SCIENCE FOR THE PEOPLE 61 



and with regard to the plague we should have to 

 explain that we have no reason to think that it is 

 the improvement of our faith or our morals which 

 keeps it away, but, once more, improvement of 

 natural knowledge. Tliis knowledge has taught 

 us that plague and pestilence can only live in the 

 naiTow unwatered streets of cities \\ath ill-drained, 

 ill-hghted, and worse- ventilated houses. Such a city 

 was London in 1665, and such are cities of the East 

 where plague still rages. 



Huxley, however, points out that although we have 

 no plague, we still have typhus in our midst, and 

 in an interesting, prophetic moment ^vrite8 that it 

 is not presumptuous to e-cpress the belief that when 

 cm' knowledge is more complete, London will covmt 

 her centuries of freedom from tliis disaster. We, 

 who are living nearly fifty years after him who 

 spoke these words, can see the commencement of 

 the fulfilment of the prophecy. 



Huxley then turns his attention to those who at 

 that time criticised the pursuit of natm-al science as 

 leading to nothing more than the improvement of 

 the material resources and the mcrease of the com- 

 forts in hfe. He says that these folks can see nothing 

 in the bountiful mother of humanity but a sort of 

 comfort-grinding machine. And in a fine passage he 

 adds, " If this talk were true, I, for one, should not 

 greatly care to toil in the service of natural know- 

 ledge. I tliink I would just as soon be quietly 

 chipping my own flint axe, after the manner of my 

 forefathers a few thousand years back, as be troubled 

 with the endless malady of thought which now infests 

 us all, for such reward." But, on the contrary, he 

 proceeds to argue that the improvement of natural 



