ON IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 25 



Natural knowledge is, in their eyes, no real mother 

 of mankind, bringing them up with kindness, and, 

 if need be, with sternness, in the way they should go, 

 and instructing them in all things needful for their 

 welfare; but a sort of fairy god-mother, ready to 

 furnish her pets with shoes of swiftness, swords of 

 sharpness, and omnipotent Aladdin's lamps, so that 

 they may have telegraphs to Saturn, and see the other 

 side of the moon, and thank God they are better than 

 their benighted ancestors. 



If this talk were true, I, for one, should not greatly 

 care to toil in the service of natural knowledge. I 

 think I would just as soon be quietly chipping my own 

 flint axe, after the manner of my forefathers a few 

 thousand years back, as be troubled with the endless 

 malady of thought which now infests us all, for such 

 reward. But I venture to say that such views are con- 

 trary alike to reason and to fact. Those who discourse 

 in such fashion seem to me to be so intent upon trying 

 to see what is above Nature, or what is behind her, 

 that they are blind to what stares them in the face in 

 her. 



I should not venture thus to speak strongly if my jus- 

 tification were not to be found in the simplest and most 

 obvious facts, if it needed more than an appeal to 

 the most notorious truths to justify my assertion, that 

 the improvement of natural knowledge, whatever 

 direction it has taken, and however low the aims of 

 those who may have commenced it has not only 

 conferred practical benefits on men, but, in so doing, 

 has effected a revolution in their conceptions of the 

 universe and of themselves, and has profoundly 

 altered their modes of thinking and their views of 

 right and wrong. I say that natural knowledge, seek- 



