The Kimball graphic. (Kimball, Brule County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1905, 1885-07-10

grain and another fourth part is taken
country like jackals at night on a bat
tletield. Hence great famines and
diseases came and swept away millions.
The so-called thinking men were too
busy in the regions of abstraction and
fancy to admit of their bestowing any
attention upon the study of harvest
fields, production, implements, disease
and health.
Had not Rome gone down under her
military madness and the vices hat
resulted from her conquests. Lord
Bacon would perhaps have been
robbed of his laurels and made i'm
possible by the sons Of Virgil and PHI
ny. Rome had begun to study the de-
velopment of material things and was
busy at great wagon-roads, aqueducts,
drains and general improvements.
Caesar had begun to invite men of sci
ence to come to Rome to reside. He
planned libraries for all the large
towns; he was planning a draining. and
filling of the Pontine marshes; he had
forbidden the young men of rank to
ride in litters carried by slaves; he
had stopped the importing of luxuries:
he had set the example of PLAN living
and plain dress. The Latin mind had
gotten wholly away from the traDscen.
dental regions and had fled from a
million deities to almost none atall. In
the Georges of Virgil we see the new
thought and life that were passing in-
to tho pillow, the harrow, the soil, the
orchard and the beehive, while in
Pliny we note Il study of nature that
would do credit now to a Watt or a
Franklin or an Edison.
All things indicated an era of mate
rial advance. But this awakening
came too late. Rome was a sick man
whose constitution was gone. Reason
came too late, and going into a rapid
over her begun sciences and inventions
to the care of the Sixteenth Century
in which Bacon was to come. Long
was the interval between Virgil, Pliny
and Lord Bacon. 1t was filed IN chief
ly by the affairs of religion and the
lofty decorations of religion,
Christianity did not make the Dark
Ages. They were manufactured in
the DAYS which ruined the Pagan splen-
dor; and Christianity had to accept of
a wreck of her inheritance. Goth,
Vendal and every kind of wild and
torlorn creature were to be found in
the estate that passed into the hands
of Constantine. The mysterious Druids
were on one border, the heather on
another, and the Norsemen were pass
ing down through the centre. The
Christianity did not know anything ex-
cept the theology; and thus the human
mind was turned toward the study OF
God and the house of God. Out of the
former came theological studies, out
OF the latter came the fine arts. As
for the domestic and useful arts they
had no friends for twelve hundred
years.
Under the impulse given by Lord
Bacon, mankind began to let the
angels alone long enough to admit of
a look at the pillow, the hoe, the orch
ard, the field. This look was repeated
until new implements and inventions
began to appear. The steam-engine
and railway, the steamship, reaping-
machine, have appeared on the arena
Of man, and while the angels are not
harmed any by this philosophic neg
lect, the millions not yet angels have
proiited much by the transfer Of
thought from things IN heaven to
things on earth. Heaven and earth
will be equal partners in the philoso-
ply Of the future aud Suing, in
MOicn1O Current