had been the cradle of the new knowledge, discovered the principle of its true theory in a fact which reduces the explanation of all the phenomena in question to the simple contact of two substances of different nature.  This fact became in his hands the germ of the admirable apparatus to which its manner of being and its fecundity assign one of the chief places among those with which the genius of mankind has enriched physics.”

Shortly afterwards, our amateur would learn that Carlisle and Nicholson had decomposed water by the aid of a battery; then, that Davy, in 1803, had produced, by the help of the same battery, a quite unexpected phenomenon, and had succeeded in preparing metals endowed with marvellous properties, beginning with substances of an earthy appearance which had been known for a long time, but whose real nature had not been discovered.

In another order of ideas, surprises as prodigious would wait for our amateur.  Commencing with 1802, he might have read the admirable series of memoirs which Young then published, and might thereby have learned how the study of the phenomena of diffraction led to the belief that the undulation theory, which, since the works of Newton seemed irretrievably condemned, was, on the contrary, beginning quite a new life.  A little later—­in 1808—­he might have witnessed the discovery made by Malus of polarization by reflexion, and would have been able to note, no doubt with stupefaction, that under certain conditions a ray of light loses the property of being reflected.

He might also have heard of one Rumford, who was then promulgating very singular ideas on the nature of heat, who thought that the then classical notions might be false, that caloric does not exist as a fluid, and who, in 1804, even demonstrated that heat is created by friction.  A few years later he would learn that Charles had enunciated a capital law on the dilatation of gases; that Pierre Prevost, in 1809, was making a study, full of original ideas, on radiant heat.  In the meantime he would not have failed to read volumes iii. and iv. of the Mecanique celeste of Laplace, published in 1804 and 1805, and he might, no doubt, have thought that before long mathematics would enable physical science to develop with unforeseen safety.

All these results may doubtless be compared in importance with the present discoveries.  When strange metals like potassium and sodium were isolated by an entirely new method, the astonishment must have been on a par with that caused in our time by the magnificent discovery of radium.  The polarization of light is a phenomenon as undoubtedly singular as the existence of the X rays; and the upheaval produced in natural philosophy by the theories of the disintegration of matter and the ideas concerning electrons is probably not more considerable than that produced in the theories of light and heat by the works of Young and Rumford.

If we now disentangle ourselves from contingencies, it will be understood that in reality physical science progresses by evolution rather than by revolution.  Its march is continuous.  The facts which our theories enable us to discover, subsist and are linked together long after these theories have disappeared.  Out of the materials of former edifices overthrown, new dwellings are constantly being reconstructed.