452 



SCIENCE. 



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



parents in 1850, and our children in the 

 rising generation will have twice as many- 

 luxuries and live twice as easy and com- 

 fortable lives, if they so choose, in their 

 later time as do we to-day.* The oracle 

 may sometimes be in error ; but it remains 

 the fact that "science, and science only, 

 often can and frequently does, by a per- 

 fectly accurate and correct method, give us 

 clairvoyant views of the immediate, if not 

 of the remote, future. Of the trend of 

 modern progress, in the direction and in 

 rate of movement, there is no reasonable 

 doubt." 



XV. 

 Finally, en resume, to our time,t all life 

 and movement, whether of man, animals, 

 vegetation, seasons, suns and planets, arts, 

 commerce, civilization, intellectual, moral 

 or physical worlds, depend upon transfor- 

 mations of preexisting energy. All stud- 

 ies, all work in the domain of the physical, 

 the natural sciences, relate to transforma- 

 tions of energies and their mutual interac- 

 tions and modifications. We have learned 

 to compute the velocity, to determine the 

 methods of refraction and reflection of 

 light; but we still know little of its exact 

 character as motion of molecules. We know 

 the related form, heat-energy, in its sensi- 

 ble effects ; but .we are still unable to differ- 

 entiate the one from the other. We can 

 produce and utilize electricity in many 

 ways, but we, as yet, do not even know what 

 it is or how its transformations from other 

 energies are effected. We work with these 

 three forms of power, they are the amuse- 

 ment of the ignorant, the wonder of the 

 sage, the slaves of Immanity; bi;t we do 

 not even know what is the nature of the sub- 

 stance through which they act to produce 

 their beautiful, their marvelous, their 



* ' The Trend of National Progress,' Conclu- 

 sions. 



f This section is abstracted from the earlier 

 address already referred to. 



world-impelling eft'ects. The ether is still 

 to us an enigma, unsolved by the wisest, 

 a riddle to the most expert investigator. 



The chemist knows much of the composi- 

 tion of ' compounds, ' but he has never 

 seen, felt or identified an 'atom' and still 

 vaguely dreams of a single first element 

 into which all shall be resolved. He counts 

 with unseeing eyes the number of atoms 

 in a ' molecule, ' but has never yet learned 

 their form or grouping. Even with the aid 

 of the physicist he loses track of their 

 transformations in the furnace of the sun 

 and the stars, and finds in the spectro- 

 scopic lines a strange language of which he 

 lacks the key. He can isolate and weigh 

 the phosphorus in a gram of steel, but 

 he cannot give us the phosphorescent fuel, 

 the source of light, of the fire-fly. He can 

 reduce the muscle, fat, and nerve matter 

 of the human system into their elements, 

 biit he cannot produce the storage bat- 

 teries of brain and spine, or the gymnotus' 

 cells. 



The astronomer weighs and measures the 

 sun, the moon, the planets, and the nearer 

 stars ; but he stands aghast and amazed by 

 that flying sphinx, ' 1830 Goombridge, ' the 

 'runaway star,' flying 200 miles a second, 

 faster than it could fall from infinite space, 

 and its origin, course, destiny are to him 

 questions of the oracles. He has, as yet, 

 no solution. He is lost amid the depths 

 of space, he knows not where to look for 

 a limit, or how to prove its non-existence. 

 He asks, with the believing and the unbe- 

 lieving among the simple. How and when 

 shall the ' Heavens melt with fervent 

 heat ' ? and, How long shall this wandering 

 handful of worlds traverse the infinite 

 safely and without that conflagrating col- 

 lision with other systems or other worlds 

 that, as it seems possible, now and then, at 

 intervals of years or of centuries, causes 

 a star to blaze out in the midst of darkness 

 with a brilliancy greater than that of the 



