When the
use of written language was thus introduced, the word of command
ceased to be confined to the range of the human voice, and it
became possible for master minds to extend their influence as far
as a written message could be carried. Then were communities
gathered into provinces; provinces into kingdoms, kingdoms into
great empires of antiquity. Then arose a stage of civilization
which we find pictured in the most ancient records--a stage in
which men were governed by laws that were perhaps as wisely
adapted to their conditions as our laws are to ours--in which the
phenomena of nature were rudely observed, and striking occurrences
in the earth or in the heavens recorded in the annals of the
nation.
Vast was the progress of knowledge during the interval between
these empires and the century in which modern science began. Yet,
if I am right in making a distinction between the slow and regular
steps of progress, each growing naturally out of that which
preceded it, and the entrance of the mind at some fairly definite
epoch into an entirely new sphere of activity, it would appear
that there was only one such epoch during the entire interval.
This was when abstract geometrical reasoning commenced, and
astronomical observations aiming at precision were recorded,
compared, and discussed.
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