THE TECHNOLOGIST. [May 1, 1864- 



440 ON GRANITE AND ITS USES. 



It was furnished as mental fuel, and had been shovelled into the child's 

 head with intent that it should take fire, and warm and light up its 

 whole being ; and it would have done so, had it been laid on the hearth 

 of its imagination, where a fire is ever burning ; but instead thereof, it 

 had been cast into the unlighted furnace of the intellect, which it had 

 only choked. So far is it from being the intention of scientific utili- 

 tarianism or technology to encourage such a style of teaching, to rob 

 children of their imaginations and distract their intellects, that one of 

 its great aims — an aim with which personally I sympathise deeply — is 

 by lessening the toil and trouble which the great majority of mankind 

 are compelled to spend, even from their earliest years, in gaining their 

 bread, to give them leisure and opportunity to feed their imaginations 

 and cultivate their intellects as God intended they should do. Let no 

 poet or painter, then, or artist of any other kind, or friend or lover of 

 these or of the arts, think unkindly of utilitarian technology. It can 

 do them no harm, if they are true to themselves, and it will be their 

 fault if it do not render them service. 



I will not affirm that there are no grounds for the charge that utili- 

 tarianism has made men sordid and worldly. Great discoveries of gold 

 diggings ; ready access through the medium of swift steamers and rail- 

 ways to the choicest regions of the earth ; the command which the 

 telegraph gives over the markets of the world ; the immense improve- 

 ments in machinery ; the new, and newer, and newest applications of 

 chemistry to the useful arts ; the great advances of agriculture, of navi- 

 gation, of the art of war, and the wide diffusion of knowledge among 

 the people, have unquestionably a strong tendency to fix men's thoughts 

 too much upon this world, and make them forget how soon they must 

 leave it. 



All this is true ; but for the evil, industrialism is not to blame. We 

 are at best but narrow-minded creatures, troubled to carry more than 

 one idea in our heads at a time, and but partially able to keep hold of 

 two worlds at once. By all means let moralists and Christian divines, 

 and every good man and woman, warn their brethren against mistaking 

 this little passing world for the great eternal one. But to abolish 

 industrialism would not cure the evil, and industrialism has many evils 

 to cure. Its vocation far more is to relieve the wants of the poor than 

 to minister to the luxuries of the rich ; and we have the poor with us 

 always. 



Think how many thousands of starving men there are in our country 

 at this moment for whom there is bread enough and to spare in this 

 God's world of ours, if wisdom and and patience were allowed their 

 perfect work ! Think how many women crowd our streets, forlorn 

 outcasts, for whom no man cares, who have been driven to perdition of 

 soul and body by those vulnerable demons — Cold and Hunger ! And 

 think, lastly, how many stalwart working men and patient house 

 mothers there are who, though not starving, are yet so overworked, so 



