to town, and the motor was unknown. A single illustrative example, this
could be duplicated in innumerable ways everywhere and in all walks
of life.

The result is obvious, and was inevitable. Entered on a new phase of
existence, the world is not as it was in the days of Columbus, when a
single new continent was discovered containing in it what we would now
regard as a limited accumulation of the precious metals. It is, on the
contrary, as if, in the language of Dr. Johnson, "the potentiality of
wealth" had been revealed "beyond the dreams of avarice"; together with
not one or two, but a dozen continents, the existence and secrets of
which are suddenly laid bare. The Applied Sciences have been the
magicians,--not Protection or the Currency.

And still scientists are continually dinning in our ears the question
whether this state of affairs is going to continue,--whether the era of
disturbance has reached its limit! I hold such a question to be little
short of childish. That era has not reached its limits, nor has it even
approximated those limits. On the contrary, we have just entered on the
uncharted sea. We know what the last thirty years have brought about as
the result of the agencies at work; but as yet we can only dimly dream
of what the next sixty years are destined to see brought about.
Imagination staggers at the suggestion.

What, then, has been of this the inevitable consequence,--the
consequence which even the blindest should have foreseen? It has
resulted in all those far-reaching changes suggested in the earlier part
of what I have said to-day, as respects our ideals, our political
theories, our social conditions. In other words, the old era is ended;
what is implied when we say a new era is entered upon?