OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 69 



contrived and executed manufacture which we use 

 daily, and the comforts which have been invented, 

 tried, and improved upon by thousands, in every 

 form of domestic convenience, and for every ordi- 

 nary purpose of life, can never be enjoyed by him. 

 To produce a state of things in which the physical 

 advantages of civilized life can exist in a high de- 

 gree, the stimulus of increasing comforts and con- 

 stantly elevated desires, must have been felt by 

 millions ; since it is not in the power of a few- 

 individuals to create that wide demand for useful 

 and ingenious applications, which alone can lead to 

 great and rapid improvements, unless backed by 

 that arising from the speedy diffusion of the same 

 advantages among the mass of mankind. 



(63.) If this be true of physical advantages, it 

 applies with still greater force to intellectual. Know- 

 ledge can neither be adequately cultivated nor 

 adequately enjoyed by a few; and although the 

 conditions of our existence on earth may be such as 

 to preclude an abundant supply of the physical ne- 

 cessities of all who may be born, there is no such 

 law of nature in force against that of our intellectual 

 and moral wants. Knowledge is not, like food, de- 

 stroyed by use, but rather augmented and per- 

 fected. It acquires not, perhaps, a greater certainty, 

 but at least a confirmed authority and a probable 

 duration, by universal assent ; and there is no body 

 of knowledge so complete, but that it may acquire 

 accession, or so free from error but that it may 

 receive correction in passing through the minds of 

 millions. Those who admire and love knowledge for 

 its own sake ought to wish to see its elements made 



