Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/622

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
618
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
Lord Kelvin with his Compass.

universal tribute rendered to the memory of Lord Kelvin, there seemed to be some revival of recognition of what the nation owes to science and to her great men. That which impressed Voltaire nearly two hundred years ago at the funeral of Newton was the public recognition which the England of that day accorded to the great representative of science. To-day the man of action looms larger in the world than the man of thought; and mankind which worships success is apt to heed little the thought and toil without which success is not achieved. In an age which has been preeminent over all that ever went before for the advances of science, the fashion of glorifying the warrior and the orator seems a grotesque anachronism. Mr. Gladstone's dictum, 'that the present is by no means an age abounding in minds of the first order,' did but reveal that he too shared the general blindness. The fact is that there never was an age so rich in minds of the first order in science. The nineteenth century has, intellectually, been the golden age, not of drama or of adventure, but of science. It has been an epoch distinguished by a galaxy of men who made it great, and who. whether the world recognizes it or not, were great men. Though Lord Kelvin was not the last of these, be was assuredly the greatest; and his name will be revered and