ALLEGED USES OF NATURAL SCIENCE. 177 



way, rejecting, wherever they can, the evidence in its 

 favour, and extenuating what they cannot reject ; 

 in short, taking all the well recognised means 

 which have been so often employed in keeping back 

 advancing truths. If this looks like special plead- 

 ing, I can only call upon the reader to bring to his 

 remembrance the impressions which have been 

 usually made upon him by the transactions of 

 learned societies and the pursuits of individual 

 men of science. Did he not always feel mat, 

 while there were laudable industry and zeal, there 

 was also an intellectual timidity rendering all the 

 results philosophically barren ! Perhaps a more 

 lively illustration of their deficiency in tlie life and 

 soul of Nature-seeking, could not be presented 

 than in the view which Sir John Herschel gives of 

 the uses of science, in a treatise reputed as one 

 of the most philosophical ever produced in our 

 country. These uses, according to the learned 

 knight, are strictly material — it might even be 

 said, sordid — namely, " to show us how to avoid 

 attempting impossibilities — to secure us from 

 important mistakes, in attempting what is, in 

 itself, possible, by means either inadequate, or 

 actually opposed to the end in view — to enable us 

 to accomplish our ends in the easiest, shortest, 

 t3 



