98 LIFE AND WORK OF SIR JAGADIS C. BOSE 



made records, and perceived in them one phase of a pervading 

 unity that bears within it all things the mote that quivers in 

 ripples of light, the teeming life upon our earth, and the radiant 

 suns that shine above us it was then that I understood for the 

 first time a little of that message proclaimed by my ancestors 

 on the banks of the Ganges thirty centuries ago 



' They who see but one, in all the changing manifoldness of 

 this universe, unto them belongs Eternal Truth unto none 

 else, unto none else ! ' 



The Royal Institution lecture was highly appreciated ; 

 and its totally unexpected revelations naturally created 

 wide interest throughout scientific circles, and even in the 

 press generally. So far Bose's earlier success, both scientific 

 and popular, which had been earned by his previous work 

 and on his visit four years before, had been fully repeated, 

 and even surpassed. But now his troubles began. 



Here may be recalled an old and proverbial summary 

 of the progress of ideas scientific and other that people 

 first say : ' It is not true ' ; and next : ' It is not new ' ; 

 and then often later : ' We knew it all before/ The last is 

 indeed the commonest of these sayings in India ; but in 

 Europe we generally begin with the other two. 



After his preliminary communication Bose read his 

 paper at the Royal Society on June 6, 1901, with full 

 and detailed experimental demonstration. The paper 

 seemed as well received as usual, but the blow was now 

 to come ; and this from no less than Sir John Burdon 

 Sanderson, who was then, and for many years had been, 

 ' the grand old man ' of physiological science in England. 

 His work, moreover, had largely lain not only in the 

 study of the behaviour of muscle and nerve under stimu- 

 lation, but very specially upon the movements of the Venus' 

 fly-trap (Dionsea), to which Darwin had first called his 

 attention, and to the electrical physiology of which he had 

 devoted unsparing labours during many years. He thus 

 stood out as a peculiar authority on the electro-physiology 

 both of animals and plants so far as was then known ; and 



