INTKODUCTOBY EEMAEKS. 



IT is not correct it is the very reverse of the truth to 

 represent the practical applications of science as the only real, 

 and, as it were, tangible profit derived from scientific dis- 

 coveries or philosophical pursuits in general. There cannot 

 be a greater oversight or greater confusion of ideas than that 

 in which such a notion has its origin. It is near akin tc 

 the fallacy which represents profitable or productive labour 

 as only that kind of labour by which some substantial or 

 material thing is produced or fashioned. -The labour which 

 of all others most benefits a community, the superior order of 

 labour which governs, defends, and improves a state, is by 

 this fallacy excluded from the title of productive, merely 

 because, instead of bestowing additional value on one mass or 

 parcel of a nation's capital, it gives additional value to the 

 whole of its property, and gives it that quality of security 

 without which all other value would be worthless. So they 

 who deny the importance of mere scientific contemplation, 

 and exclude from the uses of science the pure and real pleasure 

 of discovering, and of learning, and of surveying its truths, 

 forget how many of the enjoyments derived from what are 

 called the practical applications of the sciences, resolve them- 

 selves into gratifications of a merely contemplative kind. Thus, 

 the steam engine is confessed to be the most useful application 

 of machinery and of chemistry to the arts. Would it not be 

 so if steam navigation were its only result, and if no one used 



