Septkmbke 19, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



449 



pies which are the essential elements, also, 

 of successful seientiiic research ; the efficient 

 revelation to the growing and maturing 

 mind of the great facts and the principal 

 data of all branches of knowledge or of 

 philosophy proposed to be taught, and this 

 discovery, to the youth of sufficient capa- 

 city, of the great laws of nature which re- 

 late those facts to one another and to the 

 great scheme of the universe. Finally 

 comes the deduction, from the trend of 

 movements controlled by those laws, of the 

 most direct line of present and future pro- 

 gress and the best methods of promoting, 

 of profiting by, scientific progress in later 

 times. There may be hardly a less exact 

 science of education than of astronomy or 

 geometry or mechanics, and there is but a 

 mathematical line of ideal, perfect ad- 

 vance. Our grandest problem is to find 

 and to follow that line and to show the 

 way to later generations. 



"We are not called upon simply to ascer- 

 tain what, for our time, is the most desir- 

 able system of school and college work, or 

 even what is the most 'complete and gener- 

 ous,' the most truly Miltonian, education; 

 but rather to discover and reveal the best 

 system of teaching a people what a people 

 shoidd know, effectively and with cer- 

 tainty. This problem being solved, we 

 may reveal the principles and all their corol- 

 laries and show the way to ' educate a people 

 for the life and work of the people.' Proph- 

 ecy then will become simple and certain 

 respecting the ideal educations, and the 

 results of their formulation and introduc- 

 tion by great minds devoted to the greatest 

 of all human tasks in the fields of human 

 knowledge. 



XIY. 

 Kevelation and prophecy are thus the 

 cTiaracteristics of the work of the scientific 

 investigator and the outcome of research. 

 The revelation of the facts and the laws 

 of the phenomena witnessed in the various 



kingdoms of nature, their mutual relations, 

 the control of the movements of all cycles, 

 and all progress in the orderly evolution 

 of the natural world, by law, the motions 

 of atoms, changes of compounds, growth 

 and life-histories of creation and its worlds, 

 giving the human mind the power to look 

 back upon the centuries and the ages, is but 

 the first part of the task of science. A 

 prophecy of a future of progress in the 

 infinite evolution, discovering the trend of 

 every continuous movement up to date and 

 indicating the direction of further develop- 

 ment, is the second and consequent task. 

 In science, more than in any other depart- 

 ment of knowledge, is it possible to judge 

 the future by the past and, as the move- 

 ments of sun, stars, planets and all satel- 

 lites may be now predicted by the astrono- 

 mer, so the evolutions of geology, of botany, 

 of biology, of the races themselves, man and 

 animals, are coming more and more within 

 the purview of the seer. The life-histories 

 of worlds and systems and perhaps of uni- 

 verses are to steadily reveal themselves in 

 coming time. Already it is possible that 

 the long uncertain question of the method 

 of restoration of kinetic energy and all 

 life, within a universe, run down, appa- 

 rently dead and cold, and whose energies 

 of motion have been converted into poten- 

 tial forms, is beginning to find answer ; the 

 significant hint of the new star and the new 

 nebula in Perseus may prove the first of 

 the revelations throwing light upon this 

 immense enigma. 



Wherever the path of time may be traced 

 and represented by its ' curve of progress ' 

 its terminal in the present may be with 

 certainty projected forward into a future, 

 and prophecy becomes as accurate, approxi- 

 mately, as the line of the immediate past. 



It is science only that can read the oracle 

 of the future. 



Knowing, from an experience extending 

 far back into the past, that all the phenom- 



