ON THE STUDY OF PHYSICS 301 



Now, we cannot, without prejudice to humanity, separate 

 the present from the past. The nineteenth century strikes 

 its roots into the centuries gone by, and draws nutriment 

 from them. The world cannot afford to lose the record of 

 any great deed or utterance; for such are prolific through- 

 out all time. We cannot yield the companionship of our 

 loftier brothers of antiquity — of our Socrates and Cato — 

 whose lives provoke us to sympathetic greatness across the 

 interval of two thousand years. As long as the ancient 

 languages are the means of access to the ancient mind, 

 they must ever be of priceless value to humanity; but 

 surely these avenues might be kept open without making 

 such sacrifices as that above referred to universal. We 

 have conquered and possessed ourselves of continents of 

 land, concerning which antiquity knew nothing; and if 

 new continents of thought reveal themselves to the ex- 

 ploring human spirit, shall we not possess them also? 

 In these latter days, the study of Physics has given us 

 glimpses of the methods of Kature which were quite hid- 

 den from the ancients, and we should be false to the 

 trust committed to us, if we were to sacrifice the hopes 

 and aspirations of the Present out of deference to the 

 Past. 



The bias of my own education probably manifests itself 

 in a desire I always feel to seize upon every possible op- 

 portunity of checking my assumptions and conclusions by 

 experience. In the present case, it is true, your own con- 

 sciousness might be appealed to in proof of the tendency 

 of the human mind to inquire into the phenomena pre- 

 sented to it by the senses; but I trust you will excuse me 

 if, instead of doing this, I take advantage of the facts 

 which have fallen in my way through life, referring to 



