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principles which we denominate mathematics, physics, chemistry, 

 geology, hotan}', biology, social, political, and moral science. 



Science, thus created, has rescued savage man from the bond- 

 age of ignorance and gross superstition, and, by giving him com- 

 mand over the primal forces of nature, has elevated him in the 

 economic, social, and moral scale. It has benefited him by im- 

 proving agriculture, developing and utilizing the staples of com- 

 merce, and increasing and cheapening the means of transportation. 

 It has bridged the ocean and made its waves a means of convey- 

 ance from one hemisphere to the other, thus bringing distant 

 nations face to face, as it were, and enabling them to exchange 

 their handicrafts quickly and profitabby. It has thrown huge 

 bridges wonders of engineering skill over impassable rivers, 

 and covered the earth with an endless net-work of railwaj's. The 

 classic fable of Mercury, cast from Olympus, becoming the mes- 

 senger of the gods, it has practical^ realized by drawing from 

 heaven the electric fluid and compelling it to act as the letter- 

 carrier of man along thousands of miles of telegraphic wire. Nay, 

 mirabile dictu, it has bound together the two hemispheres with 

 mighty submarine cables, along which our scientific Hermes speeds 

 with his letter-bags at the rate of 19,000 miles in a second of time. 

 It has introduced, as motive power, thousands of steam-engines 

 into mills, mines, and factories, with the most extraordinary in- 

 dustrial and financial results. By inventing a multiplicity of 

 apparatus for accomplishing, in a simple and effective manner, a 

 great I had almost said an endless varietj' of purposes, it has 

 increased the facilities of production, simplified and cheapened 

 many manufactures, remodelled the arts, and made labor so easy 

 and rapid that it is now possible to perform an amount of work 

 which no combined manual effort could hope to accomplish. Con- 

 stantly discovering new raw materials, it is constantly adapting 

 them to the material wants of life. It has taught us to bleach and 

 to dye, to spin and to weave, to decompose and recombine, and in 

 various ways to modify and to call into existence the hidden, use- 

 ful properties of the numberless substances that nature gives to 

 man for his convenience and comfort. It teaches us how to irri- 

 gate and manure barren soils into fruitful fields, how to transform 

 the wild currant into the sweet grape, how to convert its juice 

 into wine, and this into ether ; how to transform a caterpillar into 

 a silk-worm, and to weave into velvet the silk which it spins. 



