When we glance back at the culture, or cultures, of the great peoples of antiquity, Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, and Roman, that which had its center on the banks of the Tiber offers the closest analogy to our own. Among English-speaking peoples as among the Romans there is noticeable a certain contempt for scientific studies strangely mingled with an inclination to exploit all theory in the interest of immediate application. An English author, writing in 1834, remarks that the Romans, eminent in war, in polite literature, and civil policy, showed at all times a remarkable indisposition to the pursuit of mathematical and physical science. Geometry and astronomy, so highly esteemed by the Greeks, were not merely disregarded by the Italians, but even considered beneath the attention of a man of good birth and liberal education; they were imagined to partake of a mechanical, and therefore servile, character. "The results were seen to be made use of by the mechanical artist, and the abstract principles were therefore supposed to be, as it were, contaminated by his touch. This unfortunate peculiarity in the taste of his countrymen is remarked by Cicero. And it may not be irrelevant to inquire, whether similar prejudices do not prevail to some extent even among ourselves." To Americans also must be attributed an impatience of theory as theory, and a predominant interest in the applications of science.
Lucretius, _The Nature of Things_; translated by H. A. J. Munro.
Pliny, _Natural History_; translated by Philemon Holland.
Professor Baden Powell, _History of Natural Philosophy_.
Seneca, _Physical Science_; translated by John Clarke.
Vitruvius, _Architecture_; translated by Joseph Gwilt, 1826.
Vitruvius, _Architecture_; translated by Professor M. H. Morgan, 1914.
THE CONTINUITY OF SCIENCE--THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH AND THE ARABS
Learning has very often and very aptly been compared to a torch passed from hand to hand. By the written sign or spoken word it is transmitted from one person to another. Very little advance in culture could be made even by the greatest man of genius if he were dependent, for what knowledge he might acquire, merely on his own personal observation. Indeed, it might be said that exceptional mental ability involves a power to absorb the ideas of others, and even that the most original people are those who are able to borrow the most freely.