The Gifts of Science 125 



though they spoke beside us; by it the nations of the 

 earth are drawn together by instant communication and 

 mutual understanding, and have even now entered upon 

 a merger that shall never be dissolved. The ticking of 

 Marconi's wires across the ocean wastes in a stillness un- 

 broken from eternity may yet usher in the reign of uni- 

 versal peace. What expenditure of dollars shall reckon 

 up a service such as this, or to what value will you liken 

 it? Had men gone to the gods for gifts they had never 

 framed their lips to ask for half so much ; nor had it en- 

 tered into the heart of man to conceive such richness 

 in comfort and joy and blessedness as at all among the 

 possibilities of this terrestrial life. 



But this is only a glimpse of what physical science has 

 done or is doing for our world and in the most direct and 

 tangible ways. Biologic science has been in its way 

 equally munificent. In 1889 the German government 

 subsidized the optical workshop of Carl Zeiss in Jena 

 that he might perfect a glass that should enable the mi- 

 croscopist better to do his work. The consequent per- 

 fecting of microscopic lenses, taken with a fortunate con- 

 temporaneous discovery of the delicate application of the 

 coal tar series of colors, has made it possible for the stu- 

 dent of life and its processes to enter upon investigation 

 with a thoroughness that, were it not so familiar, would 

 appear nothing short of marvelous. Not only do we bet- 

 ter understand the structure of all living things, we 

 have to-day even a pathology of the white corpuscles of 

 the human blood, but all the phenomena of life itself 

 are so clearly understood that we condition its manifesta- 

 tion almost as we choose. The very minutest forms of 



