224 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



her secrets and the patient mastery of her laws. This not 

 only enables us to protect ourselves from the hostile action 

 of natural forces, but makes them our slaves. By the study 

 of Physics we have indeed opened to ns treasuries of power 

 of which antiquity never dreamed. But while we lord it 

 over Matter, we have thereby become better acquainted 

 with the laws of Mind; for to the mental philosopher the 

 study of Physics furnishes a screen against which the human 

 spirit projects its own image, and thus becomes capable of 

 self-inspection. 



Thus, then, as a means of intellectual culture, the study 

 of Physics exercises and sharpens observation: it brings the 

 most exhaustive logic into play: it compares, abstracts, 

 and generalizes, and provides a mental scenery appropriate 

 to these processes. The strictest precision of thought is 

 everywhere enforced, and prudence, foresight, and sagac- 

 ity are demanded. By its appeals to experiment, it con- 

 tinually checks itself, and thus walks on a foundation of 

 facts. Hence the exercise it invokes does not end in a 

 mere game of intellectual gymnastics, such as the ancients 

 delighted in, but tends to the mastery of Nature. This 

 gradual conquest of the external world, and the conscious- 

 ness of augmented strength which accompanies it, render 

 the study of Physics as delightful as it is important. 



With regard to the effect on the imagination, certain it 

 is that the cool results of physical induction furnish con- 

 ceptions which transcend the most daring flights of that 

 faculty. Take for example the idea of an all-pervading 

 ether which transmits a tingle, so to speak, to the finger 

 ends of the universe every time a street lamp is lighted. 

 The invisible billows of this ether can be measured with the 

 same ease and certainty as that with which an engineer meas- 

 ures a base and two angles, and from these finds the distance 

 across the Thames. Now it is to be confessed that there 

 may be just as little poetry in the measurement of an ethe- 

 real undulation as in that of the river; for the intellect, 

 during the acts of measurement and calculation, destroys 

 those notions of size which appeal to the poetic sense. It is 

 a mistake to suppose, with Dr. Young, that 



An undevout astronomer is mad;' 



there being no necessary connection between a devout 

 state of mind and the observations and calculations of a 



