SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS.
School-learning is, undoubtedly, the best foundation: “In all industrial pursuits connected with the natural sciences, in fact in all pursuits not simply dependent on manual dexterity, the development of the intellectual faculties, by what may be termed ’school-learning,’ constitutes the basis and chief condition of progress and of every improvement. A young man with a mind well stored with solid scientific acquirements will, without difficulty or effort, master the technical part of an industrial pursuit; whereas, in general, an individual who may be thoroughly master of the technical part is altogether incapable of seizing upon any new fact that has not previously presented itself to him, or of comprehending a scientific principle and its application.”
Lord Stanhope has thus strikingly illustrated the subject:
See how the field of human knowledge is extended. Within the last fifty years there is scarce a branch of knowledge, even in those which have been explored for hundreds of years—classical learning, for example—which has not received some new and important additions. But not only this; it may be said that new sciences have been discovered. Who, seventy or eighty years ago, thought or heard of the name of geology, or of men like Cuvier, who by their genius have brought back to us the forms of long-extinct animals, and the state of the earth as it must have existed thousands of years ago? Who could have imagined that in art such vast resources should have been opened up to us, as, for instance, the now-familiar science of photography supplies? Who would have imagined that railways, which have enabled us at so quick a rate to have communication with all parts of the country, would become a study of well-regulated curiosity; or that the instantaneous power of transmission which we possess in the electric telegraph should be imparted to the whole of the people who now crowd these busy shores?
Some of the noblest triumphs of science, however, do but show the shortsightedness of man, and seem to dictate to him that great results can only be obtained by gradual and patient labour, as if to keep in check his overweening conceit. This is illustrated in the discovery of Voltaism. “When Galvani,” says Lord Brougham, in his powerful manner, “observed the contortions of the muscle in a dead frog, or even when Volta gave an explanation of them, how little could it be foreseen that the discovery would lead not only to the decomposition of bodies which had resisted all attempts to ascertain their constituent parts, and bring us acquainted with substances wholly unlike any before known, as metals that floated in water and took fire on exposure to the air; but, after having thus changed the face of chemical science, should also impress a new character upon the moral, judicial, and political world! Yet this has undeniably been the result of the discovery made by Volta.”
The histories of invention present many instances of “the slip between the cup and the lip.” New modes of lighting have been very productive of such disappointments. About thirty years since was patented a light by the admixture of the vapour of hydrocarbons with atmospheric air, so as to produce an illumination equal in brilliancy to that of the purest gas; the power of light from a ten-hole burner equalling that of 22-1/8th wax-candles. This invention had been a long and costly labour; a single set of experiments having cost 500l. At length the patent was sold to a company for the large sum of 28,000l.; a plant was established, licenses were advertised for sale, and, among the confident promises, it was held out that the gas-pipes and mains of the existing companies might be bought up for the requirements of this new light! But the working of the invention did not succeed in detail (indeed, it had been purchased with the knowledge that it was incomplete); and the entire capital invested, some 40,000l. or 50,000l., was lost!