art and science, bearing fruit not
to be imagined even by men of the stature of Watt, Lavoisier, or
Humboldt. Compare this rapid march of conquest with the slow adaptation,
through age after age, of fire to cooking, smelting, tempering. Yet it
was partly, perhaps mainly, because the use of fire had drawn out man's
intelligence and cultivated his skill that he was ready in the fulness
of time so quickly to seize upon electricity and subdue it.

Electricity is as legitimately the offspring of fire as fire of the
simple knack in which one savage in ten thousand was richer than his
fellows. The principle of permutation, suggested in both victories,
interprets not only how vast empire is won by a new weapon of prime
dignity; it explains why such empires are brought under rule with
ever-accelerated pace. Every talent only pioneers the way for the
richer talents which are born from it.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Permutations are the various ways in which two or more different
things may be arranged in a row, all the things appearing in each row.
Permutations are readily illustrated with squares or cubes of different
colours, with numbers, or letters.

Permutations of two elements, 1 and 2, are (1 x 2) two; 1, 2; 2, 1; or
_a_, _b_; _b_, _a_. Of three elements the permutations are (1 x 2 x 3)
six; 1, 2, 3; 1, 3, 2; 2, 1, 3; 2, 3, 1; 3, 1, 2; 3, 2, 1; or _a_, _b_,
_c_; _a_, _c_, _b_; _b_, _a_, _c_; _b_, _c_, _a_; _c_, _a_, _b_; _c_,
_b_, _a_. Of four elements the permutations are (1 x 2 x 3 x 4)
twenty-four; of five elements, one hundred and twenty, and so on. A new
element or permutator multiplies by an increasing figure all the
permutations it finds.

[6] Some years ago I sent an outline of this argument to Herbert
Spencer, who replied: "I recognize a novelty and value in your inference
that the law implies an increasing width of gap between lower and higher
types as evolution advances."

COUNT RUMFORD IDENTIFIES HEAT WITH MOTION.

[Benjamin Thompson, who received the title of Count Rumford from
the Elector of Bavaria, was born in Woburn, Massachusetts, in 1753.
When thirty-one years of age he settled in Munich, where he devoted
his remarkable abilities to the public service. Twelve years
afterward he removed to England; in 1800 he founded the Royal
Institution of London, since famous as the theatre of the labours
of Davy, Faraday, Tyndall, and Dewar. He bequeathed to Harvard
Unive