ector of that communication of things, of power, of
thought, which in every prior stage of advancement has marked the
successive lifts of humanity. It was much when the savage loaded a pack
upon a horse or an ox instead of upon his own back; it was yet more when
he could make a beacon-flare give news or warning to a whole
country-side, instead of being limited to the messages which might be
read in his waving hands. All that the modern engineer was able to do
with steam for locomotion is raised to a higher plane by the advent of
his new power, while the long-distance transmission of electrical energy
is contracting the dimensions of the planet to a scale upon which its
cataracts in the wilderness drive the spindles and looms of the factory
town, or illuminate the thoroughfares of cities. Beyond and above all
such services as these, electricity is the corner-stone of physical
generalization, a revealer of truths impenetrable by any other ray.

The subjugation of fire has done much in giving man a new independence
of nature, a mighty armoury against evil. In curtailing the most arduous
and brutalizing forms of toil, electricity, that subtler kind of fire,
carries this emancipation a long step further, and, meanwhile, bestows
upon the poor many a luxury which but lately was the exclusive
possession of the rich. In more closely binding up the good of the bee
with the welfare of the hive, it is an educator and confirmer of every
social bond. In so far as it proffers new help in the war on pain and
disease it strengthens the confidence of man in an Order of Right and
Happiness which for so many dreary ages has been a matter rather of hope
than of vision. Are we not, then, justified in holding electricity to be
a multiplier of faculty and insight, a means of dignifying mind and
soul, unexampled since man first kindled fire and rejoiced?

We have traced how dexterity rose to fire-making, how fire-making led to
the subjugation of electricity. Much of the most telling work of fire
can be better done by its great successor, while electricity performs
many tasks possible only to itself. Unwitting truth there was in the
simple fable of the captive who let down a spider's film, that drew up a
thread, which in turn brought up a rope--and freedom. It was in 1800 on
the threshold of the nineteenth century, that Volta devised the first
electric battery. In a hundred years the force then liberated has
vitally interwoven itself with every