446 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 403. 



the unseen. Their solution will, if proved 

 possible and practicable, furnish the ele- 

 ments of the Universal Science of Ener- 

 getics for all these worlds. 



Over ten years ago, addressing the 

 Alpha Chapter of Sigma Xi, I took occa- 

 sion to refer to the still unsolved problems 

 of this nature.* These problems have been 

 solved, here and there, and occasionally a 

 great step has been made, as when the di- 

 visibility of the so-called atom of the chem- 

 ist was shown to be possible, or where 

 wireless telegraphy has become practicable ; 

 but the impression made during these ten 

 years upon the great body of the unknown 

 has been comparatively small, and the op- 

 portunities for further revelation and the 

 scientific use of the imagination, of scien- 

 tific prophecy, are larger than ever. 



Unquestionably there exist energy rela- 

 tions amongst all phenomena of motion, re- 

 lations of potential energy amongst all 

 groupings of atoms, molecules and masses. 

 The fundamental law of energetics is al- 

 ready known, as is the law of the quan- 

 tivalence of all the energies, and as is the 

 fact of the persistence of energies and of 

 matter. It needs but the discovery of the 

 mechanism of matter and of motion, and of 

 its action in production and transfer of 

 energy-effects, to furnish the essentials for 

 the establishment of a complete and uni- 

 vei'sal science of the material universe as 

 we know it. We may even perhaps hope 

 to enter at least the borders of the unseen 

 universe, now apparently closed to us. But 

 we have studied and weighed and meas- 

 ured the unseen atom and molecule; we 

 have discovered the movement of unseen 

 particles as ions; we have even determined 

 the size, form and orbit of an unseen stel- 

 lar world: why should we despair of ulti- 



* ' The Man of Science, his Methods and his 

 Work,' address before the Alpha Chapter of Sigma 

 Xi, Cornell University, June 14, 1891. Scientific 

 American Supplement, January 2, 1892, No. 835. 



mately finding ways of tracing the laws 

 and the phenomena of the grander Unseen ? 

 Cicero's declaration becomes more convinc- 

 ing as the years go by and as science be- 

 comes more easy of comprehension and 

 more nearly all-comprehending. 



XII. 

 A later Newton, Galileo, Bacon or 

 Compte, with learning sufficient to per- 

 ceive the relations of the fundamental 

 facts and laws of allied sciences, possibly 

 comprehending the common features of all 

 natural science, will find here the greatest 

 of opportunities for the greatest of all great 

 minds. The progress of the sciences, in- 

 dividually, is continuing to exhibit gain in 

 rate of gain; the boundary between chem- 

 istry and physics, between both, and applied 

 mechanics, between all phases of nature and 

 all movement, is constantly becoming more 

 and more obscured. The time is evidently 

 steadily approaching when chemistry and 

 physics will have a common and smoothly 

 shaded, if not obliterated, junction, when 

 energetics will comprehend all phenomena, 

 and all laws of mass and molecular and 

 atomic motion, alike. Mighty minds will 

 certainly come forward, in due time, each 

 familiar ■with the learning of each of a 

 pair of divisions having thus adjacent lim- 

 its, to join the two sections together with a 

 perfect and indistinguishable weld. With 

 our present knowledge of the tendency 

 toward the simplification and the union of 

 the sciences, it is even possible to imagine 

 the appearance, at some future day, of 

 minds capable of thus reducing to continu- 

 ity and unity the whole area. There is the 

 more reason for conviction that such a re- 

 sult may be sometime attained as we real- 

 ize the fact that it is through such unity 

 and conspiring of the forces and the laws of 

 the universe that nature accomplishes her 

 great purposes and that man must, by sim- 

 ilar extension and union of his codes of 



