8 TOWN GEOLOGY. 



not merely their comfort and their wealth, but their 

 health and their very lives, and the health and the lives 

 of their children and descendants. 



I know some will say, at least to themselves : 

 "What need for us to study science? There are plenty 

 to do that already; and we shall be sure sooner or later 

 to profit by their discoveries ; and meanwhile it is not 

 science which is needed to make mankind thrive, but 

 simple common sense. " 



I should reply, that to expect to profit by other 

 men's discoveries when you do not pay for them to let 

 others labour in the hope of entering into their labours, 

 is not a very noble or generous state of mind com- 

 parable somewhat, I should say, to that of the fatting 

 ox, who willingly allows the farmer to house him, till 

 for him, feed him, provided only he himself may lounge 

 in his stall, and eat, and not be thankful. There is one 

 difference in the two cases, but only one that while 

 the farmer can repay himself by eating the ox, the 

 scientific man cannot repay himself by eating you; and 

 so never gets paid, in most cases, at all. 



But as for mankind thriving by common sense: they 

 have not thriven by common sense, because they have 

 not used their common sense according to that regulated 

 method which is called science. In no age, in no 

 country, as yet, have the majority of mankind been 

 guided, I will not say by the love of God, and by the 

 fear of God, but even by sense and reason. Not sense 

 and reason, but nonsense and unreason, prejudice and 

 fancy, greed and haste, have led them to such results 

 as were to be expected to superstitions, persecutions, 

 wars, famines, pestilence, hereditary diseases, poverty, 

 waste waste incalculable, and now too often irre- 



