1868. | The Modern Aspects of Physical Science. 331 
so well the purposes for which they are designed—the happiness 
and peace of men—as those which we are now impulsively rejecting 
as of an ancient type. 
Thus it is, too, in the purer regions of thought. There is an 
ominous trembling amongst those trees of knowledge which were 
planted by our truth-seeking forefathers, and which have borne fruit 
to science. The rustling of the leaves is all that is heard at present; 
but this indicates too truly a passing undulation of great power, 
the precursor of a sweeping force, before which all the trees of 
knowledge must bend, and those which are not securely planted, 
and of vigorous growth, must fall to rise no more. 
Whether the tendencies of the present time are favourable to 
the production of Truths is a question to which it is not easy to give 
a satisfactory answer. That throbbing of the brain and pulsation 
of the heart which mark the movements of the men of to-day, 
and which manifest themselves in impulsive action and sensational 
thought, are, we fear, extending themselves with dangerous influences 
to the philosophers. In many an essay in which questions of pure 
science are discussed, in books professedly enunciating some high 
philosophy, and in lectures professing to teach the simple truths 
which experiments have brought to light, may be discovered the 
symptoms of that prevailing mental epidemic which is mainly dis- 
tinguished by a straining after effect, a desire to surprise, and a 
resolve to be, in one way or another, sensational. 
The worth of scientific knowledge is far too commonly esti- 
mated according as the men of to-day have fixed upon one or 
the other of two standards: the first being its money-worth— 
the commercial value of science in some practical application ; 
and the second, its sensational value—its worth as a surprise to 
the public mind, or its influence as a lecture experiment which 
shall, mm theatrical phrase, bring down the house. 
To borrow the thought—it is not our purpose to quote the exact 
words—of a living philosopher; man appeared to us a few years 
since as beginning to consider himself not merely as the denizen 
but as the interpreter of Nature, and inspired by the noble pro- 
spects opening to him, he exhibited a tendency to become a humble 
but diligent seeker of the means by which to unravel some of the 
lowest of her mysteries, and catch a dim, because a distant, glimpse 
of the designs of the Creator. “The cherub Contemplation” ap- 
peared to find a genial atmosphere amongst us. With a religious 
calmness, men asked for more light to guide them in their pursuit 
of truth. There were many who—regardless of external sym- 
pathy, carmg but little for applause, unrepressed by difficulty and 
undisturbed by the excitements of the world—pursued their tran- 
quil paths, earnestly seeking for some development of Nature’s 
mysteries, regarding the discovery of a truth its own exceeding 
