1868. | The Modern Aspects of Physical Science. 337 
controlling, certainly modifying, their actual energies. This mole- 
cular power cannot be regarded as a mode of motion—it is a sta- 
tical, rather than a dynamical force, yet it is the cause of actual 
energy. 
The study of those powers which appear to act at insensible dis- 
tances only, is gradually leading us to a knowledge of new condi- 
tions, which, probably, determine those dissimilar states under which 
we find matter of the same kind presenting itself, such as carbon 
and the diamond, oxygen and ozone, yellow and red phosphorus, 
and other elements. ‘Che relations existing between those molecular 
forces and the physical forces—Heat, Light, and Electricity—are at 
present too obscure to admit of the formation of any hypothesis. 
At the same time there are facts which inform us of some evident 
relations; and the careful study of these promises to place the 
inquirer upon new lands in the unexplored sea over which Newton 
looked from the shore on which he laboured, rich with the fruits 
of the trees of knowledge. 
Everything, however, points to the establishment of the great 
fact that the sun is the reservoir of force ; and it is constantly dif- 
fusing to all the worlds revolving around it, those energies which, at 
the beginning, converted a chaotic mass into a globe beautiful in 
its order, organization, and life. Matter changing its form in the 
sun develops an accurately-determined quantity of power, which, 
passing without loss through space, falls upon another mass of 
matter, and transmutes its atoms into a thousand forms, some bril- 
liant as gems, others beautiful as flowers. ‘The fine old fable of the 
Memnonian Statue, bursting into music at the first touch of the 
morning sunbeam, was but the outshadowing of a philosophic truth. 
Piercing through the darkness of night, the sunbeam touches the 
dormant earth, and establishes a series of undulations, which move 
onward in harmony and awaken the brute atoms into the divinest 
music. Touched by influences which can only be derived from the 
solar energies falling on the surface of the earth, the inorganic 
atoms, buried deep within the rocky crust, glide into geometric forms 
of beauty, and the crystal foretells the coming organization. 
Such are the modern aspects of Physical Science ; such are the 
wondrous truths which experimental inquiry is opening up to us. 
With so much to know, and with the deep consciousness of the little 
that we really do know, let us not indulge in the bewitching, but often 
bewildering labour of creating hypotheses; but, above all things, 
let us be careful to avoid advancing our hypothetical deductions 
from our inductive investigations into the importance of theories 
until they have been subjected to the severest tests. 
When we have a theory which, like that of Gravitation, aids us 
in reaching far into space and feeling out a world which had never 
