THE POSSIBILITIES OF AGRICULTURE. 41 



against outgrown privileges. As to the honest longing 

 for more technical education surely let us all have as 

 much of it as possible : it will be a boon for humanity ; 

 for humanity, of course not for a single nation, because 

 knowledge cannot be cultivated for home use only. 

 Knowledge and invention, boldness of thought and 

 enterprise, conquests of genius and improvements of 

 social organisation have become international growths ; 

 and no kind of progress intellectual, industrial or social 

 can be kept within political boundaries; it crosses 

 the seas, it pierces the mountains ; steppes are no ob- 

 stacle to it. Knowledge and inventive powers are now 

 so thoroughly international that if a simple newspaper 

 paragraph announces to-morrow that the problem of 

 storing force, of printing without inking, or of aerial 

 navigation, has received a practical solution in one 

 country of the world, we may feel sure that within a few 

 weeks the same problem will be solved, almost in the 

 same way, by several inventors of different nationalities. 

 Continually we learn that the same scientific discovery, 

 or technical invention, has been made within a few days' 

 distance, in countries a thousand miles apart,; as if 

 there were a kind of atmosphere which favours the ger- 

 mination of a given idea at a given moment. And such 

 an atmosphere exists : steam, print and the common 

 stock of knowledge have created it. 



Those who dream of monopolising technical genius 

 are therefore fifty years behind the times. The world 

 the wide, wide world is now the true domain of 

 knowledge ; and if each nation displays some special 

 capacities in some special branch, the various capa- 

 cities of different nations compensate one another, and 

 the advantages which could be derived from them would 

 be only temporary. The fine British workmanship in 

 mechanical arts, the American boldness for gigantic 

 enterprise, the French systematic mind, and the Ger- 

 man pedagogy, are becoming international capacities. 



