Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-07-23

Emerson delivered his
address on the g neri-
can Scholar" which has well been STYLED our intel
lectual Declaration of Independence, and in which
he expressed the hope that perhaps the time is
already come . when the sluggard intellect
of this continent will look from under its iron
lids and fulfil the postponed expectation of the
world with something better than the exertions of
mechanical skill Nearly seventy years ago
this prophecy uttered which still echoes unfulfed.
But we like sentries are obliged to stand
In staress nights, and wait the appointed hour.
In the nineteenth century, in which we came to
maturity a nation, one of the chief leaders of
art even including literature in its broadcast aspects
and no one of the chief leaders in science native
to our country. Perhaps we may claim that
Webster was one of the worlds greatest orators
and that Parkman was of the world greatest
historians but probably the world outside of the
United States would be found unprepared and
willing admit either claim however likely it may
be to win acceptance in the future Lincoln is in
disputably of the worlds greatest statesmen;
and his fame is firmly established throughout
the whole of civilization But this is all
assert; and cannot deny that have given
birth scarcely of the foremost poets, drama
fists, noveists, painters sculptors, architects
scientific discoveries of the past hundred years
Alfred Russell Wallace, whose fame is linked with
Darwin's and whose competence as a critic of
scientific advance is beyond dispute, has declared
that the nineteenth century the most wonderful
of all since the world began. He asserts that the
scientific achievements of the nineteenth century,
both in the discovery of general principles and in
their practical application, exceed in number the
sum total of the scientific achievements to be
credited to all the centuries that went before.
He considers first of all the practical applications
which have made the aspect of civilization in 1900
differ in a thousand ways from what it in 1901.
He thirteen of these practical applications,
including railways, steam navigation, the electric
telegraph, the telephone fricton-natches gas-lght
ing electric-ighting, the photograph, the Rontgen
rays spectrum analysis anesthetics and antiseptics
1t is with pride that American check off at
least six of these utilities as being due wholly in
part to the ingenuity of one or another of his
countrymen.
But his pride has a fall when Wallace draws up
a second list not of mere inventions but of those
fundamental discoveries, of those formulating
theories underlying all practical applications and
making them possible of those principles (which
have extended our knowledge widened con-
ceptions of the universe" Of these he catalogues
twelve; and panied to find that American
has had important share in the establishment of
any of these broad congratulations We may
have added little here and there; but single
of all the twelve discoveries is either wholly
in large part to be credited to any American 1t
seems as though our French critic was not so far
out when he asserted that were terribly prac-
teal In the mere application of principles, in
the devising of methods, share larger
than that of any other nation. In the working out
OF the stimulating principles themselves our share
not "a younger brothers portion"
Practical are, even though may not have