THE STUDY OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 453 



as comfortably and wholesomely as they can, they aud their children 

 after them it seems strange, I say, that such people should in general 

 be so careless about the constitution of this same planet, and of the 

 laws and facts on which depend, not merely their comfort and their 

 wealth, but their health and their very lives, and the health and the 

 lives of their children and descendants. 



I know some will say, at least to themselves, " What need for us to 

 study science ? There are plenty to do that already ; and we shall be 

 sure sooner or later to profit by their discoveries ; and meanwhile it is 

 not science which is needed to make mankind thrive, but simple com- 

 mon-sense." 



I should reply that, to expect to profit by other men's discoveries 

 when you do not pay for them to let others labor in the hope of en- 

 tering into their labors, is not a very noble or generous state of mind 

 comparable somewhat, I should say, to that of the fatting ox, who will- 

 ingly allows the farmer to house him, till for him, feed for him, pro- 

 vided only he himself may lounge in his stall, and eat, and not be 

 thankful. There is one difference in the two cases, but only one that 

 while the farmer can repay himself by eating the ox, the scientific man 

 cannot repay himself by eating you ; and so never gets paid, in most 

 cases, at all. 



But as for mankind thriving by common-sense : they have not 

 thriven by common-sense, because they have not used their common- 

 sense according to that regulated method which is called science. In 

 no age, in no country, as yet, have the majority of mankind been 

 guided, I will not say by the love of God, and by the fear of God, but not 

 even by sense and reason. Not sense and reason, but nonsense and 

 unreason prejudice and fancy greed and haste have led them to 

 such results as were to be expected to superstitions, persecutions, 

 wars, famines, pestilence, hereditary disease, poverty, waste waste in- 

 calculable, and now too often irremediable waste of life, of labor, of 

 capital, of raw material, of soil, of manure, of every bounty which God 

 has bestowed on man, till, as in the eastern Mediterranean, whole coun- 

 tries, some of the finest in the world, seem ruined forever : and all be- 

 cause men will not learn nor obey those physical laws of the universe 

 which (whether we be conscious of them or not) are all around us, like 

 walls of iron and of adamant say rather, like some vast machine, ruth- 

 less though beneficent, among the wheels of which, if we entangle our- 

 selves in our rash ignorance, they will not stop to set us free, but crush 

 us, as they have crushed whole nations and whole races ere now to 

 powder. Very terrible, though very'calm, is outraged Nature : 



" Though the mills of God grind 



Slowly, yet they grind exceeding small. 

 Though He sit, and wait with patience, 

 With exactness grinds He all." 



It is, I believe, one of the most hopeful among the many hopeful 



