588 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



this would have crushed a weaker man ; but in the case of M. Plateau 

 it served to show the genuine metal he was made of. He spent 

 the long hours of darkness, not in useless repining, or vain regrets, 

 but in endeavoring to advance the knowledge of his race by pon- 

 dering over the unsolved problems connected with the subjects he 

 understood so well, and in devising experiments, often of the most 

 exquisite ingenuity, for putting his theories and conclusions to the 

 test. These, which he could no longer perform for himself, were un- 

 dertaken for him by a devoted band of friends, among whom was his 

 own son ; and the result has been, not merely a very lai'ge addition to 

 our knowledge of the properties of the surfaces of liquids, but, what is 

 perhaps far more important, the presentation to the world of a spec- 

 tacle of victory over almost overwhelming obstacles such as it has 

 seldom seen. It is not well that our knowledge of scientific facts 

 should be entirely divorced from an acquaintance with the lives and 

 labors of their discoverers, or that we should come to regard them 

 simply as a sort of revelation made to a fortunate few, to the rich 

 inheritance of which we have been lucky enough to succeed. The 

 men who built up the pile of modern science were not of those who 

 sit still and wait with folded hands for some inspiration, they know 

 not whence ; rather they performed their tasks, and won success amid 

 difficulties and discouragements to which we in happier times are 

 strangers. But, while rightly ready to pay our homage to the great 

 achievements of the past, we should ever be watchful to honor duly 

 deeds which will cast a lustre upon our own time;. and among these 

 the life-work of M. Plateau holds in some respects a position sec- 

 ond to none. Others may deserve a higher place for the number, 

 or practical or scientific importance, of their discoveries, but none 

 have more honestly earned the praise due to those who have done 

 what they could ; and the world, which is so apt to appropriate the 

 work and forget the worker, should be taught at all events to remem- 

 ber this, that we owe some of the most charming experiments in the 

 whole range of physics to one who himself has never beheld many of 

 them, and of whom, with respect to the rest, we must in all sadness 

 say, he " shall see them again no more forever." 



