-37672 IBS? S4^ A A o; 1 3 2 4 5 ; 6^ 1 ^ 5«. Evolution of Education Annual r^ddrsss before the Nevad^i State University, Reno, June 3, 1897 By Irving Murray Scott ||^0litti0n of ^Anc^iion^ Bnnual B^^re00 Before the Nevada State University, Reno, Nevada, Thursday, June 3, 1897. m Irving ni>- Scott. "^x^olntion 0f %A\xc^tion. Bnnual Bbbrees Before the Nevada State University, Reno, Nevada, Thursday, June 3, 1897. 36^ flrvtnG riD, Scott THK HICKS-JUDD CO., PRINTKRS, PUBLI8HKRS, BOOKBINDERS, IS FIRST ST., S. F., CAL. 37 ieH 4 cL EVOLUTION OF EDUCATION. Mr. President, Messrs. Regents, Ladies and Gentlemen: The founders and promoters of the Univer- sity of Nevada are well deserving of the highest honor and praise for their efficient efforts in the noble cause of education. " 'Tis education forms the common mind; just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined." Education is largely the motor of progress and civilization. Its function is to refine and ennoble all within its scope. It re- dounds to the honor of the State. It is the bul- wark of civil liberty. Not only is it of the greatest utility in all the various affairs of life, ' but, as Cicero eloquently says : " It is the food of r youth ; the delight of old age ; the ornament of = prosperity; the refuge and comfort of adversity; a \ delight at home, and no hindrance abroad; it is ■ a companion by night, and in travel, and in the country." The beautiful and inviting site of this Univer- sity, surrounded by extensive and fertile valley lands, with majestic mountains not far remote, rich in minerals and the precious metals, the granite-filtered water, pure as that from the Cas- talian fount, and the air of Elysian purity — all conspire in assuring glorious success to the Uni- versity of Nevada from the present on to the most distant future. Among the many valuable features of the University, I would especially com- mend that of its open doors to the free access of the fair sex as well as to the more robust. Recognition of the equality of the sexes is an evolution from the barbaric state of our race to that of the civilized. M}' theme for the present occasion is EVOLUTION OF EDUCATION. Nature in her works records progress in characters not to be misunderstood. Thus the record reads : Nature evolved from elements the primary or azoic rocks ; from these by mechanical and chemical action she evolved soil ; from this she evolved vegetation ; and from it she evolved animal life in its various forms from the mollusk up to man. The matter that pre-existed as ele- ments has by successive steps been transformed into animal substance. Nature precludes the pos- sibility of either animals or vegetables subsisting on elements; nor ma}' the animal subsist upon minerals. Vital force, as such, is non-existent till the vegetable is evolved for its action. " Life," says Professor Dana, " commenced among plants in seaweeds, and it ended in palms, oaks, elms, the orange, rose, etc. It commenced among ani- mals in mollusks standing on a stem like a plant ; it ended in man. There were higher and lower species created through all ages, but the successions were still in their general range of higher and higher grade. With every new fauna and flora in the passing periods there was a fuller and higher exhibition of the kingdoms of life.'' On the subject of the evolution of life, Pro- fessor Joseph Le Conte, enjoying the van of the world's ablest scientists, says: "It (life) must have come somewhat suddenly, but not, therefore, by other than a natural process ; for the process takes place dail}^ and under our eyes. When the necessary conditions — sunlight, chlorophyl and living protoplasm — are present, light and chemism change at once into life force, and mineral matter into living matter." Aristotle, probably the ablest of the Grecian metaphysicists, held that " plants have soul with- out consciousness; that all animals have soul — body and mind in them being inseparable; that man has soul — intellect passive and intellect active; that his intellect passive and his body are insepar- able ; but that his intellect active is pure form — cognition of the highest principles, existing as an entity distinct, detached from matter; that it is the prime mover of all — an immortal, self-sub- sisting substance, the essence of deity." This speculation of Aristotle respecting the soul — the intellect active^ as he terms it, is adopted by some authors of intellectual philosophy, and is a tenet of religious faith with a vast number of the human family. " But of mind, apart from the body," says Professor Bain, " we have no direct experience, and absolutely no knowledge. * * * We are not permitted to see a mind acting apart from its material companion. * * * We have every reason for believing that there is an unbroken material succession, side by side with all our mental processes. From the ingress of a sensa- tion to outgoing responses in action, the mental succession is not for an instant dissevered from physical succession." "Whatever," says Dr. Draper, "is not founded on a material substratum is necessarily a castle in the air. Old-school philosophers have sailed upon a shoreless sea from which the fog never lifts. '•■• '•■• '■'^- God ever materializes. =s: * * No nobler conception can be had of the Great Author of the wonderful forms around us than to regard them all, the vegetable and animal, the living and lifeless, the earth and the stars, and the numberless worlds that are beyond our vision, as ///<? offspring of ONE PRIMITIVE IDEA and the consequences of ONE PRIMORDIAL LAW.'* Whether mind has been evolved by natural law operating upon matter, or is a direct emana- tion of divine fiat, seems a problem answered by conjecture rather than absolute demonstration. "The mind," says Cicero, "knows not what the mind is." It is something, however, which per- ceives, reflects, remembers, believes, imagines, reas- ons and wills; is susceptible of education, and by education of progress, onward, upward, excelsior, and in its fullest development in man, seems, in our conception, the nearest approximate to divinity. It is endowed witH the faculties of perception, consciousness, original suggestion, abstraction, memory, reason, imagination, taste, conscience, will, judgment, instinct and bias. It conceives, directs and effects its purposes by its own in- herent powers and the aid of subordinates. Man thus endowed has by persevering effort determined not a few of the laws of nature, and learned to read her records written by her own hand in the strata of the earth and in the heavens. The history of man runs not far back before merging into myth. Egyptian hieroglyphics, among other things, record the use of the plough in the valley of the Nile five thousand years ago. Computation from Jewish' data indicates that nearly six thousand years have elapsed since the occurrence of man's advent upon the earth. In Table Mountain, Calaveras County, California, a human skull cemented with gravel, and the remains of a mas- todon, have been found in the gravel bed of an ancient river, one hundred and eighty feet below the surface of the mountain — found under five successive lava beds. These remains of man and mastodon were thus entombed before the lava peaks of the Sierras were formed. " England," says Gunning in his " Life History of Our Planet," ** has passed through a triple change of climate and fauna and physical geography since Kent's cave was a den of hyenas and cave bears, which dragged into their lair the dead 8 reiudeer and rhinoceros and mammoth. The hun- dred thousand years, or more, recorded in the floor of stalagmite are a time-scale none too long for the measurement of changes so vast. But man was already in England — a troglodyte housed with hyenas and bears. His crude implements of flint are strewn in profusion through the same cave-earth that holds the remains of the extinct fauna." These implements, conferring upon man the appellation of a " tool-using animal," belong to the rough-stone age, or paleolithic, and are probably the oldest of man's works thus far discovered. In the same cave, in a superimposed layer of cave earth, are found more highly finished implements belonging to the smooth-stone age, or neolithic, antedating historic record by untold ages. In a still higher stratum of cave earth are found iron spearheads and nails, and daggers, and amber beads, and finger rings, and armlets, and brace- lets of bronze, and the ivory boss of a Roman sword, and silver coins of Trajan. The flint implements, consisting of knives, arrowheads and spearheads, hitherto referred to, show that when man first dwelt in Kent's cave he was cognizant of the first law of nature, that of self-preservation — self-defense and self sustenance by warfare. That he lived, as Mr. Gunning assumes in his "Life History of Our Planet," in the cave as a companion of liycnas, cave bears, lions, and mas- todons, is hardly admissible; but that a company of men killed and brought these animals into the cave for food, and other purposes, seems entirely probable: the cave was man's castle, the store- house of his wealth. These evidences of man's sojourn on earth show that, beginning in the paleolithic age, and, as it would appear, in an interglacial period, he passed up through the neo- lithic, bronze and iron ages, becoming more and more skillful in each successive age. In the Magdelaine cave in France are found, among other things, bone and ivory implements of utility, as needles, combs, etc., and a paleo- lithic carving of the mastodon long since extinct, but with which it seems highly probable the artist was a cotemporary. Geological exploration in the valley of the Nile discloses pottery, estimated, from the data furnished by the superimposed strata, to be thir- teen thousand years old — nine thousand years older than the oldest pyramid of Egypt. A comparison of this rude pottery with the Egyp- tian pyramids, sphinxes, obelisks, seeming the work of superhuman hands, furnishes marked degrees on the scale of the Evolution of Educa- tion in that country, embracing a period of a hundred centuries and upward. At an early age of our race man perceived himself environed by energies superior to his own, some of which afforded him pleasure and others pain; the former he denominated good and the latter evil. He conceived these powers, exist- lO iiig iu material substances, to be possessed of ^vill — intelligence of the nature of his own. He invoked the assistance of the good, and to gain their favor made offerings to them of frankin- cense and whatever is delightful to the senses. To the evil he sacrificed blood, conceiving, as Porph3'r3' says, that " demons are fond of blood, humidity, stench." Summer teemed with abund- ance; winter brought destruction, scarcity and misery. The stars in the ascendant during these re- spective seasons were supposed to cause the different results set forth. The sun was held to be king god, the moon his queen goddess, and the stars to be possessed of supernatural powers — star gods, authors of good and evil, but sub- ject to the orders of the sun god. Dupuis, one of the most distinguished of French savants, determines, from incontestable astronomical data, that star worship, Sabianism, obtained in Egypt more than fifteen thousand years ago — determines that Egyptians at that epoch had divided the Zodiac into twelve con- stellations or signs, and ascribed divine powers to them. "The ancients," says Maimonides, "directing all their attention to agriculture, gave to the stars names derived from their occupation during the 3'ear." " Thus the Egyptian of Thebes," says Volney, "named stars of inundation, or aquarms^ those II under whicli the Nile began to overflow; stars of the ox or bull, those under which he began to plough; stars of the lion, those under which that animal, driven from the desert by thirst, appeared on the banks of the Nile; stars of the sheaf, or of the Harvest Virgin, those of the reaping season; stars of the lamb, stars of the kids, those under which those precious animals were brought forth." Not only did the Egyptians adore the constellations along the pathway of the sun, but all the stars as a nation of divinities, or singly or in clusters, sjmibolic respectively of some natural phenomenon: event — real or imagi- nar}'- — achievement, characteristic feature of man, or peculiar property of animal of lower order. Thus, illustrative of watchfulness, that beau- tiful star, Sirius, the Barker, was the watch dog — dog star of the Egj^ptians, and, rising apparently near the head of the Nile, warned them of the danger of the inundation of that river. The whimsical worship of the stars, propa- gated by various means, overspread the entire world. Not only was astrology a religion, a matter of faith, but it embraced whatever was known of science and learning, which, though faulty and complex, contained much of worth. The system, though retaining long its main features, was somewhat mutilated in different countries, each engrafting it with some peculiarity or conception of its own. Thus the scorpion was in Egypt primitively the chief of the winter signs of the Zodiac; subsequently in Persia it was the serpent. 12 Astrological fable represents that the serpent beguiled the Harvest Virgin, and that she, with a branch of fruit held out to the herdsman Bootes, tempted him to partake; and that Perseus, with sword in hand, rising heliacally in the east, drove them from the summer heaven — the garden of fruit and flowers — drove them below the west- ern horizon into obscurity and want of winter. Savants holding the Hebrew account of the ex- pulsion and fall of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden to be an allegory maintain that it was derived from the astrological fable of the Harvest Virgin and Bootes. Moses sought to establish the worship of the soul of the universe — in other words, the God worshiped at Heliopolis, where he was educated — a God coming not under the senses, thereupon not susceptible of being painted or otherwise represented by art. He purposed that the wor- ship or religion should be entirely free from any form of star-worship. It was a noble pur- pose, and has been the cause of grand results. But he failed in his purpose, as is evidenced by the "seven luminaries or planets of the great candlestick; the twelve stones or signs in the 7irim of the high priest; the feast of the two equinoxes; entrances and gates of the two hemis- pheres (denoting summer and winter); the cere- mony of the lamb or celestial ram ; and even the name of Osiris, Tsour. Creator." At length the Christian religion was estab- lished—founded on love, an attribute of the Su- 13 preme Being, most essential in his relations to man, and in the relations of man to man. Its chief maxims are love to God and love to man, and " do unto others as you would they should do unto you." That these principles or rules for our guidance are the best of all seems abso- lutely certain; and that their effect upon a vast portion of the human race has been most bene- ficent seems no less so. Indeed, in the Evolu- tion of Education with respect to religion, Christianity has attained a higher degree of excellence than any other system of worship ; but that it is still fraught with errors, imposed upon it by ancient myth, is quite obvious. Its votaries are too often actuated by craven, super- stitious fear, and dread of punishment, rather than by that peerless principle of love to God and love to their fellow-men. To rectify these errors is the function of science. Unbridled im- agination, for ages, peopled the heavens and earth and the fictitious regions in the bowels of the earth with inimical monsters. These goblins science has vanished from the heavens, and is banishing them from the earth, and from the fictitious regions within the earth. Turning now to Greece in our inquiry with respect to the Evolution of Education, we learn from tradition, also from subsequent history at its dawn, that the country was in a semi-barba- rous state. The Trojan war, so masterly described by Homer's Iliad, is conjectured to have termi- 14 nated nearly 1200 years before the Christian era. From that epoch down occurred a mythical period of four hundred years. During that period gods and goddesses, celestial, terrestrial and infernal demigods and goddesses, heroes and heroines, men and women, seem to have been on terms among themselves of approximate equality, at least of great familiarity. The authentic histor}^ of Greece began B. C. 776. At that epoch the inhabitants consisted chiefly of tribes — the Pelasgians, signifjdng swai'thy Asiatics, dark-faced men, and Hellenes, signifying zuarriors. From the union of the Pelasgians and Hellenes was developed a nation more distin- guished for genius, grand achievements, learning and refinement, than any other nation of antiquity. Herodotus informs us that " the Greeks owed their greatness to a coalition with the Pelasgians." The Pelasgians evidently greatly outnumbered the Hellenes in early times, as we learn that they spread, not only over the Grecian peninsula, but the Italian, and that their language formed the basis of the Latin as well as of the Greek. They had a greater numerical strength; but the Hellenes braver, more intellectual and enterpris- ing, became dominant, and, to a large extent, Hellenized Greece. The Eg3'ptian priests aver that the civiliza- tion, arts and religion of the Greeks were all derived from Egypt. This claim, though accepted as true by some historians, seems not warranted 15 by facts. Thus Jove, tlie great divinity of both the Pelasgians and Hellenes, was essentially Greek. His most ancient seat of worship was Dodona, in Kpirus. Homer calls Dodonean Jove Pelasgic, denoting an Asiatic origin and not Egyptian. As the Hellenes became more domi- nant, the chief seat of Jovian worship was trans- ferred from Dodona to Mount Olympus. Mount Ida, in the Island of Crete, was, in most ancient times, said to be the birthplace of Jove, or Zeus, as he was called in Greek. This indicates that the Greeks themselves did not regard the Jovian religion of Egyptian origin. The absence of Egyptian monuments in Greece bears strong evidence against the claim of the Egyptian priests. True, monuments of pyramidal form were early found in Greece, but such form was not necessarily derived from Egypt, since it obtains also in other countries, as India, Babylonia, etc. The architecture of Greece was es- sentially different from that of Egypt. The char- acteristics of Egyptian architecture were strength, simplicity and perpetuity ^ while those of Greece were perfect proportions^ symmetry and beauty. In the structure of nearly all the most noted Grecian temples, the Doric columns were em- ployed. These, involving the curves of conic sections, nowhere found in Egyptian architecture, were faultless. Each longitudinal line of the column is a curve so proportioned as to seem straight to the eye of the beholder at any and i6 everj' point of view. This fact I had the pleasure of verifying by critical tests by measurement and observation of the lines of the columns of the Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis. One legend sets forth that Cecrops of Sais in Egypt, bringing with him A^eith^ an Egyptian goddess, came to Attica B. C. 1550, and occupied the rock which subsequently became the citadel of Athens — the Acropolis; that around this rock a city was built, first called Cecropia, from its founder Cecrops, and that the name of the god- dess N^eith was changed to that of Athence. If there be a color of truth in this legend, noth- ing remains — neither monument nor authentic word to indicate it. Philology shows the Greek language to have been Indo-Germanic in character, and to have been composed of two elements — Pelasgic and Hellenic; and that, by purely Grecian culture of these, the Greek language, especially at Attica, attained the highest degree of perfection of any language in the world. It far surpassed the Egyptian in that, in writing, it employed an al- phabet consisting of simple characters, by whose combinations into words, sentences and discourse every phase of thought, however profound, com- plex, delicate, sublime and subtle, was clearly and fully expressed with facility; whereas, the Egyptian written language, consisting of hiero- glyphics elaborated from picture-writing, was clumsy, limited, inflexible, obscure, burdensome 17 to writer and reader, and ill-adapted to the use of the public. Myth attributes to Cadmus of Phoenicia the introduction into Greece of an alphabet of sixteen letters, to which the Greeks subsequently added eight more. Investigation, however, fails to find a trace of anything Phoeni- cian in the language, art and literature of Greece. In fact, whence and when the Greeks first em- ployed alphabetical characters to communicate thought is unknown. Certain it is, however, that by their use Greece largely achieved her great- ness and that by their use her fame for greatness has spread world-wide. In general it is to be truly said that no more important invention was ever made than that of alphabetical characters. They stimulated learn- ing, and rendered possible the efforts of those whose works, as beacon lights, have illumed suc- ceeding ages, ennobled the mind by their intrinsic merit, and by inciting in it a spirit of emulating their effulgent splendors. But for the invention of letters as a means of transmitting intelligence, posterity would evidently have known but little of the achievements of the eminent historians, poets, orators, scholars, warriors, philosophers, rulers and statesmen. The facts accumulated by the extensive re- search and travel of Herodotus, the " Father of History," would have been unrecorded. The songs sung by Homer would have little more than survived their echo. The effects of the elo- i8 quence of Demosthenes, that roused the Athe- nians to battle the mighty hosts of Macedon, would have been ephemeral. The lessons of Plato, Aristotle and Socrates, that down the course of time have so largely shaped the des- tinies of the world, would, at best, have long since been rendered meaningless by distorted and confused tradition. Thought, however, necessarily precedes its expression, and is developed in accord with its environment. The Greeks, especially the Hel- lenic portion, had evidently lion courage, intellect in general, quick, acute, and in many instances profound, and exquisite esthetic taste. These properties of the mind may have been in part due to native endowment, but it is to be appre- hended that they largely resulted from impres- sions made upon it, or inwrought in it, by the features of the country. The lofty and craggy mountains of a rich silvery color, the sea pene- trating here and there far inland, as gulfs, bays, and inlets, and forming numerous peninsulas with bold promontories, the extensive and rugged shore, the pellucid air and genial climate, con- stitute a perfect poem. With it the character- istics and education of the Greeks were in union. The heroic of it was pronounced in almost con- tinuous warfare, and was especially emphasized at Thermopylae, Salaniis, Alarathon and Platsea, wliile the more refined and ennobling was pro- nounced by the genius of the arts, sciences and 19 literature. The sciences, embracing pHlosopliy, rhetoric and mathematics, were subdivided thus: philosophy into logic, ethics and physics; rhetoric into the demonstrative, deliberate and judicial; mathematics into music, geometry and arithmetic. In the development of these the Greek mind turned more to the metaphysical and to the ideal of beauty in their various departments than to the physical and exact. Pythagoras, for example, esteemed one of the ablest of the Greek mathematicians, is said to have sacrificed a hundred head of oxen in celebrating his wondrous feat of crossing the pons asinoi^tim — a bridge which ingenuous youth troop over with facility. The solution of the problem of specific gravity was unattained by the Greek physicists, and was not effected till the glory of Greece had departed. Nor do the Greeks seem to have made any considerable advancement in the theory of mechanics, in geology, chemistry, and astronomy. In the art of communicating thought, both by speech and by pen, they attained a high degree of perfection. Demosthenes heads the list of the great orators of the world, ^^schines, a Grecian orator of extraordinary eloquence, when a distin- guished critic, on having heard him read his oration on the crown, expressed his surprise that the judges had decided against him, is said to have replied, " You should have heard Demos- thenes.'''' Facts, however, seem to show that the Greeks excelled most in temple-architecture, sculp- 20 ture and painting. Of the many classic works of the scnlptor's art, those of the decorations of the Parthenon, the statues of Athense and Olym- pian Jove, executed by Phidias, are the master- pieces of all time; that of Olympian Jove was esteemed one of the wonders of the world. The poetic imagination of the Greek was wont to aver: that the artist by his brush lured the bee to seek honey from the painted flower; that the sculptor b\' his chisel warmed the marble into life, and that tlie musician by his sweet music charmed not only men and beasts, but trees, and the very stones themselves, to follow and dance together in his path. The politics of Greece were essentially demo- cratic, irregular as her surface, and fickle as the winds that sweep over it. But Grecian politics contained, nevertheless, the germs of freedom — the birthright of man; and to them, cultured by experience, the republican form of govern- ment, wherever on earth it exists, is largely due. The jurisprudence of Greece, modified by the Romans — perhaps improved by them — still obtains largely throughout the civilized world. Greece, though much stained with wrongdoing, has been a great benefactor to mankind. Beginning, as wc beliold her, in semi-barbarism, she by her owii energies, gradually rose, in her evolution of education, to the loftiest summit of intellectual greatness and refinement of any nation of an- tiquity. She is justly termed "the mother of refinement, the nurse of literature, and the foun- der of P:uropeau civilization." And let us not 21 forget to say that by her means the Alexandrian Library was established, by far the grandest achievement of her pupil^ Alexander the Great — an achievement whose effulgence has illumed the pathway of time down the ages, and still illumes the world of thought. But for the Alexandrian Library, Greek learning would have been forever lost to the world, and the crystal streams of science that have so enriched and ennobled the intellect of succeeding ages would have been fountainless but for the Graeco-Alexandrian school. It is a sad comment upon Christendom, that, for the treasures which have come down to us from the Alexandrian school, we are indebted to the Moslems. Among the works so preserved, suffice it to mention Euclid's Elements of Geom- etry, and the Philosophy and Higher Geometry of Archimedes. These works were most efi&cient in the revival of mathematics and philosophy in the fifteenth century, and in the progress thence on of those sciences. Algebra was greatly enlarged in its scope, and enriched by numer- ous contributions. Of these, without detraction from any, let mention be made of Vieta, who introduced symbols to represent quantities, em- ployed signs, respectively expressive of addition, subtraction, multiplication, divisions, powers, ex- traction of roots, and laid the foundation of the general theory of equations. In the progress of that great intellectual development, the Arabic system of nine digits and nought was introduced and applied — an invention nearly as invaluable as that of the alphabet itself. The art of print- 22 ing, invented in Europe in the fifteenth century, has proved one of the greatest blessings ever conferred by genius upon the world in its prog- ress of learning and civilization. Descartes invented the system of represent- ing all the parts of a geometrical figure by a single equation. The analytic system thus in- vented is far more simple and extensive in its scope than the synthetic employed by the ancient geometricians. It is an indispensable factor in the investigation of the laws and phenomena of nature. Napier discovered hyperbolic logarithms, whose use cannot well be dispensed with in some of the higher branches of analysis. Briggs' system of logarithms — known as the common system — was brought forth soon after the pub- lication of Napier's. Trigonometry was wrought out and tables computed, expressing the relations of its functions among themselves. The perfection of spherical trigonometry was effected by the contributions to it of rules invented by Napier for the solution of all the cases of right-angled triangles, and of his demonstrated analogies. Newton discovered fluxions, and Leibnitz the differential and integral calculus about the same time. The principles of fluxions are essentially identical with those of the calculus. The discovery by whatever name known, is pronounced, by those competent to judge, to be the greatest, most subtle and sub- lime ever made by human i^enius. Its scope, however, was greatly expanded by Lagrange's Calculus of Variations, and by 23 Laplace's Coefficients, from which has arisen spherical harmonic analysis. Thus in brief was evolved the life, the soul, of all science. Seven- teen centuries had passed since Archimedes laid down his great work — the greatest known to antiquity. The first to essay the task of taking it up and carrying it forward was Leonardo da Vinci. Referring to his attainments, Hallam, the historian, says, ''His knowledge was almost superhuman." Not only did Da Vinci remove from this masterpiece of antiquity the mould of time, causing it to shine in its original lustre, but augmented and adorned it with his own works equally lustrous. He proceeded upon the maxim that experience and observation are necessarily the foundation of all reasoning in science; that experiment is indispensably requisite in interpreting nature aright, and in ascertaining her laws. He clearly demonstrated the theory of forces obliquely applied to a lever; was conversant with the laws of friction and the principle of virtual velocities; was an adept in hydraulics; treated of ^the times of descent of a body on an inclined plane, and on a circular arc, and announced the hypothesis of geology with respect to the elevation of continents. This was the beginning of the modern movement in natural philosophy. Subsequently the fundamental prop- erty of the inclined plane was solved by Stevinus, and the three laws of motion discovered by Gali- leo. Galileo further rediscovered the mechanical properties of fluids — properties known to the phil- osophers of the Alexandrian school, but entirely 24 lost for ages in Europe. By the establishment of these laws of motion was made the discovery of the laws of falling bodies and the discovery of laws determining the resultant path and motion of a body impressed by forces — constant or vari- able — applied to it in different directions; also, by their establishment, the principles of mechanics were firmly established, and a preparation made for their application in astronomy. The ordeal of science as it thus rose step by step was terrible. Patristic dogma decreed that the earth was flat and stationary, and that to say it was globular, and in motion, consti- tuted a crime punishable with torture and death. The circumnavigation of the earth, began under the command of Magellan, and ended under that of his lieutenant, Sebastian d'Elcano, completely refuted this dogma with respect to the form of the earth — proved it globular. Though thus refuted as to the form, pretentious dogma still persistently maintained that the earth was motion- less, condemned Galileo for publishing ''that the earth moves, that the sun is stationary," and compelled him to abjure and curse his works as heresies lest he should be punished according to the grim formula, " as merciful as possible and without the shedding of his blood," as was Bruno for a similar offense. As he arose from his knees he is said to have whispered to a friend, " // does move^ thoughy Copernicus ventured to propound the helio- centric hypothesis of Archimedes, as set forth in liis work entitled Psammites. He held that the 25 earth and the planets revolved in circular orbits about the sun; that the earth had a daily rota- tion on her axis, an annual motion round the sun, and a motion of declination of its axis. His system, encumbered with the mechanism of epicycles and eccentrics to meet the requirements of these motions, and due to his misconception of the true form of the orbits, and of the obliquity of the ecliptic, was very faulty as first published. In the process of development, the Coperni- can theory was relieved of its errors with respect to the relation existing between the axis and path of the earth round the sun, and with re- spect to the form of the orbits of the earth and planets b}'^ the application of Kepler's laws, which determined the orbit form elliptical instead of circular. These laws, discovered by Kepler, but not substantiated by him, were demonstrated to be true by Newton in his Principia, and to result of necessity from tangential force and the force of gravitation. Without these contributions of Newton, the Copernican system would have been but a limp- ing speculation. In fact the Principia of the Prince, of Philosophers laid the foundation of physical astronomy, and effected much in rear- ing thereon one of the noblest structures of science. Nothing seems simpler than the fall of an apple. Millions of the human family had witnessed a like phenomenon, but it was left to Newton to grasp the cause. This he found to be "the thread that could guide him through the labyrinth of the universe." 26 In the development of the science of astron- omy since the time of Newton, the ablest work is donbtless Laplace's Celestial Mechanics. It presents a reasonable hypothesis of the forma- tion of the solar system, thence rigidly solves the various and more important problems aris- ing from the action of force upon its several parts. Of these let it suffice to note that La- place, as set forth in his great work, determines the cause of the acceleration of the moon's mean motion to be the influence of the sun upon the moon, combined with the secular variation of the eccentricity of the earth's orbit ; that this secular irregularity of the motion of the moon is periodical ; that millions of years will be re- quired to re-establish its pristine motion, after which the acceleration will become a retarda- tion. This rigid demonstration proves false the prophecy of terrorists to the end that the more rapid motion of the moon now than formerly portends the crash of worlds — the end of time. By the use of superior instruments, the science of astronomy, since the time of Laplace, has been greatly improved— planets unknown to him dis- covered, and the component elements of sun- worlds determined. So that, in the evolution of education, this branch of science has attained a very high degree of perfection. Chemistry had its origin in alchemy. The gases were at first held to be spirits — mostly evil — and were called ghosts. Air and earth were supposed to be replete with them. The chief objects of alchemy were to gain control 27 of them, to convert base metals into gold, and to produce the elixir of life. From a scientific standpoint the Saracens in the ninth century laid the foundation of chemistry by the discovery of nitric and sulphuric acids and phosphorus. Prior to this time the strongest acid known was vinegar. Djafar, an Arabic chemist, dissolved gold with nitric acid and sal ammoniac. Thus " po- table gold" was first obtained; but it was found not to be the " elixir of life," as had generally been conceived, and for which alchemists had so long sought. Djafar appears to have been aware that gases were not ghosts possessed of intelligence, but insentient matter. Marcus Grsecus, at the close of the eighth century, invented gun powder, which, from a politicial point of view, has revolutionized the world. In the seventeenth century it was per- ceived that the union of bodies depends upon their opposite qualities, as witnessed in the be- havior of acids and alkalies, and their neutraliza- tion. Hence arose the doctrine of chemical affinity. Parcelus discovered hydrogen in 1672. A hundred years later Priestly discovered oxygen, and in 1781 Cavendish determined the product of their combustion to be water. Water seems to have been first resolved into its original elements — oxygen and hydrogen — by Grove. The artificial decomposition of water constitutes an epoch in chemistry. 28 A train of splendid discoveries followed. The old nomenclature, earth, air, fire, and water, was discarded, and for which there was substituted that of sixty and upward elements, with their equivalents accurately determined. Also the laws of combination of the elements, and the laws of the resolution of their compounds, were established. Experiment proved beyond cavil that mat- ter susceptible of infinite change of form is indestructible; that an atom is an immortal being. Thus, a particle of water rises from the sea, floats in the cloud, falls in the raindrop, sinks into the earth, enters the rootlets of a plant, rises in the sap to the leaves, whence b}' sunlight it is resolved into its constituent elements, oxygen and hydrogen. These, com- bining with other elements, form various organic compounds, of which many constitute the food of animals, are digested within them, circulate in their blood, support life, put in operation the faculties of intellection, and expire in breath to reappear in the form of its constituent elements in the unending cj^cles of change. Through all the mutations the particle of water has under- gone, however widely its elements may have been separated, and however powerful the blows dealt them may have been, not an atom has been lost. As with the elements composing water, so with all the elements. Nature in her works precludes both gain and loss of matter. Upon this basis, firm as the universe itself, has been reared, by most skilful architects, the extensive and imposing structure of chemistry. 29 The invention by Watt of the steam engine in the eighteenth century has revolutionized the industry of the world. The engine ploughs, plants, harvests and distributes the products. It forges, fashions and finishes with masterly skill every mechanical device, from the most ponderous to the most complex and delicate. It spins and weaves. It prints and publishes. From city to city and place to place through- out the land, it transports, with impetuous speed, trains of cars replete with passengers, or laden with hundreds of tons of goods. It propels vast navies, also fleets of commerce, exchanging the products of every clime. It lights our streets, manufactories and homes, as it were, with sunlight, and sends forth messengers with light- ning speed to every city and hamlet in the land, and even to those bej^'ond the sea. The most important discovery of the present century seems justly esteemed to be that of the correlation and conservation of forces. " The law of conservation," says Professor Tyndall, "rigidly excludes both creation and annihila- tion." This law applies to force as well as to matter. The experiments leading up to this grand discovery were made by Benjamin Frank- lin and by Benjamin Thompson, afterwards known as Count Rumford — both Americans by birth and education. Franklin demonstrated that lightning is but a case of common electricity, and Thompson proved that heat is a mode of motion^ and not a subtle fluid insinuating itself between the particles of other matter, 30 as held by the old-school philosophers. Subse- quent investigation demonstrated that light, heat, electricit}^, magnetism, and chemical affinity are all convertible material affections. Taking either as the cause, one of the others will be the effect. Thus heat will produce electricity and electricity produce heat; magnetism will produce electricity and electricity produce magnetism, and so on of the rest. Dr. Joule a half century ago determined that heat requisite to raise the tem- perature of one pound of water one degree by the Fahrenheit scale is equal to the energy of 772 foot-pounds. Thus was established the mechanical equivalent of heat — a unit of most extensive application in physics. By it are measured all forms of physical force, and, as some experi- ments indicate, of even that of mind itself. The discovery of the X ray adds a highly valuable trophy to science, by enabling us to read not through a glass darkly, but to read clearly the internal structure of bodies hitherto held to be absolutely opaque. The discovery has already proved of great utility, and, did not science forbid us to assert more than we know, I should say that the seed only has been dis- covered, which, by proper culture, will yield a hundred-fold and upward. Charles De Kay, U. S. Consul-General at Berlin, in his official report to the Department of State, Washington, D. C, states that Pro- fessor Linde ot Munich has invented a device by which air can be liquefied at a cost of 25^ cents for 176 cubic feet. Hitherto the cost for 31 liquefying an equal quantity was $2.25, or one hundred times as much. It is well known that liquid air, in passing back to its normal state, can be applied to many industrial purposes. Indeed scientists know not the limits of its usefulness. Its high cost of production has hitherto precluded its use in practise. Professor Linde's invention removes this obstacle. The present is fraught with the treasures of the past — with its literatures, its discoveries, its inventions, its theories, its arts, and its sciences. It estimates their worth, employs the more valuable, adopting utility as its motto — progress in producing in luxuriant abundance the necessaries, comforts and luxuries of life. To accomplish this grand object, Agriculture more assiduously cultivates and harvests her broad fields; Manufactures more zealously ply their handy-craft in producing all kinds of struc- tures, from the pin to the locomotive and battle- ship, from the thread to the woven cloth and finished garment; and commerce hastens to exchange the products of every clime. Never occurred there an age, since the advent of man on earth, so replete with blessings as the pres- ent. The cave-dwellers fought with the elements, and with wild beasts, for existence; the Egyptians piled up permanent structures, with a view of reinhabiting them after an absence of a thousand years in an unknown world; the Greeks reared temples magnificently grand and exquisitely beautiful, as habitations of their fictitious gods. Whereas, the Genius of the present age builds 30476.'i 32 happy homes, numerous as the stars that smile above them, builds school-houses, academies, col- leges, and universities, as temples of substantial learning, so indispensable in the foundation and structure of good government and in the ameni- ties of life. Such, in brief, has been the evolution of education. It has been observed that science understands facts, and that art uses them; but, to appl}' them properly, art must understand them too, and therefore is the science of use. Contemplating the evolution of education, the mind, unbidden, exclaims. Science, O beautiful science! how delicately frail thy youth; how oft wast thou prostrated in the dust by that monster ignorance — but as often rose and grew in goodly proportions, till now the nadir is thy footstool, the zenith thy diadem, and systems of rolling worlds thy toys ! Naught too minute, naught too sublime, for thy inspection. Suns, systems of suns, and worlds, are in thy ken, and the star-dust in thy grasp. Irving M. Scott. May 21, 1897. •mlim /F CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, LOS ANC^r j-r TJKIYKRSrt^ '^^ AT LOS ANGELES UBRABY DfcMCO LIBRARY SUPPLIES 114 South Carroll Street Madison, Wisconsin i \' LD3767.2 1897 S45 y L 009 595 792 4 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRAR T; ^