time in Pliny's day; and the exchange of thought has gained as immensely as the exchange of friendly sentiments. In this way it is a fact that every application of science develops the moral force of man.
Man measures the universe, and he measures himself in the rapidity of his thought and will, and finds the relation between the world and himself. He knows that he measures with relation to himself, that he measures with his senses; and in the relations between them and the world, in the necessary relation which unites them, he finds the human absolute. Reducing all the measures to a single scale, he discovers the unity of the science for which there exists a law that embraces all, anthropology. Anthropology examines the nature of man, the civilization of man, his laws, his errors, his poetry, his ideal. This ideal, which must go on ascending in proportion as man attains knowledge of himself, consists in the harmonious development of the species; and this embraces all the factors—the functions, passions, and aspirations—of his moral being. The more the individual assimilates himself to it, the more this harmony makes of man a work of art, the more it gives him the faculty and the right to admire and love his title of man; because he finds the reason of the good and the beautiful rooted in his nature. Anthropology embraces ethics, æsthetics, and history.
Hope comes to fortify the ideal at an epoch when we are comprehending the transformation of force and of form; because, with this conception of the conservation of force, all phenomena and all the moral manifestations of men may perfect themselves without ever striking upon an ultimate limit. Against such an ideal, against such a hope, the shadows of ignorance and the discouragements of pessimism will never prevail. The shadows are afraid of a statue,[1] and pessimism has no courage but that of despair. But the poet (Victor Hugo) has said with right, "Whoever despairs is in the wrong." He who does not despair and who works carries in his own conscience the fruit and the recompense of his efforts.—Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from the Revue Scientifique.
- ↑ I mean the statue of Giordano Bruno. The place selected for its site (also a very natural location, and the only one worthy of it), the Campo del Fiori, where it looks upon the spot where the heroic thinker was burned, is a protest against clerical intolerance.
