The Problem of Increasing Human Energy With Special References to the Harnessing of the Sun's Energy

Of all the endless variety of phenomena which nature presents to our senses there is none that fills our minds with greater wonder than that inconceivably complex movement which in its entirety we designate as human life; Its mysterious origin is veiled in the forever impenetrable mist of the past its character is rendered incomprehensible by its infinite intricacy and its destination is hidden in the unfathomable depths of the future. Whence does it come? What is it? Whither does it tend? are the great questions which the sages of all times have endeavored to answer.<P>Modern science says: The sun is the past the earth is the present the moon is the future. From an incandescent mass we have originated and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom. Lord Kelvin in his profound meditations allows us only a short span of life something like six million years after which time the suns bright light will have ceased to shine and its life giving heat will have ebbed away and our own earth will be a lump of ice hurrying on through the eternal night. But do not let us despair. There will still be left upon it a glimmering spark of life and there will be a chance to kindle a new fire on some distant star. This wonderful possibility seems indeed to exist judging from Professor Dewar's beautiful experiments with liquid air which show that germs of organic life are not destroyed by cold no matter how intense; consequently they may be transmitted through the interstellar space. Meanwhile the cheering lights of science and art ever increasing in intensity illuminate our path and marvels they disclose and the enjoyments they offer make us measurably forgetful of the gloomy future.<P>Though we may never be able to comprehend human life we know certainly that it is a movement of whatever nature it be. The existence of movement unavoidably implies a body which is being moved and a force which is moving it. Hence wherever there is life there is a mass moved by a force. All mass possesses inertia all force tends to persist. Owing to this universal property and condition a body be it at rest or in motion tends to remain in the same state and a force manifesting itself anywhere and through whatever cause produces an equivalent opposing force and as an absolute necessity of this it follows that every movement in nature must be rhythmical. Long ago this simple truth was clearly pointed out by Herbert Spencer who arrived at it through a somewhat different process of reasoning. It is borne out in everything we perceive-in the movement of a planet in the surging and ebbing of the tide in the reverberations of the air the swinging of a pendulum the oscillations of an electric current and in the infinitely varied phenomena of organic life. Does not the whole of human life attest to it? Birth growth old age and death of an individual family race or nation what is it all but a rhythm? All life-manifestation then even in its most intricate form as exemplified in man however involved and inscrutable is only a movement to which the same general laws of movement which govern throughout the physical universe must be applicable.