SCIENTIFIC FAITH AND WORKS 119 



bility, and the intellectual power developed, that I could wish that as 

 a counterpart to Plato's motto should he placed over every college gate- 

 way, " Let none depart hence who knows not the calculus/' at least as 

 to what it deals with, and its fundamental principles. 



I am glad to say that in some of our colleges are now given courses 

 in what is termed " culture calculus." It seems to me that this 

 subject is more deserving of the name of culture than the familiarity 

 with the immoralities of the Greek gods. 



Of the natural sciences there are two fundamental ones, physics and 

 biology. Physics has to do with all the universe, in so far as it pos- 

 sesses energy, and exerts forces one part upon another, and in so far 

 as it does not possess life. Biology deals with all matter possessing 

 this difficultly defined attribute, but so far as we know, even the phe- 

 nomena of living matter are subject to the laws of physics. I presume 

 that every biologist will admit that life does not create energy, but 

 merely directs it. Nevertheless, the question of vitality is to-day far 

 beyond the explanation of the physicist. The subdivisions of physics 

 have been, for convenience only, set off as individual sciences, chiefly 

 because the whole subject would be too large for the treatment of any 

 individual scientist. The most important part of physics is dynamics, 

 which treats of the laws of motion, and the forces which are associated 

 therewith. Of this a great division is celestial mechanics, which, as 

 we have seen in the cases of Galileo and Newton, contributed in great 

 part to the inductive establishment of the laws of motion in general. 

 The remainder of astronomy is now catalogued as astrophysics and is 

 dealt with by purely physical methods and instruments. As a sub- 

 division of astronomy may be reckoned geodesy, which deals with the 

 form of the earth, deduced from astronomical measurements and from 

 its gravitational attraction. 



Chemistry is that part of physics which deals with the properties 

 of substances that have individual characteristics by which they may 

 be always distinguished, and which combine with each other in definite 

 proportions. Its methods are those of physics, its main instrument 

 is the physical balance, and it is in recent years concentrating more 

 attention upon those physical relations connected with temperature, 

 pressure, and electrical relations, all of which are now found to yield 

 to mathematical treatment in a manner until recently unsuspected. 



The methods of physics and chemistry usually involve the controlling 

 of certain of the circumstances under which phenomena occur, so that 

 the changes in others may be more easily observed. This is usually 

 done in a laboratory furnished with many means of controlling circum- 

 stances, for instance, temperature, pressure, electrical or magnetic state, 

 so that the same circumstances may be reproduced again and again. 

 Meteorology, or as it is now somewhat grandiloquently called, cosmical 



