The first savages collected in the forests a few nourishing fruits, a
few salutary roots, and thus supplied their most immediate wants. The
first shepherds observed that the stars moved in a regular course, and
made use of them to guide their journeys across the plains of the
desert. Such was the origin of the mathematical and physical sciences.
Once convinced that it could combat nature by the means which she
herself afforded, genius reposed no more, it watched her without
relaxation, it made incessantly new conquests over her, all of them
distinguished by some improvement in the situation of our race. From
that time a succession of conducting minds, faithful depositories of
the attainments already made, constantly occupied in connecting them,
in vivifying them by means of each other, have conducted us, in less
than forty ages, from the first essays of rude observers to the
profound calculations of Newton and La Place, to the learned
classifications of Linnaeus and Jussieu. This precious inheritance,
perpetually increasing, brought from Chaldea into Egypt, from Egypt
into Greece, concealed during ages of disaster and of darkness
recovered in more fortunate times, unequally spread among the nations
of Europe, has everywhere been followed by wealth and power; the
nations which have reaped it are become the mistresses of the world;
such as have neglected it, are fallen into weakness and obscurity.
_Curtis's Lectures on the Ear._
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