JERKELEY \ 
 
 IBRARY 
 
 miver:ity of 
 
 CALIFORNIA J 
 

 
THE STUDY 
 
 o$ 
 
 THE PHYSICAL SGIEJNTCES 
 
 THEIR VALUE IN EDUCATION, 
 
 AND THE PAET THEY PLAY IN ADVANCING THE 
 
 CIVILIZATION OF MANKIND. 
 
 AN ESSAY, 
 
 GEORGE D. WOOD, 
 
 LECTURER ON PHYSICAL SCIENCE, QUEEN'S COLLEGE INSTITUTION, WEST 
 
 LONDON COLLEGE, SOUTH HAMPSTEAD COLLEGB, 
 
 NORTH-EAST LONDON COLLEGB, ETC. 
 
 LONDON : 
 F. W. C ALDER, 199, OXFORD STREET. 
 
 MDCCCLXIV. 
 
C8.15I 
 
 W6 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 In this little book the Author has made an 
 attempt to show the importance of the Physical 
 Sciences in promoting education ; and also the 
 substantial value of scientific knowledge under any 
 circumstances in assisting man to play his part 
 happily and worthily. Addressing himself more 
 especially to the enlightened educator and intelli- 
 gent student, he desires to contribute his little 
 offering to the cause of science, by pointing out its 
 attractions and usefulness, from a profound con- 
 viction that the diffusion of such information is 
 desirable, and that the more men understand and 
 appreciate the tendency of science, the better they 
 will perceive what fitting instruments are provided 
 by its teachings for ihe elevation of the human 
 race. 
 
 946 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 In a work designedly elementary, the Author 
 has avoided encumbering his pages with notes 
 and references as unnecessary where the subject 
 matter is limited to the region of recognized facts. 
 The scientific reader, however, will perceive that a 
 more elaborate design might turn to good account 
 many speculations of an interesting character, 
 though scarcely entitled as yet to assume the 
 position of established principles. 
 
 The Author's obligations are generally indicated 
 in the text ; but he is indebted to " Tate's Philo- 
 sophy of Education," for the idea of the illustra- 
 tions of simple reasoning in the second chapter. 
 
 The Author has only to add that, in the treat- 
 ment of his theme, he has acted mainly upon 
 the suggestions of his experience 'as a teacher of 
 science, 
 
 Winchester Street, Pimlico, 
 January, 1864. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 SCIENCE AND EDUCATION. 
 
 Necessity of studying physical science. A scien- 
 tific age. What modern science has done for 
 Man. General ignorance of science. Causes of 
 this ignorance. Prejudices and their origin. 
 On teaching science ------ 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SCIENCE DISCIPLINES THE INTELLECT. 
 
 Value of training. Study of scientific truths an 
 excellent mental discipline. Wonders of science 
 rouse and interest the young and promote per- 
 ceptive power. Illustrations of simple reasoning. 
 The Inductive and Deductive process con- 
 trasted. First fruits of scientific studies 10 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 SCIENCE WARS AGAINST SUPERSTITION. 
 
 Superstition. Crusade against witchcraft. Origin 
 of superstitions and fallacies. Evils arising from 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 superstition. Direct influence of science. Indi- 
 rect influence. Are religion and poetry ad- 
 vanced by superstition ?- - - - - 16 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SCIENCE THE INTERPRETER OP NATURAL PHENOMENA. 
 
 Curiosity natural to the young. Dies unless cared 
 for. Phenomena connected with Astronomy, 
 Meteorology and Chemistry. Value of an early 
 introduction to nature's laws 24 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE A NECESSITY. 
 
 Practical advantages of scientific knowledge. Dan- 
 gers that surround us in an age of scientific 
 applications. Knowledge a protection in ques- 
 tions of ventilation, water, fire, moviog bodies, 
 coal gas, poisons and food 29 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 SCIENCE REFINES AND ELEVATES. 
 
 Beauty of natural phenomena often striking and 
 obvious The poetry of science illustrated by 
 the story of a raindrop, and the wonderful history 
 of two pebbles. Lessons from lichens and mosses. 
 The natural history of a piece of iron - - 34 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 SCIENCE ILLUSTRATES MAN'S GREATNESS. 
 
 Science assist us in the study of human nature. 
 Courage of Pliny, Galileo, Columbus, Franklin, 
 
CONTENTS. Vll 
 
 Davy and Stephenson in scientific investigation. 
 Illustrations of perseverance, modesty and 
 patience. Man's capacity as shown in the pro- 
 gress of modern science. Scientific triumphs - 45 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SCIENCE SHOWS THE CREATOR IN HIS WORKS. 
 
 Erroneous opinions of scientific tendencies. Man's 
 imperfect notions of the Infinite. Beneficent 
 action of nature's laws. Science by elevating- 
 man gives him a higher conception of the Deity. 
 The attributes of the Almighty. Use of appa- 
 rent evils in promoting man's civilization. 
 Conclusion ----- . - 54 
 
THE 
 
 PHYSICAL SCIENCES 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 SCIENCE AND EDUCATION. 
 
 NECESSITY OF STUDYING PHYSICAL SCIENCE. A SCIENTIFIC AGE. 
 WHAT MODERN SCIENCE HAS DONE FOR MAN. GENERAL 
 IGNORANCE OF SCIENCE. CAUSES OF THIS IGNORANCE. 
 PREJUDICES AND THEIR ORIGIN. ON TEACHING SCIENCE. 
 
 " What is man, 
 If his chief good and market of his time 
 Be but to sleep and feed ? a beast no more. 
 Sure He that made us with such large discourse, 
 Looking before and after, gave us not 
 That capability and godlike reason 
 To fust in us unused." 
 
 Shakspeare. 
 
 In addition to those branches of learning which are 
 recognised as valuable agents in the education of the 
 young, we should certainly include the scientific laws 
 or principles which are the fruit of the Baconian philo- 
 sophy. 
 
 No one who studies the present age and its tendencies 
 can fail to perceive the intimate relation that the modern 
 development of science bears to the industrial arts, and 
 
* THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 the numerous applications of scientific discovery and 
 invention for the promotion of man's comfort and pro- 
 sperity ; but its relation to many other important matters 
 is not so obvious. The age is pre-eminently a scientific 
 one, as all the world knows. "If we are asked," says 
 Dr. Lardner, "by what characteristic the present age 
 will be marked in future records, we answer by the 
 miracles which have been wrought in the subjugation 
 of the powers of the material world to the uses of the 
 human race." Every day the action of these prac- 
 ticable applications becomes more powerful. Science 
 is not now confined to the speculations of philosophers. 
 It is rapidly setting its mark on society, moulding our 
 habits, controlling our politics, and influencing even 
 religious controversy. The humblest enjoy the advan- 
 tages afforded by its innumerable applications : the 
 thoughtful find mental food in its speculations at once 
 relishing and invigorating ; the poet, themes in its 
 marvellous revelations, for grand epics; while the 
 moralist points to its examples of harmony and bene- 
 ficent design, and bids us be mindful of the great 
 Architect and contemplate his handywork reverently. 
 Upon this point let us listen to the eloquent summary 
 of Macaulay : " Ask a follower of Bacon what the 
 new philosophy, as it was called in the reign of Charles 
 II. , has effected for mankind, and his answer is ready. 
 It has lengthened life ; it has mitigated pain ; it has 
 extinguished diseases ; it has increased the fertility of 
 the soil ; it has given new securities to the mariner ; it 
 has furnished new arms to the warrior ; it has spanned 
 great rivers and estuaries with bridges of form unknown 
 to our fathers; it has guided the thunderbolt inno- 
 cuously from heaven to earth; it has lighted up the 
 night with the splendour of the day ; it has extended 
 
GENERAL IGNORANCE OF SCIENCE. 3 
 
 the range of human vision ; it has multiplied the power 
 of human muscles ; it has accelerated motion ; it has 
 annihilated distance ; it has facilitated intercourse, cor- 
 respondence, all friendly offices, all despatch of business; 
 it has enabled man to descend to the depths of the sea, 
 to soar into the air, to penetrate securely into the 
 noxious recesses of the earth, to traverse the land in 
 cars which whirl along without horses, and the ocean in 
 ships which run ten knots an hour against the wind. 
 These are but a part of its fruits, and of its first-fruits. 
 For it is a philosophy which never rests, which has 
 never attained, which is never perfect. Its law is 
 progress. A point which yesterday was invisible is its 
 goal to-day and will be its starting point to-morrow." 
 
 No one can doubt that we should consider it a matter 
 of importance to acquire some knowledge of that which 
 has invested man with such wonderful powers, and 
 indeed there are abundant signs of some such feeling, 
 but that the study is neglected to an extraordinary 
 degree is certain. The Dean of Hereford, speaking upon 
 this subject, says : " It is a fact almost unaccountable, 
 and certainly curious to reflect upon, how few there are, 
 even in any class of life, educated or uneducated, who 
 are acquainted with the philosophical principles of those 
 things which they see in action every day of their lives, 
 and which are in so many ways administering to the 
 wants of social life, truths easily understood when 
 explained by experiments, and so important in them- 
 selves to mankind, that the names of the discoverers of 
 them are handed down from one generation to another 
 for the admiration of future ages, and as the great 
 benefactors of their species." 
 
 There can be no better authority upon this point than 
 the Dean ; and we may conclude it to be a fact that what 
 
4 THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 should be the most attractive of all studies has not as 
 yet enjoyed the attention it deserves ; and it may be 
 worth while to investigate the cause, although the cir- 
 cumstance, in the language of the writer quoted, is 
 " curious and almost unaccountable." 
 
 If we look at the state of our educational establish- 
 ments, we shall doubtless learn something of it. Dr. 
 Lancaster says: " The young are too frequently kept 
 in ignorance of the wonders and beauties around them ; 
 and, whilst encouraged to learn many languages and 
 read many books, they remain unacquainted with the 
 bright volume of Creation, the pages of which are 
 daily and hourly unrolled before them, written in the 
 only language which has gone forth to the ends of the 
 world unaffected by the confusion of Babel." 
 
 The inertia of all institutions of this kind may partly 
 account for this. Science has made such rapid strides 
 that schools have been unable to keep pace with it ; and 
 the difficulties incident to changes and the introduction 
 of new and untried branches are often so considerable, 
 the attachment of teachers to the routine of their own 
 school curriculum, sanctioned by time-honoured usage, so 
 natural, that even the principal universities in England 
 have scarcely as yet made any earnest attempt to en- 
 courage the cultivation of science, and to this day 
 attach more importance to the manufacture of Latin 
 and Greek verses than to Chemistry or Geology. 
 
 A second cause lies in a misconception of science and 
 its objects. The very word suggests to many some- 
 thing hard, dry, and technical, fit only for philosophers 
 who, prolific in learned words and speculations, are 
 barren in human sympathies. But what is the fact? 
 Science is literally the knowledge of truth, and every- 
 body consequently is scientific in some degree. Its 
 
CAUSES OF IGNORANCE. 
 
 range is wide enough, its scope vast enough to embrace 
 so much that, while at one moment it explains the 
 rationale of the simplest operation, at another it over- 
 whelms us by the grandeur and comprehensiveness of its 
 revelations ; that, while on the one hand, some questions 
 exact the utmost precision and unwearying patience to 
 reach but dry results, on the other, the great proportion 
 demand so little effort, and are invested with so much 
 that is beautiful and interesting, that a very moderate 
 acquaintance with science is sufficient to show how 
 accessible are its teachings, and how little they deserve 
 to be characterised either as abstruse or unattractive. 
 
 No doubt science itself has provoked some of the 
 prejudices against it through its association with so 
 many technical terms. These are indeed numerous 
 enough and hard enough to impede the study of 
 science ; placed, too, at the very gates, as if by their 
 forbidding aspect to warn off all intruders, they are 
 responsible for much error and one-sided opinion. 
 Their use need not be discussed here : the discouraging 
 influence they exercise upon beginners is a serious 
 matter ; but it should be borne in mind that, however 
 useful and necessary technical terms may be in their 
 place, they are not for beginners, and are neither so 
 important nor so difficult as is commonly supposed ; 
 and that it is quite possible to know a great deal of 
 scientific truth without possessing the nomenclature of 
 the initiated. A child, for instance, can distinguish a 
 round table from a square one ; pick out the largest 
 apple from a heap, count ten, add, subtract, and 
 multiply before it can make a figure on paper, or has 
 heard the word Mathematics. A beginning is made in 
 Mineralogy when we know chalk from coal, or silver 
 from copper ; in Optics, when we know red from yellow ; 
 
b THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 of Chemistry, when we discover our tea dissolves sugar, 
 but not teaspoons, or that the fire burns tops but not 
 marbles ; of Astronomy, when we know the sun from the 
 moon ; and in like manner with Botany, Zoology, and 
 Geography. We get acquainted with the elements of 
 language, history, and morals after the same fashion, 
 and at the same early date. 
 
 Simple and obvious as all this is, it has been almost 
 constantly overlooked. Every man, woman and child 
 has some knowledge of scientific truth, and prac- 
 tises the inductive philosophy of Bacon too. " The most 
 ignorant clown, by this species of reasoning," says 
 Macaulay, u concludes that if he sows barley he shall not 
 reap wheat." The grand laws or generalizations of 
 science are reached by processes as humble. Bacon only 
 pointed out what all the world had instinctively practised 
 from the beginning. The reasoning that leads a child 
 to avoid putting its finger in the fire is of a piece with 
 that which added Neptune to the solar system. 
 
 Two useful conclusions may be drawn from the 
 foregoing remarks : first, that the young should not 
 be required to learn scientific terms and technical 
 phraseology till they are sufficiently advanced to really 
 require them ; and next, that in studying science we 
 do but carry on systematically the instinctive processes 
 of our childhood, and gather more accurate and more 
 varied knowledge in proportion to our exertions. 
 
 Again, science requires the voice of the living teacher. 
 Many of the best and most carefully prepared manuals 
 on scientific subjects result only in making them, how- 
 ever interesting naturally, enigmatical and distasteful. 
 Such compilations are of necessity miserably inadequate. 
 A grand principle, that demands, let us say, half-an- 
 hour of verbal illustration and demonstration, dismissed 
 
ON TEACHING SCIENCE. 7 
 
 in two or three lines. One stereotyped definition for 
 all capacities, when the teacher can invoke the aid of 
 simple language, pleasing illustration, and the ready 
 diagram, can be precise or discursive, matter of fact or 
 figurative, as he finds useful, and bring in a host of 
 useful adjuncts ; for the tone of voice, a wave of the 
 hand, or a glance of the eye, even may be significant in 
 a demonstration. Faraday can find in the chemistry 
 of a common candle matter enough for six interesting 
 lectures ; in a school book it would probably be dis- 
 missed in as many lines. Let us look at a book of this 
 class, arranged upon the plan of question and answer. 
 In the seventeenth edition of this little work devoted to 
 the inculcation of science, we find the question, " Why 
 does flame tend upwards?" Answer: " Because it is 
 specifically lighter than air." Another on the same 
 subject runs, il Why does the tallow of a lighted 
 candle ascend towards the flame ?" The answer is a 
 wonderful one, " Because the wick performs the office 
 of a sponge, and incessantly pumps up the tallow that 
 melts and evaporates according as combustion decom- 
 poses it. " Here the unfortunate pupil who is nourished 
 on such aliment as this, is supposed to know the office 
 performed by a sponge, and, therefore, to comprehend 
 without further waste of words the law of capillary 
 attraction telling him the tallow is pumped up is 
 leading him astray, pumps not depending for their 
 action upon capillary attraction, but the pressure of the 
 atmosphere. After this we have three technical terms, 
 evaporation, combustion, and decomposition, employed, 
 to say the least, in a reckless fashion and without the 
 slightest regard to the capacity of the youthful mind in 
 this pursuit of knowledge under difficulties. 
 
 No wonder science is pronounced difficult and un- 
 
8 THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 interesting. Any thirst for knowledge that should 
 survive a course of several hundred questions, more or 
 less like those looked at, would be wonderful indeed. 
 Books of this description, however, are the worst of the 
 class. In recent times very carefully arranged manuals 
 have been produced of a very different stamp ; and for 
 those sciences in which description is an important ele- 
 ment, as Astronomy, Physical Geography and Zoology, 
 accurate and simplified introductions like Chambers', 
 Dr. Lardner's, Page's, and Sir John Herschel's, are 
 really useful. As, however, the greater number of the 
 best scientific works written for general use are ad- 
 dressed to adults, they are, notwithstanding their high 
 character, unsuitable for the young, often ignorant of 
 the most elementary principles and definitions, and a 
 preparation is necessary to render such works of real 
 service. This initiation into science should include 
 two things knowledge of broad and essential principles, 
 and the development of a taste for reading scientific 
 books, which will then not only be easily comprehended 
 but heartily relished, and ultimately a power will be 
 developed for the independent exercise of mind and 
 observation. 
 
 This preparation and early training, it has been 
 observed, must be the work of the living teacher. It 
 is his duty to summon the youthful student to nature's 
 banquets, to feast on dainties that delight but never 
 satiate ; and to encourage the natural, instinctive desire 
 to know by which he can do so much. Let him point 
 out one by one the grand and instructive teachings of 
 Physical Science. Let him speak of the majesty, the 
 harmony, the subtle relations, the surpassing beauty 
 of Nature's Laws, and he will not speak uselessly. 
 Demonstrations that abound in examples of infinite 
 
ON TEACHING SCIENCE. y 
 
 wisdom and beneficence must needs, by strengthening 
 the reason, encouraging a love for truth, and raising his 
 thoughts to Nature's great Master, prepare the student 
 for his conflicts in the battle of life ; and when the 
 judgment is in danger of being swayed by fancies, or 
 warped by prejudice, of rusting through neglect or 
 cankering through the poisonous action of a vitiated 
 moral atmosphere, such early lessons will not be for- 
 gotten ; and when staggering under the weight of an 
 imperious, selfish will, or reeling from the assaults of 
 his own hurtful passions, he needs help and guidance, 
 the disciplined reason and the honest love of truth for 
 truth's sake, acquired by familiarity with the principles 
 and teachings of the great world of matter, will quicken 
 his torpid conscience, strengthen his religious con- 
 victions, and help him to direct his steps aright in the 
 perilous path of life. 
 
10 THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SCIENCE DISCIPLINES THE INTELLECT. 
 
 VALUE OF TRAINING. STUDY OF SCIENTIFIC TRUTHS AN EXCEL- 
 LENT MENTAL DISCIPLINE. WONDERS OF SCIENCE ROUSE AND 
 INTEREST THE YOUNG AND PROMOTE PERCEPTIVE POWER. 
 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SIMPLE REASONING. THE INDUCTIVE AND 
 DEDUCTIVE PROCESSES CONTRASTED. FIRST FRUITS OF SCIEN- 
 TIFIC STUDIES. 
 
 " The whole period of youth is one essentially of formation, 
 edification, instruction. I use the words with their full weight 
 in them ; in taking of stores, establishment in vital habits, hopes 
 and faiths. There is not an hour of it but is trembling with 
 destinies, not a moment of which, once past, the appointed 
 work can ever be done again, or the neglected blow struck on the 
 cold iron." 
 
 Kuskin. 
 
 In the great work of Education, actual acquirements 
 must be considered subordinate to the training which 
 tends to form good habits and to develop and discipline 
 the intellectual faculties ; so that the future man may 
 be able to observe, compare, and finally attain the 
 power of thinking and acting for himself. 
 
 Locke says: "We are born with faculties and 
 powers capable of almost anything, such at least as 
 would carry us further than can be easily imagined ; 
 but it is only the exercise of those powers which gives 
 us ability and skill in anything, and leads us towards 
 perfection." 
 
SCIENCE AN AGENT IN TRAINING. 11 
 
 Education, then, is essentially a work of developing 
 and training faculties, and carried on by various agencies, 
 having the triple object of attaining the nearest possible 
 approach to moral, mental, and physical perfection. 
 The study of science may be considered as one of the 
 most valuable of these agents, particularly in training 
 the most important of the knowing faculties, perception 
 and reason. A late writer on the philosophy of 
 education, says: "Physics exercise the observing and 
 perceptive faculties, cultivate all the reasoning powers 
 in the highest degree, and lead us to appreciate the 
 force of moral evidence." 
 
 Confining our attention, in this chapter, to the 
 assistance the study of science affords in promoting 
 these two objects, let us first consider in what way the 
 perceptive power would be influenced. 
 
 For the young, it is obvious that the kingdom of 
 nature affords the widest possible scope for gratifying 
 the instinctive desire to see. The earth on which we 
 stand, with its countless objects, animate and inanimate, 
 is full of wonders which the child longs to examine. 
 These natural objects seem peculiarly well adapted for 
 the exercise of observation and exciting a thirst for 
 knowledge. Plants and animals are so accessible, and 
 possess so many elements of interest, that the attention 
 of the young is aroused and sustained by the number of 
 attractions presented to them, and if encouraged, they 
 will soon learn to appreciate the works of nature 
 generally, and from the contemplation of leaves, flowers 
 and fruits, of birds, fishes and insects, extending their 
 range of vision, take in with exalted powers the 
 glory and beauty that surround them. They will not 
 only see but feel the influence of the rippling brook, 
 the loud-voiced ocean, the impetuous torrent, and the 
 
12 THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 silent, ever-moving glacier ; the secrets of natural 
 phenomena will one by one be revealed, design and 
 beneficence mingling with every beauty, and the con- 
 trolling hand of the Almighty everywhere. They will 
 see a thousand sights and feel a thousand sweet 
 influences denied to the uninitiated ; and well has the 
 poet said : 
 
 " With, tender ministrations thon, Nature, 
 Healest thy wandering and distracted child ; 
 Thou pourest on him thy soft influences, 
 Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets, 
 The melody of woods, and winds, and waters : 
 Till he relent, and can no more endure 
 To be a jarring and dissonant thing 
 Amidst the general voice and minstrelsy, 
 But bursting into tears wins back his way, 
 His angry spirit healed and harmonized 
 By the benignant touch of love and mercy." 
 
 Closely connected with the power of perception is 
 that of reasoning. This depends upon the ability to 
 see the relations of things ; and, as science affords 
 numberless forms of these relations, we cannot advance 
 a step without encountering them. A few simple 
 examples will be sufficient to show that science furnishes 
 us with an excellent practical system for developing 
 logical acumen and a power of generalization : 
 
 EXAMPLES. 
 
 I. One ball will go into a hole, another will not. 
 
 Inference : Second ball is larger than the first. 
 
 II. John can lift a chair, but not the table. 
 
 Inference : The table is heavier than the chair. 
 
 III. The kettle on the fire with water in never burns. 
 Inference : Heat is carried off by the steam. 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS OF SIMPLE REASONING. 13 
 
 IV. A walks 4 miles while B walks 8. 
 
 Inference : B walks twice as fast as A. 
 
 These are extremely simple and elementary, but 
 exercises of this kind form the very alphabet of reason- 
 ing and prepare the way for something higher. Let us 
 consider experiments and investigations somewhat more 
 difficult. 
 
 I. Bed lead heated gives off oxygen gas. 
 
 Inference : Bed lead contains oxygen. 
 
 II. f 1. Bespiration vitiates the air by removing 
 oxygen. 
 
 2. Man requires oxygen. 
 Inference : Ventilation necessary. 
 
 III. j 1. Iron heated, increases in bulk. 
 
 ( 2. Hot water requires more space than cold. 
 Inference (generalization) : Heat expands 
 matter. 
 
 IV. j 1 . Pendulums swing more slowly at the equator 
 than in 45 degrees lat. 
 
 2. Pendulums swing faster at the arctic circle 
 than in 45 degrees lat. 
 
 3. But pendulums obey the attractive force of 
 the earth. 
 
 4. Then the attraction of the earth at the 
 surface varies. 
 
 5. But attractive force is equal at equal dis- 
 tances. 
 
 6. Then the equator is further from the centre 
 of the earth than either the 45 degrees lat. 
 or polar regions. 
 
 7. And (final inference) the earth is not a 
 
 PERFECT SPHERE. 
 
14 THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 By a process of this kind, drawing conclusions from 
 ascertained facts, then making use of the newly dis- 
 covered principle to reach a higher generalization, 
 almost all our knowledge of nature's laws has been 
 obtained. A simple inference of this kind laid the 
 foundation of modern Astronomy. Copernicus, ob- 
 serving that the planet Mars varied in brilliancy, con- 
 cluded that its distance from the earth was subject to 
 variation, in opposition to the theory of the ancients, 
 that the planets moved round the earth in circles of 
 which the earth was the centre. 
 
 We owe this modern system of investigation or the 
 Inductive process to Lord Bacon. Since his time, 
 the physical sciences have made astonishing progress, 
 and we have learned more of the earth and its organi- 
 zation during the last two centuries, than was acquired 
 during thousands of years previous, when a different 
 system prevailed. If we contrast the two processes, we 
 shall find no difficulty in understanding the cause ot 
 this. The Inductive method, as laid down by Bacon 
 himself in his great work, the Novum Organum, " raises 
 axioms from sense and particulars, by ascending con- 
 tinuously, and step by step, so that the most general 
 axioms are arrived at in the last stage." The De- 
 ductive method," from sense and particulars, flies to 
 the most general axioms, and from those principles, 
 and their never- questioned truth, judges of, and derives 
 intermediate axioms" very like what, in an ordinary 
 way, we call jumping to a conclusion ; and we see how 
 much of the Astronomy of the ancients was derived 
 after this fashion. Thus, because the sun is to the 
 east in the morning and west in the evening, their 
 conclusion was that the sun had moved over the space 
 
THE INDUCTIVE METHOD. 15 
 
 while the earth stood still. Something of the same 
 process gave many of the ancients their pagan deities. 
 Seeking causes for natural phenomena, they assumed 
 that the winds were under the control of Eolus, the 
 ocean was calmed or excited by Neptune, and Jupiter 
 launched the thunderbolts which Vulcan forged in 
 Mount Etna. 
 
 Fallacies and superstitions of all kinds, indeed, are 
 the natural product of the swift process that leaps at 
 one bound to a sweeping generalization, and not only in 
 physical science should the deductive method be 
 shunned ; in every investigation that aims at attaining 
 truth, whether physical, political, logical or ethical, the 
 process of slow and careful inference can alone be relied 
 on. From the ruler, whose wisdom or folly is the 
 happiness or misery of millions, to the humblest 
 guardian of his own private thoughts and actions, all 
 alike have need of truth ; and how much of error, 
 wrong-headedness, folly, misery and misrepresentation, 
 are to be ascribed to this vicious practice of leaping 
 away from it. True, the deductive process has occa- 
 sionally helped man in his labours ; with sudden 
 inspiration he has seized a truth; but who would not 
 rather choose to rely upon the regular fruits of his 
 steady industry, than to wander here and there for the 
 chance of picking up a bag of gold by the way -side ? 
 and it must be important for us to know that, in all the 
 relations of life, the only safe foundation for opinions 
 and sound judgment is a solid substratum of facts and 
 " intermediate axioms." 
 
 At the very outset, then, of our studies on science, 
 results of an important nature in their bearing upon 
 the education of the mind and its formation are 
 produced : 
 
16 THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 1st. We have the encouragement of perception with 
 its collateral advantages : namely, a greater power of 
 storing up facts and ideas, and a more genuine, because 
 better understood, admiration for the beauties of nature. 
 
 2nd. Scientific investigation depending so completely 
 on the relation of cause and effect, is a tangible and 
 fruitful system of reasoning, appealing to every degree 
 of intellectual power, and equally useful for giving order 
 and method to the labours of the student, prudence and 
 foresight to the man of action, and power and coherence 
 to the arguments of the philosopher. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 SCIENCE WARS AGAINST SUPERSTITION. 
 
 SUPERSTITIONS. CEUSADE AGAINST WITCHCBAFT. ORIGIN OF 
 SUPERSTITIONS AND FALLACIES. EVILS ARISING FROM SUPERSTI- 
 TIONS. DIRECT INFLUENCE OF SCIENCE. INDIRECT INFLUENCE. 
 ARE RELIGION AND POETRY ADVANCED BY SUPERSTITION? 
 
 " Natural science lias a great influence on the more advanced 
 conceptions of the recognition of a God, by banishing from the 
 rank of free agents those natural objects which had been formerly 
 worshipped, and submitting them to the laws of nature; for, 
 when the car of the Sun- God rolls on without his guidance, the 
 belief in his existence disappears." Oersted's Soul in Nature. 
 
 Superstitions assume many forms ; some sinking into 
 mere fallacies, others elevating themselves into religious 
 dogmas ; some comparatively harmless creations of 
 poetry ; others, acquiring the proportion of deeply- 
 rooted beliefs and usurping the functions of reason, have 
 
CRUSADE AGAINST WITCHCRAFT. 17 
 
 from time to time impelled men and communities to 
 commit atrocities which the enlightened humanity of a 
 later age contemplates with mingled feelings of wonder 
 and horror. It would be hard to find a more prolific 
 source of evil than superstition, as we may see by con- 
 sidering the consequences that flowed from the belief in 
 witchcraft that prevailed in the most civilised part of 
 the world down to the beginning of the eighteenth 
 century. 
 
 In 1484 Pope Innocent issued a bull which inaugu- 
 rated a crusade against witchcraft. The persecution 
 thus sanctioned produced results that are truly appalling. 
 Without dwelling upon the miserable state of that com- 
 munity in which innocent men were utterly at the 
 mercy of unscrupulous enemies who might make an 
 accusation the instrument of their secret hate, the 
 agonising tortures inflicted to extort confessions from 
 the unhappy sufferers, the fevered state of men's minds 
 that made them, the victims of self-delusion, confess 
 their supposed guilt; it is sufficient to know, that 
 during the 250 years that followed the issue of the bull, 
 4000 were put to death in Scotland, 30,000 in England, 
 while in Germany a moderate calculation gives 100,000 
 men, women and children burnt to death at the stake ! 
 
 Such are the fearful results of ignorance and an 
 unrestrained, undisciplined imagination; for, though 
 ignorance is the one great cause of error, it often 
 requires the stimulating influence of an excited imagi- 
 nation to produce enormities of this terrible character. 
 Curious and instructive it is to reflect upon the anta- 
 gonistic action of this last-named faculty, so potent for 
 both good and evil. It brightens with golden hues the 
 gloomy shadows of weary life, but often the shadows 
 themselves are its offspring. It paints with many 
 
 c 
 
18 THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 colours ; now light and roseate as the dawn, now dark 
 and terrible as blackest midnight. In the following 
 lines the poet shows how imagination may promote 
 man's happiness when it awakens his secret sympathies 
 for the beautiful : 
 
 " Whate'er adorns 
 The princely dome, the column or the arch, 
 The breathing marbles, or the sculptured gold, 
 Beyond the proud possessor's narrow claim, 
 His tuneful breast enjoys. Tor him the spring 
 Distils her dews, and from the silken gem 
 Its lucid leaves unfolds; for him the hand 
 Of autumn tinges every fertile branch 
 With blooming gold, and blushes like the morn 
 Each passing hour sheds tribute from her wings 
 And loves unfelt attract him. Not a breeze 
 Flies o'er the meadow not a cloud imbibes 
 The setting sun's effulgence not a strain 
 From all the tenants of the warbling shade 
 Ascends, but whence his bosom can partake 
 Fresh pleasure, unreprov'd." 
 
 But, while this is true, we know the poet might with 
 equal truth paint imagination as a fruitful source of 
 error and misery. Allied with ignorance and unre- 
 strained by reason, it has produced a countless host of 
 fallacies and superstitions which have inflicted evils on 
 suffering mankind enslaving men's minds and yoking 
 them to horrible forms of paganism, stifling their aspi- 
 rations, obstructing their progress, and even degrading 
 and corrupting the heaven-born teachings of Christ. 
 
 Bearing these things in mind, we may now consider 
 whence certain forms of superstition were derived, and 
 in what way science may claim to be their natural 
 antagonist. 
 
 A large proportion of superstitions are connected 
 with natural phenomena, and ar^se from the common 
 
ORIGIN OF SUPERSTITIONS. 19 
 
 tendency of man to ascribe them to supernatural causes. 
 The first savage that burnt his fingers would naturally 
 suppose fire to be a species of malignant spirit. Light- 
 ning, winds, meteors, volcanoes, earthquakes, inun- 
 dations, the growth of plants and the movements of 
 heavenly bodies, would be regarded as so many manifes- 
 tations of different powers. In the mythology of the 
 Greeks and Romans we see this systematised, and, 
 mingled with the deification of men, assume the pro- 
 portions of a gigantic polytheistic paganism. Christi- 
 anity set aside the direct worship of pagan deities, but 
 not altogether the belief in their existence ; for fairies, 
 magicians, gnomes, mountain spirits, goblins and what 
 not, have a strong family likeness to the naiads, dryads 
 and other inferior deities of the ancients. We may 
 see, too, how unaccountable maladies led to a belief in 
 witchcraft, the evil eye and satanic agency. Remnants 
 of paganism, again, give us the superstitions connected 
 with many animals. The astronomer, Tycho Brahe, 
 always turned back if a hare crossed his path, and 
 Shakspeare, who illustrates superstitions very often in 
 his works, makes Lady Macbeth say, 
 
 " The raven himself is hoarse 
 
 That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan 
 Under my battlements." 
 
 The power of science in uprooting superstitions 
 more or less pernicious is shown in the following 
 examples : 
 
 When men were struck dead on entering cellars that 
 had long been closed, there arose the notion that ser- 
 pents called basilisks took up their abode in them, and 
 could kill with a look. Science tells us these other- 
 wise mysterious deaths are owing to an accumulation of 
 
20 THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 carbonic acid gas. Of the same character was the 
 belief of miners, who imagined that evil spirits threw 
 them down and suffocated them. Again, because 
 lightning sometimes destroyed life, men assumed that 
 it indicated the judgment of an angry God. Science, 
 thanks to Franklin, has demonstrated it to be elec- 
 tricity, and as natural a phenomenon as the descent of 
 rain. Showers of blood, investigated by science, assume 
 the harmless character of red fungi, or swarms of insects. 
 The death-watch alluded to in Gay's line, 
 
 " The death- watch, ticked the hour she died," 
 
 and even now a very common superstition, is nothing 
 more than the ticking noise of a small beetle. 
 
 Pestilences are now understood to owe their origin to 
 neglect of sanitary laws, rather than the vindictive act 
 of an offended deity. Spectral illusions are now ascribed 
 to the working of a diseased imagination, or are simply 
 due to the same peculiar action of the atmosphere which 
 produces looming of coasts, the mirage of deserts, and 
 phantom ships. 
 
 Perhaps no science has contributed so much to the 
 great work of combating superstition as Astronomy. 
 The time was when the most extraordinary influence 
 was ascribed to the moon, planets, and other heavenly 
 bodies. The sun exercised an action over diseases of 
 the heart, mouth and throat epilepsy and brain fevers 
 plants of various kinds gold and certain precious 
 stones, all singing birds, and all shell fish. The moon 
 ruled all diseases of the eyes silver and pearls the 
 dog, the cat and the mouse all water birds eels, 
 crabs and lobsters. Pliny prescribes the time of the 
 full moon for sowing beans, and that of the new moon 
 for lentils ! and at the present day it is a maxim among 
 
ASTRONOMY COUNTERACTS SUPERSTITION. 21 
 
 gardeners, that cabbages which are desired to shoot 
 early, flowers which are to be double, and trees which 
 are to produce early fruit, should severally be sown, 
 planted and pruned during the decrease of the moon ; 
 but trees which are expected to grow with vigour, 
 should be planted and pruned during the increase of the 
 moon. Comets too, in all ages and among all nations, 
 barbarous and civilized, have operated powerfully on 
 the imagination, and been regarded with inexpressible 
 awe and terror. The comet of 1486 spread such alarm 
 throughout Europe, in consequence of a belief that its 
 appearance presaged the approaching domination of the 
 Turks, that Pope Calixtus thought proper to direct 
 the thunders of the Church against the enemies of the 
 faith, terrestrial and celestial, and in the same bull 
 exorcised both the Turks and the comet. In addition 
 to these precautions, the bells of all churches were 
 ordered to be rung at noon, and it is said that in some 
 the practice of ringing them every day is still preserved. 
 
 How much we are indebted to astronomy for relieving 
 us from the incubus of such awe-inspiring, panic- 
 producing beliefs as these, we may perceive, if we con- 
 trast them with the effect these fiery visitors produce on 
 minds taught to see in them, not harbingers of famine, 
 pestilence, or impending woe to mankind, but beautiful 
 and regular bodies, subject to controlling forces, and 
 well calculated, by their resplendent beauty and mysteri- 
 ous nature, to produce powerful impressions of the 
 greatness of Him who sends them on their mission. 
 
 The direct conflict of science with certain beliefs has 
 tended to throw discredit upon others whose nature 
 does not admit of direct confutation. The belief in 
 omens, dreams, charms, lucky and unlucky days, are 
 of this class ; and our credulity in such matters will be 
 
22 THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 in an inverse ratio to our knowledge of nature's 
 laws. 
 
 Some very common superstitions are so utterly irra- 
 tional, that is quite astonishing common sense does not 
 throw them off. These, like most forms of superstition, 
 assume a gloomy, foreboding character, that must im- 
 press the mind injuriously. We may instance, spilling 
 salt, so pleasantly satirised by Addison. " Do you re- 
 member, child," says the foolish woman in the Spectator 
 to her husband, " that the pigeon house fell the very 
 afternoon that our careless wench spilt the salt upon 
 the table?" "Yes, my dear," replies the gentleman; 
 ' ' and the very next post brought us an account of the 
 battle of Almanza." Among these irrational beliefs 
 may be included the howling of dogs, thirteen at table, 
 the sight of two or three magpies, and many others 
 equally ridiculous. 
 
 If these were simply harmless absurdities, little need 
 be said ; but as it is well known that their diffusion can 
 be but hurtful, as tending to create an impression that 
 man is subject to a host of malignant influences from 
 which he is very likely to suffer, science, by accustom- 
 ing men to require something more like the relation of 
 cause and effect before obtaining credence, may be 
 welcomed as perhaps the only effectual means we possess 
 for destroying them. 
 
 " Oh," but some say, " science is so prosaic; it 
 makes war upon our poetry, and tends to develop 
 materialism." No doubt science destroys some pretty 
 conceits. She tells us, for instance, that diamonds are 
 mere lumps of coal: the poet's fancy makes them 
 angel's tears congealed as they fall on a cold and sinful 
 world. But science has poetry too, with this advantage, 
 that, whilst it is infinitely grander than the fictions of 
 
SUPERSTITION NO AID TO RELIGION. 23 
 
 the imagination, it is true. In coal, the philosopher 
 sees stored up for the use of man the light and heat of 
 the sun when it shone in ages that have long since 
 rolled away. A lump of coal speaks to him of ancient 
 forests, of strange tropical-looking plants ; he sees in 
 luxuriant confusion tree-like mosses, gigantic ferns, 
 stunted, palm-like zamias, scale trees and graceful 
 horsetails ; he knows their blended trunks were crushed 
 and buried at vast depths, forest after forest, to store 
 up for him through countless ages the warmth, light, 
 and steam-power of to-day: and he feels the poetry and 
 sublimity of these things, while he values them as 
 grand truths, secrets wrested from nature by the earnest 
 toil of her admirers and interpreters. 
 
 Occasionally we meet with good men who entertain 
 an opinion that superstitions are in some measure use- 
 ful in the cause of religion, and that their powerful 
 action produces results closely allied to those deep- 
 seated feelings of helplessness and dependence which it 
 is the province of religion to awaken. This opinion is 
 generally based on the belief that science is cold, rigid, 
 material, and more or less antagonistic to revelation. 
 Were these men better acquainted with the matter, 
 they would be convinced that science, by the grandeur 
 of her teachings, by giving us truths for fictions, is far 
 more likely to promote the cause of true religion than 
 superstition. Science gives us conceptions of a God 
 all-powerful, beneficent, and unchangeable. Supersti- 
 tion appeals to our terrors, and substitutes chance or 
 fate as the presiding deity of the universe, and would 
 make man the sport of circumstances, fighting unseen 
 enemies. 
 
 Eeligion has surely nothing to gain by thus allying 
 herself with error. By doing so she incurs a double 
 
24 THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 danger the one of seeing the logical and incredulous 
 throw off her dogmas with the fallacies associated with 
 them ; and the other, her own inevitable degradation 
 and corruption through the pernicious influence of the 
 superstitions she fosters. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SCIENCE THE INTERPRETER OF NATURAL PHENOMENA. 
 
 CURIOSITY NATURAL TO THE YOUNG. DIES UNLESS CARED TOR. 
 PHENOMENA CONNECTED WITH ASTRONOMY, METEOROLOGY 
 AND CHEMISTRY. VALUE OF AN EARLY INTRODUCTION TO 
 NATURE'S LAWS. 
 
 "Man, a creation endned with mighty faculties, but a 
 mystery to himself, stands in the midst of a wonderful world ; 
 and an infinite variety of phenomena arise around him in strange 
 forms and magical disposition, like the phantasma of a restless 
 night." Hunt's Poetry of Science. 
 
 In the breast of every human being there seems an 
 instinctive desire to know. The insatiable, lively 
 curiosity of a child to learn something of what is 
 going on in the world, at that age so full of wonders, 
 is a well-known and striking characteristic. It asks a 
 thousand questions. The man who should undertake 
 to answer them must needs be well informed. Rang- 
 ing through all the physical sciences, they relate to 
 the sun, moon, and stars ; rain, snow, wind, thunder 
 and lightning; burning, dissolving, boiling, growth, 
 decay, death ; astronomy, meteorology, chemistry, 
 the little enquirer wants to know everything. How 
 soon this curiosity flags, and but too often dies, we all 
 
man's incuriosity. 25 
 
 know ; and Faraday, npon the general absence of this 
 knowledge-seeking instinct, says, " How wonderfully 
 we stand upon this world ! Here it is we are born, 
 bred and live ; and yet we view these things with an 
 almost entire absence of wonder to ourselves respecting 
 the way in which all this happens." 
 
 This incuriosity at a later period of existence arises, 
 no doubt, partly from the mind being engrossed by the 
 cares and occupations of a busy life, and also from the 
 want of sympathy that the young too often experience 
 in their earnest questionings. They grow up more and 
 more familiar with phenomena that are now accepted 
 as something of course, and with a thorough indif- 
 ference to even the most wonderful. Questions of 
 transcendent importance are either unheeded, or, if 
 capable of exciting a momentary interest, the paths to 
 scientific knowledge are found too thorny to be trodden 
 with pleasure, and even too hidden to be found. 
 
 Surely, no one doubts that a lively interest in 
 natural phenomena is a healthy symptom, in accord- 
 ance with the first spontaneous action of the mind and 
 infinitely to be preferred to that unnatural and con- 
 ventional state of feeling which regards these things 
 with supreme indifference, or insinuates that they are 
 questions which ordinary persons have neither the time 
 nor the power to discuss. And although it is quite 
 true that many scientific investigations are too intricate 
 for the uninitiated, yet the greater number of the prin- 
 ciples or laws established by the labour of the last two 
 or three hundred years may be easily digested. Many 
 of these are connected with natural phenomena ; and 
 three important branches of science, Astronomy, 
 Meteorology, and Chemistry, embrace questions of deep 
 interest for the general student. 
 
26 THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 The importance, indeed, of Astronomy in the educa- 
 tion of youth seems obvious. The phenomena discussed 
 in this science are the most wonderful, the most 
 beautiful, and yet among the most common. When 
 the young have secured such elementary knowledge 
 as the simple facts relating to the magnitudes, periods 
 and relative positions of the bodies composing the solar 
 system, they may then pass to the phenomena that 
 depend upon the earth's movements, the rising and 
 setting of heavenly bodies, the sun, moon, planets 
 and stars, the length of day, change of seasons, as 
 also the moon's phases and eclipses. When such 
 subjects as these have been considered, the student 
 surveys the great law of attraction, the fountain of 
 the wondrous controlling power that regulates with 
 precision the motions of the heavenly bodies and their 
 complex relations. The laws of Newton and Kepler 
 will nourish his mind on aliment well fitted, indeed, to 
 strengthen it ; and soon with increased powers he, an 
 atom of creation, will pass on to the intelligent con- 
 templation of the majesty and glory of the Almighty's 
 greatest works. 
 
 The phenomena of Meteorology are also of an 
 interesting character. Our well-being is so intimately 
 bound up with heat and cold, rain, snow, wind, light- 
 ning and tempests, that men in all ages seem to have 
 paid some attention to the subject, though without 
 gaining much. In modern times, however, suc- 
 cess has rewarded constant, intelligent investigation 
 of nature's working ; and we now know, as Dr. 
 Arnott says : '< Even the wind and rain, which in com- 
 mon speech are the types of uncertainty and change, 
 obey laws as fixed as those of the sun and moon ; and 
 already, as regards many parts of the earth, man can 
 
METEOROLOGY AND CHEMISTRY. 27 
 
 foretell them without fear of being deceived. He plans 
 his voyages to suit the coming monsoon, and prepares 
 against the floods of the rainy season." 
 
 Although meteorological laws are complex, and 
 some are still in the region of hypothesis, many beau- 
 tiful principles may be considered with advantage. 
 Facts connected with the distribution of rain, hail, 
 snow, direction and character of winds, hurricanes, 
 lightning, heat, &c. ; optical appearances, as the rain- 
 bow, mirage, may be first acquired. Next the prin- 
 cipal agents in their production, as heat in relation to 
 wind, electricity to thunderstorms, light to the rainbow, 
 and other optical phenomena should be investigated. 
 The wonderful, complex, but beautiful, machinery for 
 distributing fresh water may then be comprehended by 
 considering the harmonious action of various powers in 
 nature. Evaporation, cloud-formation and distribu- 
 tion, action of winds, discharge of electricity, and 
 finally, the descent of rain, constitute a very interest- 
 ing sequence of natural phenomena, brought into play 
 to furnish fifty millions square miles of land with fresh 
 water necessary for the life of animals and plants. 
 
 Chemistry also furnishes solutions to much in nature 
 that appears inscrutable. The grand principle of 
 chemical attraction being understood, it is compa- 
 ratively easy to comprehend that the union or sepa- 
 ration of elements, under certain conditions, is the 
 cause of fire burning, metals rusting, or wood decay- 
 ing ; that breathing, like combustion, is the union of 
 oxygen and carbon; while fermentation, in brewing 
 and wine-making, is a kind of decay. Oxygen, the 
 most wonderful and most widely diffused element 
 known to chemists, appears to be the most active 
 agent in the astonishing transformations that take 
 
28 THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 place every hour. It is ever busy decomposing hard 
 rocks, crumbling stubborn metals like iron into dust, 
 removing carbon from our lungs, tearing animals and 
 plants into pieces when life has left them, feeding our 
 fires with a stream of aliment, transforming the sweet 
 juice of the grape into wine, and souring even the 
 wine. A constant and irresistible power, itself invi- 
 sible, tasteless, scentless, it is found everywhere, and 
 appears to do almost everything ; without it man could 
 not breathe, fire burn, plants grow, or a leaf decay ; 
 an element whose special mission seems to be destruc- 
 tion, but which really destroys in order to build up. 
 
 Marvellous, yet inevitable, inference from chemical 
 discoveries ! The whole world of life is constantly 
 renewed from the ruins of the past. Plants and animals 
 live and die, and live and die again. The coal we 
 burn one day may form leaves, flowers and fruit 
 another. There is death in order that there may be 
 life. Nothing is ever really destroyed, nothing lost. 
 Every atom is wanted in the economy of nature, and 
 there is neither waste nor superfluity. 
 
 Such revelations do we get from chemistry when we 
 seek knowledge of the material world and her agents ; 
 and surely the consideration of such things is calculated 
 to quicken the apprehension and prompt it to intel- 
 ligent observation of phenomena ; and, while extracting 
 profit from the teachings of even little things, a mind 
 is gradually developed powerful enough to grasp the 
 meaning of complex relations, and elevated enough to 
 appreciate their glorious harmony. 
 
THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 29 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE A NECESSITY. 
 
 PRACTICAL ADVANTAGES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. DANGERS 
 THAT SURROUND US IN AN AGE OF SCIENTIFIC APPLICATIONS. 
 KNOWLEDGE A PROTECTION IN QUESTIONS OF VENTILATION, 
 WATER, FIRE, MOVING BODIES, COAL, GAS, POISONS AND FOOD. 
 
 " The man of civilization, if he be ignorant, is in the midst of 
 dangers. The artificial cookery tempts with many things of 
 which the constant use may be hurtful. He lives in a house with 
 close-shutting windows and doors which prevent ventilation ; 
 while fires and lamps, and other sources of impurity, are con- 
 stantly generating aerial poisons where the knowledge necessary 
 to secure perfect ventilation is very uncommon." 
 
 Dr. Arnott. 
 
 Some knowledge of the physical sciences will also be 
 found directly advantageous, and even necessary, as 
 a protection ; for ignorance is certainly a source of 
 weakness and danger. How many constantly violate 
 nature's laws to their own serious injury by the neglect 
 of the most ordinary precautions ! Experience, too, 
 shows that so long as there is no immediate evil result 
 simple admonitions are addressed to deaf ears. Only 
 when men perceive the danger will they do their best 
 to keep out of it. Let them comprehend, for instance, 
 that to breathe poisoned air is injurious, and they will 
 attend to the ventilation of their apartments and do 
 their utmost to battle with those insidious, invisible, 
 
30 
 
 THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 but potent, enemies of man, carbonic acid gas and 
 sulphuretted hydrogen. Very little knowledge in some 
 of these things would often save men from sudden 
 destruction. Carbonic acid gas is heavy, and often 
 accumulates in shut-up cellars, wells and sewers. No 
 one can breathe it, and any one descending into a well 
 in which it has accumulated, has less chance of coming 
 out alive than if he entered the den of a tiger. It is 
 not, however, in this violent manner that noxious 
 gases exercise their most pernicious effect, but 
 rather by slowly undermining the health and breeding- 
 terrible maladies. The frightful plagues of history 
 were, doubtless, mainly due to the universal ignorance 
 and neglect of sanitary laws ; and even now it is well 
 known that, as a rule, the ignorant classes have a 
 positive prejudice against opening doors and windows 
 to ventilate their rooms, and in our hospitals stringent 
 rules have been necessary to combat the dislike to fresh 
 air on the part of the nurses. 
 
 Water also may be so charged with minerals or 
 organic matter as to be seriously unwholesome ; and, 
 although it cannot be expected that everybody should 
 analyze the water he drinks, it is often easy to perceive 
 conditions which are certain to render it impure. 
 
 We sometimes hear of death arising from the igno- 
 rant use of fire, as burning charcoal in an unventilated 
 room. Were it universally known that the principal 
 product of combustion is carbonic acid gas, sad accidents 
 of this kind would be avoided ; but without some know- 
 ledge of scientific principles, we see nature's best gifts 
 air, water, and fire, become agents of destruction ; and 
 as every day adds to the number of scientific applications, 
 introduced to promote man's comfort and well-being, 
 this kind of knowledge becomes more and more a 
 
DANGERS OF IGNORANCE. 31 
 
 necessity. At home or abroad we are attended by new 
 and artificial circumstances of the greatest value to 
 the community, but not to be trifled with. Ignorance 
 in these matters is not only the absence of a certain 
 kind of power, it is equivalent to a position of danger, 
 and may entail most serious evils. On railways, for 
 instance, we see hundreds heedlessly court mutilation 
 or death, by leaving trains when in motion. Warnings 
 and expostulations seem to be useless, and the most 
 frightful accidents even are insufficient to put a stop to 
 the practice. 
 
 Lives, too, are sacrificed and property destroyed 
 through the ignorant and careless use of coal gas. The 
 public are usually at first too fearful of its powers for 
 harm; but, when familiarity has divested it of its 
 terrors, they pass to the other extreme and become 
 heedless. Indeed it may be observed as characteristic 
 of the ignorant, that their minds are extreme in their 
 tendency, unreasonably timid or prejudiced, or just as 
 unreasonably careless and indifferent. 
 
 The reckless and dishonest use of poisons in this 
 civilized age, involves dangers not easily guarded 
 against. In some instances poisons enter into the 
 composition of preparations, hurtful it may be, but not 
 necessarily expected to be so ; in other cases, and these 
 by far the most numerous, the utmost dishonesty and 
 recklessness of consequence are displayed, and men, for 
 the sake of gain, coolly poison by wholesale. In the 
 first class may be included the use of certain dyes and 
 pigments. A most brilliant green colour prepared 
 from arsenic and copper is employed for wall papers, 
 and several cases are on record of its injurious action. 
 A late analysis by a chemist yields thirteen grains from 
 a surface of six inches square, a sufficient quantity to 
 
32 THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 kill two persons. Artificial leaves and light fabrics are 
 often charged with this active poison to an alarming 
 degree. Dr. Letheby's analysis of one artificial leaf 
 shewed the presence of a grain and a half, enough to 
 kill a child. It was lately asserted by a good authority 
 that there is sometimes enough arsenic in a ball dress 
 to poison a dozen people, and, from the manner of 
 its use in the form of fine powder, it readily escapes 
 into the atmosphere. 
 
 Many food preparations are shamefully adulterated 
 as late analyses by the Lancet prove. Poisons are em- 
 ployed to colour sweatmeats and pickles. Bread, milk, 
 malt liquors, wines and even the very drugs upon 
 whose purity our lives may depend, are all often 
 adulterated with substances more or less hurtful. Legis- 
 lative enactments are utterly unequal to the duty of 
 checking these gigantic evils ; and it is therefore left to 
 the individual to take what measures he can to protect 
 himself against the systematic attacks of the unscrupu- 
 lous, who thus endanger his life by sapping the founda- 
 tions of health. 
 
 If knowledge of these things be of advantage in 
 assisting us to protect ourselves against the attacks of 
 such malignant influences, so must it be in many 
 matters that depend not upon others but upon ourselves. 
 Our knowledge of self-guardianship is shown by the 
 attention we pay to the laws of health. We can do 
 that for ourselves which none can do for us, and if we 
 are ignorant we shall often breathe air that is impure, 
 take food that is unwholesome, and fall into irregular 
 habits as regards eating, sleeping, exercise, work and 
 recreation ; but the intelligent man who comprehends 
 how complex a piece of machinery his physical frame 
 is, and what conditions are necessary to the preservation 
 
SELF- PROTECTION. 33 
 
 of health, will quietly regulate the action of his life to 
 the conditions nature imposes. To this end he will 
 endeavour to live on plain, wholesome food, duly varied, 
 to secure ventilation for his apartments, to take regular 
 exercise, to work moderately, to sleep seven hours 
 a day, to avoid extremes of heat or cold, to preserve 
 a quiet, cheerful mind, and to seek now and then a 
 change of scene. 
 
 Few things in this world, it will be allowed, are 
 more valuable than good health ; and as man's civiliza- 
 tion has undoubtedly tended to multiply diseases, it is 
 satisfactory to think that we are approaching a higher 
 civilization in which science will exercise her influence 
 in sweeping many of them away. 
 
34: THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES . 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 SCIENCE REFINES AND ELEVATES. 
 
 BEAUTY OF NATURAL PHENOMENA OFTEN STRIKING AND OBVIOUS. 
 THE POETRY OF SCIENCE ILLUSTRATED BY THE STORY OF A 
 RAINDROP, AND THE WONDERFUL HISTORY OF TWO PEBBLES. 
 LESSONS FROM LICHENS AND MOSSES. THE NATURAL HISTORY 
 OF A PIECE OF IRON. 
 
 "He, therefore, who amid the discordant strife of nations 
 would seek intellectual repose, turns with delight to contemplate 
 the silent life of plants, and to study the hidden forces of nature 
 in her sacred sanctuaries ; or, yielding to that inherent impulse 
 which for thousands of years has glowed in the breast of man, 
 directs his mind, by a mysterious presentiment of his destiny, 
 towards the celestial orbs which, in undisturbed harmony, pursue 
 their ancient and eternal course." 
 
 Humboldt. 
 
 Man lives in a world inexhaustible in its varied 
 beauty, to which he is attracted by an instinctive 
 sympathy. The grand features of Nature impress 
 him deeply, even when unprepared by education for a 
 due appreciation of her hidden beauty and mysterious 
 workings. The glory of the setting sun, the awe- 
 inspiring majesty of towering mountains -, the wild roar 
 of the ocean waves, the rushing cataract, the changing 
 cloud, the running brook, the golden harvest, excite 
 by turn emotions of veneration, of gladness, or of 
 hope in the breasts of most men ; but the cultivation of 
 an intimate acquaintance with the natural sciences 
 alone will develop that elevated condition of mind 
 
STORY OF A RAIN-DROP. ^0 
 
 which perceives beauty and poetry in a thousand appa- 
 rently insignificant objects, and possesses the power, 
 
 " To trace in nature's most minute design, 
 The signature of power divine." 
 
 No phenomenon is more common than the fall of 
 rain, and none apparently less likely to furnish an 
 illustration of admirable and complex working. Every 
 Raindrop, however, has a history which we may profit- 
 ably investigate. At one time it is a fractional portion 
 of the great ocean, that glorious mirror 
 
 "Where the Almighty's form 
 Glasses itself in tempests ; in all time, 
 Calm or convulsed in breeze, or gale, or storm, 
 Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime 
 Dark -heaving ; boundless, endless and sublime 
 The image of eternity." 
 
 Now this drop may, with other countless companions, 
 rush along the shores of the western world in the 
 track of the Gulf Stream, seeking in vain an entrance to 
 the Pacific. Passing by Newfoundland, and contri- 
 buting to the fogs of that inhospitable land, it crosses 
 the Atlantic, and by its warmth, before returning 
 to the equator, elevates the temperature of Western 
 Europe and softens the rigours of our own winter. 
 Escaping from its companion drops, it assumes a new 
 condition, and, transformed into a thousand airy bubbles, 
 soars aloft in another sphere of action. Assuming 
 new functions, as haze, fog or cloud, these particles 
 traverse the air, and before their reunion may glorify 
 the heavens with fantastic beauty, lour in threatening 
 gloom, or launch upon the earth a thunderbolt. Its 
 serial career ended, and again a drop of water, it paints 
 
 2 D 
 
36 THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 while descending a bow of transcendent beauty npon 
 the sky, and is soon busy with a new round of duties 
 on the thirsty earth; it fertilises the soil, sustains the 
 drooping life of plants and animals ; it is by turns the 
 sap of a tree, the juice of the ripe grape, the nectar of 
 flowers, or as a dewdrop it 
 
 " Sows the earth with orient pearL" 
 
 Imprisoned in earthly bonds for a time beneath the 
 surface, after traversing long subterranean passages, it 
 at last bursts forth joyously in a bubbling spring of 
 pure water, and rolls along a river-bed on its way 
 home. Restless even there, and ever moving to new 
 scenes, it seeks the neighbourhood of the pole, is 
 captured by King Frost, and being congealed into a 
 solid particle, finds repose in an iceberg until the 
 moment when the disposer of its destiny its rightful 
 sovereign, the sun shall burst its bonds and restore 
 its freedom. 
 
 Our imaginary drop of water might, under other 
 circumstances, assume the form of a Snow-flake, each 
 composed of a number of regular six-sided crystals. In 
 many parts of the earth snow falls on mountains ; and 
 as, in the Gulf Stream, our drop of water elevated the 
 temperature, it may now usefully assist in cooling the 
 sun- scorched regions of the tropics. Passing into the 
 condition of glacial ice, those wonderful ice rivers 
 slowly descending the sides of mountains at the rate of 
 a few inches a day 
 
 " Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice 
 And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge ! 
 Motionless torrents ! Silent cataracts ! " 
 
 it slowly, but surely, grinds the mountain to powder 
 
HISTORY OF TWO PEBBLES. 37 
 
 ere, liquid once more, and exulting in its recovered 
 liberty, it 
 
 " From rock to rock leaps with delirious bounds 
 Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent 
 With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful rent." 
 
 Perhaps there is nothing more utterly common than 
 a Pebble. Look at it, however, for it has a history. 
 It is a piece of flint, or, it may be, granite, rounded or 
 waterworn, and such stones are found in all parts of 
 the earth variously distributed ; on the banks of rivers 
 and lakes, on the sea -shore, scattered over plains as 
 at Crau, in Provence, on mountains seven thousand 
 feet above the level of the sea ; in the Alps and in 
 Norway there are mountains themselves formed, in 
 a great measure, of them ; and, consequently, however, 
 humble and insignificant as a single stone, the natural 
 history of fragments that collectively under the name of 
 gravel occupy so much of the earth's surface may not 
 be wanting in elements of interest, and we may dis- 
 cover with the poet, 
 
 " Sermons in stones." 
 
 Here is a small stone, a piece of granite, smooth, 
 rounded, and lying with countless others, all presenting 
 the same general characteristics, but varying in size 
 from stones weighing a pound or two to minute frag- 
 ments no larger than small shot, and associated with 
 very small angular grains called sand. Where do these 
 stones come from ? Geologists tell us that granite is 
 an igneous rock ; so our pebble was once a portion of a 
 glowing red-hot mass tossed up by volcanic action from 
 below to form when cooled the towering, snow-crowned 
 
38 THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 mountain peak of a Mont Blanc, or of some sturdy, 
 defiant ocean rock. Glaciers, mountain torrents, or the 
 waves of stormy seas exercise their powers of destruc- 
 tion, and break off pieces of various shapes and sizeS. 
 Rolled in the bed of a torrent, or slowly carried down 
 by the sluggish ice-fall, our pebble finds itself, after 
 numberless buffets and much rough usage, urged along 
 by the tranquil current of a gently flowing river in its 
 tedious and often interrupted course to the sea, where 
 the companionship of others detached from the ocean 
 rock awaits it. Shorn of its angularities and much 
 polished by foreign travel, no rest comes till the sea 
 bed, uplifted above the restless waves, forms dry land, 
 and then, at peace in some pleasant valley, the ocean- 
 tossed wanderer may be usefully employed in filtering 
 the water that the earth receives from the descending 
 rain, till, after myriads of ages, its repose is disturbed 
 by utilitarian man, who ignores its claims to any respect 
 on the score of its eventful history ; and the stone that 
 commenced its career by sharing the grandest and most 
 terrible phenomena of earth's fiery action ; whose re- 
 miniscences are of lofty mountain peaks, foaming tor- 
 rents, and stormy seas ; may find itself at last an 
 insignificant but useful unit in the pebbles of a garden 
 walk. 
 
 Is our pebble of flint, then the story is different. No 
 fires, mountain peaks, or glaciers are connected with its 
 less eventful career. Its origin is lowly. Though hard 
 enough now, it was once held in solution by the water 
 of a sea and was as unlike a stone as possible. Later, 
 its particles find themselves strangely associated with a 
 plant-like animal living on the sea bed, and called a 
 sponge. When the sponge dies the flint particles quietly 
 take possession, and uniting into a compact substance 
 
HISTORY OF TWO PEBBLES. 39 
 
 behold, a flint. Buried many feet below an enormous 
 accumulation of chalk shells for millions of years, our 
 jjebble's career is tranquil enough. It is at last raised 
 to a more commanding position, and, in a chalk cliff, 
 our friend has a fine opportunity of witnessing the action 
 of water upon yielding chalk. One stormy day which 
 strewed the coast with wreck the cliff fell, and our 
 pebble is free to be the plaything of sportive waves for 
 many a long year. Tossed at length on the beach it is 
 seized by man, who, thinking of his own wants, crushes 
 it to atoms and throws it into a furnace. Having 
 passed through this fiery ordeal it emerges a beautiful 
 transparent substance, and, as glass, commences another 
 and a very different career in the service of its master, 
 and the story of its faithful services is found worthy of 
 being told by the great Cuvier, who says: " It could 
 not be expected that those Phoenician sailors who saw 
 the sand of the shores of Bastica transformed by fire 
 into transparent glass should have at once foreseen that 
 this new substance would prolong the pleasures of sight 
 to the old ; that it would one day assist the astronomer 
 in penetrating the depths of the heavens, and in num- 
 bering the stars of the Milky Way ; that it would lay 
 open to the naturalist a miniature world, as populous, 
 as rich in wonders as that which alone seemed to have 
 been granted to his senses and his contemplation ; in 
 fine, that the most simple and direct use of it would 
 enable the inhabitants of the coast of the Baltic sea to 
 build palaces more magnificent than Tyre and Memphis, 
 and to cultivate almost under the polar circle the most 
 delicious fruit of the torrid zone." 
 
 The hundred thousand kinds of plants that clothe and 
 adorn the world with their infinite variety of beauty and 
 
40 THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 usefulness are sure to secure attention from man, though 
 never to the extent they merit. The manufacturer 
 looks to the vegetable world for his raw material, and 
 heeds but little its beauty ; the botanist, immersed in 
 his technicalities, pores over minute but to him all im- 
 portant details ; the agriculturist interests himself in 
 his ripening crops ; the artist looks out for picturesque 
 effects, and a clump of fern is more important in his 
 eyes than a rich pasturage; the geographer loves to 
 dilate upon the luxuriant vegetation of the torrid zone, 
 the vine, the olives, the orange groves of the sub- 
 tropics, or the gloomy pine forests of the north. Poets 
 have sung of plants ; artists have painted them, and in 
 all time children have played with them. 
 
 The passing emotions, however, of pleasure or admi- 
 ration evoked by these gifts of nature, instructive tribute 
 as they are to the power of plants to gratify an ever- 
 present yearning for intercourse with them, and which 
 with 
 
 "Placid smile 
 Reprove man's feverish strivings, and infuse, 
 Through his worn soul, a more unworldly life 
 With their soft, holy breath," 
 
 are not all surely that is required. This natural, spon- 
 taneous feeling soon passes away, but cherish and 
 develop it from early years and a healthy enduring 
 sympathy with the vegetable world as a whole, flows 
 from the knowledge that the meanest plant has a use, 
 and the lowliest elements of striking beauty. Contem- 
 plate a humble lichen or a sprig of moss with the light 
 of science which but enhances our natural appreciation 
 of the most beautiful plants, while it compels our admi- 
 ration for the apparently insignificant and useless and 
 what do we see ? If we observe the wonderful diffusion 
 
LICHENS AND MOSSES. 41 
 
 of plants and mark Nature's operations, we shall soon 
 perceive the importance of lichens in ensuring this 
 distribution. 
 
 Most plants require soil for their roots, and they 
 consequently cannot flourish on a surface of sand, 
 chalk, gravel, or granite. The lichen, however, is con- 
 tent with a little moisture, and thrives on an old wall, 
 a house side, or a bare rock, rendering them gay with 
 beautiful colours, green, bright orange, or red ; and 
 from its ashes is formed the soil in which nobler but 
 not more important plants root. The minute seeds, 
 too, of fungi, lichens, and mosses favour this pioneer 
 kind of use. Every wind that blows carries their dust- 
 like germs over the wide world, and where they are 
 wanted there they are soon to be found. Give them 
 moisture and they introduce life and all opportunities 
 for life. 
 
 " Lichens and mosses I" says Euskin. " Meek 
 creatures ! The first mercy of the earth veiling with 
 hushed softness its dintless rocks ; creatures full of 
 pity, covering with strange and tender honour the 
 scarred disgrace of ruin, laying quiet finger on the 
 trembling stones to teach them rest. No words that I 
 know of will say what these mosses are. None are 
 delicate enough, none perfect enough, none rich enough. 
 How is one to tell of the rounded bosses of furred and 
 beaming green, the starred divisions of rubied bloom 
 fine filmed, as if the rock spirits could spin porphyry as 
 we do glass ; the traceries of intricate silver and fringes 
 of amber, lustrous, arborescent, burnished through 
 every fibre into fitful brightness and glossy traverses of 
 silken change, yet all subdued and pensive, and framed 
 for simplest, sweetest offices of grace. They will not be 
 gathered like the flowers, for chaplet or love token ; 
 
42 THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 but of these the wild bird will make its nest and the 
 wearied child his pillow. 
 
 " And, as the earth's first mercy, so they are its last 
 gift to us. When all other service is vain from plant 
 and tree, the soft mosses and gray lichen take up their 
 watch by the head-stone. The woods, the blossoms, the 
 gift-bearing grasses, have done their part for a time, 
 but these do service for ever. Trees for the builder's 
 yard, flowers for the bride's chamber, corn for the 
 granary, moss for the grave. 
 
 " Yet as in one sense the humblest, in another they 
 are the most honoured of the earth -children. Unfading, 
 as motionless, the worm frets them not, and the 
 autumn wastes not. Strong in lowliness, they neither 
 blanch in heat nor pine in frost. To them, slow- 
 fingered, constant-hearted, is intrusted the weaving of 
 the dark eternal tapestries of the hills ; to them, slow- 
 pencilled, iris-dyed, the tender framing of their endless 
 imagery. Sharing the stillness of the unimpassioned 
 rock, they also share its endurance ; and while the 
 winds of departing spring scatter the white hawthorn 
 blossoms like drifted snow, and summer dims on the 
 parched meadow the drooping of its cowslip gold, far 
 above, among the mountains, the silver lichen spots 
 rest, star-like, on the stone; and the gathering orange 
 stains upon the edge of yonder western peak reflects 
 the sunsets of a thousand years." 
 
 " What are the teachings of a piece of rusty iron, 
 apparently as unpromising a subject for the poetry of 
 science as could well be named ? True, men recognise 
 the great practical use of iron, but commonly enough, 
 as only the type of the useful and matter of fact ; 
 so that iron age is an expression for hard, prosaic 
 utilitarianism. 
 
A PIECE OF IRON. 43 
 
 Iron is indeed an important metal, considered in this 
 limited light, but a survey of its properties will soon 
 show us matter enough for astonishment that one 
 substance should possess properties so striking and so 
 varied. Man's most willing slave, iron, can be hardened 
 or softened, can become brittle as glass, or flexible 
 enough to write with. It is man's right hand. Pos- 
 sessing iron, he goes forth conquering and to conquer. 
 Tools and cutting instruments give him the mastery of 
 the material world. With iron, man cuts down forests, 
 tills the ground, constructs roads, bridges, houses, 
 ships and machinery ; equally suitable for needles or 
 cannon, great anchors or watch springs, the mason's 
 trowel, the woodman's axe, the blacksmith's hammer, 
 the gardener's spade, the soldier's sword, the pen of the 
 writer, and the tool of the graver, its varied capabilities 
 may well astonish us. 
 
 We owe to iron also our knowledge of remote 
 countries and the power of universal intercourse. The 
 mariner's compass enables us to navigate trackless 
 oceans, and to provide ourselves with the products of 
 every sea and land. Picture to the imagination what is 
 the most common of every-day occurrences, a noble 
 ship freighted with precious commodities and still more 
 precious lives, in the darkness of a stormy night, fear- 
 lessly stemming the waves under the trustworthy 
 guidance of a slender needle of iron, obeying the in- 
 fluence of the distant magnetic pole and what can 
 be more wonderful ? All the gold in the world ten 
 times told is not worth the precious magnetic property 
 
 " That power which like a potent spirit guides 
 The sea- wide wanderers over distant tides." 
 
 Unlike other metals, iron is friendly to man's frame 
 
44 THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 and circulates in his arteries, to invigorate his failing 
 strength and arm it against the attacks of disease. 
 
 Elements of beauty, too, are associated with this 
 metal; for it may be deemed Nature's great colouring 
 agent. To oxide of iron we owe the golden sands of the 
 sea- shore, and the rich brown furrow of the ploughed 
 field. Iron has painted the veins of rich variegated 
 marbles, the violet of Sicily and Spain, the glowing 
 orange and amber of Sienna, and the blood colour of the 
 precious jasper. To iron, agates, cornelians, blood- 
 stones and porphyry owe their richness of hue, and 
 even the dazzling blue of the sapphire and the red of 
 the ruby are painted by the same hand and with the 
 same material. 
 
 Thus does science reveal the secrets around us. 
 Examining some of her teachings, we behold the veil of 
 nature drawn aside and read the history of the Rain- 
 drop, the Pebble, the Lichen, and the Piece of Iron. 
 From it we may comprehend, how much there is in 
 these and kindred themes fitted for the work of counter- 
 acting the influence of worldly life. In communion 
 with nature, our minds are ever striving- to learn her 
 lessons of order, gentleness, patience, and activity. We 
 desire to grasp the hidden springs of her inspiration, 
 and wrestle with her for precious secrets she alone can 
 impart ; and this labour adds to the dignity, as it adds 
 to the happiness of our lives. 
 
THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 45 
 
 CHAPTEK VII. 
 
 SCIENCE ILLUSTRATES HAN'S GREATNESS. 
 
 SCIENCE ASSISTS US IN THE STUDY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 COURAGE OF PLINY, GALILEO, COLUMBUS, FRANKLIN, DAVY AND 
 STEPHENSON IN SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION. ILLUSTRATIONS OF 
 PERSEVERANCE, MODESTY AND PATIENCE. MAN'S CAPACITY AS 
 SHOWN IN THE PROGRESS OF MODERN SCIENCE. SCIENTIFIC 
 TRIUMPHS. 
 
 " Is is surely no mean reward of our labours to become ac- 
 quainted witb the prodigious genius of those who have almost 
 exalted the nature of man above its destined sphere ; and, admitted 
 to a fellowship with those loftier minds, to know how it comes to 
 pass that by univeral consent they hold a station apart, rising 
 over all the Great Teachers of mankind, and spoken of reverently 
 as if Newton and Laplace were not the names of mortal men." 
 
 Brougham. 
 
 Many striking lessons, illustrative of the human 
 mind, are to be learned from the history of man's con- 
 tests with the problems of the material world. Nature's 
 secrets are only to be wrested from her upon cer- 
 tain conditions, involving patience, humility, courage, 
 reverence, loving enthusiam and never-dying perse- 
 verance. Science has her heroes and martyrs. Daring 
 all things, and enduring all things, these men claim 
 our admiration for their gifts, sympathy for their 
 sufferings, and eternal love and gratitude for their 
 contributions to the enlightenment and elevation of 
 mankind. Every quality that can adorn humanity is 
 displayed in their lives. Conspicuous is that cool and 
 daring courage which braves every peril in search of 
 
46 THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 truth. Pliny sacrifices his life while investigating 
 volcanic Vesuvius ; Galileo dares the dungeons of the 
 Inquisition in defence of the new-born astronomy. 
 Columbus encounters the dangers of unknown seas in 
 quest of a western world; Davy nearly loses his life 
 through breathing nitrous oxide, and Van Alsten, of 
 Eotterdam, in 1849, is killed by inhaling hydrogen; 
 George Stephenson decends a coal mine in the dead of 
 the night to test the power of his safety lamp, his 
 instant destruction being the penalty of failure, and 
 Franklin deliberately solves a problem by drawing down 
 lightning from a thunder cloud. Kecords of this kind 
 abound ; and we see men confront in turn the dangers 
 of noxious gases, unknown seas, remote and savage 
 lands, deep mines, balloons, lightning, volcanoes, and, 
 what is harder still, poverty, persecution and the con- 
 tempt of their fellow men, in search of truth. 
 
 Of perseverance, too, we have wonderful examples. 
 Sir W. Herschel, when making a telescope, finished 
 and tried two hundred mirrors before he found one that 
 satisfied him. Newton was occupied seventeen years 
 in demonstrating the great law of universal attraction. 
 Sir J. Herschel expatriated himself for years at the 
 Cape of Good Hope to make a catalogue of the southern 
 stars. Schwabe, during thirty years, made nine thou- 
 sand observations of the sun's spots ; whilst Lalande 
 and Clairaut, computing the disturbing effect of Jupiter 
 and Saturn upon Halley's comet, toiled from morning 
 till night for six months ; sometimes, says Lalande, 
 even at meals, as it was necessary to calculate the dis- 
 tance of the two planets from the comet separately for 
 every degree for one hundred and fifty years. 
 
 There is an inexpressible charm in the association of 
 high capacity and a modest spirit ; and it is pleasant to 
 
MODESTY OF NEWTON. 
 
 I 
 
 meet with instances of men who, godlike in their 
 powers, felt their own insignificance in presence of 
 nature's manifestations. Brewster, in his life of Kepler, 
 says : ' ' He felt his own humility the farther he was 
 allowed to penetrate into the mysteries of the universe ; 
 and, sensible of the incompetency of his unaided powers 
 for such transcendent researches, and recognising him- 
 self as the instrument which the Almighty employed to 
 make known his wonders, he never entered upon his 
 inquiries without praying for assistance from above." 
 And perhaps there is no quality more characteristic of 
 the great Newton than his modesty. One of his latest 
 sayings will be forgotten only when men forget Newton 
 himself. Eeviewing his career : "It seems to me," he 
 said, "that I have been like a child on the sea-shore, 
 picking up here and there a shell or a bright pebble 
 while the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before 
 me." 
 
 So much of patience, modesty, perseverance, and 
 courage have not been without reward. The history of 
 science is a record of brilliant triumphs, and is the best 
 possible demonstration of man's wonderful intellect. 
 Indeed, the most commonplace facts of astronomy, 
 geography, chemistry, and physics abound in illustra- 
 tions of his capacity. The slightest clue is seen to be 
 sufficient to stimulate an investigation that ends in a 
 great discovery, and the most simple instruments are 
 not disdained. Modern astronomy begins with Coper- 
 nicus, whose observation of Mars and its variation in 
 brilliancy led him to doubt and finally to overthrow a 
 system that had been taught for thousands of years. 
 Newton studied the laws of optics by means of soap 
 bubbles. Galileo is said to have been led to the study 
 of the pendulum through observing a chandelier swing- 
 
48 THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 ing in the cathedral of Pisa. A piece of amber attract- 
 ing light substances laid the foundation of frictional 
 electricity ; and the quivering of a frog's leg has given 
 us the galvanic battery, to which we owe new methods 
 of chemical research, the electric light, and the tele- 
 graph. The swinging of a pendulum enables us to 
 show that the earth is not a perfect sphere ; and, a few 
 years ago, Professor Airy employed pendulums to 
 weigh the world we live on. 
 
 How truly grand, too, is the long roll of man's 
 triumphs ! Not, indeed, his triumphs achieved by the 
 sword over his fellow men, but victories over ignorance, 
 prejudice, and superstition ; not the triumphs associated 
 with that hideous strife which glories in destroying 
 commerce, ravaging provinces, sacking towns and 
 villages, and trampling upon the dearest rights of 
 human kind, but the peaceful conquests of mind over 
 matter ; conquests which create instead of destroying, 
 and elevate man instead of degrading him ; which seek 
 rather to satisfy his wants, to feed and clothe him, to 
 alleviate his pains, and to make him happier by making 
 him better. . In the strength of armed men we see but 
 power shared by tigers and wolves ; in the mighty 
 operations of the intellect we see a likeness, an affinity 
 to the great All-knowing Himself, and we may then in- 
 deed say of man with the poet who best understood him, 
 
 " How noble in reason ! how infinite in faculties ! 
 In apprehension how like a God ! " 
 
 And yet, with these powers, he lived for thousands of 
 years in almost total ignorance of what he daily saw 
 around him ; but, guided by sound methods of investi- 
 gation, he has, during the last two centuries, secured 
 an amazing fund of knowledge. In Astronomy he has 
 
ASTRONOMICAL TRIUMPHS. 49 
 
 weighed and measured the earth, defined its motions, 
 and given it an orbit in the solar system ; he has placed 
 the sun in the centre of more than seventy circumvolv- 
 ing worlds, and assigned to Neptune, the most distant, 
 an orbit of twenty thousand million miles and a period 
 of a hundred and sixty-four years ; he has measured 
 Saturn's rays, catalogued the stars, gauged the Milky 
 Way, and filled the universe with stellar groups. Be- 
 sides all these completed labours he predicts the return 
 of comets, foresees eclipses, and habitually corrects his 
 erring clocks and compasses by the aid of heavenly 
 bodies. Jupiter's moons taught him the velocity of 
 light, and that a ray can traverse the ninety-five millions 
 of miles between the sun and the earth in eight minutes, 
 or nearly two hundred thousand miles a second ; a 
 velocity that would carry a flash of light eight times 
 round the earth between two ticks of a clock. 
 
 Of all the wonderful doings of the astronomer, the 
 greatest surely is the discovery of Neptune by calcula- 
 tion. The planet Uranus, being subject to irregularities 
 of movement or perturbations that could not be accounted 
 for by the attractive influence of its neighbours Saturn 
 and Jupiter, it was thought possible that these irre- 
 gularities might be owing to the controlling force of an 
 unknown and more remote planet. Two mathemati- 
 cians, Adams and Leverrier, unknown to each other, 
 occupy themselves in calculating the size, distance, and 
 orbit of the suppositious member of the solar system, 
 and, after months of the most severe labour, Leverrier, 
 on the 31st August, 1846, laid the result of his exer- 
 tions before the French Academy of Sciences. On the 
 18th September, Leverrier wrote to his friend M. Galle, 
 of Berlin, to ask him to direct his telescope to that part 
 of the heavens he pointed out as the probable situation 
 
50 THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 of the unknown planet. The imediate result was the 
 discovery of the distant wanderer that had been tracked 
 so surely. There, in the field of the telescope, was a 
 planet throwing its reflected light upon the earth from 
 the distance of three thousand millions of miles ! 
 
 Wonderful, too, are the discoveries in Optics. The 
 eye is examined, comprehended, its powers increased, 
 or its defects remedied ; a flashing beam of light is 
 caught, subjected to keen scrutiny, and forthwith we 
 know whence Nature derives her varied hues ; that red 
 light means 37,640 undulations of we know not what 
 in an inch, yellow 44,000, and blue 51,110. Chemistry 
 lends a helping hand here, and informs us that the 
 very light which falls upon yonder oak of a thousand 
 summers is not lost. Whilst promoting vital action it 
 is stored up in the tree's tissues, and may be developed 
 by burning ; and the coal of our familiar hearths, won 
 from the gloomy depths of the earth, is the sunlight of 
 millions of years ago ; the bright light and tropical 
 heat of a primaeval sun absorbed by these buried 
 primaeval forests. 
 
 Chemistry in modern times is a long series of im- 
 portant discoveries. No longer seeking the philoso- 
 pher's stone, the universal panacea, or the elixir of life, 
 chemists content themselves with the patient and close 
 observation of matter in all its forms, and the results, 
 am lytic and synthetic, are wonderful. We have bril- 
 liant dyes from gas tar that might astonish an ancient 
 Tyrian, fragrant perfumes from the most noisome sub- 
 stances, lustrous metals from clay, potash, and common 
 salt. We know that combustion, fermentation, and 
 respiration yield the same gas ; that coal is chemically 
 the same as the diamond ; that sapphires, rubies, and 
 topazes are but coloured clay; amethysts and corne- 
 
GEOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY. 51 
 
 Hans flint; while opals are made of flint and water. 
 Chemistry assists man in numberless arts, in extracting 
 metals, dying and bleaching, glass and porcelain 
 making, tanning, soap-making, and even in brewing, 
 bread-making, and distilling. Chemistry has also in- 
 creased the supply of food by developing agriculture, 
 improved the health by pointing out the necessity for 
 ventilation and showing the nature of the subtle atmo- 
 spheric influences around us ; and our freedom from the 
 frightful pestilences that in former times ravaged Eu- 
 rope is doubtless a result of chemical knowledge, for 
 the modern physician, armed with mightier powers, 
 grapples more successfully with disease. 
 
 How wonderfully, again, in recent times has the 
 earth's surface been explored, and, like a panorama, 
 opened to our gaze. Men of various nations have 
 aided the great work. Diaz discovers the Cape, and 
 Vasco de Gama doubles it. Columbus, Pinzon, Magel- 
 lan, Cabot, Hudson and Baffin reveal a New World 
 in the west; Cook, La Perouse, Bass and Vancouver 
 explore the South Seas ; Ross, Parry, Franklin and 
 M'Clintock brave the dangers of polar ice ; while a 
 host of adventurous travellers, like Humboldt, Bruce, 
 Park, Atkinson and Livingstone, have penetrated into 
 the interior of great continents. 
 
 But the earth has other mysteries besides those on 
 the surface. It is a great book, and men yearned 
 to read the pages as well as scan the binding ; the 
 great stone record written in a language of which 
 no one as yet knew even the alphabet. Smith, Buck- 
 land, Lyell, Murchison, Ramsay, and many others, 
 have deciphered many of these pages containing the 
 history of the earth's changes during millions of years. 
 Duringt his long roll of ages, a world once crude and 
 
52 THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 shapeless, has become beautiful and varied. Fire has 
 tossed up mountains and slowly heaved up continents. 
 Water has accumulated strata miles in thickness, 
 buried forests, or destroyed land. At one time the 
 seas swarm with strange fishes and reptiles ; the land is 
 clothed with forests of more than tropical luxuriance, 
 a strange labyrinth of huge ferns, mosses, sigillarias and 
 zamias. Millions of years pass by and all is changed. 
 An arctic clime prevails. In Britain, even, glacial 
 ice, year after year, winds round the hills and strews 
 the valleys with stones, while the mammoth elephant 
 and the cave bear roam in the woods. Time rolls on, 
 change succeeding change. Whole continents rise and 
 fall the restless waves break the land into islands 
 rivers cut deep channels on their journey to the sea 
 animals leave their traces everywhere : in the chalk of 
 South Britain, the sands of the Sahara, the limestone 
 of the Paris basin, the polishing slate of Germany, the 
 nummulitic hills of North America, the coral rock of 
 the South Seas, and, indeed, the entire crust of the 
 earth speaks everywhere of life that is passed away, 
 thousands of species passed away for ever, for the races 
 themselves are dead. 
 
 As it has been so it is now. Air, fire, water, snow 
 and ice, plants and animals play their parts. Land 
 changes its level, animals and plants die out ; here the 
 sea wears the land and there heaps up strata ; and while 
 the unthinking mortal sees in the earth a type of 
 stability and permanence, the eye of the geologist, 
 scanning the unrolled record of countless ages, sees 
 there written in unfading characters words that repre- 
 sent the history of this rolling world in all time 
 creation, existence, destruction an eternal round of 
 changes, in meet harmony with the pathless orbit of 
 
 
THE STEAM ENGINE. 53 
 
 the earth itself, in her ever-beginning, ever-continuing, 
 yet never-ending journey round the sun. 
 
 Most striking and most conspicuous, too, are those 
 instances in which man appears to subjugate matter to 
 the control of his mil, and to sweep from his path, 
 by well-directed knowledge, obstacles that seem to 
 forbid all advance. Not content with the organisation 
 of such physical powers as he himself possesses, he 
 calls in the aid of air, water, fire, steam and galvanism. 
 The steam-engine is the Hercules of our day, or the 
 good genius of the Arabian tales a marvellous com- 
 bination of pistons, cylinders, wheels, bands, rods, and 
 valves that we feed on coal and water a machine that 
 never tires, and wants no sleep ; that works in all 
 climates, and at any kind of work propelling ships, 
 dragging railway trains, grinding, sawing, pumping or 
 spinning. A machine more like a fabled monster in 
 its tremendous powers, and yet obedient to the mere 
 touch of its master's hand, doing the work in Britain 
 alone of millions of men. It toils in our factories, car- 
 ries our letters, prints our newspapers, distributes our 
 merchandise, drains marshes, ploughs, threshes, grinds, 
 and helps to guard our shores. Potent for good and 
 evil, at once the slave and the master of man, for he 
 cannot now do without it, the steam-engine is the 
 grand invention of an era that has produced the 
 electric telegraph, gas-lighting, electro-plating, photo- 
 graphy, and such engineering triumphs as the draining 
 of the Haarlem Sea, the Thames Tunnel, the Tubular 
 Bridge over the Menai Straits, and underground rail- 
 ways. 
 
 As illustrative of man's mental power, his scientific 
 progress is significant ; and when we remember that, 
 in the recesses of his mind, there exist nobler faculties 
 
54 THE. PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 still, speaking a higher language, furnishing sublimer 
 impulses, controlling, softening, and hallowing all 
 thoughts and all deeds, we are reminded of that passage 
 of the Hebrew writer: " Thou hast made him but a 
 little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him 
 with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have 
 dominion over all the works of thy hand ; thou hast 
 put all things under his feet." 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SCIENCE SHEWS THE CREATOR IN HIS WORKS. 
 
 ERRONEOUS OPINIONS OF SCIENTIFIC TENDENCIES. MAN'S IM- 
 PERFECT NOTIONS OF THE INFINITE. BENEFICENT ACTION OF 
 NATURE'S LAWS. SCIENCE BY ELEVATING MAN GIVES HIM A 
 HIGHER CONCEPTION OF THE DEITY. THE ATTRIBUTES OF THE 
 ALMIGHTY. USE OF APPARENT EVILS IN PROMOTING MAN'S 
 CIVILIZATION CONCLUSION. 
 
 " Though I cannot with eyes of flesh behold the invisible God, 
 yet I do, in the strictest sense, behold and perceive by all my 
 senses such signs and tokens, such effects and operations as 
 suggest, indicate, and demonstrate an invisible God." 
 
 Berkley. 
 
 Of all the questions in connection with the physical 
 sciences, the most important, undoubtedly, are its 
 relations to the teachings of religion and our conception 
 of God. At various times it has been asserted that 
 science deposes the Almighty from His throne and 
 relegates Christianity to the domains of superstition ; 
 and the influence of this feeling has occasionally excited 
 
PREJUDICE AGAINST 
 
 in the minds of good Christians a distrust of science, 
 that assumes the form of deep-rooted prejudice against 
 its labours. The noblest of the physical sciences. 
 Astronomy, has had an immense amount of suspicion 
 and hostility to encounter in the course of its progress, 
 and it was only little by little that its teachings were 
 acknowledged as in no sense likely to clash with any 
 doctrine higher than the ingrained superstition of 
 ages. Other sciences, as Geology, Chemistry, Political 
 Economy, and Ethnology were also more or less fre- 
 quently pronounced irreligious in their tendency until 
 they had attained a certain standing. 
 
 If we are surprised that physical science has at 
 times excited so large an amount of prejudice we must 
 bear in mind that men have almost always resisted 
 innovation. The history of laws, languages, arts, 
 sciences and religions, shows this. There is a conser- 
 vative spirit in men that prompts them to love the ways 
 of their forefathers ; and in many respects this is a good 
 and estimable feeling, for a reckless love of perpetual 
 change, arising from the notion that everything new is 
 better than everything old, is incompatible with the 
 stability of civilised communities and productive of 
 worse consequences than the stagnant conservatism of 
 the Chinese. 
 
 It is perhaps, then, good for science that she should 
 have to undergo this trying and purifying ordeal. Her 
 authority is acquired more slowly, but, once secured, 
 her position is infinitely stronger, for as she advances 
 she gently directs men's thoughts into new channels 
 and moulds their opinions into new forms ; so that, as 
 truth after truth is revealed, criticised and established, 
 it is soon welcomed as another illustration of the beauty 
 and order in nature's kingdom and placed in harmonious 
 
56 THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 relation with the teachings of religion. Bacon foresaw 
 this when he said: " Only let mankind regain their 
 rights over nature, assigned to them by the gift of 
 God ; that power obtained, its exercise will be governed 
 by right reason and true religion." 
 
 It is curious to observe how opinions have varied with 
 regard to the attributes of the Almighty, and with good 
 reason, when we think of the impossibility of man, 
 with his limited powers, attaining to a true conception 
 of the Infinite ; but, regarding the subject a little more 
 closely, we shall soon perceive how reasonable it is to 
 consider the works of creation as in some degree repre- 
 sentative of the attributes of the Creator. 
 
 The ancient Jewish writers were accustomed to paint 
 the great Jehovah as a dread Deity, prone to anger, 
 and ever seeking the chastisement of men. We in 
 these days are more disposed to include among the 
 great attributes of the Omnipotent, in association with 
 his power, his glory, and his wisdom, a supreme 
 beneficence that displays itself in a thousand arrange- 
 ments, in the organization of nature, conducive to 
 man's well-being. Many of these blessings are obvious 
 enough. The rain descends to moisten the parched 
 earth, the sun sends his light and heat-giving beams to 
 sustain a world of life ; plants yield unnumbered 
 blessings in the shape of food, medicine and clothing ; 
 fruits that please the palate, and flowers that delight 
 the eye. Tbe veriest savage instinctively feels this and 
 recognises a principle of good in creation ; but science 
 alone can demonstrate the universality of this goodness, 
 and in some sort do justice to the Creator of mankind 
 by showing how fully his works breathe it. 
 
 Indeed the grand harmony of all creation is well 
 adapted to impress upon the mind of the reverent 
 
BENEFICENCE OF THE CREATOR. 57 
 
 student higher notions of its Great Architect. In no 
 way can we so well learn something of the Omnipotent 
 himself as by an intelligent survey of the laws that 
 regulate the machinery of the universe ; and association 
 with the majesty of the Creator and his mighty attri- 
 butes, even in this indirect manner, must impart some- 
 thing to man of a diviner nature .by refining and 
 exalting his conceptions of God. This is indeed the high- 
 est result that can flow from science ; for, whatever of 
 value we may attach to her teachings for their assistance 
 in promoting our comfort and developing our powers, 
 we must admit that the great insight they afford us into 
 a vast scheme of universal benevolence, of an organiza- 
 tion in which man's happiness in so many ways is pro- 
 vided for, is in harmony with the Christian view of the 
 Almighty's attributes and a source of the highest 
 consolation to the thoughtful mind. God's "mysterious 
 ways," when scanned and co-related, evince the design 
 of a being omniscient, the powerand glory of a being 
 almighty, and the goodness of a benevolent father. 
 
 Casting our eyes around, we behold in the meanest 
 of nature's works the impress of the Divine hand. 
 From the foot of a fly, as from the hand of a man, we 
 may gather lessons which are but a type of marvellous 
 adaptations abounding in the entire range of animal 
 life. Birds, fishes, quadrupeds, insects, are provided in 
 every instance with organs and faculties suitable to 
 their condition : wings for flying, fins for swimming, 
 clothing for warmth and protection, weapons for attack 
 or defence, and instincts that teach them to build 
 houses, select their food, shun enemies, bring up their 
 young, and provide generally for the conduct of their 
 lives. 
 
 The organization of the vegetable kingdom abounds 
 
58 THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 in provisions for the sustenance, preservation and 
 diffusion of plants. Adapted to every region, the 
 salt sea, the running brook, the marsh, the desert, the 
 open plain, and the mountain side, the frost and snow 
 of polar regions and the burning clime of the equator, 
 every plant is in itself the expression of so many con- 
 ditions of heat, moisture, air and soil. Purposely 
 made attractive, plants, too, are objects of delight to 
 the unreflecting, and of interest to the poet and the 
 philosopher ; and well has Wordsworth said, 
 
 " To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
 Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." 
 
 If an influence like this can be exercised by the 
 humbler works of creation, what must be the effect 
 produced by the contemplation of the grandeur and 
 beauty of the most striking ? Can man look unmoved 
 upon the rolling, tempest-tossed sea ? Can he regard 
 its vastness, or listen to its wild roar, without in- 
 stinctively feeling its sublimity ? On every hand there 
 is that which must extort our admiration ; on sea 
 and on land the sympathetic feeling within us is 
 roused and quickened by objects that appeal to it. 
 In all time and among all races of men, the great 
 blue dome over head, and the sheen of sun, moon and 
 stars as they wander in their silent paths, have stirred 
 the hearts of men and excited varied feelings of admi- 
 ration for their beauty, veneration for their grandeur, 
 love and praise for their beneficent action, and curiosity 
 to inquire into their nature. Science, by giving system 
 to this curiosity has, by increasing our knowledge, not 
 only intensified these natural and spontaneous feelings, 
 but revea'el worlds of interest once hidden from us, and 
 our impulsive sense of homage to the great Master of 
 
GLORY OF THE CREATOR. 59 
 
 Nature is strengthened and confirmed by the reasoning 
 of the philosopher. The world abounds in lessons that 
 all may read, but for its more difficult teachings science 
 must aid us. The unassisted eye sees in the heavens 
 but one sun, one moon, and a few thousand stars ; but 
 to the astronomer alone is revealed the real glory of 
 the heavens blazing with millions of suns, 
 
 " Yast central, living fires 
 Lords of dependent systems, kings of worlds 
 That wait as satellites upon tlieir power 
 And flourish in their smile." 
 
 "If," says an astronomer, "you would know the 
 glory of the Omnipotent, examine the interminable 
 range of suns and systems which crowd the Milky 
 Way. Multiply the hundred millions of stars which 
 belong to our own " island universe" by the thousands 
 of these astral systems that exist in space within the 
 range of human vision, and then you may form some 
 idea of the infinitude of His kingdom ; for lo ! these 
 are but a part of His ways. Examine the scale on 
 which the universe is built. Comprehend, if you can, 
 the vast dimensions of our sun. Stretch outward 
 through his system, from planet to planet, and cir- 
 cumscribe the whole within the immense circumference 
 of Neptune's orbit. This is but a single unit out of 
 the myriads of similar systems. Take the wings of 
 light, and flash with impetuous speed day and night, 
 and month and year, till youth shall wear away and 
 middle age is gone and the extremest limit of human 
 life has been attained ; count every pulse, and at each 
 speed on your way a hundred thousand miles ; and 
 when a hundred years have rolled by, look out, and 
 behold ! the thronging millions of blazing suns are 
 
GO THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 still around you, each separated from the other by such 
 a distance that in this journey of a century you have 
 only left half a score behind you. 
 
 ' ' Would you gather some idea of the eternity past 
 of God's existence ? Go to the astronomer and bid 
 him lead you with him in one of his walks through 
 space ; and as he sweeps onward from object to object, 
 from universe to universe, remember that the light 
 from those filmy stains on the deep pure blue of 
 heaven, now falling on your eye, has been traversing 
 space for a million of years. Would you gather some 
 knowledge of the omnipotence of God? Weigh the 
 earth on which we dwell, then count the millions of 
 its inhabitants that have come and gone for the last 
 six thousand years. Unite their strength into a single 
 arm, and test its power in an effort to move this 
 earth. It could not stir it a single foot in a thousand 
 years ; and yet, under the omnipotent hand of God, 
 not a minute passes that it does not fly for more than a 
 thousand miles. But this is a mere atom; the most 
 insignificant point among His innumerable worlds. 
 At His bidding every planet, and satellite, and comet, 
 and the sun himself fly onward in their appointed 
 courses. His single arm guides the millions of sweep- 
 ing suns, and around His throne circles the great con- 
 stellations of unnumbered universes. 
 
 " AVould you comprehend the idea of the omniscience 
 of God ? Remember that the highest pinnacle of 
 knowledge reached by the whole human race, by the 
 combined efforts of its brightest intellects, has enabled 
 the astronomer to complete approximately the pertur- 
 bations of the planetary worlds. He has predicted, 
 roughly, the return of half a dozen comets. But God 
 has computed the mutual perturbations of millions of 
 
WISDOM OF THE CREATOR. 61 
 
 suns, and planets, and comets, and worlds without 
 number ; and throughout the ages which are yet to 
 come, not approximately, but with perfect and absolute 
 precision. The universe is in motion, system rising 
 above system, cluster above cluster, nebula above 
 nebula, all majestically sweeping around under the 
 providence of God, who alone knows the end from the 
 beginning, and before whose glory and power all 
 intelligent beings, whether in heaven or on earth, 
 should bow with humility and awe. 
 
 11 Would you gain some idea of the wisdom of God ? 
 Look to the admirable adjustment of the magnificent 
 retinue of planets and satellites which sweep around the 
 sun. Every globe has been weighed and poised, every 
 orbit has been measured and bent to its beautiful form. 
 All is changing, but the laws fixed by the wisdom of 
 God, though they permit the rocking to and fro of the 
 system, never introduce disorder or lead to destruction. 
 All is perfect and harmonious, and the music of the 
 spheres that turn and roll around our sun is echoed by 
 that of ten millions of moving worlds, that sing and 
 shine around the bright suns that reign above." 
 
 Such teachings are not confined to astronomy. 
 Every physical science has revealed truths that speak 
 trumpet-tongued to the same purport. Geology with 
 its history of a wonderfully elaborated earth, of buried 
 forests, continents submerged or upheaved, of a strange 
 extinct world of animals and plants swept away as the 
 great waves of change one by one passed over the 
 primaeval earth, abounds in such teachings ; and every 
 pebble, every grain of sand is fraught with lessons that 
 may raise our thoughts to the great Architect. 
 
 Phenomena that appear hurtful even, and antagonistic 
 to man, are frequently shown by science to be necessary 
 
62 THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 as parts of a great system framed in a spirit of bene- 
 volence. The evils are partial, the good universal. 
 Volcanoes that provide for the harmless escape of gases 
 that might rive the earth, tempests that distribute and 
 equalize the aerial fluids of the atmosphere, and 
 lightning, a necessary agent in forming clouds and sup- 
 plying rain, are all examples of this kind. Storms may 
 strew our coasts with wrecks, the volcano may bury a 
 peaceful village, the lightning strike sudden death, but 
 the good results that flow from their agency are only to 
 be understood by knowing that their absence would 
 endanger the stability of all things in this fair world. 
 The evils we see, the good we overlook, as is our 
 custom when it assumes the form of protection against 
 perils of which actual experience has taught us 
 nothing. 
 
 Whatever may be the difficulties that underlie the 
 question of the existence of evil in the world, man may 
 see enough to comprehend that this evil in many cases 
 is relative rather than positive, and in no wise intended 
 to afflict him, but to rouse him, it may be, from his in- 
 difference, and to make the advantages he enjoys more 
 conspicuous by occasionally withdrawing them. It is 
 these evils to which man is exposed that have developed 
 his civilization : that is, increased the power of his 
 faculties, promoted his intelligence, and fitted him in 
 some degree by a better knowledge of himself for com- 
 prehending more fully the transcendent powers of the 
 Infinite. Did man never suffer from heat and cold, 
 hunger and thirst, he would make neither the mental nor 
 physical exertions necessary to avoid them. The steri- 
 lity of the soil, the harshness of a climate, the obstacles 
 to his movements in the form of seas, rivers, and 
 mountains, the fierceness of wild beasts, the frail nature 
 
SCIENCE PROMOTES RELIGION. 63 
 
 of his own organization, are all stimulating influences 
 that compel thought and rouse to action. 
 
 Man becomes a thinking, reasoning being : accustomed 
 to act from the influence of motive, he casts off his bar- 
 barism and learns to exercise a more efficient control 
 over his actions. Ages pass away and leave him still 
 toiling, still marching onward aiming at an unseen and 
 never-reached goal, but with every step he will become 
 better fitted for the reception of nature's teachings and 
 more appreciative of Christian precepts. More sensible, 
 too, of the majesty and greatness of the all-directing 
 Providence, he will render him sincere and willing be- 
 cause intelligent homage ; and beholding, amidst all the 
 splendour of creation, a thousand signs of love and 
 sympathy for human kind, with reverent spirit and 
 grateful heart he will often breathe a low but fervent 
 offering of love and thankfulness to that great Being in 
 whom he recognises the attributes of God and Father 
 Almighty. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Richard Barrett, Printer, 13, Mark Lane, London. 
 
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