254 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



continually increasing, it is not by the effect of logical reasoning 

 or theological declamation, but by the necessary results of discov- 

 eries in chemistry, mechanics, and physiology, which have already 

 transformed agriculture and will transform it still further in a 

 near future. However slowly peasants may change their tradi- 

 tional practices, we have taught them how to get from a field in 

 a given time, with the same amount of labor and expenditure, a 

 much larger quantity of wheat than the field formerly produced, 

 and we are, in this matter, still very far from the goal that sci- 

 ence permits us to set before ourselves. It is in consequence of 

 the progress of science that everybody, or nearly everybody, in 

 France now eats the white bread which formerly only richer peo- 

 ple could get. The number of cattle we raise in our pastures has 

 increased in no less proportion during the past two centuries, and 

 always by the application of methods created by science ; and, by 

 virtue of what those methods have accomplished, animal food has 

 been made accessible to our workmen and peasants, to whom it 

 was unknown sixty years ago. By virtue of discoveries in chem- 

 istry, sugar, a rare and exceptional luxury in the last century, is 

 now produced in colossal quantities, and has become one of the 

 usual foods of the people. It would be easy to extend indefinitely 

 this enumeration of the ameliorations of the conditions of life 

 achieved through science. 



Now all these advances, I repeat, are not due to dialectic or lit- 

 erary discussions, but to the positive discoveries of the physical, 

 mathematical, and natural sciences. I do not mean merely prac- 

 tical discoveries made empirically, but the chief part of this prog- 

 ress is attributable to the highest theoretical conceptions of the 

 positive sciences. Thus all the modern industries of metals, 

 stones, wood, work in materials of every sort, rest upon the gen- 

 eral discoveries of chemistry and mechanics. So with the im- 

 mense development of ways of communication, which every one 

 admires and acknowledges has opened indefinite domains to com- 

 merce and industry. It has permitted a general distribution of 

 products and wealth among all civilized peoples, while it has at 

 the same time tended toward a certain continuity of the ideas 

 and the intellectual and moral education of the nations. The 

 last is a capital point, for it is the fundamental characteristic of 

 science to belong particularly to no sect and no nationality, and 

 to be the general domain of mankind. 



It is important to recollect how this distribution in common 

 of all the resources of the globe, which has resulted from the 

 development of the ways of communication, has been realized. 

 We should never forget that it is through the discoveries of 

 astronomy that the course of ships across the ocean is directed 

 with certainty, and that the general plan and detailed map of the 



