726 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Harvey made physiology a science, and so on in all branches of 

 knowledo;e. 



Now, let us see what was tlie method by which these results were 

 obtained. Meditation had of course the inciting share, but furnished 

 no materials. Observation accumulated the materials of which reflec- 

 tion might weave a tissue, the test was experiment. If fi'om a knowl- 

 edge of conditions a result can be predicted, then there is certainty. 

 Such certainty is science ; it consists of observation, meditation, 

 knowledge of conditions, knowledge of their results, and therefore of 

 the connection between results and causes ; these being regular, im- 

 mutable, within the time accessible to our perceptions, and coercing 

 everything under their sway, are called natural laws. 



Of science, it is allowed that no part comes out of the human brain 

 alone, not even the ideas of God and Immortality, which Kant claimed 

 as innate ideas, while allowing all others to be the result of observa- 

 tion and reflection. The celebrated joke, that, if an Englishman and a 

 German were asked to produce a camel each, the Teuton would evolve 

 one out of his inner consciousness while the Briton would produce a 

 camel of flesh and bone, is a good satire upon innate ideas. Science did 

 not progress until it rejected all innate ideas or phantasies, and applied 

 itself deeply to its proper methods, to observation, to meditation on 

 the correlation of forces, and to experiment. Work, work, and again 

 work, were the three main features of its success. The search for the 

 philosopher's stone, for the medicine that should make young, healthy, 

 happy, and rich, was also work, enormous in amount and extension, 

 but it was not based upon observation. It left results which science 

 gathered, the main result being that we cannot prolong our lives for- 

 ward, but we can, as Kopp has beautifully said, prolong them back- 

 ward indefinitely, and see the changes of enormous spaces of time pass 

 before our admiring eyes and minds. 



There are three kinds of history, that of our planetary system in 

 the theory of Laplace, that of our earth in geology, that of living 

 things in the theory of Darwin. No serious person doubts now that 

 the teachings of geology deserve the title of an exact science, and that 

 compared to its coercing character upon the mind of man the convic- 

 tions derived from written history are feeble in the extreme, and all 

 contradictory writings, however old, mere nullities. The youngest of 

 the sciences or branch of science is chemistry, founded by Lavoisier 

 and Dalton; developed by thousands of clear lieads and nimble hands, 

 it has in half a century become a recognized power in the afiairs of 

 man. It has materially improved his estate, and enlarged his mind to 

 conceptions of an elevating nature ; it has become a ready test of his 

 reasoning and working power. It has become the handmaid of almost 

 all the elder sisters of astronomy, teaching the composition of distant 

 8tar ; of geology, teaching the composition and changes of strata and 

 minerals; of physiology, vegetable and animal, teaching about food, 



