MODES OF TRAVELLING. 



is now wholesome food would be useless to him. With- 

 out fire he must always have remained ignorant of the 

 larger part of the world of matter and of its mysterious 

 forces. He might have lived in the warmer parts of the 

 earth in a savage or even in a partially civilized condi- 

 tion, but he could never have risen to the full dignity of 

 intellectual man, the interpreter and master of the forces 

 of nature. 



Having thus briefly indicated our standpoint, let us 

 proceed to sketch in outline those great advances in 

 science and the arts which are the glory of our century. 

 In the course of our survey we shall find that the more 

 important of these are not mere improvements upon, or 

 developments of, anything that had been done before, 

 but that they are entirely new departures, arising out of 

 our increasing knowledge of and command over the 

 forces of the universe. Many of these advances have 

 already led to developments of the most startling kind, 

 giving us such marvellous powers, and such extensions 

 of our normal senses, as would have been incredible, and 

 almost unthinkable even to our greatest men of science, 

 a hundred years ago. We begin with the simplest of 

 these advances, those which have given us increased 

 facilities for locomotion. 



The younger generation, which has grown up in the 

 era of railways and of ocean-going steamships, hardly 

 realize the vast change which we elders have seen, or 

 how great and fundamental that change is. Even in my 

 own boyhood the wagon for the poor, the stage coach 

 for the middle class, and the post-chaise for the wealthy, 

 were the universal means of communication, there 

 being only two short railways then in existence the 



