THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE 357 



germ theory of diseases of the nineteenth. The mariners' com- 

 pass of the fourteenth century easily yields first place to the 

 electric telegraph of the nineteenth, while the barometer and 

 thermometer of the seventeenth century are certainly less 

 wonderful, though perhaps not less serviceable, than the tele- 

 phone and phonograph of our own day. 



" I need not pursue the comparison exhaustively, but in addi- 

 tion to the advances now enumerated the great doctrine of 

 organic evolution, supported especially by the recapitulation 

 theory in embryology, finds nothing to match with it in broad- 

 ening and inspiring power in all the past history of the race. 

 The same can be said of the periodic law of Mendeleeff in 

 chemistry, of the molecular theory of gases, of Lord Kelvin's 

 vortex theory of matter, of the glacial period in geology, and of 

 the establishment of the origin and antiquity of man — all of our 

 own century. Nothing can be brought from all the past to com- 

 pare for one moment in direct application to ' the relief of man's 

 estate ' with the discovery of anaesthetics, while by his discovery 

 of antiseptic surgery the name and fame of Sir Joseph Lister 

 will grow to the last syllable of recorded time. In the mobili- 

 zation of man and the giving to him of the freedom of the globe, 

 the railways and steamships of our century are absolutely with- 

 out any element for comparison in all that the past has left us. 



" There are, however, three inventions and discoveries that we 

 have inherited from the past, and that have been already named, 

 two of them from some distant but unrecorded century and one 

 from the darkness of the middle ages, which have proved so 

 indispensable to all subsequent advances that it is impossible 

 for even the nineteenth century to present anything that can be 

 properly compared with them. I refer to the alphabet, Arabic 

 numerals, and the printing-press. To this list might be added, 

 perhaps, language and the use of fire. The factors I have 

 named are presupposed in all modern progress. By the very 

 necessities of the case they must have preceded the progress at 

 which we have glanced. 



"As I have before said, the nineteenth century is the century 

 of science, and it is science, mainly physical science, that con- 

 stitutes the proper object of this association. Our geographical 

 name is wide, but the scope of our association is wider still. It 

 deals with and is devoted to science, which is the best product 

 of the best powers of the human mind — the human mind, cre- 

 ated in the image of God and divinely inspired to interpret this 



