MANY INVENTIONS
One day I enjoyed luncheon with an old friend and we essayed a theme
hard as high. I doubt if what we talked about would be intelligible to
all readers, and I am none too sure that we understood ourselves, but as
there seems to be a public craving for such intellectual flights I shall
venture a brief digest of our talk.
But first a word about this friend. He is a finished product of an older
civilization than that of New York. Whenever I walk with him in what Mr.
Henry James carefully describes as "the Fifth Avenue," I feel as George
Warrington did when he walked with Pendennis: "I feel as if I had a
flower in my button-hole." His life moves entirely among the most
precious objects of art and literature, among masterpieces of sculpture,
painting, printing, book-binding, and what not. And withal he is very
much alive and in touch with the world in which we live. After this
introduction I shall let him rail at our wonderful civilization.
"Invention is the curse of the world. With our machinery and efficiency
we are speeded up so that life has been spoiled. I wonder who made the
first invention."
That led to a pretty discussion. After dealing with the subject back and
forth, we decided that the most guilty man the world had ever known was
the man who invented the first wheel--who discovered that something
round could be made to revolve. That discovery was the starting-point of
all our modern machinery and destructive speed. Take away the wheel and
the world would come to a standstill. I joined him in reviling that
far-off, long-ago inventor.
Then we followed the first wheel--was it perhaps a potter's wheel?--and
followed its deadly evolution. The oldest wheels recorded in art are the
wheels of chariots--war chariots, of course. There you see the earliest
tendency of the war spirit that culminated in our great war of
machinery. The warrior used the wheel to make a chariot to give him an
advantage over his enemies. The development of the wheel has been
involved with war from the chariot wheel to the whirling propellers of
aeroplanes.
This line of thought led us to realize that war is the great stimulator
of invention. Such inventions as the aeroplane were perfected more
completely in the four years of war than they would have been in
centuries of peace. We found that it would be easy to hold a brief for
war as the force that has been perfecting our civilizations of many
inventions. (Solomon said, "Man was born upright, but he has sought out
many inventions.")
But what does it profit us if the highest use we make of our inventions
is to increase our efficiency in battle? If we invent long enough and
cleverly enough, we may yet start a war in which we will destroy the
human race.
That awful possibility is the present preoccupation of scientific
research.
We are told that the next advance of science may be the discovery of how
to release atomic energy. Molecular energy, brought under control
through the unstable equilibrium of certain artificial compounds, has
given us the gun, the cannon, the bomb, the mine, and all the other
infernal masterpieces of high explosives.
What would atomic energy give us?
Sir Oliver Lodge has told us that the amount of atomic energy in one
ounce of matter would be sufficient to raise the fleet that was anchored
in Scapa Flow to the top of the highest mountain in Scotland. Then what
would happen if we released the atomic energy in tons of matter? It is
certain that if man ever masters the secret he will go in for quantity
production of atomic energy. And what then?
To realize the dire possibilities of this thought we must digress and
approach it from a new angle.
Those of us who date our meagre scientific knowledge from reading done
in the last quarter of the past century had our imaginations fired by
the nebular hypothesis. I do not know whether it has current authority,
but it was a wonderful theory and will serve our purposes to-day. I
quite realize that if I am to avoid destructive scientific criticism, I
should consult some up-to-the-minute scientist and get my facts right,
but a care-free conversation between friends is not to be "cabined,
cribbed, confined" in that way. If I let the public overhear our talk I
shall expect them to listen with unquestioning courtesy. I have
purposely avoided asking the aid and leading of a scientist in this
matter because most of the scientists of my acquaintance live wholly
within three dimensions and have put a padlock on the third. But the
conversation of friends demands the freedom of a fourth dimension in
which our Space and Time are but points on the superfices of a
comprehended Infinity and Eternity. Now will you be good!
To return to the nebular hypothesis. According to it the planets were
flung from the whirling mass of the sun as it was in the process of
shrinking. Neptune was naturally the first to be thrown off and the
others followed in due order. Would it not be reasonable to suppose that
the oldest of the planets--the one that was first thrown off from the
sun and is farthest from it--would be the first to cool and become
habitable? But it is known that all the outer planets except Mars are in
a gaseous state. Is there any possible explanation of this curious state
of affairs--this apparent contradiction of logical results which gives
us the last planets solid and the earlier planets gaseous?
If the earlier planets cooled to solid form and developed life analogous
to ours, it is probable that they lived by war and invention. If these
forces developed as with us, it is probable that a day came on each of
the old planets when its puny inhabitants got control of atomic energy,
started a last war, and blew their planet back to its constituent
gases. Atomic energy is probably a force of the fourth dimension and if
released in three dimensions would have about the same effect as that of
a high-explosive shell passing through a piece of tissue paper and
exploding as it passed.
The destructive discovery progressed across the ecliptic until only four
planets are left in solid form. Mars may now be preparing for the last
proud war and we are on the verge of a culminating discovery of the
disruptive force of atomic energy. Unless something checks our rage for
discovery, and war is within reasonable possibility, the whole planetary
system may be blown back to chaos--and so fulfil Poe's amazing figure of
the alternation from Chaos to Order and from Order to Chaos as "the
systole and diastole of the heart of the Infinite."
After this exhausting flight my friend faced the High Cost of Living in
the form of the waiter's check, passed me a cigar that cost a dollar,
and in a humble taxi we joined the whirling civilization that speeds on
wheels along "the Fifth Avenue," and doubtless whiles away its idle time
in discussing the war and who won it.