206 SKETCH OP THE LIFE AND ACHIEVEMENTS 



power is concentrated in the general intelligence 

 of a people. To know, to perceive, and to enjoy 

 is one of the great prerogatives of mankind; and 

 not unfrequently a recompense for those goods 

 which nature perhaps afforded in a scanty 

 measure. Nations who remain behind in the 

 almost universal competition of industrial ac- 

 tivity, in the application of technical chemistry, 

 &c., in a careful selection and cultivation of their 

 natural productions, nations who disregard 

 this, will inevitably decline ; and all the more 

 rapidly, if their neighbours, amongst whom 

 science, and industrial art, exercise a mutual 

 influence, advance with daily renewed energy. 

 But in all departments of physical science, and 

 likewise in the higher regions of the ideal and 

 the emotional, in the pursuit of history, of 

 philosophy, and of rhetoric, the first and prin- 

 cipal impulse must proceed from within, and be 

 directed to the discovery of natural laws, in 

 their various operation ; to the perception of 

 the necessary connection of all changes in the 

 universe. If such a knowledge pervades the 

 industrial life of a nation, and thereby raises 

 the standard of mechanical skill, and of industry 

 in general, such a happy condition has its 

 origin in the fortunate intertwinings of human 

 affairs, according to which the True, the Beau- 



