TWENTY-NINTH • CONGRESS, 1845-47. 427 



Is nothing common but these material frames of ours ; 

 nothing, but the garments we wear, the habitations that 

 shelter, and the food that nourishes us ; notliing, but the 

 air we breathe, the fowls of heaven, the beasts of the field, 

 the herbs, the trees, and the rocks around us ? Is nothing 

 common but the glittering sands beneath our feet, and the 

 glittering stars on which we gaze ? Sir, these are indeed 

 common, and well it is to understand their uses, and so far 

 as our dim vision can pierce, even their natures also. But 

 are there not things even more common, nearer to our in- 

 most selves, harder indeed, but more profitable to be under- 

 stood ; objects not limited by the three dimensions, not 

 ponderable, not cognizable by any of the senses, and yet 

 subjects of precise definition, of logical argument, of phil- 

 osophical interest, and of overwhelming importance ? Sir, 

 the soul of man is a very common thing ; his relations to 

 his Maker and to his fellows, the laws of his moral and 

 intellectual being, his past history and his probable future 

 destiny, the principles of government and the laws of polit- 

 ical economy — all these are common things, the commonest 

 indeed of all things, and shall we make no provision for 

 instruction in these ? 



But, sir, the knowledge of what are called the physical 

 sciences is of far less importance, even in reference to the 

 very objects which the}' are supposed especially to promote, 

 than is generally believed. There was an age — I should 

 say ages — brilliant and glorious ages of philosophers, of 

 statesmen, of patriots, of heroes, and of artists, and arti- 

 zans too ; when, as yet, the sciences of chemistry, and 

 mineralogy, and metallurgy had neither name nor being — 

 when experimental research was unknown, and the raw 

 material of the arts was prepared for subsequent manipula- 

 tion in no laborator}' but the hidden workshops of nature — 

 when the profoundest philosophers were content with resolv- 

 ing all material things into the four elements, and men knew 

 nothing of that subtle analysis and those strange powers, 

 whereby the elements themselves are decomposed, the in- 

 gredients of the atmosphere solidified, and granite, porphyry 

 and adamant, resolved into imperceptible gases. And what 

 sir, have our boasted researches taught us to accomplish in 

 the industrial arts, that the cunning workman of Egypt, and 

 Tyre, and Greece could not do three thousand years ago ? 

 Can our machinery rear loftier piles than the Pyramids, or 

 move more ponderous masses than the stones of Persepolis, 

 or the monolithic temples of Egypt? Is a European prin- 

 cess arrayed in finer webs than the daughter of a Pharaoh, 



