7 2o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



He says: "There is the world of ideas, and there is the world of 

 practice ; the French are often for suppressing the one, and the English 

 the other." ' Admitting the success of the English in action, Mr. 

 Arnold thinks that it goes along with want of faith in speculative con- 

 clusions. But by putting ideas and practice in this antithesis, he im- 

 plies his acceptance of the notion that effectual practice does not de- 

 pend on superiority of ideas. This is an erroneous notion. Methods 

 that answer are preceded by thoughts that are true. A successful en- 

 terprise presupposes an imagination of all the factors, and conditions, 

 and results ; which differs from the imagination leading to an unsuc- 

 cessful enterprise in this, that what will happen is clearly and completely 

 foreseen, instead of being foreseen vaguely and incompletely : there is 

 greater ideality. Every scheme is an idea ; every scheme, more or less 

 new, implies an idea more or less original ; every scheme proceeded 

 with, implies an idea vivid enough to prompt action ; and every scheme 

 which succeeds, implies an idea so accurate and exhaustive that the 

 results correspond with it. When an English company accommodates 

 Amsterdam with water an element the Dutch are very familiar with, 

 and in the management of which they, centuries ago, gave us lessons 

 must we not say that, by leaving us to supply their chief city, they 

 show a want of confidence in results ideally seen ? Is it replied that 

 the Dutch are not an ideal people ? Then take the Italians. How 

 happens it that such a pressing need as the draining of Naples has 

 never suggested to Italian rulers or Italian people the taking of meas- 

 ures to achieve it; and how happens it that the idea of draining Naples, 

 instead of emanating from French or Germans, supposed by Mr. Arnold 

 to have more faith in ideas, emanates from a company of Englishmen, 

 who are now proposing to do the work without cost to the municipali- 

 ty ? 2 Or what shall we infer as to relative faith in ideas, on learning 

 that even within their respective territories the French and Germans 

 wait for us to undertake new things for them ? When we find that 

 Toulouse and Bordeaux were lighted with gas by an English company, 

 must we not infer lack of ideas in the people of those places ? When 

 we find that a body of Englishmen, the Rhone Hydraulic Company, 

 seeing that at Bellegarde there are rapids having a fall of forty feet, 

 made a tunnel carrying a fourth of the river, and so got 10,000 horse- 

 power, which they are selling to manufacturers ; and when we ask 

 why this source of wealth was not utilized by the French them- 

 selves ; must we not say that it was because the idea did not occur to 

 them, or because it was not vivid and complete enough to prompt the 

 enterprise ? And when, on going north, we discover that not only in 

 Belgium and Holland are the chief towns, Brussels, Antwerp, Lille, 

 Ghent, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Haarlem, etc., lighted by our Conti- 

 nental Gas Association, but that this combination of Englishmen lights 

 many towns in Germany also Hanover, Aix-la-Chapelle, Stolberg, 



1 "Essays in Criticism," p. 12. * Times, January 22, 1873. 



