The mathematicians might carry their calculations back as far
as the fourteenth century when algebra seems to have become for
the first time the standard measure of mechanical progress in
western Europe; for not only Copernicus and Tycho Brahe, but even
artists like Leonardo, Michael Angelo, and Albert Durer worked by
mathematical processes, and their testimony would probably give
results more exact than that of Montaigne or Shakespeare; but, to
save trouble, one might tentatively carry back the same ratio of
acceleration, or retardation, to the year 1400, with the help of
Columbus and Gutenberg, so taking a uniform rate during the whole
four centuries (1400-1800), and leaving to statisticians the task
of correcting it.
Or better, one might, for convenience, use the formula of
squares to serve for a law of mind. Any other formula would do as
well, either of chemical explosion, or electrolysis, or vegetable
growth, or of expansion or contraction in innumerable forms; but
this happens to be simple and convenient. Its force increases in
the direct ratio of its squares. As the human meteoroid
approached the sun or centre of attractive force, the attraction
of one century squared itself to give the measure of attraction
in the next.
Behind the year 1400, the process certainly went on, but the
progress became so slight as to be hardly measurable.
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