598 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. 



tion of the mecbauical theory of heat; Dalton, the author of the atomic 

 theory upon which all chemistry rests; and Bessel, the greatest of mod- 

 ern astronomers, — these and others almost as illustrious, whom we can 

 not even name to-night, were still in the womb of time. 



Pure science first felt the effects of the new intellectual life, and it 

 was more than a century later before the arts yielded to its intluence. 

 Then came Hargreaves, the inventor of the spinning-jenny; Ark- 

 wright, the inventor of the cotton-spinning frame; Watt, who gave us 

 the condensing steam-engine ; Jacquard, the inventor of the loom for 

 weaving figured stuffs; Murdock, the originator of gas-lighting; Evans, 

 the inventor of the high-pressure steam-engine ; Fulton, the father of 

 steam navigation ; Trevithick, who ranks very near Watt and Evans in 

 perfecting the steam-engine; and Stephenson, the father of railroads. 

 If now we add the names of those who have given us the telegraph, to 

 wit. Gauss, the eminent physicist and the greatest mathematician of 

 the present century; Weber, Wheatstone, and Henry, all famous phj\s- 

 icists, and Morse, the inventor and engineer, we have before us the 

 demigods who have transforined the ancient into the modern world, 

 given us machinery which has multiplied the productive power of the 

 human race many fold, annihilated time and space, and bestowed upon 

 toiling millions a degree of comfort and luxury which was unknown to 

 kings and emperors of old. 



The discoveries and inventions of the last two centuries have so far 

 exceeded all others within historic times, that we are amply justified in 

 calling this an age of amazing progress, and under the circumstances 

 a little self-glorification is pardonable, perhaps even natural. The 

 weekly and monthly records of scientific events which appear in so 

 many newspapers and magazines are the immediate result of this, and 

 the great increase of ephemeral scientific literature has led multitudes 

 of educated people to believe that such records represent actual prog- 

 ress. The multiplication of bricks facilitates the building of houses, but 

 does not necessarily improve architecture. Similarly, the multiplica- 

 tion of minor investigations improves our knowledge of details, but 

 rarely afi'ects the great philosophic theories upon which science is 

 founded. The importance of human actions is measured by the degree 

 in which they affect human thought, and the only way of permanently 

 aftfccting scientific thought is by modifying or extending scientific 

 theories. The men who do that, are neither numerous, nor do they re- 

 quire weekly paragraphs to record their deeds ; but their names are 

 honored by posterity. Even in this golden age the advance of science 

 is not steady, but is made by spasmodic leaps and bounds. Mere 

 scientific brick-making, commonly called progress, is always the order 

 of the day until some genius startles the world by a discovery affecting 

 accepted theories. Then every effort is directed in the new line of 

 thought until it is measurably worked out, and after that brick-making 

 again resumes its place. While the progress in two centuries has been 



