ON THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 9 



starves. The man of science may not desire to live luxuriously ; he 

 may not, nor ought he, desire to rival his neighbors in the follies of 

 equipage and ostentation, which are often, indeed, rather a burden 

 imposed by the customs of society than an advantage or even a grati- 

 fication to the parties themselves ; but he must live, and for the sake 

 of science itself he ought to be able to live, free from those anxious 

 cares for the present and the future, or from the calls of a profession, 

 which often beset and burden his laborious career. Why was our 

 Dalton compelled to waste the powers of such an intellect on private 

 teaching ? As a teacher, a physician, or a clergyman, or more rarely 

 as a partner in a profitable patent, such a man may earn a competence, 

 and give to science the hours which can be spared from his other 

 avocations ; and it is, indeed, astonishing what results have been the 

 produce of these leavings of a laborious life, these leisure hours, if 

 so they may be called, of men who are engaged in arduous duties of 

 another kind. But this ought not to be ; and it will not long be, I 

 am confident. It must give way before the extended cultivation of 

 science itself. The means of occupation, in connection with our 

 schools, and our colleges, and our examinations, will increase ; and I 

 cannot but hope that a grateful country will insist upon her benefac- 

 tors in science receiving a more liberal share of her bounty than has 

 hitherto been allotted them. Nor have I any fear that the study of 

 science should ever become too exclusive, that is, should make us 

 too material, that it should overgrow and smother those more ethical, 

 more elevating, influences which are supposed to grow from the pur- 

 suit of literature and art. 



" In the first place, the demands of science upon the patient and 

 laborious exercise of thought are too heavy, too severe, to make it 

 likely that it should ever become the favorite study of the many. In 

 art and literature the mind of the student is often comparatively pas- 

 sive, in a state of almost passive enjoyment of the banquet prepared 

 for him by others ; in those of science the student must work hard 

 for his intellectual fare. He cannot throw up his oars, 



' And let his little bark attendant sail, 

 Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale ; ' 



but he must tug at the oar himself, and take his full share in the labor 

 by which his progress is to be made. 



" Nor indeed, when I read the works of a Whewell, and a Herschel, 

 and a Brewster, a Hugh Miller, or a Sedgwick, and a hundred others, 

 the glory of our days, can I see any reason for apprehending that the 

 study of science deprives the mind of imagination, the style of grace 

 and beauty, or the character of its moral and religious tone, its eleva- 

 tion and refinement." 



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