THE SCIENTIFIC AGE. 815 



out, to disappear amid the commotions of the following age without 

 leaving a trace behind them. Even after the art of the mechanical 

 multiplication of writings and pictures had made the achievements of 

 mind the common good of mankind ; after the foundations of our 

 present science had been laid, and it had been recognized that un- 

 changeable laws lie at the bottom of all natural phenomena, and the 

 only sure way of learning these laws lay in questioning Nature herself, 

 through properly directed experiments — still, scientific and technical 

 progress was toilsome, slow, and insecure. There was still needed a 

 coming out of learning into public life, an infection of empirical art 

 by the spirit of modern science, to release it from the ban of the tra- 

 ditional and mechanical and raise it to the dignity of a scientific art. 



We older men among you have had the good fortune to be wit- 

 nesses of the immense impulse that has been given to human activity, 

 in nearly all departments of life, by the vitalizing breath of natural 

 science. We have also seen, on the other hand, how science has been 

 advanced by the achievements of art ; how art has brought to it a 

 fullness of new phenomena and problems, and with these the stimula- 

 tion to further investigations ; and how, with the spread of scientific 

 knowledge, a host of observers and fellow-workers have grown up to 

 her, in whom, although they may not stand on the full height of scien- 

 tific knowledge, the love of science has repeatedly made up for that lack. 



I will not attempt here to follow up the history of the growth of 

 natural science, and its offspring, scientific art, or to describe the 

 powerful transforming influences which science and art together have 

 exercised upon the spiritual and material development of our period. 

 It has been done many times, in convincing words and a masterly 

 manner. 



For us older men it suffices to acquire a view of the great difference 

 between the past and the present — to cast a brief glance back to our 

 own youth. We can still recollect the time when steamboats and loco- 

 motives made their first feeble experimental trips ; we still hear with 

 credulous astonishment the news that light itself can be made to paint 

 the picture which it renders visible to our eyes; that the mysterious 

 new force, electricity, could transmit news with the velocity of light- 

 ning through whole continents and the oceans separating them ; that 

 the same force would separate metals, in fixed form, from their solu- 

 tions ; and that it could drive away the night with a light as clear as 

 that of day. Who wonders to-day over these now self-evident things, 

 without which our youth could hardly imagine a civilized life — to-day, 

 in an age when, according to Reuleaux's calculations, several iron 

 laborers work day and night for every civilized man ; when millions 

 of men and immense quantities of goods are carried great distances at 

 velocities which were once hardly conceivable ; when the world-bind- 

 ing telegraph is not sufficient "for the wants of our commerce, and has 

 to make way for the transmission of the living word through the tele- 



