Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 | Page 8

possess. It is the idea of the good, therefore, which lifts that which is merely just into a higher--into, I might say, an immortal sphere of activity. It has always had an intense attraction for noble souls, which history shows us; and it is not to be supposed that that attraction will ever diminish; it will ever increase, although its forms may change; and finally, along with this betterment of the emotions, and of the sense of justice--of right and of ethics and of ?sthetics--we find the constant effort and desire of all mankind, in all stages of culture, to find out what is true, as distinct from that which is not true. You will not be mistaken if you seek for this in the soul of the rudest savage; he, too, likes to know the truth. The methods by which he arrives at it, or seeks to arrive at it, are widely different from those which you have been taught. Nevertheless, the logical force of his mind; the methods of thought that he has; the laws that govern his intelligence, are exactly the same as yours: and it is only with your enlightenment you have gained more and more acquaintance with the methods. You know something about the great discovery which has advanced all modern science from its medi?val condition to that of the present--of the application of the inductive system of science and thought; and you know that it is by constant and close mathematical study of analogy--of probability--that we exclude error little by little from our observations--we improve more and more our instruments of precision--we count out the errors of our observation; and we are constantly seeking those laws which are not transient and ephemeral only, but which are eternal and immortal. Upon those laws, finally, must rest all our real, certain knowledge; and it is the endeavor of the anthropologist to apply those laws to man and his development; and such, indeed, is the recognized and highest mission of that science. We thus find that the idea of truth is at the summit of this scale which I have placed before you--not separated from it. It interprets every one of the ideas and justifies them and qualifies them and lifts them up into their highest usefulness. Chevalier Bunsen, in describing what he thought would be the highest condition of human enlightenment, said, "It will be when the good will be the true and the true will be the good;" and he might have extended that further and said, when both those ideas were the inspiring motives of all these five great ideas which I have stated are at the basis of the culture of every individual and are also at the basis of the culture of the race and of the nation.
This, therefore, will serve as a sketch of the milestones of human progress. The way has been long and painful; the results have been far from satisfactory; and yet they have been enormous and wonderful, when we compare them now with what our ancestors were when history began. We can conclude, however, from looking back on this thorny and upward path, that it is still going to ascend; we do not know it for certain; progress may cease, through some unknown law, now and here; but if there is anything that we can derive from the lesson of the past--if we can project into the future any of the facts which history shows us are our own now--it guides us forward to a firm belief that the hereafter will have in its breast greater treasures for humanity, greater glories for posterity, than any that we know or can understand.
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TOMBS OF THE FIRST EGYPTIAN DYNASTY.[1]
[Footnote 1: The Independent.]
By LUDWIG BORCHARDT, Ph.D., Director of the German School in Cairo.
For many years various European collections of Egyptian antiquities have contained a certain series of objects which gave arch?ologists great difficulty. There were vases of a peculiar form and color, greenish plates of slate, many of them in curious animal forms, and other similar things. It was known, positively, that these objects had been found in Egypt, but it was impossible to assign them a place in the known periods of Egyptian art. The puzzle was increased in difficulty by certain plates of slate with hunting and battle scenes and other representations in relief in a style so strange that many investigators considered them products of the art of Western Asia.
The first light was thrown on the question in the winter of 1894-95 by the excavations of Flinders Petrie in Ballas and Neggadeh, two places on the west bank of the Nile, a little below ancient Thebes. This persevering English investigator discovered here a very large necropolis in which he examined about three thousand graves.