324 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



later asked that commissioners be ap- 

 pointed to make a careful survey of 

 the Potomac and James rivers to their 

 respective sources, and that a complete 

 map of the country intervening between 

 the seaboard, the Ohio waters and the 

 Great Lakes be presented to the people. 

 "These things being done," he says, "I 

 shall be mistaken if prejudice does not 

 yield to facts, jealousy to candor and 

 finally, if reason and nature, thus aided, 

 do not dictate what is right and proper 

 to be done." 



He introduced his plan to the no- 

 tice of Congress, thus making the first 

 suggestion to that body of the policy 

 of national improvements which the 

 present generation is carrying on, as 

 well as of the policy of exploration and 

 national surveys to which our Govern- 

 ment so firmly adheres. To-day the 

 Government is carrying forward sur- 

 veying work by means of the largest 

 and most thoroughly equipped organiza- 

 tions in existence, and thus is Wash- 

 ington honored. 



The scientific men of to-day owe to 

 Washington profound respect and grati- 

 tude for the scientific spirit he culti- 

 vated in his work. The Government 

 once established on so high a plane, it 

 necessarily followed that all true science 

 should be encouraged and be enlisted in 

 the development of the citizen and of 

 the material resources of the nation. 

 Ohakles D. Walcott, 

 U. S. Geological Survey, 



Washington, D. C. 



SCIENCE AND FICTION. 

 The leading article of the June num- 

 ber of the Century Magazine is entitled 

 "The Problem of increasing Human 

 Energy," and is written by Nikola 

 Tesla. Mr. Tesla offers the reader some 

 naive verbal analogies between the 

 causes of human progress and the 

 'energy' of theoretical physics, and a 

 eulogy of a number of inventions which 

 he expects to make. He intersperses 

 these with sundry remarkable state- 

 ments such as, "our own earth will be a 

 lump of ice;" "Though this movement is 



not of a translatory character, yet the 

 general laws of mechanical movement 

 are applicable to it;" "That we can send 

 a message to a planet is certain, that we 

 can get an answer is probable;" "It is 

 highly probable that if there are intelli- 

 gent beings on Mars they have long 

 ago realized this very idea [the trans- 

 mission of electrical energy for indus- 

 trial purposes without wires], which 

 would explain the changes on its sur- 

 face noted by astronomers." (The 

 italics are our own.) 



Mr. Tesla's doctrine of human energy 

 is in some ways as original as the in- 

 ventions and discoveries which he ex- 

 pects to make. Each of us is, he says, 

 a part of a unitary whole, 'man.' "This 

 one human being lives on and on. . . 

 . . Therein . . . . is to be found 

 the partial explanation of many of 

 those marvelous phenomena of hered- 

 ity which are the result of countless 

 centuries of feeble but persistent in- 

 fluence." Now we may "assume that 

 human energy is measured by half the 

 product of man's mass with the square 

 of a certain hypothetical velocity. . 



the great problem of 



science is, and always will be, to in- 

 crease the energy thus defined. . . . 

 This mass is impelled in one direction 

 by a force F, which is resisted by an- 

 other partly frictional and partly nega- 

 tive force R, acting in a direction ex- 

 actly opposite, and retarding the move- 

 ment of the mass." 



Unhappily Mr. Tesla in his enthu- 

 siasm to progress to recommendations 

 of religion, vegetarianism, the old re- 

 gime for women and the artificial prep- 

 aration of nitrogen compounds, neglects 

 to state which direction is the proper 

 one for the human mass to follow, 

 north, south, east, west, toward the 

 moon or Sirius or to Dante's Satan in 

 the centre of the earth. Nor does he 

 explain how 'enlightenment' makes the 

 mass of human bodies go in an exactly 

 opposite direction to that toward which 

 'visionariness' impels them, nor reveal 

 why, if his account be true, he and a 

 'visionary' can walk in the same di- 



