CHAPTER IV 



FIRST RESEARCHES IN PHYSICS 



Electric Waves 



Now an outline of Bose's first researches. Towards some 

 new age the progress of science and its applications 

 has been tending ever since the dawn of civilisation ; 

 and to-day, it may be, more than ever. In the past its' 

 growth has been too often like that of a coral reef storm- 

 beaten and broken, even subsiding : but now its workers 

 hope they are city-building for all time helping to erect 

 the ideal city of knowledge which should grow indefinitely, 

 though it can never be completely realised. Each of 

 its busy workers is searching and quarrying out, shaping 

 or laying his stone ; and at some point, and for its 

 moment, it rests on the highest edge of the rising wall. 

 But on this stone, so soon as accepted, others may 

 speedily follow ; and thus each sound and solid piece 

 of work is overbuilt, and so far surpassed. Each stone 

 commonly bears its own mason's mark, but the world cares 

 little for that : its brief glance of interest is naturally 

 enough on the handling of the new blocks as they are lifted 

 and laid on the wall-edge against the sky. At most there 

 can survive in history but a few individual names, whose 

 memory is preserved by the mighty columns they have 

 wrought ; while these again stand on earlier foundations 

 laid by toilers long forgotten, giants though they must 

 have been. Still the old masons know, and at times recall, 

 the significance of past work ; they review it and its doers 



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