MANUAL WORK. 397 



tribution of animals and plants meets with 

 stumbling-blocks at every step. Travellers 

 cross continents, and do not know even how 

 to determine the latitude nor how to manage 

 a barometer. Physiology, both of plants and 

 animals, psycho-physiology, and the psychologi- 

 cal faculties of man and animals are so many 

 branches of knowledge requiring more data 

 of the simplest description. History remains 

 a jdble convenue chiefly because it wants fresh 

 ideas, but also because it wants scientifically 

 thinking workers to reconstitute the life of 

 past centuries in the same way as Thorold 

 Rogers or Augustin Thierry have done it for 

 separate epochs. 



In short, there is not one single science which 

 does not suffer in its development from a want 

 of men and women endowed with a philoso- 

 phical conception of the universe, ready to apply 

 their forces of investigation in a given field, 

 however limited, and having leisure for devoting 

 themselves to scientific pursuits. In a com- 

 munity such as we suppose, thousands of 

 workers would be ready to answer any appeal 

 for exploration. Darwin spent almost thirty 

 years in gathering and analysing facts for the 

 elaboration of the theory of the origin of species. 

 Had he lived in such a society as we suppose, 

 he simply would have made an appeal to 



