Recapitulation . 441 



But let none indulge the vain dream that all 

 darkness is about to be banished from the earth, 

 and that human nature is rapidly hastening to per- 

 fection. " When the philosophers of the seventeenth 

 century were first congregated into the Royal So- 

 ciety, we are told that great expectations were raised 

 of the sudden progress of useful arts. The time was 

 supposed to be near when engines should turn by a 

 perpetual motion, and health be secured by the 

 universal medicine; when learning should be fa- 

 cilitated by a real character, and commerce ex- 

 tended by ships which could reach their ports in 

 defiance of the tempest. But that time never 

 came. The Society met and parted without any 

 visible diminution of the miseries of life. The 

 gout and stone were still painful ; the ground 

 that was not ploughed brought forth no harvest ; 

 and neither oranges nor grapes could grow upon 

 the hawthorn. " p The same result, it may be con- 

 fidently predicted, will appear at the close of the 

 century on which we have now entered. The 

 advocates of the supremacy of Reason and the 

 perfectibility of Man, at every successive retros- 

 pect of human affairs, will find themselves refuted 

 and confounded. And though Science, slowly 

 advancing amidst the opposing hosts of prejudice, 

 mistaken facts, and false theories, will reach far 

 beyond its present limits, it must ever fall short of 

 those extravagant expectations which, founded in 

 ignorance of human nature, and discarding the 

 dictates of experience, cannot avoid proceeding 

 in error, and ending in disappointment. 



Philosophers of the Nineteenth Century ! your 

 predecessors of the past age have bequeathed to 

 you an immeasurable mass both of good and evil. 

 Contemplate the labours and the progress of your 



VOL. II. 3L 



p Idler, vcl. ii No. 88. 



