289 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Grandeur 

 Growth 



forces which are available for the accom- 

 plishment of the end in view. ARGYLL 

 Reign of Law, ch. 3, p. 78, (Burt.) 



1403. GRAVITATION PROVED UNI- 

 VERSAL The Work of a Century of Astron- 

 omy Laborious Climbing to Noio Familiar 

 Conception. The advance of astronomy in 

 the eighteenth century ran in general an 

 even and logical course. The age succeed- 

 ing Newton's had for its special task to 

 demonstrate the universal validity and 

 trace the complex results of the law of 

 gravitation. The accomplishment of that 

 task occupied just one hundred years. It 

 was virtually brought to a close when La- 

 place explained to the French Academy, 

 November 19, 1787, the cause of the moon's 

 accelerated motion. As a mere machine, the 

 solar system, so far as it was then known, 

 was found to be complete and intelligible in 

 all its parts ; and in the " Me"canique 

 Celeste " its mechanical perfections were 

 displayed under a form of majestic unity 

 which fitly commemorated the successive tri- 

 umphs of analytical genius over problems 

 among the most arduous ever dealt with by 

 the mind of man. CLERKE History of As- 

 tronomy, int., p. 2. (Bl., 1893.) 



1404. GRAVITATION SURPASSED BY 

 MOLECULAR FORCES Power Involved in 

 Expansion of Iron. The constituent mole- 

 cules of bodies do not touch. It is thus, and 

 thus only, that the expansion and the 

 change of state of bodies under the influence 

 of heat can be explained. We do not doubt 

 the energy of the atomic forces in action 

 around us. Let us heat 1 Ib. of iron from 

 to 100 degrees, it will expand about ^, 

 a span imperceptible to the eye, and yet the 

 force which has produced this expansion 

 would be capable of lifting 12,000 Ks., and 

 raising them to the height of one yard. The 

 power of gravitation almost vanishes in 

 comparison with these molecular forces ; the 

 attraction exercised by the earth on the 

 weight of half a kilogram (about a pound) 

 taken in a mass is nothing compared to the 

 mutual attraction of its own molecules. In 

 the combination of 1 Ib. of hydrogen with 8 

 Tbs. of oxygen to form water, work is per- 

 formed capable of raising by 1 degree the 

 temperature of 34,000 Ibs. of water; or of 

 lifting 15,000,000 Ibs. to 1 yard high! 

 These nine pounds of water in being formed 

 have fallen molecularly down a precipice 

 equal to that which would be passed over 

 by a ton of 1,000 kilograms rolling down to 

 46,000 feet of depth. FLAMMARION Popular 

 Astronomy, bk. iii, ch. 7, p. 320. (A.) 



1405. GREED BRINGS DESTRUCTION 



The Puma and Its Prey. The puma, after 

 eating its fill, covers the carcass with many 

 large bushes, and lies down to watch it. 

 This habit is often the cause of its being dis- 

 covered; for the condors, wheeling in the 

 air, every now and then descend to partake 

 of the feast, and being angrily driven away, 

 rise all together on the wing. The Chileno 



Guaso then knows there is a lion watching 

 his prey the word is given and men and 

 dogs hurry to the chase. Sir F. Head says 

 that a Gaucho in the pampas, upon merely 

 seeing some condors wheeling in the air, 

 cried " A lion ! " DARWIN Naturalist's 

 Voyage around the World, ch. 12, p. 269. 

 (A., 1898.) 



1406. GROWTH AND DECAY PER- 

 VADE ALL NATURE "In the Beginning." 

 " In the beginning God created the heaven 

 and the earth. And the earth was without 

 form, and void." 



Whatever our speculations may be in re- 

 gard to a " beginning," and when it was, it 

 is written in the rocks, that, like the ani- 

 mals and plants upon its surface, the earth 

 itself grew; that for countless ages, meas- 

 ured by years that no man can number, the 

 earth has been gradually assuming its pres- 

 ent form and composition, and that the 

 processes of growth and decay are active 

 every hour. ELISHA GRAY Nature's Mir- 

 acles, vol. i, ch. 1, p. 1. (F. H. & H., 1900.) 



1407. GROWTH COMES ONLY FROM 



LIFE (Matt, vi, 27) Growth vs. Accretion 

 Christian Life a Growth. A boy not only 

 grows without trying, but he cannot grow 

 if he tries. No man by taking thought has 

 ever added a cubit to his stature; nor has 

 any man by mere working at his soul ever 

 approached nearer to the stature of the 

 Lord Jesus. The stature of the Lord Jesus 

 was not itself reached by work, and he who 

 thinks to approach its mystical height by 

 anxious effort is really receding from it. 

 Christ's life unfolded itself from a divine 

 germ, planted centrally in his nature, which 

 grew as naturally as a flower from a bud. 

 This flower may be imitated; but one can 

 always tell an artificial flower. The human 

 form may be copied in wax, yet somehow 

 one never fails to detect the difference. And 

 this precisely is the difference between a 

 native growth of Christian principle and the 

 moral copy of it. The one is natural, the 

 other mechanical. The one is a growth, the 

 other an accretion. DRUMMOND Natural 

 Law in the Spiritual World, essay 3, p. 114. 

 (H. Al.) 



1408. GROWTH, GRADUAL, OF TRUTH 

 Sudden Harvest of Discovery Limited 

 Work of Any Single Discoverer Total Re- 

 sult Fulfils Divine Plan. Slowly, it is true', 

 does the power of the mind give to man the 

 mastery over the more hidden ways of Na- 

 ture. One after another tries and fails, tho 

 gradually accumulating the knowledge by 

 which, in the end, the secret will be learned. 

 At length the master-mind arrives which is 

 to utilize the garnered knowledge of ages. 

 On a sudden the scattered portions of the 

 chain of evidence are linked together, and 

 the chain is complete. A great work has 

 then been achieved a work which the Al- 

 mighty had as fully intended that the hu- 

 man race should accomplish as any of those 

 material successes by which men have ob- 



