Masterpieces of Science 



able state of things, a universal nebula, if you 

 will, in his secret soul he makes one exception 

 himself. That there is a great deal more assent 

 than conviction in the world is a chiding which 

 may come as justly from the teacher's table as 

 from the preacher's pulpit. Now, if we but 

 catch the meaning of man's mastery of electricity, 

 we shall have light upon his earlier steps as a fire- 

 kindler, and as a graver of pictures and symbols 

 on bone and rock. As we thus recede from civili- 

 zation to primeval savagery, the process of the 

 making of man may become so clear that the 

 arguments of Darwin shall be received with con- 

 viction, and not with silent repulse. 



As we proceed to recall, one by one, the salient 

 chapters in the history of fire, and of the arts of 

 depiction that foreran the camera, we shall per- 

 ceive a truth of high significance. We shall see 

 that, while every new faculty has its roots deep 

 in older powers, and while its growth may have 

 been going on for age after age, yet its flowering 

 may be as the event of a morning. Even as our 

 gardens show us the century-plants, once sup- 

 posed to bloom only at the end of a hundred 

 years, so history, in the large, exhibits discover- 

 ies whose harvests are gathered only after the 

 lapse of aeons instead of years. The arts of fire 

 were slowly elaborated until man had produced 

 the crucible and the still, through which his 

 labours culminated in metals purified, in acids 

 vastly more corrosive than those of vegetation, 

 in glass and porcelain equally resistant to flame 

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