The labour of our forerunners never wholly perishes.  The ideas of yesterday prepare for those of to-morrow; they contain them, so to speak, in potentia.  Science is in some sort a living organism, which gives birth to an indefinite series of new beings taking the places of the old, and which evolves according to the nature of its environment, adapting itself to external conditions, and healing at every step the wounds which contact with reality may have occasioned.

Sometimes this evolution is rapid, sometimes it is slow enough; but it obeys the ordinary laws.  The wants imposed by its surroundings create certain organs in science.  The problems set to physicists by the engineer who wishes to facilitate transport or to produce better illumination, or by the doctor who seeks to know how such and such a remedy acts, or, again, by the physiologist desirous of understanding the mechanism of the gaseous and liquid exchanges between the cell and the outer medium, cause new chapters in physics to appear, and suggest researches adapted to the necessities of actual life.

The evolution of the different parts of physics does not, however, take place with equal speed, because the circumstances in which they are placed are not equally favourable.  Sometimes a whole series of questions will appear forgotten, and will live only with a languishing existence; and then some accidental circumstance suddenly brings them new life, and they become the object of manifold labours, engross public attention, and invade nearly the whole domain of science.

We have in our own day witnessed such a spectacle.  The discovery of the X rays—­a discovery which physicists no doubt consider as the logical outcome of researches long pursued by a few scholars working in silence and obscurity on an otherwise much neglected subject—­ seemed to the public eye to have inaugurated a new era in the history of physics.  If, as is the case, however, the extraordinary scientific movement provoked by Roentgen’s sensational experiments has a very remote origin, it has, at least, been singularly quickened by the favourable conditions created by the interest aroused in its astonishing applications to radiography.

A lucky chance has thus hastened an evolution already taking place, and theories previously outlined have received a singular development.  Without wishing to yield too much to what may be considered a whim of fashion, we cannot, if we are to note in this book the stage actually reached in the continuous march of physics, refrain from giving a clearly preponderant place to the questions suggested by the study of the new radiations.  At the present time it is these questions which move us the most; they have shown us unknown horizons, and towards the fields recently opened to scientific activity the daily increasing crowd of searchers rushes in rather disorderly fashion.