Edward Huntington Williams

“ Herschel answers, they are suns, each and every one of all the millions—suns, many of them, larger than the one that is the centre of our tiny system. Not only so, but they are moving suns. Instead of being fixed in space, as has been thought, they are whirling in gigantic orbits about some common centre. Is our sun that centre? Far from it. Our sun is only a star like all the rest, circling on with its attendant satellites—our giant sun a star, no different from myriad other stars, not even so large as some; a mere insignificant spark of matter in an infinite shower of sparks. ”

“ And then there came that still weirder conquest of time and space, wrought by the electric current. The moment when man first spoke with man from continent to continent in defiance of the oceans, marked the dawning of that larger day when all mankind shall constitute one brotherhood and all peoples but a single nation. Within a half century the sun of that new day has risen well above the horizon, and far sooner than even the optimist of to-day dare predict with certainty, it seems destined to reach its zenith. ”

“ Yet one needs but to glance up at the sky, and then to glance about one at the solid earth, to grant, on a moment's reflection, that the geocentric idea is of all others the most natural; and that to conceive the sun as the actual Centre of the solar system is an idea which must look for support to some other evidence than that which ordinary observation can give. Such was the view of most of the ancient philosophers, and such continued to be the opinion of the majority of mankind long after the time of Copernicus. ”

“ Hitherto no one since Mayow, of the previous century, whose flash of insight had been strangely overlooked and forgotten, had even vaguely surmised the true function of the lungs. The great Boerhaave had supposed that respiration is chiefly important as an aid to the circulation of the blood; his great pupil, Haller, had believed to the day of his death in 1777 that the main purpose of the function is to form the voice. No genius could hope to fathom the mystery of the lungs so long as air was supposed to be a simple element, serving a mere mechanical purpose in the economy of the earth. ”

“ Is it possible as a part of the economy of our system that the habitable globe should to a certain extent become depopulated, both in the ocean and on the land, or that the variety of species should diminish until some new era arrives when a new and extraordinary effort of creative energy is to be displayed? Or is it possible that new species can be called into being from time to time, and yet that so astonishing a phenomenon can escape the naturalist? ”

“ As one stands in the presence of all these priceless relics, so vividly do the traditions of more than two centuries of science come to mind that one seems almost to have lived through them. One recalls, as if it were a personal recollection, the founding of the Royal Society itself in 1662, and the extraordinary scenes which the society witnessed during the years of its adolescence.
As one views the mementos of Boyle and Newton, one seems to be living in the close of the seventeenth century. It is a troublous time in England. Revolution has followed revolution. ”

“ It is nothing less than pitiful to contemplate in imagination our great-great-grandmothers—and all their forebears of the long centuries—drudging away day after day, year in and year out, at the ceaseless task of spinning and weaving—only to produce, as the output of a lifetime of labor, a quantity of cloth equivalent perhaps to what our perfected machine, driven by steam, and manipulated by a factory girl, produces each working hour of every day. ”

“ The words in which Empedocles expresses his conception of deity have been preserved and are well worth quoting: "It is not impossible," he says, "to draw near (to god) even with the eyes or to take hold of him with our hands, which in truth is the best highway of persuasion in the mind of man; for he has no human head fitted to a body, nor do two shoots branch out from the trunk, nor has he feet, nor swift legs, nor hairy parts, but he is sacred and ineffable mind alone, darting through the whole world with swift thoughts." ”

“ When we merely consider the immensity of the starry sphere in comparison with the smallness of the terrestrial ball, which is contained many million times in the former, and then think of the rapidity of the motion which completes a whole rotation in one day and night, I cannot persuade myself how any one can hold it to be more reasonable and credible that it is the heavenly sphere which rotates, while the earth stands still. ”

“ A bicycle in motion gives an even more striking illustration of the same phenomenon. And best of all, a spinning-top. Everyone knows how this familiar toy, which topples over instantly when at rest and can in no wise be balanced on its point, rises up triumphant when whirled about, and stands erect, poised in a way that would seem simply miraculous198 to all of us, had we not all spun tops at an age when the world was so full of wonders that we failed to marvel at any of them. ”

“ The vague Greek questionings as to organic evolution were world-wide from the precise inductions of a Darwin. If the mediaeval Arabian endeavored to dull the knife of the surgeon with the use of drugs, his results hardly merit to be termed even an anticipation of modern anaesthesia. And when we speak of preventive medicine—of bacteriology in all its phases—we have to do with a marvellous field of which no previous generation of men had even the slightest inkling.
All in all, then, those that lie before us are perhaps the most wonderful and the most fascinating of all the fields of science. ”

“ Half a century of London air can rival a cycle of Greece or Italy in weathering effect, and the fine building of the British Museum frowns out at the beholder to-day as grimy and ancient-seeming as if its massive columns dated in fact from the old Grecian days which they recall. Regardless of age, however, it is one of the finest and most massive specimens of Ionic architecture in existence. ”

“ The most significant [187] thing that strikes the eye is a row of great mushroom-like affairs, for all the world like giant tops, that stand spinning—and spinning. These great tops are about a dozen feet in diameter. They are whirling, so we are told, at a rate of two hundred and fifty revolutions per minute. Hour after hour they spin on, never varying in speed, never faltering; day and night are alike to them, and one day is like another. They are as ceaselessly active, as unwearying as Niagara itself, whose power they symbolize; and, like the great Falls, they murmur exultingly as they work. ”

“ Similar phrases have been turned against men of versatile talent in every age. Be that as it may, Eratosthenes passed into history as the father of scientific geography and of scientific chronology; as the astronomer who first measured the obliquity of the ecliptic; and as the inventive genius who performed the astounding feat of measuring the size of the globe on which we live at a time when only a relatively small portion of that globe's surface was known to civilized man. ”

“ In watching the rapid and ceaseless contractions of the heart, Harvey was impressed with the fact that, even if a very small amount of blood was sent out at each pulsation, an enormous quantity must pass through the organ in a day, or even in an hour. Estimating the size of the cavities of the heart, and noting that at least a drachm must be sent out with each pulsation, it was evident that the two thousand beats given by a very slow human heart in an hour must send out some forty pounds of blood—more than twice the amount in the entire body. ”

“ Whoever thinks of the earth as a cooling globe can hardly doubt that its crust, when thinner, may have heaved under strain of the moon's tidal pull—whether or not that body was nearer—into great billows, daily rising and falling, like waves of the present seas vastly magnified. ”

“ As in imagination we walk up to the sacred tank, drop our drachma in the slot, and hold our hand for the spurt of holy-water, can we realize that this is the land of the Pharaohs, not England or America; that the kingdom of the Ptolemies is still at its height; that the republic of Rome is mistress of the world; that all Europe north of the Alps is inhabited solely by barbarians; that Cleopatra and Julius Caesar are yet unborn; that the Christian era has not yet begun? Truly, it seems as if there could be no new thing under the sun. ”

“ If we assume that the power which holds one atom to another is the same which in the case of larger bodies we term gravitation, that answer carries us but a little way, since, as we have seen, gravitation itself is the greatest of mysteries. But again, how chances it that different atoms attract one another in such varying degrees, so that, for example, fluorine unites with everything it touches, argon with nothing? And how is it that different kinds of atoms can hold to themselves such varying numbers of fellow-atoms—oxygen one, hydrogen two, and so on? ”

“ I do not well understand how that powerful motion may be said to as good as not exist for the sun, the moon, the other planets, and the innumerable host of fixed stars. Do you call that nothing when the sun goes from one meridian to another, rises up over this horizon and sinks behind that one, brings now day, and now night; when the moon goes through similar changes, and the other planets and fixed stars in the same way? ”

“ THE DYNAMO As you stand waiting for your train at elevated or subway station you must have noticed the third rail. To outward appearance it is not different from the other rails. It seems a mere inert piece of steel. Yet you are well aware that a strange power abides there unseen—a power that pulls the train, and that lurks in hiding to strike a death-blow to any chance unfortunate whose foot or hand comes in contact with the rail. As the heavy train dashes up, dragged by this unseen power, probably you, in common with the rest of the world, have been led to remark, "Is it not marvelous?" ”

“ There is hardly another case in history of a man not a specialist in science accomplishing so much in original research as did this chemist, physiologist, electrician; the mathematician, logician, and moralist; the theologian, mental philosopher, and political economist. He took all knowledge for his field; but how he found time for his numberless researches and multifarious writings, along with his every-day duties, must ever remain a mystery to ordinary mortals. ”

“ The modern chemist makes no claim for his elements except that they have thus far resisted all human efforts to dissociate them; it would be nothing strange if some of them, when subjected to the crucible of the sun, which is seen to vaporize iron, nickel, silicon, should fail to withstand the test. But again, chemistry has by no means exhausted the resources of the earth's supply of raw material, and the substance which sends its message from a star may exist undiscovered in the dust we tread or in the air we breathe. ”

“ From our latter-day point of view, it seems so much more natural to accept than to reject the Copernican system, that we find it difficult to put ourselves in the place of a sixteenth-century observer. Yet if we recall that the traditional view, having warrant of acceptance by nearly all thinkers of every age, recorded the earth as a fixed, immovable body, we shall see that our surprise should be excited rather by the thinker who can break away from this view than by the one who still tends to cling to it. ”

“ Yet, with Haeckel here, it is unquestionably the finest laboratory in which to study zoology that exists in the world to-day, or has existed for the last third of a century.
Haeckel himself is domiciled, when not instructing his classes, in a comfortable but plain room across the hall—a room whose windows look out across the valley of the Saale on an exquisite mountain landscape, with the clear-cut mountain that Schiller's lines made famous at its focus. As you enter the room a big, robust man steps quickly forward to grasp your hand. ”

“ A sound mind in a sound body was the motto of the day. To excel in feats of strength and dexterity was an accomplishment that even a philosopher need not scorn. It will be recalled that aeschylus distinguished himself at the battle of Marathon; that Thucydides, the greatest of Greek historians, was a general in the Peloponnesian War; that Xenophon, the pupil and biographer of Socrates, was chiefly famed for having led the Ten Thousand in the memorable campaign of Cyrus the Younger; that Plato himself was credited with having shown great aptitude in early life as a wrestler. ”

“ Each wavelet seems eager to hurry on to the full fruition of the cataract. It lashes with angry foam each chance obstruction, and gurgles its disapproval in ever-changing measures. Even to the most thoughtless observer the mighty current thus unchained attests the sublimity of almost irresistible power. Could a mighty mill-wheel be adjusted in that dizzy current, what labors might it not perform? Five million tons of water rush down this decline each hour, we are told; and the force that thus goes to waste is as if three million unbridled horses exhausted their strength in ceaseless plunging. ”

“ In the midst of all this the little earth, single and alone, would obstinately and wilfully withstand such force—a supposition which, it appears to me, has much against it. I could also not explain why the earth, a freely poised body, balancing itself about its centre, and surrounded on all sides by a fluid medium, should not be affected by the universal rotation. Such difficulties, however, do not confront us if we attribute motion to the earth—such a small, insignificant body in comparison with the whole universe, and which for that very reason cannot exercise any power over the latter. ”

“ The spirit of war is in the air. And yet, as before, the spirit of science also is in the air. The strain of the political relations does not prevent a perpetual exchange of courtesy between scientific men and scientific bodies of various nations. Davy's dictum that "science knows no country" is perpetually exemplified in practice. And at the Royal Society, to match the great figures that were upon the scene a century before, there are such men as the eccentric Cavendish, the profound Wollaston, the marvellously versatile Priestley, and the equally versatile and even keener-visioned Rumford. ”

“ There is, indeed, a curious suggestiveness in the theory of Democritus; there is philosophical allurement in his reduction of all matter to a single element; it contains, it may be, not merely a germ of the science of the nineteenth-century chemistry, but perhaps the germs also of the yet undeveloped chemistry of the twentieth century. Yet we dare suggest that in their enthusiasm for the atomic theory of Democritus the historians of our generation have done something less than justice to that philosopher's precursor, Anaxagoras. ”

“ Arcturus, the brightest measured star, shines like two hundred suns; and even this giant orb is dim beside those other stars which are so distant that their parallax cannot be measured, yet which greet our eyes at first magnitude. As to actual bulk, of which apparent lustre furnishes no adequate test, some stars are smaller than the sun, while others exceed him hundreds or perhaps thousands of times. Yet one and all, so distant are they, remain mere disklike points of light before the utmost powers of the modern telescope. ”