[Sidenote: Mechanical theory of heat.]
When all these great truths respecting molar motion, or the movements of visible and tangible ma.s.ses, had been shown to hold good not only of terrestrial bodies, but of all those which const.i.tute the visible universe, and the movements of the macrocosm had thus been expressed by a general mechanical theory, there remained a vast number of phenomena, such as those of light, heat, electricity, magnetism, and those of the physical and chemical changes, which do not involve molar motion. Newton"s corpuscular theory of light was an attempt to deal with one great series of these phenomena on mechanical principles, and it maintained its ground until, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the undulatory theory proved itself to be a much better working hypothesis. Heat, up to that time, and indeed much later, was regarded as an imponderable substance, _caloric_; as a thing which was absorbed by bodies when they were wanned, and was given out as they cooled; and which, moreover, was capable of entering into a sort of chemical combination with them, and so becoming latent. Rumford and Davy had given a great blow to this view of heat by proving that the quant.i.ty of heat which two portions of the same body could be made to give out, by rubbing them together, was practically illimitable. This result brought philosophers face to face with the contradiction of supposing that a finite body could contain an infinite quant.i.ty of another body; but it was not until 1843, that clear and unquestionable experimental proof was given of the fact that there is a definite relation between mechanical work and heat; that so much work always gives rise, under the same conditions, to so much heat, and so much heat to so much mechanical work. Thus originated the mechanical theory of heat, which became the starting-point of the modern doctrine of the conservation of energy. Molar motion had appeared to be destroyed by friction. It was proved that no destruction took place, but that an exact equivalent of the energy of the lost molar motion appears as that of the _molecular_ motion, or motion of the smallest particles of a body, which const.i.tutes heat. The loss of the ma.s.ses is the gain of their particles.
[Sidenote: Earlier approaches towards doctrine of conservation.]
Before 1843, however, the doctrine of conservation of energy had been approached Bacon"s chief contribution to positive science is the happy guess (for the context shows that it was little more) that heat may be a mode of motion; Descartes affirmed the quant.i.ty of motion in the world to be constant; Newton nearly gave expression to the complete theorem; while Rumford"s and Davy"s experiments suggested, though they did not prove, the equivalency of mechanical and thermal energy.
Again, the discovery of voltaic electricity, and the marvellous development of knowledge, in that field, effected by such men as Davy, Faraday, Oersted, Ampere, and Melloni, had brought to light a number of facts which tended to show that the so-called "forces" at work in light, heat, electricity, and magnetism, in chemical and in mechanical operations, were intimately, and, in various cases, quant.i.tatively related. It was demonstrated that any one could be obtained at the expense of any other; and apparatus was devised which exhibited the evolution of all these kinds of action from one source of energy.
Hence the idea of the "correlation of forces" which was the immediate forerunner of the doctrine of the conservation of energy.
It is a remarkable evidence of the greatness of the progress in this direction which has been effected in our time, that even the second edition of the "History of the Inductive Sciences," which was published in 1846, contains no allusion either to the general view of the "Correlation of Forces" published in England in 1842, or to the publication in 1843 of the first of the series of experiments by which the mechanical equivalent of heat was correctly ascertained.[I] Such a failure on the part of a contemporary, of great acquirements and remarkable intellectual powers, to read the signs of the times, is a lesson and a warning worthy of being deeply pondered by anyone who attempts to prognosticate the course of scientific progress.
[Sidenote: What this doctrine is.]
I have pointed out that the growth of clear and definite views respecting the const.i.tution of matter has led to the conclusion that, so far as natural agencies are concerned, it is ingenerable and indestructible. In so far as matter may be conceived to exist in a purely pa.s.sive state, it is, imaginably, older than motion. But, as it must be a.s.sumed to be susceptible of motion, a particle of bare matter at rest must be endowed with the potentiality of motion. Such a particle, however, by the supposition, can have no energy, for there is no cause why it should move. Suppose now that it receives an impulse, it will begin to move with a velocity inversely proportional to its ma.s.s, on the one hand, and directly proportional to the strength of the impulse, on the other, and will possess _kinetic energy_, in virtue of which it will not only continue to move for ever if unimpeded, but if it impinges on another such particle, it will impart more or less of its motion, to the latter. Let it be conceived that the particle acquires a tendency to move, and that nevertheless it does not move. It is then in a condition totally different from that in which it was at first. A cause competent to produce motion is operating upon it, but, for some reason or other, is unable to give rise to motion. If the obstacle is removed, the energy which was there, but could not manifest itself, at once gives rise to motion.
While the restraint lasts, the energy of the particle is merely potential; and the case supposed ill.u.s.trates what is meant by _potential energy_. In this contrast of the potential with the actual, modern physics is turning to account the most familiar of Aristotelian distinctions--that between dunamis and energeia.
That kinetic energy appears to be imparted by impact is a fact of daily and hourly experience: we see bodies set in motion by bodies, already in motion, which seem to come in contact with them. It is a truth which could have been learned by nothing but experience, and which cannot be explained, but must be taken as an ultimate fact about which, explicable or inexplicable, there can be no doubt.
Strictly speaking, we have no direct apprehension of any other cause of motion. But experience furnishes innumerable examples of the production of kinetic energy in a body previously at rest, when no impact is discernible as the cause of that energy. In all such cases, the presence of a second body is a necessary condition; and the amount of kinetic energy, which its presence enables the first to gain, is strictly dependent on the relative positions of the two. Hence the phrase _energy of position_, which is frequently used as equivalent to potential energy. If a stone is picked up and held, say, six feet above the ground, it has _potential energy_, because, if let go, it will immediately begin to move towards the earth; and this energy may be said to be _energy of position_, because it depends upon the relative position of the earth and the stone. The stone is solicited to move but cannot, so long as the muscular strength of the holder prevents the solicitation from taking effect. The stone, therefore, has potential energy, which becomes kinetic if it is let go, and the amount of that kinetic energy which will be developed before it strikes the earth depends on its position--on the fact that it is, say, six feet off the earth, neither more nor less. Moreover, it can be proved that the raiser of the stone had to exert as much energy in order to place it in its position, as it will develop in falling.
Hence the energy which was exerted, and apparently exhausted, in raising the stone, is potentially in the stone, in its raised position, and will manifest itself when the stone is set free. Thus the energy, withdrawn from the general stock to raise the stone, is returned when it falls, and there is no change in the total amount.
Energy, as a whole, is conserved.
Taking this as a very broad and general statement of the essential facts of the case, the raising of the stone is intelligible enough, as a case of the communication of motion from one body to another. But the potential energy of the raised stone is not so easily intelligible. To all appearance, there is nothing either pushing or pulling it towards the earth, or the earth towards it; and yet it is quite certain that the stone tends to move towards the earth and the earth towards the stone, in the way defined by the law of gravitation.
In the currently accepted language of science, the cause of motion, in all such cases as this, when bodies tend to move towards or away from one or another, without any discernible impact of other bodies, is termed a "force," which is called "attractive" in the one case, and "repulsive" in the other. And such attractive or repulsive forces are often spoken of as if they were real things, capable of exerting a pull, or a push, upon the particles of matter concerned. Thus the potential energy of the stone is commonly said to be due to the "force" of gravity which is continually operating upon it.
Another ill.u.s.tration may make the case plainer. The bob of a pendulum swings first to one side and then to the other of the centre of the arc which it describes. Suppose it to have just reached the summit of its right-hand half-swing. It is said that the "attractive forces" of the bob for the earth, and of the earth for the bob, set the former in motion; and as these "forces" are continually in operation, they confer an accelerated velocity on the bob; until, when it reaches the centre of its swing, it is, so to speak, fully charged with kinetic energy. If, at this moment, the whole material universe, except the bob, were abolished, it would move for ever in the direction of a tangent to the middle of the arc described. As a matter of fact, it is compelled to travel through its left-hand half-swing, and thus virtually to go up hill. Consequently, the "attractive forces" of the bob and the earth are now acting against it, and const.i.tute a resistance which the charge of kinetic energy has to overcome. But, as this charge represents the operation of the attractive forces during the pa.s.sage of the bob through the right-hand half-swing down to the centre of the arc, so it must needs be used up by the pa.s.sage of the bob upwards from the centre of the arc to the summit of the left-hand half-swing. Hence, at this point, the bob comes to a momentary rest.
The last fraction of kinetic energy is just neutralised by the action of the attractive forces, and the bob has only potential energy equal to that with which it started. So that the sum of the phenomena may be stated thus: At the summit of either half-arc of its swing, the bob has a certain amount of potential energy; as it descends it gradually exchanges this for kinetic energy, until at the centre it possesses an equivalent amount of kinetic energy; from this point onwards, it gradually loses kinetic energy as it ascends, until, at the summit of the other half-arc, it has acquired an exactly similar amount of potential energy. Thus, on the whole transaction, nothing is either lost or gained; the quant.i.ty of energy is always the same, but it pa.s.ses from one form into the other.
To all appearance, the phenomena exhibited by the pendulum are not to be accounted for by impact: in fact, it is usually a.s.sumed that corresponding phenomena would take place if the earth and the pendulum were situated in an absolute vacuum, and at any conceivable distance from, one another. If this be so, it follows that there must be two totally different kinds of causes of motion: the one impact--a _vera causa_, of which, to all appearance, we have constant experience; the other, attractive or repulsive "force"--a metaphysical ent.i.ty which is physically inconceivable. Newton expressly repudiated the notion of the existence of attractive forces, in the sense in which that term is ordinarily understood; and he refused to put forward any hypothesis as to the physical cause of the so-called "attraction of gravitation." As a general rule, his successors have been content to accept the doctrine of attractive and repulsive forces, without troubling themselves about the philosophical difficulties which it involves. But this has not always been the case; and the attempt of Le Sage, in the last century, to show that the phenomena of attraction and repulsion are susceptible of explanation by his hypothesis of bombardment by ultra-mundane particles, whether tenable or not, has the great merit of being an attempt to get rid of the dual conception of the causes of motion which has. .h.i.therto prevailed. On this hypothesis, the hammering of the ultra-mundane corpuscles on the bob confers its kinetic energy, on the one hand, and takes it away on the other; and the state of potential energy means the condition of the bob during the instant at which the energy, conferred by the hammering during the one half-arc, has just been exhausted by the hammering during the other half-arc. It seems safe to look forward to the time when the conception of attractive and repulsive forces, having served its purpose as a useful piece of scientific scaffolding, will be replaced by the deduction of the phenomena known as attraction and repulsion, from the general laws of motion.
The doctrine of the conservation of energy which I have endeavored to ill.u.s.trate is thus defined by the late Clerk Maxwell:
"The total energy of any body or system of bodies is a quant.i.ty which can neither be increased nor diminished by any mutual action of such bodies, though it may be transformed into any one of the forms of which energy is susceptible." It follows that energy, like matter, is indestructible and ingenerable in nature. The phenomenal world, so far as it is material, expresses the evolution and involution of energy, its pa.s.sage from the kinetic to the potential condition and back again. Wherever motion of matter takes place, that motion is effected at the expense of part of the total store of energy.
Hence, as the phenomena exhibited by living beings, in so far as they are material, are all molar or molecular motions, these are included under the general law. A living body is a machine by which energy is transformed in the same sense as a steam-engine is so, and all its movements, molar and molecular, are to be accounted for by the energy which is supplied to it. The phenomena of consciousness which arise, along with certain transformations of energy, cannot be interpolated in the series of these transformations, inasmuch as they are not motions to which the doctrine of the conservation of energy applies.
And, for the same reason, they do not necessitate the using up of energy; a sensation has no ma.s.s and cannot be conceived to be susceptible of movement. That a particular molecular motion does give rise to a state of consciousness is experimentally certain; but the how and why of the process are just as inexplicable as in the case of the communication of kinetic energy by impact.
When dealing with the doctrine of the ultimate const.i.tution of matter, we found a certain resemblance between the oldest speculations and the newest doctrines of physical philosophers. But there is no such resemblance between the ancient and modern views of motion and its causes, except in so far as the conception of attractive and repulsive forces may be regarded as the modified descendant of the Aristotelian conception of forms. In fact, it is hardly too much to say that the essential and fundamental difference between ancient and modern physical science lies in the ascertainment of the true laws of statics and dynamics in the course of the last three centuries; and in the invention of mathematical methods of dealing with all the consequences of these laws. The ultimate aim of modern physical science is the deduction of the phenomena exhibited by material bodies from physico-mathematical first principles. Whether the human intellect is strong enough to attain the goal set before it may be a question, but thither will it surely strive.
[Sidenote: (3) Evolution.]
The third great scientific event of our time, the rehabilitation of the doctrine of evolution, is part of the same tendency of increasing knowledge to unify itself, which has led to the doctrine of the conservation of energy. And this tendency, again, is mainly a product of the increasing strength conferred by physical investigation on the belief in the universal validity of that orderly relation of facts, which we express by the so-called "Laws of Nature."
[Sidenote: Early stages of this theory]
The growth of a plant from its seed, of an animal from its egg, the apparent origin of innumerable living things from mud, or from the putrefying remains of former organisms, had furnished the earlier scientific thinkers with abundant a.n.a.logies suggestive of the conception of a corresponding method of cosmic evolution from a formless "chaos" to an ordered world which might either continue for ever or undergo dissolution into its elements before starting on a new course of evolution. It is therefore no wonder that, from the days of the Ionian school onwards, the view that the universe was the result of such a process should have maintained itself as a leading dogma of philosophy. The emanistic theories which played so great a part in Neoplatonic philosophy and Gnostic theology are forms of evolution. In the seventeenth century, Descartes propounded a scheme of evolution, as an hypothesis of what might have been the mode of origin of the world, while professing to accept the ecclesiastical scheme of creation, as an account of that which actually was its manner of coming into existence. In the eighteenth century, Kant put forth a remarkable speculation as to the origin of the solar system, closely similar to that subsequently adopted by Laplace and destined to become famous under the t.i.tle of the "nebular hypothesis."
The careful observations and the acute reasonings of the Italian geologists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the speculations of Leibnitz in the "Protogaea" and of Buffon in his "Theorie de la Terre;" the sober and profound reasonings of Hutton, in the latter part of the eighteenth century; all these tended to show that the fabric of the earth itself implied the continuance of processes of natural causation for a period of time as great, in relation to human history, as the distances of the heavenly bodies from us are, in relation to terrestrial standards of measurement. The abyss of time began to loom as large as the abyss of s.p.a.ce. And this revelation to sight and touch, of a link here and a link there of a practically infinite chain of natural causes and effects, prepared the way, as perhaps nothing else has done, for the modern form of the ancient theory of evolution.
In the beginning of the eighteenth century, De Maillet made the first serious attempt to apply the doctrine to the living world. In the latter part of it, Erasmus Darwin, Goethe, Trevira.n.u.s, and Lamarck took up the work more vigorously and with better qualifications. The question of special creation, or evolution, lay at the bottom of the fierce disputes which broke out in the French Academy between Cuvier and St.-Hilaire; and, for a time, the supporters of biological evolution were silenced, if not answered, by the alliance of the greatest naturalist of the age with their ecclesiastical opponents.
Catastrophism, a short-sighted teleology, and a still more short-sighted orthodoxy, joined forces to crush evolution.
Lyell and Poulett Scrope, in this country, resumed the work of the Italians and of Hutton; and the former, aided by a marvellous power of clear exposition, placed upon an irrefragable basis the truth that natural causes are competent to account for all events, which can be proved to have occurred, in the course of the secular changes which have taken place during the deposition of the stratified rocks. The publication of "The Principles of Geology," in 1830, const.i.tuted an epoch in geological science. But it also const.i.tuted an epoch in the modern history of the doctrines of evolution, by raising in the mind of every intelligent reader this question: If natural causation is competent to account for the not-living part of our globe, why should it not account for the living part?
By keeping this question before the public for some thirty years, Lyell, though the keenest and most formidable of the opponents of the trans.m.u.tation theory, as it was formulated by Lamarck, was of the greatest possible service in facilitating the reception of the sounder doctrines of a later day. And, in like fashion, another vehement opponent of the trans.m.u.tation of species, the elder Aga.s.siz, was doomed to help the cause he hated. Aga.s.siz not only maintained the fact of the progressive advance in organisation of the inhabitants of the earth at each successive geological epoch, but he insisted upon the a.n.a.logy of the steps of this progression with those by which the embryo advances to the adult condition, among the highest forms of each group. In fact, in endeavoring to support these views he went a good way beyond the limits of any cautious interpretation of the facts then known.
[Sidenote: Darwin]
Although little acquainted with biological science, Whewell seems to have taken particular pains with that part of his work which deals with the history of geological and biological speculation; and several chapters of his seventeenth and eighteenth books, which comprise the history of physiology, of comparative anatomy and of the palaetiological sciences, vividly reproduce the controversies of the early days of the Victorian epoch. But here, as in the case of the doctrine of the conservation of energy, the historian of the inductive sciences has no prophetic insight; not even a suspicion of that which the near future was to bring forth. And those who still repeat the once favorite objection that Darwin"s "Origin of Species" is nothing but a new version of the "Philosophie zoologique" will find that, so late as 1844, Whewell had not the slightest suspicion of Darwin"s main theorem, even as a logical possibility. In fact, the publication of that theorem by Darwin and Wallace, in 1859, took all the biological world by surprise. Neither those who were inclined towards the "progressive trans.m.u.tation" or "development" doctrine, as it was then called, nor those who were opposed to it, had the slightest suspicion that the tendency to variation in living beings, which all admitted as a matter of fact; the selective influence of conditions, which no one could deny to be a matter of fact, when his attention was drawn to the evidence; and the occurrence of great geological changes which also was matter of fact; could be used as the only necessary postulates of a theory of the evolution of plants and animals which, even if not at once, competent to explain all the known facts of biological science, could not be shown to be inconsistent with any. So far as biology is concerned, the publication of the "Origin of Species," for the first time, put the doctrine of evolution, in its application to living things, upon a sound scientific foundation. It became an instrument of investigation, and in no hands did it prove more brilliantly profitable than in those of Darwin himself. His publications on the effects of domestication in plants and animals, on the influence of cross-fertilisation, on flowers as organs for effecting such fertilisation, on insectivorous plants, on the motions of plants, pointed out the routes of exploration which have since been followed by hosts of inquirers, to the great profit of science.
Darwin found the biological world a more than sufficient field for even his great powers, and left the cosmical part of the doctrine to others. Not much has been added to the nebular hypothesis, since the time of Laplace, except that the attempt to show (against that hypothesis) that all nebulae are star cl.u.s.ters, has been met by the spectroscopic proof of the gaseous condition of some of them.
Moreover, physicists of the present generation appear now to accept the secular cooling of the earth, which is one of the corollaries of that hypothesis. In fact, attempts have been made, by the help of deductions from the data of physics, to lay down an approximate limit to the number of millions of years which have elapsed since the earth was habitable by living beings. If the conclusions thus reached should stand the test of further investigation, they will undoubtedly be very valuable. But, whether true or false, they can have no influence upon the doctrine of evolution in its application to living organisms. The occurrence of successive forms of life upon our globe is an historical fact, which cannot be disputed; and the relation of these successive forms, as stages of evolution of the same type, is established in various cases. The biologist has no means of determining the time over which the process of evolution has extended, but accepts the computation of the physical geologist and the physicist, whatever that may be.
[Sidenote: and philosophy]
Evolution as a philosophical doctrine applicable to all phenomena, whether physical or mental, whether manifested by material atoms or by men in society, has been dealt with systematically in the "Synthetic Philosophy" of Mr. Herbert Spencer. Comment on that great undertaking would not be in place here. I mention it because, so far as I know, it is the first attempt to deal, on scientific principles, with modern scientific facts and speculations. For the "Philosophic positive" of M. Comte, with which Mr. Spencer"s system of philosophy is sometimes compared, though it professes a similar object, is unfortunately permeated by a thoroughly unscientific spirit, and its author had no adequate acquaintance with the physical sciences even of his own time.
The doctrine of evolution, so far as the present physical cosmos is concerned, postulates the fixity of the rules of operation of the causes of motion in the material universe. If all kinds of matter are modifications of one kind, and if all modes of motion are derived from the same energy, the orderly evolution of physical nature out of one substratum and one energy implies that the rules of action of that energy should be fixed and definite. In the past history of the universe, back to that point, there can be no room for chance or disorder. But it is possible to raise the question whether this universe of simplest matter and definitely operating energy, which forms our hypothetical starting point, may not itself be a product of evolution from a universe of such matter, in which the manifestations of energy were not definite--in which, for example, our laws of motion held good for some units and not for others, or for the same units at one time and not at another--and which would therefore be a real epicurean chance-world?
For myself, I must confess that I find the air of this region of speculation too rarefied for my const.i.tution, and I am disposed to take refuge in "ignoramus et ignorabimus."
[Sidenote: Other achievements in physical science.]
The execution of my further task, the indication of the most important achievements in the several branches of physical science during the last fifty years, is embarra.s.sed by the abundance of the objects of choice; and by the difficulty which everyone, but a specialist in each department, must find in drawing a due distinction between discoveries which strike the imagination by their novelty, or by their practical influence, and those un.o.btrusive but pregnant observations and experiments in which the germs of the great things of the future really lie. Moreover, my limits restrict me to little more than a bare chronicle of the events which I have to notice.
[Sidenote: Physics and chemistry.]
In physics and chemistry, the old boundaries of which sciences are rapidly becoming effaced, one can hardly go wrong in ascribing a primary value to the investigations into the relation between the solid, liquid, and gaseous states of matter on the one hand, and degrees of pressure and of heat on the other. Almost all, even the most refractory, solids have been vaporised by the intense heat of the electric arc; and the most refractory gases have been forced to a.s.sume the liquid, and even the solid, forms by the combination of high pressure with intense cold. It has further been shown that there is no discontinuity between these states--that a gas pa.s.ses into the liquid state through a condition which is neither one nor the other, and that a liquid body becomes solid, or a solid liquid, by the intermediation of a condition in which it is neither truly solid nor truly liquid.
Theoretical and experimental investigations have concurred in the establishment of the view that a gas is a body, the particles of which are in incessant rectilinear motion at high velocities, colliding with one another and bounding back when they strike the walls of the containing vessel; and, on this theory, the already ascertained relations of gaseous bodies to heat and pressure have been shown to be deducible from mechanical principles. Immense improvements have been effected, in the means of exhausting a given s.p.a.ce of its gaseous contents; and experimentation on the phenomena which attend the electric discharge and the action of radiant heat, within the extremely rarefied media thus produced, has yielded a great number of remarkable results, some of which have been made familiar to the public by the Gieseler tubes and the radiometer. Already, these investigations have afforded an unexpected insight into the const.i.tution of matter and its relations with thermal and electric energy, and they open up a vast field for future inquiry into some of the deepest problems of physics. Other important steps, in the same direction, have been effected by investigations into the absorption of radiant heat proceeding from different sources by solid, fluid, and gaseous bodies. And it is a curious example of the interconnection of the various branches of physical science, that some of the results thus obtained have proved of great importance in meteorology.
[Sidenote: The spectroscope.]
The existence of numerous dark lines, constant in their number and position in the various regions of the solar spectrum, was made out by Fraunhofer in the early part of the present century, but more than forty years elapsed before their causes were ascertained and their importance recognised. Spectroscopy, which then took its rise, is probably that employment of physical knowledge, already won, as a means of further acquisition, which most impresses the imagination.
For it has suddenly and immensely enlarged our power of overcoming the obstacles which almost infinite minuteness on the one hand, and almost infinite distance on the other, have hitherto opposed to the recognition of the presence and the condition of matter. One eighteen-millionth of a grain of sodium in the flame of a spirit-lamp may be detected by this instrument; and, at the same time, it gives trust-worthy indications of the material const.i.tution not only of the sun, but of the farthest of those fixed stars and nebulae which afford sufficient light to affect the eye, or the photographic plate, of the inquirer.
[Sidenote: Electricity.]
The mathematical and experimental elucidation of the phenomena of electricity, and the study of the relations of this form of energy with chemical and thermal action, had made extensive progress before 1837. But the determination of the influence of magnetism on light, the discovery of diamagnetism, of the influence of crystalline structure on magnetism, and the completion of the mathematical theory of electricity, all belong to the present epoch. To it also appertain the practical execution and the working out of the results of the great international system of observations on terrestrial magnetism, suggested by Humboldt in 1836; and the invention of instruments of infinite delicacy and precision for the quant.i.tative determination of electrical phenomena. The voltaic battery has received vast improvements; while the invention of magneto-electric engines and of improved means of producing ordinary electricity has provided sources of electrical energy vastly superior to any before extant in power, and far more convenient for use.
It is perhaps this branch of physical science which may claim the palm for its practical fruits, no less than for the aid which it has furnished to the investigation of other parts of the field of physical science. The idea of the practicability of establishing a communication between distant points, by means of electricity, could hardly fail to have simmered in the minds of ingenious men since, well nigh a century ago, experimental proof was given that electric disturbances could be propagated through a wire twelve thousand feet long. Various methods of carrying the suggestion into practice had been carried out with some degree of success; but the system of electric telegraphy, which, at the present time, brings all parts of the civilised world within a few minutes of one another, originated only about the commencement of the epoch under consideration. In its influence on the course of human affairs, this invention takes its place beside that of gunpowder, which tended to abolish the physical inequalities of fighting men; of printing, which tended to destroy the effect of inequalities in wealth among learning men; of steam transport, which has done the like for travelling men. All these gifts of science are aids in the process of levelling up; of removing the ignorant and baneful prejudices of nation against nation, province against province, and cla.s.s against cla.s.s; of a.s.suring that social order which is the foundation of progress, which has redeemed Europe from barbarism, and against which one is glad to think that those who, in our time, are employing themselves in fanning the embers of ancient wrong, in setting cla.s.s against cla.s.s, and in trying to tear asunder the existing bonds of unity, are undertaking a futile struggle. The telephone is only second in practical importance to the electric telegraph. Invented, as it were, only the other day, it has already taken its place as an appliance of daily life. Sixty years ago, the extraction of metals from their solutions, by the electric current, was simply a highly interesting scientific fact. At the present day, the galvano-plastic art is a great industry; and, in combination with photography, promises to be of endless service in the arts. Electric lighting is another great gift of science to civilisation, the practical effects of which have not yet been fully developed, largely on account of its cost. But those whose memories go back to the tinder-box period, and recollect the cost of the first lucifer matches, will not despair of the results of the application of science and ingenuity to the cheap production of anything for which there is a large demand.
The influence of the progress of electrical knowledge and invention upon that of investigation in other fields of science is highly remarkable. The combination of electrical with mechanical contrivances has produced instruments by which, not only may extremely small intervals of time be exactly measured, but the varying rapidity of movements, which take place in such intervals and appear to the ordinary sense instantaneous, is recorded. The duration of the winking of an eye is a proverbial expression for an instantaneous action; but, by the help of the revolving cylinder and the electrical marking-apparatus, it is possible to obtain a graphic record of such an action, in which, if it endures a second, that second shall be subdivided into a hundred, or a thousand, equal parts, and the state of the action at each hundredth, or thousandth, of a second exhibited.
In fact, these instruments may be said to be time-microscopes. Such appliances have not only effected a revolution in physiology, by the power of a.n.a.lysing the phenomena of muscular and nervous activity which they have conferred, but they have furnished new methods of measuring the rate of movement of projectiles to the artillerist.
Again, the microphone, which renders the minutest movements audible, and which enables a listener to hear the footfall of a fly, has equipped the sense of hearing with the means of entering almost as deeply into the penetralia of nature, as does the sense of sight.