Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/335

 generation, the human mind has been baffled in its attempts to construct a universal science of physics. But nothing will discourage it. When foiled in one direction, it will attack in another. Science is not destructive, but progressive. While its theories change, the facts remain. Its generalizations are widening and deepening from age to age. We may extend to all the theories of physical science the remark of Grote, which Challis quotes in favor of his own: "Its fruitfulness is its correctibility." Instead of being disheartened by difficulties, the true man of science will congratulate himself in the words of Vauvenargues, that he lives in a world fertile in obstacles. Immortality would be no boon if there were not something left to discover as well as to love. Fortunate, thought Fontenelle, was Newton, beyond all other men, in having a whole fresh universe before him, waiting for an explanation. But science wants no Alexanders weeping because there are not other worlds to conquer. For every heroic Columbus who launches forth, in however frail a bark, upon untried oceans, seeing before him rich continents where others behold only a wilderness of waters, there are precious discoveries in reserve. Surely the time has not yet come when the men in any section in this Association can fold their arms and say, "It is finished." Unless our physicists are contented to lag behind and gather up the crumbs which fall from the rich laboratories and studies of Europe, they must unite to delicate manipulation the power of mathematical analysis. Mathematics wins victories where experiment has been beaten. With good reason we applaud the many brilliant successes of instrumental research. Mathematical analysis, with its multitudinous adaptations, is the only key which will fit the most intricate wards in the treasury of science. With the help of her mathematical physicists, Great Britain has now taken a position in science which she has not held before since the days of Newton. In Germany, the physicists do not hold back from the most difficult problems of the day, because they are led along by experiment on one arm and by mathematics on the other. The zeal of the Italian scientists prevails over even the terrors of Vesuvius, and makes them ready to become martyrs, like Pliny the Elder, to Nature and humanity. France, too, out of the very ashes of her humiliation, sends an inspiring word to us. Since her defeat, her scientific spirit has been aroused as it was after the days of the first Revolution. Her Association for the Advancement of Science is only a two-year old infant; but it has sprung into existence, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter, full grown and equipped. Already it has displayed a vitality and a prosperity which this Association, in its opening manhood, has not yet acquired. The words of its first president are as true for the United States as for France—that the strength and glory of a country are not in its arms, but in its science.