local ignorance and prejudice, the creation of common interests among
the most widely separated peoples, and the strengthening of the forces
of the organisation of the commonwealth against those of political or
social anarchy, thus effected, have exerted an influence on the
present and future fortunes of mankind the full significance of which
may be divined, but cannot, as yet, be estimated at its full value.

[Sidenote: caused by the increase of physical science]

This revolution--for it is nothing less--in the political and social
aspects of modern civilisation has been preceded, accompanied, and in
great measure caused, by a less obvious, but no less marvellous,
increase of natural knowledge, and especially of that part of it which
is known as Physical Science, in consequence of the application of
scientific method to the investigation of the phenomena of the
material world. Not that the growth of physical science is an
exclusive prerogative of the Victorian age. Its present strength and
volume merely indicate the highest level of a stream which took its
rise, alongside of the primal founts of Philosophy, Literature, and
Art, in ancient Greece; and, after being dammed up for a thousand
years, once more began to flow three centuries ago.

[Sidenote: Greek and mediæval science.]

It may be doubted if even-handed justice, as free from fulsome
panegyric as from captious depreciation, has ever yet been dealt out
to the sages of antiquity who, for eight centuries, from the time of
Thales to that of Galen, toiled at the foundations of physical
science. But, without entering into the discussion of that large
question, it is certain that the labors of these early workers in the