Iron Age, according to the use of stone, bronze and iron implements.

PREHISTORIC MAN. If therefore we would begin the history of science at the very beginning, we must turn far backward in imagination to a time when the human race was barely superior to the beasts that perish. Absorbed in a fierce struggle for existence, the passing generations had little history and left behind them no permanent records. In one respect nevertheless mankind stood far above the beasts; namely, in possessing the power of language, by which they could not only communicate more readily one with another, but also convey to their descendants through oral tradition something of whatever they might possess of accumulated knowledge. Eventually, though slowly, the generations began to leave behind them more enduring records, at first crude and fragmentary, in the form of tools, cairns, and other monuments, or in drawings, paintings, or carvings, on ivory or rocks or trees, or on the walls of caverns, which should serve to inform or instruct other men. Finally, but still slowly, and especially out of this so-called "picture-writing," grew the art of writing, which furnished a means of keeping permanent records of the past and a new and more perfect way of communication between living men and races of men. We who have ourselves witnessed some of the consequences of improvements in the arts of communication between men and nations, such as have recently been effected by steam transportation and telegraphy and telephony, can to some extent realize how much the introduction of the rudiments of the art of writing may have meant in the progress of prehistoric and primitive mankind.

THE SCIENCE OF MANKIND. ANTHROPOLOGY. - The various steps in the evolution of mankind and in the earliest development of civilization and the arts form the subject matter of one of the youngest of the sciences, anthropology, to works upon which the reader is referred who would pursue these matters further. One of the earliest and still one of the most interesting of these, Man's Place in Nature, by Huxley, is now a classic. Another, also somewhat out of date but still very valuable, entitled

Anthropology," is of special interest because its author, E. B. Tylor, was the founder of the science and is still living (in 1916).1 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE RACE. There is reason to believe that the human race, in its long and slow development, has passed through periods of essential childhood and youth, very much as the individual human being passes slowly through infancy onwards; and that, precisely as the individual begins his intellectual life in wonder, questioning, and curiosity, so the race has advanced from a condition of childish wonder, questionings, and interpretations of mankind and the external world, sun, moon, and stars, thunder and lightning, wind, rain, and snow, which have gradually developed into more mature and more scientific explanations. This principle of an essential parallelism between individual development and racial, named by Haeckel "the biogenetic law," will be found especially pertinent at many stages in the history of science.

PRIMITIVE INTERPRETATIONS OF NATURE.-As the child thinks he sees in almost everything some living agency,—because most of the things that happen about him are obviously connected with himself, or his parents, or his nurses, or other children, or with his pets, so man in the childhood of the race and in its earlier development sees in the wind some hidden being or personality bending the tree, or shaking the leaves, or moaning or sighing in the forest, or roaring angrily in thunder. Only a slightly different imagination is required to see in the sun, moon, and planets supernatural beings or gods travelling across the heavens, and by association, since they seem to visit his heavens daily or monthly or at other regular intervals, to believe that they are somehow concerned with himself and his welfare or destiny. From this primitive interpretation to the modern astronomical knowledge of the immensity, the movements and the paths, the temperatures, and

1 The latest edition of Sir John Lubbock's [Lord Avebury's] "Prehistoric Times" should also be consulted. Other easily accessible volumes are A. C. Haddon's "The Wanderings of Peoples" (Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature) and J. L. Myres' "The Dawn of History' (Home University Library Series). The chapters on "Modern Savages" in Lord Avebury's "Prehistoric Times" are especially instructive. Most important of all is Professor H. F. Osborn's recent work, "Men of the Old Stone Age."

even the chemical composition, of those enormous lifeless masses which we call sun, moon, and stars, has been a long and laborious journey, how long no one can tell. It is still almost always possible to find tribes or peoples somewhere on the earth living under one or more of the various conditions which the more highly developed peoples have apparently passed through, and there is no great difficulty in finding primitive tribes to-day holding such childish interpretations of nature as we have just described. This circumstance enables anthropologists, ethnologists, and historians to draw with considerable confidence the broader outlines of the probable history of the more highly developed nations, such as those of western Europe and North America, nations in the progress of which, since the beginning of the nineteenth century, science has played a notable part.

The first stepping-stones towards scientific knowledge are wonder and curiosity, and peoples are still to be found so low in intelligence as to be almost destitute of curiosity. As a rule, however, most human beings, no matter how primitive, have some curiosity concerning, and some sort of explanation for, the commonest events, such as day and night, life, death, sickness, health, sun, moon, stars, winds, seasons, and the like. And one of the commonest, simplest, and probably most natural, is that already referred to as the childish or personal interpretation of nature; viz., that which assumes everything to be in a sense alive and possessed of some sort of being, animation, or personality, kindred to man's own. This primitive interpretation has been called animism. At present, however, the term animatism finds more favor among certain anthropologists, apparently for the reason that the notion of mere diffuse vitality, or general "animation," is even more primitive, as observed in certain peoples of low development, than is the idea of a specific "soul" (anima) differentiated from the body and possessing a separate existence. For example, a tree blown by the wind may seem to a man of very low development to be merely quivering with life, and bending before some more powerful but invisible influence, diffused, hazy, unembodied, and without personality or name

(animatism). Or it may seem to be an individual tree, bent by an invisible but powerful being like a man and perhaps having a name such as "Boreas" (the Greeks' name for the north wind). In this latter case we have the assumption of personality and, by analogy with man, of the presence and influence of a spirit or soul (animism).

PREVALENCE OF ANIMISM IN ANTIQUITY.-Judging by the opinions and beliefs of races which still exist in very low stages of development, prehistoric man when he pondered at all, reasoned largely in the direction of animism. He interpreted himself and his actions by his own ideas, will, feelings, and desires, and reasoned that other things were actuated likewise. If, for example, he killed an ox or a man by a blow, and later an ox or a man were killed by lightning, it was reasonable to assume that some invisible and manlike being had given the ox or man an invisible blow. The oldest records of the human race confirm this idea. The ancient Assyrians, Babylonians, and Egyptians "animated" much of what we today call inanimate, i.e. inorganic, nature; and Greek and Hebrew poetry are full of survivals of this view of man and nature, which on the higher levels passes into personification and anthropomorphism. The establishment of a hierarchy of the gods of Greece, such as was supposed to dwell upon Mt. Olympus, is merely a further differentiation of the same kind. "The Hellenic gods and goddesses are glorified men and women."

SOURCES OF INFORMATION CONCERNING PREHISTORIC AND ANCIENT TIMES. - These are of three kinds, tradition, monuments (including tools, implements, pottery, and other objects which have survived to the present time, more or less in their original form), and inscriptions. Of these tradition, because readily subject to perversion, is the least reliable and need not be further considered. It is monuments, such as ruins, tombs, weapons, pottery, implements, ornaments, furniture, and the like, upon which we must chiefly depend for our knowledge of prehistoric times, and the evidence which has been gradually accumulated from finds of this sort is extensive and trustworthy and corre

spondingly valuable. With the introduction of inscriptions of all sorts, including drawings, pictures, hieroglyphics, and writings of every kind, upon tablets, monuments, walls, caves, clay cylinders, papyri, parchments, and the like, from about the eighth or tenth century B.C., we enter upon the historical period. From that time forward we have more or less of the raw material from which we may reconstruct the beginnings, not only of civilization and art, but also of literature and science.

SOME ANCIENT LANDS AND PEOPLES. From the standpoint of European history, and especially the history of science, the most important peoples of antiquity were the Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, and Phoenicians. The Babylonians and Assyrians occupied the fertile valley of the Tigris and Euphrates; the Egyptians, that of the Nile; and the Phoenicians the eastern slopes of the Mediterranean basin (modern Syria). The first three peoples were chiefly agricultural; the last, chiefly seafaring, mercantile, and industrial.

BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA. - These, lying almost side by side, may be considered together, although Babylonia furnishes the older and the more important civilization. Babylon and Nineveh were the chief cities of the two countries, the former in Mesopotamia on the Euphrates, the latter above and to the northeast, and much nearer the mountains, on the Tigris.

In that part of Asia which borders upon Africa, to the north of Arabia and the Persian Gulf, in an almost tropical region at the foot of the Armenian highlands, defended by mountains on the east and bounded by desert on the west, opens the broad valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers which, flowing from the same mountains and in the same direction and maintaining for a long distance a parallel but independent course, join at last and fall together into the Persian Gulf. In the month of April these two rivers, swollen by the melted snows in the mountains of Armenia, overflow, sinking again to the level of their beds in June. The country around them therefore was very similar to the Nile valley. A large number of canals joined the Tigris to the Euphrates, and distributed the water rendered by the tropical climate necessary for agriculture.