BCIENCE AND MAN 855 



opposed to each other after all. In one fundamental par- 

 ticular they at all events agree. They equally imply the 

 interdependence and harmonious interaction of parts, and 

 the subordination of the individual powers of the universal 

 organism to the working of the whole. 



Never were the harmony and interdependence just 

 referred to so clearly recognized as now. Our insight 

 regarding them is not that vague and general insight to 

 which our fathers had attained, and which, in early times, 

 was more frequently affirmed by the synthetic poet than 

 by the scientific man. The interdependence of our day 

 has become quantitative — expressible by numbers— lead- 

 ing, it must be added, directly into that inexorable reign 

 of law which so many gentle people regard with dread. 

 In the domain now under review men of science had first 

 to work their way from darkness into twilight, and from 

 twilight into day. There is no solution of continuity 

 in science. It is not given to any man, however en- 

 dowed, to rise spontaneously into intellectual splendor 

 without the parentage of antecedent thought. Great dis- 

 coveries grow. Here, as in other cases, we have first the 

 seed, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear, the last 

 member of the series implying the first. Thus, as regards 

 the discovery of gravitation with which the name of New- 

 ton j,is identified, notions more or less clear concerning it 

 had entered many minds before Newton's transcendent 

 mathematical genius raised it to the level of a demonstra- 

 tion. The whole of his deductions, moreover, rested upon 

 the inductions of Kepler. Newton shot beyond his pre- 

 decessors ; but his thoughts were rooted in their thoughts, 

 and a just distribution of merit would assign to them a 

 fair portion of the honor of discovery. 



