NATURE AND MAN. 171 



friends and mutual servitors, each supplying to the 

 other what most it needs. And this result we owe 

 it should be remembered for their sakes and our own 

 to the labours of those men who have proved by- 

 long and patient demonstration that the things which 

 answer to our apprehension of nature are but an 

 appearance of it ; men who have often seemed to be 

 labouring in the obscurest and most abstract regions, 

 often to little or no purpose, from whose pursuits the 

 sympathy of the world has been often entirely with- 

 held ; yet who by a divine instinct would not cease 

 their toil, nor divert it to more inviting paths. We 

 can see now, reaping the fruit of their labours, why 

 they persevered. For, as so many times has been 

 the case, the loftiest and most abstruse work becomes 

 in its results the most universal, practical, and simple. 

 So, for example, the prosecution of the highest 

 mathematics has added to the intellectual possessions 

 of the child, and serves to guide the least instructed 

 sailor. And so, too, the arduous attempt to fathom 

 the nature of things, and penetrate the conditions of 

 our knowledge, has furnished a basis from which the 

 most childlike heart may look with fresh eyes upon 



