such, indeed, is the recognized and highest mission of that science. We thus find that the idea of truth is at the summit of this scale which I have placed before you—not separated from it. It interprets every one of the ideas and justifies them and qualifies them and lifts them up into their highest usefulness. Chevalier Bunsen, in describing what he thought would be the highest condition of human enlightenment, said, "It will be when the good will be the true and the true will be the good;" and he might have extended that further and said, when both those ideas were the inspiring motives of all these five great ideas which I have stated are at the basis of the culture of every individual and are also at the basis of the culture of the race and of the nation. This, therefore, will serve as a sketch of the milestones of human progress. The way has been long and painful; the results have been far from satisfactory; and yet they have been enormous and wonderful, when we compare them now with what our ancestors were when history began. We can conclude, however, from looking back on this thorny and upward path, that it is still going to ascend; we do not know it for certain; progress may cease, through some unknown law, now and here; but if there is anything that we can derive from the lesson of the past—if we can project into the future any of the facts which history shows us are our own now—it guides us forward to a firm belief that the hereafter will have in its breast greater treasures for humanity, greater glories for posterity, than any that we know or can understand. [1] A lecture delivered by Prof. Daniel G. Brinton at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia. TOMBS OF THE FIRST EGYPTIAN DYNASTY.1 By LUDWIG BORCHARDT, Ph.D., Director of the German School in Cairo. For many years various European collections of Egyptian antiquities have contained a certain series of objects which gave archæologists great difficulty. There were vases of a peculiar form and color, greenish plates of slate, many of them in curious animal forms, and other similar things. It was known, positively, that these objects had been found in Egypt, but it was impossible to assign them a place in the known periods of Egyptian art. The puzzle was increased in difficulty by certain plates of slate with hunting and battle scenes and other representations in relief in a style so strange that many investigators considered them products of the art of Western Asia.