Masterpieces of Science 



exampled since man first kindled fire and re- 

 joiced ? 



We have traced how dexterity rose to fire- 

 making, how fire-making led to the subjugation 

 of electricity. Much of the most telling work 

 of fire can be better done by its great successor, 

 while electricity performs many tasks possible 

 only to itself. Unwitting truth there was in the 

 simple fable of the captive who let down a 

 spider's film, that drew up a thread, which in turn 

 brought up a rope and freedom. It was in 1800 

 on the threshold of the nineteenth century, that ' 

 Volta devised the first electric battery. In a 

 hundred years the force then liberated has vitally 

 interwoven itself with every art and science, 

 bearing fruit not to be imagined even by men of 

 the stature of Watt, Lavoisier, or Humboldt. 

 Compare this rapid march of conquest with the 

 slow adaptation, through age after age, of fire to 

 cooking, smelting, tempering. Yet it was partly, 

 perhaps mainly, because the use of fire had drawn 

 out man's intelligence and cultivated his skill 

 that he was ready in the fulness of time so quickly 

 to seize upon electricity and subdue it. 



Electricity is as legitimately the offspring of 

 fire as fire of the simple knack in which one 

 savage in ten thousand was richer than his fel- 

 lows. The principle of permutation, suggested 

 in both victories, interprets not only how vast 

 empire is won by a new weapon of prime dignity ; 

 it explains why such empires are brought under 

 rule with ever- accelerated pace. Every talent 

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