When comparing the present condition of society with that of past
centuries the question naturally arises, what will the future be?
Will the same progress which, in our own times especially, has been
of such vast dimensions, and manifested itself in so many directions,
continue to be progressive? And if so--for who could think of reaction,
since the art of printing has guarded against any furrow of the
human mind being ever effaced--where is to be the ultimate goal of
the progress of our successors? Where are we to look for the fruits
of those innumerable germs which the present generation is sowing
for the benefit of those that will come after them?
These, and similar other questions, occupied my mind when, seated
one afternoon in my comfortable arm-chair, I allowed my thoughts
freely to wander amid the manes of those that preceded us. I thought
of our own Musschenbroek, Gravesande, Huyghens, and Stevin, and of
what would be their surprise were they to reappear on this earth,
and gaze upon the marvellous works of modern machinery; I passed
in review a Newton and Galileo, with so many others, founders of an
edifice which they themselves would not now recognise. I thought of
steam engines and electric telegraphs, of railways and steamboats, of
mountain tunnels and suspension bridges, of photography and gasworks,
of the amazing strides lately made by chemistry, of telescopes and
microscopes, of diving bells and aëronautics; aye, and of a hundred
other things, which, in motley array, wildly crossed my mind,
though all corresponding in this that they loudly proclaimed the
vast and enormous difference between the present and the past. The
line of demarcation between the one and the other revealed itself
still more clearly to me as my thoughts carried me further back
into the past and the ghost of Roger Bacon seemed to rise before my
imagination. This thirteenth-century child was a scholar who surpassed
all his contemporaries in sound judgment and knowledge of natural
science; alas! his fate was the ordinary one in store for all those
whose light shone above that of others in those darkest of ages. He
was accused of witchcraft, and cast into a dungeon, there doomed to
sigh for ten weary years, after which, as the rumour goes, he died
in his prison. The memory of that illustrious man called to my mind
some passages of his writings, from which it will be seen how he,
as if endowed with the seer's gift, did actually foretell, some six
hundred years ago, that which since, and chiefly in our own time,
has become an array of realities. For example:
"It is possible," says he, "to construct spying-glasses by which the
most distant objects can be drawn near to us, so that we shall be
able to read the most minute writing at an almost incredible distance,
to see all kinds of diminutive objects, and to make the stars appear
wherever we choose."
"We might make waggons that could move along with great velocity,
and without being drawn by animals."
"Similar other machines might be had, as, for example, bridges without
pillars or supports of any kind."
"There might be contrivances for the purpose of navigation without
navigators, so that the greatest vessels would be handled by one
single man, and at the same time move onward with greater speed than
those with numerous crews." [1]
As I pondered over such remarkable observations as those, I sank
into absolute reverie; all surrounding objects seemed gradually to
disappear from my sight, until I got into that peculiar condition
in which, while everything material about us is at rest and passive,
the mind, on the contrary, proves uncommonly active and alert.
I felt myself suddenly in the midst of an immense city; where I
did not know, but about me I saw a vast square, and in it a stately
edifice with a lofty tower, on which I fancied I read the following
inscription: