26 IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 



confess that I was guilty of exaggeration when I hinted, 

 that to him who had the gift of distinguishing between 

 prominent events and important events, the origin of a 

 combined effort on the part of mankind to improve natu- 

 ral knowledge might have loomed larger than the Plague 

 and have outshone the glare of the Fire ; as a something 

 fraught with a wealth of beneficence to mankind, in com- 

 parison with which the damage done by those ghastly 

 evils would shrink into insignificance. 



It is very certain that for every victim slain by the 

 plague, hundreds of mankind exist and find a fair share 

 of happiness in the world, by the aid of the spinning 

 jenny. And the great fire, at its worst, could not have 

 burned the supply of coal, the daily working of which, 

 in the bowels of the earth, made possible by the steam 

 pump, gives rise to an amount of wealth to which the mil- 

 lions lost in old London are but as an old song. 



But spinning jenny and steam pump are, after all, but 

 toys, possessing an accidental value; and natural knowl- 

 edge creates multitudes of more subtle contrivances, the 

 praises of which do not happen to be sung because they 

 are not directly convertible into instruments for creating 

 wealth. When I contemplate natural knowledge squan- 

 dering such gifts among men, the only appropriate com- 

 parison I can find for her is, to liken her to such a peas- 

 ant woman as one sees in the Alps, striding ever upward, 

 heavily burdened, and with mind bent only on her home ; 

 but yet without effort and without thought, knitting for 

 her children. Now stockings are good and comfortable 

 things, and the children will undoubtedly be much the 

 better for them; but surely it would be short-sighted, to 

 say the least of it, to depreciate this toiling mother as n 

 mere stocking-machine a mere provider of physical 

 comforts? 



