v.] VAN MONS. 141 



refinement and expansion of the old magic which smote 

 the rock or swung the enchanted wand to disclose to 

 some oracle the secret of the mysteries of nature. It 

 needed the modern analytical mind to grasp the mean- 

 ing of the forces of nature, to see that there was nothing 

 supernatural, and to pick the kernel of truth from the 

 husk of sophistry. It was in the latter half of this 

 present century that such a mind grasped the entire 

 sweep of organic nature and attempted to discover its 

 meaning in order that the most common man, as well 

 as the oracle, might apprehend the truth and apply it 

 to his own life. This, as I think of it, is the transcend- 

 ant merit of Darwin. His theories and conclusions 

 may perish, but his life marks an epoch in the habit of 

 thought. All the old notions and traditions, the pano- 

 rama of nature, the rise of civilization, the destiny of 

 beings and events, — all these are but links or factors in 

 a grand spectacle whose beginning and end are one and 

 whose concerns are every man's. 



Van Mons. 



With this introduction, you can understand the 

 setting in which the theories of Van Mons and Knight 

 appeared, and we may be able to construct a perspective 

 in which to contemplate them. Jean Baptiste Van Mons 

 was born in Brussels in 1765, and he died in Louvain in 

 1842. At the age of twenty he became a pharmacist, 

 but at that time the brilliant experiments of Lavoisier 

 and his contemporaries turned the attention of the 

 young student to pure chemistry. With the French 

 occupation of Belgium, he became professor of physics 

 and chemistry in the department of the Dyle, and he 



