for it is perfectly certain that though man might successfully combat some of the agents seeking for his destruction, there is one that it would be wholly beyond his power to subdue. An agent over which he has and can have no control whatever imposes a term to his existence; nor does it seem possible for human intelligence to avert the threatened doom. To point out the necessity for this conclusion is my object in this chapter.
I know that in the present day there are many who seem to think that hardly any boundaries can be assigned to the resources of a reasoning being. I have heard that when King Hudson in the zenith of his fame was asked as to what his railways were to do when all the coal was burned out, he replied that by that time we should have learned how to burn water. Those who are asked the same question now, will often reply that they will use electricity, and doubtless think that they have thus disposed of the question. The fallacy of such answers is obvious. A so-called "water-gas" may no doubt be used for developing heat, but it is not the water which supplies the energy. Trains may be run by electricity, but all that the electricity does is to convey the energy from the point where it is generated to the train which is in motion. Electricity is itself no more a source of power than is the rope with which a horse drags a boat along the canal. There is much more philosophy in the old saying, "Money makes the mare to go," than in the optimistic doctrine we often hear spoken of with regard to the capacity of man for dealing with nature.
The fact is that a very large part of the boasted advance of civilisation is merely the acquisition of an increased capability of squandering. For what are we doing every
