ON- IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 23 



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

 carried off 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 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 

 w^ater upon fires, any one of which would have furnished 

 the ingenious Mr, Hooke, the first "curator and experi- 

 menter" 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 knowl- 

 edge, 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 which 

 have been rendered possible only by the progress of natural 

 knowledge in the direction of mathematics, and the accu- 

 mulation of wealth in virtue of other natural knowledge. 



But the plague? My Lord Brouncker's observation 

 would not, I fear, lead him to think that Englishmen of the 

 nineteenth century are purer in life, or more fervent in 

 religious faith, than the generation which could produce a 

 Boyle, an Evelyn, and a Milton. He might find the mud 

 of society at the bottom, instead of at the top, but I fear 

 that the sum total would be as deserving of swift judgment 

 as at the time of the Restoration. And it would be our 

 duty to explain once more, and this time not without shame, 

 that we have no reason to believe that it is the improvement 



