34 Selections from Huxley 



have to learn that, although London contains tenfold the 

 inflammable matter that it did in 1666; though, not con- 

 tent with filling our rooms with woodwork and light 

 draperies, we must needs lead inflammable and explosive 

 5 gases into every corner of our streets and houses, we never 

 allow even a street to burn down. And if he asked how 

 this had come about, we should have to explain that the 

 improvement of natural knowledge has furnished us with 

 dozens of machines for throwing water upon fires, any 



10 one of which would have furnished the ingenious Mr. 

 Hooke, the first " curator and experimenter " of the Royal 

 Society, with ample materials for discourse before half 

 a dozen meetings of that body; and that, to say truth, 

 except for the progress of natural knowledge, we should 



15 not have been able to make even the tools by which these 

 machines are constructed. And, further, 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 



20 been rendered possible only by the progress of natural 

 knowledge in the direction of mathematics, and the accu- 

 mulation of wealth in virtue of other natural knowl- 

 edge. 



But the plague? My Lord Brouncker's observation 



25 would not, I fear, lead him to think that Englishmen of 

 the nineteenth century are purer in life, or more fervent 

 in religious faith, than the generation which could pro- 

 duce a Boyle, an Evelyn, and a Milton. He might find 

 the mud of society at the bottom, instead of at the top, 



30 but I fear that the sum total would be as deserving of 

 swift judgment as at the time of the Restoration. And 

 it would be our duty to explain once more, and this time 

 not without shame, that we have no reason to believe 

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



