The First Period, From The Chamois Track
To The Foot Road, Was One Of Millions Of Years; The Second, From
The first foot road to the Roman military way, was one of many
thousands; the third, from the Roman to
The mediaeval, was perhaps
a thousand; from the mediaeval to the Napoleonic, five hundred;
from the Napoleonic to the railroad, fifty. What will come next we
know not, but it should come within twenty years, and will probably
have something to do with electricity.
It follows by an easy process of reasoning that, after another
couple of hundred years or so, great sweeping changes should be
made several times in an hour, or indeed in a second, or fraction
of a second, till they pass unnoticed as the revolutions we undergo
in the embryonic stages, or are felt simply as vibrations. This
would undoubtedly be the case but for the existence of a friction
which interferes between theory and practice. This friction is
caused partly by the disturbance of vested interests which every
invention involves, and which will be found intolerable when men
become millionaires and paupers alternately once a fortnight -
living one week in a palace and the next in a workhouse, and having
perpetually to be sold up, and then to buy a new house and
refurnish, &c. - so that artificial means for stopping inventions
will be adopted; and partly by the fact that though all inventions
breed in geometrical ratio, yet some multiply more rapidly than
others, and the backwardness of one art will impede the forwardness
of another.
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