Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/630

612 we see a world completely hidden from the more powerful eyesight of antiquity. By means of the telescope we study a multitude of distant worlds about which the Indian can not even speculate.

Stentor lived on the banks of the Bosporus, not in a busy American seaport. The modern Stentor, with less perfect throat and lung and ear, speaks through telegraph and telephone across oceans and continents; and, in the phonograph, talks without regard to time or place.

One's first impression, then, of man's decrepitude must needs be modified. The evolution of power in matters purely physical is undeniable. In spite of this increase of power, however, the modern man is in many ways a poor creature and unlovable. It is an increase of power by deputy. With his narrow chest, dull ears, near-sighted eyes, and squeaky voice, even his multitudinous apparatus fails to make him comparable with the glorious creature who represented the best product of Greek culture. If our reflection ended here, even Mr. Spencer's very clever suggestion would scarcely make us thankful for an evolutionary process which had given us such doubtful progress. There has been an unquestionable falling off of personal power. The advance has been of the race. But we may believe without undue optimism that this failure of the individual will be but temporary. It is a period of acquisition. We may reasonably hope that this will be followed by a period of expenditure, when the gains of the race will be utilized. To-day, the majority busies itself with the means of living; to-morrow, it may find time to live. The faculties have been sacrificed to the demands of research and mental activity. When these have yielded their harvest, we may look for a wholesome reaction upon the faculties themselves. The knowledge which cost a human life, once gained, will serve a thousand lives. The philosopher whose bent form and bleared eyes bespeak research will be succeeded by a more beautiful generation who utilize his discoveries. Any smaller result would hardly justify the current martyrdom. The coming renaissance will be in the fine art of living.

In this evolution, the materials acted upon have ceased to be simply flesh and blood. The human activity is largely cerebral, while its materials are inanimate. To supply them the three kingdoms of Nature have been ransacked. It is the purpose of the present paper to indicate in a measure the contributions which glass has made to this evolutionary process, for its office is one of increasing importance. In the search for power, the qualities which have given glass so large a value are those particularly of refraction and transparency. These qualities, combined with its hardness and indifference to most chemical