WILLIAM B. D WIGHT. 49 



whereas, the fact is, that it is often during those very 

 seasons of lack of popular economical success that she is 

 achieving some of her grandest results, in the accumula- 

 tion of observations, the formulating of natural laws and 

 the sharp discipline of mental habits. 



Thus, during the last thirty or more years, experts in 

 electrical science have, until very lately, been utterly 

 baffled in any attempts to make the electric current 

 practicable in the lighting of streets and buildings. Yet, 

 during all those experiences of material economical re- 

 verses, the science was, all unknown to the popular in- 

 telligence, gaining some of its noblest victories, and win- 

 ning some of its most perpetual laurels in the field of 

 philosophic thought and the mastery of law. And now, 

 as we glance at the galaxies of electric lights which at 

 last brighten our streets and public halls, we are looking 

 at only a small material offshoot from that long line of 

 intellectual achievements of many years. 



This difference and disproportion between the super- 

 ficial and popular apprehension of a subject and its true 

 and deeper philosophy may, perhaps, be made more 

 clear by the following illustration : 



Ask an ordinary observer as to the useful functions of 

 water. He will have no hesitation in enumerating its 

 obvious uses in promoting commerce through navigation, 

 in turning w x ater-wheels, irrigating fields and quenching 

 thirst. But the physicist, whose knowledge of nature is 

 intimate, sees that these few palpable beneficencies are a 

 very small part of the true office and work of water. He 

 sees it pervading all nature through and through ; he sees 

 it to be an essential constituent of a large part of the 

 foundation-rocks of the earth ; he sees that without it 

 almost all natural organisms would be dead and 

 shrivelled ; that it is the great circulatory medium of the 

 solid yet porous globe ; that it controls and modifies 

 every ray of light sent to our sphere ; and that it has been 



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