436 AIenio7'iaI of George Brozvn Goode. 



Even though the investigations of Descartes, Newton, L,eibnitz, Boyle, 

 Torricelh, and Malpighi had directly helped no man to either wealth or 

 comfort, the cumulative results of their labors, and those of their pupils 

 and associates, resulted in a condition of scientific knowledge from which, 

 sooner or later, utilitarian results must necessarily have sprung. 



It is true, as Huxley tells us, that at the beginning of this century 

 weaving and spinning were still carried on with the old appliances; true 

 that nobody could travel faster by sea or by land than at any previous 

 time in the world's history, and true that King George could send a 

 message from lyondon to York no faster than King John might have 

 done. Metals were still worked from their ores l^y inunemorial rule of 

 thumb, and the center of the iron trade of these islands was among the 

 oak forests of Sussex, while the utmost skill of the British mechanic did 

 not get bej'ond the production of a coarse watch. 



It can not be denied that although the middle of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury was illuminated b}' a host of great names in science, chemists — biol- 

 ogists, geologists — English, French, German, and Italian, the deepening 

 and broadening of natural knowledge had produced next to no innnediate 

 practical benefits. Still I can not believe that Bacon, the prophet, would 

 have been so devoid of "scientific insight" as to have failed to foresee 

 at this time the ultimate results of all this intellectual activity. 



But Huxley says: 



Even if, at tliis time, Francis Bacon could have returned to the scene of his great- 

 ness and of his littleness, he must have regarded the philosophic world which praised 

 and disregarded his precepts with great disfavor. If ghosts are consistent he would 

 have said, "these people are all wasting their time, just as Gilbert and Kepler and 

 Galileo and my worthy physician Harvey did in my day. Where are the fruits of 

 the restoration of science which I promised ? This accumulation of bare knowledge 

 is all very well, but cni bono? Not one of these people is doing what I told him 

 specially to do, and seeking that secret of the cause of forans which will enable him 

 to deal at will with matter and superinduce new nature upon old foundations." 



As Huxley, however, proceeds himself to show in the discussion which 

 immediately follows this passage, a "new nature, begotten by .science 

 upon fact," has been born within the past few decades, and, pressing 

 itself daily and hourly upon our attention, has worked miracles which 

 have not only modified the whole future of the lives of mankind, but has 

 reacted constantly upon the progress of science it.self. 



It is to the development of this new nature, then in its very infancy, 

 that we must look for the revival of interest in science on this side of the 

 Atlantic. 



The second decade of the century was marked b}' a great accession of 

 interest in the sciences. The second war with Great Britain having 

 ended, the country, for the first time since colonial days, became suffi- 

 ciently tranquil for peaceful attention to literature and philosophy. The 

 end of the Napoleonic wars and the restoration of tranquillity to Europe 



