Three inventions which may perhaps be long delayed, but which possibly are near at hand, will give to this overcrowded island the prosperous condition of the United States. The first is the discovery of a motive force which will take the place of steam, with its cumbrous fuel of oil and coal; the second, the invention of aerial locomotion which will transport labour at a
trifling cost of money and of time to any part of the planet, and which by annihilating distance will speedily extinguish national distinctions; the third, the manufacture of flesh and flour from the elements by a chemical process in the laboratory, similar to that which is now performed within the bodies of animals and plants. Food will then be manufactured in unlimited quantities at a trifling expense, and our enlightened prosperity will look back upon us who eat oxen and sheep just as we look back upon cannibals. Hunger and starvation will then be unknown, and the best part of human life will no longer be wasted in a tedious process of cultivating the fields. … [claims that everyone will embrace Victorian morality omitted] … These bodies which now we wear belong to the lower animals; our minds have already outgrown them; already we look upon them with contempt. A time will come when science will transform them by means which we cannot conjecture, and which, even if explained to us, we could not now understand, much as the savage cannot understand electricity, magnetism, or steam. Disease will be extirpated; the causes of decay will be removed; immortality will be invented. And then, the earth being small, mankind will migrate into space, and will cross the airless Saharas which separate planet from planet and sun from sun. The earth will become a Holy Land which will be visited by pilgrims from all the quarters of the universe. Finally, men will master the forces of Nature; they will become themselves architects of system, manufacturers of worlds.
Three inventions which may perhaps be long delayed, but which possibly are near at hand, will give to this overcrowded island the prosperous condition of the United States. The first is the discovery of a motive force which will take the place of steam, with its cumbrous fuel of oil and coal; the second, the invention of aerial locomotion which will transport labour at a trifling cost of money and of time to any part of the planet, and which by annihilating distance will speedily extinguish national distinctions; the third, the manufacture of flesh and flour from the elements by a chemical process in the laboratory, similar to that which is now performed within the bodies of animals and plants. Food will then be manufactured in unlimited quantities at a trifling expense, and our enlightened prosperity will look back upon us who eat oxen and sheep just as we look back upon cannibals. Hunger and starvation will then be unknown, and the best part of human life will no longer be wasted in a tedious process of cultivating the fields. … [claims that everyone will embrace Victorian morality omitted] … These bodies which now we wear belong to the lower animals; our minds have already outgrown them; already we look upon them with contempt. A time will come when science will transform them by means which we cannot conjecture, and which, even if explained to us, we could not now understand, much as the savage cannot understand electricity, magnetism, or steam. Disease will be extirpated; the causes of decay will be removed; immortality will be invented. And then, the earth being small, mankind will migrate into space, and will cross the airless Saharas which separate planet from planet and sun from sun. The earth will become a Holy Land which will be visited by pilgrims from all the quarters of the universe. Finally, men will master the forces of Nature; they will become themselves architects of system, manufacturers of worlds.
-- Winwood Reade, “The Martyrdom of Man”, 1872
quoted (and ridiculed) by Patrick Allitt in 2002