Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/54

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36
A THOUSAND YEARS HENCE.

front, but eventually even resanitate and reconstitute the whole society. I came at last to be quite full of this idea, and even to express a willingness, at some trifle of pecuniary cost, to give a hand to see it practically commenced, on however small a scale at the first. But I got no help in this practical direction. My wife called it the sheer nonsense of these upsetting times. Even my fail-me-never old Brown, who enjoyed the theory of the thing, declared that, in going further, he could not see business in any part of it. And so, on this subject, at any rate, I was always left in a minority of one.

But to return to world-population estimates, even if we supposed only the Anglo or Kelto-German races to survive in the future squeeze, and "survival of the fittest," the multiplication, ere a thousand years, would not leave even foot-room on the world's surface. What a curious spectacle must be our world with all this population, and their striving and ingenuity to secure mutual and comfortable accommodation! As I often say, might I but be there to see.

Black's Scientific Forecast.

Black dealt largely and sagely with the new phrase Energy. All forces were convertible into energy. We were to have dealers and traders in energy, and our money itself would some day be energy. Black's predominating idea was that electricity, which was one of the forms of energy, was at the bottom of everything. And then there was his peculiar notion about crossing and recrossing the electric current, by means of which, in successive grand eras of