Page:Future of England - Peel.djvu/73

Rh So far, therefore, it seems as if we must admit that our industrialism is likely to miss its central purpose, and that the pursuit by the people of reasonable wealth is more or less impracticable. For how can we achieve more than we achieve already, outdoing our own ascendency and outvying ourselves?

Nevertheless, it is certain that all this that looks impossible will be accomplished, that this barrier purporting to bar our progress is but a mist, that we are as yet on the mere verge and fringe of our industrial resources, and that the future will multiply infinitely our commercial strength. Science says so. For science views our boasted progress in production as the mere gropings of a standstill empiricism, and pours contempt on the archaism of our primitive inventions, on the crude wastefulness of our processes, and on the ignorance of any despair.

In order to estimate the progress that industry will achieve in the sphere of production during the coming time, it must be remembered that, if industry is the action of man upon matter, modern science has only within the last few years begun to account for what matter is. The advance has begun in full earnest. The new discoveries in physics have, in our own hour, stimulated science as much as the Renaissance stimulated literature, and it is evident that the knowledge of to-day is but fractional compared with what will accrue to-morrow. Augebitur scientia. Borne on the ad-