THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE 219 



Indeed, science everywhere reveals a carnival of 

 miglitier gods than those that cut such fantastic tricks 

 in the ancient world. Listen to Tyndall on light, 

 or Youmans on the chemistry of a sunbeam, and see 

 how fable pales its ineffectual fires, and the boldest 

 dreams of the poets are eclipsed. 



The vibratory theory of light and its identity with 

 the laws of sound, the laws of the tides and the sea- 

 sons, the wonders of the spectroscope, the theory of 

 gravitation, of electricity, of chemical affinity, the 

 deep beneath deep of the telescope, the world within 

 world of the microscope, etc. , — in these and many 

 other fields it is hard to tell whether it is the scien- 

 tist or the poet we are listening to. What greater 

 magic than that you can take a colorless ray of 

 light, break it across a prism, and catch upon a screen 

 all the divine hues of the rainbow 1 



In some respects science has but followed out and 

 confirmed the dim foreshadowings of the human 

 breast. Man in his simplicity has called the sun 

 father and the earth mother. Science shows this to 

 be no fiction, but a reality; that we are really chil- 

 dren of the sun, and that every heart-beat, every 

 pound of force we exert, is a solar emanation. The 

 power with which you now move and breathe came 

 from the sun just as literally as the bank-notes in 

 your pocket came from the bank. 



The ancients fabled the earth as resting upon the 

 shoulders of Atlas, and Atlas as standing upon a 

 turtle ; but what the turtle stood upon was a puzzle. 

 An acute person says that science has but changed 



