Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/614

588 this would have crushed a weaker man; but in the case of M. Plateau it served to show the genuine metal he was made of. He spent the long hours of darkness, not in useless repining, or vain regrets, but in endeavoring to advance the knowledge of his race by pondering over the unsolved problems connected with the subjects he understood so well, and in devising experiments, often of the most exquisite ingenuity, for putting his theories and conclusions to the test. These, which he could no longer perform for himself, were undertaken for him by a devoted band of friends, among whom was his own son; and the result has been, not merely a very large addition to our knowledge of the properties of the surfaces of liquids, but, what is perhaps far more important, the presentation to the world of a spectacle of victory over almost overwhelming obstacles such as it has seldom seen. It is not well that our knowledge of scientific facts should be entirely divorced from an acquaintance with the lives and labors of their discoverers, or that we should come to regard them simply as a sort of revelation made to a fortunate few, to the rich inheritance of which we have been lucky enough to succeed. The men who built up the pile of modern science were not of those who sit still and wait with folded hands for some inspiration, they know not whence; rather they performed their tasks, and won success amid difficulties and discouragements to which we in happier times are strangers. But, while rightly ready to pay our homage to the great achievements of the past, we should ever be watchful to honor duly deeds which will cast a lustre upon our own time; and among these the life-work of M. Plateau holds in some respects a position second to none. Others may deserve a higher place for the number, or practical or scientific importance, of their discoveries, but none have more honestly earned the praise due to those who have done what they could; and the world, which is so apt to appropriate the work and forget the worker, should be taught at all events to remember this, that we owe some of the most charming experiments in the whole range of physics to one who himself has never beheld many of them, and of whom, with respect to the rest, we must in all sadness say, he "shall see them again no more forever."