108 THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE n 



points, by means of electricity, could hardly fail to 

 have simmered in the minds of ingenious men 

 since, well-nigh a century ago, experimental proof 

 was given that electric disturbances could be pro- 

 pagated through a wire twelve thousand feet long. 

 Various methods of carrying the suggestion into 

 practice had been carried out with some degree of 

 success; but the system of electric telegraphy; 

 which, at the present time, brings all parts of the 

 civilised world within a few minutes of one another, 

 originated only about the commencement of the 

 epoch under consideration. In its influence on the 

 course of human affairs, this invention takes its 

 place beside that of gunpowder, which tended to 

 abolish the physical inequalities of fighting men : 

 of printing, which tended to destroy the effect of 

 inequalities in wealth among learning men ; of 

 steam transport, which has done the like for 

 travelling men. All these gifts of science are aids 

 in the process of levelling up; of removing the 

 ignorant and baneful prejudices of nation against 

 nation, province against province, and class against 

 class; of assuring that social order which is the 

 foundation of progress, which has redeemed Europe 

 from barbarism, and against which one is glad to 

 think that those who, in our time, an- employing 

 themselves in fanning the embers of ancient wrong, 

 in setting class against class, and in trying to tear 

 asunder the existing bonds of unity, arc.- under- 

 taking a futile struggle. The telephone is only 



