Xxiv THIRD REPORT — IS3H. 



gifted portion of the species for 5000 years has been requisite. 

 There is another science, Optics, in which we are, perhaps, in 

 the act of obtaining the same success, with regard to a part of 

 the phaenomena. But all the rest of the pi'ospect is compara- 

 tively darkness and chaos ; limited rules, imperfectly known, 

 imperfectly verified, connected by no known cause, are all that 

 we can discern. Even in those sciences which are considered 

 as having been most successful, as Chemistry, every few years 

 changes the aspect under which the theory presents the facts 

 to our minds, while no theory, as yet, has advanced beyond the 

 mere horn-book of calculation. What is there here of which 

 man can be proud, or from which he can find reason to be pre- 

 sumptuous ? And even if the Discoverers to whom these sciences 

 owe such progress as they have made — the great men of the 

 present and the past — if they might be elate and confident 

 in the exercises of their intellectual powers, who are we, that 

 we should ape their mental attitudes ? — we, who can but with 

 pain and effort keep a firm hold of the views which they have 

 disclosed ? But it has not been so ; they, the really great in 

 the world of intellect, have never had their characters marked 

 with admiration of themselves and contempt of others. Their 

 genuine nobility has ever been superior to those ignoble and 

 low-born tempers. Their views of their own powers and achieve- 

 ments have been sober and modest, because they have ever felt 

 how near their predecessors had advanced to what they had 

 done, and what patience and labour their own small progress 

 had cost. Knowledge, like wealth, is not likely to make us 

 proud or vain, except when it comes suddenly and unlearned ; 

 and in such a case, it is little to be hoped that we shall use 

 well, or increase, our ill-understood possession. 



" Perhaps some of the appearance of overweening estimation 

 of ourselves and our generation which has been charged against 

 science, has arisen from the natural exultation which men feel 

 at witnessing the successes of art. I need not here dwell upon 

 the distinction of science and art ; of knowledge, and the ap- 

 plication of knowledge to the uses of life ; of theory and 

 practice. In the success of the mechanical arts there is much 

 that we look at with an admiration mingled with some feeling 

 of triumph ; and this feeling is here natural and blameless. 

 For what is all such art but a struggle, — a perpetual conflict 

 with the inertness of matter and its unfitness for our purposes? 

 And when, in this conflict, we gain some point, it is impossible 

 we should not feel some of the exultation of victory. In all 

 stages of civilization this temper prevails : from the naked in- 

 habitant of the islands of the ocean, who by means of a piece 



