breath of flame, covers the land; the cables and
telegraphs, along which lightning is the carrier of thought, have
made the nations neighbors and brought the world to every home;
the making of paper from wood, the printing presses that made it
possible to give the history of the human race each day; the reapers,
mowers and threshers that superseded the cradles, scythes and
flails; the lighting of streets and houses with gas and incandescent
lamps, changing night into day; the invention of matches that made
fire the companion of man; the process of making steel, invented
by Bessemer, saving for the world hundreds of millions a year; the
discovery of anesthetics, changing pain to happy dreams and making
surgery a science; the spectrum analysis, that told us the secrets
of the suns; the telephone, that transports speech, uniting lips
and ears; the phonograph, that holds in dots and marks the echoes
of our words; the marvelous machines that spin and weave, that
manufacture the countless things of use, the marvelous machines,
whose wheels and levers seem to think; the discoveries in chemistry,
the wave theory of light, the indestructibility of matter and force;
the discovery of microbes and bacilli, so that now the plague can
be stayed without the assistance of priests.

The art of photography became known, the sun became an artist, gave
us the faces of our friends, copies of the great paintings and
statues, pictures of the world's wonders, and enriched the eyes of
poverty with the spoil of travel, the wealth of art. The cell
theory was advanced, embryology was studied and science entered
the secret house of life. The biologists, guided by fossil forms,
followed the paths of life from protoplasm up to man. Then came
Darwin with the "Origin of Species," "Natural Selection," and the
"Survival of the Fittest." From his brain there came a flood of
light. The old theories grew foolish and absurd. The temple of
every science was rebuilt. That which had been called philosophy
became childish superstition. The prison doors were opened and
millions of convicts, of unconscious slaves, roved with joy over
the fenceless fields of freedom. Darwin and Haeckel and Huxley
and their fellow-workers filled the night of ignorance with the
glittering stars of truth. This is Darwin's victory. He gained
the greatest victory, the grandest triumph. The laurel of the
nineteenth century is on his brow.

_Question_. How does the literat