IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 341 



but though such work engrossed the best intellects of 

 Europe for a longer time than has elapsed since the great 

 fire, its effects were " writ in water," so far as our social 

 state is concerned. 



On the other hand, if the noble first President of the Royal 

 Society could revisit the upper air and once more gladden 

 his eyes with a sight of the familiar mace, he would find 

 himself in the midst of a material civilization more different 

 from that of his day, than that of the seventeenth was from 

 that of the first century. And if Lord Brouncker's native 

 sagacity had not deserted his ghost, he would need no long 

 reflection to discover that all these great ships, these 

 railways, these telegraphs, these factories, these printing- 

 presses, without which the whole fabric of modern English 

 society would collapse into a mass of stagnant and starving 

 pauperism, that all these pillars of our State are but the 

 ripples, and the bubbles upon the surface of that great 

 spiritual stream, the springs of which, only, he and his 

 fellows were privileged to see ; and seeing, to recognise as 

 that which it behoved them above all things to keep pure 

 and undefiled. 



It may not be too great a flight of imagination to conceive 

 our noble revenant not forgetful of the great troubles of his 

 own day, and anxious to know how often London had been 

 burned down since his time, and how often the plague had 

 carried of! its thousands. He would have to learn that, 

 although London contains tenfold the inflammable matter 

 that it did in 1666 ; though, not content with filling our 

 rooms r with woodwork and light draperies, we must needs 

 lead inflammable and explosive gases into every corner of 

 our streets and houses, we never allow even a street to burn 

 down. And if he asked how this had come about, we 

 should have to explain that the improvement of natural 

 knowledge has furnished us with dozens of machines for 

 throwing water upon fires, any one of which would have 

 furnished the ingenious Mr. Hooke, the first " curator and 

 experimenter " of the Royal Society, with ample materials 

 for discourse before half a dozen meetings of that body ; 

 and that, to say truth, except for the progress of natural 

 knowledge, we should not have been able to make even 

 the tools by which these machines are constructed. And, 

 further, it would be necessary to add, that although severe 

 fires sometimes occur and inflict great damage, the loss is 

 very generally compensated by societies, the operations of 



