216 FACTS AND THEORIES. 



jsvhich paralyzes the imagination, has been measured in 

 ways independent of each other, and that the result, 

 marvelously agree. They have heard that physicists are 

 able with help of the specs fcroscope, to tell what the 

 stars are made of, and that invisible stars have been 

 detected by the perturbations which they produce in the 

 movements of stars that are visible. They have seen the 

 geologists overthrow the traditional belief that, till some 

 6,000 years ago, there was neither plant nor animal on our 

 globe, nor globe for them to inhabit. 



Then there is the wonderful array of discoveries and 

 inventions which distinguish the present half century. 

 Light made to do our printing. Steam made to do our 

 work. Electricity made to give us light and heat, and 

 to carry our messages, reproducing even the tones of our 

 voices. Without geering or belts, it mysteriously and 

 silently transports energy from the waterfall, or the 

 steam engine, to distant points, and there delivers it to 

 do man's w^ill. 



I do not wonder that plain men give to science attri- 

 butes little short of omniscience, and, with a faith that is 

 really touching in its unquestioning simplicity, drink in 

 the words of those who are supposed to be its high 

 priests. But they soon find themselves disappointed and 

 perplexed. Science, they imagine, is but another name 

 for truth, and truth, they know, never becomes falsehood. 

 It may increase, but never grows less, never denies itself. 

 But they read in some standard work on optics, that 

 light, according to Sir Isaac Newton, consists of little 

 particles of matter shot out from the sun, and then, a few 

 paragraphs farther on, that light is not particles of mat- 

 ter at all, and that nothing is shot out from the sun ex- 

 cept an intangible, invisible, imponderable something 

 called energy, and that it is this which causes undulations 

 in an interplanetary substance (?) styled ether, and that 

 these excite the sensation of seeing. And then they read a 



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