30 
IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 
’round the planet and is carried into effect at Tientsin and 
Pekin. In direct contrast, unscientific China outspreads 
her bulk like some vast insensate vegetal growth. Under 
attack even at a vital point, she can neither mobilize her 
armies, nor even disseminate a knowledge of the danger 
before it is too late. It has been said by Gfiddings that, 
“objectively viewed, progress is an increasing intercourse, 
a multiplication of relationships, an advance in material 
well-being, a growth of population, and an evolution of 
rational conduct. Subjectively, it is the expansion of the 
consciousness of kind.”* 
In all these respects science has been an accelerating 
force in the evolution of society. Increasing food supply 
by means of scientific agriculture, lengthening life by the 
repression of diseases, and introducing a thousand new 
means of livelihood, it has made possible the extraordinary 
recent growth of civilized nations. It permits the popula- 
tion of Europe to more than double since 1800, and enables 
England, which in the seventeenth century men thought 
too small for its scanty population, to support in compara- 
tive comfort more than 38,000,000 people. It encourages 
the prophecy of Albert Bushnell Hart, that the Mississippi 
valley will sooner or later contain a population of 350,- 
000,000. 
At the same time science has produced a heterogeneity 
of structure. The scientific principle discovered to-day flow- 
ers to-morrow in invention and produces the seeds of social 
arts and crafts. To Volta’s researches in his villa on Lake 
Como 5,000,000 men now employed in the many various arts 
connected with electricity, owe in a measure their livelihood. 
In promoting the development of the complex organs of 
society for the handling of energy, for distribution, and for 
communication, science has constantly been a differen- 
tiating force. 
By the same means it is accomplishing a more and more 
complete integration. The separate life of primitive 
society, the old personal independence, is gone. In the 
^Principles of Sciology, New York, 1896, p. 359. 
