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 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.
 
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