THE LESSOK OF THE LIFE OF HUXLEY. 703 



privileged to see, and seeing, to recognize as that wiiich it L.-hoovd 

 them, above all things, to keep pure and undetiled. 



It may not be too great a flight of the imagination to eoncciv.- I.in. 

 not forgetful of the great troubles of his own dav. and anxious to 

 know how often London had been burned down and how often the 

 plague had carried oft' its thousands. He would have to learn that nat- 

 ural knowledge has furnished us with dozens of engines for throwing 

 water upon tires, and that except for the progress of natural knowb 

 edge w^e should not be able to make even the tools by which these 

 machines are constructed. And it would be necessary to add that 

 although severe fires sometimes occur and inflict great damage, the 

 loss is very generally compensated by societies the operations of 

 which have been rendered possible only by the progress of natui-al 

 knowledge. 



But the plague! His observations would not lead him to think that 

 we of the nineteenth century are purer of life or more fervent in 

 religious faith than the generation which could produce a Boyle, an 

 Evelj'n, and a ^Milton. And it would be our dut}' to explain once 

 more, and this time not without shame, that we have no reason to 

 believe it is the improvement of our faith, nor that of our morals, 

 which keeps the plague from us; but again, that it is the improve- 

 ment of our natural knowledge. We, in later times, have learned 

 somewhat of nature and partly obey her. Because of this partial 

 iniprovement of our natural knowledge and of that fractional oliedi- 

 ence we have no plague. Because that knowledge is very imperfect, 

 and that obedience yet incomplete, typhoid is our companion and 

 cholera our visitor. But it is not presumptuous to express the belief 

 that when our knowledge is more complete, and our obedienc-c the 

 expression of our knowledge, London will count her centuries of free 

 dom from typhoid and cholera as she now gratefully reckons up her 

 two hundred years of ignorance of that plague which swooped upon 

 her thrice in the first half of the seventeenth century. 



It is very certain that for every victim slain by the plague hundreds 

 of mankind exist and find a fair share of happiness in the world l)y 

 the aid of the spinning jenny. And the great fire, at its worst, could 

 not have burned the supply of coal, the daily working of which, m 

 the bowels of the earth, made possible by the steam pump, gives rise 

 to an amount of wealth to which the millions lost in old London arc 



but as an old song. 



But spinning jenny and steam pump are after all but toys, possess- 

 ing an accidental value, and natural knowledge creates multitudes of 

 more subtle contrivances, the praise of which does not happen to be 

 sung because they are not directly convertible into wealth. 



If natural knowledge were only a sort of tairy godmother, ready to 

 furnish her pets with shoes of swiftness, swor<ls <.t sharpness, and 



