438 THE APPLIED SCIENCES, 



of a practical nature, which can discern no value in speculation, 

 unless it conducts us to conclusions bearing immediately upon the 

 uses and the necessities of daily life. I feel that there is some 

 degree of humiliation even in the task of defending the pursuit 

 of abstract truth. Yet, though many a voice has been loudly 

 raised in protest against this utilitarian spirit, the feeling, but 

 half smothered, breaks forth again and again. The mind unused 

 to science has a natural tendency to regard it simply as a mean, 

 a mean to an ulterior end ; and it is only just so far as this end is 

 attained, it is only by the direct advantages which science confers 

 upon the physical condition of man, that its value is wont to be 

 estimated. 



Must it then again and again be repeated, that man has a two- 

 fold nature ? that the intellectual and the bodily have each its own 

 aliment, each its own gratifications ? and that truth speculative, 

 abstract truth is as properly the food of the one, as that which 

 ministers to the support of physical life is of the other ? And 

 shall we compare the intellectual, and its enjoyments, with the 

 inferior part of our being, and the things which minister to its 

 gratification ? Shall we degrade the high and disinterested plea- 

 sures that attend the discovery of the links in the chain of a priori 

 knowledge, or those which flow from the contemplation of har- 

 mony and order, which reign in the works of God, shall we demean 

 enjoyments such as these, by bringing them into comparison with 

 those of sense ? No ! I trust the day will never come, when a 

 spirit such as this shall take possession of the halls of our venerated 

 universities : I trust that those who occupy their chairs may never 

 be called upon to meet such an antagonist within their walls. 



But while we advocate the claims of speculative knowledge, 

 considered apart from its applications, let it not be supposed that 

 we are insensible to the value of such applications, or that our 

 voices will not swell the shout of applause, whenever science 

 yields results bearing upon social well-being, or social progress. 

 Among the heathen nations of early antiquity, the inventors of 

 the sickle and the plough were deemed worthy of a place among 

 their gods: and shall we affect to disdain the richer fruits of 

 modern science, or to look down upon those who have contributed 

 to raise them from her prolific soil ? Reason forbids it : self- 

 interest forbids it. The useful arts are the results of such applica- 

 tions ; modern civilisation is mainly based upon them. And it is 



