FINAL DEDUCTIONS. 



85 



inevitable in the form of accompanying heat; could 

 he directly produce electricity, without other and lost 

 energy, from the combustion of fuel — could he do 

 these things to-day, the growth of all that is desirable 

 to mankind and the advancement of all the interests 

 and powers of the race would be inconceivably ac- 

 celerated. Moral sentiments, logical power, inventive 

 genius, capacity for accomplishing all the grander tasks 

 of civiHzation, develop together. All gain and retain 

 existence through the mysterious power, possessed by 

 all, of transforming and utilizing those original natural 

 energies coming to us all alike from the central sun, 

 and to the central sun from initial chaos and a diffused 

 universe. Every motion and every power of each and 

 all is due to conversion of these primary energies for 

 a specific purpose and in a specific manner. 



The engineer, to whom is confided this duty of 

 utilizing all the forces of nature for the benefit of his 

 fellows, has, however, now apparently reached a point 

 beyond which he can see but little opportunity for 

 further improvement, except by slow and toilsome and 

 continually limited progress. He seems to have come 

 very nearly to the limit of his advance in the directions 

 Vv'hich have, up to the moment, been so fruitful of 

 result. His steam-engine is doing nearly the best that 

 can be done, so far as he can see, in the conversion 

 of heat into power ; hght is produced through the 

 steam-engine and the dynamo-electric machine about 

 as efficiently as he can hope to obtain it by known 

 methods ; heat is obtainable for his thousand purposes, 

 economically at least, only by the combustion of his 

 rapidly disappearing stores of fuel laid by in the past 

 millenniums for his use during a brief life on the globe, 



