SCIENTIFIC COUNTRIES. 283 



FRANCE to Descartes, Pascal, Lavoisier, Jussieu, Laplace, 

 Lamarck, and Cuvier. In almost every great branch, if not 

 the initiator in the same sense as Italy, England has been 

 the improver and perfecter. She has given the decisive, the 

 finishing stroke of genius necessary to carry science or its 

 application to its culminating point. After such physio- 

 logists as Servetus, Vesalius, and Caesalpinus, there comes 

 HARVEY, who towers over them by his beautiful discovery ; 

 after the Arabs and the alchemists, there comes William 

 GILBERT, who founds a new science ; after Copernicus and 

 Leonardo, Galileo and Kepler, all giants, after Tycho, 

 Torricelli, and Pascal, there comes NEWTON with his unsur- 

 passable results ; after a Quesnay and a Turgot, there comes 

 ADAM SMITH with his economical revolution ; after Papin, 

 there comes JAMES WATT with his steam machinery ; after 

 Jouffroy d'Albans and Marc Seguin there comes STEPHEN- 

 SON and his flying locomotive ; after Scheele and Lavoisier, 

 Richter, Berzelius, great discoverers all, there comes DALTON 

 with his atomic law ; after Volta and Ampere, there comes 

 W T HEATSTONE with his electric telegraph ; after a number of 

 practical metallurgists in all countries, there comes BESSEMER 

 who opens the Age of Steel ; after Werner and Cuvier, LYELL 

 comes with his geological laws ; after Lamarck and Geoffroy 

 St. Hilaire, there comes DARWIN with his evolutionary law 

 of natural selection ; after Carnot, Coulomb, Lagrange, and 

 the great Laplace, there comes JOULE with his conservation 

 of energy; after Comte and Diderot, there comes Herbert 

 SPENCER and his magnificent synthesis just as in the 

 Middle Ages there had been a ROGER BACON and a WlCLIF. 

 In very few branches indeed can it be said that the climax 

 was reached outside England. 



If the English were of Jewish extraction and were swayed 

 by theological ideas, they would, no doubt, ascribe their 

 greatness to a supernatural cause, and aver that they were 

 "the chosen people"; but their success is due to natural 

 causes easily detected. Their MIXED ANCESTRY, descending 

 as they do from Iberians and Celts, Romans and Scandi- 

 navians, Teutons and French, has left an indelible impress 

 upon their race. They have inherited the different characters 



