514 THE POPULAR HCIENCU MONTHLY. 



greatest power ~of oar modern civilization. Consider how much it has 

 accomplished during the last century toward increasing the comforts 

 and enlarging the intellectual vision of mankind. The railroad, the 

 steamship, the electric telegraph, photography, gas-lights, petroleum- 

 oils, coal-tar colors, chlorine-bleaching, anaesthesia, are a few of its re- 

 cent material gifts to the world; and not only has it made one \iQ\Y of 

 hands to do the work of twenty, but it has so imj)roved and facili- 

 tated the old industries that what were luxuries to the fathers of our 

 republic have become necessities to our generation. And when, jjass- 

 ing from these material fruits, you consider the purely intellectual tri- 

 umphs of physical science, such as those which have been gained with 

 the telescope, the microscope, and the si3ectroscoj)e, yon cannot won- 

 der at the esteem in which these branches of study are held in this 

 i^ractical age of the world. 



Now, these immense results have been gained by the application 

 to the study of Nature of a method which was so admirably described 

 by Lord Bacon in his " Novum Organon," and which is now generally 

 called the experimental method. What we observe in Nature is an 

 orderly succession of phenomena. The ancients speculated about 

 these phenomena as well as ourselves, but they contented themselves 

 with speculations, animating Nature with the products of their wild 

 fancies. Their great master, Aristotle, has never been excelled in the 

 art of dialectics ; but his method of logic applied to the external 

 world was of very necessity an utter failure. It is frequently said, in 

 defense of the exclusive study of the records of ancient learning, that 

 they ai'e the products of thinking, loving, and hating men, like our- 

 selves, and it is claimed that the study of science can never rise to 

 the same nobility because it deals only with lifeless matter. But 

 this is a mere play on words, a repetition of the error of the old 

 schoolmen. Physical science is noble because it does deal with 

 thought, and with the very noblest of all thought. Nature at once 

 manifests and conceals an Infinite Presence : Her methods and order- 

 ly successions are the manifestations of Omnipotent Will ; Her con- 

 trivances and laws the embodiment of Omniscient Thoiight.- The dis- 

 ciples of Aristotle so signally failed simply because they could see in 

 Nature only a reflection of their idle fancies. The followers of Bacon 

 have so gloriously succeeded because they approached Nature as 

 humble students, and, having first learned how to question Her, have 

 been content to be taught and not sought to teach. The ancient 

 logic never relieved a moment of pain, or lifted an ounce of the bur- 

 den of human misery. The modern logic has made a very large share 

 of material comfort the common heritage of all civilized men. 



In what, then, does this Baconian system consist ? Simply in 

 these elements : 1. Careful observation of the conditions under which 

 a given phenomenon occurs; 2. The varying of these conditions by 

 experiments, and observing the effects produced by the variation. We 



