Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/542

526 be able to act-upon the influences on which, that march depends and by which it is regulated.

The objective of the social sciences is to neglect no factor of life. It is only by a ponderous and progressive labor that can be realized that amelioration of the social conditions which can never be attained by a sudden leap, but which we can see in fact preparing and asserting itself by a gradual and continuous evolution.

The evolution of mechanics, of which the strongest, most adroit, and most expeditious workman is electricity, is daily reducing the muscular labor of man. By virtue of the principle of the conservation of energy, the diminution of muscular labor is of advantage to intellectual labor, in quantity as well as in intensity. Attention becomes more profound, intelligence more quick, judgment more sure. The danger of the workman of modern times becoming brutalized is, without any doubt, greatly diminished. The workman has become more polite, more reflective, and more human, and is advancing further every day toward the conquest of the more considerable place in society which he merits. Not only the quantity of intellectual labor has been advanced by the technical applications which science has made possible; we have a right to ask also if its quality has not gained still more.

The telegraph and the telephone have made all the world more expeditious, more attentive, more ready in its judgments, and more prompt in its decisions. Recollect the perplexity into which, thirty years ago, a letter demanding prompt advice or immediate assistance would put us. Knowing that we had time, that we should have to wait several hours before sending an answer or beginning a journey, we gave ourselves up to doubts; and, when doubt possesses itself of a man, his judgment is often obscured and his will paralyzed. Now that we have to leap the ditch, to think on the instant, and turn our good-will at once into action, thought takes wings, and our decision is resolute and bold.

In this way Volta and Galvani have become powerful educators. By their scientific discoveries they are teaching our sons to think readily, to will firmly, and to express themselves briefly, in a manner precise and conformed to their thought. A rapid physical means of communication triumphs over torpor of the intelligence, indecision of character, and prolixity in speech. Further, this electric pile has become the mother of the postal-card, another mistress of simple and pertinent words. The later generations know so well how to use these instruments that to some the postal-card is already too large. In a very few lines they can assure friends of continued affection and produce the illusion that one is for an instant enjoying their presence, feeling their caresses, and experiencing the stimulation of their spirit. Economy of time leaves leisure to write short letters, for which there was not