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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that it would so educate the nations 

 in the peaceful ai'ts that, at no dis- 

 tant day, they would resolve to learn 

 war no more, so that Astraea, if she 

 were so minded, might return to the 

 plains of earth and find nothing to 

 remind her of the conflicts and 

 bloodshed which, according to the 

 poets, had caused her to take her 

 flight. If things could have gone 

 just as the early economists wished 

 and hoped, something like this might 

 have come, or be about to come, to 

 pass. They thought that commerce 

 was going to shake off its shackles, 

 that trade was going to be free, and 

 that the mutual benefits which it 

 would bestow would, year by year, 

 strengthen the feeling of fi^endship 

 between nation and nation. They 

 did not foresee such a revival of the 

 prejudice-breeding protectionist sys- 

 tem as our eyes have witnessed, or 

 the greed for colonial acquisitions 

 which it has introduced into the 

 world. They magnified unduly the 

 role which reason was going to play 

 in the atfairs of men, and made in- 

 adequate allowance for the meas- 

 ureless floods of popular ignorance 

 which popular education would dis- 

 engage and set into activity. Still, 

 their dream was no discredit to them, 

 and one of these days, after a greater 

 lapse of time than they counted on, 

 it may come true. 



But what trade has not yet ac- 

 complished, and does not, as things 

 are at present, seem in the way of 

 accomplishing, another force is si- 

 lently laboring to achieve. That 

 force is science. It is cosmopolitan 

 by nature ; something more than 

 the world even is its parish. We 

 all remember the story of Goethe, 

 who, when the Revolution of July, 

 1830, broke out in France, and was 

 creating commotion and trepidation 

 more or less throughout Evirope, 

 was so absorbed in thinking of the 

 conti'oversy between Cvivier and 



GeofProy de Saint-HilaLre over the 

 theory of development, which had 

 become acute just at the same time, 

 that he completely mystified a friend 

 who had come to see him by talking 

 with the greatest excitement about 

 the intellectual crisis when the friend 

 was thinking of the political one. 

 It seemed to Goethe an enormous 

 descent to come down from the level 

 of a great scientific and philosoph- 

 cal problem to a mere question as to 

 the precise form of monarchical gov- 

 ernment which was to prevail in a 

 certain country. To him the pro- 

 tagonists on the world's theater were 

 not the Polignacs, the Periers, or the 

 Metternichs of the hour, but the 

 leaders of thought and the represent- 

 atives of science. Goethe has been 

 accused of lack of patriotism ; but 

 we may put it to his credit that he 

 was free from those sentiments of 

 rancor toward foreigners which con- 

 stitute so large a portion of the pa- 

 triotism of the majority. In his 

 predominant interest in large intel- 

 lectual questions he was a type of 

 the better mind of the future, and 

 pointed forward to the time when 

 science would become a missionary 

 of peace and concord to the jarring 

 nations. 



Two generations have passed 

 since then, and science has made ad- 

 vances which, could he have lived 

 to witness them, would have filled 

 the great German with gratification 

 and delight. That it is sensibly 

 drawing the nations together there 

 is no doubt. Scientific workers in 

 every field of reseai'ch are stretch- 

 ing out, across seas and continents, 

 hands of friendship and help to 

 their fellow-workers in other lands. 

 Literatures are national, broadly 

 speaking, but science is necessarily 

 international. There is but one set 

 of natural laws for the universe ; 

 and, broadly speaking again, the 

 method of science is one. It fol- 



