When we cast our eyes upon the early stages of the histories of nations, we cannot fail to be struck with the consideration, that in many countries the Arts of life already appear, at least in some rude form or other, when, as yet, nothing of science exists. A {130} practical knowledge of Astronomy, such as enables them to reckon months and years, is found among all nations except the mere savages. A practical knowledge of Mechanics must have existed in those nations which have left us the gigantic monuments of early architecture. The pyramids and temples of Egypt and Nubia, the Cyclopean walls of Italy and Greece, the temples of Magna Græcia and Sicily, the obelisks and edifices of India, the cromlechs and Druidical circles of countries formerly Celtic,--must have demanded no small practical mechanical skill and power. Yet those modes of reckoning time must have preceded the rise of speculative Astronomy; these structures must have been erected before the theory of Mechanics was known. To suppose, as some have done, a great body of science, now lost, to have existed in the remote ages to which these remains belong, is not only quite gratuitous, and contrary to all analogy, but is a supposition which cannot be extended so far as to explain all such cases. For it is impossible to imagine that _every_ art has been preceded by the science which renders a reason for its processes. Certainly men formed wine from the grape, before they possessed a Science of Fermentation; the first instructor of every artificer in brass and iron can hardly be supposed to have taught the Chemistry of metals as a Science; the inventor of the square and the compasses had probably no more knowledge of demonstrated Geometry than have the artisans who now use those implements; and finally, the use of speech, the employment of the inflections and combinations of words, must needs be assumed as having been prior to any general view of the nature and analogy of Language. Even at this moment, the greater part of the arts which exist in the world are not accompanied by the sciences on which they theoretically depend. Who shall state to us the general chemical truths to which the manufactures of glass, and porcelain, and iron, and brass, owe their existence? Do not almost all artisans practise many successful artifices long before science explains the ground of the process? Do not arts at this day exist, in a high state {131} of perfection, in countries in which there is no science, as China and India? These countries and many others have no theories of mechanics, of optics, of chemistry, of physiology; yet they construct and use mechanical and optical instruments, make chemical combinations, take advantage of physiological laws. It is too evident to need further illustration that Art may exist without Science;--that the former has usually been anterior to the latter, and even now commonly advances independently, leaving science to follow as it can.