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Breaking Barriers
By Wilhelm Ostwald
Drawings by Wm. Washburn Nutting
SCIENTISTS have reason to believe that the solar system was first a gaseous sphere, which slowly turned into a fluid, and finally became a solid. After this, life sooner or later appeared on the different planets, and scientists connect man's appearance with that state of the earth in which it consists of a solid framework partly covered by the fluid ocean and entirely surrounded by the gaseous atmosphere. It was on the solid parts that man first moved. He required an incalculably long period of technical development to obtain some degree of power over the fluid element. That old chicken-hearted poet, Horace, even in his day, centuries on centuries later, was still aghast that a man could have had the idea to embark on the open waters. Contrast that with the present, when a trip across the Atlantic is so safe and pleasant that I, for my part, would far rather spend two weeks on the sea than two clays in a railroad coach. A sea trip is cleaner—and safer.
Now we stand at the threshold of a third period, when man is making the gaseous part of our world accessible to us. There is no doubt that this signifies a new epoch of civilization. Hitherto we all lived a bi-dimensional existence on a surface. Henceforth the third, the spacial, dimension will come more and more to be the arena for man to move upon. This will give rise to entirely new conditions of existence and entirely new problems, the solution of which will make us quite different beings from what we have been.
Once, to make the nature of spacial dimensions clear, Helmholtz assumed the existence of beings that lived in space of one or two dimensions. Such beings are points on a line, or whole lines, and all they can do is move forward and backward on a line. If two points A and B move on a line, they can meet but never pass each other, and no change can take place in this, their spacial relation. That relation can no more be altered than we can alter our time relations. If your wife happens to be older than you there is no possibility by any operation of which man is capable of making her younger or you older.
The beings confined to a space of two dimensions, however, are able to avoid contact with one another. But if one of them or a group of them is hemmed in by a line that cannot be crossed, they are held captive. They cannot get out.
This is essentially man's condition at present on earth, especially upon the solid part of the earth, on which boundary lines can easily be drawn. The same cannot be done on the watery parts. Consequently the ocean is a powerful agent for setting men free and joining them together. Just as water has the power to dissolve some solids, so the ocean acts as a solvent on the rigid political forms into which men are divided, and which keep them apart. A process of diffusion among the various human groups was brought about by travel on the seas. That process is continuing at an increasing rate, and is no longer to be checked.
This agent of diffusion has been known for thousands of years, but has been effective for only several hundreds. And now we are looking forward to another, the air. We can foresee the time when it, too, will be effective. In keeping with its gaseous character, its influence upon diffusion will be incomparably greater. The inevitable result will be an entirely new relation between the individual and society.
Surfaces are separated by lines, spaces by surfaces. Our countries are surfaces, and hitherto it has been comparatively easy to separate them by linear confines, and so preserve tariffs and military and linguistic boundaries. But after the third dimension has become accessible it will be absolutely impossible to maintain these divisions. Every country would have to be surrounded by walls as high as Mt. Blanc (even this, after a time, may not be high enough) to prevent the smuggling of lace, pearls and progressive ideas.
So in the flying machine I see a powerful instrument for bringing about the brotherhood of man. In effectiveness it far surpasses its predecessors. This is not a sentimental, but a technical observation. I am not raising the question, "Is diffusion of men desirable, and if so, to what extent?" Whether we wish it or not, the process will take place. We cannot prevent it. And that is the condition we have to reckon with.
Of course, progressive people will look forward to such a future with pleasure. The conservatives will regard it with distrust, disinclination, and even hatred. The reason that conservative sentiment has as yet scarcely been aroused is that the consequences of the introduction of the flying machine are not yet easy to foresee. Besides, the conservatives do not fully believe in the reality of such things as flying machines, and so fortunately lose the chance of using the power they have to nip aviatory enterprise in the bud. In fact, history is playing one of its ironic tricks upon the conservatives. There are conservatives who are advocates of war, and war is a remnant of an earlier, coarser state. It is therefore upheld by those who have some interest in preserving the old, or, at least, in retarding inevitable progress. Now, these conservative partisans of war are eagerly furthering the perfection of the flying machine, which stands for man's technical progress, because they expect that the conquest of the air will produce an extremely effective mode of warfare in the future. We will let this go, because we can anticipate the true and final results.
And the final results will be that under the pressure of circumstances we shall give up all those linear boundaries which artificially divide territories allied to one another geographically and economically. What man who thinks and feels in terms of energy is not impressed with all the pitifulness of our life when he sees what a vast amount of energy is spent upon preserving boundary lines? Consider the Austrian provinces, for instance, those countries upon whom nature has been so lavish. Would anybody be the loser if they were to give up their frontiers? No. On the contrary, everybody would be the gainer. The same is true of all lands. Each artificial boundary is necessarily a thief of energy. To maintain a boundary line requires an expenditure of energy; so it does to cross a boundary line. And that energy might be applied to much better purposes.
Then, pray, why do we keep up boundary lines? For the same reason that a tailor sews two buttons on the tails of every man's dress-coat. The two buttons don't button anything. There are even no buttonholes to match. There was a time when the two buttons were of some use on a coat that reached entirely around the body. The front flaps could be buttoned back on them to leave the upper legs free. On a dress-coat there are no front flaps, and the two buttons are absolutely unnecessary. But like a rudimentary organ, the remnant of a previous stage of
