Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1909-09-19
Americas, Ga, September 10, 1909.
WHAT OF MANS FUTURE?
What of the future2

hoNellSs' 'oHSS Iii q recent iJlcle DEAL
ing with the greater and greater mar
vels to which the intellect, persever-
ance and courage of man will drive
him in the coming years.
What was once impossible has now
become the commonplace of daily life.
The spirit of increduIity has passed
away. No~on now questions mans
ability to surpass the most wonderful
achievements of the past The only
real question at issue is the limita-
lions that providence has put upon
his ownward progress. The hand of
death, it is freely admitted, will be
stayed in many instances where now
it falls. Time and space will be more
annihiliated. Perhaps even the dreams
of converse with the spirit world will
become an actuality and not the mere
enary pursuits of fakirs, as at pres
ent. Man is driven onward by what
Wells calls AN Unrelenting Gift" He
cannot stay his progress if he would.
The desire that has taken possession
of him forces him to greater and
greater efforts tosconquer nature, to
make her subservient to his will, to
dominate her hidden forces, to abso-
lutely sway every agency she has at
her command to his own personal SER
vice. Man is conquering because he
is dominated by his own insatiate de-
sires to know and to subdue.
Each new marvel that science pro-
duces leads on to fresh marvels,
spans possibilities and stays with us,
increasing and multiplying.
Man, says Wells, is for the most
part, still timid and shrinking ami
NAL given over to small comforts. in
dulgences and vanities-fonder of
dreaming than of effort. He is only
beginning to realize the power he has
begotten out of a corner of his brain
to rule his life
He wants to live in little houses like
his father before him, live a little,
work little, play little, laugh lit
tie, be comforted by tales and die
easily.
But as the novelist holds, the steely
power of science, pointing to the deeps
beyond, the stars but crumbling mat
ter in her hand-looking ever deeper
into his living substance-is no friend
of the common life or the easy-going
man.
Come" says Science, ely! You
cant" And man gulps down his terror
and hurls himself up over the tree
tops and becomes a giddy speck in the
still sky.
Into the wilderness with you!" and
men are seen toiling in horrible plasTsa.
over heaped Commissions. o.5ijfaEan ancient ice
under desolate.sgkIes"
.-Aae.iI then in his peerings into tina
future with which his imagination ha!
dealt so wildly in many of his books
Wells continues as follows:
She, Science, puts great implement:
and fearful weapons before him. Mel
| ind themselves standing erect inside
the mouths of mostrous guns, clam
| bering over ironclads like Liliputians
| over a giants cuirass.
! The unrelenting gift is perpetually
| only beginning; men are constantly
| guessing what will come next in the
unfaltering logic of that development
| We are all amateur prophets nova
| days, all seeking to foretell the sur.
prises that will nevertheless come as
freshly as though we had never an.
| ticipated them, because no one car
| anticipate their quality and manner.
Probably the new phase in human
invention will lie in quite different
1hass+1ss TON those in which it has hith.
erto won its triumphs
For my own part, | would hazard {
guess that before very long it will be
| physiology and medicine that will be
| yielding the astonishing items in the
| harvest of human achievement. 81
| far these fields have had to wait foI
| the development or organic chemistry
and they have also been delayed by
the survival of unscientific metaphy
steal methods and by the backward
ness of psychology.
| am not writing of surgery anC
! hygiene. The nineteenth century sur.
| geons and civil engineers have done
wonders, but of medicine, nervous
regimen and the use of drugs. In this
| direction there are probably immense
| reservoirs of human power as yet un.
tapped. And concurrently with these
| developments there will be forced up
| on mankind a far more thorough
| practical and fruitful study of educa.
| ton and the science of social coopera.
| ton than we can imagine at the pres.
| ent time.
The imperious mistress man has
made for himself will not suffer fol
many more generations the kindly
! haphazard up-bringing we tolerate to-
| day. Men Will be braced-by our gen.
| ial standards-quite dreadfully brac-
| ed. And not simply braced.
see that the unrelenting gift means
more to us than that How it will be
done | cannot foresee, but the whole
| drift of things is toward collective eff
forts to breed a more adequate type oil
man
We quail from the suggestions OF
that, but presently we die and stouter
harder generations will come who will
| not quail
Man will come up to the machines
again and then thrust his machines
onward to fresh levels of power and
efficiency.
see great giants going fearlessly
amidst the stars, and they are the
children of our bodies and our mind.
AT $40 plate Savannah ought to be
able to have its guests swim in artil-
lery punch.