In
the higher types of civilization, where advances in every department are rapid, where education is widely diffused and opportunites of all kinds are numerous, we might, with reason, look for a corresponding progress in the growth of ideas in the individual and in their practical outcome in his actions.
It
has cost the United States just five hundred thousand dollars to find out that the earth we live upon is 7,899 miles tall and 7,926 miles wide, so to speak.