LE ROY C. COOLEY. 39 



These are to be found at every scientific center on the 

 globe, and observations with them have been continuous 

 for many years. The shelves of the libraries fairly groan 

 under the weight of their accumulation. And yet the 

 greatest achievement in meteorology is the modern sys- 

 tem of predicting the weather, not as eclipses by calcu- 

 lations based on established laws, but by means of elec- 

 tric signals, which simply outrun the atmospheric 

 changes. 



The ingenuity of the meteorologist is baffled, not by 

 obstacles in the way of getting facts, but by the difficulty 

 experienced in conceiving a suitable hypothesis to explain 

 them. Astronomy waited long for its law of gravitation ; 

 chemistry for its atomic theory ; optics for the theory of 

 waves. Meteorology still waits for a Newton, a Dalton, 

 or a Huyghens, whose transcendent genius may be equal 

 to the task of* inventing a theory which will reduce the 

 multitude of its observed facts to scientific order. 



But I have already overstepped the limit of time 

 properly allotted to this discussion, and must hasten to 

 its conclusions. 



In the first place, science, when reduced to its ulti- 

 mate elements, consists of three, which may be desig- 

 nated respectively as a power, a motive, and a faculty. 

 There is the power of the mind to come into conscious 

 contact with nature through the senses ; there is the mo- 

 tive which prompts to observation, which is the love of 

 truth for its own sake ; and there is the faculty of in- 

 vention. 



In the second place, these elements came into human 

 life, one after the other, in the order named, the exist- 

 ence of each being a condition necessary to the intro- 

 duction of the next. To this extent the birth of science 

 was an example of evolution. 



In the third place, science, since its birth, has passed 

 along successive stages of development, from the simple 



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