all
vulgar applications, there is something in knowing and understanding the
operation of Nature, some pleasure in contemplating the order and harmony
of the arrangements belonging to the terrestrial system of things. There
is no absolute utility in poetry, but it gives pleasure, refines and
exalts the mind. Philosophic pursuits have likewise a noble and
independent use of this kind, and there is a double reason offered for
pursuing them, for whilst in their sublime speculations they reach to the
heavens, in their application they belong to the earth; whilst they exalt
the intellect, they provide food for our common wants, and likewise
minister to the noblest appetites and most exalted views belonging to our
nature. The results of this science are not like the temples of the
ancients, in which statues of the gods were placed, where incense was
offered and sacrifices were performed, and which were presented to the
adoration of the multitude founded upon superstitious feelings; but they
are rather like the palaces of the moderns, to be admired and used, and
where the statues, which in the ancients raised feelings of adoration and
awe, now produce only feelings of pleasure, and gratify a refined taste.
It is surely a pure delight to know how and by what processes this earth
is clothed with verdure and life, how the clouds, mists, and rain are
formed, what causes all the changes of this terrestrial system of things,
and by what divine laws order is preserved amidst apparent confusion. It
is a sublime occupation to investigate the cause of the tempest and the
volcano, and to point out their use in the economy of things, to bring
the lightning from the clouds and make it subservient to our experiments,
to produce, as it were, a microcosm in the laboratory of art, and to
measure and weigh those invisible atoms which, by their motions and
changes according to laws impressed upon them by the Divine Intelligence,
constitute the universe of things. The true chemical philosopher sees
good in all the diversified forms of the external world. Whilst he
investigates the operations of infinite power guided by infinite wisdom,
all low prejudices, all mean superstitions, disappear from his mind. He
sees man an atom amidst atoms fixed upon a point in space, and yet
modifying the laws that are around him by understanding them, and
gaining, as it were, a kind of dominion over time and an empire in
material space, and exerting on a scale