284 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



His enjoyments for a time are physical, and the con- 

 fectioner's shop occupies the foreground of human 

 happiness; but the blossoms of a finer life are already 

 beginning to unfold themselves, and the relation of 

 cause and effect dawns upon the boy. He begins to 

 see that the present condition of things is not final, 

 but depends upon one that has gone before, and will 

 be succeeded by another. He becomes a puzzle to him- 

 self; and to satisfy his newly-awakened curiosity, asks 

 all manner of inconvenient questions. The needs and 

 tendencies of human nature express themselves through 

 these early yearnings of the child. As thought ripens, 

 he desires to know the character and causes of the 

 phenomena presented to his observation; and unless 

 this desire has been granted for the express purpose of 

 having it repressed, unless the attractions of natural 

 phenomena be like the blush of the forbidden fruit, 

 conferred merely for the purpose of exercising our self- 

 denial in letting them alone; we may fairly claim for 

 the study of Physics the recognition that it answers to 

 an impulse implanted by nature in the constitution 

 of man. 



A few days ago, a Master of Arts, who is still a 

 young man, and therefore the recipient of a modern 

 education, stated to me that until he had reached the 

 age of twenty years he had never been taught anything 

 whatever regarding natural phenomena, or natural law. 

 Twelve years of his life previously had been spent 

 exclusively among the ancients. The case, I regret to 

 say, is typical. Now, we cannot, without prejudice to 

 humanity, separate the present from the past. The 

 nineteenth century strikes its roots into the centuries 

 gone by, and draws nutriment from them. The world 

 cannot afford to lose the record of any great deed or 

 utterance; for such are prolific throughout all time. 



