individual stars, in additional tests, and found that he had made no error in his calculations. It then dawned on him that of a certainty the whole universe was adrift on the unknown sea of the sky. In modern phraseology, the precession of the equinoxes verifies a slow receding motion in the earth, not in the stars; or in other words, our earth is drifting through space; the great year "Plato" coming once in 25,800 normal years.

Here before us then is a classical illustration of the way the masses ultimately receive dividends of knowledge. One supreme thinker, in this case Hipparchus, discerns new laws (conditions) governing this universe; the light is dim it is true, and contrasted with the midnight of ignorance around about, Hipparchus' discovery made no more impression than that of a match whose feeble blaze is immediately blown out by the wind. But nevertheless the world was never again to be wholly as dark as it was before Hipparchus, the patient scholar, consumed his brief life in the unrecognized labors of the scholar. After his day mankind had reason to be less and less afraid of those malicious ghosts that were supposed by the fervid Greek imagination to rule this universe. Hipparchus' uncovered a majestic law of order, a law that took the place of myth, for at least one man in Greece and that man, Hipparchus. We are thus going back to absolute fundamentals in this story of the rise of the masses. We have set up and have endeavored to show that as the latest inheritance of Time, the conception known as Democracy had to do among other things with the spread of knowledge; and necessarily one man has to affirm knowledge by incessant mental labor, before even a second person may be in a position to be taught. The contrast between the new enlightenment of Hipparchus, and the benighted condition of millions of slaves on which the social system of Greece was bulwarked, is here expressed in terms of one man against the entire population, limited in this case to the crumb of law (condition) on Nature's ways. No wonder social evolution is infinitely slow; how long will it be before men generally become intelligent on this one idea of the

drift of the skies? Obviously, centuries will roll into oblivion; but Greeks in all departments of knowledge are at work and results will come more swiftly, by and by. Here it is well to see that modern development is but a dividend on past labors, originally started by men dead and gone centuries ago. This fact should not discourage us, but on the contrary should stimulate to new endeavors each man for the general cause, that we too may add our mite before the sun goes down. . . .

...

Progress in formal knowledge is exceed-
ingly slow; often, the centuries seem to
stand still.

We may before passing to intimate details of other Greek victories for knowledge round off the general conception of ancient astronomical lore. Greek formal knowledge in this field was finally embodied in Ptolemy's "Almagest" (150 A. D.) wherein the earth is ingeniously pictured as the center of the universe, all the stars revolving around our own globe once in 24 hours; though to be sure Ptolemy was forced to argue that sun, moon and earth describe variously conditioned orbits around the familiar center. Ptolemy accepted and developed the writings of Marinus of Tyre, a geographer presumably of high repute but unknown to later generations, except as recalled by quotations made by Ptolemy. Ptolemy also copied and enlarged on Eratostenes (d. 194 B. C.); unifying the knowledge of his predecessors, Ptolemy expressed the sum total of geographical and astronomical lore of the Ancient World-information that with all its gross errors was to hold dominion over the wisest of mankind for many centuries to come.

Among other achievements, Ptolemy computed the size of the earth by means even now considered the best, the measurement of an arc of a meridian. We quote from Whewell (Hist. Inductive Science): "Advocates of the Ptolemaic theory . . . . conceived that a bar, or something equivalent, is connected at one end with the earth; that at some part of this bar the sun is attached; while be

tween that and the earth, Venus is fastened, not to the bar directly, but to a sort of crank; and farther on, Mercury is joined on in the same way. They did not fully understand the nature of these bars-whether they were real or only imaginary-but they did comprehend their action, as they thought; and so they supposed the bar revolved, carrying the sun and planets along in a large circle about the earth: While all the short cranks kept flying around, thus sweeping each planet through a smaller circle." Movements of the planets were to the ancients extremely complex. Venus, for instance, was sometimes seen as "evening star" in the west; and then again as "morning star" in the east. Sometimes she seemed to be moving in the same direction as the sun, then going apparently behind the sun, she appeared to pass on again in a course directly opposite. At one time she would recede from the sun more and more slowly and coyly, until she would appear to be entirely stationary; then she would retrace her steps, and seem to meet the The meaning of all these facts was accounted for by an incongruous system of cycles and epicycles. The system Ptolemaic passed current for 1,400 years, and during this time astrology was ranked as the most important branch of knowledge. Star-diviners were held in the greatest estimation, and the issue of any important undertaking or the fortune of an individual, was foretold by means of horoscopes.

sun.

The idea that our earth is the be-all and end-all of the Cosmos, continued to be accepted in a servile way till the 1500's. Nicholas Copernicus (d. 1543) Canon of Frauenburg, devoted himself with supreme scholastic heroism to the formidable task of correcting the stupendous error of the ages. From that point, progress in astronomy took on the form of a very early struggle between science and religion, of which we shall tell in another connection, but here rest content with mentioning that Copernicus' scientific revelations were denounced even by Luther and by Melanchton, head and front of the Reformation movement. To such an extent are even the

best of men victims to preconcerted ideas concerning "what" comprises progress.

Pythagorean system (500 B. C.) taught that the sun is a moveable sphere in the center of the universe, around which all the planets revolve. Here again we are face to face with the difficulty of demonstrating fundamental originality to any one thinker, whatsoever.

Pythagorean system of the 500's B. C. is behind the Copernican and Newtonian of the 1700's A. D. Voltaire, in London on the day of Newton's funeral, wrote a vivid soliloquy on Newton stealing the secret of God Almighty (theory of gravity). Voltaire might better have said that Newton's work was, all said and done, the final appropriation and distribution of dividends from the early Greek investment in knowledge. We do not mean that Newton's work should be minimized; on the contrary, we disavow that thought entirely, as we shall show in a few moments. Only the dividends from the Greek investment were very late in maturing. It is all somewhat like the familiar story the astronomers tell of the fathomless abyss of time-light from remote stars now reaches the earth only after traveling millions of light-years, but arrives at last.

While the Pythagorean principles were a truer explanation of Nature than was Ptolemy's astrological lore, for various reasons the Pythagorean philosophy was overborne and Ptolemy ruled the minds of men for many centuries. We do not say that Copernicus' work was a revival of Pythagoras; far from it, but on the contrary, Copernicus' conclusions verified the unscientific theories of the ancient mathematician.

Pythagoras was a picturesque fellow, noted for his physical beauty, his long hair, his ready wit, and his original ideas. He told folks he had a golden thigh, and that he had been on earth at least four times before, in other lives, was the reincarnation of great thinkers that had gone before, whose names he mentioned. The philosopher pretended he could even write on the face of the moon. His plan was to mark a message in blood, on a mirror and then reflect the moon's rays till the inscription would appear on the moon's disc. Also, Pythagoras

was a practitioner of mesmerism, as we would call it, today. Pamblichus tells us that Pythagoras tamed a savage Daunian bear by "stroking it gently with his hand; subdued an eagle by the same means; and held dominion over beasts and birds by the power of his voice, or influence of his touch.'

Here it is time to pause and try to think
clearly on what is meant by the principle
of development, as applied to social evolu-
tion; you have your own work to do, and
even the great Aristotle did not do your part.

Here, another difficulty in tracing social evolution, when limited in the customary way to a few selected names, enters in. The situation is fundamental, and we are often misled by summaries of "great" names. Let us illustrate by using the famous name, Aristotle. That philosopher's works are honeycombed with such phrases as these: "Nature is always striving for the best"-what does that mean? "From nothing comes nothing"-what does that signify? Yet we find writers who will tell you that Aristotle "anticipated" Charles Darwin's profound "Origin of Species" published over twenty centuries later. It is true, Aristotle talking of development, meant that when you turn over a fact in your mind you find other facts imbedded in the original fact; yet are we to concede, therefore, that Aristotle forecast the idea of evolution in the physical world? Charles Darwin (d. 1882), in his introductory, tells us: "When on board H. M. S. 'Beagle,' as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the organic beings inhabiting South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent. These facts seemed to throw light on the origin of species -that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers. On my return home, it occurred to me, in 1837, that something might perhaps be made out on this question by patiently accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of facts which could possibly have any bearing on it!"