Hudson Maxim

“ Each tower will be so built as amply to house several hundred thousand persons, and there will be homes in sky-hung parks and gardens up in the clear, cool, pure air, and from their commercial work down near the earth business men will take express elevators to their homes in a veritable "airy, fairy dreamland of nightingales," where the clouds hover and smile in the evening sun long after the ink of night has engulfed the lower floors. ”

“ What is needed is the discovery of some electro-chemical process by which the germs of disease may be killed in the living tissues, lymph, and blood without injury to the cells of the living body. Such a desideratum is one of the reasonable probabilities of the near future, wherein the victim of any germ disease whatsoever can be made clean and whole in a day. He who shall discover or invent this thing will be the greatest benefactor of the human race that history has ever had or can ever know. For there is no room for another so great. ”

“ We have no weapon with which we can attack that enemy. We must stand by, impotent spectators, while our loved ones are actually devoured by the microscopic wolves of disease. We have a few antitoxins which help a little, some new methods of treatment, and the surgeon's knife. But what we need is a tower of refuge with a veritable pool of Bethesda, where the victim of disease may enter and pass out purified and clean. ”

“ The first step to be taken toward the coming millennium is to fit the great human procession for millennial possibilities. There can be no millennium, no way of making complete living common, until there shall have been weeded out of the great human garden the obnoxious plants that now grow rank in the hothouse of unbridled passions, fertilized by drugs and watered with alcohol. ”

“ There is a no more common error of belief than the one that altruism is a mere matter of sentiment, for it has a practical business side, a side befitting cold, calculating policy. Perfect selfishness and perfect altruism lead to a common goal, where life is found to be an equation—the individual on one side, other people on the other side. ”

“ Following down the descending scale, we should see the cooling sun grow dim and the parching earth drink up the seas, and see man become a cave-dweller again, mining for moisture, more precious then than gold. ”

“ Every effect is in turn a cause for other effects exactly equal to itself. There can be no more effects in nature, therefore, than are exactly equal to producing causes.
Every atom in existence follows a course mathematically exact—a course determined for it by the combined forces exerted upon it of all the other atoms in existence and as exact as the orbit of a star. We know, therefore, that the sum of all the forces of all nature at the present moment is exactly the sum of the combined forces exerted between atoms. ”

“ Man is a warring animal. The first sun of civilization's dawn broke through a war cloud, and what light it has since shed upon mankind has been through rifts in clouds of war. The history of nations is the history of wars; but while armies of men have met and hewn each other down, there have been enemies in the ranks of the combatants on every side far more deadly than he of the two-edged sword.
WAR WITH DISEASE In every war pestilence has slain dozens to every one that has fallen in battle. There are no rifts in the clouds of war waged with the deadly germs of disease. ”

“ It is the ignorance of barbarism that leads us to imprison men for crimes they cannot help committing, releasing them after a stated period with the impulse toward crime unchecked. This is as unwise as it would be to imprison a leper when the first flush of his disease appeared, then to release him to mingle with the human throng and contaminate others, and again to imprison him for that contamination, releasing him again after punishment, to continue the contagion. ”

“ We have discovered that the internal molecular energy of matter is perfectly inconceivable in amount, and if we ever succeed in harnessing it to human use we shall be able to light, heat, and run the world from the dynamo. ”

“ Viewed from a distance, the great city will have the aspect of a frail structure of webs and ribbons of steel through which the sun and air will find a freer access to the earth than they now find between the present city walls. ”

“ HUMANITARIAN PROGRESS Just as we now elect what immigrants shall come into our country to reside and mingle their blood with ours, so we have the right to choose—and shall soon know enough to exercise that right—what blood we shall let continue to flow into the great human stream. ”

“ NEW SOURCES OF ENERGY There is one stupendous problem which man must soon solve, for upon its solution hangs the very possibility of continued human civilization and progress. We must have a supply of heat and power inexhaustible in quantity and cheap of production. ”

“ Morse made electricity our Mercury, annihilating time and space in the transmission of intelligence, and Alexander Graham Bell has brought the world's ear to our desk and makes it listen. Now, with the advent of the flying-machine, we shall soon be able to leave the earth-road and go coursing on the unobstructed sky-way. We shall soon have our automobiles of the air, and shall then be able to tour the Siberian sky, the Arctic waste, and chase the mirage over arid Saharas as commonly as we now tour an adjacent state. ”

“ If, for argument's sake, we were to assume a condition of mechanical and scientific perfection, where every want except human companionship and sympathy could be supplied by pressing a button, there is no place in the world that would not be a prison-house if these requisites to happiness were lacking. ”

“ It is estimated that the total amount of energy received by the earth from the sun is equal to that which would be developed by a continuous Niagara seventy-five thousand miles wide—wide enough to encircle the earth three times. But this enormous energy, great as it is, is received upon such a vast area that the great difficulty lies in its concentration. Water-power is an indirect utilization of the heat of the solar rays, but were every stream and fall harnessed to maximum duty, the energy developed would not long be sufficient for man's needs. ”

“ Had we an engine which would utilize the energy latent in coal with an economy equal to that with which the sea-gull utilizes the carbon it consumes in its food, we should be able to develop ten times the energy that we now do from the fuel we consume to turn the wheels of industry and trade. ”

“ This evidences that a chlorin solution sufficiently strong to kill infectious germs may be employed without injuriously affecting the tissues of the body.
The animal organism is a complex one. It is a sort of electric generator. The blood is alkaline, while the lymph or juice of the flesh is acid, and they are separated by an impervious membrane, so that a person may have a disease of the blood without having a disease of the lymphatics, and may have a disease of the lymphatics, such as tuberculosis of the lymphatics, known as scrofula, without producing tuberculosis of the blood. ”

“ My suggestion is to interpose the human body as a part of the diaphragm in electro-osmosis, or cataphoresis, and thus to force remedial agents or germ-destroying chemicals into and through the human tissues, lymph, and blood. ”

“ FORETELLING THE FUTURE No man is able to foretell the future except from his knowledge of the present, and what he foresees must result from present tendencies. There can be no effect without a cause, and there can be no cause which is not in itself an effect of a preceding cause. ”

“ Even at the present time, from a humane point of view, we are standing miles higher than the ancients stood. In olden times there was no recognition of such a thing as inalienable human rights; and when one people were able to rob or enslave another people with profit, it was looked upon as weakness and bad business not to rob and enslave them. ”

“ At night, when the millions of lights emblazon the sky and throw their united fire far into the outer dark, the city will resemble an enormous torch about which fast-fleeting flying-machines will flit and plunge like giant moths about a giant flame. ”

“ Hence, in order to be sure of destroying every disease germ in lymph and blood, bone and muscle, it would be necessary to penetrate them all, and simultaneously, with a germ-destroying agent, and such would be the aim of germicidal electro-osmosis.
CONQUEST OF THE AIR The conquest of the air, which we are already beginning to realize, is one of the great achievements that will make for the millennium. Whatever facilitates travel and transportation makes the remote near, the foreigner a countryman, and the alien a neighbor and a friend. ”

“ It is safe to predict that man's advancement from now on will be vastly more rapid than it has ever been before, and possibly the millennium of intellectual achievement may not be so far ahead as has been the habit of our conjecture. ”

“ There is a growing spirit of international brotherhood, a growing knowledge of the truth that all mankind feeds at a common board and sits by a common fireside and that selfish sea-gull ethics do not pay. ”

“ Standing here upon the threshold of all that is yet to be, had we infinite knowledge of causes now operating, and of their trend, we should have infinite foresight too; but our knowledge is so small and our powers are so finite that we can at best but speculate and generalize. ”

“ Daringly peering into the future, he makes one gasp as he predicts the machine-made millennium.'
The discovery of a radio-motor, says Mr. Maxim, will make power so cheap that none will work save for recreation; crystallization of fertilizer out of the atmosphere will make the earth so prolific that farming will he a pastime; disinfectant solutions forced through the body will exterminate all germs, and disease will be eliminated; life insurance companies will become simply accident insurance companies, and man's life will run its allotted span ”

“ Our lives are part and parcel of the great cosmic procession, and even our free will is predestined to will as it does, for we can no more will without a cause for willing than a sun can be deflected from its orbit without cause for that deflection. ”

“ Instead of individual buildings, disunited and independent in architecture, that great city of the future will be as one enormous edifice. The present streets upon the surface of the ground will become the basement, and the business thoroughfares will be upon an enormous platform a story high ”

“ The warmth of the fire is better enjoyed when shared than when monopolized at the cost of crowding others into the cold. The half of a sweet morsel shared is better than the whole unshared. Mutuality in the enjoyment of possessions is what gives them most value. ”

“ Every ton of coal consumed renders unfit for breathing twelve tons of air. So that, even if we had coal enough to last us indefinitely, we should not have enough oxygen in the air to burn it up, but should fill the air with carbonic acid gas to suffocation.
Possibly we shall invent some motor which will utilize efficiently the heat of the solar rays. ”

“ This means that in one pound of ponderable substance there is sufficient energy to hurl a one-pound projectile at a velocity of a hundred thousand miles a second.
GLIMPSES OF THE FUTURE Every human want has its expression in terms of heat and power, and when heat and power are made cheap enough the earth will be a playground, and every land and every sea will pulse and vibrate under the human finger and the guidance of the human brain. ”

“ A great French philosopher once truly said: "All law, all philosophy, all wisdom, depend upon the practice of these principles. Moderate thyself. Instruct thyself. Live for thy fellow creatures that they may live for thee." He is the best business man who abides by this teaching. ”

“ There will be no son and no daughter to inherit the property of the thrifty manufacturer, house-owner, or landholder, for all property will belong to the commonwealth, and on the death of a tenant the property occupied by him will revert to the commonwealth to be assigned to some new offender sent in from the outer world. ”

“ The lonely farmhouse will be no more, but the people will group themselves in little cities with metropolitan recreations and amusements. Every little village will have its theater, but the actors will live and play in New York, London, or Paris. ”

“ If two persons were to proceed with equal wisdom, one actuated by purely selfish motives and by policy, the other by purely altruistic motives with no idea of policy, the one would serve others by his own self-service, and the other would serve himself by his service to others. The unselfish man would find it necessary to conserve himself in the interest of others, and the selfish man would find that he must conserve others equally in the interest of himself. ”

“ It is a constant and ever-present bloody battle. The beautiful daughter, health and happiness smiling in her face, kisses a playmate on whose lips are the bacilli of tuberculosis, and she falls a victim to the White Plague ”

“ The reform will come not by punishing the offender, but by his isolation. The criminal will then be classed with the leper, and men will no more think of punishing for theft or than we now think of punishing for insanity or smallpox. ”

“ There will be cities with beautiful residences, schools, colleges, clubs, libraries, and art-galleries—in short, every convenience and luxury common to the civilized life of that time. There will be but one restriction—the lives of all who enter there, although lived and ended in comfort and even luxury, shall not be perpetuated in others. ”