234 SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS. 



subterranean rocks ; let him rather stand on the Surrey side of Lon- 

 don Bridge from 8 to 10 A.M. and contemplate the march of one of 

 the battalions of our metropolitan industrial army, as it pours forth 

 in an unceasing stream from the railway stations toward the city. 

 ]tn analysis of the moral forces which produce the earnest faces and 

 rapid steps of these rank and file and officers of commerce will reveal 

 the ftfue elements of British greatness, rather than any laboratory 

 dissection of our coal or ironstone. 



Fuel and steam-power have been urgently required by all mankind. 

 Englishmen supplied these wants. Their urgency was primary and 

 they were first supplied, even though the bowels of the earth had to 

 be penetrated in order to obtain tliem. In the present exceptional 

 and precocious degree of exhaustion of our coal treasures, we have 

 the effect not the cause of British industrial success. 



If in a ruder age our greater industrial energy enabled us to take 

 the lead in supplying the ruder demands of our fellow-creatures, why 

 should not a higher culture of those same abundant energies qualify 

 us to maintain our position, and enable us to minister to the more 

 refined and elaborate wants of a higher civilization ? There are other 

 necessary occupations quite as desirable as coal-digging, furnace- 

 feeding, and cotton-spinning. 



The approaching exhaustion of our coal supplies should therefore 

 serve us as a warning for preparation. Britain will be forced to 

 retire from the coal trade, and should accordingly prepare her sons 

 for higher branches of business, for those in which scientific knowl- 

 edge and artistic training will rep]ace mere muscular strength and 

 mechanical skill. We have attained our present material prosperity 

 mainly by our excellence in the use of steam-power ; let us now 

 struggle for supremacy in the practical application of brain-power. 



We have time and opportunity for this. The exhaustion of our 

 coal supplies will go on at a continually retarding pace we shall 

 always be approaching the end, but shall never absolutely reach it, 

 as every step of approximation will diminish the rate of approach ; 

 like the everlasting process of reaching a given point by continually 

 halving our distance from it. 



First of all we shall cease to export coal ; then we shall throw up the 

 most voracious of our coal-consuming industries, such as the reduc- 

 tion of iron-ore in the blast-furnace ; then copper-smelting and the 

 manufacture of malleable iron and steel from the pig, and so on pro- 

 gressively. If we keep in view the natural course and order of such 

 progress, and intelligently prepare for it, the loss of our coal need 

 not in the smallest degree retard the progress of our national pros- 

 perity. 



If, however, we act upon the belief that the advancement of a* 

 nation depends upon the mere accident of physical advantages, if we 

 fold our arms and w r ait for Providence to supply us with a physical 

 substitute for coal, we shall become Chinamen, minus the unworked 

 coal of China. 



If our educational efforts are conducted after the Chinese model ? 

 if we stultify the vigor and freshness of young brains by the weary, 

 dull, and useless cramming of words and phrases ; if we poison and 

 pervert the growing intellect of British youth by feeding it upon the 

 decayed carcasses of dead languages, and on effete and musty litera- 

 ture, our progress will be proportionally Chinaward ; but if we shake 



