THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 523 



available to us immense opportunities for the betterment of man's es- 

 tate. For example, to mention only one of the lines along which im- 

 provement is plainly practicable, what is to hinder an indefinite mitiga- 

 tion, if not a definite extinction, of the ravages of such dread diseases 

 as consumption and typhoid fever? Or what, we may ask, is to hinder 

 the application to New York, Philadelphia and Chicago of as effective 

 health regulations as those now applied to Havana? Nothing, appar- 

 ently, except vested interests and general apathy. We read, not many 

 years ago, that a city of about one million inhabitants had, during one 

 year, more than six thousand cases of typhoid fever. The cost to the 

 city of a single case may be estimated as not less, on the average, than 

 one thousand dollars, making an aggregate cost to that city, for one 

 year, of more than six millions of dollars. Such a waste of financial 

 resources ought to appeal to vested interests and general apathy even 

 though they cannot be moved by any higher motives. Thanks to the 

 penetration of the enlightenment of our times, distinct advances have 

 already been made in the line of effective domestic and public sanita- 

 tion; but the good work accomplished is infinitesimal in comparison 

 with that which can be, and ought to be, done. It is along this and 

 along allied lines of social and industrial economy, that we should 

 look, I think, for the alleviation of the miseries of mankind. No 

 amount of contemplation of the beatitudes, human or divine, will pre- 

 vent men from drinking contaminated water or milk; and no fear of 

 future punishments, which may be in the meantime atoned for, will 

 much deter men from wasting their substance in riotous living. The 

 moral certainty of speedy and inexorable earthly annihilation is alone 

 adequate to bring man into conformity with the cosmic rules and reg- 

 ulations of the drama of life. 



And finally we must reckon amongst the most important of the 

 conditions favorable to the progress of science, the unexampled activity 

 in our times of the scientific spirit as manifested in the work of all 

 kinds of organizations, from the semi-religious Chautauquan assemblies 

 up to those technical societies whose programs are Greek to all the world 

 beside. Literature, linguistics, history, economics, law and theology 

 are now permeated by the scientific spirit if not animated by the sci- 

 entific method. Curiously enough, also, the terminology, the figures 

 of speech and the points of view of science are now quite common in 

 realms of thought hitherto held somewhat scornfully above the plane of 

 materialistic phenomena. Tyndall's Belfast address, which, twenty- 

 seven years ago, was generally anathematized, is now quoted with ap- 

 proval by some of the successors of those who bitterly denounced him 

 and all his kind. Thus the mere lapse of time is working great changes 

 and smoothing out grave differences of opinion in favor of the progress 



