POPULAR SCIENCE. 10 



some two-thousand-year-dead-and-buried Egyptian Pharaoh, 

 and our daily bread. 



What I set myself to do is done; not to give the full 

 rationale of processes indicated, but to foreshadow some ex- 

 amples of the modern application of science to the wants of 

 man. In view of these cases, and others like them, we need 

 no longer wonder that science has taken such fast hold on 

 the minds of men. The pure life and reverent belief of that 

 great philosopher Faraday, who has passed away from us, is in 

 itself a standing proof and disclaimer to all who profess to 

 fear the influence of science on the holy mysteries of man's 

 present and to come. One addicted to science, be it in ever 

 so humble a way, must fain derive pleasure from contemplat- 

 ing the scientific movement that now pervades the whole of 

 English society. Independently of the direct pleasures and 

 material advantages of scientific culture, both very great, it 

 may possibly be that its indirect consequences as a mental 

 discipline may be very applicable to English minds. Owing 

 to our free institutions, our free press, and the license accorded 

 by our government to full political debate, it may be fairly 

 questioned whether the science of politics, if one may so dig- 

 nify it, has not been carried to a point incompatible with a 

 purity of mind or tranquillity of thought which human beings 

 might rise to by following other trains of contemplation whi- 

 ther they tend. It may be that the proper study of mankind 

 is man ; but the time at length arrives for human beings to 

 grieve over human imperfections to long for some purer field 

 of intellect, within the realms of which the soul may expand, 

 and reach, ideally at least, the sacred throne of truth. Science 

 presents such a field. There we absolve ourselves from hu- 

 man passions. There the elements speak to us in their never- 

 changing, never-erring language: teachings the same for 

 all, though their higher mysteries only a favoured few in each 

 generation can understand. 



