The climax of civilisation / by Correa Moylan Walsh.

  • Correa Moylan Walsh
Date:
1917
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The climax of civilisation / by Correa Moylan Walsh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    68/170 (page 54)
    well advanced in this culminating period, it is probable that on the whole we are only near its commencement; for there is prospect of considerable further material advance. The de- lightfulness of this prospect is often exaggerated, as we shall presently see; yet the advance is likely to proceed with little check and hindrance for some time, differently in different countries. And differently in different countries will be ef- fected the setting in of the stoppage and of the decline, in some earlier, in others later, in some first through physical exhaus- tion of the land, in others first through moral exhaustion of the people. One thing we may be certain of: the advance of civ- ilisation cannot go on without interruption forever. We also — have reason to believe that the interruption is not many cen- turies ahead of us. The superiority of our civilisation in a material way over all that has preceded, rests on our employment of the natural powers of heat and electricity; and our employment of these rests on our production of coal and iron and copper. Coal, indeed, is the ultimate basis of our material civilisation, where- fore ours has not improperly been denominated the Coal Age; because the mining, smelting, forging, and transportation of the metals requires heat in a quantity that coal alone can supply, and electricity not only needs copper for its generation and transmission, but is itself only a form of heat, so that our production of it equally (for nobody has recommended the use of lightning) depends on coal. It is true that waterfalls supply power that is convertible into heat and electricity or that may be directly employed, in never or only intermittently failing constancy. But the amount of power thence derivable is not sufficient to keep up civilisation at its present height. The winds are a too intermittent source of power. Then it has been suggested that the power wasted in the tides might be harnessed and applied in almost unlimited quantity. But this seems to be only one of the dreams of science. Wood as a fuel has, of course, long ceased to be sufficient. Another 3 A tidal mill existed so long ago as to be mentioned in Domesday Book, according to Jevons, The Coal Question, 136. 4 Jevons reckoned fifty years ago, when the production of coal in Great Britain was not a quarter of what it is to-day, forests covering two and a half times the area of the United Kingdom would be needed to furnish even the theoretical equivalent of the coal then annually produced, op. cit., 140.