INFLUENCE OF INVENTIONS ON CIVILIZATION. 667 



tract silk directly from the leaves, and perhaps even produce the sub- 

 stance which the worm elaborates, and spin it into silk ! 



Since the telephone has shown that man, through the agency of 

 electricity, can talk with his fellow-man hundreds of miles away, there 

 are men daring enough to think that through the same agency man 

 may yet see things at an equally great distance, so that you may not 

 only talk from Boston to your friend in New York, but may actually 

 see him as if face to face, and they claim that their attempts have 

 been attended with some degree of success. Would you dare to say 

 it is more unlikely that such a result may be achieved than that man 

 should be able to transmit intelligence instantly three thousand miles 

 through the depths of the ocean ? Through long ages man remained 

 unconscious of the presence and action of the forces of magnetism and 

 electricity, but we now know that they are constantly present every- 

 where, and incessantly active. "What other forces may still be hidden 

 from the observation of man it is impossible to know. 



The present scientific belief is that the atmosphere is an aggrega- 

 tion of infinitely small molecules, which really fill but a small part of 

 the space the air seems to occupy ; that through the unoccupied space 

 these molecules are rushing at a high speed, hitting each other and the 

 solid bodies around them and rebounding, and that what we call the 

 pressure of the atmosphere, fifteen pounds to the inch, is really the 

 bombardment of these molecules upon whatever arrests their course. 

 The reason that all solid things are not swept away by this incessant 

 pounding is, that the blows are struck in every direction, and so neu- 

 tralize each other. But here is an ever-present and ever-active force, 

 and, if man should ever discover a way to make all the particles of a body 

 of air move in one direction, he would have at every place on the sur- 

 face of the earth an unlimited amount of power placed at his command. 



But even if man should accomplish all this, there would still be an 

 infinite distance between anything which he could devise or construct 

 and the organic structures which grow up around him ; between the 

 forces which he could wield and those exhibited in the operations of 

 Nature ; and each step which he might take, while it would enlarge 

 his knowledge, would at the same time bring him into the presence of 

 new mysteries, and open up to him new problems for solution. Each 

 new invention gives birth to a host of other new ones. 



The steam-engine has been the study of inventors for a hundred 

 years, and each year has witnessed improvements upon it, and such 

 improvements are going on more rapidly than ever before. 



About forty years have elapsed since Howe gave the sewing-ma- 

 chine to the world, and thousands of inventions for its improvement 

 or adaptation to new uses have been made, and they are going on still. 

 The same is true of reaping-machines, spinning-machines, looms, the 

 manufacture of iron and steel, printing and telegraphy, and of almost 

 everything used by man. 



