498 D'ALEMBERT. 



superior order of labour which governs, defends, and im- 

 proves a state, is by this fallacy excluded from the title of 

 productive, merely because, instead of bestowing additional 

 value on one mass or parcel of a nation's capital, it gives 

 additional value to the whole of its property, and gives it 

 that quality of security without which all other value would 

 be worthless. So they who deny the importance of mere 

 scientific contemplation, and exclude from the uses of science 

 the pure and real pleasure of discovering, and of learning, 

 and of surveying its truths, forget how many of the enjoy- 

 ments derived from what are called the practical applications 

 of the sciences, resolve themselves into gratifications of a 

 merely contemplative kind. Thus, the steam engine is con- 

 fessed to be the most useful application of machinery and 

 of chemistry to the arts. Would it not be so if steam navi- 

 gation were its only result, and if no one used a steam boat 

 but for excursions of curiosity or of amusement ? Would it 

 not be so if steam engines had never been used but in the 

 fine arts ? So a microscope is a useful practical application 

 of optical science as well as a telescope and a telescope 

 would be so, although it were only used in examining distant 

 views for our amusement, or in showing us the real figures 

 of the planets, and were of no use in navigation or in war. 

 The mere pleasure, then, of tracing relations, and of con- 

 templating general laws in the material, the moral, and the 

 political world, is the direct and legitimate value of science ; 

 and all scientific truths are important for this reason, whether 

 they ever lend any aid to the common arts of life or no. In 

 like manner the mental gratification afforded by the scientific 

 contemplations of Natural Religion are of great value, inde- 

 pendent of their much higher virtue in mending the heart 

 and improving the life, towards which important object, 

 indeed, all the contemplations of science more or less directly 

 tend, and in this higher sense all the pleasures of science are 

 justly considered as Practical Uses. 



