A Century of Science 9 



terrestrial experience, and therefore perhaps inac- 

 cessible to any rational interpretation. Such im- 

 aginary lines of demarcation between earth and 

 heavens were forever swept away by Newton, and 

 the recent work of spectrum analysis simply com- 

 pletes the demonstration that the remotest bodies 

 which the photographic telescope can disclose are 

 truly part and parcel of the dynamic world in 

 which we live. 



All this enlargement of the mental horizon, from 

 Newton to Kirchhoff, had reference to space. The 

 nineteenth century has witnessed an equally not- 

 able enlargement with reference to time. The be- 

 ginnings of scientific geology were much later than 

 those of astronomy. The phenomena were less 

 striking and far more complicated ; it took longer, 

 therefore, to bring men's minds to bear upon them. 

 Antagonism on the part of theologians was also 

 slower in dying out. The complaint against New- 

 ton, that he substituted Blind Gravitation for an 

 Intelligent Deity, was nothing compared to the 

 abuse that was afterwards lavished upon geologists 

 for disturbing the accepted Biblical chronology. 

 At the time when Priestley discovered oxygen, 

 educated men were still to be found who could 

 maintain with a sober face that fossils had been 

 created already dead and petrified, just for the fun 



