266 



KNOWLEDGE 



[October 1, 1887. 



South America were available for the American population. 

 A bout three-fourths of a .square yard of surface would then 

 be available for each inhabitant of the double continent. If 

 the whole earth were peopled by these 60,000,000,000,000 

 Americans, there would be nearly three square yards of 

 space for each person 1 



Of course we know that there is no likelihood of any 

 race or nation increasing in population even at such rates 

 as 1^ per cent, for several centuries in succession. It is 

 not because of any real danger (or hope) that England, for 

 example, which now boasts of this rate of increase during a 

 quarter of a century, or the United States, which boasts of 

 a much greater rate of increase during a much longer time, 

 will continue to grow at this rate, that I have presented the 

 above startling figures. But it is worth while to consider a 

 little how far we are entitled to " rejoice and be glad " over 

 what we regard as progress, when it is clear that the pro- 

 gress cannot possibly continue without ruinous results for 

 the whole human race. 



Especially startling, or rather oppressive, become the 

 thoughts suggested by this so-called progress when we re- 

 member how much more rapid is the progress of exhaustion 

 of our earth's accumulated stores on which the growing 

 pojiulation of the earth in part depends. 



It might or might not be possible for the present popula- 

 tion of the earth to live, as of old the inhabitants of earth 

 were content to live, upon the annual produce of the earth 

 . — on the earth's income, not on her capital. But assuredly 

 whether this might be done or not, it is not done at present. 

 Year after year the buried stores of life, for that is really 

 what they should be called, are being brought in greater and 

 greater quantities to the surface, and used to supply the 

 human race with much more than the necessities of life. 



In two States of the Union alone one kind of accumu- 

 lated earth life, the petroleum and natural gas store, has 

 been so rapidly used up that within one generation alone 

 stores which were millions of years accumulating will have 

 been almost wholly exhausted. 



In Great Britain 150,000,000 tons of coal are yearly 

 brought to the pit's mouth, though it has become clear that 

 the effective supply will be exhausted at the present rate of 

 consumption in the course of ten or twelve generations at 

 the outside. 



The forests of the earth, at any rate in all civilised 

 countries, a,ve being steadily destroyed, though it would be 

 quite possible so to arrange matters that the supply used 

 each year should be replaced by new growth during the same 

 time. 



Like a spendthrift, the human race of to-day, boasting 

 itself " the heir of all the ages " in intelligence, is con- 

 suming at a rate fully one-hundred fold beyond what is just 

 the supplies which, as heir of all the geological jeons, it has 

 received — in trust partly for future generations. 

 • That men should rejoice when statistical records attest the 

 steady growth of all civilised nations in population, at the 

 very time that the stores of the earth are being wastefully 

 consumed, is as though the father of a growing family 

 should rejoice at each addition to his family circle, at the 

 very time when each year's accounts told him that his 

 means of providing for them were rapidly gi-owing less, and 

 exhaustion was imminently threatened. 



, I have occasion often, as a student of astronomy, to touch 

 on the gradual dying out of the earth's vitality, and to 

 descant on the limited nature of the sun's supply of life- 

 giving energy. I remind my audiences in lectures, and my 

 readers in books and essays, that as the moon has died so 

 must the earth hereafter die ; and that as among the stars 

 (those other suns than ours) we find suns that are mani- 

 festly fading in lustre and even evidence of orbs which, 



though once lustrous, are now dark and dead, so must our 

 sun one day lose his light and heat, and with them his 

 power of sustaining life in the worlds circling around him. 

 But I doubt whether the inhabitants of our world need 

 be very much interested in the future darkness of the sun 

 or in the coming decay and death of the earth. The 

 human race is taking excellent care that its duration shall 

 not extend to either of those dismal times (whichever of 

 them may be the first to come). Millions of years pro- 

 bably before the sun is dark, millions of years before our 

 earth is dead, the civilised human race will have exhausted 

 all that it has to live on, and will have come to an end 

 through sheer inanition. 



No discovery of new scientific appliances can avail to save 

 our kind from this end, seeing that ever}' such discovery 

 would inevitalJy lead only to the moi'e i-apid exhaustion of 

 the aarth's garnered stores. Progress in civilisation, at 

 le.ast along the present lines, can only hasten the coming of 

 the end. For civilisation, as at present understood, culture 

 as at present alone appreciated, imply steady advance be- 

 yond the supply of mere necessities, beyond the mere 

 support of life — the steady development of new wants, fresh 

 pleasures, and greater luxury. Nothing could avail to make 

 the increase of life, which so many contemplate with satis- 

 faction, a real gain, or even to justify it, but some such 

 change in the ways of the human race as Cornaro adopted 

 for his own individual habit of life. When he found that 

 he was exhausting the very springs of life, wasting the 

 stored-up constitutional energies of his frame by unduly 

 luxurious living, he wisely changed his way of living to 

 what his friends regarded as a foolishly abstemious regimen. 

 Condemned by the unanimous voice of the physicians to 

 death within two years, he so developed his vital energies 

 that he lived for sixty-four years instead of two, attaining 

 the ripe age of ninety-nine years before death claimed him. 

 Moreover, whereas in the fulness of his youth and manhood 

 life had been but as a burden to him, life during the last 

 three-fifths of his time — for a quarter of a century beyond 

 the four score years, when, the Psalmist says, life is but 

 labour and sorrow — was to him well worth living, nay, full 

 of satisfaction and delight. 



The human race is at present certainly advancing with 

 swift strides towards a very desolate condition, if not towards 

 death. It is not getting very much satisfaction out of its 

 wasteful and thoughtless manner of living. If a few opti- 

 mists recognise promise of good, more among us pessimisti- 

 cally ask the doleful question, " Is life worth living 1 " The 

 meliorists who, deploring the evil, still see hope of change 

 to wiser ways are few and low-voiced. Not regimen, which 

 is really needed, but recipe is chiefly suggested by short- 

 sighted men (whom the world mistakes for philosophers) to 

 improve this state of things. Philanthropy, communism, 

 socialism, anarchy, in turn hold out promise of improvement. 

 But in the meantime the stores of life, on which the vitality 

 of the human race as such must depend, are being used up 

 at such a rate that the time of final exhaustion lies within 

 measurable distance. And the statistician boasts, because 

 the records of birth rates and death i-ates show that the end 

 must be even nearer (supposing no change should take 

 place) than it would be if consumptipn went on no more 

 quickly than it is already doing. 



The .steamees of the new American "Arrow Line" are to be 

 constructed upon a new principle, and with a view to an estimated 

 speed sufficient to make the voyage between New York and Liver- 

 pool in a little more than four days. The Pocahontas will be 

 540 feet long, will be prorided with 1,060 water-tight compart- 

 ments, 500 of which are to be below the water-line, and will have 

 twenty boilers with engines of 27,986 horse-power, and capable of 

 giving a speed of 22 knots an hour. 



