THE PRACTICAL OUTCOME OF SCIENCE. 487 



suraes a thousand shapes, but under every guise remains still the 

 firni friend of the human race. 



Nor have the triumphs of science been less in the moral than 

 in the physical and intellectual world. When the curtain of 

 antiquity rises upon our race we find its moral condition of the 

 lowest and most degrading character. What, then, has raised 

 man out of that condition ? It may have been revealed religion ; 

 but, in my opinion, scientific progress, by introducing higher and 

 grander ideas, had much to do with it. Whatever may have been 

 the cause, we have certainly left forever the dark ages of our 

 fathers' beliefs. If we find a woman troubled with nervous dis- 

 order, we no longer look about for the person who has bewitched 

 her, and cast that person into the water to be drowned as inno- 

 cent, or to float and be burned as guilty ; but we simply treat the 

 woman for hysteria. If a man falls down and goes into convul- 

 sive movements with foaming at the mouth, we are not accus- 

 tomed to follow the example of the ancient Greeks and Romans, 

 and say he is possessed with an evil spirit ; but we give him 

 bromide of potassium or some other remedy to cure his epilepsy. 

 If a plague or pestilence break out and sweep away half a city, 

 we do not place our reliance on sacrifices and supplications ad- 

 dressed to the deities to avert their anger ; but we seek the cause 

 of it in a lack of cleanliness and remove the filth. We have 

 learned that these things may be punishments sent from God, 

 yet they come mediately, not for a moral sin, but for violating 

 one of the physical laws of our being. Science found mankind 

 everywhere believing that each tree, bush, or dark recess was 

 peopled by an evil demon ; but by the glorious sunlight of the 

 nineteenth century she has banished these shapes of darkness 

 from off the civilized earth, and planted in the brain of the peo- 

 ple that intelligence, greater than an angel with a flaming sword, 

 which shall forever prevent their return. 



And then the ideas in regard to God, derived from the study 

 of Nature, how surpassingly grand ! The old Hebrew seers may 

 have taught that Jehovah was infinite in power and wisdom, fill- 

 ing immensity with his presence, and existing from everlasting 

 to everlasting ; but it remained for astronomy, geology, and mi- 

 croscopy to show the profound significance of such utterances. 

 Nothing is more humiliating than the study of Nature, However 

 viewed, she but reflects back upon us the infinite wisdom and 

 glory of her great designer. 



Such have been some of the achievements of modern Science. 

 She has, as it were, made a palladium out of the bones of Pel ops. 

 She has, indeed, been a mother of plenty, scattering blessings 

 everywhere with a liberal hand. As the gods in ancient times 

 are fabled to have piled Pelion upon Ossa, and rolled upon the 



