Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/787

CHAPTER XLIV PROGRESS OF MODERN SCIENCE AND INVENTION I. THE GREAT AGE OF THE EARTH; EVOLUTION; MODERN CHEMISTRY 1072. Influence of Scientific Discoveries and Invention. Perhaps even more important than the various events we have been reviewing have been the scientific discoveries during the past hundred years and the changes they have wrought in the ideas and daily life of civilized mankind. Great as were the achieve- ments of the eighteenth century, mentioned in an earlier chapter, those of the nineteenth were still more startling. In order to ap- preciate this we have only to recollect that the representatives of the European powers who met together at Vienna after Napoleon's fall had not only never dreamed of telegraphs, telephones, electric lights, and electric cars, which are everyday necessities to us, but they knew nothing of ocean steamships or railways, of photog- raphy, anaesthetics, or antiseptics. Such humble comforts as matches, kerosene oil, illuminating gas, and our innumerable india- rubber articles were still unheard of. Sewing machines, type- writers, and lawri mowers would have appeared to them wholly mysterious contrivances whose uses they could not have guessed. The progress of science in the twentieth century bids fair, with our ever more refined means of research, to solve many another deep mystery and add enormously to man's power and resources. It should be the aim of every student of history to follow the development of science and to observe the ways in which it is constantly changing our habits and our views of man, his origin and destiny. It will be possible here to do no more than suggest some of the more astonishing results of the scientific research 589