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AFTER THE SOUTH POLE-WHAT?
|As Men Grow
Bigger, Men
tally, They
Turn from
Things That
Are Little to
Things That
Are Great. As
the Human
Race Grows
in Intellectual
Power, It Will
Turn from
Study of This
Tiny Earth to
Contemplation
of the Vast
Universe in
Which This
Earth Is an
Atom. We
Have Discov
ered Our Two
Poles, North
and South.
Opened Up
Our Little Con
tinents. Explor
ed Our Distant
Islands. It Is
Almost Time
for Human Be
ings to Begin
the Study of
REALITY,
Which Is the
Study of the
Outside Uni
verse.
kmerict.4B-Jou.rnaJ Examiner. Great Britain Rights Reserved.
ERY slowly, during hundreds of
i thousands of years, thinking
human beings have crept around
this planet in different direc
i tions, moving from East to West,
J and from North to South, EX-
CopjiW, 1»I2, by A
AMINING, STUDYING, MAPPING AND
TAKING POSSESSION OP THE LITTLE
BALL OF EARTH UPON WHICH WE LIVE.
Within a short time one man went to
the North Pole, and came hack to tell us of a
spot where the sun acts strangely, where, amid
ice and snow, only a few strange animals live.
And then came Amundsen, to tell us that
he had stood at the South Pole, another point
of ice and snow and useless territory.
One after another the continents, the great
islands, the mountain tops and the depths of
the seas have been explored by curious man,
driven by ambition and restlessness.
The forests, the mines under the ocean, the
veins of coal, the streams of oil below the sur
face, the lakes and the rivers, are mapped and
known and “owned” by man.
We know our little earth as the man in the
suburbs knows his little back yard and his little
front yard.
We travel under the water and on the
water, we are beginning to fly in the air, we live,
as we choose, th? lives of birds and of fishes.
Man rules above the earth, below the water, or
on the earth’s surface.
There is little more for us to know about
THIS earth.
And this picture of the explorer at the
South Pole, gazing out at the heavens with
nothing much left to discover here below, is a
picture of humanity as it will be soon.
* # #
The artist, tn make his point clear, shows
you the Pole hunter, looking at Mars, magnified
vastly, with the canals showing, and our other
neighbor planets.
The great telescopes, the imagination and
scientific, precise knowledge of man magnify
the planets and tell us truths about them more
vividly than any exaggerated picture could do.
Do you realize, as you live on this little
earth, sitting at your desk writing, going out in
the fields laboring, entering your factory and
doing your share, that the earth in reality is not
your REAL home?
You are the inhabitant of all space; you are
Interested in the entire universe.
As you sail through infinite space on this
earth you are like the sailor crossing the ocean
on his ship.
The ship is not his WHOLE world. He is
interested in the ocean through which he sails,
interested in the land tow ard w hich he is going,
in the islands as he passes them.
And you, sailing through limitless space,
through endless time, on this little ship, the
earth, are in reality interested in the planet
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ONLY AS THE SAILOR IS INTERESTED IN
THE SHIP.
YOUR REAL INTEREST. YOUR REAL
HOME, IS THE GREAT UNIVERSE THE
MARVE LLO U s AND OVERWHELMING
AREA OF SUNS AND PLANETS OF
COMETS AND NEBULAE, THE WONDERS
AND THE POWER THAT SURROUND YOU.
It is hard to make the ignorant peasant feel
that anything is more important than the field
in which he digs.
It is hard to make the savage take his
thought away from the forest in which he finds
prey, or the hut in which he finds shelter.
Act we know that if the peasant were
broader in mind, it the savage were civilized,
the single field or the tangled forest could not
bound his interest.
So it is with us earth dwellers. We are
peasants and savages, only half civilized, only
just beginning to realize what a magnificent
thing it is to be i citizen of the whole universe,
to belong to a race that can measure and can
weigh the distant planets and suns.
It is hard for us to get our minds off this
little earth, this'l'itle back yard in w hich we live.
A et we know that real life, real intellectual
freedom, w ill be found in contemplation of that
which is infinite, endless, without beginning
and without end.
* £ *
Every schoolboy is interested in Alexander
the Great, w hose mind took the w hole earth as a
field of labor. Such a man as Alexander, start
ing out to a conquest ot the earth, is more stim
ulating to the imagination than the dull stay-at
home cultivating bis little plot of ground.
M hat Alexander was to the stay-at-home
so is the man interested in universal things
compared to the man whose interests are limited
to this little earth.
Already we can send a telegraph message
around our planet SEVEN TIMES IN ONE
SECOND. That is the possibility of electrical
transmission already conquered by man.
A man’s body can be transported around
the earth with our present defective svstem of
transportation IN A LITTLE MORE THAN
FORTY DAYS.
Flying machines, before children now
born shall have died, w ill take men around this
planet in a week. And eventually men will go
around the earth as rapidly as the sun now
SEEMS to go.
Those that arc living will circle the globe
in a time shorter than that which .Jefferson occu
pied in going from his home to Washington.
Our earth has become A LITTLE EARTH
because our race has become to some extent at
least a great and conquering race.
♦ ♦
You may be sure that in the future, not
distant, human beings will be confined intel
lectually to this earth no longer. We shall not,
A ' - II
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c i n ° W ’ ave a FEW astronomers and a few
devoted to the study of the heavens.
a study will be the study of all intelligent
mankind.
Once—only a few generations back—
o’eign countries were e?<plored and investi
ga*?H only by a f ew individual travellers.
1 hey came back to tell the wondering
crowns what thev had seen.
Now everybody travels—everybody able
to travel, at least. Tens of thousands go to
Europe from America. Millions of people go
about on the continents from one countrv to an
other. We have all become PHYSICAL travel
lers on this planet.
Soon we shall all become INTELLECT
UAL travellers throughout the entire universe.
And the man so dull as to limit his interest
to this planet will be considered a being un-*
worthy ot intelligent friendship or association.
Teach your children to interest themselves
in the real world, which is the great world out
side ol us. Interest them in astronomy. Make
them understand the motions of the suns and
the planets, acquaint them at least with the
simpler wonders of that universe which should
occupy their minds when they reach maturity.
Try to make them think intelligently in
connection with great numbers and vast dis
tances.
In an article by Professor Larkin, recently
published in this new spaper, an effort was made
to give to readers some idea of the vastness of
space and the smallness of that which we con
sider great.
Suppose you took a ring three inches in
diameter and put in the centre of it a little frag
ment of a diamond one-seventy-first of an inch
in width, then walked away about nine miles.
The three-inch ring with the little bit of dia
mond in the middle would look to you at a dis
tance of nine miles as our solar orbit with the
bright little sun in the middle of it would look
to an astronomer gazing at us from the great
star Sirius, that we call the Dog Star.
Our solar system seems to us gigantic
and indeed it IS gigantic.
The ring which our planet makes around
the sun every year is 186,000.000 miles in
diameter: yet seen from the Dog Star that
gigantic ring looks as small as a little ring three
inches in diameter w oum took to you it it were
" placed nine miles away from you.
_ Our sun is one of billions of great suns that travel
through space on mysterious errand.,, some of them
single, some of them double and triple suns. All ol
them have their planets travelling with them, and the
planets ha\e their satellites, as we have our one moon,
and as others of the planets in our system have numer
ous moons.
Each of these suns has a vast exclusive territory
in space, inhabited only by its solar family, except
lor the visits of comets and lost flying fragments.
W hen you get outside of our own little family in
space, away from our sun with its planets, you must
travel twenty-five billions of miles before yon come to
the nearest sun. which is called Alpha Centauri.
Light travels at the rate of 186,400 miles a second,
et it takes the light more than four years to come
frem the nearest sun to our solar sytem.
II we could hear the sound of a cannon fired from
that nearest sun. IT WOULD TAKE THREE MIL
LIO?,’ YEARS FOR THE SOUND TO TRAVEL FROM
1 HAI SUN 'IO OUR PLANET.. And ar express train,
such as we have on this earth, travelling at the rate of
thirty-seven milej» an hour, would have to travel stead
ily tor seventy-five millions of years to come from
Alpha Centauri to Grand Central Station in New York
City.
* ♦ *
Some will say that human beings are not interest
ed in such questions, in such inconceivable distances
BUT THEY ARE INTERESTED, AS MANA’ OF THEM
AS ARE INTELLIGENT BEINGS. And the entire
race will soon be .nterested in these vast distances,
these vast problems, these magnificent realms of power
and wonderful beauty.
. * P a l’ ves a little, lost village in some valley
ot the Himalayas are not interested in our western
country. They are not interested in Paris, in London
m the telescope or the flying machine. They are in
terested only in their little village, their narrow streets
their few goats, their marauding expeditions, their
™ !se ’’[mle. superstitious religion, which teaches them
inat they alone are important.
... !! ea l h " man bein^s inhabiting this planet are not
ike the halt-savage inhabitants of an Asiatic village.
We are interested, all of us, in everything upon this
earth.
Before long, like the man in this picture, we shall
be sitting, looking away from this earth, looking out
into the infinite spaces, backward through time that
never began, forward through time that shall never
end. We shall realize that our possibilities are unlim
ited. that when this little earth ends and disanpears, as
our bodies end and disappear, still the mind, the power
of thought, will continue, and in other solar systems
on other planets, in endless time and endless space
continue the work of the intellect—the only work that
is worth while.
Our sun is a million times bigger than the planet
on which we live.
And within sight of us there exists a sun one mil
lion times bigger than our own sun.
And all of these gigantic suns and planets and
comets are held in their paths, kept swinging on
mighty journeys, by the eternal power of law and jus
tice.
‘ hat alone is worth Hie study m an intellectual
man.