646 
the herds and crops of man. She destroys 
the insect enemies of our grain fields and 
protects vine and fruit tree from blight and 
mildew. She saves the silk-worms of 
Europe from the plague threatening their 
destruction, and the flocks and herds of 
America from some of their most destruc- 
tive diseases. 
Thus science performs a service to society 
incalculable inits value. It defends it from 
foes both within and without the gates. It 
prolongs life, assuages pain, lessens disease 
and makes death a euthanasy. So notable 
have been its victories during the century 
that we may almost prophesy the coming 
of the time when the only deadly bacillus 
remaining will be that as yet undescribed 
species, bacillus senectutis, or at least when 
only sufficient disease will be left on earth 
to provide for a speedy and beneficent extir- 
pation of the unfit. 
Viewing organic evolution from the angle 
of the physicist and considering the animal 
body simply as a machine for the trans- 
formation of potential into kinetic energy, 
the secular process sums itself up in the pro- 
duction of better and better machines. 
From the fish of the early Paleozoic, on to 
the amphibians of the Carboniferous, the 
reptiles of the Mesozoic, and the mammals 
of the Tertiary and of the present, we have 
a series of higher and higher organisms, 
each capable of doing more work and better 
work than its predecessors. 
It is possible to construe social evolution 
in the same terms. Primitive society was 
weak. The energy at its disposal was that 
only of the human body, the beast of 
burden, and, to a limited extent, of wind, 
water and flame. So feeble was the ancient 
state in what may be termed its muscula- 
ture, so little could it utilize the forces of 
nature, that it may be compared with a 
stage of organic evolution preceding that 
of the vertebrata, that, let us say, of the 
turbellarian worm, ‘ whose arrangement of 
SCIENCE. 
[N. 8S. Vou. XIII. No. 330. 
muscles,’ biologists tell us, ‘is far from 
economical or effective. ’* 
In comparison modern society may be 
likened to one of the higher mammalia, such 
as the tiger or the elephant, which can not 
only take up from nature the maximum of 
energy, but can also apply it in varied 
movements and a highly complicated con- 
duct. 
Consider the vast stores of energy which 
society has to-day at its disposal. The 
steam power of the United States alone 
equals the day labor of one hundred million 
men. Behind each man, woman and child 
of the nation stands more than one autom- 
aton of steel, with the strength of a man 
but with manifold his capacity for produc- 
tive labor. In carding, for example, fingers 
of steel do in half an hour what the unaided 
workman of a century ago could not have 
accomplished in less than eight months. 
Society finds in machinery a tireless hand 
capable of performing the mightiest and the 
most delicate of tasks with equal ease. It 
strikes with the steam hammer a blow of 
2,000 tons, and it rules the Rowland grating 
with its 48,000 parallel lines to the inch. 
Consider also the new induement of 
energy which science has bestowed upon 
society in the gift of electricity, a power 
capable of the swiftest and most ready 
transmission, of infinite subdivision, and of 
the greatest known intensity of concentra- 
tion. And how varied is its function- 
ing. In mine and quarry it picks and 
drills and fires the blast. At the wharf it 
lifts and loads and carries. In the factory 
it forges, casts, welds and rivets. In the 
home it shines in the most healthful light 
yet made by man. In electrolysis it pro- 
duces a hundred substances of value, such 
as the caustic alkalies, bleaching powder, 
chloroform, the chlorates, and aluminium, 
the metal perhaps to give name to the new 
*J. M. Taylor, ‘Whence and Whither of Man,’ 
Morse Lectures, 1895, N. Y., 1896, p. 47. 
