30 n\ IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE i 



a peasant woman as one sees in the Alps, strid- 

 ing ever upward, heavily burdened, and with mind 

 bent only on her home ; but yet without effort 

 and without thought, knitting for her children. 

 Now stockings are good and comfortable things, 

 and the children will undoubtedly be much the 

 better for them ; but surely it would be short- 

 sighted, to say the least of it, to depreciate this 

 toiling mother as a mere stocking-machine a 

 mere provider of physical comforts ? 



However, there are blind leaders of the blind, 

 and not a few of them, who take this view of natural 

 knowledge, and can see nothing in the bountiful 

 mother of humanity but a sort of comfort-grinding 

 machine. According to them, the improvement 

 of natural knowledge always has been, and always 

 must be, synonymous with no more than the 

 improvement of the material resources and the 

 increase of the gratifications of men. 



Natural knowledge is, in their eyes, no real 

 mother of mankind, bringing them up with kind- 

 ness, and, if need be, with sternness, in the way 

 they should go, and instructing them in all things 

 ul for their welfare ; but a sort of fairy god- 

 mother, ready to furnish her pets with shoes of 

 swiftness, swords of sharpness, and omnipotent 

 Aladdin's lamps, so that they may have telegraphs 

 to Saturn, and see the other side of the moon, and 

 thank God they are better than their benighted 

 ancestors. 



