PHYSICAL SCIENCE 



I should say the same were I planning it in boyhood 

 or in youth. No period could be anything but 

 narrow in face of such an undertaking. As it is, 

 when the midday of life is past, I have entered upon 



4 a task that is serious, difficult, limitless. Let me 

 act as people generally do in a journey those that 

 are late in starting make up for the delay by their 

 speed. I must hurry on, and without further excuse 

 on the score of age proceed to tackle my problem 

 undoubtedly a vast, possibly an insuperable, one. 

 My mind swells with pride when I survey the 

 magnitude of my undertaking and reflect how much 

 is unaccomplished of my plan, though not of my 

 life. 



5 Some writers have wasted their efforts in nar- 

 rating the doings of foreign kings, and in telling, 

 as the case may be, the sufferings or the cruelties 

 of nations. Surely it is wiser to try to end one's 

 own ills than to record for a coming generation the 

 ills of others. How much better to make one's 

 theme the works of the gods than the robberies of 

 Philip, or Alexander, or the other conquerors who 

 earned their fame by the destruction of mankind ! 

 Such men were as truly scourges of humanity as a 

 flood by which a whole plain has been inundated, or 

 a conflagration by which the greater part of its 



6 living creatures has been burnt up. The historians 

 tell us how Hannibal crossed the Alps, how he sud- 

 denly transferred into Italy a war rendered more 

 formidable by Roman disasters in Spain ; how, 

 when his fortunes were shattered, more determined 

 still, even though the fate of Carthage was sealed, 

 he wandered through all kingdoms, offering to be 

 leader against Rome, and begging for an army ; 

 how he never ceased even in his old age to seek 



