Not only Atlantic telegraphy, the adjustable compass, but the scullery tap came under his inventive genius. Apply your knowledge! It is of little use if not capable of application. That was the law of Kelvin's life. In addition to inventions, he soared into the profoundest speculations of philosophy: the birth of worlds, the size of atoms, the cooling of the earth, etc., all engaged his attention.
If the laws of gravitation, and the decomposition of light by the prism, were the chief achievements of the immortal Newton; the magnitudes and motions of atoms, the theory of the age of the world, and oceanic telegraphy, were the principal discoveries of the immortal Kelvin.
A mere material universe, however, did not satisfy Lord Kelvin. There are such things as intelligence, volition, and emotion; the power to reason, the capacity to distinguish good and evil, and taste to admire the beautiful, which cannot be expressed in terms of length, breadth, and depth; or as qualities of solids, or liquids, or gases. There are life and mind; these no knowledge of matter has explained. "Proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie all around us," said Kelvin. Things must be as they are either by chance, necessity, or design. Chance is out of the question, unthinkable. Grant that the properties of things, like those of numbers, for instance, could not be otherwise, have been eternally as they now exist—impossible as the supposition is—how came the
