as comfortably and wholesomely as they can, they and their children after them—it seems strange, I say, that such people should in general be so careless about the constitution of this same planet, and of the laws and facts on which depend, not merely their comfort and their wealth, but their health and their very lives, and the health and the lives of their children and descendants.
I know some will say, at least to themselves, "What need for us to study science? There are plenty to do that already; and we shall be sure sooner or later to profit by their discoveries; and meanwhile it is not science which is needed to make mankind thrive, but simple common-sense."
I should reply that, to expect to profit by other men's discoveries when you do not pay for them—to let others labor in the hope of entering into their labors, is not a very noble or generous state of mind—comparable somewhat, I should say, to that of the fatting ox, who willingly allows the farmer to house him, till for him, feed for him, provided only he himself may lounge in his stall, and eat, and not be thankful. There is one difference in the two cases, but only one that while the farmer can repay himself by eating the ox, the scientific man cannot repay himself by eating you; and so never gets paid, in most cases, at all.
But as for mankind thriving by common-sense: they have not thriven by common-sense, because they have not used their common-sense according to that regulated method which is called science. In no age, in no country, as yet, have the majority of mankind been guided, I will not say by the love of God, and by the fear of God, but not even by sense and reason. Not sense and reason, but nonsense and unreason—prejudice and fancy—greed and haste—have led them to such results as were to be expected—to superstitions, persecutions, wars, famines, pestilence, hereditary disease, poverty, waste—waste incalculable, and now too often irremediable—waste of life, of labor, of capital, of raw material, of soil, of manure, of every bounty which God has bestowed on man, till, as in the eastern Mediterranean, whole countries, some of the finest in the world, seem ruined forever: and all because men will not learn nor obey those physical laws of the universe which (whether we be conscious of them or not) are all around us, like walls of iron and of adamant—say rather, like some vast machine, ruthless though beneficent, among the wheels of which, if we entangle ourselves in our rash ignorance, they will not stop to set us free, but crush us, as they have crushed whole nations and whole races ere now to powder. Very terrible, though very calm, is outraged Nature:
"Though the mills of God grind
Slowly, yet they grind exceeding small.
Though He sit, and wait with patience,
With exactness grinds He all."
It is, I believe, one of the most hopeful among the many hopeful
