Pythagoras.

This is nothing unusual in the progress of Science. There was no brighter genius in physical science at the beginning of this century than Dr. Thomas Young, who died in 1829, whose discoveries fell into obscurity until they were revived by more recent investigation. He had that intuitive genius which is most rare among scientists.

He was a great thinker and discoverer, who knew how to utilize in philosophy discovered facts, and was not busy like many modern scientists in the monotonous repetition of experiments which had already been performed.

“At no period of his life was he fond of repeating experiments or even of originating new ones. He considered that however necessary to the advancement of science, they demanded a great sacrifice of time, and that when a fact was once established, time was better employed in considering the purposes to which it might be applied, or the principles which it might tend to elucidate.”

He says, in his Bakerian lecture, “Nor is it absolutely necessary in this instance to produce a single new experiment; for of experiments there is already an ample store.”

In a letter to his sister-in-law, Mrs. Earle, he says, “Acute suggestion was then, and indeed always, more in the line of my ambition than experimental illustration,” and on another occasion, referring to the Wollaston fund for experimental inquiries, he said, “For my part, it is my pride and pleasure, as far as I am able, to supersede the necessity of experiments, and more especially of expensive ones.” The famous Prof. Helmholtz said of Young:

“The theory of colors with all their marvellous and complicated relations, was a riddle which Goethe in vain attempted to solve, nor were we physicists and physiologists more successful. I include myself in the number, for I long toiled at the task without getting any nearer my object, until I at last discovered that a wonderfully simple solution had been discovered at the beginning of this century, and had been in print ever since for any one to read who chose. This solution was found and published by the same Thomas Young, who first showed the right method of arriving at the interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphics.”

“He was one of the most acute men who ever lived, but had the misfortune to be too far in advance of his contemporaries. They looked on him with astonishment, but could not follow his bold speculations, and thus a mass of his most important thoughts remained buried and forgotten in the ‘Transactions of the Royal Society,’ until a later generation by slow degrees arrived at the re-discovery of his discoveries, and came to appreciate the force of his argument and the accuracy of his conclusions.”

This half century of passive resistance to science, in the case of Dr. Young and Dr. Gall, is nothing unusual. It was 286 years from the day when Bruno, the eloquent philosopher, was burned at the stake by the Catholic Church, before a statue was prepared to honor his memory in Italy.

What was the reception of the illustrious surgeon, physiologist, and physician, John Hunter? While he lived, “most of his contemporaries looked upon him as little better than an enthusiast and an innovator,” according to his biographer; and when, in 1859, it was decided to inter his remains in Westminster Abbey, it was hard to find his body, which was at last discovered in a vault along with 2000 others piled upon it.

Harvey’s discoveries were generally ignored during his life, and Meibomius of Lubeck rejected his discovery in a book published after Harvey’s death.

When Newton’s investigations of light and colors were first published, “A host of enemies appeared (says Playfair), each eager to obtain the unfortunate pre-eminence of being the first to attack conclusions which the unanimous voice of posterity was to confirm.” Some, like Mariotte, professed to repeat his experiments, and succeeded in making a failure, which was published; like certain professors who at different times have undertaken to make unsuccessful experiments in mesmerism and spiritualism, and have always succeeded in making the failure they desired.

Voltaire remarks, and Playfair confirms it as a fact, “that though the author of the Principia survived the publication of that great work nearly forty years, he had not at the time of his death, twenty followers out of England.”

If educated bigotry could thus resist the mathematical demonstrations of Newton, and the physical demonstrations of Harvey, has human nature sufficiently advanced to induce us to expect much better results from the colleges of to-day—from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and the rest? If such a change has occurred, I have not discovered it.

Neglect and opposition has ever been the lot of the original explorer of nature. Kepler, the greatest astronomical genius of his time, continually struggled with poverty, and earned a scanty subsistence by casting astrological nativities.

Eustachius, who in the 16th century discovered the Eustachian tube and the valves of the heart, was about 200 years in advance of his time, but was unable, from poverty, to publish his anatomical tables, which were published by Lancisi 140 years later, in 1714.

Not only in science do we find this stolid indifference or active hostility to new ideas, but in matters of the simplest character and most obvious utility. For example, this country is now enjoying the benefits of fish culture, but why did we not enjoy it a hundred years ago? The process was discovered by the Count De Goldstein in the last century, and was published by the Academy of Sciences, and also fully illustrated by a German named Jacobi, who applied it to breeding trout and salmon. This seems to have been forgotten until in 1842 two obscure and illiterate fishermen rediscovered and practised this process. The French government was attracted by the success of these fisherman, Gehin and Remy, and thus the lost art was revived.

Even so simple an invention as the percussion cap, invented in 1807, was not introduced in the British army until after the lapse of thirty years.

The founder of the kindergarten system, Friedrich Froebel, is one of the benefactors of humanity. How narrowly did he escape from total failure and oblivion.

The “Reminiscences of Frederich Froebel,” translated from the German of the late Mrs. Mary Mann, gives an interesting account of his life and labors, upon which the following notice is based:

“Froebel died in 1852, and it is possible that his system of education would have died with him—to be resurrected and reapplied by somebody else centuries later—only for a friend and interpreter who remained to give his teachings to the world. This friend, disciple, and interpreter was Madame Von Marenholz. His system of education had this peculiarity which made it different from any other plan of teaching ever given to the world—it was first grasped in its full significance by women. They, sooner than men, saw its truth to nature, and its grand, far-reaching meaning, and became at once its enthusiastic disciples. But the German women are in a bondage almost unknown to their sisters of the other civilized races, therefore Froebel’s reform progressed only slowly. Had his principles been given to the world in the midst of American or English women, they would most likely have been popularly known and adopted long ago.

“Froebel did not see any very magnificent practical results flow from the “new education” in his time. While he lived the ungrateful tribe of humanity abused, misrepresented, and laughed him to scorn, as it has done everybody who ever conferred any great and lasting benefit on it. A touching illustration of this is given