20 THE SPIRIT OF THE SOIL 



whether we realize the unparalleled developments of 

 the present era. 



Contrast for a moment the position of affairs as it 

 was in 1850 and as it is to-day, looking only along a 

 very narrow front. We had learnt by long and 

 painful experiment that all matter was composed of 

 elements, and Mendeleeff had drawn up his famous 

 table showing that there was some kinship between 

 the atoms. To-day we have made the tiny atom 

 almost visible, been able to watch the spark that 

 its impact makes, traced out its path as it hurls itself 

 through a gas, shattering the molecules that would 

 bar its way, learnt something of the subtler matter 

 of which it is composed. In electricity only the 

 broad foundations of the science had been laid; the 

 telephone was not conceived of even by the dreamer ; 

 the telegraph was already doing pioneer service in 

 shortening the world's distances; but no man had 

 conceived of harnessing the ether and forcing it to 

 carry the impulses impressed on it by the electric 

 spark. Medicine was still in an earlier era. Chloro- 

 form as an anaesthetic had barely been discovered, 

 and the surgeon, ignorant of the nature of infection, 

 could not dare to take advantage of more than a 

 tithe of what it offered. Then came the work of 

 Pasteur and of Lister, bringing in its train a flood of 

 knowledge that has swept away the dull mass of 

 ignorance, spread since the beginning of time across 

 the path of man's progress. Had the knowledge of 

 to-day been available to the Greeks, there would have 

 been no need for the sudden eclipse of her civilization. 

 It was not her internal dissensions that destroyed 



