Physical Sciences. 



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the chemist's laboratory. It predicts every change on the dial-plate of 

 the heavens and photographs the falling drop of rahi. It thunders 

 and destroys in all the enginery of modern war. 



An agency such as man never before wielded are the physical sci- 

 ences to-day. As such they bring the whole race to a plane of civil- 

 ization impossible without them. But standing high above the masses, 

 the few explorers see still higher hills, where in coming time shall be 

 a broad highway prepared by patient workers, for those to climb and 

 shout for science who see no use in all the labor till the road is ready 

 for their use. 



While natural science, then, is nothing but an instrument, and one 

 prepared by man, it is an instrument which he prepares for his own 

 use and for his own advancement. It is the means by which one gen- 

 eration rises higher than another, standing upon the towers which the 

 other raised. As an instrument, natural science is like iron that 

 forms the hammer, chisel and anvil, by which other masses of iron 

 can be fashioned into more curious and useful forms; or it may be 

 likened as a whole to two of the most wonderful scientific products, 

 the telescope and microscope, instruments Avhich are the product of 

 thought, but when once fashioned opening new fields of thought as 

 they bring within our view the extremes of the universe — the wonders 

 of the heavens and of a single drop. 



As an instrument, as the product of civilization, we would now 

 inquire into the relations of natural science to the permanency and 

 progress of the civilization which produced it. Among the greatest of 

 all triumphs of science, in its influence on civilization, are the means 

 which it offers for intercourse among the nations. Men run to and 

 fro, and knowledge is increased in the earth. The iron car thunders 

 along night and day from ocean to ocean, and then the vessels that 

 defy both wind and tide complete the circuit of the globe. And from 

 this great artery of travel branch off" a thousand lines to every portion 

 of the earth. The work of months is thus crowded into days by the 

 forces called into action and directed by modern science. 



And as though these swift messengers were not enough to bring the 

 world into sympathy, science stretches its wires across the continent, 

 sinks cables along the ocean's bed, and now through the water and the 

 air the lightning has become the messenger of thought. Every event 

 of importance in the world becomes upon the same day, if not in the 

 same hour, the subject of thought in every center of civilization on 

 the globe. The thought and impulse of the nations in all questions 

 of universal interest move on together like the hands of the electric 

 clocks in a great city. 



No longer is there danger that any of the important arts will be 

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