SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. I93 



soul to the dying body, as in the really beautiful and exquisite myth of Iris; but 

 it is simply the different colors of the spectrum, brought to view by the refraction 

 and reflection of the Sun's rays in drops of falling rain. While it may be that 

 the highest and noblest aim in the pursuit of scientific study is not mercenary, it 

 is not to be denied that science has added vastly to the world's material wealth. 

 When Werner in Germany, and Hutton in Scotland, near the close of the 

 eighteenth century, became the founders of opposing theories as to the origin of 

 the strata of the earth, each doubtless pursued his investigation with little thought 

 that he was giving an impulse to that which was soon to develop into a science, 

 from which the world was to derive vast economic benefits. These fathers of the 

 science of geology wrought for the purpose of discovering facts which had hitherto 

 been hidden from men. Their reward came from that pure gratification which 

 results from the pursuit of science for the love of it, while the great mining and 

 agricultural communities of the world are to- day receiving the economic benefits 

 of their researches. A large proportion of the scientific discoveries of the present 

 age are utilized in the various departments of human industry. The application of 

 steam, electricity and the laws of chemistry to various economic uses are examples 

 of what science has done and is doing to promote the material welfare of man. 

 In all the operations of nature there has been a continued succession of cause and 

 effect, and the very last effect of any given cause runs back in an unbroken line 

 to the very first cause. There is, in fact, not a single missing link in the great 

 chain of nature's course, reaching back through the million of ages to the un- 

 known time — "In the beginning." There are links in this unbroken chain 

 which have not yet been revealed to the eye, or to the understanding of man. 

 It is the province of science to discover them — to search out the truths which 

 exist -in nature, which have been heretofore unknown to us. All the facts and 

 possibilities which science has revealed respecting electricity may have existed as 

 fully and completely a thousand, or ten thousand years ago, as now, but there 

 had not yet been born to science a Franklin, a Morse, an Edison, or a PhiUip 

 Reis. Nature held within her repository all the unwrought materials and ele- 

 ments required for the construction of the steam engine long ages before science 

 discovered the means of applying to practical use this wonderful agent which 

 now acts in obedience to man's will. From spinning the most delicate silken 

 thread to drawing the freighted train, or propelling the mighty steamer, who can 

 estimate the work of this servant of man ? In every part of the world where civ- 

 ilization has established itself, this mighty force — this modern hercules of science 

 — is the agent of man's will. The steam engine has revolutionized the industrial 

 world, and added immensely to the material advancement of the race, while _ 

 electricity is employed to bring the nations of the earth into hourly speaking rela- 

 tions. A great political assembly in Chicago names a citizen for the highest office 

 that the suffrages of the American people can bestow, and before the presiding 

 officer of the convention can restore order, broken by the shouts of rejoicing in 

 the great building by the lake, the lightning has flashed intelligence of the result 



VIII— 13 



