All About Engines

Fuel and Its Problems 343 to drive dynamos, and the electric current generated may be used for heat and light and power as well as for processes of manufacture which cannot be dealt with here. Just as the sun enabled the plants of bygone ages to grow, and in this way provided us with vast stores of coal, so the same sun furnishes another means by which man can increase his power and lighten toil. But while the special conditions which were necessary to the formation of coal have long since passed away, the conveyance of water from sea level to high ground seems likely to go on as long as the earth remains habitable by man. It is a won- derful world, and though perhaps some of what has been written in this chapter has little to do with engines, you will see how important the matter is, and will agree, I think, that the engineer who can- not see beyond the whirling wheels and moving rods of his machine is not worthy of the name. And not he alone. For his work is merely one small division of that intellectual struggle by which the human race has risen from savagery to civilisation. Nations rise and fall because human nature is frail and men are prone to error. But from the first crude efforts in the far dis- tant past the control over natural forces has been gradually widened and extended. Let us who to-day enjoy the fruits of ten thousand years of strenuous endeavour honour the memory of the pioneers, and look with reverence, but without fear, upon those