with hatred, must have forced themselves upon the
earliest intelligence that reached the plane of conscious
self-observation. The capacity to count, at least to the number
four or five, is within the range of even animal intelligence.
Certain savages have gone scarcely farther than this; but our
primeval ancestor, who was forging on towards civilization, had
learned to count his fingers and toes, and to number objects
about him by fives and tens in consequence, before be passed
beyond the plane of numerous existing barbarians. How much beyond
this he had gone we need not attempt to inquire; but the
relatively high development of mathematics in the early
historical period suggests that primeval man had attained a not
inconsiderable knowledge of numbers. The humdrum vocation of
looking after a numerous progeny must have taught the mother the
rudiments of addition and subtraction; and the elements of
multiplication and division are implied in the capacity to carry
on even the rudest form of barter, such as the various tribes
must have practised from an early day.

As to political ideas, even the crudest tribal life was based on
certain conceptions of ownership, at least of tribal ownership,
and the application of the principle of likeness and difference
to which we have already referred. Each tribe, of course,
differed in some regard from other tribes, and the recognition of
these differences implied in itself a political classification. A
certain tribe took possession of a particular hunting- ground,
which became, for the time being, its home, and over which it
came to exercise certain rights. An invasion of this territory by
another tribe might lead to war, and the banding together of the
members of the tribe to repel the invader implied both a
recognition of communal unity and a species of prejudice in favor
of that community that constituted a primitive patriotism. But
this unity of action in opposing another tribe would not prevent
a certain rivalry of interest between the members of the same
tribe, which would show itself more and more prominently as the
tribe increased in size. The association of two or more persons
implies, always, the ascendency of some and the subordination of
others. Leadership and subordination are necessary correlatives
of difference of physical and mental endowment, and rivalry
between leaders would inevitably lead to the formation of
primitive political parties. With the ultimate success and
ascendency of one leader, who secures either absolute power or
power modified in accordance with the advice of subordinate
leaders, we have the germs of an elaborate political system--an
embryo science of government.

Meanwhile, the very existence of such a community implies the
recognition on the part of its members of certain individual
rights, the recognition of which is essential to communal
harmony. The right of individual ownership of the various
articles and implements of every-day life must be recognized, or
all harmony would be at an end. Certain rules of justice--
primitive laws--must, by common consent, give protection to the
weakest members of the community. Here are the rudiments of a
system of ethics. It may seem anomalous to speak of this
primitive morality, this early recognition of the principles of
right and wrong, as having any relation to science. Yet, rightly
considered, there is no incongruity in such a citation. There
cannot well be a doubt that the adoption of those broad
principles of right and wrong which underlie the entire structure
of modern civilization was due to scientific induction,--in other
words, to the belief, based on observation and experience, that
the principles implied were essential to communal progress. He
who has scanned the pageant of history knows how often these
principles seem to be absent in the intercourse of men and
nations. Yet the ideal is always there as a standard by which all
deeds are judged.


It would appear, then, that the entire superstructure of later
science had its foundation in the knowledge and practice of
prehistoric man. The civilization of the historical period could
not have advanced as it has had there not been countless
generations of culture back of it. The new principles of science
could not have been evolved had there not been great basal
principles which ages of unconscious experiment had impressed
upon the mind of our race. Due meed of praise must be given,
then, to our primitive ancestor for his scientific
accomplishments; but justice demands that we should look a little
farther and consider the reverse side of the picture. We have had
to do, thus far, chiefly with the positive side of
accomplishment. We have pointed out what our primitive ancestor
knew, intimating, perhaps, the limitations of his knowledge; but
we have had little to say of one all-important feature of his
scientific theorizing. The feature in question is based on the
highly scientific desire and propensity to find explanations for
the phenomena of nature. Without such desire no progress could be
made. It is, as we have seen, the generalizing from experience
that constitutes real scientific progress; and yet, just as most
other good things can be overdone, this scientific propensity may
be carried to a disastrous excess.

Primeval man did not escape this danger. He observed, he
reasoned, he found explanations; but he did not always
discriminate as to the logicality of his reasonings. He failed to
recognize the limitations of his knowledge. The observed
uniformity in the sequence of certain events impressed on his
mind the idea of cause and effect. Proximate causes known, he
sought remoter causes; childlike, his inquiring mind was always
asking, Why? and, childlike, he demanded an explicit answer. If
the forces of nature seemed to combat him, if wind and rain
opposed his progress and thunder and lightning seemed to menace
his existence, he was led irrevocably to think of those human
foes who warred with him, and to see, back of the warfare of the
elements, an inscrutable malevolent intelligence which took this
method to express its displeasure. But every other line of
scientific observation leads equally, following back a sequence
of events, to seemingly causeless beginnings. Modern science can
explain the lightning, as it can explain a great number of the
mysteries which the primeval intelligence could not penetrate.
But the primordial man could not wait for the revelations of
scientific investigation: he must vault at once to a final
solution of all scientific problems. He found his solution by
peopling the world with invisible forces, anthropomorphic in
their conception, like himself in their thought and action,
differing only in the limitations of their powers. His own dream
existence gave him seeming proof of the existence of an alter
ego, a spiritual portion of himself that could dissever itself
from his body and wander at will; his scientific inductions
seemed to tell him of a world of invisible beings, capable of
influencing him for good or ill. From the scientific exercise of
his faculties he evolved the all-encompassing generalizations of
invisible and all-powerful causes back of the phenomena of
nature. These generalizations, early developed and seemingly
supported by the observations of countless generations, came to
be among the most firmly established scientific inductions of our
primeval ancestor. They obtained a hold upon the mentality of our
race that led subsequent generations to think of them, sometimes
to speak of them, as "innate" ideas. The observations upon which
they were based are now, for the most part, susceptible of other
interpretations; but the old interpretations have precedent and
prejudice back of them, and they represent ideas that are more
difficult than almost any others to eradicate. Always, and
everywhere, superstitions based upon unwarranted early scientific
deductions have been the most implacable foes to the progress of
science. Men have built systems of philosophy around their
conception of anthropomorphic deities; they have linked to these
systems of philosophy the allied conception of the immutability
of man's spirit, and they have asked that scientific progress
should stop short at the brink of these systems of philosophy and
accept their dictates as final. Yet there is not to-day in
existence, and there never has been, one jot of scientific
evidence for the existence of these intangible anthropomorphic
powers back of nature that is not susceptible of scientific
challenge and of more logical interpretation. In despite of which
the superstitious beliefs are still as firmly fixed in the minds
of a large majority of our race as they were in the mind of our
prehistoric ancestor. The fact of this baleful heritage must not
be forgotten in estimating the debt of gratitude which historic
man owes to his barbaric predecessor.



II. EGYPTIAN SCIENCE

In the previous chapter we have purposely refrained from
referring to any particular tribe or race of historical man. Now,
however, we are at the beginnings of national existence, and we
have to consider the accomplishments of an individual race; or
rather, perhaps, of two or more races that occupied successively
the same geographical territory. But even now our studies must
for a time remain very general; we shall see little or nothing of
the deeds of individual scientists in the course of our study of
Egyptian culture. We are still, it must be understood, at the
beginnings of history; indeed, we must first bridge over the gap
from the prehistoric before we may find ourselves fairly on the
line of march of historical science.

At the very outset we may well ask what constitutes the
distinction between prehistoric and historic epochs --a
distinction which has been constantly implied in much that we
have said. The reply savors somewhat of vagueness. It is a
distinction having to do, not so much with facts of human
progress as with our interpretation of these facts. When we speak
of the dawn of history we must not be understood to imply that,
at the period in question, there was any sudden change in the
intellectual status of the human race or in the status of any
individual tribe or nation of men. What we mean is that modern
knowledge has penetrated the mists of the past for the period we
term historical with something more of clearness and precision
than it has been able to bring to bear upon yet earlier periods.
New accessions of knowledge may thus shift from time to time the
bounds of the so-called historical period. The clearest
illustration of this is furnished by our interpretation of
Egyptian history. Until recently the biblical records of the
Hebrew captivity or service, together with the similar account of
Josephus, furnished about all that was known of Egyptian history
even of so comparatively recent a time as that of Ramses II.
(fifteenth century B.C.), and from that period on there was
almost a complete gap until the story was taken up by the Greek
historians Herodotus and Diodorus. It is true that the king-lists
of the Alexandrian historian, Manetho, were all along accessible
in somewhat garbled copies. But at best they seemed to supply
unintelligible lists of names and dates which no one was disposed
to take seriously. That they were, broadly speaking, true
historical records, and most important historical records at
that, was not recognized by modern scholars until fresh light had
been thrown on the subject from altogether new sources.

These new sources of knowledge of ancient history demand a
moment's consideration. They are all-important because they have
been the means of extending the historical period of Egyptian
history (using the word history in the way just explained) by
three or four thousand years. As just suggested, that historical
period carried the scholarship of the early nineteenth century
scarcely beyond the fifteenth century B.C., but to-day's vision
extends with tolerable clearness to about the middle of the fifth
millennium B.C. This change has been brought about chiefly
through study of the Egyptian hieroglyphics. These hieroglyphics
constitute, as we now know, a highly developed system of writing;
a system that was practised for some thousands of years, but
which fell utterly into disuse in the later Roman period, and the
knowledge of which passed absolutely from the mind of man. For
about two thousand years no one was able to read, with any degree
of explicitness, a single character of this strange script, and
the idea became prevalent that it did not constitute a real
system of writing, but only a more or less barbaric system of
religious symbolism. The falsity of this view was shown early in
the nineteenth century when Dr. Thomas Young was led, through
study of the famous trilingual inscription of the Rosetta stone,
to make the first successful attempt at clearing up the mysteries
of the hieroglyphics.

This is not the place to tell the story of his fascinating
discoveries and those of his successors. That story belongs to
nineteenth-century science, not to the science of the Egyptians.
Suffice it here that Young gained the first clew to a few of the
phonetic values of the Egyptian symbols, and that the work of
discovery was carried on and vastly extended by the Frenchman
Champollion, a little later, with the result that the firm
foundations of the modern science of Egyptology were laid.
Subsequently such students as Rosellini the Italian, Lepsius the
German, and Wilkinson the Englishman, entered the field, which in
due course was cultivated by De Rouge in France and Birch in
England, and by such distinguished latter-day workers as Chabas,
Mariette, Maspero, Amelineau, and De Morgan among the Frenchmen;
Professor Petrie and Dr. Budge in England; and Brugsch Pasha and
Professor Erman in Germany, not to mention a large coterie of
somewhat less familiar names. These men working, some of them in
the field of practical exploration, some as students of the
Egyptian language and writing, have restored to us a tolerably
precise knowledge of the history of Egypt from the time of the
first historical king, Mena, whose date is placed at about the
middle of the fifth century B.C. We know not merely the names of
most of the subsequent rulers, but some thing of the deeds of
many of them; and, what is vastly more important, we know, thanks
to the modern interpretation of the old literature, many things
concerning the life of the people, and in particular concerning
their highest culture, their methods of thought, and their
scientific attainments, which might well have been supposed to be
past finding out. Nor has modern investigation halted with the
time of the first kings; the recent explorations of such
archaeologists as Amelineau, De Morgan, and Petrie have brought
to light numerous remains of what is now spoken of as the
predynastic period--a period when the inhabitants of the Nile
Valley used implements of chipped stone, when their pottery was
made without the use of the potter's wheel, and when they buried
their dead in curiously cramped attitudes without attempt at
mummification. These aboriginal inhabitants of Egypt cannot
perhaps with strict propriety be spoken of as living within the
historical period, since we cannot date their relics with any
accuracy. But they give us glimpses of the early stages of
civilization upon which the Egyptians of the dynastic period were
to advance.

It is held that the nascent civilization of these Egyptians of
the Neolithic, or late Stone Age, was overthrown by the invading
hosts of a more highly civilized race which probably came from
the East, and which may have been of a Semitic stock. The
presumption is that this invading people brought with it a
knowledge of the arts of war and peace, developed or adopted in
its old home. The introduction of these arts served to bridge
somewhat suddenly, so far as Egypt is concerned, that gap between
the prehistoric and the historic stage of culture to which we
have all along referred. The essential structure of that bridge,
let it now be clearly understood, consisted of a single element.
That element is the capacity to make written records: a knowledge
of the art of writing. Clearly understood, it is this element of
knowledge that forms the line bounding the historical period.
Numberless mementos are in existence that tell of the
intellectual activities of prehistoric man; such mementos as
flint implements, pieces of pottery, and fragments of bone,
inscribed with pictures that may fairly be spoken of as works of
art; but so long as no written word accompanies these records, so
long as no name of king or scribe comes down to us, we feel that
these records belong to the domain of archaeology rather than to
that of history. Yet it must be understood all along that these
two domains shade one into the other and, it has already been
urged, that the distinction between them is one that pertains
rather to modern scholarship than to the development of
civilization itself. Bearing this distinction still in mind, and
recalling that the historical period, which is to be the field of
our observation throughout the rest of our studies, extends for
Egypt well back into the fifth millennium B.C., let us briefly
review the practical phases of that civilization to which the
Egyptian had attained before the beginning of the dynastic
period. Since theoretical science is everywhere linked with the
mechanical arts, this survey will give us a clear comprehension
of the field that lies open for the progress of science in the
long stages of historical time upon which we are just entering.

We may pass over such rudimentary advances in the direction of
civilization as are implied in the use of articulate language,
the application of fire to the uses of man, and the systematic
making of dwellings of one sort or another, since all of these
are stages of progress that were reached very early in the
prehistoric period. What more directly concerns us is to note
that a really high stage of mechanical development had been
reached before the dawnings of Egyptian history proper. All
manner of household utensils were employed; the potter's wheel
aided in the construction of a great variety of earthen vessels;
weaving had become a fine art, and weapons of bronze, including
axes, spears, knives, and arrow-heads, were in constant use.
Animals had long been domesticated, in particular the dog, the
cat, and the ox; the horse was introduced later from the East.
The practical arts of agriculture were practised almost as they
are at the present day in Egypt, there being, of course, the same
dependence then as now upon the inundations of the Nile.

As to government, the Egyptian of the first dynasty regarded his
king as a demi-god to be actually deified after his death, and
this point of view was not changed throughout the stages of later
Egyptian history. In point of art, marvellous advances upon the
skill of the prehistoric man had been made, probably in part
under Asiatic influences, and that unique style of stilted yet
expressive drawing had come into vogue, which was to be
remembered in after times as typically Egyptian. More important
than all else, our Egyptian of the earliest historical period was
in possession of the art of writing. He had begun to make those
specific records which were impossible to the man of the Stone
Age, and thus he had entered fully upon the way of historical
progress which, as already pointed out, has its very foundation
in written records. From now on the deeds of individual kings
could find specific record. It began to be possible to fix the
chronology of remote events with some accuracy; and with this
same fixing of chronologies came the advent of true history. The
period which precedes what is usually spoken of as the first
dynasty in Egypt is one into which the present-day searcher is
still able to see but darkly. The evidence seems to suggest than
an invasion of relatively cultured people from the East
overthrew, and in time supplanted, the Neolithic civilization of
the Nile Valley. It is impossible to date this invasion
accurately, but it cannot well have been later than the year 5000
B.C., and it may have been a great many centuries earlier than
this. Be the exact dates what they may, we find the Egyptian of
the fifth millennium B.C. in full possession of a highly
organized civilization.

All subsequent ages have marvelled at the pyramids, some of which
date from about the year 4000 B.C., though we may note in passing
that these dates must not be taken too literally. The chronology
of ancient Egypt cannot as yet be fixed with exact accuracy, but
the disagreements between the various students of the subject
need give us little concern. For our present purpose it does not
in the least matter whether the pyramids were built three
thousand or four thousand years before the beginning of our era.
It suffices that they date back to a period long antecedent to
the beginnings of civilization in Western Europe. They prove that
the Egyptian of that early day had attained a knowledge of
practical mechanics which, even from the twentieth-century point
of view, is not to be spoken of lightly. It has sometimes been
suggested that these mighty pyramids, built as they are of great
blocks of stone, speak for an almost miraculous knowledge on the
part of their builders; but a saner view of the conditions gives
no warrant for this thought. Diodoras, the Sicilian, in his
famous World's History, written about the beginning of our era,
explains the building of the pyramids by suggesting that great
quantities of earth were piled against the side of the rising
structure to form an inclined plane up which the blocks of stone
were dragged. He gives us certain figures, based, doubtless, on
reports made to him by Egyptian priests, who in turn drew upon
the traditions of their country, perhaps even upon written
records no longer preserved. He says that one hundred and twenty
thousand men were employed in the construction of the largest
pyramid, and that, notwithstanding the size of this host of
workers, the task occupied twenty years. We must not place too
much dependence upon such figures as these, for the ancient
historians are notoriously given to exaggeration in recording
numbers; yet we need not doubt that the report given by Diodorus
is substantially accurate in its main outlines as to the method
through which the pyramids were constructed. A host of men
putting their added weight and strength to the task, with the aid
of ropes, pulleys, rollers, and levers, and utilizing the
principle of the inclined plane, could undoubtedly move and
elevate and place in position the largest blocks that enter into
the pyramids or--what seems even more wonderful--the most
gigantic obelisks, without the aid of any other kind of mechanism
or of any more occult power. The same hands could, as Diodorus
suggests, remove all trace of the debris of construction and
leave the pyramids and obelisks standing in weird isolation, as
if sprung into being through a miracle.

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