Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/322

 with did at last come, how marvellous its simplicity! How were we to advance upon the duplication? Why, simply, as Black showed, by the Reduplication!

Black's intimation of his discovery caused the profoundest astonishment, alike in other worlds as in our own. Wonder was now often expressed that our comparatively small world should have thus pre-eminently distinguished itself. But as to this, many calculations have fairly agreed as to the practical advantage of a happy medium, in combined light, heat, electricity, and gravity, and the advantage of such mean state, for business purposes at all events, over partial or irregular predominations, or over even that general superiority in some main elements, which no doubt helps the purely scientific, and possibly, too, the moral perception and development, while less favourable to the vigorous business element. Rumours were not wanting, too, that the discovery in question was not really new in the universe, but had been long familiar, as was much other such advanced knowledge, to a still higher life than ours in that wide and varied universe. We shall return, further on, to this most interesting question. Meanwhile, let us follow Black in the steps he took after the public intimation of his discovery.

By my worthy father's good business advice, I myself not having yet even entered my teens, Black got matters in readiness, so as to have a good start over all possible rivals, before letting the public of the