284 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



well being. This is Nature's way of proceeding, and it 

 is wonderful what progress her pupil makes. His 

 enjoyments for a time are physical, and the con- 

 fectioner's shop occupies the foreground of human 

 happiness ; but the blossoms of a finer life are already 

 beginning to unfold themselves, and the relation of 

 cause and effect dawns upon the boy. He begins to 

 see that the present condition of things is not final, 

 but depends upon one that has gone before, and will be 

 succeeded by another. He becomes a puzzle to himself; 

 and to satisfy his newly-awakened curiosity, asks all 

 manner of inconvenient questions. The needs and 

 tendencies of human nature express themselves through 

 these early yearnings of the child. As thought ripens, 

 he desires to know the character and causes of the 

 phenomena presented to his observation ; and unless 

 this desire has been granted for the express purpose of 

 having it repressed, unless the attractions of natural 

 phenomena be like the blush of the forbidden fruit, 

 conferred merely for the purpose of exercising our self- 

 denial in letting them alone ; we may fairly claim for 

 the study of Physics the recognition that it answers to an 

 impulse implanted by nature in the constitution of man. 

 A few days ago, a Master of Arts, who is still a 

 young man, and therefore the recipient of a modern 

 education, stated to me that until he had reached the 

 age of twenty years he had never been taught anything 

 whatever regarding natural phenomena, or natural law. 

 Twelve years of his lite previously had been spent 

 exclusively among the ancients. The case, I regret to 

 say, is typical. Now, we cannot, without prejudice to 

 humanity, separate the present from the past. The 

 nineteenth century strikes its roots into the centuries 

 gone by, and draws nutriment from them. The world 

 cannot afford to lose the record of any great deed or 



