shoots through
it, and its elements rush together and glitter before us in a single
translucent drop. It would hardly be extravagant to call Science the art
of packing knowledge.

* * * * *

=_John William Draper,[52] 1810-._=

From the "Human Physiology."

=_215._= TRUTHS IN THE ANCIENT PHILOSOPHIES.

It is not my intention to enter on an examination, or even enumeration,
of ancient philosophical opinions, nor to show that many of the
doctrines which have been brought forward within the last three
centuries existed in embryo in those times. It may, however, be observed
that, in the midst of much error, there were those who held just views
of the various problems of theology, law, politics, philosophy, and
particularly of the fundamental doctrines of natural science, the
constitution of the solar system, the geological history of the earth,
the nature of chemical forces, the physiological relations of animals
and plants.

It is supposed by many, whose attention has been casually drawn to the
philosophical opinions of antiquity, that the doctrines which we still
retain as true came to the knowledge of the old philosophers, not so
much by processes of legitimate investigation as by mere guessing or
crude speculation, for which there was an equal chance whether they were
right or wrong; but a closer examination will show that many of them
must have depended on results previously determined or observed by the
Africans or Asiatics, and thus they seem to indicate that the human mind
has undergone in twenty centuries but little change in its manner of
action, and that, commencing with the same data, it always comes to the
same conclusions. Nor is this at all dependent on any inherent logic
of truth. Very many of the errors of antiquity have re-appeared in our
times. If the Greek schools were infected with materialism, pantheism,
and atheism, the later progress of philosophy has shown the same
characters. To a certain extent, such doctrines will receive an
impression from the prevailing creeds, but the arguments which have been
appealed to in their favor have always been the same. The distinction
between these heresies in ancient and modern times lies chiefly in the
grosser characters which they formerly assumed, arising partly from
the reflected influence of the existing mythology, and partly from the
imperfections of exact knowledge. Even the errors of early antiquity are
venerable. W