Lemuel Gulliver, at Laputa, was astonished by seeing a philosopher aiming at extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. Had he but rightly considered the thing he would have wondered at any one's troubling to make a science of it. The thing has always been done. From Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden eating sweet fruits, through the onion-eating builders of the pyramids, down to the flesh-eating myriads of our land, this process has always been going on. The active life of reasoning man, and his limitless powers of invention, need for their full development a vast supply of labor. By means of the vegetable kingdom, the sun's work is stored up in a number of organic substances. Man takes these into his system, and in the vessels and fibres of his body they resume their original combinations, and the labor of the sun is given out as muscular action and animal heat. To allow a larger supply of labor for man's intellect to work with, Providence created the herbivorous races. Some of these further condense the work of the sun involved in plants, by taking these plants into their systems, and storing up the work in them in their flesh and fat, which, after some preparation, are fit to be received into the frame of man, there, as the simpler vegetable substances, to supply heat and labor. Others, extracting work from the vegetable kingdom, just as man does, and mostly from parts of the vegetable kingdom that are not suited to the organs of man, are valuable to man as sources of labor, since they have no power to invent modes of employing this labor to their own advantage. Man might have been gifted with a vaster frame, and so with greater power of labor in himself, but such a plan had been destitute of elasticity; and while the savage would have basked in the sun in a more extended idleness, the civilized man had still lacked means to execute his plans. [{596}] So that good providence which formed man devised a further means for supplying his wants. Instead of placing him at once on a new-formed planet, it first let the sun spend its labor for countless ages upon our world. Age by age, much of this labor was stored up in vast vegetable growths. Accumulated in the abysses of the sea, or sunk to a great depth by the collapse of supporting strata, the formations of a later age pressed and compacted this mass of organic matter. The beds thus formed were purified by water, and even by heat, and at last raised to within the reach of man by subterranean movements. From this reservoir of labor man now draws rapidly, driving away the frost of today with the sunshine of a million years ago, and thrashing this year's harvest with the power that came to our earth before corn grew upon it.
Such are the processes by which the sun's power is collected and stored up by the vegetable kingdom in a form sufficiently condensed to be available for working the machinery of the bodies of men and beasts, and also to assist man in vaster expenditures of labor. It is most interesting to trace such processes, and not only interesting, but also instructive, for it shows us in what direction we are to look for our sources of labor, and will at once expose many common delusions. One hears, perhaps, that something will be found to supplant steam. Galvanism may be named; yet galvanism is generated by certain decompositions—of metal, for instance—and this metal had first to be prepared by the agency of coal, and in its decomposition can give out no more labor than the coal before invested in it. It is as if one should buy a steam-engine to pump up water to keep his mill-wheel going. The source of all labor is the sun. We cannot immediately make much use of his rays for the purposes of work; they are not intense enough; they must be condensed. The vegetable world alone at present seems capable of doing this; and its past results of coal, peat, petroleum, etc., and present results of wood and food, are ultimately all we have to look two.
To say that man will ever be dependent upon the vegetable world for all his work may be considered bold, but there is certainly great reason to believe it. The sun's labor being supplied in such a diluted form, each small quantity continually supplied must be packed in a very small space. Now, man can only subject matter to influences in the mass. The little particle of carbon that the plant frees each instant is beyond his ken. The machinery he could make would not be fine enough; it would be like trying to tie an artery with the biggest cable on board the Great Eastern. Organized existence possesses machinery fine enough to effect these small results, and to avail itself of these little installments of labor. At present, this machinery is beyond our comprehension, and possibly will ever remain so. Nature prefers that her children should keep out of the kitchen, and not pry into her pots and pans, but eat in thankfulness the meal she provides.
Some interesting results follow from what has been stated above. One is, that we are consuming not only our present allowance of the sun's labor, but also a great deal more, unless the formation of coal in our age equals its consumption, which is not probable. Mother earth will certainly, so far as we can see, some day be bankrupt. Such a consummation is pointed to, however, in other quarters. The sun's heat, unless miraculously replenished, must gradually be dissipated through space. There are reasons for thinking that the planets must ultimately fall into the sun. These things, however, possess to us no practical physical interest. Such countless ages must elapse ere they affect man's material condition upon the earth that we hardly can gravely consider them as impending. The chief interest they excite is moral. Like the man's hand that appeared to the revelling king, they write, "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin" (weighed, measured, limited, doomed) on our material world, and dimly point to some power that stands, as it were, hidden from our view behind the screen of matter, that shall make things new.
ORIGINAL.
POEM.
BY E. HOWARD.
While wandering by the mountains
And musing by the streams,
I asked myself if ever thus
My life would pass in dreams.
I gathered the little pebbles
The waves threw on the sand:
The rippling waters seemed to say,
"There is a better land!"
And while thus my steps were straying,
Above, in azure far,
I saw a beacon's streaming light—
The glorious evening star!
My soul, enraptured, then exclaimed:
"Hail, beauteous star of even!
Wilt thou, while speeding into dawn,
Bring me the will of heaven?"
I watched it in its onward course,
Until its golden glow
Was lost behind the western clouds.
And left me wrapped in woe.
I struggled hard to free my soul
From brooding thoughts of care.
Till morning broke, when, with the star,
These words fell on the air:
"No more let earthly passion move.
Nor wearied hopes bemoan,
A life that has a God to love,
A heaven to call its own!"
The star had kindled hope
And raised my soul in prayer;
The clouds that rolled between
Foretold a life of care.
I bowed my head, and humbly knelt,
Submissive to his will.
Who, when the waves were troubled most,
Said, "Peace!" and all was still.