JgQ WEST OXFORD SOCIETY. 



from his fellow man, -will die a pauper, and demand a burial at tli© 

 public expense. 



As with the individual, so with the nation. It is a distincruishin"- 

 mark of a high degree of civilization when a nation is so situated as 

 to secure to itself everything valuable from all other portions of the 

 globe. An isolated nation is a degraded one. Everything that serves 

 to expand and elevate the human mind is there unknown. It was a 

 striking remark of Bishop Whately, "that no nation civilizes itself 

 alone." It is a peculiarity of civilized life that science lends her 

 aid to every department of human industry. Go to the South Sea 

 Islands. The war ship of an island king is a long boat manned by 

 thirty or forty men, each with paddle in hand, essentially the same 

 as was used by the rude barbarian four thousand years ago. But 

 let science step in, and these forty men could fit out and man a ship 

 of two thousand tons, and load it with all the necessaries of a long 

 voyage. 



Step into the humblest cottage in the land of civilization, and the 

 first thing you see may be an almanac. The humble cottager may 

 thus learn the changes of the moon, the eclipses of the year, the ebb 

 and flow of tides, and the position of the planets, without ever think- 

 ing that it required the most scientific minds the world has ever 

 seen to discover the laws of astronomy and bring them down to his. 

 capacity. There is in the hands of that cottager's child a spelling 

 book, but he cares not, nor thinks of the many years of toil spent 

 by the compiler of that hook. Nor does be for a moment conceive 

 the vast amount of thought necessary to invent a printing press 

 which will strike out that book such as shall render its price within 

 the reach of his limited means. He little thinks that he enjoys bj 

 the aid of science what even kings could not possess six hundred 

 years ago 



Could you visit a New Engknd farm-house as it existed forty 

 years ago, you would have found its inmates employed much the 

 same as were the Egyptian women forty centuries ago, spending the 

 long days, and nights, too, in wearisome toil, spinning and weaving 

 wherewith to clothe the family. It was a painful labor, but science 

 stepped in during the present century and showed the use of wheels 

 and bands and levers, and the inventive genius of the mechanic 

 takes out of the haads of woman that toilsome drudgery, and cards. 



