The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-01-05
moDERN AND ANCIENT WAYS.

We have often reflected on what . edge and information there would be If some of the inventions of modern times had been made long ago. and if some of the conveniences now in common use had been known to the -ancients. A vast amount of supposi- tion and guesswork would have been avoided and we would know many in- teresting things of which we are now in ignorance or which are only matters of surmise.
 Take the art of photography as notable example. Its invention or dis covery. and it's develoment many fair ly be said to belong to the present generation. for many are yet living who remember when daguerreotypes. the forerunners of the photograph. were among the wonderful novelties of the age As in most other human accomplish shments the art has been. and is being. improved and advanced in every way, until even now there is apparently little to be desired or ex- pected.
 Suppose, now. this art had been known to the ancients--Yhat vast amount of knowledge would be added to our present storel We need not go quite as far back as the days of Adam to illustrate what we mean, or to any of the periods when man was advanc- ing towards something like eiviliza- tion. Even if we should go no fur ther back than
 "The glory that was Greece
 And the grandeur that was Rome" it would be great thing. Then we might have accurate portraits of De- mosthenes and Cicero, of Caesar and Brutus and Antony. of the fascinating Cleopatra, and of the beau tifui danes who graced the courts of Greece and Rome in the days of their greater glory.
 Then, too. we would have life-like pictures of the great events. some of them glorious. some cruel and some pathetic that were enacted before the Greek and Roman nations began to decay. We would know from personal observation, as one might say, what was the daily life of the ancients. how they fought and how they died; mat ters of which we now know only through history and the fancy of painters. What we want is to see them as they were, not as we imagine they were. It Is not merely to read of them, but to see them, and that is what we could do if those old inhabitants of earth had known how to take pict- ures as the moderns do.
 We have taken photography as an example, partly because it is one of the strictly modern discoveries, and partly because of the part it might have played in transmitting to us a better knowledge of the past. but there are other adJuncts of modern life that are so common that we find 1t difficult to understand why they were so long In coming. Even the art of printing may be classed among modern discov- cries for but few centuries have ps- cd since men learned how to print words instead oG writing them. And the same may be said of the almost IA 70 1aT xrRr, chimes which take the place of hu. man hands in practically all the arts and industries of our modern life. They all belong to the later eras of human existence.
 Why was 1t, we wonder, that all these conveniences, or necessities, as we now consider them. were so long in coming to mans aid? Even the ancient Egyptians were not without skin and ingenuity, as the remains left behind them amply testify. The Creeks in their best days were far advanced in the arts and sciences. and some of thei works are still marvel to the present age. One might think that the needs of their existence would have led them into the fields of inveh- tion. and that they would have found means to save much of the time and labor that was spent on their daily tasks One might well conclude that there was no spark of inventiveness in man until a few centuries ago. and that the ancients continued to do things in the same way because they didn't know how to set about inventing some- thing bette*.
 RE MAN.