448 



SCim.GE. 



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



ured by the buying power of the wage of 

 the worker. As I have somewhere said: 



"The world has made greater progress 

 in the last centuiy than in all the earlier 

 ages. This progress it owes to the in- 

 ventor, the mechanic and the engineer. 

 Modern material advancement practically 

 dates from the time of the general recog- 

 nition of the inventor's rights, and the 

 formulation of the first rough outlines of 

 our modern system of patent law, at the 

 commencement of the seventeenth century. 

 But all progress is an acceleration, and, 

 slow at first, it becomes increasingly rapid, 

 until, after a time, all the world is as- 

 tounded by its mighty rush." 



Morals, manners, culture, develop with 

 the progress of the age and the progress 

 of the age depends upon the advancement 

 of science and the promotion of a material 

 civilization with its concomitants of intel- 

 ligence, leisure and opportunity, by the 

 development of methods of useful employ- 

 ment of every department of the applied 

 science. The progress which has been made, 

 for example, during the two centuries just 

 past, has been due in large part to general 

 progress in intelligence ; progress in intel- 

 ligence has been due to advancement in 

 education and to that splendid contagion 

 of civilization which comes with increasing 

 contact of class with class and general dis- 

 tribution of the privileges of enlightened 

 <;ivil life. Such forward and upward move- 

 ments come of the growth of production 

 and that increase in wealth and leisure 

 which allow of the more general distribu- 

 tion of opportunity and of education and 

 of the comforts of civilized life. The foun- 

 dation of all progress, spiritual, intellec- 

 tual and material, alike, for the nation 

 always, for the individual usually, is ma- 

 terial. Only with aggregation of property 

 and increase in comfort with decreasing 

 lours of labor can liberty be secured for 

 thought and for care of others, for educa- 



tion and for aspiration, and for either moral 

 or material gain. Wealth will demoralize 

 individuals ; it may even, with a rude peo- 

 ple, stimulate crime and vice ; it is yet the 

 fundamentally essential element of human 

 progress, and the nation or the individual 

 taking full advantage of its opportunities 

 and privileges gains in maximum degree in 

 morals, manners and culture. 



Among the ancients, a high degree of 

 civilization and a corresponding lofty plane 

 of morals, manners and culture were pos- 

 sible to the few and an aristocracy of in- 

 telligence, as of the limited wealth of time, 

 was a natural consequence; but it was not 

 possible to have a satisfactory condition 

 of the people as a whole until they were 

 emancipated by advancing material civili- 

 zation from the bondage of continuous toil. 



Many problems still loom up in the im- 

 mediate future, and some of them, outside 

 the domain of scientific research as com- 

 monly restricted to a definite field and 

 scope, of vastly greater importance than 

 any known unsolved question in scientific 

 departments of physical work. The great- 

 est of problems for civilization, that of an 

 efficient and profitable and generous educa- 

 tion of all people upon whom is fixed the 

 responsibility, in however small degree, of 

 self government, and in such manner that 

 the risk to people and to government shall 

 be least, while the opportunities of the 

 youth of the nation shall be the greatest 

 possible in acquirement of wisdom and 

 learning, of knowledge and culture, and of 

 the fundamental principles underlying the 

 best practice in the arts in which they are 

 engaged. 



'The modern educations,' as I have called 

 them,* are many in detail, but all are under- 

 laid by the fundamental, scientific, princi- 



• ' The Mechanic Arts and Modern Educa- 

 tions.' An address before the Virginia Mechanics' 

 Institute, Richmond, Va., May 18, 1894. Scien- 

 iific American Supplement, November 3, 1894, p. 

 15,705. 



