Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/422

388 calculation,which becomes continually more necessary at each step of our progress, and which must ultimately govern the whole of the applications of science to the arts of life.

(465.) But perhaps a doubt may arise in the mind, whilst contemplating the continually increasing field of human knowledge, that the weak arm of man may want the physical force required to render that knowledge available. The_experience of the past, has stamped with the indelible character of truth, the maxim, that "Knowledge is power." It not merely gives to its votaries control over the mental faculties of their species, but is itself the generator of physical force. The discovery of the expansive power of steam, its condensation, and the doctrine of latent heat, has already added to the population of this small island, millions of hands. But the source of this power is not without limit, and the coal-mines of the world may ultimately be exhausted. Without adverting to the theory, that new deposites of that mineral are now accumulating under the sea, at the estuaries of some of our larger rivers; without anticipating the application of other fluids requiring a less supply of caloric than water:we may remark that the sea itself offers a perennial source of power hitherto almost unapplied. The tides, twice in each day, raise a vast mass of water, which might be made available for driving machinery. But supposing heat still to remain necessary, when the exhausted state of our coal-fields renders it expensive: long before that period arrives, other methods will probably have been invented for producing it. In some districts, there are springs of hot water, which have flowed for