THE LATEST DISCOVERY.
IT is just the hour for a great discovery, whether in the region of science, or philosophic thought, or, if that were possible without a new revelation, in the morality which ought to govern life. The whole world is quivering with a sense of dissatisfaction, as if, though knowledge is so abundant, nothing were complete or contenting, or rather, as if something were coming which would enable mankind to utilise and enjoy more perfectly all that they had recently gained. The feeling which Tennyson expressed in his re- vealing line, " Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers," was never keener, or the sense of waiting for a little more light, whether in philosophic thought or politics or the effort to extract the secrets of nature in which man has in this century achieved so many victories, and which he dignifies, sometimes rather foolishly, as the pursuit of science. It is not only that the spirit of inquiry is awake, but that, as hap- pened also at the end of the last century, the general mind has drifted a little from its moorings, and there is in all departments a readiness to believe such as in a long life of observation the writer has never seen quite equalled. There is no teaching which does not find disciples, no rale of life which men are not ready to try, no report of discovery, how- ever improbable, which they are not inclined provisionally to accept. The wildcat social notions find instant acceptance; men are trying every rule of life from mere hedonism to a lofty and spiritnalised asceticism ; while they are so eager to believe new facts in physics that they hardly pause to inquire into tkeir truth, or if they are true, exaggerate absurdly their importance. It took a long generation to induce the Western world to protect itself against small-pox, but to-day if a great investigator declared in accents of conviction that a new kind of inoculation would protect us against all diseases or even against gradual decay, one man in every three, and one woman in every two, would rush to be inoculated. Indeed, the disposition to believe is strongest in the domain of physics. It infects even the truly learned physicists, among whom, we are told, on no second-rate authority, there is prevailing a curious impression that the conditions which usually precede important advances in science are so preva- lent all round us, that it is not unreasonable to expect some great leap forward, some remarkable addition either to our knowledge of general laws, or to our power of applying the gains of scientific observation to some great and definite end. Among the multitude the same notion exists in a much vaguer form, but with such intensity, that we verily believe if Mr. Edison were to assert that he could use lightning as a weapon without regard to distance, or if Professor Virchow hinted that he could extract gold in limitless profusion at little cost from sea-water, there would in the one case be a flatter among all politicians and soldiers, and in the other a perceptible panic among the holders of bank shares. Take as an illustration of the tendency, a comparatively trivial incident in the history of the fortnight. It is difficult to imagine anything which would more strongly tax the credulity of the ordinary man than a statement that he could, under certain circumstances, see through a piece of wood, or through the human body. Yet, when it was made by Dr. Röntgen, of Vienna, scarcely anybody disbelieved. Why should it not be as true as anything else,—the electric tele- graph, for instance, or the phonograph, or bacteriology ? The German Emperor, always a little sudden, or, as men say now, "previous," in his action, at once bestowed a Prussian Order on the discoverer, and the correspondents of English journals vied with each other in their suggestions of possible results from the amazing discovery. It does not seem as yet one likely to be very fruitful, though no doubt it is a very curious addition to physical knowledge. The power of sending a peculiar ray of light, produced with considerable trouble, through a wooden box, and of photographing the shadow cast by anything in the box which that ray cannot penetrate, is not very useful, except, indeed, so far as it widens our notions of the penetrating power of "light," and of what we may call the conditioned transparency of substances previously deemed opaque. Something may come of that, particularly if further research should reveal what would be a far-reaching truth, that there is no material substance which, if exposed to certain rays, remains truly opaque,—a fact which, if truly a fact, would open up a very marvellous vista, would certainly, for example, enlarge our whole conception of the power of actual visual perception, which may pertain to beings less narrowly con- ditioned than ourselves. (There must be such beings, even if everything is cause and effect, for there are worlds without number, and some at least of them must enjoy higher con- ditions than our own.) Nor shall we gain much at first from the facts that while flesh is pervious to the " Crookes ray," bone is impervious, and therefore yields its shadow, for the skeleton was accurately known in the days of Galen, and what the doctors want is the power of seeing inside the human body as they can now see inside the human eye. We do not mean in any way to hint depreciation of a discovery which may have far wider bearings than we, who, as regards most sciences, are of the laity, readily perceive, but what interests us is the new receptivity of mankind. Nobody laughs at the account of Dr. Rontgen's studies, or quotes Sam Weller's remark about seeing through a flight of stairs and a deal door, or in any way indicates contemptuous disbelief; rather the wish is to believe and to expand the meaning of the new subject of belief. That is a condition of the general mind very favourable to discoverers, for it exempts them from the heart-breaking necessity, after they have discerned a truth— and remember, there must exist genius in the region of physical inquiry as well as in literature—of inducing other minds, apparently hermetically sealed, to receive it also. For
good or evil—and there is much evil as well as good in the change—the seals which once closed all minds have been for the most part broken.
It is difficult to avoid speculating for a moment on the line which, if the impression above quoted is well-founded, the next great revelation of science should take. It should not, to fulfil expectation, be, we think, a new application of facts already known. Something which would make it easier to store electric energy, and therefore to use it as a motor without fixed machines, would no doubt double or triple the force at the actual disposal of mankind, and therefore their power of wringing the means of comfort from the reluctant planet, which gives nothing but beautiful scenes except in return for toil. A new means of levitation—scarcely oonceivable—would send us all flying through the air, trans- form all armies and navies, and modify, probably in the interest of the yellow race, which does not mind dying, all existing political combinations. Any means of employing electricity as a weapon might also have great results, as the invention of gunpowder had, though, like gunpowder, it would probably leave the relative position of the nations very much where it was. It is in the struggle of classes that a new weapon would probably do most, all recent inventions having increased the strength of all regular Governments against their peoples. There are conceivable discoveries, too, in medicine, such as a power of illuminating the human body, which would greatly help man in his warfare with disease ; and there may exist means of destroying within the bodily system, or permanently preventing the generation of, the hostile microbes. We might learn, in the domain of applied mechanics, how to utilise the colossal force of the tides, the greatest of all unused sources of power except the rush of the world through space ; or we might find a new way of easily developing heat so intense that, for instance, we could make of sand a magnificent and comparatively cheap building material. The uses of intense heat, if easily produced, would in fact be numberless. To produce a cooling apparatus, which should have precisely the reverse effect of a fire, and make the tropics a comparatively enjoyable place of residence for white men, is beyond the range of sane imagination ; but a refrigerating process which shall add, say, five years, to the durability of all food-products is not, and would greatly increase the comfort of the masses of mankind. All these would be great discoveries, but they would not greatly extend the range of human thought or furnish any solution of the problems which perplex investigators. What seems to be hoped for from among the thousands of eager brains now devoted to physical inquiry is the revelation of some hitherto unknown law as extensive in its incidence and as resistless in its operation as the law of gravitation. Suppose we discover a quality in ether, that is, in the something which presumably fills space, which once recognised will enable as to understand why a big solid attracts or pulls a little solid, or possibly why, when a loadstone approaches a needle the latter jumps up, thenceforth to hang to it. Might not that make the universe immediately around ns more intelligible, and so directly increase the pace, and therefore the amount, of fruitful investigation? We want, in fact, a discovery which shall in some great department of science simplify the explanation of great groups of fact, and therefore enable us to use those facts as bases for further dis- covery, with a novel certainty. A discovery which should literally enlarge the powers of the human mind is too much to hope for, but a discovery making the application of those powers much easier—as within a certain range some discoveries in mathematics have done—is at least within the range of the imagination. Whether any such addition will be made to the world's reservoir of thought before the century closes, the greatest savant among us cannot say, but we may venture to record, as Virgil once recorded, a general vague tone of zxpectation.
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