We study the tremendous procession of the ages,
from the immemorial past when in "cramp elf and saurian forms" the
creative forces "swathed their too-much power," down to the yesterday,
a few score thousand years distant only, when the history of man
became the overwhelming fact in the history of life on this planet;
and studying, we see strange analogies in the phenomena of life and
death, of birth, growth, and change, between those physical groups of
animal life which we designate as species, forms, races, and the
highly complex and composite entities which rise before our minds when
we speak of nations and civilizations.
It is this study which has given science its present-day prominence.
In the world of intellect, doubtless, the most marked features in the
history of the past century have been the extraordinary advances in
scientific knowledge and investigation, and in the position held by
the men of science with reference to those engaged in other pursuits.
I am not now speaking of applied science; of the science, for
instance, which, having revolutionized transportation on the earth and
the water, is now on the brink of carrying it into the air; of the
science that finds its expression in such extraordinary achievements
as the telephone and the telegraph; of the sciences which have so
accelerated the velocity of movement in social and industrial
conditions--for the changes in the mechanical appliances of ordinary
life during the last three generations have been greater than in all
the preceding generations since history dawned.
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