6i8 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Lord Kelvin with his Compass. 



universal tribute rendered to the mem- 

 ory of Lord Kelvin, there seemed to be 

 some revival of recognition of what 

 the nation owes to science and to her 

 great men. That which impressed Vol- 

 taire nearly two hundred years ago at 

 the funeral of Newton was the public 

 recognition which the England of that 

 day accorded to the great representa- 

 tive of science. To-day the man of ac- 

 tion looms larger in the world than the 

 man of thought; and mankind which 

 worships success is apt to heed little 

 the thought and toil without which 

 success is not achieved. In an age 

 which has been preeminent over all 

 that ever went before for the advances 

 of science, the fashion of glorifying the 



warrior and the orator seems a gro- 

 tesque anachronism. Mr. Gladstone's 

 dictum, ' that the present is by no 

 means an age abounding in minds of 

 the first order,' did but reveal that he 

 too shared the general blindness. The 

 fact is that there never was an age so 

 rich in minds of the first order in 

 science. The nineteenth century has, 

 intellectually, been the golden age, not 

 of drama or of adventure, but of sci- 

 ence. It has been an epoch distin- 

 guished by a galaxy of men who made 

 it great, and who. whether the world 

 recognizes it or not, were great men. 

 Though Lord Kelvin was not the last 

 of these, be was assuredly the great- 

 est; and his name will be revered and 



