Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/125

 cross-electric, with all its powers and marvels, bringing to science universally a double or treble power and pace.

Our youths of those days, then, as they passed out of school or university into the working world, were usually exhorted to choose early and deliberately, if they had not already done so, their special field, whether of business or science, in order that no time might be needlessly lost, where life was so short, and where so much must be first done ere each fresh candidate could aspire to be of any use to the world, in adding anything to the previous accumulation of its attainments. All were started in common with the advantage of a good and respectively suitable education; and, as we have seen in the general State-aid system, no one deserving and willing needed to want such further material help as the first steps of his life's career might require. There was thus before every one a fair start upon a fair field; and under all these favouring circumstances, as we have already said, a very vigorous human race was maintained.

The discovery of Cross-Electric power, and next of the Duplication of the Cross, and finally of the Reduplication, mark the successive stages of science progress, during the busy period embraced by my retrospect. These grand successive discoveries were made indeed at wide intervals. The first, that of the simple Cross-Electric, came comparatively early in