178 EXPLANATIONS. 



most economical, and most effectual manner — to 



induce us to attempt, and enable us to accomplish, 



objects, which, but for such knowledge, we should 



never have thought of undertaking."* Such re- 



^ suits, it will be felt, may occasionally be of 



^ " • importance in saving a country gentleman from 



a hopeless mining speculation, or in adding to the 



J powers and profits of an iron-foundry or a cotton- 



^, mill ; but nothing more. When the awakened 

 \ctf 



\A anfl craving mind asks what science can do for us 



^*> i^* . . 



fyyxfifyS^^ explaining the great ends of the Author of na- 



yv-^^ . ture, and our relations to Him, to good and evil, to 

 _>^^.; life and to eternity, the man of science turns to his 

 *,r collection of shells or butterflies, to his electric 

 machine or his retort, and is mute as a child who, 

 sporting on the beach, is asked what lands lie be- 

 yond the great ocean which stretches before him. 

 The natural sense of men who do not happen to 

 have taken a taste for the coleoptera or the laws 

 of fluids, revolts at the sterility of such pursuits, 

 and, though fearful of some error on its own part, 

 can hardly help condemning the whole to ridicule. 

 Can we wonder that such, to so great an extent, 

 is their fate in public opinion, when we read the 

 appeal presented in their behalf by the very prince 

 of modern philosophers ? Or can we say that 



* Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, p. 44. 



