f them,
who take this view of natural knowledge, and can see nothing in the
bountiful mother of humanity but a sort of comfort-grinding machine.
According to them, the improvement of natural knowledge always has been,
and always must be, synonymous with no more than the improvement of the
material resources and the increase of the gratification of men.

Natural knowledge is, in their eyes, no real mother of mankind, bringing
them up with kindness, and if need be, with sternness, in the way they
should go, and instructing them in all things needful for their welfare;
but a sort of fairy godmother, ready to furnish her pets with shoes of
swiftness, swords of sharpness, and omnipotent Aladdin's lamps, so that
they may have telegraphs to Saturn, and see the other side of the moon,
and thank God they are better than their benighted ancestors. If this
talk were true, I, for one, should not greatly care to toil in the
service of natural knowledge. I think I would just as soon be quietly
chipping my own flint axe, after the manner of my forefathers a few
thousand years back, as be troubled with the endless malady of thought
which now infests us all, for such reward. But I venture to say that
such views are contrary alike to reason and to fact. Those who discourse
in such fashion seem to me to be so intent upon trying to see what is
above Nature, or what is behind her, that they are blind to what stares
them in the face, in her.

I should not venture to speak thus strongly if my justification were not
to be found in the simplest and most obvious facts,--if it needed more
than an appeal to the most notorious truths to justify my assertion,
that the improvement of natural knowledge, whatever direction it has
taken, and however low the aims of those who may have commenced it--has
not only conferred practical benefits on men, but, in so doing, has
effected a revolution in their conceptions of the universe and of
themselves, and has profoundly altered their modes of thinking and
their views of right and wrong. I say that natural knowledge, seeking
to satisfy natural wants, has found the ideas which can alone still
spiritual cravings. I way that natural knowledge, in desiring to
ascertain the laws of comfort, has been driven to discover those of
conduct, and to lay the foundations of a new morality.

Let us take these points separately; and, first, what great ideas has
natural knowledge introduced into men's minds?

I cannot but t