SCIENCE AND THE THOUGHT OF THE WORLD 



during these 200 years the leaven of the open mind of 

 scientific research was silently at work, for each true student 

 of Nature became, among those about him, the source of a 

 new and living influence. The fact was that, during all 

 that time, there was no real mental contact, no true under- 

 standing, between the man of science and the average 

 man of education. The mind trained to receive without 

 questioning the teaching of traditional authority, and the 

 mind eager to find out new truth in the spirit of the Society's 

 motto, Nullius in verba, had little in common ; they were 

 often even mutually repellant. It could hardly be other- 

 wise ; there was no popular scientific press, and in the halls 

 of the schools the drone of monotonous repetitions from 

 memory of knowledge sanctioned by authority was never 

 broken in upon by the jubilant eurekas of experiments, 

 however simple, or of individual observation of Nature. 



What in the intellectual world would correspond to a 

 thunderbolt or an earthquake was needed to awaken and 

 transform the slumbering age and it came. In the early 

 years of Queen Victoria's reign the accumulated tension 

 of scientific progress burst upon the mind, not only of the 

 nation, but of the whole intelligent world, with a suddenness 

 and an overwhelming force for which the strongest material 

 metaphors are poor and inadequate. Twice the bolt fell, and 

 twice, in a way to which history furnishes no parallel, the 

 opinions of mankind may be said to have been changed in 

 a day. Changed, not on some minor points standing alone, 

 but each time on a fundamental position which, like a key- 



