292 



EXPLANATION* . 



to bring to his remembrance the imj sessions which have 

 been usually made upon him by the tr uisactions of learned 

 societies and the pursuits of individual men of science. 

 Did he not always feel that, while there were laudable in- 

 dustry and zeal, there was also an intellectual timidity 

 rendering all the results philosophically barren ? Perhaps 

 a more lively illustration of their deficiency in the life and 

 soul of Nature-seeking could not be presented than in the 

 view which Sir John Herschel gives of the uses of science, 

 in a treatise reputed as one of the most philosophical ever 

 produced in our country. These uses, according to the 

 learned knight, are strictly material — it might even be 

 said, sordid, namely, " to show us how to avoid attempting 

 impossibilities — to secure us from important mistakes, in 

 attempting what is, in itself, possible, by means either in- 

 adequate, or actually opposed to the end in view — to enable 

 us to accomplish our ends in the easiest, shortest, most 

 economical and most effectual manner — to induce us to at- 

 tempt, and enable us to accomplish objects, w T hich but for 

 such knowledge we should never have thought of under- 

 taking. 55 * Such results, it will be fell, may occasionally be 

 of importance in saving a country-gentleman from a hope- 

 less mining speculation, or adding to the powers and profits 

 of an iron-foundry or a cotton-mill ; but nothing more. 

 When the awaking and craving mind asks what science 

 can do for us in explaining the great ends of the Author 

 of nature and our relations to Him, to good and evil, to life, 

 and to eternity, the man of science turns to his collection 

 of shells or butterflies, to his electrical machine, or his re- 

 tort, and is mute as a child who, sporting on the beacn, is 

 asked what lands lie beyond the great ocean which stretch- 

 es before him. The natural sense of men who do not hap- 

 pen to have taken a taste for the coleoptera or for the laws 

 of fluids, revolts at the sterility of such pursuits, and, 

 though fearful of some error on its own part, can hardly 

 nelp condemning the whole to ridicule. Can we won- 

 der that such, to so great an extent, is their fate in pub- 

 lic opinion, when we read the appeal presented in their 

 aehalf by the very prince of modern philosophers ? Or 

 t-an we say that w T here such views of " the uses of divine 

 philosophy 55 are entertained, there could be any right 

 preparation of mind to receive with candor, or treat with 

 'ustice, a plan of nature like that presented in the Vestiges 

 * Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, p. 44. 



