ON IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 29 



are seething and surging, like the waves of an angry 

 sea; which opens up to us infinite regions where 

 nothing is known, or ever seems to have been known, 

 but matter and force, operating according to rigid 

 rules ; which leads us to contemplate phenomena the 

 very nature of which demonstrates that they must 

 have had a beginning, and that they must have an 

 end, but the very nature of which also proves that 

 the beginning was, to our conceptions of time, infi- 

 nitely remote, and that the end is as immeasurably 

 distant. 



But it is not alone those who pursue astronomy who 

 ask for bread and receive ideas. What more harmless 

 than the attempt to lift and distribute water by pump- 

 ing it; what more absolutely and grossly utilitarian? 

 Yet out of pumps grew the discussions about Nature's 

 abhorrence of a vacuum; and then it was discovered 

 that Nature does not abhor a vacuum, but that air 

 has weight; and that notion paved the way for the 

 doctrine that all matter has weight, and that the force 

 which produces weight is co-extensive with the uni- 

 verse, in short, to the theory of universal gravita- 

 tion and endless force. While learning how to handle 

 gases led to the discovery of oxygen, and to modern 

 chemistry, and to the notion of the indestructibility 

 of matter. 



Again, what simpler, or more absolutely practical, 

 than the attempt to keep the axle of a wheel from 

 heating when the wheel turns round very fast ? HO\N 

 useful for carters and gig drivers to know something 

 about this; and how good were it, if any ingenious per- 

 son would find out the cause of such phenomena, and 

 thence educe a general remedy for them. Such an 

 ingenious person was Count Rumfor^l; and he and 



