to the wife and nine children he was about to leave. After a page picture, showing the event, the poem begins: "Give Ear my Children to my Words, and point them in your thought. That you may see your father's face, when he is dead and gone." This was evidently a much-prized poem. Next comes a page of "Instructive Questions and Answers," of which the following are illustrative: This was followed by the pièce de résistance of the whole book, "The Shorter Westminster Catechism," the first page of which is reproduced as Figure 131 in the accompanying History. This required twenty-four pages of the book. Next comes a famous native production of nine and a half pages, by John Cotton, the first page of which is reproduced on page 315. The volume is now concluded with a nine and a half page rhymed dialogue between Christ, a Youth, and the Devil, which also was a great favorite in New England. The Youth declares: "Those days which God to me doth send, The Devil expresses great pleasure at the decision, while Christ entreats the Youth not to obey the Devil's voice. The Youth, though, will not listen until too late. After a long argument, Christ finally, out of patience, calls Death to come and take the Youth "before he has half lived out his days." The Youth, terrified, now begs to be spared, but Christ is obdurate; Death takes him; and the poem ends with the following words: DEATH "Youth, I am come to fetch thy breath, THE CONCLUSION "Thus ends the days of woful youth, Many don't live out half their days This Primer exercised a great influence on the New England character. It was used by both church and school, the schoolmaster drilling on the Catechism in the school, and the people reciting it yearly in the churches. Every home possessed copies of the book, and it was for sale at all bookstores, even in the smaller places, for a century and a half. It was also used extensively outside of New England, it being essentially the book of the Dissenters in the American colonies. Sometimes it was printed under the title of The Columbian Primer, The American Primer, or, The New York Primer, but the public preferred The New England Primer to any other title. Its total sales have been estimated to have been at least three million copies.1 It was used in the Boston Dame Schools as late as 1806, and in the country districts still later. The cities abandoned it first, and gradually it was replaced everywhere by a new type of secular reading book which developed in America, after the rise of a na 1 "For one hundred years this Primer was the schoolbook of the dissenters of America, and for another hundred, it was frequently reprinted. In the unfavorable locality (in a sectarian sense) of Philadelphia, the accounts of Benjamin Franklin and David Hall show that, between 1740 and 1766, that firm sold 37,100 copies of it. Livermore stated, in 1849, that within the last dozen years' 100.000 copies of modern editions have been circulated.' An over-conservative claim for it is to estimate an annual average sale of 20,000 copies during a period of one hundred and fifty years, or a total sale of 3,000,000 copies.' (Ford, The New England Primer, P. 45.) ever exercise the influence which this early religious text exercrude and extremely poor, but probably no modern textbook will pared with the primers and first readers we have to-day it seems tional consciousness and the beginning of the national life. Com Wife Son makes a glad Father, but ETTER is a little with the Fear of Drawn out of the Breafts of both Teftaments, the Lord, than great Treasure and for their Souls Nourishment. By JOHN COTTON. hathGod done for you? Trouble therewith. C OME unto Christ all ye that labour Queft. WHAT hath God made me, he and are heavy laden, and he will God hath keepeth me, and he can save me. Q. What is GOD? A God is a Spirit of himself and for himself. Q. How many Gods be there? A. There be but One GOD in three Perfons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Q. How did God make ? give you Reft. O not the abominable Thing which I D hate, faith the Lord. XCEPT a Man be born again he in the 4. In my firft Parents holy and righteous. F Heart of a Child, but the Rod of Cor Q Are you then born Holy and Righteous? A. Adam's Sin imputed to me, and a cor rupt Nature dwelling in me. Q. What is your corrupt Nature? FIRST PAGE OF JOHN COTTON'S " "SPIRITUAL MILK" rection fhall drive it from him. G RIEVE not the Holy Spirit, left it depart from thee. HOLINESS becomes God's House forever. AN ALPHABET OF LESSONS FOR YOUTH FIG. 43. Two Other Pages from the "NeW ENGLAND PRIMER to sin." books in the schools of the colonies. natural continuation, and constituted the main further reading It has been said of it that "it taught millions to read, and not one cised over both children and adults during our colonial period. The Psalter, the Testament, and the Bible were its England Primer (Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1899). with an historical introduction, is Paul Leicester Ford's The New An inexpensive photographic reprint of an edition of 1727, CHAPTER XVI THE RISE OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY THE Readings contained in this chapter deal with the rise of the study of the modern mathematical, astronomical, and physical sciences as a still further expression of the new critical, questioning spirit awakened by the Revival of Learning; the beginnings of modern scientific method, and its application to the problems of the universe; and the formulation of this method and its fruitfulness in the hands of modern investigators. The first selection (203) is from Macaulay, and not only sets forth the fundamental defects of all ancient science, but also shows how the ancient scientific purpose differed from the modern. The seconds election (204), from an old German chronicle, is a good illustration of the wonderful and miraculous, which flourished throughout the whole Middle Ages and made scientific progress impossible. The third selection (205) is an extract from the dedicatory letter of Copernicus, prefixed to his revolutionary volume (1543) on the motions of the heavenly bodies. Modern scientific methods and discovery clearly date from the publication of this book. The extract reveals the new method of thinking, and is as clear an example of the modern attitude and way of thinking as was the work of Petrarch. The next extract (206), describing how Galileo discovered the satellites of Jupiter (1610), also is a wonderfully clear example of modern scientific reasoning. Modern scientific investigation was unfortunate in its birth, in that it was ushered into the world just as the growing tolerance of the Church, which had marked the latter half of the fifteenth century and the opening years of the sixteenth, was changing to an attitude of suspicion and critical reaction as a result of the Protestant Revolts then sweeping Europe. In lands strongly Protestant this reaction manifested itself but slightly, and in England scarcely at all, but in strong Catholic countries, and especially in Italy, it strove to suppress new thinking as dangerous to orthodoxy. The Spanish Inquisition, a sort of mediæval inquisitorial grand jury, was revived, and became zealous in tracking down and punishing offenders. One of these was Galileo Galilei, a professor at Pisa, who had made many remarkable scientific discoveries. For defending the Copernican theory he was called to Rome (1615), compelled to recant his "error” (1616) to escape the stake, and for daring later (1632) again to write on the theory was compelled to "abjure his error" (207), and was made a virtual prisoner of the Inquisition for the remainder of his life. The selection is introduced to show how far the forces of reaction were stimulated, a century after Magellan's voyage, spurred on by the religious hatreds and warfare then raging in Europe. The two selections which conclude the chapter deal with the organizing work of Lord Francis Bacon. The first (208) is an extract from his famous Novum Organum, in which he sets forth some of the difficulties the new scholars of the time had to face. The second (209) is Lord Macaulay's estimate as to the importance for modern thought of the organizing work of Bacon. 203. Attitude of the Ancients toward Scientific Study (T. B. Macaulay, Essay on Lord Bacon; Edinburgh Review, July, 1837. Also in his collected Essays) Macaulay, in setting forth how completely Bacon's work was dominated by the desire that philosophy and science should bear fruit, draws the following contrast between the ideas as to scientific study held by the ancients and those aimed at by Bacon. . . . The ancient philosophy disdained to be useful, and was content to be stationary. It dealt largely in theories of moral perfection, which were so sublime that they never could be more than theories; in attempts to solve insoluable enigmas; in exhortations to the attainment of unattainable frames of mind. It could not condescend to the humble office of ministering to the comfort of human beings. All the schools contemned that office as degrading; some censured it as immoral. The ancient philosophers did not neglect natural science; but they did not cultivate it for the purpose of increasing the power and ameliorating the condition of man. The taint of barrenness had spread from ethical to physical speculations. Seneca wrote largely on natural philosophy, and magnified the importance of that study. But why? Not because it tended to assuage suffering, to multiply the conveniences of life, to extend the empire of man over the material world; but solely because it tended to raise the mind above low cares, to separate it from the body, to exercise its subtility in the solution of very obscure questions. Thus natural philosophy was considered in the light merely of a |