304 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



more perfect means of storage and preservation of foods so that we may 

 at any time avail ourselves of them in their natural freshness; the 

 almost complete control of disease; the utilization of the hitherto un- 

 controlled energy of the sun through the collection of its heat ; and the 

 practical use of the force of the tides. These, however, we shall have 

 to pass by for the present. Nor shall I dwell upon the possibilities of 

 that almost unknown force locked up in the atom and revealing itself 

 as radioactivity, far superior to any other known power. Whether we 

 shall ever be able to liberate and control it we can not even surmise. 



In all this I have emphasized the materialistic side, the gaining of 

 dollars and cents, of all that can contribute to comfort and ease, and all 

 to result from applied science. Do not, therefore, regard me as be- 

 littling that other aspect — the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, 

 the irrepressible striving to raise one's self through earnest effort 

 toward the level of the Omniscient, the feeling of Paracelsus in his 

 laboratory, 



I still must hoard and heap and class all truths 

 With one ulterior purpose: I must know! 



for night is come 

 And I betake myself to study again, 

 Till patient searchings after hidden lore 

 Half wring some bright truth from its prison ; my frame 

 Trembles, my forehead's veins swell out, my hair 

 Tingles for triumph. Slow and sure the morn 

 Shall break on my pent room and dwindling lamp 

 And furnace dead, and scattered earths and ores; 

 When, with a failing heart and throbbing brow, 

 I must review my captured truth, sum up 

 Its value, trace what end to what begins, 

 Its present power with eventual bearings, 

 Latent affinities, the view it opens. 

 And its full length in perfecting my scheme. 



For our hearts still harmonize with the outcry of the alchemist, 



I shall arrive! what time, what circuit first, 

 I ask not: but unless God send his hail 

 Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow, 

 In some time, his good time, I shall arrive. 

 He guides me and the bird. In his good time! 



And it is through this patient and persistent toil that in the future, as 

 in the past, man will triumph over the forces of nature, 



For these things tend still upward, progress is 

 The law of life, man is not Man as yet. . . . 

 But when full roused, each giant-limb awake, 

 Each sinew strung, the great heart pulsing fast. 

 He shall start up and stand on his own earth, 

 Then shall his long triumphant march begin. 

 Thence shall his being date — thus wholly roused, 

 What he achieves shall be set down to him. 



