Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/119

 to avoid useless repetition it was found convenient to work out in a rough manner the various ways in which the cheap and inexhaustible supplies of hydrogen and oxygen which I have imagined discovery to have placed at the disposal of invention would be employed in the arts. Similarly, when we interrogate imagination on the subject of scientific discovery itself, we shall be forced to think chiefly of the practical results likely to be achieved by it, and indeed there would otherwise be hardly any purpose to serve by the effort. What imports the greatest amount of complexity into the subject is the difficulty of conceiving the lines upon which science is likely to travel, unless we allow ourselves to be guided by the practical requirements of the future as far as we are able to foresee them. Imagination has indeed superabundant room in which to run riot when it endeavours to give form to the probabilities of scientific discovery; and the only danger is that effort may be wasted in purely fanciful directions, if it be not pretty securely tied down by some such artificial reStraint as the convention of keeping more or less strictly to the anticipation of discoveries likely to have immediate practical application.

For instance, there is hardly any end to the developments we might allow ourselves to imagine as arising out of the new theories, still in a probationary condition, as to the