Our astonishment and dismay were too great to
permit us quickly to recover our self-command, but after a while Jack
seized Edmund's arm, and demanded:
"For God's sake, tell us what you've been doing."
"Nothing that ought to appear very extraordinary," answered Edmund, with
uncommon warmth. "If men had not been fools for so many ages they might
have done this, and more than this long ago. It's enough to make one
ashamed of his race! For countless centuries, instead of grasping the
power that nature had placed at the disposal of their intelligence, they
have idled away their time gabbling about nothing. And even since, at
last, they have begun to do something, look at the time that they have
wasted upon such petty forces as steam and 'electricity,' burning whole
mines of coal and whole lakes of oil, and childishly calling upon winds
and tides and waterfalls to help them, when they had under their thumbs
the limitless energy of the atoms, and no more understood it than a baby
understands what makes its whistle scream! It's inter-atomic force that
has brought us out here, and that is going to carry us a great deal
farther.
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