Illustrations of Universal Progress Part 8

and that logical forms are the foundations of all things, it is a consistent hypothesis that as thought is serial, Nature is serial; but that M. Comte, who is so bitter an opponent of all anthropomorphism, even in its most evanescent shapes, should have committed the mistake of imposing upon the external world an arrangement which so obviously springs from a limitation of the human consciousness, is somewhat strange. And it is the more strange when we call to mind how, at the outset, M. Comte remarks that in the beginning "_toutes les sciences sont cultivees simultanement par les memes esprits_;" that this is "_inevitable et meme indispensable_;" and how he further remarks that the different sciences are "_comme les diverses branches d'un tronc unique_." Were it not accounted for by the distorting influence of a cherished hypothesis, it would be scarcely possible to understand how, after recognising truths like these, M. Comte should have persisted in attempting to construct "_une ech.e.l.le encyclopedique_."

The metaphor which M. Comte has here so inconsistently used to express the relations of the sciences--branches of one trunk--is an approximation to the truth, though not the truth itself. It suggests the facts that the sciences had a common origin; that they have been developing simultaneously; and that they have been from time to time dividing and sub-dividing. But it does not suggest the yet more important fact, that the divisions and sub-divisions thus arising do not remain separate, but now and again re-unite in direct and indirect ways. They inosculate; they severally send off and receive connecting growths; and the intercommunion has been ever becoming more frequent, more intricate, more widely ramified.

There has all along been higher specialization, that there might be a larger generalization; and a deeper a.n.a.lysis, that there might be a better synthesis. Each larger generalization has lifted sundry specializations still higher; and each better synthesis has prepared the way for still deeper a.n.a.lysis.

And here we may fitly enter upon the task awhile since indicated--a sketch of the Genesis of Science, regarded as a gradual outgrowth from common knowledge--an extension of the perceptions by the aid of the reason. We propose to treat it as a psychological process historically displayed; tracing at the same time the advance from qualitative to quant.i.tative prevision; the progress from concrete facts to abstract facts, and the application of such abstract facts to the a.n.a.lysis of new orders of concrete facts; the simultaneous advance in generalization and specialization; the continually increasing subdivision and reunion of the sciences; and their constantly improving _consensus_.

To trace out scientific evolution from its deepest roots would, of course, involve a complete a.n.a.lysis of the mind. For as science is a development of that common knowledge acquired by the unaided senses and uncultured reason, so is that common knowledge itself gradually built up out of the simplest perceptions. We must, therefore, begin somewhere abruptly; and the most appropriate stage to take for our point of departure will be the adult mind of the savage.

Commencing thus, without a proper preliminary a.n.a.lysis, we are naturally somewhat at a loss how to present, in a satisfactory manner, those fundamental processes of thought out of which science ultimately originates. Perhaps our argument may be best initiated by the proposition, that all intelligent action whatever depends upon the discerning of distinctions among surrounding things. The condition under which only it is possible for any creature to obtain food and avoid danger is, that it shall be differently affected by different objects--that it shall be led to act in one way by one object, and in another way by another. In the lower orders of creatures this condition is fulfilled by means of an apparatus which acts automatically. In the higher orders the actions are partly automatic, partly conscious. And in man they are almost wholly conscious.

Throughout, however, there must necessarily exist a certain cla.s.sification of things according to their properties--a cla.s.sification which is either organically registered in the system, as in the inferior creation, or is formed by experience, as in ourselves. And it may be further remarked, that the extent to which this cla.s.sification is carried, roughly indicates the height of intelligence--that, while the lowest organisms are able to do little more than discriminate organic from inorganic matter; while the generality of animals carry their cla.s.sifications no further than to a limited number of plants or creatures serving for food, a limited number of beasts of prey, and a limited number of places and materials; the most degraded of the human race possess a knowledge of the distinctive natures of a great variety of substances, plants, animals, tools, persons, &c., not only as cla.s.ses but as individuals.

What now is the mental process by which cla.s.sification is effected?

Manifestly it is a recognition of the _likeness_ or _unlikeness_ of things, either in respect of their sizes, colours, forms, weights, textures, tastes, &c., or in respect of their modes of action. By some special mark, sound, or motion, the savage identifies a certain four-legged creature he sees, as one that is good for food, and to be caught in a particular way; or as one that is dangerous; and acts accordingly. He has cla.s.sed together all the creatures that are _alike_ in this particular. And manifestly in choosing the wood out of which to form his bow, the plant with which to poison his arrows, the bone from which to make his fish-hooks, he identifies them through their chief sensible properties as belonging to the general cla.s.ses, wood, plant, and bone, but distinguishes them as belonging to sub-cla.s.ses by virtue of certain properties in which they are _unlike_ the rest of the general cla.s.ses they belong to; and so forms genera and species.

And here it becomes manifest that not only is cla.s.sification carried on by grouping together in the mind things that are _like_; but that cla.s.ses and sub-cla.s.ses are formed and arranged according to the _degrees of unlikeness_. Things widely contrasted are alone distinguished in the lower stages of mental evolution; as may be any day observed in an infant. And gradually as the powers of discrimination increase, the widely contrasted cla.s.ses at first distinguished, come to be each divided into sub-cla.s.ses, differing from each other less than the cla.s.ses differ; and these sub-cla.s.ses are again divided after the same manner. By the continuance of which process, things are gradually arranged into groups, the members of which are less and less _unlike_; ending, finally, in groups whose members differ only as individuals, and not specifically. And thus there tends ultimately to arise the notion of _complete likeness_. For manifestly, it is impossible that groups should continue to be sub-divided in virtue of smaller and smaller differences, without there being a simultaneous approximation to the notion of _no difference_.

Let us next notice that the recognition of likeness and unlikeness, which underlies cla.s.sification, and out of which continued cla.s.sification evolves the idea of complete likeness--let us next notice that it also underlies the process of _naming_, and by consequence _language_. For all language consists, at the beginning, of symbols which are as _like_ to the things symbolized as it is practicable to make them. The language of signs is a means of conveying ideas by mimicking the actions or peculiarities of the things referred to. Verbal language is also, at the beginning, a mode of suggesting objects or acts by imitating the sounds which the objects make, or with which the acts are accompanied. Originally these two languages were used simultaneously. It needs but to watch the gesticulations with which the savage accompanies his speech--to see a Bushman or a Kaffir dramatizing before an audience his mode of catching game--or to note the extreme paucity of words in all primitive vocabularies; to infer that at first, att.i.tudes, gestures, and sounds, were all combined to produce as good a _likeness_ as possible, of the things, animals, persons, or events described; and that as the sounds came to be understood by themselves the gestures fell into disuse: leaving traces, however, in the manners of the more excitable civilized races. But be this as it may, it suffices simply to observe, how many of the words current among barbarous peoples are like the sounds appertaining to the things signified; how many of our own oldest and simplest words have the same peculiarity; how children tend to invent imitative words; and how the sign-language spontaneously formed by deaf mutes is invariably based upon imitative actions--to at once see that the notion of _likeness_ is that from which the nomenclature of objects takes its rise.

Were there s.p.a.ce we might go on to point out how this law of life is traceable, not only in the origin but in the development of language; how in primitive tongues the plural is made by a duplication of the singular, which is a multiplication of the word to make it _like_ the multiplicity of the things; how the use of metaphor--that prolific source of new words--is a suggesting of ideas that are _like_ the ideas to be conveyed in some respect or other; and how, in the copious use of simile, fable, and allegory among uncivilized races, we see that complex conceptions, which there is yet no direct language for, are rendered, by presenting known conceptions more or less _like_ them.

This view is further confirmed, and the predominance of this notion of likeness in primitive times further ill.u.s.trated, by the fact that our system of presenting ideas to the eye originated after the same fas.h.i.+on.

Writing and printing have descended from picture-language. The earliest mode of permanently registering a fact was by depicting it on a wall; that is--by exhibiting something as _like_ to the thing to be remembered as it could be made. Gradually as the practice grew habitual and extensive, the most frequently repeated forms became fixed, and presently abbreviated; and, pa.s.sing through the hieroglyphic and ideographic phases, the symbols lost all apparent relations to the things signified: just as the majority of our spoken words have done.

Observe again, that the same thing is true respecting the genesis of reasoning. The _likeness_ that is perceived to exist between cases, is the essence of all early reasoning and of much of our present reasoning. The savage, having by experience discovered a relation between a certain object and a certain act, infers that the _like_ relation will be found in future cases. And the expressions we constantly use in our arguments--"_a.n.a.logy_ implies," "the cases are not _parallel_," "by _parity_ of reasoning,"

"there is no _similarity_,"--show how constantly the idea of likeness underlies our ratiocinative processes.

Still more clearly will this be seen on recognising the fact that there is a certain parallelism between reasoning and cla.s.sification; that the two have a common root; and that neither can go on without the other. For on the one hand, it is a familiar truth that the attributing to a body in consequence of some of its properties, all those other properties in virtue of which it is referred to a particular cla.s.s, is an act of inference. And, on the other hand, the forming of a generalization is the putting together in one cla.s.s, all those cases which present like relations; while the drawing a deduction is essentially the perception that a particular case belongs to a certain cla.s.s of cases previously generalized. So that as cla.s.sification is a grouping together of _like things_; reasoning is a grouping together of _like relations_ among things. Add to which, that while the perfection gradually achieved in cla.s.sification consists in the formation of groups of _objects_ which are _completely alike_; the perfection gradually achieved in reasoning consists in the formation of groups of _cases_ which are _completely alike_.

Once more we may contemplate this dominant idea of likeness as exhibited in art. All art, civilized as well as savage, consists almost wholly in the making of objects _like_ other objects; either as found in Nature, or as produced by previous art. If we trace back the varied art-products now existing, we find that at each stage the divergence from previous patterns is but small when compared with the agreement; and in the earliest art the persistency of imitation is yet more conspicuous. The old forms and ornaments and symbols were held sacred, and perpetually copied. Indeed, the strong imitative tendency notoriously displayed by the lowest human races, ensures among them a constant reproducing of likenesses of things, forms, signs, sounds, actions, and whatever else is imitable; and we may even suspect that this aboriginal peculiarity is in some way connected with the culture and development of this general conception, which we have found so deep and widespread in its applications.

And now let us go on to consider how, by a further unfolding of this same fundamental notion, there is a gradual formation of the first germs of science. This idea of likeness which underlies cla.s.sification, nomenclature, language spoken and written, reasoning, and art; and which plays so important a part because all acts of intelligence are made possible only by distinguis.h.i.+ng among surrounding things, or grouping them into like and unlike;--this idea we shall find to be the one of which science is the especial product. Already during the stage we have been describing, there has existed _qualitative_ prevision in respect to the commoner phenomena with which savage life is familiar; and we have now to inquire how the elements of _quant.i.tative_ prevision are evolved. We shall find that they originate by the perfecting of this same idea of likeness; that they have their rise in that conception of _complete likeness_ which, as we have seen, necessarily results from the continued process of cla.s.sification.

For when the process of cla.s.sification has been carried as far as it is possible for the uncivilized to carry it--when the animal kingdom has been grouped not merely into quadrupeds, birds, fishes, and insects, but each of these divided into kinds--when there come to be sub-cla.s.ses, in each of which the members differ only as individuals, and not specifically; it is clear that there must occur a frequent observation of objects which differ so little as to be indistinguishable. Among several creatures which the savage has killed and carried home, it must often happen that some one, which he wished to identify, is so exactly like another that he cannot tell which is which. Thus, then, there originates the notion of _equality_. The things which among ourselves are called _equal_--whether lines, angles, weights, temperatures, sounds or colours--are things which produce in us sensations that cannot be distinguished from each other. It is true that we now apply the word _equal_ chiefly to the separate phenomena which objects exhibit, and not to groups of phenomena; but this limitation of the idea has evidently arisen by subsequent a.n.a.lysis. And that the notion of equality did thus originate, will, we think, become obvious on remembering that as there were no artificial objects from which it could have been abstracted, it must have been abstracted from natural objects; and that the various families of the animal kingdom chiefly furnish those natural objects which display the requisite exact.i.tude of likeness.

The same order of experiences out of which this general idea of equality is evolved, gives birth at the same time to a more complex idea of equality; or, rather, the process just described generates an idea of equality which further experience separates into two ideas--_equality of things_ and _equality of relations_. While organic, and more especially animal forms, occasionally exhibit this perfection of likeness out of which the notion of simple equality arises, they more frequently exhibit only that kind of likeness which we call _similarity_; and which is really compound equality.

For the similarity of two creatures of the same species but of different sizes, is of the same nature as the similarity of two geometrical figures.

In either case, any two parts of the one bear the same ratio to one another, as the h.o.m.ologous parts of the other. Given in any species, the proportions found to exist among the bones, and we may, and zoologists do, predict from any one, the dimensions of the rest; just as, when knowing the proportions subsisting among the parts of a geometrical figure, we may, from the length of one, calculate the others. And if, in the case of similar geometrical figures, the similarity can be established only by proving exactness of proportion among the h.o.m.ologous parts; if we express this relation between two parts in the one, and the corresponding parts in the other, by the formula A is to B as _a_ is to _b_; if we otherwise write this, A to B = _a_ to _b_; if, consequently, the fact we prove is that the relation of A to B _equals_ the relation of _a_ to _b_; then it is manifest that the fundamental conception of similarity is _equality of relations_.

With this explanation we shall be understood when we say that the notion of equality of relations is the basis of all exact reasoning. Already it has been shown that reasoning in general is a recognition of _likeness_ of relations; and here we further find that while the notion of likeness of things ultimately evolves the idea of simple equality, the notion of likeness of relations evolves the idea of equality of relations: of which the one is the concrete germ of exact science, while the other is its abstract germ.

Those who cannot understand how the recognition of similarity in creatures of the same kind, can have any alliance with reasoning, will get over the difficulty on remembering that the phenomena among which equality of relations is thus perceived, are phenomena of the same order and are present to the senses at the same time; while those among which developed reason perceives relations, are generally neither of the same order, nor simultaneously present. And if further, they will call to mind how Cuvier and Owen, from a single part of a creature, as a tooth, construct the rest by a process of reasoning based on this equality of relations, they will see that the two things are intimately connected, remote as they at first seem. But we antic.i.p.ate. What it concerns us here to observe is, that from familiarity with organic forms there simultaneously arose the ideas of _simple equality_, and _equality of relations_.

At the same time, too, and out of the same mental processes, came the first distinct ideas of _number_. In the earliest stages, the presentation of several like objects produced merely an indefinite conception of multiplicity; as it still does among Australians, and Bushmen, and Damaras, when the number presented exceeds three or four. With such a fact before us we may safely infer that the first clear numerical conception was that of duality as contrasted with unity. And this notion of duality must necessarily have grown up side by side with those of likeness and equality; seeing that it is impossible to recognise the likeness of two things without also perceiving that there are two. From the very beginning the conception of number must have been, as it is still, a.s.sociated with the likeness or equality of the things numbered. If we a.n.a.lyze it, we find that simple enumeration is a registration of repeated impressions of any kind.

That these may be capable of enumeration it is needful that they be more or less alike; and before any _absolutely true_ numerical results can be reached, it is requisite that the units be _absolutely equal_. The only way in which we can establish a numerical relations.h.i.+p between things that do not yield us like impressions, is to divide them into parts that _do_ yield us like impressions. Two unlike magnitudes of extension, force, time, weight, or what not, can have their relative amounts estimated, only by means of some small unit that is contained many times in both; and even if we finally write down the greater one as a unit and the other as a fraction of it, we state, in the denominator of the fraction, the number of parts into which the unit must be divided to be comparable with the fraction.

It is, indeed, true, that by an evidently modern process of abstraction, we occasionally apply numbers to unequal units, as the furniture at a sale or the various animals on a farm, simply as so many separate ent.i.ties; but no true result can be brought out by calculation with units of this order.

And, indeed, it is the distinctive peculiarity of the calculus in general, that it proceeds on the hypothesis of that absolute equality of its abstract units, which no real units possess; and that the exactness of its results holds only in virtue of this hypothesis. The first ideas of number must necessarily then have been derived from like or equal magnitudes as seen chiefly in organic objects; and as the like magnitudes most frequently observed were magnitudes of extension, it follows that geometry and arithmetic had a simultaneous origin.

Not only are the first distinct ideas of number co-ordinate with ideas of likeness and equality, but the first efforts at numeration displayed the same relations.h.i.+p. On reading the accounts of various savage tribes, we find that the method of counting by the fingers, still followed by many children, is the aboriginal method. Neglecting the several cases in which the ability to enumerate does not reach even to the number of fingers on one hand, there are many cases in which it does not extend beyond ten--the limit of the simple finger notation. The fact that in so many instances, remote, and seemingly unrelated nations, have adopted _ten_ as their basic number; together with the fact that in the remaining instances the basic number is either _five_ (the fingers of one hand) or _twenty_ (the fingers and toes); almost of themselves show that the fingers were the original units of numeration. The still surviving use of the word _digit_, as the general name for a figure in arithmetic, is significant; and it is even said that our word _ten_ (Sax. tyn; Dutch, tien; German, zehn) means in its primitive expanded form _two hands_. So that originally, to say there were ten things, was to say there were two hands of them.

From all which evidence it is tolerably clear that the earliest mode of conveying the idea of any number of things, was by holding up as many fingers as there were things; that is--using a symbol which was _equal_, in respect of multiplicity, to the group symbolized. For which inference there is, indeed, strong confirmation in the recent statement that our own soldiers are even now spontaneously adopting this device in their dealings with the Turks. And here it should be remarked that in this recombination of the notion of equality with that of multiplicity, by which the first steps in numeration are effected, we may see one of the earliest of those inosculations between the diverging branches of science, which are afterwards of perpetual occurrence.

Indeed, as this observation suggests, it will be well, before tracing the mode in which exact science finally emerges from the merely approximate judgments of the senses, and showing the non-serial evolution of its divisions, to note the non-serial character of those preliminary processes of which all after development is a continuation. On re-considering them it will be seen that not only are they divergent growths from a common root,--not only are they simultaneous in their progress; but that they are mutual aids; and that none can advance without the rest. That completeness of cla.s.sification for which the unfolding of the perceptions paves the way, is impossible without a corresponding progress in language, by which greater varieties of objects are thinkable and expressible. On the one hand it is impossible to carry cla.s.sification far without names by which to designate the cla.s.ses; and on the other hand it is impossible to make language faster than things are cla.s.sified.

Again, the multiplication of cla.s.ses and the consequent narrowing of each cla.s.s, itself involves a greater likeness among the things cla.s.sed together; and the consequent approach towards the notion of complete likeness itself allows cla.s.sification to be carried higher. Moreover, cla.s.sification necessarily advances _pari pa.s.su_ with rationality--the cla.s.sification of _things_ with the cla.s.sification of _relations_. For things that belong to the same cla.s.s are, by implication, things of which the properties and modes of behaviour--the co-existences and sequences--are more or less the same; and the recognition of this sameness of co-existences and sequences is reasoning. Whence it follows that the advance of cla.s.sification is necessarily proportionate to the advance of generalizations. Yet further, the notion of _likeness_, both in things and relations, simultaneously evolves by one process of culture the ideas of _equality_ of things and _equality_ of relations; which are the respective bases of exact concrete reasoning and exact abstract reasoning--Mathematics and Logic. And once more, this idea of equality, in the very process of being formed, necessarily gives origin to two series of relations--those of magnitude and those of number: from which arise geometry and the calculus.

Thus the process throughout is one of perpetual subdivision and perpetual intercommunication of the divisions. From the very first there has been that _consensus_ of different kinds of knowledge, answering to the _consensus_ of the intellectual faculties, which, as already said, must exist among the sciences.

Let us now go on to observe how, out of the notions of _equality_ and _number_, as arrived at in the manner described, there gradually arose the elements of quant.i.tative prevision.

Equality, once having come to be definitely conceived, was readily applicable to other phenomena than those of magnitude. Being predicable of all things producing indistinguishable impressions, there naturally grew up ideas of equality in weights, sounds, colours, &c.; and indeed it can scarcely be doubted that the occasional experience of equal weights, sounds, and colours, had a share in developing the abstract conception of equality--that the ideas of equality in size, relations, forces, resistances, and sensible properties in general, were evolved during the same period. But however this may be, it is clear that as fast as the notion of equality gained definiteness, so fast did that lowest kind of quant.i.tative prevision which is achieved without any instrumental aid, become possible.

The ability to estimate, however roughly, the amount of a foreseen result, implies the conception that it will be _equal to_ a certain imagined quant.i.ty; and the correctness of the estimate will manifestly depend upon the accuracy at which the perceptions of sensible equality have arrived. A savage with a piece of stone in his hand, and another piece lying before him of greater bulk but of the same kind (a fact which he infers from the _equality_ of the two in colour and texture) knows about what effort he must put forth to raise this other piece; and he judges accurately in proportion to the accuracy with which he perceives that the one is twice, three times, four times, &c. as large as the other; that is--in proportion to the precision of his ideas of equality and number. And here let us not omit to notice that even in these vaguest of quant.i.tative previsions, the conception of _equality of relations_ is also involved. For it is only in virtue of an undefined perception that the relation between bulk and weight in the one stone is _equal_ to the relation between bulk and weight in the other, that even the roughest approximation can be made.

But how came the transition from those uncertain perceptions of equality which the unaided senses give, to the certain ones with which science deals? It came by placing the things compared in juxtaposition. Equality being predicated of things which give us indistinguishable impressions, and no accurate comparison of impressions being possible unless they occur in immediate succession, it results that exactness of equality is ascertainable in proportion to the closeness of the compared things. Hence the fact that when we wish to judge of two shades of colour whether they are alike or not, we place them side by side; hence the fact that we cannot, with any precision, say which of two allied sounds is the louder, or the higher in pitch, unless we hear the one immediately after the other; hence the fact that to estimate the ratio of weights, we take one in each hand, that we may compare their pressures by rapidly alternating in thought from the one to the other; hence the fact, that in a piece of music, we can continue to make equal beats when the first beat has been given, but cannot ensure commencing with the same length of beat on a future occasion; and hence, lastly, the fact, that of all magnitudes, those of _linear extension_ are those of which the equality is most accurately ascertainable, and those to which by consequence all others have to be reduced. For it is the peculiarity of linear extension that it alone allows its magnitudes to be placed in _absolute_ juxtaposition, or, rather, in coincident position; it alone can test the equality of two magnitudes by observing whether they will coalesce, as two equal mathematical lines do, when placed between the same points; it alone can test _equality_ by trying whether it will become _ident.i.ty_. Hence, then, the fact, that all exact science is reducible, by an ultimate a.n.a.lysis, to results measured in equal units of linear extension.

Still it remains to be noticed in what manner this determination of equality by comparison of linear magnitudes originated. Once more may we perceive that surrounding natural objects supplied the needful lessons.

From the beginning there must have been a constant experience of like things placed side by side--men standing and walking together; animals from the same herd; fish from the same shoal. And the ceaseless repet.i.tion of these experiences could not fail to suggest the observation, that the nearer together any objects were, the more visible became any inequality between them. Hence the obvious device of putting in apposition, things of which it was desired to ascertain the relative magnitudes. Hence the idea of _measure_. And here we suddenly come upon a group of facts which afford a solid basis to the remainder of our argument; while they also furnish strong evidence in support of the foregoing speculations. Those who look sceptically on this attempted rehabilitation of the earliest epochs of mental development, and who more especially think that the derivation of so many primary notions from organic forms is somewhat strained, will perhaps see more probability in the several hypotheses that have been ventured, on discovering that all measures of _extension_ and _force_ originated from the lengths and weights of organic bodies; and all measures of _time_ from the periodic phenomena of either organic or inorganic bodies.

Thus, among linear measures, the cubit of the Hebrews was the _length of the forearm_ from the elbow to the end of the middle finger; and the smaller scriptural dimensions are expressed in _hand-breadths_ and _spans_.

The Egyptian cubit, which was similarly derived, was divided into digits, which were _finger-breadths_; and each finger-breadth was more definitely expressed as being equal to four _grains of barley_ placed breadthwise.

Other ancient measures were the orgyia or _stretch of the arms_, the _pace_, and the _palm_. So persistent has been the use of these natural units of length in the East, that even now some of the Arabs mete out cloth by the forearm. So, too, is it with European measures. The _foot_ prevails as a dimension throughout Europe, and has done since the time of the Romans, by whom, also, it was used: its lengths in different places varying not much more than men's feet vary. The heights of horses are still expressed in _hands_. The inch is the length of the terminal joint of _the thumb_; as is clearly shown in France, where _pouce_ means both thumb and inch. Then we have the inch divided into three _barley-corns_.

So completely, indeed, have these organic dimensions served as the substrata of all mensuration, that it is only by means of them that we can form any estimate of some of the ancient distances. For example, the length of a degree on the Earth's surface, as determined by the Arabian astronomers shortly after the death of Haroun-al-Raschid, was fifty-six of their miles. We know nothing of their mile further than that it was 4000 cubits; and whether these were sacred cubits or common cubits, would remain doubtful, but that the length of the cubit is given as twenty-seven inches, and each inch defined as the thickness of six barley-grains. Thus one of the earliest measurements of a degree comes down to us in barley-grains.

Not only did organic lengths furnish those approximate measures which satisfied men's needs in ruder ages, but they furnished also the standard measures required in later times. One instance occurs in our own history.

To remedy the irregularities then prevailing, Henry I. commanded that the ulna, or ancient ell, which answers to the modern yard, should be made of the exact length of _his own arm_.

Measures of weight again had a like derivation. Seeds seem commonly to have supplied the unit. The original of the carat used for weighing in India is _a small bean_. Our own systems, both troy and avoirdupois, are derived, primarily from wheat-corns. Our smallest weight, the grain, is _a grain of wheat_. This is not a speculation; it is an historically registered fact.

Henry III. enacted that an ounce should be the weight of 640 dry grains of wheat from the middle of the ear. And as all the other weights are multiples or sub-multiples of this, it follows that the grain of wheat is the basis of our scale. So natural is it to use organic bodies as weights, before artificial weights have been established, or where they are not to be had, that in some of the remoter parts of Ireland the people are said to be in the habit, even now, of putting a man into the scales to serve as a measure for heavy commodities.

Similarly with time. Astronomical periodicity, and the periodicity of animal and vegetable life, are simultaneously used in the first stages of progress for estimating epochs. The simplest unit of time, the day, nature supplies ready made. The next simplest period, the mooneth or month, is also thrust upon men's notice by the conspicuous changes const.i.tuting a lunation. For larger divisions than these, the phenomena of the seasons, and the chief events from time to time occurring, have been used by early and uncivilized races. Among the Egyptians the rising of the Nile served as a mark. The New Zealanders were found to begin their year from the reappearance of the Pleiades above the sea. One of the uses ascribed to birds, by the Greeks, was to indicate the seasons by their migrations.

Barrow describes the aboriginal Hottentot as denoting periods by the number of moons before or after the ripening of one of his chief articles of food.

He further states that the Kaffir chronology is kept by the moon, and is registered by notches on sticks--the death of a favourite chief, or the gaining of a victory, serving for a new era. By which last fact, we are at once reminded that in early history, events are commonly recorded as occurring in certain reigns, and in certain years of certain reigns: a proceeding which practically made a king's reign a measure of duration.

And, as further ill.u.s.trating the tendency to divide time by natural phenomena and natural events, it may be noticed that even by our own peasantry the definite divisions of months and years are but little used; and that they habitually refer to occurrences as "before sheep-shearing,"

or "after harvest," or "about the time when the squire died." It is manifest, therefore, that the more or less equal periods perceived in Nature gave the first units of measure for time; as did Nature's more or less equal lengths and weights give the first units of measure for s.p.a.ce and force.

It remains only to observe, as further ill.u.s.trating the evolution of quant.i.tative ideas after this manner, that measures of value were similarly derived. Barter, in one form or other, is found among all but the very lowest human races. It is obviously based upon the notion of _equality of worth_. And as it gradually merges into trade by the introduction of some kind of currency, we find that the _measures of worth_, const.i.tuting this currency, are organic bodies; in some cases _cowries_, in others _cocoa-nuts_, in others _cattle_, in others _pigs_; among the American Indians peltry or _skins_, and in Iceland _dried fish_.

Notions of exact equality and of measure having been reached, there came to be definite ideas of relative magnitudes as being multiples one of another; whence the practice of measurement by direct apposition of a measure. The determination of linear extensions by this process can scarcely be called science, though it is a step towards it; but the determination of lengths of time by an a.n.a.logous process may be considered as one of the earliest samples of quant.i.tative prevision. For when it is first ascertained that the moon completes the cycle of her changes in about thirty days--a fact known to most uncivilized tribes that can count beyond the number of their fingers--it is manifest that it becomes possible to say in what number of days any specified phase of the moon will recur; and it is also manifest that this prevision is effected by an opposition of two times, after the same manner that linear s.p.a.ce is measured by the opposition of two lines.

For to express the moon's period in days, is to say how many of these units of measure are contained in the period to be measured--is to ascertain the distance between two points in time by means of a _scale of days_, just as we ascertain the distance between two points in s.p.a.ce by a scale of feet or inches: and in each case the scale coincides with the thing measured--mentally in the one; visibly in the other. So that in this simplest, and perhaps earliest case of quant.i.tative prevision, the phenomena are not only thrust daily upon men's notice, but Nature is, as it were, perpetually repeating that process of measurement by observing which the prevision is effected. And thus there may be significance in the remark which some have made, that alike in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, there is an affinity between the word meaning moon, and that meaning measure.

This fact, that in very early stages of social progress it is known that the moon goes through her changes in about thirty days, and that in about twelve moons the seasons return--this fact that chronological astronomy a.s.sumes a certain scientific character even before geometry does; while it is partly due to the circ.u.mstance that the astronomical divisions, day, month, and year, are ready made for us, is partly due to the further circ.u.mstances that agricultural and other operations were at first regulated astronomically, and that from the supposed divine nature of the heavenly bodies their motions determined the periodical religious festivals. As instances of the one we have the observation of the Egyptians, that the rising of the Nile corresponded with the heliacal rising of Sirius; the directions given by Hesiod for reaping and ploughing, according to the positions of the Pleiades; and his maxim that "fifty days after the turning of the sun is a seasonable time for beginning a voyage."

As instances of the other, we have the naming of the days after the sun, moon, and planets; the early attempts among Eastern nations to regulate the calendar so that the G.o.ds might not be offended by the displacement of their sacrifices; and the fixing of the great annual festival of the Peruvians by the position of the sun. In all which facts we see that, at first, science was simply an appliance of religion and industry.

After the discoveries that a lunation occupies nearly thirty days, and that some twelve lunations occupy a year--discoveries of which there is no historical account, but which may be inferred as the earliest, from the fact that existing uncivilized races have made them--we come to the first known astronomical records, which are those of eclipses. The Chaldeans were able to predict these. "This they did, probably," says Dr. Whewell in his useful history, from which most of the materials we are about to use will be drawn, "by means of their cycle of 223 months, or about eighteen years; for at the end of this time, the eclipses of the moon begin to return, at the same intervals and in the same order as at the beginning." Now this method of calculating eclipses by means of a recurring cycle,--the _Saros_ as they called it--is a more complex case of prevision by means of coincidence of measures. For by what observations must the Chaldeans have discovered this cycle? Obviously, as Delambre infers, by inspecting their registers; by comparing the successive intervals; by finding that some of the intervals were alike; by seeing that these equal intervals were eighteen years apart; by discovering that _all_ the intervals that were eighteen years apart were equal; by ascertaining that the intervals formed a series which repeated itself, so that if one of the cycles of intervals were superposed on another the divisions would fit. This once perceived, and it manifestly became possible to use the cycle as a scale of time by which to measure out future periods. Seeing thus that the process of so predicting eclipses, is in essence the same as that of predicting the moon's monthly changes by observing the number of days after which they repeat--seeing that the two differ only in the extent and irregularity of the intervals, it is not difficult to understand how such an amount of knowledge should so early have been reached. And we shall be less surprised, on remembering that the only things involved in these previsions were _time_ and _number_; and that the time was in a manner self-numbered.