BRAIN WORK AND MANUAL WORK. 203 



times of social struggles. I shall not dwell upon the 

 fulness of life which would result for each separate in- 

 dividual, if he were enabled to enjoy the use of both 

 his mental and bodily powers ; nor upon the advantages 

 of raising manual labour to the place of honour it ought 

 to occupy in society, instead of being a stamp of in- 

 feriority, as it is now. Nor shall I insist upon the disap- 

 pearance of the present misery and degradation, with all 

 their consequences vice, crime, prisons, price of blood, 

 denunciation, and the like which necessarily would 

 follow. In short, I will not touch now the great social 

 question, upon which so much has been written and so 

 much remains to be written yet. I merely intend to 

 point out in these pages the benefits which science itself 

 would derive from the change. 



Some will say, of course, that to reduce men of science 

 to the role of manual workers would mean the decay 

 of science and genius. But those who will take into 

 account the following considerations probably will agree 

 that the result ought to be the reverse namely, such 

 a revival of science and art, and such a progress in 

 industry, as we only can faintly foresee from what we 

 know about the times of the Renaissance. It has be- 

 come a commonplace to speak with emphasis about the 

 progress of science during the nineteenth century ; and 

 it is evident that our century, if compared with centuries 

 past, has much to be proud of. But, if we take into 

 account that most of the problems which our century 

 has solved already had been indicated, and their solutions 

 foreseen, a hundred years ago, we must admit that the 

 progress was not so rapid as might have been expected, 

 and that something hampered it. The mechanical 

 theory of heat was very well foreseen in the last century 

 by Rumford and Humphrey Davy, and even in Russia 

 it was advocated by Lomonosoff.* However, much more 



* In an otherwise also remarkable memoir on the Arctic Regions. 



