ADDRESS. 17 



absolute zero for experimental research ; that, like the magician in the 

 'Arabian Nights,' we should annihilate distance by means of the electric 

 telegraph and the telephone ; that we should illuminate our largest build- 

 ings instantaneously, with the clearness of day, by means of the electric 

 current ; that by the electric transmission of power we should be able to 

 utilise the Falls of Niagara to work factories at distant places ; that we 

 should extract metals from the crust of the earth by the same electrical 

 agency to which, in some cases, their deposition has been attributed 1 



These discoveries and their applications have been brought to their 

 present condition by the researches of a long line of scientific explorers, 

 such as Dalton, Joule, Maxwell, Helmholtz, Herz, Kelvin, and Rayleigh, 

 aided by vast strides made in mechanical skill. But what will our 

 successors be discussing sixty years hence ? How little do we yet know of 

 the vibrations which communicate light and heat ! Far as we have ad- 

 vanced in the application of electricity to the uses of life, we know but 

 little even yet of its real nature. We are only on the threshold of the 

 knowledge of molecular action, or of the constitution of the all-pervading 

 sether. Newton, at the end of the seventeenth century, in his preface to 

 the ' Principia,' says : ' I have deduced the motions of the planets by 

 mathematical reasoning from forces ; and I would that we could derive 

 the other phenomena of Nature from mechanical principles by the same 

 mode of reasoning. For many things move me, so that I somewhat sus- 

 pect that all such may depend on certain forces by which the particles of 

 bodies, through causes not yet known, are either urged towards each other 

 according to regular figures, or ai'e repelled and recede from each other • 

 and these forces being unknown, philosophers have hitherto made their 

 attempts on Nature in vain.' 



In 184r8 Faraday remarked : ' How rapidly the knowledge of molecular 

 forces grows upon us, and how strikingly every investigation tends to 

 develop more and more their importance ! 



' A few years ago magnetism was an occult force, affecting only a few 

 bodies ; now it is found to influence all bodies, and to possess the most 

 intimate relation with electricity, heat, chemical action, light, crystallisa- 

 tion ; and through it the forces concerned in cohesion. "We may feel 

 encouraged to continuous labours, hoping to bring it into a bond of union 

 with gravity itself.' 



But it is only within the last few years that we have begun to realise 

 that electricity is closely connected with the vibrations which cause heat 

 and light, and which seem to pei'vade all space — vibrations which may be 

 termed the voice of the Creator calling to each atom and to each cell of 

 protoplasm to fall into its ordained position, each, as it were, a musical 

 note in the harmonious symphony which we call the universe. 



1895. 



