THE CONQUEST OF TIME AND SPACE 



INTRODUCTION 



THE preceding volume dealt with the general 

 principles of application and transformation 

 of the powers of Nature through which 

 the world's work is carried on. In the present volume 

 we are chiefly concerned with man's application of 

 the same principles in his efforts to set at defiance, so 

 far as may be, the limitations of time and space. 



Something has already been said as to the contrast 

 between the material civilization of to-day and that of 

 the generations prior to the nineteenth century. The 

 transformation in methods of agriculture and manu- 

 facture has been referred to somewhat in detail. Now 

 we have to do with contrasts that are perhaps even 

 more vivid, since they concern conditions that come 

 within the daily observation of everyone. Steamships, 

 locomotives, electric cars, and automobiles, are such 

 commonplaces of every-day life that it is difficult to 

 conceive a world in which they have no part. Yet 

 everyone is aware that all these mechanisms are in- 

 ventions of the nineteenth century. Meantime the 

 aeroplane, which bids fair to rival those other means of 



VOL. VII.— 1 [ I ] 



