THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. 



one, so far as I am aware, has yet pointed out the alto- 

 gether exceptional character of our advance in science 

 and the arts, during the century which is now so near its 

 close. In order to estimate its full importance and 

 grandeur more especially as regards man's increased 

 power over nature, and the application of that power to 

 the needs of his life to-day, with unlimited possibilities 

 in the future we must compare it, not with any pre- 

 ceding century, or even with the last millennium, but 

 with the whole historical period perhaps even with the 

 whole period that has elapsed since the stone age. 



Looking back through the long dark vista of human 

 history, the one step in material progress that seems to 

 be really comparable in importance with several of the 

 steps we have just made, was, when Fire was first 

 utilized, and became the servant and the friend, instead 

 of being the master and the enemy of man. From that 

 far distant epoch even down to our day, fire, in various 

 forms and in ever-widening spheres of action, has not 

 only ministered to the necessities and the enjoyments of 

 man, but has been the greatest, the essential factor, in 

 that continuous increase of his power over nature, which 

 has undoubtedly been a chief means of the development 

 of his intellect and a necessary condition of what we 

 term civilization. Without fire there would have been 

 neither a bronze nor an iron age, and without these there 

 could have been no effective tools or weapons, with all 

 the long succession of mechanical discoveries and refine- 

 ments that depended upon them. Without fire there 

 could be no rudiment even of chemistry, and all that has 

 arisen out of it. Without fire much of the earth's sur- 

 face would be uninhabitable by man, and much of what 



