:,'! THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 



our attention, and has worked miracles which have 

 in 01 lifted the whole fashion of our lives. 



What wonder, then, if these astonishing fruits 

 of the tree of knowledge are too often regarded by 

 both friends and enemies as the be-all and end-all 

 of science? What wonder if some eulogise, and 

 others revile, the new philosophy for its utilitarian 

 ends and its merely material triumphs ? 



In truth, the new philosophy deserves neither 

 the praise of its eulogists, nor the blame of its 

 slanderers. As I have pointed out, its disciples 

 were guided by no search after practical fruits, 

 during the great period of its growth, and it 

 reached adolescence without being stimulated by 

 any rewards of that nature. The bare enumeration 

 of the names of the men who were the great 

 lights of science in the latter part of the eighteenth 

 and the first decade of the nineteenth century, 

 of Herschel, of Laplace, of Young, of Fresnel, of 

 n.Tsted, of Cavendish, of Lavoisier, of Davy, of 

 Lamarck, of Cuvier, of Jussieu, of Decandolle, of 

 Werner and of Hutton, suffices to indicate the 

 st length of physical science in the age immedi- 

 ately preceding that of which I have to treat. 

 But of which of these great men can it be said 

 that their labours were directed to practical ends ? 

 I do not call to mind even an invention of 

 practical utility which we owe to any of them, 

 except the. safety-lamp of Davy. Werner certainly 

 paid attention to mining, and I have not forgotten 



