344 ON THE ADVISABLENESS OF 



However, there are blind leaders of the blind, and not a 

 few of them, who take this view of natural knowledge, and 

 can see nothing in the bountiful mother of humanity but 

 a sort of comfort-grinding machine. According to them, 

 the improvement of natural knowledge always has been, 

 and always must be, synonymous with no more than the 

 improvement of the material resources and the increase of 

 the gratifications of men. 



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 godmother, 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 contrary 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 to speak thus strongly if my justifica- 

 tion 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 improve- 

 ment 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, seeking to satisfy natural 

 wants, has found the ideas which can alone still spiritual 

 cravings. I say that natural knowledge, in desiring to 

 ascertain the laws of comfort, has been driven to discover 

 those of conduct, and to lay the foundations of a new 

 morality. 



