elds and reaping the corn. In the most
progressive districts of all, I daresay, the very sowing of the grain is
done by means of some engine, with better results than could be got by
hand. For aught I know, there is a patented invention for catching fish
by electricity. It is natural that we should, in some degree, pride
ourselves on such triumphs. It is well that we should have poems about
them, and pictures of them. But such poems and pictures cannot touch our
hearts very deeply. They cannot stir in us the sense of our kinship with
the whole dim past and the whole dim future. The ancient Egyptians were
great at scientific dodges--very great indeed, nearly as great as we,
the archaeologists tell us. Sand buried the memory of those dodges for
a rather long time. How are we to know that the glories of our present
civilisation will never be lost? The world's coal-mines and oil-fields
are exhaustible; and it is not, I am told, by any means certain that
scientists will discover any good substitutes for the materials which
are necessary to mankind's present pitch of glory. Mankind may, I infer,
have to sink back into slow and simple ways, continent be once more
separated from continent, nation from nation, village from village. And,
even supposing that the present rate of traction and communication and
all the rest of it can forever be maintained, is our modern way of life
so great a success that mankind will surely never be willing to let it
lapse? Doubtless, that present rate can be not only maintained, but also
accelerated immensely, in the near future. Will these greater glories
be voted, even by the biggest fools, an improvement? We smile already at
the people of the early nineteenth century who thought that the vistas
opened by applied science were very heavenly. We have travelled far
along those vistas. Light is not abundant in them, is it? We are proud
of having gone such a long way, but...peradventure, those who come
after us will turn back, sooner or later, of their own accord. This is
a humbling thought. If the wonders of our civilisation are doomed, we
should prefer them to cease through lack of the minerals and mineral
products that keep them going. Possibly they are not doomed at all. But
this chance counts for little as against the certainty that, whatever
happens, the primitive and essential things will never, anywhere, wholly
cease, while mankind lasts. And thus it is that Brown's Ode to the Steam
Plough, Jone