Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Columbian Address Delivered by Hon. H. W. Childs: Before the Minnesota Historical Society, at the Capitol in the City of St. Paul, October 21, 1892
The Columbian voyage was the logical sequence and cul mination of a series of illustrious intellectual achievements. As a rational enterprise it is expressive of the highest attain ments of science at the close Of the fifteenth century. It was the final triumph of the teachings of Thales. But between the Ionian astronomer and the Genoese discoverer stretched a vale of ignorance and prejudice, with only here and there a hill-top lighted With the beams of the eternal truth. Thales had taught the true form of the earth six centuries before our era. The work so brilliantly begun in Greece was continued in both the Ionian and Alexandrian schools for centuries there after. The fame of these schools is durably founded upon the labors of Pythagoras and Aristotle, Euclid, Hipparchus and Ptolemy.
It should not be overlooked, however, that those great pioneers In the cause of truth are representatives of almost as many distinct ages of Grecian and Egyptian knowledge. Slowly, with steps measured by centuries, science was march ing toward that stupendous achievement which the whole civil ized world celebrates to-day. The Arab was the torch bearer who transferred the light of the East to the European world. Bag dad and Cordova shone resplendent in the fame of their schools, the wisdom of their teachers and the value and extent of their libraries. It is incredible, however irreconcilable the antagonism between Moor and Spaniard, that the learning of the land Of the Caliphs was not felt in the countries by which it was surrounded.
There can be no question that the learned men of Europe had long been acquainted with the teachings of the Alexan drian schools. But applied science is slow of pace. The ap plication of knowledge often demands the rarest genius. There is too frequently a wide gulf between the student and' the man of practical affairs; and he who bridges that gulf oftentimes becomes deserving of immortal remembrance.
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