Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/703

Rh, and the nation settles down to decay. Cromwell and his Puritanism introduce Charles II. and licentiousness. The Pilgrim Fathers, Washington, and other great men, lay with solemnity and greatness of mind the foundations of the United States, and is its history hitherto a satisfactory result? Nation after nation, Egyptian, Persian, Jewish, Grecian, Roman, Arabian, and Celtic, shoot into blossom in order to rot back into forgetfulness.

And if we take regard of the individual units that are always swarming by the millions into the world, what vast quantities get blasted out before they have well begun to cry, not to speak of the possible units frustrated of birth. And of those surviving the perils of the outset, how all get bruised and damaged sooner or later, till death comes and snuffs out the smoky tallow-lights! People made a great fuss at the time about the late William King Thompson, of Brooklyn, New York, ship-exploder, as if he had done something more than usually wicked, but now it is seen for the mere trifle it is. Say he exploded half a dozen ship-loads of men, was there, out of the six human cargoes that flew successively all at once into ten thousand pieces, as much as one individual that properly speaking ever lived, or lived other than the most insignificant sensational existence? At every change of the temperature of the atmosphere from heat to cold are not many thousands of aërial midges summoned, on very short notice indeed, from their gay discursions to face the solemnities of eternity? Animal existence is cheap as dust, the earth and stones only requiring some little mixing and kneading in order to turn off endless batches of men and women.

Consider the tens of thousands always being born in our large cities, who by bad parentage, bad conception, foul air, foul food, and all manner of evil influences, get at once summarily stamped and sealed off to depravity and perdition. Think how in all our towns are houses where choice human cattle are kept, fed, and dressed, their soundness attested (on the Continent) by qualified officials; and how your choicest human cattle, rejoicing in their spiritual culture, throng into these shows to inspect and purchase. And in this enlightened age we know this is Nature all the world over, and Nature must be obeyed.

We are proud of the present age as the triumph of trade and mechanism. And we know the high genius and aim of trade. Trade thinks only on a good balance, and is proud of a good balance, be it got out of the follies and vices of men or in whatever way. Trade is thinning the country, crowding the towns, swelling dukes' incomes, fattening distillers and brewers, disfiguring and reducing the human physique, blighting the tenderness of relations between man and man, checking you off the values of the different sorts of intellect and inspiration. And, thanks to the extreme nicety of our mechanical arrangements, we are cut down into the most fractional existences. As if the disjecta membra left on a field of battle were made to spin into