173 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Digestion 

 Discovery 



had been previously manufactured. The 

 compound microscope dates from 1590, and 

 when Leeuwenhoek was about forty years 

 old Holland had already given to the world 

 both microscope and telescope. NEWMAN 

 Bacteria, ch. 1, p. 1. (G. P. P., 1899.) 



842. DISCOVERY A GROWTH Many 



Contribute Items One Mind Focuses All. 

 It must not be supposed that to Pasteur is 

 due the whole credit of the knowledge ac- 

 quired respecting the cause of fermentation. 

 He did not first discover these living organ- 

 isms; he did not first study them and de- 

 scribe them; he was not even the first to 

 suggest that they were the cause of the proc- 

 esses of fermentation or disease. But, never- 

 theless, it was Pasteur who " first placed the 

 subject upon a firm foundation by proving 

 with rigid experiment some of the sugges- 

 tions made by others." Thus it has ever 

 been in the times of new learning and dis- 

 covery: many contributors have added their 

 quota to the mass of knowledge, even tho 

 one man appearing at the right moment has 

 drawn the conclusions and proved the theory 

 to be fact. NEWMAN Bacteria, ch. 4, p. 113. 

 (G. P. P., 1899.) 



843. 



Partial Views and 



Isolated Facts Combined in Grand Total. 

 Whatever the uncertainty of the field, it is 

 due to these pioneer minds to treat their 

 labor with respect. What they see in the 

 unexplored land in which they travel be- 

 longs to the world. By just such methods, 

 and by just such men, the map of the world 

 of thought is filled in here from the tra- 

 cing up of some great river, there from a 

 bearing taken roughly in a darkened sky, 

 yonder from a sudden glint of the sun on a 

 far-off mountain peak, or by a swift induc- 

 tion of an adventurous mind from a mo- 

 mentary glimpse of a natural law. So 

 knowledge grows; and in a century which 

 has added to the sum of human learning 

 more than all the centuries that are past it 

 is not to be conceived that some further 

 revelation should not await us on the high- 

 est themes of all. DRTJMMOND Ascent of 

 Man, int., p. 2. (J. P., 1900.) 



844. 



The Sciences Help 



One Another. Nothing which succeeds is 

 entirely new. The new-born is unformed 

 and incapable. The greatest things are born 

 from a state of germ, so to say, and increase 

 unperceived. Ideas fertilize each other. The 

 sciences help each other; progress marches. 

 Men often feel a truth, sympathize with an 

 opinion, touch a discovery, without knowing 

 it. The day arrives when a synthetic mind 

 feels in some way an idea, almost ripe, be- 

 coming incarnate in his brain: he becomes 

 enamored of it, he fondles it, he contem- 

 plates it. It grows as he regards it. He sees, 

 grouping round it, a multitude of elements 

 which help to support it. To him the idea 

 becomes a doctrine. Then, like the apostles 

 of Good Tidings, he becomes an evangelist, 

 announces the truth, proves it by his works, 



and all recognize in him the author of the 

 new contemplation of Nature, altho all know 

 perfectly well that he has not invented the 

 idea, and that many others before him have 

 foreseen its grandeur. FLAMMARION Popu- 

 lar Astronomy, bk. iv, ch. 1, p. 342. (A.) 



845. DISCOVERY BEFORE HISTORY 



Origin of Fire. The life of the human race 

 may be divided into two great periods, the 

 prehistoric and historic. But human beings 

 had done great things before they learned to 

 write about their doings. Among other 

 things, they had discovered the use of fire, 

 both as a means of warming their bodies 

 and cooking their food. Nobody can tell 

 how or when fire was first introduced. Lu- 

 cretius has a story which ascribes its origin 

 to the rubbing together of dry tree-branches ; 

 but this is not a likely source of ignition. 

 Forests are sometimes set ablaze by light- 

 ning, and this is a possible origin of our 

 domestic fires. Again, savages have every- 

 where employed stone implements, shaping 

 pieces of flint with sharp edges for knives, 

 and with sharp points for arrow-heads and 

 spears. Sparks were certainly thus pro- 

 duced, and such sparks may have been the 

 ancestors of our fires. TYNDALL Heat a 

 Mode of Motion, lect. 1, p. 11. (A., 1900.) 



846. DISCOVERY BY PLAIN PEOPLE 



Accident and Wit Combined. In the fall 

 of 1745, the German artisans, and especially 

 those of Leipsic, probably recognized that 

 the electric machine had come into good 

 market demand. So simple was the appara- 

 tus, and so astonishing its effects, that peo- 

 ple who made no pretense to being scientific 

 bought it out of curiosity, and amused them- 

 selves by repeating at home the experiments 

 which the philosophers publicly exhibited in 

 the lecture-rooms and laboratories. When a 

 device is thus taken to the popular bosom, 

 so to speak, the prediction may safely be 

 hazarded that before long some one in an 

 unexpected quarter will discover or invent 

 something concerning it which the philoso- 

 phers have never thought of or completely 

 missed. And the more complex the intel- 

 lectual gymnastics of a certain class of these 

 erudite persons around it, the more certain 

 it seems to be that the discoverer will be 

 found to have solved the problem either by 

 his simple wits or by accident and his wits 

 combined. PARK BENJAMIN Intellectual 

 Rise in Electricity, ch. 15, p. 511. (J. W., 

 1898.) 



847. DISCOVERY BY SPECTRUM 



ANALYSIS Rubidium and Caesium Found 

 Thallium Added. When Bunsen and Kirch- 

 hoff, the celebrated founders of spectrum 

 analysis, after having established by an ex- 

 haustive examination the spectra of all 

 known substances, discovered a spectrum 

 containing bands different from any known 

 bands, they immediately inferred the exist- 

 ence of a new metal. They were operating 



