Is there any New thing under the Sun?
Nearly three thousand years ago, Solomon said "there is nothing new under the sun, for the thing which hath been is that which shall be, and that which is done, is that which shall be done. The complacency of the 19th century is apt to ignore this judgment of the Hebrew sage, or to allow it only a partial application, restricting it in fact to the moral world. We are prone to believe that it embraced much more than we are apt to imagine.For instance, the art of printing is regarded as an invention entirely modern. And so indeed it is, in so far as an art formerly known, afterwards utterly lost, and revived without any knowledge of its previous existence on the part of the person reviving it, may be considered an invention of that person, and so we certainly regard it. Yet Disraeli, the elder, in his "Curiosities of Literature, " stoutly maintains that the Romans were acquainted with the art of printing, and that they intentionally prevented it from being practised. Rome is often appealed to as the example of a republic. In point of fact, the Roman Commonwealth seems to us to have been the most thorough oligarchy that ever existed, except, perhaps, the Venetian. The rulers had no notion of allowing to be practised an art which they had the wisdom to foresee would disseminate among the people independent opinions on literature, science, and, what they feared most of all, government. They were aristocratic in all things. They desired to retain a monopoly of ideas, as well as of corn, wine and oil. They knew too well the basis of their own power, to subject it to the action of any such disturbing element. In this respect they showed far more wisdom than the French Bourbons one century ago, who allowed the press to flourish in full freedom, while they governed as despotically as Augustus or Tiberius. How long could either of these last have kept their ground, against a free press, with some Pliny or Tagitus thundering every morning against the corruption of the times?
If, however, the Romans understood well enough the power of the printing press, and restrained it to suit the purposes of an oligarchy, they seem to have utterly overlooked the power of gunpowder. That they knew of it, is evident from many passages in ancient authors, among them some from the great Roman engineer Vitruvius, who was a contemporary of Julius Cæsar, and wrote under Augustus. Had he taken an enlarged view of the phenomena connected with the subject, what a change he might have produced in the history of the world. Imagine the great Roman General taking the field with several hundred field-pieces, to conquer Gaul, brining his heavy guns to bear upon the eighty fortresses which he demolished with his battering rams, breaking the ranks of Pompey at Pharsalus, with the concentrated fire of a powerful park, instead of sending his veterans to cut the dainty young horsemen of Rome in their faces, thus spoiling their pretty looks, and blasting forever their hopes of wealthy marriages. But, in his hands, and in the hands of many generations, gunpowder came to nothing more than a chief agency in the exhibition of fire-works and crackers. They had the thing in their hands, fifteen centuries before Roger Bacon lived, and they knew not what to make of it, although they were continually straining their invention to fashion irresistible artillery. They remind us of those Egyptian explorers who were trying for years to find the site of Lake MŒris, and knew not that they were standing on the very ground which it covered, until Lepsius came, and everything became apparent at a glance.
Two hundred and seventeen years before the birth of Christ, the year before the battle of Cannæ, and the very year of the battle of Thrasymene, Hero of Alexandria, astonished the Court of the Ptolemaic, by exhibiting light balls dancing in a jet of steam. He did more. He invented an apparatus, consisting of a small sphere, which was moved on pivots by the action of steam generated in a heated boiler! Here was a locomotive! A very primitive sort of locomotive, it must be owned, but to all intents and purposes a loco-motive! --This Hero wrote among other things, a book on pneumatics, in which he treats of the power of steam, and he is the only ancient author who speaks of it in connection with science. The absurd notion then prevailed, that it was a degradation to philosophy to apply it to any useful object. This, no doubt, was the cause of its not having been mentioned by writers; for it is certain that its power as an agent was well known. Gibbon, who lived on the eve of the great discoveries in respect to steam, but who had never seen a steamboat, or heard of a locomotive, speaks of its use in the defence of some city, we forget what, at least as early as the 4th century.
Europeans are wont to think that acupuncture is a modern discovery in surgery. It was known to the Chinese at least a thousand years ago, and is described in their most ancient medical works. The moæa, a species of actual cautery, is generally supposed to be a Chinese invention domesticated of late years in Europe. Its name is Chinese, and, in the original, signifies the dried plant used in the process. Now, if anybody will take the trouble to consult the book of Herodotus in which the manners and customs of the Libyans are treated of, he will find the whole process exactly described. These nomadic tribes tied greasy wool to the temples of their children, and set fire to it. They imagined that by burning holes in their heads they could effectually guard them against the danger of taking cold. The Romans and Greeks were far better acquainted with the properties of drugs which tend to produce sleep and insensibility to pain, than the moderns were, until at least within the last thirty years. They used the mandragora, which several of their writers tell us rendered a man insensible to the pain of a surgical operation. In the middle ages the Crusaders brought the hashish to Europe. Bocaccio speaks of a French surgeon who employed soporifics to deaden the sensibilities when he was about to operate. Paracelsus anticipated Hahnemann's system, Avicenna administered infinitesimal doses on the homŒopathic system, and the philosopher Descartes killed himself by practising upon it. Even the kindred system of hydropathy — not the mere bathing which is as old as the world, but the intricacies of Preisnitz--has a Heathen origin. It was practised on the Emperor Augustus, with signal benefit, and Musa Antonius, who practised it, was rewarded by a brazen statue, and a princely fee. He tried the same system of Marcellus--the son of the Emperor's sister, who is the subject of one of the most beautiful passages in the Aeneid — but, unfortunately, it killed him. He was chilled by the douches, and could never be restored. His death killed the system, which knew no resurrection for two thousand years.
If there were anything which could claim to be purely modern we had supposed it was table-turning and spirit-rapping. It seems, however, that the first was known to the Egyptian priesthood, probably, from the very beginning of their sway. From them it passed to the Romans, only they turned tripods instead of tables. Tertullian denounced all those who practised or believed in this mode of divination. Travellers have found it common in Cochin China, where they found, also, men who, by the exertion of their will, could propel a boat against a stream. In Tibet the lamas have gone ahead of our table-turners. They make them fly through space like projectiles. Spirit-rapping was known in Europe several centuries ago, and animal magnetism was known to the priests of Egypt.
We believe old Sol. was very nearly right.
