RECONSTRUCTION AND RESTATEMENT. 



11 



or so in particular, men's minds have widened. The outlook in 

 the physical, the biological, and the historical sciences subtends 

 a vastly greater angle than heretofore ; while the means of 

 observation have multiplied, the instruments of research are far 

 more powerful and more numerous, and the storehouse of 

 accumulated facts awaiting co-ordination is overwhelmingly full. 

 We have learned both how great the universe is and how small ; 

 what a microcosm after all is the solar system, what a macro- 

 cosm the structure of the atom. We are able to discuss the 

 chemistry of the stars. We can with our own eyes behold the 

 skeleton within a living man, and see his heart beating — can 

 even watch the progress of digestion in certain cases. We have 

 learned how to preserve in permanency accurate automatic 

 pictures of men and of events, and can register and even 

 reproduce the tones of their actual speech. We have seen the 

 air we breathe condensed into a liquid and frozen into a solid. 

 We have been taught how to manufacture light out of electrical 

 discharges. The synthesis by the chemist of organic substances 

 proceeds in an ever-widening circle of triumphs. To-day we 

 can manufacture by synthesis sugar and indigo; to-morrow it 

 may be albumen or cellulose ; protoplasm itself, though it may be 

 far off', is not beyond the possibilities of which the chemist 

 dreams. The mechanical theory of the universe, due to Kepler, 

 and Newton, and Laplace, has been extended by the discovery 

 of the principles of energy, and the formulation of them in the 

 laws of thermodynamics. The sciences of optics and electricity 

 have become one, being parts of the science of the ether. The 

 discovery of the radio-activity of certain elements and minerals, 

 with their singular emanations, has revealed a new and sur- 

 prising field of research. The recognition of the electron has 

 given a new basis to chemical hypothesis ; and Dalton's atomic 

 theory, which won its way by its general correspondence with 

 observed facts, is being swallowed up in a chemistry still more 

 fundamental. 



If the vast complexity and beauty of the universe as it was 

 known to our fathers could excite their wonder and imagination, 

 how much more must ours be excited by the immense and 

 marvellous development that has been opened in our time. 

 But it is not alone in the physical sciences that such develop- 

 ments have come about. Biology has made advances almost 

 equally great. The physical bases of life have been explored 

 as never before. Diseases which formerly baffled the skill of 

 the most experienced physician have been discovered to be 

 due to specific micro-organisms ; and we have learned how 



