FIFTY YEARS OF AMERICAN SCIENCE 7 



in fixing the respective bounds of science and faith, and seri- 

 ous antagonism to applied physics came to an end. Meantime, 

 the mechanician found himself in line with the thinker, the 

 student turned from hereditarj^ introspection of the supernal 

 toward the new found beauties of the real world, and gradually 

 teachers came to be esteemed for what they knew rather than 

 for what they conjured ; practical men became thinkers, and 

 thinking men became practical; industry was regenerated, 

 and the real glory of the Victorian era began. At first the 

 law of the conservation of energy was not the counterpart of 

 the law of the conservation of matter recognized by chemists; 

 for the ultimate and persistent basis of matter is the atom, 

 while the physicists held only that the sum of energy persists 

 in the universe. Recently, Powell has revised the law in the 

 light of generalized human experience, and suggested that 

 motion, like matter, inheres and persists in the ultimate par- 

 ticle; and thereby chemistry and physics, and the other 

 sciences as well, are brought into harmony. This rendering 

 of the fundamental law of physics is accepted by several 

 savants; it is in accord with the lines of intellectual and indus- 

 trial progress, and gives brilliant promise as a means of ex- 

 tending conquest over nature. Physical science has been 

 the giver of many generous gifts, but the goodliest of all was 

 the gift of right thinking, which was a by-product of the law 

 of the conserv^ation of energy. 



The formula of physical science came to America as a 

 mariner's compass to a crew of maroons. Already a nation of 

 inventors inspired by intellectual freedom, Americans were 

 still blind leaders of the blind; for invention is impossible 

 without at least intuitive recognition of the uniformity of 

 nature, while without conscious recognition of this law the 

 inventor drifts in a sea of uncertainties, making port only by 

 chance. The newly formulated doctrine was seized and 

 assimilated with such avidity that within a decade it was 

 more generally understood and adopted in this country than in 

 all Europe. Under its stimulus invention throve and manu- 

 facturing grew apace : the crude reaper was made a self raker, 

 next a harvester or header, then a self binder or field thresher, 

 according to local needs; the hoe gave way to the horse culti- 



