ADVANCE OF SCIENCE IN THE LAST HALF CENTURY.* 



By T. H. Huxley, F. R. S. 



The most obvious and the most distinctive feature of the history of 

 civilization during the last fifty years is the wonderful increase of in- 

 dustrial production by the application of machinery, the improvement 

 of old technical processes and the invention of new ones, accompanied 

 by an even more remarkable development of old and new means of lo- 

 comotion and inter-communication. By this rapid and vast multiplica- 

 tion of the commodities and conveniences of existence, the general 

 standard of comfort has been raised ; the ravages of pestilence and 

 famine have been checked; and the natural obstacles, which time and 

 space offer to mutual intercourse, have been reduced in a manner and 

 to an extent unknown to former ages. The diminution or removal of 

 local ignorance and prejudice, the creation of common interests among 

 the most widely separated peoples, and the strengthening of the forces 

 of the organization of the commonwealth against those of political or 

 social anarchy, thus effected, have exerted an influence on the present 

 and future fortunes of mankind the full significance of which may be 

 divined, but can not as yet be estimated at its full value. 



This revolution — for it is nothing less — in the political and social as- 

 pects of modern civilization has been i)receded, accompanied, and in 

 great measure caused by a less obvious, but no less marvellous, increase 

 of natural knowledge, and especially of that part of it which is known 

 as physical science, in consequence of the application of scientific 

 method to the investigation of the phenomena of the material world. 

 Not that the growth of physical science is an exclusive prerogative of 

 the Victorian age. Its present strength and volume merely indicate 

 the highest level of a stream which took its rise, alongside of the primal 

 founts of Philosophy, Literature, and Art, in ancient Greece ; and, after 

 being dammed up for a thousand years, once more began to flow three 

 centuries ago. 



G-REEK AND MEDIEVAL SCIENCE. 



It may be doubted if even-handed justice, as free from fulsome pane- 

 gyric as from captious depreciation, has ever yet been dealt out to the 



"Extracted, by permission, from a collection of historic summaries entitled "The 

 Reign of Queen Victoria: A survey of fifty years of progress. Edited by Thomas 

 Humphry Ward." Two vols., 8 vo. London: 1887. Vol. ii, piJ. 322-387. 



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