Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/693

Rh disappeared as such, and that new substances with totally different properties have taken their place. Yet this is all that a chemical reaction means. It may be studied any day in the kitchen. The question of heat is quite as obvious. The coal has been burned for that very purpose. At first sight these several facts seem entirely unrelated. They have been selected quite at random. A moment's consideration, however, will show that these reactions, though seemingly dissimilar, are essentially identical. Your cook may not be able to explain them to you, but she can tell how they may be prevented, and that will serve the purpose equally well. Her answer will be the same for all: Keep the air from them. A fire with all the draught closed off goes out. Hermetically sealed milk keeps fresh. Painted iron does not rust. Bottled cider remains cider. Wood, not exposed to the air, will endure for centuries. So, after all, the common element in these reactions is not difficult to find. It is manifestly the air, for, in the absence of that, they do not occur. To the chemist they are all cases of oxidation. If he wishes to prevent them, he does just what the cook does—he keeps the oxygen of the air away from them. That is all that Mr. Edison does when he pumps the air out of the bulb of his incandescent electric light, so that the little carbon horseshoe shall not burn up.

Now, there is nothing occult about all this. The examples given are not sufficient in number to warrant any very broad generalization, but they can readily be extended, and conclusions of universal application reached without other resource than that found within one's self. Beginning in the home, one's conclusions will be found to extend to the town, to the county, to the State, to the world. One may finally think about the universe. The spirit in which these investigations are conducted will be that of an inquiring child. It is literally true in science that "a little child shall lead them." The men who have built it up have labored successfully in exact proportion as they have put their questions directly to Nature rather than to books and to the sages. The most hopeful sign that the growing scientific mind can disclose to its fellows is that increasing simplicity of heart and mind which has characterized all the immortals recognized by science. It is this very faculty that has made men of science so notoriously incompetent in business matters. We have come to expect little news from a sharp bargainer.

Questioning Nature in this childlike and natural fashion, life becomes again a daily revelation, and inspiration a contemporary event. It is paradise regained. There are still suffering and sorrow, but there are also their antidotes, hope and faith. There is universal law, but there is also universal love. The severe harmonies of the universe lend grandeur and dignity to the