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As a matter of fact the new knowledge of Nature—the newly-ascertained capacity of man for a control of Nature so thorough as to be almost unlimited—has not as yet had an opportunity for showing what it can do. A lull after victory, a lethargic contentment, has to some extent followed on the crowning triumphs of the great Nature-searchers whose days were numbered with the closing years of that nineteenth century which through them marks an epoch. No power has called on man to arise and enter upon the possession of his kingdom—the 'Regnum Hominis' foreseen by Francis Bacon and pictured by him to an admiring but incredulous age with all the fervour and picturesque detail of which he was capable. And yet at this moment the mechanical difficulties, the want of assurance and of exact knowledge, which necessarily prevented Bacon's schemes from taking practical shape, have been removed. The will to possess and administer this vast territory alone is wanting.

Within the last few years an attempt to spur the will of Englishmen in this direction has been made by some who have represented that this way lie great fortunes, national ascendancy, imperial domination. The effort has not met with much success. On the other hand, I speak for those who would urge the conscious and deliberate assumption of his kingdom by Man—not as a matter of markets and of increased opportunity for the cosmopolitan dealers in finance—but as an absolute duty, the fulfilment of Man's destiny6, a necessity the