قراءة كتاب Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898

تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"

‏اللغة: English
Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898

Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898

تقييمك:
0
No votes yet
المؤلف:
دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
الصفحة رقم: 5

what I may call a pentatonic scale of culture. You may be aware that all musical scales of all savage and barbarous and primitive tribes are not in the octave, as ours, but in five notes only; they all have one musical scale only, and that is a pentatonic scale; and it is perhaps because they feel that their own minds are based upon some such arrangement as that (although that is an idea which I do not subscribe to, but only suggest); but when we come to look over the whole cycle of culture, as we find it described in the histories of culture—in the histories of civilization—we find that they are all efforts to develop one or the other, or several, of five primary ideas which are in the mind of every human being; and when they are developed, then culture is perfect, either in the individual or in the nation or the race. These five primitive ideas, innate in every human soul, are the ideas of the useful, of the beautiful, of the just, of the good and of the true, and you will not find any savage (provided he is not deficient in the ordinary mental ability of his tribe) who does not indicate an appreciation of every one of these in his own way. It is the idea of the useful which teaches him his utilitarian arts; which teaches him to build his house; to chip the flint for his weapon; to sharpen the stick to dig the place to drop the seed; and all those we call the arts of utility, the useful arts; and yet you will not find a savage tribe to-day but what goes somewhat above this; because among them all they make also an effort that these tools and weapons of theirs shall have some sign about them of the beautiful; and you will find decoration—indeed, "the painted savage" is a name we give to the lowest order of humanity; yet this same paint is to make himself beautiful; and so it is throughout all his games and amusements in life—you will find he is constantly striving at the idea of decoration—at the idea of beauty; little by little he develops this, until it becomes, in some nations, the joy of their existence and the lesson of the race, as in the ancient Greeks; as in the Italians of the time of the Renaissance. These are what we call the æsthetic emotions, based upon an innate sense and love of the beautiful: and we may also turn to the lowest savage—we shall not find him deficient in justice; on the contrary, among the rudest Australians, without shelter or clothing, you will find that the law of the tribe is well defined and also implacable; and a man who has sinned knows that he must meet it or flee; he knows that there is no avail or recourse beyond the tribal council, and he knows what they will decide in his particular case, because he knows the law and the penalty of its infringement. And this rude notion of justice develops, little by little, into the great edifice of jurisprudence, the law of nation and the law of nations. Thus we find that the idea of the just, and of what is right from man to man, is something which is found everywhere; and as that develops culture develops; but the mere just alone does not satisfy the human heart; the man who merely metes out to his fellow that which the tribal law, or the law of the land, requires of him, certainly is not up to the ideal of any man or woman in this assembly or in this city.

There is something beyond that, and what is that? We find that it rests in the idea of the good—that which is often brought forward in the beautiful forms of religion, which tells man that above justice there is something greater and nobler than mere ethics or morality—the mere right and wrong—the mere giving what is due. It is not enough to do that; there must be a giving of more than is due; because the idea of the good transcends the present life—it passes into the future life of the species; and it is only through going above what is needed to-day that we may endow our posterity with something greater than we ourselves possess. It is the idea of the good, therefore, which lifts that which is merely just into a higher—into, I might say, an immortal sphere of activity. It has always had an intense attraction for noble souls, which history shows us; and it is not to be supposed that that attraction will ever diminish; it will ever increase, although its forms may change; and finally, along with this betterment of the emotions, and of the sense of justice—of right and of ethics and of æsthetics—we find the constant effort and desire of all mankind, in all stages of culture, to find out what is true, as distinct from that which is not true. You will not be mistaken if you seek for this in the soul of the rudest savage; he, too, likes to know the truth. The methods by which he arrives at it, or seeks to arrive at it, are widely different from those which you have been taught. Nevertheless, the logical force of his mind; the methods of thought that he has; the laws that govern his intelligence, are exactly the same as yours: and it is only with your enlightenment you have gained more and more acquaintance with the methods. You know something about the great discovery which has advanced all modern science from its mediæval condition to that of the present—of the application of the inductive system of science and thought; and you know that it is by constant and close mathematical study of analogy—of probability—that we exclude error little by little from our observations—we improve more and more our instruments of precision—we count out the errors of our observation; and we are constantly seeking those laws which are not transient and ephemeral only, but which are eternal and immortal. Upon those laws, finally, must rest all our real, certain knowledge; and it is the endeavor of the anthropologist to apply those laws to man and his development; and such, indeed, is the recognized and highest mission of that science. We thus find that the idea of truth is at the summit of this scale which I have placed before you—not separated from it. It interprets every one of the ideas and justifies them and qualifies them and lifts them up into their highest usefulness. Chevalier Bunsen, in describing what he thought would be the highest condition of human enlightenment, said, "It will be when the good will be the true and the true will be the good;" and he might have extended that further and said, when both those ideas were the inspiring motives of all these five great ideas which I have stated are at the basis of the culture of every individual and are also at the basis of the culture of the race and of the nation.

This, therefore, will serve as a sketch of the milestones of human progress. The way has been long and painful; the results have been far from satisfactory; and yet they have been enormous and wonderful, when we compare them now with what our ancestors were when history began. We can conclude, however, from looking back on this thorny and upward path, that it is still going to ascend; we do not know it for certain; progress may cease, through some unknown law, now and here; but if there is anything that we can derive from the lesson of the past—if we can project into the future any of the facts which history shows us are our own now—it guides us forward to a firm belief that the hereafter will have in its breast greater treasures for humanity, greater glories for posterity, than any that we know or can understand.

[1]

A lecture delivered by Prof. Daniel G. Brinton at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia.


TOMBS OF THE FIRST EGYPTIAN DYNASTY.1

By LUDWIG BORCHARDT, Ph.D., Director of the German School in Cairo.

For many years various European collections of Egyptian antiquities have

Pages