Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 edition. Excerpt:... CHAPTER XVn SOME ADVANCES IN NATURAL SCIENCE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. COSMOGONY AND EVOLUTION What the classical renaissance was to men of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the scientific movement is to us. It has given a new trend to education. It has changed the outlook of the mind. It has given a new intellectual background to life.--Sadler. The rapid increase of natural knowledge, which is the chief characteristic of our age, is effected in various ways. The main army of science moves to the conquest of new worlds slowly and surely, nor ever cedes an inch of the territory gained. But the advance is covered and facilitated by the ceaseless activity of clouds of light troops provided with a weapon--always efficient, if not always an arm of precision--the scientific imagination. It is the business of these enfanls perdus of science to make raids into the realm of ignorance wherever they see, or think they see, a chance; and cheerfully to accept defeat, or it may be annihilation, as the reward of error. Unfortunately the public, which watches the progress of the campaign, too often mistakes a dashing incursion... for a forward movement of the main body; fondly imagining that the strategic movement to the rear, which occasionally follows, indicates a battle lost by science.--Huxley. Influence Of Eighteenth Century Revolutions.--If the French Revolution had done no more than to upset as it did the social equilibrium of the centuries, its effect in stimulating inquiry and generating doubt in almost every direction could not have failed to further scientific studies and promote wholesome investigation into the fundamental relations of man and nature. But even before that revolution, some of the ablest minds in France, keenly alive to...