OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 13 



(9.) After all, however, it must be confessed, 

 that to minds unacquainted with science, and unused 

 to consider the mutual dependencies of its various 

 branches, there is something neither unnatural nor 

 altogether blamable in the ready occurrence of this 

 question of direct advantage. It requires some 

 habit of abstraction, some penetration of the mind 

 with a tincture of scientific enquiry, some con- 

 viction of the value of those estimable and trea- 

 sured principles which lie concealed in the most 

 common and homely facts, some experience, in 

 fine, of success in developing and placing them in 

 evidence, announcing them in precise terms, and 

 applying them to the explanation of other facts of a 

 less familiar character, or to the accomplishment of 

 some obviously useful purpose : to cure the mind 

 of this tendency to rush at once upon its object, 

 to undervalue the means in over-estimation of the 

 end, and while gazing too intently at the goal which 

 alone it has been accustomed to desire, to lose sight 

 of the richness and variety of the prospects that 

 offer themselves on either hand on the road. 



(10.) We must never forget that it is principles, 

 not phenomena, the interpretation, not the mere 



necessary for their improvement and completion, which, taken 

 separately, do not appear to lead to any specifically advan- 

 tageous purpose ! how many useful inventions, and how much 

 Valuable and improving knowledge, would have been lost, if a 

 rational curiosity, and a mere love of information, had not 

 generally been allowed to be a sufficient motive for the search 

 after truth ! " M althus's Principles of Political Economy, 

 p. 16. 



