THE MODERN TRUST COMPANY 429 



ous events in all history. Most of the important arts had al- 

 ready been discovered. Iron, steel and textile fabrics could 

 be made; the possibilities of steam had been foreseen, but all 

 these tremendous powers lay dormant only to dream in Uto- 

 pian visions of the future. Suddenly all of these power sprang 

 into action. Huxley states this problem in his customary 

 clear and accurate style : 



"The middle of the eighteenth century is illustrated by a 

 host of great names in science — English, French, German and 

 Italian — especially in the fields of chemistry, geology and bi- 

 ology ; but this deepening and broadening of natural knowledge 

 produced next to no immediate practical benefits. Even if, 

 at this time, Francis Bacon could have returned to the scene 

 of his greatness and of his littleness, he must have regarded the 

 philosophic world which praised and disregarded his precepts 

 with great disfavor. If ghosts are consistent, he would have 

 said, 'These people are all wasting their time, just as Gilbert 

 and Kepler and Galileo and my worthy physician Harvey did 

 in my day. Where are the fruits of the restoration of science 

 which I promised? This accumulation of bare knowledge is 

 all very well, but cui bono? Not one of these people is doing 

 what I told him specially to do, and seeking that secret of the 

 cause of forms which will enable men to deal, at will, with mat- 

 ter, and superinduce new natures upon the old foundations'." 



Huxley's explanation is that a little later the growth of 

 knowledge beyond imaginable utilitarian ends began to pro- 

 duce some effect upon practical life. This explanation, how- 

 ever, fails to satisfy the economist. He looks for a positive 

 cause, not merely a condition in which the cause may act. Hux- 

 ley, indeed, has no positive message for the world in econom- 

 ics; his political doctrine being (consistently with his position 

 as a naturalist) an indeterminate expediency. The historian 

 and not the physiologist must discover the cause, and there 

 must evidently be some positive cause. Knowledge is power, 

 but power does not execute itself. Even after an invention is 

 realized in a machine, it remains an experiment until economi- 

 cally excited. 



No doubt the full answer to the problem is complicated. 

 There might be found remotely a geographical cause in the 



