A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



ing such visions as no human being in the world had 

 ever seen before. 



The great principle he had discovered became the 

 dominating thought of his life, and filled all his leisure 

 hours. He applied it far and wide, amid all the phe- 

 nomena of the inorganic and organic worlds. It taught 

 him that both vegetables and animals are machines, 

 bound by the same laws that hold sway over inorgan- 

 ic matter, transforming energy, but creating nothing. 

 Then his mind reached out into space and met a uni- 

 verse made up of questions. Each star that blinked 

 down at him as he rode in answer to a night-call seemed 

 an interrogation-point asking, How do I exist? Why 

 have I not long since burned out if your theory of 

 conservation be true ? No one had hitherto even tried 

 to answer that question; few had so much as realized 

 that it demanded an answer. But the Heilbronn physi- 

 cian understood the question and found an answer. 

 His meteoric hypothesis, published in 1848, gave for the 

 first time a tenable explanation of the persistent light 

 and heat of our sun and the myriad other suns an 

 explanation to which we shall recur in another con- 

 nection. 



All this time our isolated philosopher, his brain aflame 

 with the glow of creative thought, was quite unaware 

 that any one else in the world was working along the 

 same lines. And the outside world was equally heed- 

 less of the work of the Heilbronn physician. There 

 was no friend to inspire enthusiasm and give courage, 

 no kindred spirit to react on this masterful but lonely 

 mind. And this is the more remarkable because there 

 are few other cases where a master-originator in science 



268 



