A FINAL WORD 303 



perched on his banners, he arbitrarily made himself an 

 emperor and despot. His downfall soon occurred, be- 

 cause he was ignorant of the law of nature, that the 

 strength of a social unit resided in the unit characters 

 of the aggregate, just as it does in the atoms and 

 crystals making up the bodies everywhere in nature. 

 The aggregate body is nothing, but the strength of 

 cohesion of the atoms. Napoleon had on his staff a 

 naturalist, named La Place, who was the real discov- 

 erer and mathematical demonstrator of the nebular 

 theory, of the making of solar systems. He taught 

 mankind that the universe is a natural production, by 

 the evolution of solid bodies, from gaseous nebulae. 

 He started a revolution of human ideas, which is grow- 

 ing yet in strength. He brought man closer to his 

 probable origin, and taught him that his welfare de- 

 pended on natural cause and effect. But human his- 

 tory is full of Napoleon who sneered at the theories 

 of La Place, and attributed every effect to a personal 

 cause. That was a reason, unconscious on his part, 

 why he strove to be a personal ruler of the world. But 

 La Place whose achievements, compared with those of 

 Napoleon, were infinitely superior, remains in com- 

 parative obscurity, scarcely mentioned in history. The 

 real benefactors of mankind are the discoverers of 

 abstract principles, which applied science is using, to 

 increase human comfort and happiness. 



When the people of the world evolve to the intel- 

 lectual conception of natural cause and effect, to which 

 they now pay so little attention, then history will be 

 a chronicle, not of the infamous careers, and abnormal 

 ideas of such as Napoleon, but of the achievements of 

 such men as La Place, Kepler, Newton, and Darwin. 



