NA TURE 



221 



THURSDAY, JANUARY 3, 1901. 



THE NEW CENTURY. 



SCIENCE is cosmopolitan. Electricity abolishes time 

 and envelops both hemispheres with a new idea as 

 soon as it has emerged from the brain of the Thinker. 

 Mechanics, by its space-annihilating power, has reduced 

 the surface of the planet to such an extent that the 

 human race now possesses the advantage of dwelling, as 

 it were, on a tiny satellite. Both these agencies, th en^ 

 combine to facilitate a rapid exchange of new ideas and 

 commodities, as well as of those who are interested in 

 them in whatever capacity. 



These considerations indicate some of the most 

 momentous changes which have occurred in the world's 

 history since the last century dawned. 



How have they been brought about ? M. Maurice 

 L^vy, in one of those allocations — always so admirable in 

 thought and style — pronounced by the President of the 

 French Academy of Sciences at the annual public meet- 

 ing held each December, answered the question for us 

 last month. 



" Let us never forget that if applied mechanics has 

 arrived to-day at such marvellous results, if we can now 

 calculate beforehand the parts of the most complex 

 machines, it is because long ago the shepherds of 

 Chaldea and Judea observed the stars ; because 

 Hipparchus combined their observations with his own 

 and handed them down to us ; because Tycho-Brahe 

 made better ones ; because two thousand years ago a 

 great geometer, Appolonius of Perga, wrote a treatise on 

 conic sections, regarded for many centuries as useless ; 

 because the genius of Kepler, utilising this admirable 

 work and the observations of Tycho-Brahe, gave us those 

 sublime laws which themselves have been considered 

 useless by the utilitarians ; and, finally, because Newton 

 discovered the law of universal gravitation." 



From this discovery of Newton, M. Levy points out, 

 first came the study of Celestial Mechanics, from which 

 was derived later General Mechanics, from which again, 

 later still. Industrial Mechanics, which are now applied 

 every day, has taken its origin. He adds : 



" It is well to impress the fact that Industrial 

 Mechanics has come down from heaven, upon the utili- 

 tarians ; upon those who appreciate science only so 

 far as it can be immediately profitable to them ; who 

 are always complaining that too much is taught at 

 school, and who regard as superfluous everything they 

 cannot find in a formulary, manual or aid to memory." 



All our progress, then, if we accept the view to which 

 M. Maurice Levy has given expression, has come from 

 the study of what was useless at the time it was studied. 

 There is no doubt that this view is correct, and that 

 future developments, probably as momentous as those 

 to which we have already referred, will in the future 

 come to us from the same source. 



To study the useless, therefore, is as important as to 

 apply the useful, from a cosmopolitan point of view ; and 

 all wise governments and institutions should use their 

 most strenuous efforts to aid the first endeavour, the 

 second can very well take care of itself. 

 NO. 1627, VOL. 63] 



There can be no question that the progress of science 

 and of the applications of science to industry will go on 

 in a geometrical ratio, and that eventually every country 

 will benefit by this advance ; but if we quit the cosmo- 

 politan point of view and endeavour to form an idea of 

 the results of this advance on any country in particular, 

 another set of considerations comes in. 



Our Empire, as it exists at present, and our great 

 national wealth, are the results of the sea-training and 

 prowess of her sons and of the stores of natural wealth 

 in the shape of coal and iron which the first appliers of 

 mechanics found to their hand. The output and first 

 user of coal and iron depended upon the applications of 

 mechanics, and the first user of all these combined enabled 

 us to flood the markets of the world, and for years Britain 

 was the Tubal Cain among the nations. Not only had 

 we a monopoly of export, but so high an authority as Sir 

 Andrew Noble acknowledges that, fifty years ago, British 

 machinery was immeasurably superior to any other. But 

 even this statement does not exhaust all our then advan- 

 tages. Because we were the great producers we became the 

 great carriers of the world ; hence the supremacy of our 

 mercantile marine, and, flowing from this, our command 

 of the sea. At that time Germany did not exist as a 

 united nation, France was mainly agricultural, and the 

 United States were engaged in developing their enormous 

 and almost unpopulated territories. 



But what has happened since ? As we have said, 

 science is cosmopolitan, and the levelling effect of this 

 has been that the material advantages we possessed in 

 the first instance have disappeared. Other countries, 

 chiefly those we have named, have now their coal and iron 

 and applications of science as well as ourselves. 



First among these applications at the beginning of the 

 last century came steam locomotion, the gift to the world 

 of a former " instrument maker to the University of 

 Glasgow," and from the work done on the Forth and 

 Clyde Canal in 1802 have sprung all the navies and 

 railways of the world. 



For traction purposes steam is now giving way to 

 electricity ; but how different is the role that Britain is 

 playing at the beginning of the new century compared 

 with that she filled at the beginning of the old one. We 

 import instead of exporting. The chief London electric 

 railway is American, American coal is producing gas to 

 light the streets of the Metropolis, American cars are 

 now found on our English trains, which on some lines 

 are drawn by American locomotives. British applica- 

 tions to facilitate locomotion, therefore, have ceased to be 

 paramount, and at the same time we no longer occupy 

 the proud position of being the only nation of shop- 

 keepers. 



Were this all, it would be abundantly clear that our 

 old supremacy must cease, and from no fault of our own, 

 as it is but a direct consequence of the general progress 

 of science, which includes the facilitating of inter- 

 communications. But, unfortunately, it is not all. 



At a time when our ancient universities occupied no 

 higher level than that, according to Matthew Arnold, of 

 " hauts Lycdes," and when there was little or no attempt at 



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