460 



precision with which those investigations to which mathematical 

 reasoning is either not at all or only to a limited extent applicable are 

 conducted as compared with what was the case when men's minds were 

 first directed to these subjects ; nor is there any prospect of our ever 

 returning to those hypothetical systems which prevailed among 

 scientific inquirers formerly. If there be at present any danger to 

 the cause of science, it is of a totally different kind. The time has 

 arrived when the discoveries of science are becoming extensively 

 applied to commerce and manufactures, and the arts of common life. 

 The greater part of society contemplate the achievements of science 

 under this point of view, and estimate its value only as it affects the 

 material interests of the country or of themselves. The prevailing 

 study of political economy and I say this without denying the great 

 advantages which the community has derived from this comparatively 

 new science by directing men's minds so much to the increase of 

 national wealth, as the object most deserving of our attention, has 

 the effect of promoting the extension of this utilitarian principle 

 more widely among us. The danger to which I allude is, that the 

 cultivators of science might themselves be led to participate too 

 largely in these utilitarian views. If it should be so, science must 

 undoubtedly descend from the high station which it at present 

 occupies. Nor can this happen without great injury to the cause of 

 knowledge itself. The mere utilitarian philosopher, having his views 

 limited to some immediate practical result, might, like the alchemists 

 of old, elicit some new facts, but would discover no new principle, 

 and after a long life would know no more of the laws of nature than he 

 knew in the beginning. Eventually, even as to their gross material 

 interests, society would be a loser. The sailor would never have had 

 placed at his disposal the means of ascertaining the longitude, if 

 philosophers, without reference to this object, had not studied 

 mathematics and the laws of planetary motions ; nor would London 

 and Paris have ever been placed, as they now are, in instantaneous 

 communication with each other, if those who began with the simple 

 fact of the muscles of a frog's leg being made to contract by the 

 contact of certain metals had not pursued these inquiries until they 

 reached the laws of Voltaic electricity, never dreaming of the great 

 invention which was ultimately to arise out of these researches in 

 the shape of the electric telegraph. 



