60 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



definite proportions; to the now lamented Hugh Miller, and to 

 Hitchcock, arguments in support of revelation from the fossils 

 entombed in the stony recesses of the earth. 



Do you ask the results of that philosophic inquiry which is 

 alone deserving of the name ? "It has lengthened life, and it has 

 mitigated pain; it has increased the fertility of the soil; it has 

 given new securities to the mariner; it has furnished new arms to 

 the warrior; it has spanned great estuaries and rivers with bridges 

 unknown to our fathers; it has guided the thunderbolt harmlessly 

 from heaven to earth; it has lighted up the night with the splen- 

 dor of the day; it has- extended the range of the human vision; it 

 has multiplied the power of the human muscle; it has facilitated 

 intercourse; it has enabled man to soar into the air, and to descend 

 into the depths of the sea; to traverse the land on cars which 

 whirl along without horses, and the ocean in ships which sail 

 against the wind." These things has it done, but these are only 

 its first fruits; presently it will girdle the earth with the means of 

 instantaneous communication. It is a philosophy which never 

 rests, which has never attained it, and which is never perfect. 

 Its law is progress. A point which yesterday was invisible, is its 

 goal to day, and will be its starting post to-morrow. It is the 

 philosophy of common sense, and if there be aught that is feeling 

 in the language of some men in our day, whose minds are seem- 

 ingly lost in the admiration of the greatness of the ancients, let 

 us bequeath to them their metaphysical rubbish and learned 

 lumber, while, instead of pondering upon the past, it is for us to 

 "act as in the living present;" to examine physical facts, to seize 

 and use them. 



Very much astonished, undoubtedly, must that monk have 

 been, Bertholdus Schwartz, who, in some of liis experiments, 

 about the year 1320, putting "villainous saltpetre" with other 

 unknown yet explosive materials into a mortar, saw, when a spark 

 of fire accidentally dropped into the mixture, the pestle lly off 

 into the air. He would have been still more astonished could 

 any one have told him in prophetic vision the future uses, the 

 results of this accidental discovery. 



