L] SCIENCE AND CULTURE. 21 



lected that the improvement of manufacturing pro- 

 cesses is only one of the conditions which contribute 

 to the prosperity of industry. Industry is a means 

 and not an end ; and mankind work only to get 

 something which they want. What that something 

 is depends partly on their innate, and partly on their 

 acquired, desires. 



If the wealth resulting from prosperous industry 

 is to be spent upon the gratification of unworthy 

 desires, if the increasing perfection of manufacturing 

 processes is to be accompanied by an increasing 

 debasement of those who carry them on, I do not 

 see the good of industry and prosperity. 



Now it is perfectly true that men's views of what 

 is desirable depend upon their characters; and that 

 the innate proclivities to which we give that name 

 are not touched by any amount of instruction. But 

 it does not follow that even mere intellectual educa- 

 tion may not, to an indefinite extent, modify the 

 practical manifestation of the characters of men in 

 their actions, by supplying them with motives un- 

 known to the ignorant. A pleasure-loving character 

 will have pleasure of some sort ; but, if you give him 

 the choice, he may prefer pleasures which do not 

 degrade him to those which do. And this choice is 

 offered to every man, who possesses in literary or 

 artistic culture a never -failing source of pleasures, 

 which are neither withered by age, nor staled by 

 custom, nor embittered in the recollection by the 

 pangs of self-reproach. 



