But let us look forward a hundred years--no long time in the history of a nation. Our coal supplies will then be greatly diminished. The population of Great Britain doubles at the present rate of increase in about fifty years, so that we should, if the present rate continues, require to import over £400,000,000 a year in food. How, then, is this to be paid for? We have before us, as usual, three courses. The natural rate of increase may be stopped, which means suffering and outrage; or the population may increase, only to vegetate in misery and destitution; or, lastly, by the development of scientific training and appliances, they may probably be maintained in happiness and comfort. We have, in fact, to make our choice between science and suffering. It is only by wisely utilizing the gifts of science that we have any hope of maintaining our population in plenty and comfort. Science, however, will do this for us if we will only let her. She may be no Fairy Godmother indeed, but she will richly endow those who love her.
That discoveries, innumerable, marvellous, and fruitful, await the successful explorers of Nature no one can doubt. What would one not give for a Science primer of the next century? for, to paraphrase a well-known saying, even the boy at the plough will then know more of science than the wisest of our philosophers do now. Boyle entitled one of his essays "Of Man's great Ignorance of the Uses of Natural Things; or that there is no one thing in Nature whereof the uses to human life are yet thoroughly understood"--a saying which is still as true now as when it was written. And, lest I should be supposed to be taking too sanguine a view, let me give the authority of Sir John Herschel, who says: "Since it cannot but be that innumerable and most important uses remain to be discovered among the materials and objects already known to us, as well as among those which the progress of science must hereafter disclose, we may hence conceive a well-grounded expectation, not only of constant increase in the physical resources of mankind, and the consequent improvement of their condition, but of continual accession to our power of penetrating into the arcana of Nature and becoming acquainted with her highest laws."