another as they were of all other classes of society.
If we wish to form a clear picture of this earliest
stage of civilization, an age which represents at
once the naivete of childhood and the suspicious
reticence of senility, we must turn our eyes to the
priest, on the one hand, claiming as his own all art
and science, and commanding respect by his contemptuous
silence; and, on the other hand, to the
mechanic plying the loom, extracting the Tyrian
dye, practising chemistry, though ignorant of its
very name, despised and oppressed, and only tolerated
when he furnished Religion with her trappings
or War with arms. Thus the growth of
chemistry was slow, and by reason of its backwardness
it was longer than any other art in ridding
itself of the leading-strings of magic and
astrology. Practical discoveries must have been
made many times without science acquiring thereby
any new fact. For to prevent a new discovery from
being lost there must be such a combination of
favorable circumstances as was rare in that age and
for many succeeding ages. There must be publicity,
and publicity is of quite recent growth; the
application of the discovery must be not only possible
but obvious, as satisfying some want. But
wants are only felt as civilization progresses. Nor
is that all; for a practical discovery to become a
scientific fact it must serve to demonstrate the error
of one hypothesis, and to suggest a new one, better
fitted for the synthesis of existing facts. But