IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 347 



among atoms, whirling, no man knows whither, through 

 illimitable space ; which demonstrates that what we call 

 the peaceful heaven above us, is but that space, filled 

 by an infinitely subtle matter whose particles 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, infinitely 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 pumping it ; 

 what more absolutely and grossly utilitarian ? But 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 universe, in short, to the theory of 

 universal gravitation 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 ? How useful for carters 

 and gig drivers to know something about this ; and how 

 good were it, if any ingenious person would find out the 

 cause of such phenomena, and thence educe a general 

 remedy for them. Such an ingenious person was Count 

 Rumford ; and he and his successors have landed us in 

 the theory of the persistence, or indestructibility, of force. 

 And in the infinitely minute, as in the infinitely great, 

 the seekers after natural knowledge, of the kinds called 

 physical and chemical, have everywhere found a definite 

 order and succession of events which seem never to be 

 infringed. 



And how has it fared with " Physick " and Anatomy ? 

 Have the anatomist, the physiologist, or the physician, 

 whose business it has been to devote themselves assiduously 



