138 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XVII. No. 422 



combinations as a continuous history. All of this daring proposal 

 leads, of course, to a scientific revolution similar to that accom- 

 plished by Lamarck, Darwin, and Haeckel in biology. And this, 

 we have to keep recalling, is not the work of a tyro, but of a 

 savant recognized and honored as such in the front rank of pliysi- 

 cists the world over. We grant that only those in that rank, and 

 gifted also with tare powers of generalization, can competently 

 weigh the evidence and appreciate the theory which the industry 

 of a long life has presented in these volumes. It is a theory which 

 certainly must wait for final completion ; but as a working hypoth- 

 esis, in the absence of any other, it is a unitizing, completing 

 scheme of nature, invaluable as a suggesting power, and as a 

 centre around which the results of scientific observation and ex- 

 periment may be intelligently gathered, and then held as parts of 

 one mighty world drama. It may be further said, that, however 

 the author may come short of present sufficient evidence of his 

 hypothesis, he has rendered very dubious, if nbt wholly untenable, 

 the old notions of matter, and of all chemistry based upon the 

 atomic hypothesis. Hereafter we are to have neither an atom nor 

 a vacuum, but a continuous world of continuous matter, with all 

 of its world creative changes and combinations accounted for by 

 a continuous law formulated in a nomenclature expressive of that 

 unity. The realization of this dream of Newton, Huygens, Young, 

 and their many patient followers, of whom our author is one, would 

 certainly be the crowning glory of our race. To date the solution 

 of both the vital and the material worlds in the same century 



would seem to be pressing Father Time too rashly of late; and he 

 may properly leave us to evolve through another century before 

 we reach the sufficient evidences of the true theory of ether and 

 matter, suns and worlds. T. B. Wakeman. 



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