482 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



despotism, and would not impose that yoke, which hard, abstract sci- 

 ence would. 



He might be asked why he entertained that great dread of scien- 

 tific men as the ultimate rulers of a community. He was not blind to 

 their great merits, or to the vast intellectual power which they wielded 

 daily more and more, and he was neither out of sympathy with them 

 nor were their subjects uncongenial ; but, as he dreaded a monopoly 

 of power by any one class, so he especially dreaded it in their hands. 

 He believed that abstract science, so to speak, was very often devoid 

 of the milk of human kindness and sympathy, and he would quote an 

 illustration of what he meant from one of the most remarkable and 

 touching books he had ever read — " The Autobiography of John Stu- 

 art Mill." He should be sorry to take Mr. Mill as a representative of 

 hard, abstract science, for throughout his nature there ran veins of 

 feeling softer and more tender than he was willing himself to allow. 

 But he quoted that book for the moment as one of the fairest illustra- 

 tions of the action of the philosophical mind in these matters. Those 

 who had read it would remember how carefully Mr. Mill, partly under 

 the influence of his father and partly through his self-education, 

 endeavored not merely to suppress but to trample down and to crush 

 out every thing approaching to feeling in his nature. In that 

 respect he was utterly unlike Bishop Butler, who held that the feelings 

 were of the best and most indispensable parts of the human system. 

 He remembered that so far did Mr. Mill carry his theory into practice 

 that he took the opportunity of stating that in his opinion it would be 

 indefensible for an educated man to enter the same room as an unedu- 

 cated man except he were the apostle of some creed that he was about 

 to propagate. He could conceive nothing more selfish or more sub- 

 versive of all the principles on which all society existed than that doc- 

 trine. He remembered the story of a conversation related by Southey 

 between Sir Humphrey Davy and Faraday, in which the latter, then a 

 young man, told Davy that he was anxious to join in the pursuits of 

 science because its professors were more likely than others to be of a 

 liberal cast of mind. Davy smiled mournfully, and replied that, 

 whatever science might be, it did not of itself convey that liberality 

 of mind which Faraday so fondly imagined for it. Lord Carnarvon 

 objected to the application of those rules, which naturally and rightly 

 governed abstract science, to legislation, morals, social life — in fact, to 

 every thing which concerned the existence of man. Some would 

 remember that in the years 1848 and 1849, when all the Continent 

 was disturbed, when thrones were laid in the dust and kingdoms 

 shaken, a group of all the most eminent philosophers of the time met 

 in Frankfort to review the condition of affairs, and they would recol- 

 lect the very unsatisfactory conclusions at which they arrived. 



Auguste Comte, whose name was so great abroad, founded a phi- 

 losophy which contemplated the transfer of all those powers hitherto 



