Probably, says this eminent
scientist of that valley, speaking of the past, "some of the deposits at
present being mined are the result of agents ... a hundred million years
ago"; [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 18.] and of the future: "We hope for a
future ... not to be reckoned by thousands of years but by tens of
thousands or hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. And,
therefore, so far as our responsibility is concerned, it is immaterial
whether the coal will be exhausted in one hundred and fifty years or
fifteen hundred years, or fifteen thousand years. Our responsibility to
succeeding generations demands that we reduce its use to our absolute
necessities, and therefore prolong its life to the utmost." [Footnote: Van
Rise, p. 25.] Conservation has in such depth of years given a new
perspective to the picture we have been painting of the life in that
valley. The French were pioneers not merely of an exploiting individualism
of a day, or of a hundred or two hundred years, not merely of a democracy
thinking of an equality of the men of one generation, but also of the
conserving dynamic civilization of hundreds of centuries of a people--to
come back again to that best of definitions--who are the invisible
multitude of spirits, the nation of yesterday and to-morrow.
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