WATER POWER 13 



quickly. Of the immense amount of radiant energy 

 received by the earth, only a very minute proportion 

 is arrested in its transformation. Most finds its way 

 unused into the great ocean of heat energy of nearly 

 uniform temperature, and the attainment of this dead 

 level marks the final goal of every stream of energy 

 received by or set in motion in the world, whether it 

 is utilised or not. The opportunity once passed can 

 never be retrieved. The energy now being considered 

 formerly so ran to waste. Now it, to a great extent, 

 turns turbines linked to dynamos, feeds the fires of 

 electric furnaces at temperatures rivalled only by the 

 originating sun, links itself to matter in the form of 

 compounds, which are used to fertilise the soil and 

 facilitate the work of sunlight and the seed, producing 

 food. The food nourishes an army of workers, and 

 the energy of the falling waterdrops, arrested in their 

 headlong passage to the sea, now pursues a long 

 eventful journey, beyond even the ken of the cold 

 calculations of science. Linked in intimacy with 

 human destiny, it translates thought and intelligence 

 into action, before the partnership is severed, and it 

 merges itself at last into the general level it set out 

 so bravely to reach, headlong and divinely useless at 

 one bound. Science that has done this has moved 

 the whole world nearer to the glow. Not at its door, 

 surely, should be laid the consequences if the energy 

 of the falling waterdrops has been drained to provide 

 the machinery of destruction, rather than of life. 



THE SOURCE OF COSMICAL ENERGY. 



Until the twentieth century had entered its 

 opening decade a thoughtful observer of the social 

 consequences of science would have seen in the 

 revolution cause for profound uneasiness. Here was 

 no stable or enduring development, but rather the 



D 



