PHYSICAL SCIENCE.

An Address delivered at Oakland College, on the occasion of the Inauguration of Dr. J. H. Savage, as Professor of Chemistry, August, 1842.

Gentlemen of the Board of Trustees and Faculty:

ALL attentive students of history have remarked that great men and great events have generally appeared in clusters. When one individual of vast enterprise or learning has attracted the gaze and admiration of the world, others, remarkable for similar qualities, have arisen almost simultaneously with him. When great inventions and discoveries have dawned upon the earth, others of a kindred character have sprung up around them.

What is the philosophy of this historic truth?

How do we account for it? By the following simple process:-That waking up and inquisitiveness of the human intellect, which results in the discovery of some new principle, or the development of some new and startling invention, impel it forward in a new career, -a career of universal investigation; and speedily other discoveries and inventions open before it, and reward its newly-awakened energies. In addition to this, all truth is intimately affiliated and interwoven, and any change in one of her departments, speedily extends its influence to every other, and, ere long, all things become new. But the chief cause why great events and discoveries have so often appeared simultaneously has been, that without such simultaneous appearance they would have been of no great benefit to

the world. Providence seems sometimes designedly to have held back the mind of man from the perception of certain great principles because the world was not ready for them; their time had not yet come. What worthy advantage could have resulted from the discovery of the art of printing, had not mankind about the same time begun to call in question the old and time-hallowed dogma that none but kings and priests should possess power and learning-that it was a sin against God for the common people to investigate political and theological opinions. Hence, the discoveries of Johannes Faust and Martin Luther appeared in close proximity -the one standing ready to aid the other-the power of the Press to advance and perpetuate the power of the unshackled mind.

This simultaneous appearance of great events and their adaptation the one to the other, was most strikingly displayed in the discovery of America, and those other astonishing discoveries and inventions which appeared at the same time.

About the middle of the fifteenth century, that deep night of intellectual and moral darkness which had brooded over the earth for a thousand years began to break away, and the day began to dawn. Suddenly, as by a common impulse, Europe became the theater of great and marvelous events:-the invention of the mariner's compass-the use of gunpowder-the art of printing-the commencement of the glorious reformation, and the discovery of a new continent beyond the vast Atlantic! These and a thousand other magnificent discoveries thronged upon each other with pressing haste; when with a steady and triumphant step the peerless form of human intellect arose erect, and throwing off from her freshening limbs the death-shade and the grave clothes which had so long enshrouded her,

ascended to the glorious resurrection of that noontide luster which irradiates the horizon of our own day, rejoicing like a strong man to run a race.

Now some of these events paved the way for others -some were rendered useful solely from the previous existence of others, and all exerted upon each a reciprocal effect.

Among the fruits of this new order of things-of these new developments of mind-of this fresh impulse to the spirit of universal investigation, of which that cluster of great events was partly the cause and partly the effect, we should always give a prominent place to that department of knowledge called "Physical Science." For although the middle of the fifteenth century is generally marked as the great era of the revival of religion and of letters, it is no less deserving of being distinguished as the time in which men began to study, appreciate, and comprehend the laws and phenomena of the material world; and it is a remarkable historical fact, that at the very time Martin Luther effected the revolution of the theological system, at Wittenberg, in a city sixty miles to the north, Nicholas Copernicus was revolutionizing the long-received system of astronomy. While the one taught that the "Seven-hilled City" was not the center of the Church, the other demonstrated that this world. was not the center of the universe: glorious coincidence of great events-the type and the prophecy of the approaching emancipation of Matter and of Mind! My theme is the present position and aspect of the Physical Sciences.

1. The Physical Sciences, previous to the fifteenth century, were the main agents and hand-maids of superstition.

Instead of contributing to the happiness of the race,

as they were then understood and wielded, they were the chief source of human disquietude and suffering.

The mass of men, ignorant of the laws which govern the material world, and hence wholly incompetent to unravel their mysteries and explain their phenomena, became the sport of every strange fact or uncommon occurrence which nature presented. The sudden appearance of an eclipse, or of a comet with its blazing tail, the coruscations of the Aurora Borealis, the explosion of subterranean gases, the bursting up of volcanic fires, the ignis fatuus, dancing over the marshy meadow at nightfall, have often filled whole nations with alarm.

Nor in those cases where a solution of these physical facts was known to a few more gifted than their fellows were the masses the wiser or the better. For such knowledge was hoarded up with jealous care-became the exclusive property of the mysterious alchymist-the cunning priest, the ambitious ruler, and was held in terror over the heads of the multitude.

And it is a subject of curious investigation, to trace out the mode in which science thus became an instrument in the hands of the few, to overawe and enslave the many. And we believe that history will bear us out in the assertion, that every known branch of physical science was laid under contribution to sustain some one species of religious and political imposture.

How often did a knowledge of the principles of Astronomy enable the general on the eve of battle, to calculate the time of an approaching eclipse, and attacking the enemy at the moment darkness was spreading over the earth, decide the contest in his own favor, by appealing to this visible interposition of the gods. Did not Archimedes, by his knowledge of Mechanics, toss the Roman ships in the air? or consume them with

his burning lenses, thus arming Syracuse with protection more terrible than a wall of fire ?

The Egyptian priests, by some secret art resembling our modern mesmerism, could charm the adder, and the serpent, and thus rivet the chains of ghostly power upon the necks of the people. In a word, what constituted the hidden mysteries of the ancient sorcerer, the physician, the astrologer? Nothing but a knowledge of a few chemical, astronomical, or herbal secrets, as familiar now as the letters of the alphabet. Doubtless the secret

use which the ancients made of their scientific discoveries, has prevented many of their inventions from reaching our day: as for instance, the Egyptian art of embalming their dead, and the erection of the pyramids. Yet an examination of most of their famous miracles and fables will show us that their chief deceptions had their origin in physical science.

"The science of acoustics furnished the ancient sorcerers with some of their best deceptions. The imitation of thunder in their subterranean temples could not fail to indicate to a superstitious worshiper, the presence of a supernatural agent. The golden virgins, whose charming voices resounded through the temple of Delphos,—— the stone from the river Pactolus, whose trumpet notes frightened the robber from the treasure which it guarded; the speaking head which uttered its oracular responses at Lesbos; the vocal statue of Memnon, which began at break of day to accost the rising sun in strains of melody; were all deceptions, derived from science, and from an imitation of the phenomenona of nature."

The principles of Hydrostatics were equally available in the work of popular deception. The marvelous fountain, which Pliny describes, in the island of Andros, as discharging wine for seven days, and water during the rest of the year; the spring of oil, which