May l, 1864, ] THE TEC'HNOLOUIST. 



ON GRANITE AND ITS USES. 447 



earth, and air, and sea, and sky, and plant, and animal — The material 

 is nothing, the workmanship is everything. On their testimony I rest my 

 case. They are the justifiers of industrial science, they furnish an 

 argument for cheerful, hearty work. To two alone of its aspects I 

 will now refer. 



In the first place, the infinite susceptibility of useful and beautiful 

 modifications which the most common things possess, assures us that, 

 though we are not omnipotent, and cannot avail ourselves to more than 

 a small extent of this susceptibility, yet we can largely turn it to 

 account in our capacity as workmen ; neither need we fear that all the 

 generations of men to the end of time will exhaust the latent properties 

 of even one kind of matter. 



In the second place, as if not to deter us from work by showing us 

 unapproachable examples of His power, it has pleased the Almighty 

 worker to restrain His skill, if I may use such language, and whilst He 

 has made all material things beautiful, to make none perfect. 



Exquisitely graceful, 'for example, as crystals are, perfect crystals 

 never occur. A faultless cube we do not see. Equilateral triangles or 

 right angles, rigidly such, as tested mathematically, are not found, or 

 facets unerringly plane. Poets speak of entire and perfect chrysolites, 

 but crystallographers never saw them, and mathematicians never 

 measured them. 



It shows, as has been most justly tugged by a profound thinker, how 

 much greater man's intellect is than his senses, that we should have an 

 unfaltering belief in the existence of such things as cubes and triangles, 

 and circles, although we never saw them (?'. e. perfect) and cannot pro- 

 duce them. But the conclusion I wish to draw from this curious fact is 

 simply that on our globe the beauty of everything is as it were veiled 

 and subdued, and for this among other reasons, that we may not be dis- 

 heartened in working, by seeing the Divine ideal too perfectly realised 

 before us. 



And so, if our work never contents us, and, least of all, our best 

 work, let us not seek a lower ideal, or be too despondent, still less throw 

 our tools away in despair. 



The workman's song, whether successful or not, should ever be, 

 " Excelsior !" the motto, 'Higher! higher!" "VVe must postpone the 

 thought of perfection till we stand before Him who can make us perfect, 

 and our work too. 



