Well, when you have learned all that, what would you do next? “Next? Why then we should be perfectly happy, and make as much money as ever we liked, and we would turn out our toes before any company.” I am not sure myself, and I don’t think you can be, of any one of these three things. At least, as to making you very happy, I know something, myself, of nearly all these matters—not much, but still quite as much as most men under the ordinary chances of life, with a fair education, are likely to get together—and I assure you the knowledge does not make me happy at all. When I was a boy I used to like seeing the sunrise. I didn’t know then, there were any spots on the sun; now I do, and am always frightened lest any more should come. When I was a boy, I used to care about pretty stones. I got some Bristol diamonds at Bristol and some dog-tooth spar in Derbyshire; my whole collection had cost, perhaps, three half-crowns, and was worth considerably less; and I knew nothing whatever, rightly, about any single stone in it—could not even spell their names; but words cannot tell the joy they used to give me. Now, I have a collection of minerals worth, perhaps, three thousand pounds; and I know more about some of them than most other people. But I am not a whit happier, either for my knowledge, or possessions, for other geologists dispute my theories, to my grievous indignation and discontentment; and I am miserable about all my best specimens, because there are better in the British Museum. And as to your wonderful inventions, why talk at a distance, when you have nothing to say? Or go fast from this place to that, with nothing to do at either? These are powers certainly! Much more, power of increased Production, if you, indeed, had got it, would be something to boast of. Now just cast your Cathode ray this way and observe this fact: A man and a woman, with their children, properly trained, are able easily to cultivate as much ground as will feed them; to build as much wall and roof as will lodge them, and to spin and weave as much cloth as will clothe them. They can all be perfectly happy and healthy in doing this. Supposing that they invent machinery which will build, plough, thresh, cook, and weave, and that they have none of these things any more to do, but may read, or play croquet, or cricket, all day long, I believe myself that they will neither be so good nor so happy as without the machines.