| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: of heat and electricity; and others by Oersted and myself show the
convertibility of electricity and magnetism. But in no case, not
even in those of the Gymnotus and Torpedo, is there a pure creation
or a production of power without a corresponding exhaustion of
something to supply it.'
These words were published more than two years before either Mayer
printed his brief but celebrated essay on the Forces of Inorganic
Nature, or Mr. Joule published his first famous experiments on the
Mechanical Value of Heat. They illustrate the fact that before any
great scientific principle receives distinct enunciation by
individuals, it dwells more or less clearly in the general
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells: between my knees, and gritted the links of my fetters together. Presently
I was forced to talk again.
"What do you make of it, anyhow?" I asked humbly.
"They are reasonable creatures - they can make things and do things.
Those lights we saw..."
He stopped. It was clear he could make nothing of it.
When he spoke again it was to confess, "After all, they are more human
than we had a right to expect. I suppose -"
He stopped irritatingly.
"Yes?"
"I suppose, anyhow - on any planet where there is an intelligent animal -
The First Men In The Moon |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: I received no dissenting letter superior to this. To the writer of it I
replied that I agreed with much that he said, but that even so it did not
in my opinion outweigh the reasons I had given (and shall now give more
abundantly) in favor of dropping our hostile feeling toward England.
My correspondent says that we differ as a race from the English as much as
a celluloid comb from a stick of dynamite. Did our soldiers find the
difference as great as that? I doubt if our difference from anybody is
quite as great as that. Again, my correspondent says that we are bound up
in our own success only, and England is bound up in hers only. I agree.
But suppose the two successes succeed better through friendship than
through enmity? We are as friendly, my correspondent says, as two rival
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