Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/678

660 law of conservation which combines the energies of the material universe into an organic whole; that law which enables the eye of science to follow the flying shuttles of the universal power, as it weaves what the Earth Spirit in "Faust" calls "the living garment of God." This, then, is the largest flower of the garland which the science of the last fifty years is able to offer to the Queen.

The second generalization is like unto the first in point of importance, though very unlike as regards its reception by the world. For whereas the principle of conservation, with all its far-reaching, and, from some points of view, tremendous implications, slid quietly into acceptance, its successor evoked the thunder-peals which it is said always accompany the marriage of thought and fact. For a long time the scent of danger was in the air. But the evil odor has passed away; the air is fresher than before; it fills our lungs and purifies our blood, and science, in its jubilee offering to the Queen, is able to add to the law of Conservation the principle of evolution.

In connection with these victories of the scientific intellect, I have mentioned neither persons nor nationalities—holding, as Davy expressed it, when the Copley medal was awarded to Arago, that "science, like Nature, to which it belongs, is neither limited by time nor space. It belongs to the world, and is of no country and no age." Still, it will not be counted Chauvinism, if I say that in the establishment of these two great generalizations Her Majesty's subjects have quitted themselves like men. With regard to a third generalization, neither England nor Germany has been idle. Omitting the name of many a noble worker in both countries, the antiseptic system of surgery assuredly counts for something in the civilized world. And yet it is but a branch of a larger generalization, of momentous import, which in our day has been extended and consolidated to an amazing degree by a Gallic investigator. To some, however, any flower culled in this garden will be without odor. Let me therefore add a sweet-scented violet under the name of spectrum analysis which, besides revealing new elements in matter, enables the human worker to stretch forth his hand to sun and stars, to bring samples of them, as it were, into his laboratory, and to tell us, with certainty, whereof they are composed. Surely all these, and other discoveries of high importance, taken and bound together, form an intellectual wreath, not unworthy of Her Majesty's acceptance in her jubilee year.

A short time ago an illustrious party leader summed up the political progress of the Queen's reign. What I have said will, I trust, show that the intellectual world is not entirely compounded of party politics that there is a band of workers scattered over the earth whose arena is the laboratory rather than the platform, and who noiselessly produce results as likely to endure, and as likely to influence for good the future of humanity, as the more clamorous performances of the politician.