less, the unprotected-children, and widows; the sick, the maimed, and the lunatic; debtors and prisoners-have been the subjects of solicitude. Prison discipline has been improved, and the severities of punishment have been mitigated. Negro slavery has been abolished in the dependencies of European states, and there is scarcely a corner of the earth into which the active propagandism of modern benevolence has not penetrated. Even the tendency to war, under the influence of humaner feelings and more enlightened opinions respecting trade, has received a sensible check.

87 The third series consists of two elements, which, though after a time they become closely connected, were originally quite independent of each other. In the Homeric age there was no science, but the useful arts had already made a considerable progress. Men lived in houses, and had built walled towns; they spun and wove flax and wool, and made clothes. They knew the use of metals, and had instruments for tilling the earth, and for cooking their food; they ground corn, and baked bread. They had arms for fighting, and carriages for locomotion they had built ships, and could make voyages of some length. They had tamed the horse, the ass, and the dog; the ox, the sheep, the goat, and the swine; and had rendered these animals subservient to the wants of man. They could count, weigh, and measure; and they had the use of a language refined in its inflexions, precise in its grammar, and capable of expressing every idea which a man of that time wished to express. (23)

(23) The following remarks of Goguet, in his History of the Origin of Laws, Arts, and Sciences, illustrate the dependence of the useful arts upon civil government, and therefore explain their connexion with progressive civilization: L'invention et la perfection des arts est un des premiers et principaux fruits de l'établissement des sociétés fixes et policées. Le besoin a été le maître et le précepteur de l'homme. La nécessité lui a enseigné à profiter des mains qu'il a reçues de la providence, et du don de la parole, dont elle l'a doué préférablement à toutes les autres créatures; mais les premières découvertes n'auraient jamais été portées à un certain degré sans la réunion des familles, et sans l'établissement des lois qui ont affermi les sociétés. C'est par ce moyen qu'on a réussi à perfectionner peu à peu quelques inventions grossières, fruit du hasard et de la nécessité: nous voyons que les découvertes dans les arts ont été attribuées aux peuples qui se sont formés les premiers en

By the end of the Peloponnesian war, the useful arts had made a considerable progress in Greece. Alphabetical writing had been introduced from Asia, and simplified; a numerical notation had also been devised. Coined money was in use. All the constructive arts had been developed, and soon after this time the principle of the arch became known. The masons, carpenters, shipwrights, smiths, potters, and other artisans of the time of Pericles, were certainly more skilful, and had more resources and powers, than those of the Homeric age, (*) although we cannot trace the improvements step by step. The mode of living was less rude: a banquet, for instance, would have been more splendid and luxurious at Athens, in the fourth century before Christ, than in the dwelling of a Homeric prince.

The great change, however, which had taken place under this head since the Homeric period, consisted in the introduction of science and systematic knowledge. In the first place, writing had been applied to the registration of contemporary facts; histories, recording a real series of observed events, affecting communities of men, and the continuous conduct of governments, had been composed. The new positive spirit, however, did not stop here—it attempted, by reasoning upon physical phenomena, to explain the changes of outward objects, and to arrive at some philosophy of nature considered as a whole. The Socratic school gave a different turn to the new-born spirit of inquiry. They directed their investigations towards ethics, politics, rhetoric, and logic; and reduced all these subjects into a scientific form; afterwards the different departments of nature were mapped out, and treated in a scientific spirit; and though all the physical researches were not equally successful, they laid the foundation of scientific physics. They created geometry (25) and mechanics;

corps d'état. C'est en continuant à se faire part mutuellement de leurs ideés et de leurs réflexions, que les hommes, à l'aide de l'expérience, sont parvenus à acquérir cette multitude de connaissances dont on a vu et dont on voit encore jouir les nations policées.'-Liv. ii. introd.

(24) See the enumeration of artificers in Plutarch, Per. 12.

(25) M. Comte (Phil. Pos. tom. v. p. 255) considers Archimedes as the type of the true geometer.

and in medicine, astronomy, geography, and natural history, they not only laid the scientific foundation, but raised the superstructure to a considerable height.(2)

The Romans cultivated the sciences which they borrowed from the Greeks, without materially enlarging their domain. In the useful arts, however, and particularly those belonging to construction, they made great progress. Their amphitheatres, aqueducts, and public buildings; (2) their great military works and method of castrametation; their roads and bridges, their system of posts, and their land mensuration, all attest their successful cultivation of the useful arts. Their skill in the manufacture of cement and bricks, and their development of the use of the arch, are further evidences of their skill in building. Their military organization, by which they first conquered the world, and afterwards held it in subjection, was partly owing to their superiority in the useful arts over all other nations. Their weapons, carriages, and modes of fortification and communication, enabled them to overcome their enemy in the field, and to occupy his country when the battle had been won. (28)

On reaching the year 1600, the next stage of our comparison, we perceive great changes in the useful arts. Three capital inventions have during this interval risen into light-gunpowder, the compass, and printing. The first of these gradually changed the face of war; altered all the weapons, both of offence and defence, the organization of fleets and armies, the system of

(26) The idea of a progressive advance in science is contained in the remarks of Aristotle, Metaph. i. min. c. 1. Likewise Cic. Acad. Quest. iv. 5: Quod si illi tum in novis rebus, quasi modo nascentes, hæsitaverunt, nihilne tot seculis, summis ingeniis, maximis studiis, explicatum putamus ?'

(27) Strabo observes that the Romans paid more attention than the Greeks to pavements, aqueducts and sewers, in the construction of their towns, v. 3. § 8. On the existence of a great statistical register of the Roman empire see Dureau de la Malle, Economie Politique des Romains, tom. i. p. 191.

(28) Pliny speaks of the civilizing influence of the Roman empire: Quæ sparsa congregaret imperia, ritusque molliret, et tot populorum discordes ferasque linguas, sermonis commercio contraheret; colloquia et humanitatem homini daret; breviterque una cunctarum gentium in toto orbe patria fieret.'-Nat. Hist. iii. 6. See above, p. 284, n. 127.

fortification, and the methods of military and naval tactics. (29) The second enlarged the powers and changed the character of navigation. The third, combined with the invention of paper, by facilitating the modes of intellectual communication, exercised a pervading influence on literature, science, manners, and government. (30)

By the use of the compass, distant voyages were effected which the mariner of antiquity could not have accomplished. The Cape of Good Hope was circumnavigated, and America was discovered. By gaining access to all the remote parts of the

(29) M. Comte lays it down that the arts of war have made less proportionate progress among the moderns than the arts of peace; and that whereas, among the ancients, the former were in advance of the latter; among the moderns the latter are in advance of the former.-Cours de Phil. Pos. tom. v. p. 166-7. The detailed examination of this position would require the special knowledge of a military engineer; but I may be permitted to remark that it is impossible, in numerous cases, to draw a precise line of demarcation between the arts of war and the arts of peace. The same invention or improvement is used both for peaceful and industrial, and for warlike and destructive purposes: thus, steamnavigation is an invention which is important, not only for the uses of trade, and for the conveyance of goods and passengers; but also for the removal of troops and ammunition, and for attack in war. All improvements in ship-building and navigation have likewise the same double aspect. A similar remark applies to railways, roads, bridges, telegraphs, signals, and all other means for facilitating and accelerating the transport of men and provisions, and the transmission of intelligence and orders. The perfection of the useful arts and the extension of trade likewise increase the means of maintaining the health, courage, discipline, and efficiency of troops during a long campaign. The casting of cannon and the manufacture of all sorts of arms are closely connected with the general improvement of the various arts of working metal. Fortification, again, and the defence of strong places, are connected both with masonry and hydraulics. In all these cases, the arts of war and the arts of peace march, as it were, hand in hand; but the invention of gunpowder is almost exclusively warlike and destructive. Now this invention and its consequences, the cannon and the musket, have completely changed the face of war: all military tactics, the arrangement of armies, their modes of attack and defence, their order of battle, their armour, the form and size of ships of war, and their modes of fighting,-in fact, every part of the military and naval systems has been fundamentally altered by the influence of this powerful agent. Machiavel has shown that the use of artillery is an advantage to the offensive, not to the defensive side (Disc. ii. 17); and the known fact, that scarcely any fortress is now impregnable, and that the resources of the military engineer are sufficient to overcome almost every means of defence, shows that the arts of war have made a great progress in modern times.

(30) See Bacon, Nov. Org. i. 109, 129; Comte, Phil. Pos. tom. vi. p. 103, 114.

world, new vegetable products were obtained. Tea, coffee, sugar, spices, cotton, tobacco, maize, the orange,(31) the potato, were made known to Europeans. Distillation, likewise, was an important invention, posterior to the Roman period, and anterior to the seventeenth century.

୮ The sciences, as well physical as moral, had made little progress between the age of Augustus and the year 1600. Between that period, however, and the present time, the physical sciences, since the first impulses given by Galileo, Bacon, and Kepler, have undergone a mighty change. Their development has likewise not only formed a new creation of scientific instruments (such as the clock, the telescope, the microscope, the thermometer, the barometer, the hygrometer, the diving bell, the balloon), but it has also exercised a potent influence upon the extension of the useful arts. The scientific cultivation of mechanics and chemistry has led to the invention of the steamengine, which as a stationary motive power, or as employed for railways and navigation, has influenced every branch of industry and every department of practical life. Lighting by gas, and the electric telegraph, are further instances of the scientific enlargement of the useful arts.

In the metaphysical, moral, and political sciences, and in the cultivation of history, great advances have been made since the year 1600. Historical and statistical observation has been systematized and enlarged; and not only has the collection of facts been extended, but political philosophy has made great advances, though (for reasons which have been investigated in a former chapter), (2) it has not been placed on so firm a basis, or obtained so general a reception, as the most advanced physical sciences.

$ 8 No better evidence of the esthetic state of the Greeks, in the Homeric period, can be desired than the Homeric poems themselves. As an instrument for the expression of emotion,

(31) On the cultivation of fruit trees as a mark of civilization, see Comte, Traité de Législation, lib. iv. c. 8, note.

(32) Above, ch. iii. § 10.