Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 1.djvu/19

JULES VERNE embodied the unknowable that some day might perchance appear. "While I," said Verne, "base my inventions on a groundwork of actual fact." He illustrated this by instancing his submarine, the Nautilus. "This," said he, "when carefully considered, is a submarine mechanism about which there is nothing wholly extraordinary, nor beyond the bounds of actual scientific knowledge. It rises and sinks by perfectly well-known processes. . . . Its motive force even is no secret; the only point at which I have called in the aid of imagination is in. the application of this force, and here I have purposely left a blank, for the reader to form his own conclusion, a mere technical hiatus."

So it comes that Verne's prophecies already spring to realization on every side. He foresaw and in his vivid way described not only the submarine, but also, in his "Steam-house," the auto-mobile, in his "Robur the Conqueror," the aeroplane. Navigable balloons, huge aerial machines heavier than air, the telephone, moving pavements, stimulation by oxygen, compressed air, compressed food, all were existant among his clear-sighted visions. And to-day as we read those even bolder prophecies, accounts that excited only the laughter of his earlier critics, it is with ever-increasing wonder as to which will next come true.

His influence has been tremendous, not only xi