i.] ON IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE. i&amp;gt; 



will undoubtedly be much the better for them; but surely it 

 would be short-sighted, to say the least of it, to depreciate this 

 toiling mother as a mere stocking-machine a mere provider of 

 physical comforts ? 



However, there are blind leaders of the blind, and not a few of 

 them, who take this view of natural knowledge, and can see 

 nothing in the bountiful mother of humanity but a sort of com 

 fort-grinding machine. According to them, the improvement of 

 natural knowledge always has been, and always must be, 

 synonymous with no more than the improvement of the material 

 resources and the increase of the gratifications of men. 



Natural knowledge is, in their eyes, no real mother of mankind, 

 bringing them up with kindness, and, if need be, with sternness, 

 in the way they should go, and instructing them in all things 

 needful for their welfare ; but a sort of fairy godmother, ready 

 to furnish her pets with shoes of swiftness, swords of sharpness, 

 and omnipotent Aladdin s lamps, so that they may have telegraphs 

 to Saturn, and see the other side of the moon, and thank God 

 they are better than their benighted ancestors. 



If this talk were true, I, for one, should not greatly care to 

 toil in the service of natural knowledge. I think I would just 

 as soon be quietly chipping my own flint axe, after the manner 

 of my forefathers a few thousand years back, as be troubled with 

 the endless malady of thought which now infests us all, for such 

 reward. But I venture to say that such views are contrary alike 

 to reason and to fact. Those who discourse in such fashion seem 

 to me to be so intent upon trying to see what is above Nature, 

 or what is behind her, that they are blind to what stares them 

 in the face, in her. 



I should not venture to speak thus strongly if my justification 

 were not to be found in the simplest and most obvious facts, if 

 it needed more than an appeal to the most notorious truths to 

 justify my assertion, that the improvement of natural knowledge, 

 whatever direction it has taken, and however low the aims of 

 those who may have commenced it has not only conferred prac 

 tical benefits on men, but, in so doing, has effected a revolution 



