'Truths already Won.'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 1, 3 January 1901, Page 17

'Truths already Won.'

The feature of the nineteenth century which strikes the eye of the observer most directly and immediately is the extraordinary development which it witnessed within the realms of physical science and invention. In these as in certain other respects it occupies an altogether singular place in history. Few discoveries or inventions, however, stand quite alone. They are usually, as Sir Michael Foster has pointed out, * born of the truths already won.' Stanley Jevons, for instance, has Bhown how * the science of heat may be said to commence with the construction of the first thermometer,' and to be greatly advanced by the thermo-electric pile ; and how chemistry has been created chiefly by the careful use of the balance, which still remains 4 substantially in the form in which it was first applied to scientific purposes by Archimedes ' two centuries before the birth of Christ. But in almost every branch of invention and discovery Catholics have ever occupied an honorable place as originators and pioneers.