John Tyndall, 1820-1893, one of the most celebrated modern
scientists, was an Irishman by birth. He was a pupil of the distinguished
Faraday. In 1853 he was appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy in the
Royal Institution of London. He is known chiefly for his brilliant
experiments and clear writing respecting heat, light, and sound. He also
wrote one or two interesting books concerning the Alps and their glaciers.
He visited America, and delighted the most intelligent audiences by his
scientific lectures and his brilliant experiments. The scientific world is
indebted to him for several remarkable discoveries.
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As surely as the force which moves a clock's hands is derived from the arm
which winds up the clock, so surely is all terrestrial power drawn from
the sun. Leaving out of account the eruptions of volcanoes, and the ebb
and flow of the tides, every mechanical action on the earth's surface,
every manifestation of power, organic and inorganic, vital and physical,
is produced by the sun. His warmth keeps the sea liquid, and the
atmosphere a gas, and all the storms which agitate both are blown by the
mechanical force of the sun. He lifts the rivers and the glaciers up to
the mountains; and thus the cataract and the avalanche shoot with an
energy derived immediately from him.
Thunder and lightning are also his transmitted strength. Every fire that
burns and every flame that glows, dispenses light and heat which
originally belonged to the sun. In these days, unhappily, the news of
battle is familiar to us, but every shock and every charge is an
application or misapplication of the mechanical force of the sun. He blows
the trumpet, he urges the projectile, he bursts the bomb. And, remember,
this is not poetry, but rigid mechanical truth.
He rears, as I have said, the whole vegetable world, and through it the
animal; the lilies of the field are his workmanship, the verdure of the
meadows, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. He forms the muscles, he
urges the blood, he builds the brain. His fleetness is in the lion's foot;
he springs in the panther, he soars in the eagle, he slides in the snake.
He builds the forest and hews it down, the power which raised the tree,
and which wields the ax, being one and the same. The clover sprouts and
blossoms, and the scythe of the mower swings, by the operation of the same
force.
The sun digs the ore from our mines, he rolls the iron; he rivets the
plates, he boils the water; he draws the train. He not only grows the
cotton, but he spins the fiber and weaves the web. There is not a hammer
raised, a wheel turned, or a shuttle thrown, that is not raised, and
turned, and thrown by the sun.
His energy is poured freely into space, but our world is a halting place
where this energy is conditioned. Here the Proteus works his spells; the
selfsame essence takes a million shapes and hues, and finally dissolves
into its primitive and almost formless form. The sun comes to us as heat;
he quits us as heat; and between his entrance and departure the multiform
powers of our globe appear. They are all special forms of solar power--the
molds into which his strength is temporarily poured in passing from its
source through infinitude.
NOTE.--Proteus (pro. Pro'te-us) was a mythological divinity. His
distinguishing characteristic was the power of assuming different shapes.