C. and 1000 A.D., the momentum of Europe
was greatest; but such progress as the world made consisted in
economies of energy rather than in its development; it was proved
in mathematics, measured by names like Archimedes, Aristarchus,
Ptolemy, and Euclid; or in Civil Law, measured by a number of
names which Adams had begun life by failing to learn; or in
coinage, which was most beautiful near its beginning, and most
barbarous at its close; or it was shown in roads, or the size of
ships, or harbors; or by the use of metals, instruments, and
writing; all of them economies of force, sometimes more forceful
than the forces they helped; but the roads were still travelled
by the horse, the ass, the camel, or the slave; the ships were
still propelled by sails or oars; the lever, the spring, and the
screw bounded the region of applied mechanics. Even the metals
were old.
Much the same thing could be said of religious or supernatural
forces. Down to the year 300 of the Christian era they were
little changed, and in spite of Plato and the sceptics were more
apparently chaotic than ever. The experience of three thousand
years had educated society to feel the vastness of Nature, and
the infinity of her resources of power, but even this increase of
attraction had not yet caused economies in its methods of
pursuit.
There the Western world stood till the year A.
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