578 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



of his own life. The soldier will not longer yearn to reenact on a 

 grand scale among the nations the war of members and of parts which 

 his own body and mind sustain in youth, but will seek to overcome it in 

 the body politic as in his own organism. Thus will be verified the say- 

 ing of Scripture : " He that ruleth himself is greater than he that 

 taketh a city." The priest will as gladly serve, as once he ruled, the 

 state. He will rejoice more in being a servant of God than a ruler 

 over men. 



V. Struggle. — Man's struggle with the elements has been even more 

 successful than that with his fellows. The hours of final triumph have 

 often been delayed by his own carelessness and dishonesty alone. Be- 

 ginning with the arrow he won the all-encircling air, with the dug-out, 

 the inhospitable sea, with fire, the inclement sky, with the digging- 

 stick the unyielding earth to his service, or, at least, to his unhurt. 



Since his first conquest — as Gallouedec suggests — of the hill-side 

 and of the little mountains, he has become master of the plains, and 

 now morasses and bogs, deserts and huge mountains are fast yielding 

 to his sway. He lords it over unfathomable chasms, dizzy heights and 

 wind-swept ocean. He makes the desert blossom as the rose, and from 

 the very bones of earth coins and fashions things whose beauty is ever- 

 lasting. He has harnessed the lightning, housed the sunbeam, and both 

 have become the servants of art and of science. Things terrible to his 

 eye and his ear, nay, that shook him to the uttermost depths of his 

 soul, when he first trod the earth, are his familiars now. He has made 

 nature his servant instead of remaining her slave. Gallouedec hardly 

 "exaggerates when he says that from the first man to the. Frenchman or 

 the Englishman of to-day is not a whit less than the distance separating 

 the formless block of marble from the statue produced out of it by the 

 genius of the artist. And the future bids fair to outglorify the past. 

 The conquered earth, once the mere hiding-place of the savage, or his 

 prison, is becoming more and more his home. Nature, who once held 

 him in bondage, after being his servant, turns to colleague and friend. 

 With the passing of war and the lust of human slaughter man is be- 

 ginning to feel at home in the world and in the universe. And now 

 the empire of the sky is beginning to be his. The future years will 

 see the results of the leisure which progress in man, who alone of all 

 creatures possesses the power to utilize the past and to discern the 

 future, has made possible. Man will live and labor, transform and 

 create in the full sense, of his partnership in all about him, his slaves 

 and servants having become his friends and co-laborers in the evolu- 

 tion of the cosmos. He will outdo Ulysses. He will become a part of 

 all that he has met, and all that he has met will have become a part of 

 him. Struggle will be succeeded by togetherness. 



