THE CONQUEST OF NATURE 



name of the great scientific inventor, rather than that 

 of the great military conqueror the name of James 

 Watt, rather than that of Napoleon. 



The military conqueror had his day of surpassing 

 glory and departed, to leave the world only a little 

 worse than he found it. But the mechanical inventor 

 left a heritage that was to add day by day to the wealth 

 and happiness of humanity, supplying millions of 

 artificial hands, and making possible such beneficent 

 improvements as no previous age had dreamed of. 

 Tasks that human hands had performed slowly, labor- 

 iously, and inadequately, were now to be performed 

 swiftly, with ease, and well by the artificial hands 

 provided with the aid of the new power. Where carts 

 drawn by horses had toiled slowly across the land, and 

 ships driven by the wind had drifted slowly through 

 the waters, massive trains of cars were to hurtle to the 

 four corners of the earth with inconceivable speed, 

 and floating palaces were to course the waters with 

 almost equal defiance to the limitations of time and 

 space. 



And then there came that still weirder conquest of 

 time and space, wrought by the electric current. The 

 moment when man first spoke with man from continent 

 to continent in defiance of the oceans, marked the 

 dawning of that larger day when all mankind shall con- 

 stitute one brotherhood and all peoples but a single 

 nation. Within a half century the sun of that new 

 day has risen well above the horizon, and far sooner 

 than even the optimist of to-day dare predict with 

 certainty, it seems destined to reach its zenith. 



[18] 



