IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 31 



of an angry sea; which opens up to us infinite regions 

 where nothing is known, or ever seems to have been 

 known, but matter and force, operating according to 

 rigid rules ; which leads us to contemplate phsenomena ] 

 the very nature of which demonstrates that they must ! 

 have had a beginning, and that they must have an end, 

 but the very nature of which also proves that the be- 

 ginning was, to our conceptions of time, infinitely remote, 

 and that the end is as immeasurably distant. 



But It is not alone those who pursue astronomy who 

 ask for bread and receive ideas. What more harmless 

 ffiari the attempt to lift and distribute water by pumping 

 it; what more absolutely and grossly utilitarian? Yet 

 out of pumps grew the discussions about Nature's ab- 

 horrence of a vacuum; and then it was discovered that 

 Nature does not abhor a vacuum, but that air has 

 weight; and that notion paved the way for the doctrine 

 that all matter has weight, and that the force which pro- 

 duces weight is co-extensive with the universe, in 

 short, to the theory of universal gravitation and endless 

 force. While learning how to handle gases led to the 

 discovery of oxygen, and to modern chemistry, and to the 

 notion of the indestructibility of matter. 



Again, what simpler, or more absolutely practical, 

 than the attempt to keep the axle of a wheel from heat- 

 ing when the wheel turns round very fast? How useful 

 for carters and gig drivers to know something about this ; 

 and how good were it, if any ingenious person would 

 find out the cause of such phenomena, and thence educe 

 a general remedy for them. Such an ingenious person 

 was Count Rumford; 18 and he and his successors have 



18 Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (1753-1814), an 

 American by birth, was an adventurer, a scientist, and an inven- 

 tor of a practical turn of mind. He boasted, among other things, 

 of having cured five hundred London chimneys of smoking. 



