IN SCHOOL AND CHURCH 69 product of civilization; makes no Discussing mental acumen reckoning of chemical and elec­ and accomplishment he also ad­ trical discoveries, mechanical mits that “it is doubtful if there contrivances, and multiplied in­ has been any progress made in ventions that characterize our intellect” and illustrates, “Euclid day, and increase our pride. and Archimedes are probably the But it remains to be proven equals of any of our greatest whether these inventions will mathematicians of the day.” lend progress to civilization or Speaking of Egypt he says, retard the same. It must be ad­ “This country in its high natural mitted that many of them will civilization and its remarkable eventuate in both mental and religious system, was itself the physical indolence, and some of equal of any that has succeeded the professors are even now tell­ it,” but the most damaging ad­ ing us that the automobile may mission of all is made by the result in our legs one day being most ardent, if not the most ab­ diminished to “vestigial re­ surd of present day evolutionists, mains” ; the radio may reduce namely, Prof. Conkling of Prince­ our ears to Eustachian tubes; ton: “In the two centuries be­ while the multiplied forms of tween 500 and 300 B. C. the modern machinery may impover­ small and relatively barren coun­ ish our arms to kangaroo foreleg try of Attica, with an area and proportions and powers. total population about equal to The effect of all this upon that of the present State of minds and morals we leave to the Rhode Island, but with less than conjectures of theorists that now one-fifth as many free persons, throng professors’ chairs; but produced at least 25 illustrious the cold facts we have to face, men. Among statesmen and and they are disquieting in the commanders there were, Mil- last degree; and all the more so. tiades, Themistocles, Aristides, because they come from accepted Cimon, Pericles, Phocion; among authorities among the scientists poets, Aeschylus, Euripides, themselves. Sophocles, Aristophanes; among Sir Wm. Ramsey insists, in philosophers and men of science, his big volume on “The Cities of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, De­ St. Paul” that the peoples who metrius Theophrastus; among now occupy those same cities and architects and artists, Ictinus, sections of Southern Europe and Phidias, Praxiteles, Polygnotus; Asia are the degenerate descend­ among historians, Thucydides, ants of the great sires who once and Xenophon; among orators, dwelt there. Sir Alfred Wallace Aeschines, Demosthenes, Iso­ in his volume “Social Environ­ crates, Lysias. ment and Moral Progress,” says, In this small country in the “The fact that the physical char­ space of two centuries there ap­ acteristics of the Australians are peared such a galaxy of illustri­ substantially those of the Cau­ ous men as has never been found casian in its lowest types, has led on the whole earth in any two me to conclude that these inter­ centuries since that time. Gal- esting people may have been ton concludes that the average descended from much more civil­ ability of the Athenian race of ized remote ancestors and are that period was, on the lowest thus an example of degradation estimate, as much greater than rather than survival.” that of the English race of the