July 6, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



13 



benefits, which everybody recognizes, these 

 contributions may be specified under three 

 heads in the order of their historical suc- 

 cession. 



First, there is the far-reaching generali- 

 zation known as the law of conservation of 

 energy, whose establishment dates from 

 about 1850. This law holds in what for 

 the present we find it convenient to call the 

 material world. It enables us to describe 

 what goes on in that world in the simplest 

 terms and in the most comprehensive fash- 

 ion. It relates unknown to known phe- 

 nomena ; and it enables us to predict with 

 practical certainty not only the feasibility 

 and efficiency of the vast aggregate of 

 mechanical appliances on which the con- 

 tinuity of daily life now depends, but also 

 the range and limitations of the physical 

 processes of the entire visible universe. 

 This doctrine supplies at once the principal 

 criteria of, and the principal methods of in- 

 vestigation in, physical science. It is the 

 most precise and the most comprehensive 

 of theories devised by man. 



Secondly, there is the doctrine of evolu- 

 tion, which dates substantially from the 

 publication of Darwin's work on the 

 Origin of Species in 1859. This, like the 

 doctrine of energy in the material world, 

 enables us to describe in the simplest terms 

 and in the most comprehensive fashion the 

 succession of events in what for the present 

 we find it convenient to call the organic 

 world. It enables us to trace the lines of 

 development along which life has proceeded 

 from age to age in geologic time, and to 

 predict with some degree of probability the 

 course and order of development in the 

 future. It enables us to see how in the 

 endless interactions of the organic and in- 

 organic worlds, the former is adapted to 

 the latter and the latter is moulded by the 

 former ; so that the history of terrestrial 

 life, with its teeming forms of animal and 

 vegetable organisms, becomes, in the light 



of this doctrine, at once readable and veri- 

 fiable. But the law of evolution is not 

 limited in its application to the lower forms 

 of life alone. It extends to man as well, 

 and proclaims him a part of, and not apart 

 from, the world of phenomena we seek by 

 scientific methods to explain. Thus, with 

 the advent of this doctrine, the anthropo- 

 centric theory of the universe, so long held 

 by man, vanishes ; but by way of compen- 

 sation, if any were needed, the new view 

 of his role confronts him with the transcen- 

 dent problem in which the instrument of 

 investigation is, in a far higher degree than 

 hitherto, the object of research. 



Thirdly, and perhaps most important of 

 all, there is the educational renaissance 

 which seems to be a direct result of the in- 

 crease and dijBfusion of science in our times. 

 Learning is no longer restricted to a narrow 

 range of subjects. Studies are no longer 

 strictly divisible into those which are liberal 

 or humanistic, and into those which, per 

 contra, must be illiberal or demoniacal ; 

 and the value of knowledge is no longer 

 measured by linguistic standards alone. In 

 short, we have come to understand the es- 

 sential unity of knowledge and the univer- 

 sality of its sources ; and that progress is 

 attained not so much by journeying along 

 the easy highway of a iwiori reasoning as 

 by following up the rough trails of obser- 

 vation and experiment. So rapidly and 

 completely has this renaissance come about 

 that many of the present generation are 

 quite unable to understand how educational 

 afiairs could have been at all diiferent in 

 the preceding generation. That liberal 

 provision should be made for the teaching 

 of science in every school, and especially 

 in every college and university, now goes 

 without saying ; and munificent endow- 

 ments for the maintenance of scientific in- 

 struction and investigation are everywhere 

 the order of the day. But it was not very 

 long ago— quite within a stretch of the 



