...
The sober Englishman at the close of the nineteenth century could sit
at his breakfast-table, decide between tea from Ceylon or coffee from
Brazil, devour an egg from France with some Danish ham, or eat a New
Zealand chop, wind up his breakfast with a West Indian banana, glance at
the latest telegrams from all the world, scrutinise the prices current
of his geographically distributed investments in South Africa, Japan,
and Egypt, and tell the two children he had begotten (in the place of
his father's eight) that he thought the world changed very little. They
must play cricket, keep their hair cut, go to the old school he had gone
to, shirk the lessons he had shirked, learn a few scraps of Horace and
Virgil and Homer for the confusion of cads, and all would be well with
them....
Section 5
Electricity, though it was perhaps the earlier of the two to be studied,
invaded the common life of men a few decades after the exploitation of
steam. To electricity also, in spite of its provocative nearness all
about him, mankind had been utterly blind for incalculable ages. Could
anything be more emphatic than the appeal of electricity for attention?
It thundered at man's ears, it signalled to him in blinding flashes,
occasionally it killed him, and he could not see it as a thing that
concerned him enough to merit study.
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