This rapid survey of what electricity has done and may yet do—futile expectation dismissed—has shown it the creator of a thousand material resources, the perfector 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 art and science, bearing fruit not to be imagined even by men of the stature of Watt, Lavoisier, or Humboldt. Compare this rapid march of conquest with the slow adaptation, through age after age, of fire to cooking, smelting, tempering. Yet it was partly, perhaps mainly, because the use of fire had drawn out man's intelligence and cultivated his skill that he was ready in the fulness of time so quickly to seize upon electricity and subdue it.
Electricity is as legitimately the offspring of fire as fire of the simple knack in which one savage in ten thousand was richer than his fellows. The principle of permutation, suggested in both victories, interprets not only how vast empire is won by a new weapon of prime dignity; it explains why such empires are brought under rule with ever-accelerated pace. Every talent only pioneers the way for the richer talents which are born from it.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Permutations are the various ways in which two or more different things may be arranged in a row, all the things appearing in each row. Permutations are readily illustrated with squares or cubes of different colours, with numbers, or letters.
Permutations of two elements, 1 and 2, are (1 x 2) two; 1, 2; 2, 1; or a, b; b, a. Of three elements the permutations are (1 x 2 x 3) six; 1, 2, 3; 1, 3, 2; 2, 1, 3; 2, 3, 1; 3, 1, 2; 3, 2, 1; or a, b, c; a, c, b; b, a, c; b, c, a; c, a, b; c, b, a. Of four elements the permutations are (1 x 2 x 3 x 4) twenty-four; of five elements, one hundred and twenty, and so on. A new element or permutator multiplies by an increasing figure all the permutations it finds.
[6] Some years ago I sent an outline of this argument to Herbert Spencer, who replied: “I recognize a novelty and value in your inference that the law implies an increasing width of gap between lower and higher types as evolution advances.”