TWO DISCOURSES

OF THE

OBJECTS,
PLEASUKES, AND ADVANTAGES,

I. OF SCIENCE:
n. OF POLITICAL SCIENCE.

BY

HENRY LORD BROUGHAM, F.R.S,

AND MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF FKANCE.

LONDON:

CHARLES KNIGHT & CO., LUDGATE STREET.

1846.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The Discourse of the 'Objects, Pleasures,
and Advantages of Science/ was originally
published as the Introductory Treatise to the
' Library of Useful Knowledge.' It was the
first step in that remarkable advance in the
Instruction of the People, by the means of
cheap books, which was commenced by the
Society for the Diffusion of Useful Know-
ledge nearly twenty years ago. The Discourse
of the ' Objects, Pleasures, and Advantages
of Political Knowledge' was published at a
later period as the Introductory Treatise to
Lord Brougham's ' Political Philosophy.'
Both Discourses are reprinted in this Volume
by permission of the noble author, under an
arrangement with the Society for the Diffusion
of Useful Knowledge as to the Copyright of
each.

OBJECTS,
ADVANTAGES, AND PLEASUEES

OF

SCIENCE.

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INTRODUCTION.

In order fully to understand the advantages and
the pleasures which are derived from an acquaint-
ance with any Science, it is necessary to become
acquainted with that Science ; and it would there-
fore be impossible to convey a complete knowledge
of the benefits conferred by a study of the various
Sciences which have hitherto been cultivated by
philosophers, without teaching all the branches of
them. But a very distinct idea may be given of
those benefits, by explaining the nature and objects
of the different Sciences : it may be shown, by ex-
amples, how much use and gratification thtre is in
learning a part of any one branch of knowledge ;
and it may thence be inferred, how great reason
there is to learn the whole.

It may easily be demonstrated, that there is an
advantage in learning, both for the usefulness and
the pleasure of it. There is something positively
agreeable to all men, to all at least whose nature is
not most grovelling and base, in gaining knowledge
for its own sake. When you see anything for the

B 2

8 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

first time, you at once derive some gratification
from the sight being new ; your attention is
awakened, and you desire to know more about it.
If it is a piece of workmanship, as an instrument,
a machine of any kind, you wish to know how it is
made ; how it works ; and what use it is of. If it
is an animal, you desire to know where it comes from ;
how it lives ; what are its dispositions, and, gene-
rally, its nature and habits. You feel this desire,
too, without at all considering that the machine or
the animal may ever be of the least use to yourself
practically ; for, in all probability, you may never
see them again. But you have a curiosity to learn
all about them, because they are new and unknown.
You accordingly make inquiries ; you feel a
gratification in getting answers to your ques-
tions, that is, in receiving information, and in
knowing more, — in being better informed than you
were before. If you happen again to see the same
instrument or animal, you find it agreeable to re-
collect having seen it formerly, and to think that
you know something about it. If you see another
instrument or animal, in some respects like, but
differing in other particulars, you find it pleasing
to compare them together, and to note in wha*
they agree, and in what they differ. Now, all this
kind of gratification is of a pure and disinterested
nature, and has no reference to any of the common
purposes of life ; yet it is a pleasure — an enjoy-

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 9

ment. You are nothing- the richer for it ; you do
not gratify your palate or any other bodily appe-
tite ; and yet it is so pleasing, that you would give
something out of your pocket to obtain it, and
would forego some bodily enjoyment for its sake.
The pleasure derived from Science is exactly of the
like nature, or, rather, it is the very same. For
what has just been spoken of is, in fact, Science,
which in its most comprehensive sense only means
Knowledge, and in its ordinary sense means Know-
ledge reduced to a System ; that is, arranged in a
regular order, so as to be conveniently taught, easily
remembered, and readily applied.

The practical uses of any science or branch of
knowledge are undoubtedly of the highest import-
ance ; and there is hardly any man who may not
gain some positive advantage in his worldly wealth
and comforts, by increasing his stock of information.
But there is also a pleasure in seeing the uses to
which knowledge may be applied, wholly indepen-
dent of the share we ourselves may have in those
practical benefits. It is pleasing to examine the
nature of a new instrument, or the liabits of an un-
known animal, without considering whether or not
they may ever be of use to ourselves or to any
bod}''. It is another gratification to extend our in-
quiries, and find that the instrument or animal is
useful to man, even although we have no chance of
ever benefiting by the information : as, to find that

10 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

the natives of some distant country employ the
animal in travelling* ; — nay, though we have no
desire of benefiting by the knowledge ; as for ex-
ample, to find that the instrument is useful in per-
forming some dangerous surgical operation. The
mere gratification of curiosity ; the knowing more
to-day than we knew yesterday ; the understanding
clearly what before seemed obscure and puzzling ;
the contemplation of general truths, and the com-
paring together of diflferent things, — is an agree-
able occupation of the mind ; and, beside the pre-
sent enjoyment, elevates the faculties above low
pursuits, purifies and refines the passions, and helps
our reason to assuage their violence.

It is very true, that the fundamental lessons of
philosophy may to many, at first sight, wear a for-
bidding aspect, because to comprehend them re-
quires an effort of the mind somewhat, though
certainly not much, greater than is wanted for un-
derstanding more ordinary matters ; and the most
important branches of philosophy, those which are of
the most general application, are for that very reason
the less easily followed, and the less entertaining
when apprehended, presenting as they do few par-
ticulars or individual objects to the mind. In dis-
coursing of them, moreover, no figures will be at
present used to assist the imagination ; the appeal
Is made to reason, without help from the senses.
But be not, therefore, prejudiced against the doc-

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 11

trine, that the pleasure of learning the truths which
philosophy unfolds is truly above all price.. Lend
but a patient attention to the principles explained, and
giving us credit for stating nothing which has not
some practical use belonging to it, or some important
doctrine connected with it, you will soon perceive the
value of the lessons you are learning, and begin to in-
terest yourselves in comprehending and recollecting
them ; you will find that you have actually learnt
something of science, while merely engaged in seeing
what its end and purpose is ; you will be enabled
to calculate for yourselves, how far it is worth the
trouble of acquiring, by examining samples of it ;
you will, as it were, taste a little, to try whether or
not you relish it, and ought to seek after more ; you
will enable yourselves to go on, and enlarge your
stock of it ; and after having first mastered a very
little, you will proceed so far as to look back with
wonder at the distance you have reached beyond
your earliest acquirements.

The Sciences may be divided into three great
classes : those which relate to Number and Quan-
tity— those which relate to Matter- — and those
which relate to Mind. The first are called the
Mathematics^ and teach the property of numbers
and of figures ; the second are called Natural
Philosophy^ and teach the properties of the various
bodies which we are acquainted with by means of
our senses ; the third are called Intellectual or

12 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

Moral Philosophy, and teach the nature of the
mind, of the existence of which we have the most
perfect evidence in our own reflections ; or, in
other words, they teach the moral nature of man,
both as an individual and as a member of society.
Connected with all the sciences, and subservient to
to them, though not one of their number, is His-
tory, or the record of facts relating to all kinds of
knowledge.

I. MATHEMATICAL SCIENCE.

The two great branches of the Mathematics, or
the two mathematical sciences, are Arithmetic, the
science of number, from the Greek word signify-
ing nymber, and Geometry, the science of figure,
from the Greek words signifying measure of the
earth, — land-measuring having first turned men's
attention to it.

When we say that 2 and 2 make 4, we state an
arithmetical proposition, very simple indeed, but
connected with many others of a more diflficult and
complicated kind. Thus, it is another proposition,
somewhat less simple, but still very obvious, that
5 multiplied by 10, and divided by 2 is equal to,
or makes the same number with, 100 divided by 4 —
both results being equal to 25. So, to find how
many farthings there are in 1000/., and how many

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 13

minutes in a year, are questions of arithmetic which
we learn to work by being taught the principles of
the science one after another, or, as they are com-
monly called, the rules of addition, subtraction,
multiplication, and division. Arithmetic may be
said to be the most simple, though among the most
useful of the sciences ; but it teaches only the pro-
perties of particular and known numbers, and it
only enables us to add, subtract, multiply, and
divide those numbers. But suppose we wish to
add, subtract, multiply, or divide numbers which
we have not yet ascertained, and in all respects to
deal with them as if they were known, for the pur-
pose of arriving at certain conclusions respecting
them, and, among other things, of discovering
what they are ; or, suppose we would examine pro-
perties belonging to all numbers ; this must be
performed by a peculiar kind of arithmetic, called
Universal diYiihiTHiXic, or Algebra.* The common
arithmetic, you will presently perceive, carries the
seeds of this most important science in its bosom.
Thus, suppose we inquire what is the number
which multiplied by 5 makes 10 ? This is found if
we divide 10 by 5, — it is 2: but suppose that,
before finding this number 2, and before knowing
what it is, we would add it, whatever it may turn

* Algebra, from the Arabic words signifying the reduc-
tion of fractions ; the Arabs having brought the knowledge
of it into Europe.

B 3

14 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

out, to some other number ; this can only be done
by putting some mark, such as a letter of the
alphabet, to stand for the unknown number, and
adding that letter as if it were a known number.
Thus, suppose we want to find two numbers which,
added together, make 9, and, multiplied by one
another, make 20. There are many which, added
together, make 9 ; as 1 and 8 ; 2 and 7 ; 3 and 6 ;
and so on. We have, therefore, occasion to use
the second condition, that multiplied by one another
they should make 20, and to work upon this con-
dition before we have discovered the particular
numbers. We must, therefore, suppose the numbers
to be found, and put letters for them, and by rea-
soning upon those letters, according to both the
two conditions of adding and multiplying, we find
what they must each of them be in figures, in order
to fulfil or answer the conditions. Algebra
teaches the rules for conducting this reasoning,
and obtaining this result successfully ; and by
means of it we are enabled to find out numbers
which are unknown, and of which we only know
that they stand in certain relations to known
numbers, or to one another. The instance now
taken is an easy one ; and you could, by consider-
ing the question a little, answer it readily enough ;
that is, by trying different numbers, and seeing
which suited the conditions ; for you plainly see
that 5 and 4 are the two numbers sought; but you

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 15

see this by no certain or general rule applicable to
all cases, and therefore you could never work more
difficult questions in the same way ; and even
questions of a moderate degree of difficulty would
laive an endless number of trials or guesses to
answer. Thus a shepherd sold his flock for 80/. ;
and if he had sold four sheep more for the same
money, he would have received one pound less for
each sheep. To find out from this, how many the
flock consisted of, is a very easy question in algebra,
but would require a vast many guesses, and a long
time to hit upon by common arithmetic : * And
questions infinitely more difficult can easily be
solved by the rules of algebra. In like manner,
by arithmetic you can tell the properties of particu-
lar numbers ; as, for instance, that the number
348 is divided by 3 exactly, so as to leave nothing
over : but algebra teaches us that it is only one of
an infinite variety of numbers, all divisible by 3,
and any one of which you can tell the moment you
see it ; for they all have the remarkable property,
that if you add together the figures they consist of,
the sum total is divisible by 3. You can easily
perceive this in any one case, as in the number
mentioned, for 3 added to 4 and that to 8 make 15,
which is plainly divisible by 3 ; and if you divide
348 by 3, you find the quotient to be 116, with
nothing over. But this does not at all prove that
* It is 16.

16 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

any other number, the sum of whose figures is
divisible by 3, will itself also be found divisible by
3, as 741 ; for you must actually perform the division
here, and in every other case, before you can know
that it leaves notliing over. Algebra, on the con-
trary, both enables you to discover such general pro-
perties, and to prove them in all their generality.*
By means of this science, and its various appli-
cations, the most extraordinary calculations may
be performed. We shall give, as an example, the
method of Logarithms, which proceeds upon this
principle. Take a set of numbers going on by
equal differences ; that is to say, the third being as
much greater than the second, as the second
is greater than the first, and the common dif-
ference being the number you begin with ; thus,
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and so on, in which the common
difference is 1 : then take another set of numbers,

* Another class of numbers divisible by 3 is discovered in
like manner by algebra. Every number of 3 places, the
figures (or digits) composing which are in arithmetical
progression, (or rise above each other by equal differences,)
is divisible by 3: as 123, 789, 357, 159, and so on. The
same is true of numbers of any amount of places, provided
they are composed of 3, 6, 9, &c., numbers rising above each
other by equal differences, as 289, 299, 309, or 148, 214,
280, or 307142085345G48276198756, which number of
24 places is divisible by 3, being composed of 6 numbers
in a series whose common difference is 1137. This pro-
perty, too, is only a particular case of a much more gene-
ral one.

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 17

such tliat each is equal to twice or three times the
one before it, or any number of times the one
before it, but the common multi])lier being- the
number you bej^in with : thus, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64,
128; write this second set of numbers under tlie
first, or side by side, so that the numbers shall
stand opposite to one another, thus,

12 3 4 5 6 7
2 4 8 16 32 64 128
you will find, that if you add together any two of
the upper or first set, and go to the number oppo-
site their sum, in the lower or second set, you will
have in this last set the number arising from mul-
tiplying together the numbers of the lower set corre-
sponding or opposite to the numbers added together.
Thus, add 2 to 4, you have 6 in tlie upper set,
opposite to which in the lower set is 64, and
multiplying the numbers 4 and 16 opposite to
2 and 4, the product is 64. In like manner, if
j'ou subtract one of the upper numbers from ano-
ther, and opposite to their difference in the upper
line, you look to the lower number, it is the
quotient found from dividing one of the lower
numbers by the other opposite the subtracted ones.
Thus, take 4 from 6 and 2 remains, opposite to
which you have in the lower line 4 ; and if you
divide 64, the number opposite to 6, by 16, the
number opposite to 4, the quotient is 4, The
upper set are called the logarithms, of the lower

18 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

set, which are called natural numbers; and tables
may, with a little trouble, be constructed, giving
the logarithms of all numbers from 1 to 10,000
and more: so that, instead of multiplying or
dividing one number by another, you have only to
add or subtract their logarithms, and then you at
once find the product or the quotient in the tables.
These are made applicable to numbers far higher
than any actually in them, by a very simple process :
so that you may at once perceive the prodigious sav-
ing of time and labour which is thus made. If
you had, for instance, to multiply 7,543,283 by
itself, and that product again by the original
number, you would have to multiply a number of
7 places of figures by an equally large number, and
then a number of 14 places of figures by one of 7
places, till at last you had a product of 21 places
of figures — a very tedious operation ; but, working
by logarithms, you would only have to take three
times the logarithm of the original number, and that
gives the logarithm of the last product of 21 places
of figures, without any further multiplication. So
much for the time and trouble saved, which is still
greater in questions of division ; but by means of
logarithms many questions can be worked, and of
the most important kind, which no time or labour
would otherwise enable us to resolve.

Geometry teaches the properties of figure, or
particular portions of space, and distances of points

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 19

from each other. Thus, when you see a triangle^
or three-sided figure, one of whose sides is perpen-
dicular to another side, you find, by means of geo-
metrical reasoning respecting this kind of triangle,
that if squares be drawn on its three sides, the
large square upon the slanting side opposite the two
perpendiculars, is exactly equal to the smaller
squares upon the perpendiculars, taken together ;
and this is absolutely true, whatever be the size of
the triangle, or the proportions of its sides to each
other. Therefore, you can always find the length
of any one of the three sides by knowing the
lengths of the other two. Suppose one perpen-
dicular side to be 3 feet long, the other 4, and you
want to know the length of the third side opposite
to the perpendicular ; you have only to find a
number such, that if, multiplied by itself, it shall
be equal to 3 times 3, together with 4 times 4,
that is 25.* (This number is 5.)

Now only observe the great advantage of know-
ing this property of the triangle, or of perpendicu-
lar lines. If you want to measure a line passing
over ground which you cannot reach — to know.

* It is a propei'ty of numbers, that every number -what-
ever, whose last place is either 5 or 0, is, when multiplied
into itself, equal to two others which are square numbers,
and divisible by 3 and 4 respectively : — thus, 45 X 45 ^2025=
729+1298, the squares of 27 and 36; and 60X60 = 3600=
1296-1-2304, the squares of 36 and 48.

20 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

for instance, the length of one side, covered with
water, of a field, or the distance of one point on a
lake or bay from another point on the opposite
side — you can easily find it by measuring two lines
perpendicular to one another on the dry land, and
running through the two points ; for the line
wished to be measured, and which runs through
the water, is the third side of a perpendicular-sided
triangle, the other two sides of which are ascer-
tained. But there are other properties of tri-
angles, which enable us to know the length of two
sides of any triangle, whether it has perpendicular
sides or not, by measuring one side, and also mea-
suring the inclinations of the other two sides to
this side, or what is called the two angles made by
those sides with the measured side. Therefore
you can easily find the perpendicular line drawn,
or supposed to be drawn, from the top of a moun-
tain through it to the bottom, that is, the height of
the mountain ; for you can measure a line on level
ground, and also the inclination of two lines, sup-
posing them drawn in the air, and reaching from
the two ends of the measured line to the mountain's
top ; and having thus found the length of the one
of those lines next the mountain, and its inclination
to the ground, you can at once find the perpendi-
cular, though you cannot possibly get near it. In
the same way, by measuring lines and angles on
the ground, and near, you can find the length of

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 21

lines at a great distance, and wliich you cannot
approach : for instance, the length and breadth of
a field on the opposite side of a lake or sea ; the
distance of two islands ; or the space between the
tops of two mountains.

Again, there are curve-lined figures as well as
straight, and geometry teaches the properties of
these also. The best known of all the curves is
the circle^ or a figure made by drawing a string
round one end which is fixed, and marking w^here
its other end traces, so that every part of the circle
is equally distant from the fixed point or centre.
From this fundamental property, an infinite variety
of others follow by steps of reasoning more or less
numerous, but all necessarily arising one out of
another. To give an instance ; it is proved by
geometrical reasoning, that if from the two ends
of any diameter of the circle you draw two lines
to meet in any one point of the circle whatever,
those lines are perpendicular to each other.

Another property, and a most useful one, is,
that the sizes, or areas, of all circles whatever,
from the greatest to the smallest, from the sun to
a watch-dialplate, are in exact proportion to the
squares of their distances from the centre ; that is,
the squares of the strings they are drawn with : so
that if you draw a circle with a string 5 feet long,
and another with a string 10 feet long, the large
circle is four times the size of the small one, as far

22 OBJECTSj ADVANTAGES, AND

as the space or area inclosed is concerned ; the
square of 10 or 100 being four times the square of
5 or 25. But it is also true, that the lengths of
the circumferences themselves, the number of feet
over which the ends of the strings move, are in
proportion to the lengths of the strings ; so that
the curve of the large circle is only twice the
length of the curve of the lesser.

But the circle is only one of an infinite variety
of curves, all having a regular formation and fixed
properties. The oval or ellipse is, perhaps, next
to the circle, the most familiar to us, although we
more frequently see another curve, the line formed
by the motion of bodies thrown forward. When
you drop a stone, or throw it straight up, it goes
in a straight line ; when you throw it forward, it
goes in a curve line till it reaches the ground ; as
you see by the figure in which water runs when
forced out of a pump, or from a fire-pipe, or from
the spout of a kettle or teapot. The line it moves
in is called a parabola ; every point of which bears
a certain fixed relation to a certain point within it,
as the circle does to its centre. Geometry teaches
various properties of this curve : for example, if
the direction in which the stone is thrown, or the
bullet fired, or the water spouted, be half the per-
pendicular to the ground, that is, half way be-
tween being level with the ground and being up-
right, the curve will come to the ground at a

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 23

greater distance than if any other direction what-
ever were given, with the same force. So that, to
make the gun carry farthest, or the fire-pipe play
to the greatest distance, they must be pointed, not,
as you might suppose, level or point blank, but
about half way between that direction and the per-
pendicular. If the air did not resistj and so some-
what disturb the calculation, the direction to give
the longest range ought to be exactly half perpen-
dicular.

The ovalf or ellipse, is drawn by taking a string
of any certain length, and fixing, not one end as
in drayving the circle, but both ends to different
points, and then carrying a point round inside the
string, always keeping it stretched as far as pos-
sible. It is plain, that this figure is as regularly
drawn as the circle, though it is very diflTerent
from it ; and you perceive that every point of its
curve must be so placed, that the straight lines
drawn from it to the two points where the string
was fixed, are, when added together, always the
same ; for they make together the length of the
string.

Among various properties belonging to this
curve, in relation to the straight lines drawn within
it, is one which gives rise to the construction of
the trammels, or elliptic compasses, used for
making figures and ornaments of this form ; and

24 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

also to the construction of lathes for turning oval
frames, and the like.

If you wish at once to see these three curves,
take a pointed sugar-loaf, and cut it any where
clean through in a direction parallel to its base or
bottom ; the outline or edge of the loaf where it is
cut will be 2i circle. If the cut is made so as to
slant, and not be parallel to the base of the loaf,
the outline is an ellipse, provided the cut goes
quite through the sides of the loaf all round, or is
•in such a direction that it would pass through the
sides of the loaf were they extended ; but if it goes
slanting and parallel to the line of the loaf's side,
the outline is a parabola ; and if you cut in any
direction, not through the sides all round, but
through the sides and base, and not parallel to the
line of the side, being nearer the perpendicular,
the outline will be another curve of which we
have not yet spoken, but whf h is called an hyper-
bola. You will see another instance of it, if you
take two plates of glass, and lay fchem on one
another ; then put their edge in water, holding them
upright and pressing them together; the water,
which, to make it more plain, you may colour with
a few drops of ink or strong tea, rises to a certain
height, and its outline is this curve ; which, how-
ever much it may seem to differ in form from a
circle or ellipse, is found by mathematicians to

PXEASURES OF SCIENCE. 25

resemble them very closely in many of its most
remarkable properties.

These are the curve lines best known and most
frequently discussed ; but there are an infinite
number of others all related to straight lines and
other curve lines by certain fixed rules : for ex-
ample, the course which any point in the circum-
ference of a circle, as a nail in the felly of a wheel
rolling along, takes through the air, is a curve
called the cycloid^ which has many remarkable
properties ; and, among others, this, that it is, of
all lines possible, the one in which any body, not
falling perpendicularly, will descend from one
point to another the most quickly. Another curve
often seen is that in which a rope or chain hangs
when supported at both ends : it is called the Ca-
tenary, from the Latin for chain ; and in this form
some arches are built. The form of a sail filled
with wind is the same curve.

II. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MATHEMATICAL AND
PHYSICAL TRUTHS.

You perceive, if you reflect a little, that the
science which we have been considering, in both
its branches, has nothing to do with matter ; that is
to say, it does not at all depend upon the properties
or even upon the existence of any bodies or sub-

26 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

stances whatever. The distance of one point or
place from another is a straight line ; and whatever
is proved to be true respecting this line, as, for
instance, its proportion to other lines of the same
kind, and its inclination towards them, what we
call the angles it makes with them, would be
equally true whether there were anything in those
places, at those two points, or not. So if you find
the number of yards in a square field, by measuring
one side, 100 yards, and then, multiplying that by
itself, which makes the whole area 10,000 square
yards, this is equally true whatever the field is,
whether corn, or grass, or rock, or water ; it is
equally true if the solid part, the earth or water,
be removed, for then it will be a field of air
bounded by four walls or hedges ; but suppose the
walls or hedges were removed, and a mark only
left at each corner, still it would be true that the
space inclosed or bounded by the lines supposed to
be drawn between the four marks, w^as 10,000
square yards in size. But the marks need not be
there ; you only want them v/hile measuring one
side : if they were gone, it would be equally true
that the lines, supposed to be drawn from the places
where the marks had been, inclose 10,000 square
yards of air. But if there were no air, and conse-
quently a mere void, or empty space, it would be
equally true that this space is of the size you had
found it to be by measuring the distance of one

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 27

point from another, of one of the space's corners
or angles from another, and then multiplying that
distance by itself. In the same way it would
be true, that, if the space were circular, its size,
compared with another circular space of half its
diameter, would be four times larger : of one-third
its diameter nine times larger, and of one-fourth
sixteen times, and so on always in proportion to the
squares of the diameters ; and that the length of the
circumference, the number of feet or yards in the
line round the surface, would be twice the length
of a circle whose diameter was one half, thrice the
circumference of one whose diameter was one-third,
four times the circumference of one whose diameter
was one-fourth, and so on, in the simple proportion
of the diameters. Therefore, every property which
is proved to belong to figures belongs to them
without the smallest relation to bodies or matter of
any kind, although we are accustomed only to see
figures in connection with bodies ; but all those
properties would be equally true if no such thing
as matter or bodies existed ; and the same may be
said of the properties of number, the other great
branch of the mathematics. When we speak of
twice two, and say it makes four, we affirm this
without thinking of two horses, or two balls, or
two trees ; but we assert it concerning two of any
thing and every thing equally. Nay, this branch
of matliematics may be said to apply still more ex-

28 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

tensively than even the other ; for it has no relation
to space, which geometry has ; and, therefore, it is
applicable to cases where figure and size are wholly
out of the question. Thus you can speak of two
dreams, or two ideas, or two minds, and can calcu-
late respecting them just as you would respecting
so many bodies ; and the properties you find be-
longing to numbers, will belong to those numbers
when applied to things that have no outward or
visible or perceivable existence, and cannot even
be said to be in any particular place, just as much
as the same numbers applied to actual bodies which
may be seen and touched.

It is quite otherwise with the science which we
are now going to consider. Natural Philosophy,
This teaches the nature and properties of actually
existing substances, their motions, their connections
with each other, and their influence on one another.
It is sometimes also called Physics, from the Greek
word signifying Nature, though that word is more
frequently, in common speech, confined to one
particular branch of the science, that which treats
of the bodily health.

^We have mentioned one distinction between
Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, that the
former does not depend on the nature and existence
of bodies, which the latter entirely does. Another
distinction, and one closely connected with this, is,
that the truths which Mathematics teach are

PJLEASUKES OF SCIENCE. 29

necessarily such, — they are truths of themselves,
and wholly independent of facts and experiments, —
they depend only upon reasoning- ; and it is utterly
impossible they should be otherwise than true.
This is the case vvith all the properties which we
find belong to numbers and to figures — 2 and 2
must of necessity, and through all time, and in
every place, be equal to 4: those numbers must
necessarily be always divisible by 3, without leav-
ing any remainder over, which have the sums of
the figures they consist of divisible by 3 ; and
circles must necessarily^ and for ever and ever, be
to one another in the exact proportion of the
squares of their diameters. It cannot be otherwise ;
we cannot conceive it in our minds to be otherwise.
No man can in his own mind suppose to himself
that 2 and 2 should ever be more or less than 4 ;
it would be an utter impossibility — a contradiction
in the very ideas ; and if stated in words, those
words would have no sense. The other propertiest
of number, though not so plain at first sight as this,
are proved to be true by reasoning, every one step
of which follows from the step immediately before,
as a matter of course, and so clearly and unavoid-
ably, that it cannot be supposed, or even imagined,
to be otherwise ; the mind has no means of fancying
how it could be otherwise: the final conclusion,
from all the steps of the reasoning or demonstration,
as it is called, follows in the same v/ay from the

c

so OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

last of the steps, and is therefore just as evidently
and necessarily true as the first step, which is always
something self-evident ; for instance, that 2 and 2
make 4, or that the whole is greater than any of
its parts, but equal to all its parts put together. It
is through this kind of reasoning, step by step,
from the most plain and evident things, that we
arrive at the knowledge of other things which seem
at first not true, or at least not generally true ; but
when we do arrive at them, we perceive that they
are just as true, and for the same reasons, as the
first and most obvious matters ; that their truth is
absolute and necessary, and that it would be as
absurd and self-contradictory to suppose they ever
could, under any circumstances, be not true, as to
suppose that 2 added to 2 could ever make 3, or 5,
or 100, or anything but 4; or, which is the same
thing, that 4 should ever be equal to 3, or 5,
or 100, or anything but 4. To find out these
Teasonings, to pursue them to their consequences,
and thereby to discover the truths which are not
immediately evident, is what science teaches us :
but when the truth is once discovered, it is as
certain and plain by the reasoning, as the first
truths themselves from which all the reasoning
takes its rise, on which it all depends, and which
require no proof, because they are self-evident at
once, and must be assented to the instant they are
understood.

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 31

But it is quite different with the truths which
Natural Philosophy teaches. All these depend
upon matter of fact ; and that is learnt by observa-
tion and experiment, and never could be discovered
by reasoning at all. If a man were shut up in
a room with pen, ink, and paper, he might by
thinking discover any of the truths in arithmetic,
algebra, or geometry ; it is possible at least ; there
would be nothing absolutely impossible in his dis-
covering all that is now known of these sciences ;
and if his memory were as good as we are supposing
his judgment and conception to be, he might dis-
cover it all without pen, ink, and paper, and in a
dark room. But we cannot discover a single one of
the fundamental properties of matter without ob-
serving what goes on around us, and trying experi-
ments upon the nature and motion of bodies. Thus,
the man whom we have supposed shut up, could
not possibly find out beyond one or two of the very
first properties of matter, and those only in a very
few cases ; so that he could not tell if these were
general properties of all matter or not. He could
tell that the objects he touched in the dark were
hard and resisted his touch ; that they were ex-
tended and were solid : that is, that they had three
dimensions, length, breadth, and thickness. He
might guess that other things existed besides those
he felt, and that those other things resembled what
he felt in these properties; but he could know

c2

32 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

nothing for certain, and could not even conjecture
mucli beyond this very limited number of qualities.
He must remain utterly ignorant of what really
exists in nature, and of what properties matter in
general has. These properties, therefore, we learn
by experience ; they are such as we know bodies to
have ; they happen to have them — they are so
formed by Divine Providence as to have them — but
they might have been otherwise formed ; the great
Author of Nature might have thought fit to make
all bodies diiferent in every respect. "We see that
a stone dropped from our hand falls to the ground ;
this is a fact which we can only know by ex-
perience ; before observing it, we could not have
guessed it, and it is quite conceivable that it should
be otherwise : for instance, that when we remove
our hand from the body it should stand still in the
air ; or fly upward, or go forward, or backward,
or sideways ; there is nothing at all absurd, con-
tradictory, or inconceivable in any of these sup-
positions; there is nothing impossible in any of
them, as there would be in supposing the stone
equal to half of itself, or double of itself ; or both
falling down and rising upwards at once ; or going
to the right and to the left at one and the same
time. Our only reason for not at once thinking it
quite conceivable that the stone should stand still
in the air, or fly upwards, is that we have never
seen it do so, and have become accustomed to see

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 33

it do otherwise. But for that, we should at once
think it as natural that the stone should fly upwards
or stand still, as that it should fall down. But no
degree of reflection for any length of time could
accustom us to think 2 and 2 equal to anything but
4, or to believe the whole of any thing equal to a
part of itself.

After we have once, by observation or experi-
ment, ascertained certain things to exist in fact,
we may then reason upon them by means of the
mathematics ; that is, we may apply mathematics to
our experimental philosophy, and then such reason-
ing becomes absolutely certain, taking the funda-
mental facts for granted. Thus, if we find that a
stone falls in one direction when dropped, and we
further observe the peculiar way in which it falls,
that is, quicker and quicker every instant ^11 it
reaches the ground, we learn the rule or the
proportion by which the quickness goes on increas-
ing ; and we further find, that if the same stone is
pushed forward on a table, it moves in the direction
of the push, till it is either stopped by something,
or comes to a pause by rubbing against the table
and being hindered by the air. These are facts
which we learn by observing and trying, and they
might all have been different if matter and motion
had been otherwise constituted ; but supposing
them to be as they are, and as we find them, we
can, by reasoning mathematically from them, find

34 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

out many most curious and important truths de-
pending upon those facts, and depending upon
them not accidentally, but of necessity. For
example, we can find in what course the stone will
move, if, instead of being dropped to the ground,
it is thrown forward : it will go in the curve
already mentioned, the parabola, somewhat altered
by the resistance of the air, and it will run through
that curve in a peculiar way, so that there will
always be a certain proportion between the time it
takes and the space it moves through, and the time
it would have taken, and the space it would have
moved through, had it dropped from the hand in a
straight line to the ground. So we can prove, in
like manner, what we before stated of the relation
between the distance at which it will come to the
groufid, and the direction it is thrown in; the
distance being greatest of all when the direction is
half way between the level or horizontal and the
upright or perpendicular. These are mathematical
truths, derived by mathematical reasoning upon
physical grounds ; that is, upon matter of fact found
to exist by actual observation and experiment. The
result, therefore, is necessarily true, and proved to
be so by reasoning only, provided we have once
ascertained the facts; but taken altogether, the
result depends partly on the facts learned by ex-
periment or experience, partly on the reasoning
from these facts. Thus it is found to be true by

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 35

reasoning, "and necessarily true, that if the stone
falls in a certain way when unsupported, it must,
when thrown forward, go in the curve called a
parabola, provided there be no air to resist : this is
a necessary or mathematical truth, and it cannot
possibly be otherwise. But when we state the
matter without any supposition, — without any " ?"/*,"
— and say, a stone thrown forward goes in a curve
called a parabola, we state a truth, partly fact, and
partly drawn from reasoning on the fact ; and it
might be otherwise if the nature of things were
different. It is called a proposition or truth in
Natural Philosophy ; and as it is discovered and
proved by mathematical reasoning upon facts in
nature, it is sometimes called a proposition or truth
in the Mixed Mathematics^ so named in contradis-
tinction to the Pure Mathematics^ which are
employed in reasoning upon figures and numbers.
The man in the dark room could never discover
this truth unless he had been first informed, by
those who had observed the fact, in what way the
stone falls when unsupported, and moves along the
table when pushed. These things he never could
.have found out by reasoning : they are facts, and
he could only reason from them after learning them
by his own experience, or taking them on the
credit of other people's experience. But having
once so learnt them, he could discover by reasoning
merely, and with as much certainty as if he lived

36 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

in daylight, and saw and felt the moving body, that
the motion is a parabola, and governed by certain
rules. As experiment and observation are the
great sources of our knowledge of Nature, and as
the judicious and careful making of experiments is
the only way by which her secrets can be known,
^Natural and Experimental Philosophy mean one
and the same thing ; mathematical reasoning being
applied to certain branches of it, particularly those
which relate to motion and pressure.

III. NATURAL OR EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE.

Natural Philosophy, in its most extensive
sense, has for its province the investigation of the
laws of matter ; that is, the properties and the
motions of matter ; and it may be divided into two
great branches. The first and most important
(which is sometimes, on that account, called
Natural Philosophy by way of distinction, but
more properly Mechanical Philosophy) investi-
gates the sensible motions of bodies. The second
investigates the constitution and qualities of all
bodies, and has various names, according to its
different objects. It is called Chemistry, if it
teaches the properties of bodies with respect to
heat, mixture with one another, weight, taste,
appearance, and so forth ; Anatomy and Animal

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 37

Physiology^ (from the Greek word signifying to
speak of the nature of any thing,) if it teaches the
structure and functions of living bodies, especially
the human ; for, when it shows those of other
animals, we term it Comparative Anatomy;
Medicine^ if it teaches the nature of diseases, and
the means of preventing them and of restoring
health ; Zoology, (from the Greek words signifying
to speak of animals^ if it teaches the arrangement
or classification and the habits of the different
lower animals ; Botany, (from the Greek word for
herbage,^ including Vegetable Physiology^ if it
teaches the arrangement or classification, the
structure and habits of plants ; Mineralogy, includ-
ing Geology, (from the Greek words meaning to
speak of the earth,) if it teaches the arrangement
of minerals, the structure of the masses in which
they are found, and of the earth composed of those
masses. The term Natural History is given to
the three last branches taken together, but chiefly
as far as they teach the classification of different
things, or the observation of the resemblances and
differences of the various animals, plants, and
inanimate and ungrowing substances in nature.

But here we may make two general observations.
The^r^^ is, that every such distribution of the
sciences is necessarily imperfect ; for one runs un-
avoidably into another. Thus, Chemistry shows
the qualities of plants with relation to other sub-

c 3

38 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

stances, and to each other ; and Botany does not
overlook those same qualities, though its chief
object be arrangement. So Mineralogy, though
principally conversant with classifying metals and
earths, yet regards also their qualities in respect
of heat and mixture. So, too, Zoology, beside
arranging animals, describes their structures, like
Comparative Anatomy. In truth, all arrangement
and classifying depends upon noting the things in
which the objects agree and differ ; and among
those things, in which animals, plants, and minerals
agree, or differ, must be considered the anatomical
qualities of the one and the chemical qualities of
the other. From hence, in a great measure, fol-
lows the second observation, namely, that the
sciences mutually assist each other. We have seen
how Arithmetic and Algebra aid Geometry, and
how both the purely Mathematical Sciences aid
Mechanical Philosophy. Mechanical Philosophy,
in like manner, assists, though, in the present
state of our knowledge, not very considerably,
both Chemistry and Anatomy, especially the
latter ; and Chemistry very greatly assists both
Piiysiology, Medicine, and all the branches of
Natural History.

The first great head, then, of Natural Science,
is Mechanical Philosophy ; and it consists of
various subdivisions, each forming a science of
great importance. The most essential of these,

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 39

and which is indeed fundamental, and applicable to
all the rest, is called Dynamics^ from the Greek
word signifying j^oz^^er or force ^ and it teaches the
laws of motion in all its varieties. The case of
the stone thrown forward, which we have already
mentioned more than once, is an example. Ano-
ther, of a more general nature, but more difficult
to trace, far more important in its consequences,
and of which, indeed, the former is only one par-
ticular case, relates to the motions of all bodies,
which are attracted (or influenced, or drawn) by
any power towards a certain point, while they are,
at the same time, driven forward, by some push
given to them at first, and forcing them onwards,
at the same time that they are drawn towards the
point. The line in which a body moves while so
drawn and so driven, depends upon the force it is
pushed with, the direction it is pushed in, and the
kind of power that draws it towards the point ;
but at present, we are chiefly to regard the latter
circumstance, the attraction towards the point.
If this attraction be uniform, that is, the same at
all distances from the point, the body will move in
a circle, if one direction be given to the forward
push. The case with which we are best acquainted
is when the force decreases as the squares of the
distances, from the centre or point of attraction,
increase ; that is, when the force is four times less
at twice the distance, nine times less at thrice tlie

40 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

distance, sixteen times less at four times the dis-
tance, and so on. A force of this kind acting on
the body, will make it move in an oval, a parabola,
or an hyperbola, according to the amount or direc-
tion of the impulse, or forward push, originally
given ; and there is one proportion of that force,
Avhieh, if directed perpendicularly to the line in
which the central force draws the body, will make
it move round in a circle, as if it were a stone tied
to a string and whirled round the hand. The most
usual proportions in nature, are those which deter-
mine bodies to move in an oval or ellipse, the
curve described by means of a cord fixed at both
ends, in the way already explained. In this case,
the point of attraction, the point towards which
the body is drawn, will be nearer one end of the
ellipse than the other, and the time the body will
take to go round, compared with the time any
other body would take, moving at a different dis-
tance from the same point of attraction, but drawn
towards that point with a force which bears the
same proportion to the distance, will bear a certain
proportion, discovered by mathematicians, to the
average distances of the two bodies from the point
of common attraction. If you multiply the num-
bers expressing the times of going round, each by
itself, the products will be to one another in the
proportion of the average distances multiplied
each by itself, and that product again by the dis-

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 41

tance. Thus, if one body take two hours, and is
five yards distant, the other, being ten yards off,
will take something less than five hours and forty
minutes.*

jSTow, this is one of the most important truths in
the whole compass of science ; for it does so
happen, that the force with which bodies fall
towards the earth, or what is called their gravity,
the power that draws or attracts them towards the
earth, varies with the distance from the Earth's
centre, exactly in the proportion of the squares,
lessening as the distance increases : at two diame-
ters from the Earth's centre, it is four times less
than at one ; at three diameters, nine times less ;
and so forth. It goes on lessening, but never is
destroyed, even at the greatest distances to which
we can reach by our observations, and there can be
no doubt of its extending indefinitely beyond.
But, by astronomical observations made upon the
motion of the heavenly bodies, upon that of the
Moon for instance, it is proved that her movement
is slower and quicker at different parts of her
course, in the same manner as a body's motion on
the earth would be slower and quicker, according
to its distance from the point it was drawn towards,

* This is expressed mathematically by saying, that the
squares of the times are as the cubes of the distances.
Mathematical language is not only the simplest and most
easily understood of any, but the shortest also.

42 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

provided it was drawn by a force acting in the pro-
portion to the squares of the distance, which we
have frequently mentioned ; and the proportion of
the time to the distance is also observed to agree
with the rule above referred to. Therefore, she is
shown to be attracted towards the Earth by a force
that varies according to the same proportion in
which gravity varies ; and she must consequently
move in an ellipse round the Earth, which is placed
in a point nearer the one end than the other of that
curve. In like manner, it is shown that the Earth
moves round the Sun in the same curve line, and is
drawn towards the sun by a similar force ; and that
all the other planets in their courses, at various
distances, follow the same rule, moving in ellipses,
and drawn towards the Sun by the same kind of
power. Three of them have moons like the Earth,
only more numerous, for Jupiter has four, Saturn
seven, and Herschel six, so very distant, that we
cannot see them without the help of glasses ; but
all those moons move round their principal planets,
as ours does round the Earth, in ovals or ellipses ;
while the planets, with their moons, move in their
ovals round the Sun, like our own Earth with its
moon.

But this power, which draws them all towards
the sun, and regulates their path and their motion
round him, and which draws the moons towards
the principal planets, and regulates their motion

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 43

and path round those planets, is the same with the
gravity by which bodies fall towards the earth,
being attracted by it. Therefore, the whole of the
heavenly bodies are kept in their places, and wheel
round the sun, by the same influence or power that
makes a stone fall to the ground.

It is usual to call the sun, and the planets which
with their moons move round him (eleven in num -
ber, including the four lately discovered, and the
one discovered by Herschel), the Solar System,
because they are a class of the heavenly bodies
far apart from the innumerable fixed stars, and so
near each other as to exert a perceptible influ-
ence on one another, and thus to be connected
together.

The Comets belong to the same system, accord-
ing to this manner of viewing the subject. They
are bodies which move in elliptical paths, but far
longer and narrower than the curves in which the
earth and the other planets and their moons roll.
Our curves are not much less round than circles ;
the paths of the comets are long and narrow, so as,
in many places, to be more nearly straight lines
than circles. They differ from the planets and
their moons in another respect ; they do not depend
on the sun for the light they give, as our moon
plainly does, being dark when the earth comes be-
tween her and the sun ; and as the other planets
do, those of them that are nearer the sun than we

44 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

are, being dark when they come between us and
him, appearing to pass across his surface. But the
comets give light always of themselves, being appa-
rently vast bodies heated red-hot by coming in
their course far nearer the sun than the nearest of
the planets ever do. Their motion, when near the
sun, is much more rapid than that of the planets ;
they both approach him much nearer, retreat from
him to much greater distances, and take much
longer time in going round him than any of the
planets do. Yet even these comets are subject to
the same great law of gravitation which regulates
the motions of the planets. Their year, the time
they take to revolve, is in some cases 75, in others
135, in others 300 of our years ; their distance is
a hundred times our distance when farthest off, and
not a hundred and sixtieth of our distance when
nearest the sun ; their swiftest motion is above
twelve times swifter than ours, although ours is a
hundred and forty times swifter than a cannon
ball's ; yet their path is a curve of the same kind
with ours, though longer and flatter, differing in
its formation only as one oval differs from another
by the string you draw it with having the ends
fixed at two points more distant from each other :
consequently the sun, being in one of those points,
is much nearer the end of the path the comet
moves in, than he is near the end of our path.
Their motion, too, follows the same rule, being

PLEASURES OP SCIENCE. 45

swifter the nearer the sun : the attraction of the
sun for them varies according to the squares of
the distances, being four times less at twice the
distance, nine times less at thrice, and so on;
and the proportion between the times of revolv-
ing and the distances is exactly the same, in the
case of those remote bodies, as in that of the
moon and the earth. One law prevails over all,
and regulates their motions as well as our own ; it
is the gravity of the comets towards the sun, and
they, like our own earth and moon, wheel round
him in boundless space, drawn by the same force,
acting by the same rule, which makes a stone fall
when dropped from the hand.

The more full and accurate our observations are
upon those heavenly bodies, the better we find all
their motions agreeing with this great doctrine ;
although, no doubt, many things are to be taken
into the account besides the force that draws them
to the different centres. Thus, while the moon is
drawn by the earth, and the earth by the sun, the
moon is also drav/n directly by the sun ; and while
Jupiter is drawn by tlie sun, so are his moons ;
and both Jupiter and his moons are drawn by
Saturn : nay, as this power of gravitation is quite
universal, and as no body can attract or draw
another without being itself drawn by that other,
the earth is drawn by the moon, while the moon is
drawn by the earth ; and the sun is attracted by

46 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

the planets which he draws towards himself.
These mutual attractions give rise to many devia-
tions from the simple line of the ellipse, and pro-
duce many irregularities in the simple calculation
of the times and motions of the bodies that com-
pose the system of the universe. But the extraor-
dinary powers of investigation applied to the sub-
ject by the modern improvements in mathematics,
have enabled us at length to reduce even the
greatest of the irregularities to order and system ;
and to unfold one of the most wonderful truths in
all sciences, namely, that by certain necessary con-
sequence of the simple fact upon which the whole
fabric rests, the proportion of the attractive force
to the distances at which it operates, — all the irre-
gularities which at first seemed to disturb the order
of the system, and to make the appearances depart
from the doctrine, are themselves subject to a cer-
tain fixed rule, and can never go beyond a par-
ticular point, but must begin to lessen when they
have slowly reached that point, and must then
lessen until they reach another point, when they
begin again to increase ; and so on, for ever. Nay,
so perfect is the arrangement of the whole system,
and so accurately does it depend upon mathe-
matical principles, that irregularities, or rather
apparent deviations, have been discovered by ma-
thematical reasoning before astronomers had ob-
served them, and then their existence has been

TLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 47

ascertained by observation, and found to agree
precisely with the results of calculation.* Thus,
the planets move in ovals, from gravity, the power
that attracts them towards the sun, combined with
the original impulse they received forwards ; and
the disturbing forces are continually varying the
course of the curves or ovals, making them bulge
out in the middle, as it were, on the sides, though
in a very small proportion to the whole length of
the ellipse. The oval thus bulging, its breadth in-
creases by a very small quantity yearly and daily ;
and after a certain large number of years, the
bulging becomes as great as it ever can be : then
the alteration takes a contrary direction, and the
curve gradually flattens as it had bulged ; till, in
the same number of years which it took to bulge,

* The application of mathematics to chemistry has already
produced a great change in that science, and is calculated to
produce still greater improvements. It may be almost cer-
tainly reckoned upon as the source of new discoveries, made
by induction after the mathematical reasoning has given the
suggestion. The learned reader -will perceive that we allude
to the beautiful doctrine o^ Definite or Multiple Proportions.
To take an example ; the probability of an oxide of arsenic
being discovered is impressed upon us, by the composition
of arsenious and arsenic acids, in which the oxygen is as
2 to 3 ; and therefore we may expect to find a compound
of the same base, with the oxygen as unity. The extraor-
dinary action of chlorine and its compounds on light leads
us to expect some further discovery respecting its composi-
tion, perhaps respecting the matter of light.

48 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

it becomes as flat as it ever can be, and tlien it
begins to bulge again, and so on for ever. And
so, too, of every other disturbance and irregularity
in the system : what at first appears to be some
departure from the rule, when more fully examined,
turns oat to be only a consequence of it, or the
result of a more general arrangement springing
from the principle of gravitation ; an arrangement
of which the rule itself, and the apparent or sup-
posed exception, both form parts.

The power of gravitation, which thus regulates
the whole system of the universe, is found to rule
each member or branch of it separately. Thus, it
is demonstrated that the tides of the ocean are
caused by the gravitation which attracts the water
towards the sun and moon ; and the figure both of
our earth and of such of the other bodies as have
a spinning motion round their axis, is determined
by gravitation combined with that motion : they
are all flattened towards the ends of the axis they
spin upon, and bulge out towards the middle.

The great discoverer of the principle on which
all these truths rest, Sir Isaac Newton, certainly
by far the most extraordinary man that ever lived,
concluded by reasoning upon the nature of motion
and matter, that this flattening must take place in
our globe ; every one before his time had believed
the earth to be a perfect sphere or globe, chiefly
from observing the round shadow which it casts on

TLEASUEES OP SCIENCE. 49

the moon in eclipses ; and it was many years after
his death that the accuracy of his opinion was
proved by measurements on the earth's surface,
and by the different weight and attraction of bodies
at the equator, where it bulges, and at the poles,
where it is flattened. The improvement of tele-
scopes has enabled us to ascertain the same fact
with respect to the planets Jupiter and Saturn.

Besides unfolding the general laws which re-
gulate the motions and figures of the heavenly
bodies forming our Solar System, Astronomy con-
sists in calculations of the places, times, and eclipses
of those bodies, and their moons ov satellites (from
a Latin word signifying an attendajit), and in ob-
servations of the Fixed Stars, which are innume-
rable assemblages of bodies, not moving round the
Sun as our Earth and the other planets do, nor re-
ceiving the light they shine with from his light ;
but shining, as the Sun and the Comets do, with a
light of their own, and placed, to all appearance,
immoveable, at immense distances from our world,
that is, from our Solar System. Each of them is
probably the sun of some other system like our
own, composed of planets and their moons or satel-
lites ; but so extremely distant from us, that they
all are seen by us like one point of faint light, as
you see two lamps placed a few inches asunder, only
like one, when you view them a great way off.
The number of the Fixed Stars is prodigious : even

50 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

to the naked eye they are very numerous, about
3000 being thus visible ; but when the heavens are
viewed through the telescope, stars become visible
in numbers wholly incalculable : 2000 are dis-
covered in one of the small collections of a few
visible stars called Coiistellations ; nay, what ap-
pears to the naked eye only a light cloud, as the
Milky Way, when viewed through the telescope,
proves to be an assemblage of innumerable Fixed
Stars, each of them in all likelihood a sun and a
system like the rest, though at an immeasurable
distance from ours.

The size, and motions, and distances of the
heavenly bodies are such as to exceed the power of
ordinary imagination, from any comparison with
the smaller things we see around us. The Earth's
diameter is nearly 8000 miles in length ; but the
Sun's is above 880,000 miles, and the bulk of the
Sun is above 1,300,000 times greater than that of
the Earth. The planet Jupiter, which looks like a
mere speck, from his vast distance, is nearly 1300
times larger than the Earth. Our distance from
the Sun is above 95 millions of miles ; but Jupiter
is 490 millions, and Saturn 900 millions of miles
distant from the Sun. The rate at which the Earth
moves round the Sun is 68,000 miles an hour, or
140 times swifter than the motion of a cannon-ball ;
and the planet Mercury, the nearest to the Sun,
moves still quicker, nearly 110,000 miles an hour.

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 51

We, upon the Earth's surface, besides being carried
round the Sun, move round the Earth's axis by
the rotatory or spinning motion which it has ; so
that every 24 hours we move in this manner near
24,000 miles, beside moving round the Sun above
1,600,000 miles. These motions and distances,
however, prodigious as they are, seem as nothing
compared to those of the comets, one of which,
when farthest from the Sun, is 11,200 millions of
miles from him ; and, when nearest the Sun, flies
at the amazing rate of 880,000 miles an hour. Sir
Isaac Newton calculated its heat at 2000 times that
of red-hot iron ; and that it would take thousands
of years to cool. But the distance of the Fixed
Stars is yet more vast : they have been supposed to
be 400,000 times farther from us than we are from
the Sun, that is 38 millions of millions of miles ;
so that a cannon-ball would take nearly nine millions
of years to reach one of them, supposing there was
nothing to hinder it from pursuing its course
thither. As light takes about eight minutes and a
quarter to reach us from the Sun, it would be above
six years in coming from one of those stars ; but
the calculations of later astronomers prove some
stars to be so far distant, that their light must take
centuries before it can reach us ; so that every
particle of light which enters our eyes left the
star it comes from three or four hundred years
ago.

52

Astronomers have, by means of their excellent
glasses, aided by Geometry and calculations, been
able to observe not only stars, planets, and their
satellites, invisible to the naked eye, but to mea-
sure the height of mountains in the Moon, by ob-
servations of the shadows which those eminences
cast on her surface ; and they have discovered vol-
canoes, or burning mountains, in the same body.

The tables, which they have by the like means
been enabled to form of the heavenly motions, are
of great use in navigation. By means of the
eclipses of Jupiter's satellites, and by the tables of
the Moon's motions, we can ascertain the position
of a ship at sea ; for the observation of the Sun's
height at mid-day gives the latitude of the place, that
is, its distance from the equinoctial or equator, the
line passing through the middle of the Earth's sur-
face equally distant from both poles ; and these tables,
with the observations of the satellites, or moons,
give the distance east and west of the observatory
for which the tables are calculated — called the
longitude of the place : consequently the mariner
can thus tell nearly in what part of the ocean he is,
how far he has sailed from his port of departure,
and how far he must sail, and in what direction, to
gain the port of his destination. The advantage of
this knowledge is therefore manifest in the common
affairs of life ; but it sinks into insignificance com-
pared with the vast extent of those views which the

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 53

contemplations of the science afford, of numberless
worlds filling the immensity of space, and all kept
in their places, and adjusted in their prodigious
motions by the same simple principle, under the
guidance of an all-wise and all-powerful Creator.

We have been considering the application of
Dynamics to the motions of the heavenly bodies^
which forms the science of Physical Astronomy,
The application of Dynamics to the calculation,
production, and direction of motion, forms the
science of Mechanics, sometimes called Practical
Mechanics, to distinguish it from the more general
use of the word, which comprehends every thing
that relates to motion and force. The fundamental
principle of the science, upon which it mainly de-
pends, flows immediately from a property of the
circle already mentioned, and which, perhaps, ap-
peared at the moment of little value, — that the
lengths of circles are in proportion to their di-
ameters. Observe how upon this simple truth
nearly the whole of those contrivances are built by
which the power of man is increased as far as solid
matter assists him in extending it ; and nearly the
whole of those doctrines, too, by which he is en-
abled to explain the voluntary motions of animals,
as far as these depend upon their own bodies.
There can be nothing more instructive in showing
the importance and fruitfulness of scientific truths,
however trivial and forbidding they may at first

D

54 OBJECTS, ADVAJJTAGES, AND

sight appear. For it is an immediate consequence
of this property of the circle, that if a rod of iron,
or beam of wood, or any other solid material, be
placed on a point, or pivot, so that it may move as
the arms of a balance do round its centre, or a see-
saw board does round its prop, the two ends will go
through parts of circles, each proportioned to that
arm of the beam to which it belongs : the two
circles will be equal if the pivot is in the centre or
middle point of the beam; but if it is nearer one
end than the other, say three times, that end will
go through a circular space, or arch, three times
shorter than the circular space the other end goes
through in the same time. If, then, the end of the
long beam goes through three times the space, it
must move with three times the swiftness of the
short beam's end, since both move in the same
time ; and therefore any force applied to the long
end must overcome the resistance of three times
that force applied at the opposite end, since the
two ends move in contrary directions : hence one
pound placed at the long end would balance three
placed at the short end. The beam we have been
supposing is called a Lever, and the same rule must
evidently hold for all proportions of the lengths of
its arms. If, then, the lever be seventeen feet long,
and the pivot, or fulcrum (as it is called, from a
Latin word signifying support), be a foot from one
end, an ounce placed on the other end will balance a

PLEASURES OF SCIEXCE. 55

pound placed on the near end ; and the least addi-
tional weight, or the slightest push or pressure on
the far end, so loaded, will make the pound weight
on the other move upwards. If, instead of an
ounce, we place upon the end of the long arm the
short arm of a second beam or lever supported by a
fulcrum, one foot from it, and then place the long
arm of this second lever upon the short arm of a
third lever, whose fulcrum is one foot from it ; and
if we put on the end of this third lever's long arm
an ounce weight, that ounce will move upwards a
pound on the second lever's long arm, and this
moving upwards will cause the short arm to force
downwards sixteen pounds at the long end of the
first lever, which will make the short end of the first
lever move upwards, though two hundred and fifty-
six pounds be laid on it : the same thing continu-
ing, a pound on the long arm of the third lever
will move a ton and three-quarters on the short
arm of the first lever ; that is, will balance it, so
that the slightest pressure with the finger, or a touch
from a child's hand, will move as much as two
horses can draw. The lever is called, on this ac-
count, a mechanical power; and there are five
other mechanical powers, of most of which its pro-
perties form the foundation ; indeed they have all
been resolved into combinations of levers. The
pulley seems the most difficult to reduce under the
principle of the lever. Thus the wheel and axle is

D 2

56 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

only a lever moving round an axle, and always re-
taining the effect gained during every part of the
motion, by means of a rope wound round the butt
end of the axle ; the spoke of the wheel being the
long arm of the lever, and the half diameter of the
axle its short arm. By a combination of levers,
wheels, pulleys, so great an increase of force is ob-
tained, that, but for the obstruction from friction,
and the resistance of the air, there could be no
bounds to the effect of the smallest force thus mul-
tiplied ; and to this fundamental principle Archi-
medes, one of the most illustrious mathematicians
of ancient times, referred, when he boasted, that if
he only had a pivot or fulcrum whereon he might
rest his machinery, he could move the Earth.
Upon so simple a truth, assisted by the aid derived
from other sources, rests the whole fabric of me-
chanical power, whether for raising weights, or
cleaving rocks, or pumping up rivers from the
bowels of the earth ; or, in short, performing any
of those works to which human strength, even
augmented by the help of the animals whom Pro-
vidence has subdued to our use, would prove alto-
gether inadequate.

The application of Dynamics to the pressure and
motions of fluids, constitutes a science which re-
ceives different appellations according as the fluids
are heavy and liquid like water, or light and in-
visible like air. In the former case it is called

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 57

Hydrodynamics, from the Greek words signifying
water, and power or force ; in the latter Pneu-
matics, from the Greek word signifying breath or
air; and Hydrodynamics is divided into Hydro-
statics, which treats of the weight and pressure of
liquids, from the Greek words for balancing of
water; and Hydraulics, which treats of their
motion, from the Greek name for certain musical
instruments played with water in pipes.

The discoveries to which experiments, aided by
mathematical reasoning, have led, upon the pressure
and motion of fluids, are of the greatest importance,
whether we regard their application to practical
purposes, or to their use for explaining the ap-
pearances in nature, or their singularity as the
subjects of scientific contemplation. When it is
found that the pressure of water or any other
liquid upon the surface that contains it, is not in
the least degree proportioned to its bulk, but only
to the height at which it stands, so that a long
small pipe, containing a pound or two of the fluid,
will give the pressure of twenty or thirty tons ; nay,
of twice or thrice as much, if its length be in-
creased and its bore lessened, without the least
regard to the quantity of the liquid, we are not
only astonished at so extraordinary and unexpected
a property of matter, but we straightway perceive
one of the great agents employed in the vast
operations of nature, in which the most trifling

58 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

means are used to work the mightiest effects. We
likewise learn to guard against many serious mis-
chiefs in our own works, and to apply safely and
usefully a power calculated, according as it is
directed, either to produce unbounded devastation,
or to render the most beneficial service.

Nor are the discoveries relating to the Air less
interesting in themselves, and less applicable to
important uses. It is an agent, though invisible,
as powerful as Water, in the operations both of
nature and of art. Experiments of a simple and
decisive nature show the amount of its pressure to
be between 14 and 15 pounds on every square inch ;
but, like all other fluids, it presses equally in every
direction : so that though, on one hand, there
is a pressure downwards of above 250 pounds,
yet this is exactly balanced by an equal pressure
upwards, from the air pressing round and getting
below. If, however, the air on one side be removed,
the whole pressure from the other acts unbalanced.
Hence the ascent of water in pumps, which suck
out the air from a barrel, and allow the pressure
upon the water to force it up 32 or 33 feet, that
body of water being equal to the weight of the
atmosphere. Hence the ascent of the mercury
in the barometer is only 28 or 29 inches, mercury
being between 13 and 14 times heavier than water.
Hence, too, the motion of the steam-engine ; the
piston of which, until the direct force of steam was

PLEASURES OP SCIENCE. 59

applied, used to be pressed downwards by the weight
of the atmosphere from above, all air being re-
moved below it by first filling it with steam, and
then suddenly cooling and converting that steam
into water, so as to leave nothing in the space it
had occupied. Hence, too, the power which some
animals possess of walking along the perpendicular
surfaces of walls, and even the ceilings of rooms,
by squeezing out the air between the inside of their
feet and th« wall, and thus being supported by
the pressure of the air against the outside of
their feet.

The science of Optics, (from the Greek word
for seeing,) which teaches the nature of light, and
of the sensation conveyed by it, presents, of itself,
a field of unbounded extent and interest. To it the
arts, and the other sciences, owe those most useful
instruments which have enabled us at once to
examine the minutest parts of the structure of
animal and vegetable bodies, and to calculate the
size and the motions of the most remote of the
heavenly bodies. But as an object of learned
curiosity, nothing can be more singular than the
fundamental truth discovered by the genius of
Newton, — that the light, which we call white, is
in fact composed of all the colours, blended in
certain proportions ; unless, perhaps, it be that
astonishing conjecture of his unrivalled sagacity,
by which he descried the inflammable nature of the

60 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

diamond, and its belonging, against all appearance
of probability, to the class of oily substances, frona
Laving observed, that it stood among them, and far
removed from all crystals, in the degree of its
action upon light ; a conjecture turned into cer-
tainty by discoveries made a century afterwards.

To a man who, for original genius and strong
natural sense, is not unworthy of being named after
this illustrious sage, we owe the greater part of
Electrical science. It treats of the peculiar sub-
stance, resembling both light and heat, which, by
rubbing, is found to be produced in a certain class
of bodies, as glass, wax, silk, amber; and to be
conveyed easily or conducted through others, as
"wood, metals, water ; and it has received the name
of Electricity^ from the Greek word for amber.
Dr. Franklin discovered that this is the same matteJ
which, when collected in the clouds, and conveyed
from them to the earth, we call lightning, and
whose noise, in darting through the air, is thunder.
The observation of some movements in the limbs
of a dead frog gave rise to the discovery oi Animal
Electricity, or Galvanism, as it was at first called
from the name of the discoverer ; and which has
of late years given birth to improvements that have
changed the face of chemical philosophy ; affording
a new proof how few there are of the processes of
nature incapable of repaying the labour we bestow
in patiently and diligently examining them. It is

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 61

to the results of the remark accidentally made upon
the twitching in the frog's leg, not, however,
hastily dismissed and forgotten, but treasured up
and pursued through many an elaborate experiment
and calculation, that we owe our acquaintance
with the extraordinary metal, liquid like mercury,
lighter than water, and more inflammable than
phosphorus, which forms, when it burns by mere
exposure to the air, one of the salts best known in
commerce, and the principal ingredient in salt-
petre.

In order to explain the nature and objects of
those branches of Natural Science more or less
connected with the mathematics, some details were
necessary, as without them it was difficult imme-
diately to perceive their importance, and, as it were,
relish the kind of instruction which they afford.
But the same course needs not be pursued with
respect to the other branches. The value and the
interest of chemistry is at once perceived, when it is
known to teach the nature of all bodies ; the relations
of simple substances to heat and to one another, or
their combinations together; the composition of
those which nature produces in a compound state ;
and the application of the whole to the arts and ma-
nufactures. Some branches of philosophy, again, are
chiefly useful and interesting to particular classes,
as surgeons and physicians. Others are easily un-
derstood by a knowledge of the principles of

d3

62 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

Mechanics and Chemistry, of which they are appli-
cations and examples ; as those which teach the
structure of the earth and the changes it has under-
gone ; the motions of the muscles, and the structure
of the parts of animals ; the qualities of animal
and vegetable substances ; and that department of
Agriculture which treats of soils, manure, and
machinery. Other branches are only collections of
facts, highly curious and useful indeed, but which
any one who reads or listens, perceives as clearly,
and comprehends as readily, as the professed
student. To this class belongs Natural History,
in so far as it describes the habits of animals and
plants, and its application to that department of
Agriculture which treats of cattle and their

IV. APPLICATION OF NATURAL SCIENCE TO THE
ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE WORLD.

But, for the purpose of further illustrating the
advantages of Philosophy, its tendency to enlarge
the mind, as well as to interest it agreeably, and
afford pure and solid gratification, a few instances
may be given of the singular truths brought to
light by the application of Mathematical, Mechani-
cal, and Chemical knowledge to the habits of
animals and plants ; and some examples may be

PLEASURES OP SCIENCE. 63

added of the more ordinary and easy, but
scarcely less interesting* observationSj made upon
those habits, without the aid of the profounder
sciences.

We may remember the curve line which mathe-
maticians call a Cycloid. It is the path which any
point of a circle, moving along a plane, and round
its centre, traces in the air ; so that the nail on the
felly of a cart-wheel moves in a Cycloid, as the
cart goes along, and as the wheel itself both turn«
round its axle and is carried along the ground.
Now this curve has certain properties of a peculiar
and very singular kind with respect to motion.
One is, that if any body whatever moves in a
cycloid by its own weight or swing, together with
some other force acting upon it all the while, it
will go through all distances of the same curve in
exactly the same time ; and, accordingly, pendu-
lums have sometimes been contrived to swing in
such a manner, that they shall describe cycloids,
or curves very near cycloids, and thus move in
equal times, whether they go through a long or a
short part of the same curve. Again, if a body is
to descend from any one point to any other, not in
the perpendicular, by means of some force acting
on it together v/ith its weight, the line in which it
will go the quickest of all will be the cycloid ; not
the straight line, though that is the shortest of all

64 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

lines which can be drawn between the two points ;
nor any other curve whatever, though many are
much flatter, and therefore shorter than the
cycloid — but the cycloid, which is longer than
many of them, is yet, of all curved or straight
lines which can be drawn, the one the body will
move through in the shortest time. Suppose,
again, that the body is to move from one point to
another, by its weight and some other force acting
together, but to go through a certain space, — as
a hundred yards, — the way it must take to do this,
in the shortest time possible, is by moving in a'
cycloid ; or the length of a hundred yards must be
drawn into a cycloid, and thpn the body will
descend through the hundred yards in a shorter
time than it could go the same distance in any
other path whatever. Now, it is believed thai
Birds, as the Eagle, which build in the rocks, drop
or fly down from height to height in this course.
It is impossible to make very accurate observations
of their flight and path ; but there is a general
resemblance between the course they take and the
cycloid, which has led ingenious men to adopt this
opinion.

If we have a certain quantity of any substance,
a pound of wood, for example, and would fashion
it in the shape to take the least room, we must
make a globe of it ; it will in this figure have the

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 65

smallest surface. But suppose we want to form
the pound of wood, so that in moving through the
air or water it shall meet with the least possible
resistance ; then we must lengthen it out for ever,
till it becomes not only like a long-pointed pin, but
thinner and thinner, longer and longer, till it is
quite a straight line, and has no perceptible breadth
or thickness at all. If we would dispose of the
given quantity of matter, so that it shall have a
certain length only, say a foot, and a certain
breadth at the thickest part, say three inches, and
move through the air or water with the smallest
possible resistance which a body of those dimen-
sions can meet, then we must form it into a figure
of a peculiar kind called the Solid of least resist-
ance, because, of all the shapes that can be given
to the body, its length and breadth remaining the
same, this is the one which will make it move
with the least resistance through the air, or water,
or other fluid. A very difficult chain of mathe-
matical reasoning, by means of the highest branches
of algebra, leads to a knowledge of the curve
Avhich, by revolving on its axis, makes a solid of
this shape, in the same way that a circle, by so re-
volving, makes a sphere or globe ; and the curve
certainly resembles closely the face or head part of
a fish. Nature, therefore, (by which we always
mean the Divine Author of nature,) has fashioned
these fishes so, that, according to mathematical

66 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

principles, they swim the most easily through the
element they live and move in.*

Suppose upon the face part of one of these
fishes a small insect were bred, endowed with
faculties sufficient to reason upon its condition,
and upon the motion of the fish it belonged to, but
never to have discovered the whole size and shape
of the face part ; it w^ould certainly complain of
the form as clumsy, and fancy that it could have
made the fish so as to move with less resistance.
' Yet if the whole shape were disclosed to it, and it
could discover the principle on which that shape
was preferred, it would at once perceive, not only
that what had seemed clumsy was skilfully con-
trived, but that, if any other shape whatever had
been taken, there would have been an error com-
mitted ; nay, that there must of necessity have been
an error ; and that the very best possible arrange-
ment had been adopted. So it may be with man
in the universe, where, seeing only a part of the
great system, he fancies there is evil ; and yet, if
he w^ere permitted to survey the whole, what had
seemed imperfect might appear to be necessary for
the general perfection, insomuch that any other
arrangement, even of that seemingly imperfect part,
must needs have rendered the wdiole less perfect.

* The feathers of the wings of birds are found to be
placed at the best possible angle for helping on the bird by
their action on the air.

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 67

The common objection is, that what seems evil
might have been avoided ; but in the case of the
fish's shape, it could not have been avoided.

It is found by optical inquiries, that the particles
or rays of light, in passing through transparent
substances of a certain form, are bent to a point
Avhere they make an image or picture of the
shining bodies they come from, or of the dark
bodies they are reflected from. Thus, if a pair of
spectacles be held between a candle and the wall,
they make two images of the candle upon it ; and
if they be held between the window and a sheet of
paper when the sun is shining, they make a picture
on the paper of the houses, trees, fields, sky, and
clouds. The eye is found to be composed of seve-
ral natural magnifiers which make a picture on a
membrane at the back of it, and from this mem-
brane there goes a nerve to the brain, conveying the
impression of the picture, by means of which we
see. Now, white light was discovered by Newton
to consist of differently-coloured parts, which are
differently bent in passing through transparent sub-
stances, so that the lights of several colours come
to a point at different distances, and thus create an
indistinct image at any one distance. This was
long found to make our telescopes imperfect, inso-
much that it became necessary to make them of
reflectors or mirrors, and not of magnifying glasses,
the same difference not being observed to affect the

68 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

reflection of light. But another discovery was,
about fifty years afterwards, made by Mr. DoUond,
— that, by combining different kinds of glass in a
compound magnifier, the difference may be greatly
corrected; and on this principle he constructed
his telescopes. It is found, too, that the different
natural magnifiers of the eye are combined upon a
principle of the same kind. Thirty years later, a
third discovery was made by Mr. Blair, of the
greatly superior effect which combinations of differ-
ent liquids have in correcting the imperfection ;
and, most wonderful to think, when the eye is ex-
amined, we find it consists of different liquids,
acting naturally upon the same principle which
was thus recently found out in optics by many in-
genious mechanical and chemical experiments.

Again, the point to which any magnifier collects
the light is more or less distant as the magnifier is
flatter or rounder, so that a small globe of glass or
any transparent substance makes a microscope.
And this property of light depends upon the na-
ture of lines, and is purely of a mathematical
nature, after we have once ascertained by experi-
ment, that light is bent in a certain way when it
passes through transparent bodies. Now birds
flying in the air, and meeting with many obstacles,
has brances and leaves of trees, require to have
their eyes sometimes as flat as possible for protec-
tion ; but sometimes as round as possible, that they

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 69

may see the small objects, flies and other insects,
which they are chasing through the air, and which
they pursue with the most unerring certainty.
This could only be accomplished by giving them a
power of suddenly changing the form of their eyes.
Accordingly, there is a set of hard scales placed
on the outer coat of their eye, round the place
where the light enters ; and over these scales are
drawn the muscles or fibres by which motion is
communicated ; so that, by acting with these
muscles, the bird can press the scales, and squeeze
the natural magnifier of the eye into a round shape
when it wishes to follow an insect through the
air, and can relax the scales, in order to flatten the
eye again, when it would see a distant object, or
move safely through leaves and twigs. This power
of altering the shape of the eye is possessed by
birds of prey in a very remarkable degree. They
can thus see the smallest objects close to them, and
can yet discern larger bodies at vast distances, as a
carcass stretched upon the plain, or a dying fish
afloat on the water.

A singular provision is made for keeping the
surface of the bird's eye clean — for wiping the
glass of the instrument, as it were— and also for
protecting it, while rapidly flying through the air
and through thickets, without hindering the sight.
Birds are, for these purposes, furnished with a third
eyelid, a fine membrane or skin, which is con-

70 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

stantly moved very rapidly over the eyeball by two
muscles placed in the back of the eye. One of the
muscles ends in a loop, the other in a string which
goes through the loop, and is fixed in the corner
of the membrane, to pull it backward and forward.
If you wish to draw a thing towards any place
with the least force, you must pull directly in the
line between the thing and the place ; but if you
wish to draw it as quickly as possible, and with
the most convenience, and do not regard the loss
of force, you must pull it obliquely, by drawing
it in two directions at once. Tie a string to a
stone, and draw it straight towards you with one
hand ; then, make a loop on another string, and
running the first through it, draw one string in
each hand, not towards you, but sideways, till both
strings are stretched in a straight line : you will
see how much more easily the stone moves quickly
than it did before when pulled straight forward.
Again, if you tie strings to the two ends of a rod,
or slip of card, in a running groove, and bring
them to meet and pass through a ring or hole, fQr
every inch in a straight line that you draw both
together below the ring, the rod will move onward
two. Now this is proved, by mathematical reason-
ing, to be the necessary consequence of forces ap-
plied obliquely : there is a loss of power, but a
great gain in velocity and convenience. This is
the thing required to.be gained in the third eyelid,

PLEASUHES OF SCIENCE. 71

and the contrivance is exactly that of a string and a
loop, moved each by a muscle, as the two strings are
by the hands in the cases we have been supposing.

A third eyelid of the same kind is found in the
horse, and called the haw ; it is moistened with a
pulpy substance (or mucilage) to take hold of the
dust on the eyeball, and wipe it clear off; so that
the eye is hardly ever seen with anything upon it,
though greatly exposed from its size and posture.
The swift motion of the haw is given to it by a
gristly elastic substance placed between the eyeball
and the socket, and striking obliquely, so as to
drive out the haw with great velocity over the eye,
and then let it come back as quickly. Ignorant
persons, when this haw is inflamed from cold, and
swells so as to appear, which it never does in a
healthy state, often mistake it for an imperfection,
and cut it off: so nearly do ignorance and cruelty
produce the same mischief

If any quantity of matter, as a pound of wood
or iron, is fashioned into a rod of a certain length,
say one foot, the rod will be strong in proportion
to its thickness ; and, if the figure is the same, that
thickness can only be increased by making it hol-
low. Therefore hollow rods or tubes, of the same
length and quantity of matter, have more strength
than solid ones. This is a principle so well under-
stood now, that engineers make their axles and other
parts of machinery hollow, and therefore stronger

72 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

with the same weight than they would be if thinner
and solid. Now the bones of animals are all more
or less hollow ; and are therefore stronger with the
same weight and quantity of matter than they
otherwise would be. But birds have the largest
bones in proportion to their weight ; their bones
are more hollow than those of animals which do
not fly ; and therefore they have the needful
strength without having to carry more weight than
is absolutely necessary. Their quills derive strength
from the same construction. They possess another
peculiarity to help their flight. No other animals
have any communication between the air-vessels of
their lungs and the hollow parts of their bodies ;
but birds have it ; and by this means they can blow
out their bodies as we do a bladder, and thus be-
come lighter when they would either make their
flight towards the ground slower, or rise more
swiftly, or float more easily in the air ; while, by
lessening their bulk and closing their wings, they
can drop more speedily if they wish to chase or to
escape. Fishes possess a power of the same kind,^
though not by the same means. They have air-
bladders in their bodies, and can puff" them out, or
press them closer, at pleasure : when they want to
rise in the water, they fill out the bladder, and this
lightens them ; when they would sink, they squeeze
the bladder, pressing the air into a smaller space,
and this makes them heavier. If the bladder

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 73

breaks, the fish remains at the bottom, and can be
held up only by the most laborious exertions of the
fins and tail. Accordingly, flat fish, such as skaits
and flounders, which have no air-bladders, seldom
rise from the bottom, but are found lying on banks
in the sea, or at the bottom of rivers.

If you have a certain space, as a room, to fill up
with closets or little cells, all of the same size and
shape, there are only three figures which will an-
swer, and enable you to fill the room without losing
any space between the cells ; they must either be
squares, or figures of three equal sides, or figures
of six equal sides. With any other figures what-
ever, space would be lost between the cells. This
is evident upon considering the matter ; and it is
proved by mathematical reasoning. The six-sided
figure is by far the most convenient of those three
shapes, because its corners are flatter, and any round
body placed in it has therefore more space, less
room being lost in the corners. This figure, too, is
the strongest of the three ; any pressure from
without or from within will hurt it least, as it
has something of the strength of an arch. A
round figure would be still stronger, but then
room would be lost between the circles, whereas
with the six-sided figure none is lost. Now, it
is a most remarkable fact, that Bees build their
cells exactly in this shape, and thereby save both
room and materials beyond what they could save if

74 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

they built in any other shape whatever. They
build in the very best possible shape for their pur-
pose, which is to save all the room and all the wax
they can. So far as to the shape of the walls of
each cell ; but the roof and floor, or top and bot-
tom, are built on equally true principles. It is
proved by mathematicians, that, to give the greatest
strength, and save the most room, the roof and floor
must be made of three square planes meeting in a
point ; and they have further proved, by a dem.on-
stration belonging to the highest parts of Algebra,
that there is one particular angle or inclination of
those planes to each other where they meet, which
makes a greater saving of materials and of work than
any other inclination whatever could possibly do.
Now, the Bees actually make the tops and bottoms
of their cells of three planes meeting in a point ;
and the inclinations or angles at v/hich they meet
are precisely those found out by the mathematician
to be the best possible for saving wax and work.*

* Koenig, pupil of Bernoulli, and Maclaurin, proved by
very refined investigations, carried on with the aid of the.
fluxional calculus, that the obtuse angle naust be 109° 28',
and the acute 70° 32', to save the most wax and work pos-
sible. Maraldi found by actual measurement, that the angles
are about 110<=* and 70°. These angles never vary in any
place ; and it is scarcely less singular, that the breadth of all
bees' cells are everywhere precisely the same, the drone or
male cells being ^|ths and the worker or female cells i^ths of
an inch in breadth, and this in all countries and times.

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 75

Who would dream of the bee knowing the highest
branch of the Mathematics — the fruit of Newton's
most wonderful discovery— a result, too, of which
he was himself ignorant, one of his most celebrated
followers having found it out in a later age ? This
little insect works with a truth and correctness
which are perfect, and according to the prin-
ciples at which man has arrived only after ages of
slow improvement in the most difficult branch
of the most difficult science. But the Mighty and
All-wise Creator, who made the insect and the phi-
losopher, bestowing reason on the latter, and giving
the former to m ork without it — to Him all truths
are known to all eternity, with an intuition that
mocks even the conceptions of the sagest of human
kind.

It may be recollected, that when the air is ex-
hausted or sucked out of any vessel, there is no
longer the force necessary to resist the pressure of
the air on the outside ; and the sides of the vessels
are therefore pressed inwards with violence : a flat
glass would thus be broken, unless it were very
thick ; a round one, having the strength of an arch,
would resist better ; but any soft substance, as
leather or skin, would be crushed or squeezed to-
gether at once. If the air was only sucked out
slowly, the squeezing would be gradual ; or, if it
were only half sucked out, the skin would only be
partly squeezed together. This is the process by

76 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

which Bees reach the fine dust and juices of hollow-
flowers, like the honeysuckle, and some kinds of
long fox-glove, which are too narrow for them to
enter. They fill up the mouth of the flower with
their bodies, and suck out the air, or at least a
large part of it ; this makes the soft sides of the
flower close, and squeezes the dust and juice towards
the insect as well as a hand could do, if applied to
the outside.

We may remember this pressure or weight of the
atmosphere as shown by the barometer and the suck-
ing-pump. Its weight is near fifteen pounds on every
square inch, so that if we could entirely squeeze out
the air between our two hands, they would cling
together with a force equal to the pressure of double
this weight, because the air would press upon both
hands ; and if we could contrive to suck or squeeze
out the air between one hand and the wall, the hand
would stick fast to the wall, being pressed on it
with the weight of above two hundredweight, that
is, near fifteen pounds on every square inch of the
hand. Now, by a late most curious discovery of
Sir Everard Home, the distinguished anatomist, it is
found that this is the very process by which Flies and
other insects of a similar description are enabled
to walk up perpendicular surfaces, however smooth,
as the sides of walls and panes of glass in windows,
and to walk as easily along the ceiling of a room
with their bodies downwards and their feet over

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 77

head. Their feet, when examined by a microscope,
are found to have flat skins or flaps, like the feet of
web-footed animals, as ducks and geese ; and they
have by means of strong folds the power of drawing
the flap close down upon the glass or wall the
fly walks on, and thus squeezing out the air
completely, so as to make a vacuum between
the foot and the glass or wall. The conse-
quence of this is, that the air presses the foot
on the wall with a very considerable force compared
to the weight of the fly ; for if its feet are to its
body in the same proportion as ours are to our bo-
dies, since we could support by a single hand on the
ceiling of the room (provided it made a vacuum)
more than our whole weight, namely, a weight of
above fifteen stone, the fly can easily move on four
feet in the same manner by help of the vacuum
made under its feet.

It has likewise been found that some of the
larger Sea-animals are by the same construction,
only upon a greater scale, enabled to climb the
perpendicular and smooth surfaces of the ice hills
among which they live. Some kinds of Lizard
have a like power of climbing, and of creeping
with their bodies downwards along the ceiling of a
room ; and the means by which they are enabled
to do so are the same. In the large feet of those
animals, the contrivance is easily observed, of the
toes and muscles, by which the skin of the foot is

78 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES; AND

pinned down, and the air excluded in the act of
walking or climbing ; but it is the very same, only
upon a larger scale, with the mechanism of a fly's
or a butterfly's foot; and both operations, the
climbing of the sea-horse on the ice, and the creep-
ing of the fly on the window or the ceiling, are
performed exactly by the same power, the weight
of the atmosphere, v/hich causes the quicksilver to
stand in the weather-glass, the wind to whistle
through a key-hole, and the piston to descend in
an old steam-engine.

Although philosophers are not agreed as to the
peculiar action which light exerts upon vegetation,
and there is even some doubt respecting the decom-
position of air and water during that process, one
thing is undeniable, — the necessity of light to the
growth and health of plants : without it they have
neither colour, taste, nor smell ; and accordingly
they are for the most part so formed as to receive
it at all times when it shines on them. Their
cups, and the little assemblages of their leaves
before they sprout, are found to be more or less
affected by the light, so as to open and receive it.
In several kinds of plants this is more evident than
in others; their flowers close entirely at night,
and open in the day. Some constantly turn round
towards the light, following the sun, as it were,
while he makes or seems to make his revolution,
so that they receive the greatest quantity possible

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 79

of his rays. Thus clover in a field follows the
apparent course of the sun. But all leaves of
plants turn to the sun, place them how you will,
light being essential to their thriving.

The lightness of inflammable gas is well known.
When bladders of any size are filled with it, they
rise upwards, and float in the air. Now, it is a
most curious fact, ascertained by Mr. Knight, that
the fine dust, by means of which plants are im-
pregnated one from another, is composed of very
small globules, filled with this gas — in a word, of
small air-balloons. These globules thus float from
the male plant through the air, and striking
against the females, are detained by a glue pre-
pared on purpose to stop them, which no sooner
moistens the globules than they explode, and their
substance remains, the gas flying off which enabled
them to float. A provision of a very simple kind
is also, in some cases, made to prevent the male
and female blossoms of the same plant from breed-
ing together, this being found to hurt the breed of
vegetables, just as breeding in and in spoils the
race of animals. It is contrived that the dust
shall be shed by the male blossom before the female
of the same plant is ready to be affected by it ; so
that the impregnation must be performed by the
dust of some other plant, and in this way the breed
be crossed. The light gas with which the globules
are filled is most essential to the operation, as it

e2

80 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

conveys them to great distances. A plantation of
yew-trees has been known, in this way, to impreg-
nate another several hundred yards off.

The contrivance by which some creeper plants
are enabled to climb walls, and fix themselves,
deserves attention. The Virginia creeper has a
small tendril, ending in a claw, each toe of which
has a knob, thickly set with extremely small
bristles ; they grow into the invisible pores of the
wall, and swelling, stick there as long as the plant
grows, and prevent the branch from falling ; but
when the plant dies, they become thin again, and
drop out, so that the branch falls down.

The Vanilla plant of the West Indies climbs
round trees likewise by means of tendrils ; but
when it has fixed itself, the tendrils drop off, and
leaves are formed.

It is found by chemical experiments, that the juice
which is in the stomachs of animals (called the gas-
tric ^ulce, from a Greek word signifying the belly)
has very peculiar properties. Though it is for the
most part a tasteless, clear, and seemingly a very
simple liquor, it nevertheless possesses extraor-
dinary powers of dissolving substances which it
touclies or mixes with ; and it varies in different
classes of animals. In one particular it is the same
in all animals ; it will not attack living matter, but
only dead ; the consequence of which is, that its
powers of eating away and dissolving are perfectly

P1.EASURES OF SCIENCE. 81

safe to the animals themselves, in whose stomachs it
remains without ever hurting them. This juice
differs in different animals according to the food on
which they subsist ; thus, in birds of prey, as kites,
hawks, owls, it only acts upon animal matter, and
does not dissolve vegetables. In other birds, and
in all animals feeding on plants, as oxen, sheep,
hares, it dissolves vegetable matter, as grass, but
will not touch flesh of any kind. This has been
ascertained by making them swallow balls with
meat in them, and several holes drilled through
to let the gastric juice reach the meat : no
effect was produced upon it. We may further
observe, that there is a most curious and beau-
tiful correspondence between this juice in the
stomach of different animals and the other parts of
their bodies, connected with the important opera-
tions of eating and digesting their food. The use
of the juice is plainly to convert what they eat into
a fluid, from which, by various other processes, all
their parts, blood, bones, muscles, &c., are after-
wards formed. But the food is first of all to be
obtained, and then prepared by bruising, for the
action of the juice. Now birds of prey have in-
struments, their claws and beaks, for tearing and
devouring their food (that is, animals of various
kinds), but those instruments are useless for picking
up and crushing seeds ; accordingly they have a
gastric juice which dissolves the animals they eat ;

82 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

while birds which have only a beak fit for pecking,
and eating seeds, have a juice that dissolves seeds,
and not flesh. Nay more, it is found that the seeds
must be bruised before the juice will dissolve them :
this you find by trying the experiment in a vessel
with the juice ; and accordingly the birds have a
gizzard, and animals which graze have flat teeth,
which grind and bruise their food, before the gas-
tric juice is to act upon it.

We have seen how wonderfully the Bee works,
according to rules discovered by man thousands
of years after the insect had been following them
with perfect accuracy. The same little animal
seems to be acquainted with principles of which we
are still ignorant. We can, by crossing, vary the
forms of cattle with astonishing nicety; but we
have no means of altering the nature of an animal
once born, by means of treatment and feeding.
This power, however, is undeniably possessed by
the bees. When the queen bee is lost by death or
otherwise, they choose a grub from among those
which are born for workers ; they make three cells
into one, and placing the grub there, they build a
tube round it ; they afterwards build another cell
of a pyramidal form, into which the grub grows ;
they feed it with peculiar food, and tend it with
extreme care. It becomes, when transformed from
the worm to the fly, not a worker, but a queen bee.
These singular insects resemble our own species

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 83

in one of our worst propensities, the disposition to
war; but their attention to their sovereign is
equally extraordinary, though of a somewhat ca-
pricious kind. In a few hours after their queen is
lost, the whole hive is in a state of confusion. A
singular humming is heard, and the bees are seen
moving ail over the surface of the combs with
great rapidity. The news spreads quickly, and
when the queen is restored, quiet immediately suc-
ceeds. But if another queen is put upon them,
they instantly discover the trick, and, surrounding
her, they either suffocate or starve her to death.
This happens if the false queen is introduced within
a few hours after the first is lost or removed ; but
if twenty-four hours have elapsed, they will receive
any queen, and obey her.

The labours and the policy of the Ants are,
when closely examined, still more wonderful, per-
haps, than those of the Bees. Their nest is a city
consisting of dwelling-places, halls, streets, and
squares into which the streets open. The food
they principally like is the honey which comes from
another insect found in their neighbourhood, and
which they, generally speaking, bring home from
<iay to day as they want it. Late discoveries have
shown that they do not eat grain, but live almost
entirely on animal food and this hone3^ Some
kinds of ants have the foresight to bring home the
insects on whose honey they feed, and keep them

84 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

in particular cells, where they guard them to pre-
vent their escaping, and feed them with proper
vegetable matter which they do not eat themselves.
Nay, they obtain the eggs of those insects, and
superintend their hatching, and then rear the young
insect until he becomes capable of supplying the
desired honey. They sometimes remove them to
the strongest parts of their nest, where there are
cells apparently fortified for protecting them from
invasion. In those cells the insects are kept to
supply the wants of the whole ants which compose
the population of the city. It is a most singular
circumstance in the economy of nature, that the
degree of cold at which the ant becomes torpid is
also that at which this insect falls into the same
state. It is considerably below the freezing-point ;
so that they require food the greater part of the
winter, and if the insects on which they depend for
food were not kept alive during the cold in which
the ants can move about, the latter would be with-
out the means of subsistence.

How trifling soever this little animal may appear
in our climate, there are few more formidable crea-
tures than the ant of some tropical countries. A
traveller, who lately filled a high station in the
French government, Mr. Malouet, has described
one of their cities, and, were not the account con-
firmed by various testimonies, it might seem exag-
gerated. He observed at a great distance what

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 85

seemed a lofty structure, and was informed by his
guide that it consisted of an ant-hill, which could
not be approached without danger of being de-
voured. Its height was from fifteen to twenty feet,
and its base thirty or forty feet square. Its sides
inclined like the lower part of a pyramid, the point
being cut off. He was informed that it became
necessary to destroy these nests, by raising a suffi-
cient force to dig a trench all round, and fill it
with fagots, which were afterwards set on fire ; and
then battering with cannon from a distance, to
drive the insects out and make them run into the
flames. This was in South America ; and African
travellers have met them in the same formidable
numbers and strength.

The older writers of books upon the habits of
some animals abound with stories which may be of
doubtfLil credit. But the facts now stated, respect-
ing the Ant and Bee, may be relied on as authentic.
They are the result of very late observations, and
experiments made with great accuracy by several
most worthy and intelligent men ; and the greater
part of them have the confirmation arising from
more than one observer having assisted in the in-
quiries.* The habits of Beavers are equally

* A singular circumstance occasioned this in the case of
Mr. Huber, by far the most eminent of these naturalists : he
was quite blind, and performed all his experiments by means
of assistants.

E 3

86

well authenticated, and, being more easily observed,
are vouched by a greater number of witnesses.
These animals, as if to enable them to live and move
either on land or water, have two web -feet like
those of ducks or water-dogs, and two like those of
land animals. When they wish to construct a
dwelling-place, or rather city, for it serves the
whole body, they choose a level ground with a
stream running through it ; they then dam up the
stream so as to make a pond, and perform the ope-
ration as skilfully as we could ourselves. Next
they drive into the ground stakes of five or six feet
long in rows, wattling each row with twigs, and
puddling or filling the interstices with clay, which
they ram close in, so as to make the whole solid
and water-tight. This dam is likewise shaped on
the truest principles ; for the upper side next the
water slopes, and the side below is perpendicular :
the base of the dam is ten or twelve feet thick ; the
top or narrow part two or three, and it is some-
times as long as one hundred feet.* The pond

* If the base is twelve, and the top three feet thick, and
the height six feet, the face must be the side of a righv-
angled triangle whose height is eight feet. This would be
the exact proportion which there ought to be, upon mathe-
matical principles, to give the greatest resistance possible to
the water in its tendency to turn the dam round, provided
the materials of which it is made were lighter than water in
the proportion of 44 to 100. But the materials are probably
more than twice as heavy as water, and the form of so fiat a

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 87

being thus formed and secured, they make their
houses round the edge of it ; they are cells, with
vaulted roofs, and upon piles : they are made of
stones, earth, and sticks ; the walls are two feet
thick, and plastered as neatly as if the trowel had
been used. Sometimes they have two or three
stories for retreating to in case of floods ; and they
always have two doors, one towards the water and
one towards the land. They keep their winter
provisions in stores, and bring them out to use ;
they make their beds of moss ; they live on the bark
of trees, gum, and crawfish. Each house holds
from twenty to thirty, and there may be from ten
to twenty-five houses in all. Some of their com-
munities are larger than others, but there are
seldom fewer than two or three hundred inhabi-
tants. In working they all bear their shares ; some
gnaw the trees and branches with their teeth to form
stakes and beams ; others roll the pieces to the
water ; others, diving, make holes with their teeth
to place the piles in ; others collect and carry stones
and clay ; others beat and mix the mortar ; and

dike is taken, in all likeliliood, in order to guard against a
more imminent danger — that of the dam being carried away
by being shoved forwards. We cannot calculate what the
proportions are which give the greatest possible resistance to
this tendency, without knowing the tenacity of the materials,
as well as their specific gravity. It may very probably be
found that the construction is such as to secure the most com-
pletely against the two pressures at the same time.

SH OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

Others carry it on their broad tails, and with these
beat it and plaster it. Some superintend the rest,
and make signals by sharp strokes with the tail,
which are carefully attended to ; the beavers
hastening to the place were they are wanted to work,
or to repair any hole made by the water, or to de-
fend themselves or make their escape, when at-
tacked by an enemy.

The fitness of different animals, by their bodily
structure, to the circumstances in which they
are found, presents an endless subject of curious
inquiry and pleasing contemplation. Thus, the
Camel, which lives in sandy deserts, has broad
spreading hoofs to support him on the loose soil ;
and an apparatus in his body by which water is
kept for many days, to be used when no moisture
can be had. As this would be useless in the neigh-
bourhood of streams or wells, and as it would be
equally so in the desert, where no water is to
be found, there can be no doubt that it is intended
to assist in journeying across the sands from one
watered spot to another. There is a singular and
beautiful provision made in this animal's foot, for
enabling it to sustain the fatigue of journeys under
the pressure of its great weight. Besides the yield-
ing of the bones and ligaments, or bindings, which
gives elasticity to the foot of the deer and other
animals, there is in the Camel's foot, between the
horny sole and the bones, a cushion, like a ball, of

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 89

soft matter, almost fluid, but in which there is a
mass of threads extremely elastic, interwoven with
the pulpy substance. The cushion thus easily
changes its shape when pressed, yet it has such an
elastic spring, that the bones of the foot press on it
uninjured by the heavy body which they support,
and this huge animal steps as softly as a cat.

Nor need we flee to the desert in order to witness
an example of skilful structure : the limbs of the
Horse display it strikingly. The bones of the foot
are not placed directly under the weight ; if they
were in an upright position, they would make a
firm pillar, and every motion would cause a shock.
They are placed slanting or oblique, and tied
together by an elastic binding on their lower sur-
faces, so as to form springs as exact as those which
we make of leather and steel for carriages. Then
the flatness of the hoof, which stretches out on each
side, and the frog coming down in the middle
between the quarters, adds greatly to the elasticity
of the machine. Ignorant of this, ill-informed
farriers nail the shoe in such a manner as to fix
the quarters, and cause permanent contraction of
the bones, ligaments, and hoof — so that the elas-
ticity is destroyed ; every step is a shock ; inflam-
mation and lameness ensue.*

* Mr. Bracey Clarke has contrived an expanding shoe,
-which, by a joint in front, opens and contracts so as to obviate
the evils of the common process.

90 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

The 'Rein-deer inhabits a country covered with
snow the greater part of the year. Observe how
admirably its hoof is formed for going over that
cold and light substance, without sinking in it or
being frozen. The under side is covered entirely
with hair, of a warm and close texture ; and the
hoof, altogether, is very broad, acting exactly like
the snow-shoes which men have constructed for
giving them a larger space to stand on than their
feet, and thus avoid sinking. Moreover, the deer
spreads the hoof as wide as possible when it touches
the ground : but, as this breadth would be incon-
venient in the air, by occasioning a greater resist-
ance while he is moving along, no sooner does he
lift the hoof than the two parts into which it
is cloven fall together, and so lessen the surface
exposed to the air, just as we may recollect the
birds doing with their bodies and wings. The shape
and structure of the hoof are also well adapted
to scrape away the snow, and enable the animal to
get at the particular kind of moss (or lichen)
on which he feeds. This plant, unlike others, is
in its full growth during the winter season ; and the
Kein-deer accordingly thrives, from its abundance,
at the season of his greatest use to man, notwith-
standing the unfavourable effects of extreme cold
upon the animal system.

There are some insects, of which the males have
Vrings, and the females are grubs or worms. Of

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 91

these, the Glow-worm is the most remarkable : it
is the female, and the male is a fly, which would be
unable to find her out, creeping as she does in the
dark lanes, but for the shining light which she gives
to attract him.

There is a singular fish found in the Mediterra-
nean, called the Nautilus, from its skill in naviga-
tion. The back of its shell resembles the hulk of a
ship ; on this it throws itself, and spreads two thin
membranes to serve for two sails, paddling itself on
with its feet or feelers, as oars.

The Ostrich lays and hatches her eggs in the
sands: her form being ill-adapted for sitting on
them, she has a natural oven furnished by the sand,
and the strong heat of the sun. The Cuckoo is
known to build no nest for herself, but to lay in the
nests of other birds ; but late observations show
that she does not lay indiscriminately in the nests
of all birds ; she only chooses the nests of those
which have bills of the same kind with herself, and
therefore feed on the same kind of food. The
Duck, and other birds breeding in muddy places,
have a peculiar formation of the bill : it is both
made so as to act like a strainer, separating
the finer from the grosser parts of the liquid, and
it is more furnished with nerves near the point than
the bills of birds which feed on substances more
exposed to the light ; so that being more sensitive,
it serves better to grope in the dark stream for food.

92 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

The bill of the Snipe is covered with a curious net-
work of nerves for the same purpose ; but the most
singular provision of this kind is observed in a bird
called the Toucan, or Egg-sucker, which chiefly
feeds on the eggs found in birds' nests, and in coun-
tries where these are very deep and dark. Its bill
is broad and long ; when examined, it appears
completely covered with branches of nerves in all
directions ; so that, by groping in a deep and dark
nest it can feel its w^ay as accurately as the finest and
most delicate finger could. Almost all kinds of
birds build their nests of materials found where
they inhabit, or use the nests of other birds ; but
the Swallow of Java lives in rocky caverns on the
sea, where there are no materials at all for the pur-
pose of building. It is therefore so formed as to
secrete in its body a kind of slime with which
it makes a nest, much prized as a delicate food in
Eastern countries.

Plants, in many remarkable instances, are pro-
vided for by equally wonderful and skilful con-
trivances. There is one, the Muscipula, Fly-
trap, or Fly-catcher, which has small prickles in
the inside of two leaves, or half leaves, joined by a
hinge ; a juice or syrup is provided on their inner
surface, which acts as a bait to allure flies. There
are several small spines or prickles standing upright
in this syrup, and upon the only part of each leaf
that is sensitive to the touch. When the fly, there-

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 93

fore, settles upon this part, its touching-, as it were,
the spring of the trap, occasions the leaves to shut
and kill and squeeze the insect ; whose juices and
the air arising from their rotting serve as food to
the plant.

In the West Indies, and in other hot countries of
South America, where rain sometimes does not fall
for a great length of time, a kind of plant called
the Wild-pme grows upon the branches of the
trees, and also on the bark of the trunk. It has
hollow or bag-like leaves so formed as to make
little reservoirs of water, the rain falling into them
through channels which close at the top when full,
and prevent it from evaporating. The seed of this
useful plant has small floating threads, by which,
when carried through the air, it catches any tree in
the way, and falls on it and grows. Wherever it
takes root, though on the under side of a bough, it
grows straight upwards, otherwise the leaves would
not hold water. It holds in one leaf from a pint to
a quart ; and although it must be of great use to
the trees it grows on, to birds and other animals
its use is even greater.

" When we find these pines," says Dampier, the
famous navigator, " we stick our knives into the
leaves just above the root, and the water gushing
out, we catch it in our hats, as I myself have fre-
quently done to my great relief."

Another tree, called the Water-ivitli^ in Jamaica,
has similar uses : it is like a vine in size and shape.

94 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

and though growing in parched districts, is yet so
fall of clear sap or water, that by cutting a piece
two or three yards long, and merely holding it to
the mouth, a plentiful draught is obtained. In the
East there is a plant somewhat of the same kind,
called the Bejuco, which grows near other trees
and twines round them, with its end hanging down-
wards, but so full of juice, that, on cutting it,
a good stream of water spouts from it ; and this, not
only by the stalk touching the tree so closely must
refresh it, but affords a supply to animals, and to
the weary herdsman on the mountains. Another
plant, the Nepenthes distillatoria, is found in the
same regions, with a yet more singular structure.
It has natural mugs or tankards hanging from its
leaves, and holding each from a pint to a quart of
very pure water. Two singular provisions are to
be marked in this vegetable. There grows over
the mouth of the tankard, a leaf nearly its size and
shape, like a lid or cover, which prevents evapora-
tion from the sun's rays ; and the water that fills
the tankard is perfectly sweet and clear, although
the ground in which the plant grows is a marsh of
the most muddy and unwholesome kind. The pro-
cess of vegetation filtrates or distils the liquid, so
as to produce from the worst, the purest water.*
The Palo de Vaca, or cow-tree, grows in South

* A specimen of this curious plant, though of a small size,
is to be found in the fine collection at Wentworth. reared by
Mr. Cooper.

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 95

America, upon the most dry and rocky soil, and in
a climate where for months not a drop of rain falls.
On piercing the trunk, however, a sweet and
nourishing milk is obtained, which the natives
gladly receive in large bowls. If some plants thus
furnish drink, where it might least be expected,
others prepare, as it were, in the desert, the food
of man in abundance. A single Tapioca tree is said
to afford, from its pith, the whole sustenance of
several men for a season.

V. ADVANTAGES AND PLEASURES OF SCIENCE.

After the many instances or samples which have
now been given of the nature and objects of
Natural Science, we might proceed to a different
field, and describe in the same way the other grand
branch of human knowledge, that which teaches the
properties or habits of Mind — the intellectual
faculties of man, or the powers of his understand-
ing, by which he perceives, imagines, remembers,
and reasons ; — his moral faculties, or the feelings
and passions which influence him ; — and, lastly, as
a conclusion or result drawn from the whole, his
duties both towards himself as an individual, and
towards others as a member of society : which last
head opens to our view the whole doctrines of
political science, including the nature of govern-

96 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES. AND

ments, of policy, and generally of laws. But we
shall abstain at present from entering at all upon
this field, and shall now take up the subject more
particularly pointed at through the course of the
foregoing observations, and to illustrate which
they have been framed, namely, — the Use and
Pleasure of Scientific Studies.

Man is composed of two parts, body and mind,
connected indeed together, but wholly different
from one another. The nature of the union — the
part of our outward and visible frame in which it
is peculiarly formed — or whether the soul be indeed
connected or not with any particular portion of the
body, so as to reside there — are points as yet
wholly hid from our knowledge, and which are
likely to remain for ever concealed. But this we
know, as certainly as we can know any truth, that
there is such a thing as the Mind ; and that we
have at the least as good proof of its existence,
independent of the Body, as we have of the exist-
ence of the Body itself. Each has its uses, and
each has its peculiar gratifications. The bounty of
Providence has given us outward senses to be
employed, and has furnished the means of gratify-
ing them in various kind, and in ample measure.
As long as we only taste those pleasures according
to the rules of prudence and of our duty, that is,
in moderation for our own sakes, and in harmless-
ness towards our neighbours, we fulfil rather than

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 97

thwart the purpose of our being. But the same
bountiful Providence has endowed us with the
higher nature also — ^with understandings as well as
with senses — with faculties that are of a more ex-
alted order, and admit of more refined enjoyments,
than any to which the bodily frame can minister ;
and by pursuing such gratifications, rather than
those of mere sense, we fulfil the most exalted ends
of our creation, and obtain both a present and
a future reward. These things are often said, but
they are not therefore the less true, or the less
worthy of deep attention. Let us mark their prac-
tical application to the occupations and enjoyments
of all branches of society, beginning with those
who form the great bulk of every community, the
working classes, by what names soever their voca-
tions may be called — professions, arts, trades,
handicrafts, or common labour.

1. The first object of every man who has to
depend upon his own exertions must needs be
to provide for his daily wants. This is a high
and important office ; it deserves his utmost
attention ; it includes some of his most sacred
duties, both to himself, his kindred, and his
country; and although, in performing this task,
he is only influenced by a regard to his own
interest, or by his necessities, yet it is ah employ-
ment which renders him truly the best benefactor
of the community he belongs to. All other pur-

98 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

suits must give way to this ; the hours which he
devotes to learning must be after he has done his
work ; his independence, without which he is not
fit to be called a man, requires first of all that he
should have insured for himself, and those depen-
dent on him, a comfortable subsistence before he
can have a right to taste any indulgence, either of
his senses or of his mind ; and the more he learns —
the greater progress he makes in the sciences — the
more will he value that independence, and the more
will he prize the industry, the liabits of regular
labour, whereby he is enabled to secure so prime a
blessing.

In one view, it is true, the progress which he
makes in science may help his ordinary exertions,
the main business of every man's life. There is
hardly any trade or occupation in which useful
lessons may not be learnt by studying one science
or another. The necessity of science to the more
liberal professions is self-evident ; little less mani-
fest is the use to their members of extending their
knowledge beyond the branches of study with
which their several pursuits are peculiarly con-
versant. But the other departments of industry
derive hardly less benefit from the same source.
To how many kinds of workmen must a knowledge
of Mechanical Philosophy be useful ! To how
many others does Chemistry prove almost neces-
sary ! Every one must with a glance perceive

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 99

that to engineers, v/atch-makers, instrument-
makers, bleachers, and dyers, those sciences are
most useful, if not necessary. But carpenters and
masons are surely likely to do their work better for
knowing how to measure, which Practical Mathe-
matics teaches them, and how to estimate the
strength of timber, of walls, and of arches, which
they learn from Practical Mechanics ; and they
who work in various metals are certain to be the
more skilful in their trades for knowing the nature
of those substances, and their relations to both
heat and other metals, and to the airs and liquids
they come in contact with. Nay, the farm servant,
or day-labourer, whether in his master's employ, or
tending the concerns of his own cottage, must
derive great practical benefit, — must be both a
better servant, and a more thrifty, and therefore
comfortable, cottager, for knowing something of
the nature of soils and manures, which Chemistry
teaches, and something of the habits of animals, and
the qualities and growth of plants, which he learns
from Natural History and Chemistry together. In
truth, though a man be neither mechanic nor
peasant, but only one having a pot to boil, he is
sure to learn from science lessons which will enable
him to cook his morsel better, save his fuel, and
both vary his dish and improve it. The art of good
and cheap cookery is intimately connected with the
principles of chemical philosophy, and has received

100 OBJECTS, ADVAIVTAGES, AND

much, and will yet receive more, improvement
from their application. Nor is it enough to say,
that philosophers may discover all that is wanted,
and may invent practical methods, which it is
sufficient for the working man to learn by rote
without knowing the principles. He never will
work so well if he is ignorant of the principles ;
and for a plain reason : — if he only learn his lesson
by rote, the least change of circumstances puts him
out. Be the method ever so general, cases will
always arise in which it must be varied in order to
apply ; and if the workman only knows the rule
without knowing the reason, he must be at fault
the moment he is required to make any new appli-
cation it. This, then, is the first use of learning
the principles of science: it makes men more
skilful, expert, and useful in the particular kinds
of work by which they are to earn their bread, and
by which they are to make it go far and taste well
when earned.

2. But another use of such knowledge to handi-
craftsmen is equally obvious : it gives every man
a chance, according to his natural talents, of
becoming an improver of the art he works at, and
even a discoverer in the sciences connected with it.
He is daily handling the tools and materials with
which new experiments are to be made ; and daily
witnessing the operations of nature, whether in the
motions and pressures of bodies, or in their chemi-

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 101

cal actions on each other. All opportunities of
making experiments must be unimproved, all ap-
pearances must pass unobserved, if he has no know-
ledge of the principles ; but with this knowledge
he is more likely than another person to strike out
something new which may be useful in art, or
curious or interesting in science. Very few great
discoveries have been made by chance and by
ignorant persons, much fewer than is generally
supposed. It is commonly told of the steam-engine,
that an idle boy being employed to stop and open
a valve, saw that he could save himself the trouble
of attending and watching it, by fixing a plug upon
a part of the machine which came to the place at
the proper times, in consequence of the general
movement. This is possible, no doubt; though
nothing very certain is known respecting the origin
of the story ; but improvements of any value are
very seldom indeed so easily found out, and hardly
another instance can be named of important dis-
coveries so purely accidental. They are generally
made by persons of competent knowledge, and who
are in search of them. The improvements of the
Steam-engine by Watt resulted from the most
learned investigation of mathematical, mechanical,
and chemical truths. Arkwright devoted many
years, five at the least, to his invention of spinning-
jennies, and he was a man perfectly conversant in
everything that relates to the construction of

p

102 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

machinery : he had minutely examined it, and knew
the effects of each part, though he had not received
any thing like a scientific education. If he had,
we should in all probability have been indebted to
him for scientific discoveries as well as practical
improvements. The most beautiful and useful in-
vention of late times, the Safety -lamp, was the
reward of a series of philosophical experiments
made by one thoroughly skilled in every branch of
chemical science. The new process of Eefining
Sugar, by which more money has been made in a
shorter time, and with less risk and trouble, than
was ever perhaps gained from an invention, was
discovered by a most accomplished chemist,* and
was the fruit of a long course of experiments, in
the progress of which, known philosophical prin-
ciples Avere constantly applied, and one or two new
principles ascertained. But in so far as chance has
anything to do with discovery, surely it is worth
the while of those who are constantly working in
particular employments to obtain the knowledge re-
quired, because their chances are greater than other
people's of so applying that knowledge as to hit
upon new and useful ideas : they are always in the
way of perceiving what is wanting, or what is amiss
in the old methods ; and they have a better chance
of making the improvements. In a word, to use a
common expression, they are in the way of good

* Edward Howard, brother of the Duke of Norfolk.

PliEASURES OF SCIENCE. ]03

luck ; and if they possess the requisite information,
they can take advantage of it when it comes to
them. This, then, is the second great use of learn-
ing the sciences : it enables men to make im-
provements in the arts, and discoveries in philo-
sophy, which may directly benefit themselves and
mankind.

3. Now, these are the practical advantages of
learning; but the third benefit is, when rightly
considered, just as practical as the other two — the
pleasure derived from mere knowledge, without
any Vi&w to our own bodily enjoyments : and this
applies to all classes, the idle as well as the indus-
trious, if, indeed, it be not peculiarly applicable to
those who enjoy the inestimable blessing of having
time at their command. Every man is by nature
endowed with the power of gaining knowledge ; and
the taste for it, the capacity to be pleased with it,
forms equally a part of the natural constitution of
his mind. It is his own fault, or the fault of his edu-
cation, if he derives no gratification from it. There
is a satisfaction in knowing what others know — ^in
not being more ignorant than those we live with :
there is a satisfaction in knowing what others do
not know — in being more informed than they are.
But this is quite independent of the pure pleasure of
knowledge — of gratifying a curiosity implanted in
us by Providence, to lead us towards the better un-
derstanding of the universe in which our lot is cast,

F 2

104 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

and the nature wherewithal we are clothed. That
every man is capable of being delighted with ex-
tending his information upon matters of science will
be evident from a few plain considerations.

Eeflect how many parts of the reading, even of
persons ignorant of all sciences, refer to matters
wholly unconnected with any interest or advantage
to be derived from the knowledge acquired. Every
one is amused with reading a story : a romance may
divert some, and a fairy tale may entertain others ;
but no benefit beyond the amusement is derived
from this source : the imagination is gratified ; and
we willingly spend a good deal of time and a little
money in this gratification, rather than in resting
after fatigue, or in any other bodily indulgence.
So we read a newspaper, without any view to the
advantage we are to gain from learning the news,
but because it interests and amuses us to know what
is passing. One object, no doubt, is to become ac-
quainted with matters relating to the welfare of the
country ; but we also read the occurrences which
do little or not at all regard the public interests,
and we take a pleasure in reading them. Acci-
dents, adventures, anecdotes, crimes, and a variety
of other things amuse us, independent of the infor-
mation respecting public affairs, in which w^e feel
interested as citizens of the state, or as members of
a particular body. It is of little importance to in-
quire how and why these things excite our atten-

PLEASURES OP SCIENCE. 105

tion, and wherefore the reading about them is a plea-
sure ; the fact is certain ; and it proves clearly that
there is a positive enjoyment in knowing what we
did not know before ; and this pleasure is greatly
increased when the information is such as excites
our surprise, wonder, or admiration. Most persons
who take delight in reading tales of ghosts, which
they know to be false, and feel all the while to be
silly in the extreme, are merely gratified, or rather
occupied with the strong emotions of horror excited
by the momentary belief, for it can only last an in-
stant. Such reading is a degrading waste of pre-
cious time, and has even a bad effect upon the
feelings and the judgment.* But true stories of hor-
rid crimes, as murders, and pitiable misfortunes, as
shipwrecks, are not much more instructive. It
may be better to read these than to sit yawning and
idle — much better than to sit drinking or gaming,
which, when carried to the least excess, are crimes
in themselves, and the fruitfid parents of many
more. But this is nearly as much as can be said
for such vain and unprofitable reading. If it be a

•SI

* Children's hooks have at all times been made upon the
pernicious plan of exciting wonder, generally horror, at
whatever risk. The folly and misery occasioned by this
error, it would be difficult to estimate. The time may come
when it will be felt and understood. At present, the inve-
terate habits of parents and nurses prevent the children from
benefiting by the excellent lessons of Mrs. Barbauld and Miss
Edgeworth.

106 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

pleasure to gratify curiosity, to know what we were
ignorant of, to have our feelings of wonder called
forth, how pure a delight of this very kind does
Natural Science hold out to its students ! Eecol-
lect some of the extraordinary discoveries of Me-
chanical Philosophy. How wonderful are the laws
that regulate the motions of fluids ! Is there any-
thing in all the idle books of tales and horrors more
truly astonishing than the fact, that a few pounds
of water may, by mere pressure, without any ma-
chinery— by merely being placed in a particular
way, produce an irresistible force ? What can be
more strange, than that an ounce weight should
balance hundreds of pounds, by the intervention of
a few bars of thin iron ? Observe the extraordinary
truths which Optical Science discloses. Can any
thing surprise us more, than to find that the colour
of white is a mixture of all others — that red, and
blue, and, green, and all the rest, merely by being
blended in certain proportions, form what we had
fancied rather to be no colour at all, than all
colours together ? Chemistry is not behind in its
wonders. That the diamond should be made of the
same material with coal; that water should be
chiefly composed of an inflammable substance ; that
acids should be, for the most part, formed of dif-
ferent kinds of air, and that one of those acids,
whose strength can dissolve almost any of the
metals, should consist of the self-same ingredients

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 107

with the common air we breathe ; that salts should
be of a metallic nature, and composed, in great part,
of metals, fluid like quicksilver, but lighter than
water, and which, without any heating, take fire
upon being exposed to the air, and by burning,
form the substance so abounding in saltpetre and
in the ashes of burnt wood: these, surely, are
things to excite the wonder of any reflecting mind
— ^nay, of any one but little accustomed to reflect.
And yet these are trifling when compared to the
prodigies which Astronomy opens to our view : the
enormous masses of the heavenly bodies ; their im-
mense distances ; their countless numbers, and
their motions, whose swiftness mocks the uttermost
efforts of the imagination.

Akin to this pleasure of contemplating new and
extraordinary truths, is the gratification of a more
learned curiosity, by tracing resemblances and re-
lations between things, which, to common appre-
hension, seem widely different. Mathematical
science to thinking minds affords this pleasure in a
high degree. It is agreeable to know that the three
angles of every triangle, whatever be its size,
howsoever its sides may be inclined to each other,
are always, of necessity, when taken together, the
same in amount : that any regular kind of figure
whatever, upon the one side of a right-angled
triangle, is equal to the two figures of the same
kind upon the two other sides, whatever be the size

108 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

of the triangle : that the properties of an oval curve
are extremely similar to those of a curve which
appears the least like it of any, consisting of two
branches of infinite extent, with their backs turned
to each other. To trace such unexpected resem-
blances is, indeed, the object of all philosophy;
and experimental science, in particular, is occupied
Avith such investigations, giving us general views,
and enabling us to explain the appearances of na-
ture, that is, to show how one appearance is con-
nected with another. But we are now considering
only the gratification derived from learning these
things. It is surely a satisfaction, for instance,
to know that the same thing, or motion, or what-
ever it is, which causes the sensation of heat, causes
also fluidity, and expands bodies in all directions ;
that electricity, the light which is seen on the back
of a cat when slightly rubbed on a frosty evening,
is the very same matter with the lightning of the
clouds ; — that plants breathe like ourselves, but dif-
ferently by day and by night ;• — that the air which
burns in our lamps enables a balloon to mount, and
causes the globules of the dust of plants to rise,
float through the air, and continue their race — in
a word, is the immediate cause of vegetation.
Nothing can at first view appear less like, or less
likely to be caused by the same thing, than the pro-
cesses of burning and of breathing, — the rust of me-
tals and burning, — an acid and rust, — the influence

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 109

of a plant on the air it grows in by night, and of
an animal on the same air at any time, nay, and of
a body burning in that air ; and yet all these are
the same operation. It is an undeniable fact, that
the very same thing which makes the fire burn,
makes metals rust, forms acids, and enables plants
and animals to breathe ; that these operations, so
unlike to common eyes, when examined by the light
of science are the same, — the rusting of metals, —
the formation of acids, — the burning of inflammable
bodies, — the breathing of animals, — and the growth
of plants by night. To know this is a positive gra-
tification. Is it not pleasing to find the same sub-
stance in various situations extremely unlike each
other ; — to meet with fixed air as the produce of
burning, of breathing, and of vegetation ; — to find
that it is the choke-damp of mines, the bad air in
the grotto at Naples, the cause of death in neglect-
ing brewers' vats, and of the brisk and acid flavour
of Seltzer and other mineral springs ? Nothing
can be less like than the working of a vast steam-
engine, of the old construction, and the crawling of
a fly upon the window. Yet we find that these two
operations are performed by the same means, the
weight of the atmosphere, and that a sea-horse
climbs the ice-hills by no other power. Can any-
thing be more strange to contemplate ? Is there in
all the fairy-tales that ever were fancied anything
more calculated to arrest the attention and to oc-

f3

110 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

cupy and to gratify the mind, than this most unex-
pected resemblance between things so unlike to the
eyes of ordinary beholders ? What more pleasing
occupation than to see uncovered and bared before
our eyes the very instrument and the process by
which Nature works ? Then we raise our views to
the structure of the heavens ; and are again grati-
fied with tracing accurate but most unexpected re-
semblances. Is it not in the highest degree in-
teresting to find, that the power which keeps this
earth in its shape, and in its path, wheeling upon
its axis and round the sun, extends over all the
other worlds that compose the universe, and gives
to each its proper place and motion ; that this same
power keeps the moon in her path round our earth,
and our earth in its path round tlie sun, and each
planet in its path ; that the same power causes the
tides upon our globe, and the peculiar form of the
globe itself; and that, after all, it is the same
power which makes a stone fall to the ground ? To
learn these things, and to reflect upon them, occu-
pies the faculties, fills the mind, and produces cer-
tain as well as pure gratification.

But if the knowledge of the doctrines unfolded
by science is pleasing, so is the being able to trace
the steps by which those doctrines are investigated,
and their truth demonstrated: indeed you cannot
be said, in any sense of the word, to have learnt
them, or to know them, if you have not so studied

PLEASURES OF SCIENCJ:. Ill

them as to perceive how they are proved. Without
this you never can expect to remember them long,
or to understand them accurately ; and that would
of itself be reason enough for examining closely
the grounds they rest on. But there is the highest
gratification of all, in being able to see distinctly
those grounds, so as to be satisfied that a belief in
the doctrines is well founded. Hence to follow a
demonstration of a grand mathematical truth — to
perceive how clearly and how inevitably one step
succeeds another, and how the whole steps lead to
the conclusion — to observe how certainly and un-
erringly the reasoning goes on from things per-
fectly self-evident, and by the smallest addition at
each step, every one being as easily taken after the
one before, as the first step of all was, and yet the
result being something not only far from self-
evident, but so general and strange, that you can
hardly believe it to be true, and are only convinced
of it by going over the whole reasoning — this
operation of the understanding, to those who so
exercise themselves, always affords the highest de-
light. The contemplation of experimental inquiries,
and the examination of reasoning founded upon the
facts which our experiments and observations dis-
close, is another fruitful source of enjoyment, and
no other means can be devised for either imprinting
the results upon our memory, or enabling us really
to enjoy the whole pleasures of science. They who

112 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

found the study of some branches dry and tedious
at the first, have generally become more and more
interested as they went on ; each difficulty over-
come gives an additional relish to the pursuit, and
makes us feel, as it were, that we have by our work
and labour established a right of property in the
subject. Let any man pass an evening in vacant
idleness, or even in reading some silly tale, and
compare the state of his mind when he goes to sleep
or gets up next morning with its state some other
day when he has passed a few hours in going
through the proofs, by facts and reasoning, of some
of the great doctrines in Natural Science, learning
truths wholly new to him, and satisfying himself by
careful examination of the grounds on which known
truths rest, so as to be not only acquainted with the
doctrines themselves, but able to show why he be-
lieves them, and to prove before others that they
are true ; — he will find as great a difference as can
exist in the same being, — the difference between
looking back upon time unprofitably wasted, and
time spent in self-improvement : he will feel himself
in the one case listless and dissatisfied, in the other
comfortable and happy : in the one case, if he d6
not appear to himself humbled, at least he will not
have earned any claim to his own respect ; in the
other case, he will enjoy a proud consciousness of
having, by his own exertions, become a wiser and
therefore a more exalted creature.

PLEASURES OP SCIENCE. 113

To pass our time in the study of the sciences, in
learning what others have discovered, and in ex-
tending the bounds of human knowledge, has, in all
ages, been reckoned the most dignified and happy
of human occupations ; and the name of Philosopher,
or Lover of Wisdom, is given to those who lead
such a life. But it is by no means necessary that
a man should do nothing else than study known
truths, and explore new, in order to earn this high
title. Some of the greatest philosophers, in all
ages, have been engaged in the pursuits of active
life ; and an assiduous devotion of the bulk of our
time to the work which our condition requires, is
an important duty, and indicates the possession of
practical wisdom. This, however, does by no
means hinder us from applying the rest of our
time, beside what nature requires for meals and
rest, to the study of science ; and he v/ho, in w hat-
ever station his lot may be cast, works his day's
work, and improves his mind in the evening, as
well as he who, placed above such necessity, prefers
the refined and elevating pleasures of knowledge
to the low gratification of the senses, richly de-
serves the name of a True Philosopher.

One of the most delightful treats which science
affords us is the knowledge of the extraordinary
powers with which the human mind is endowed.
No man, until he has studied philosophy, can have
a just idea of the great things for which Providence

114 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND

has fitted his understanding — the extraordinary dis-
proportion which there is between his natural
strength and the powers of his mind and the force
he derives from them. When we survey the
marvellous truths of Astronomy, we are first of
all lost in the feeling of immense space, and of the
comparative insignificance of this globe and its
inhabitants. But there soon arises a sense of grati-
fication and of new wonder at perceiving how so
insignificant a creature has been able to reach such
a knowledge of the unbounded system of the uni-
verse— to penetrate, as it were, through all space,
and become familiar with the laws of nature at
distances so enormous as to baffle our imagina-
tion— to be able to say, not merely that the Sun has
329,630 times the quantity of matter which our
globe has, Jupiter 308i-Vj ^^'^ Saturn 93^ times;
but that a pound of lead weighs at the Sun 22 lbs.
15 ozs. 16 dwts. 8 grs. and ^ of a grain ! at Jupiter

2 lbs. 1 oz. 19 dwts. 1 gr. f^ ; and at Saturn 1 lb.

3 ozs. 8 dwts. 20 grs. -^V part of a grain ! And
what is far more wonderful, to discover the laws
by which the whole of this vast system is held
together and maintained through countless ages in
perfect security and order. It is surely no mean
reward of our labour to become acquainted with
the prodigious genius of those who have almost
exalted the nature of man above its destined sphere,
when, admitted to a fellowship with these loftier

PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 115

minds, we discover how it comes to pass that, by
universal consent, they hold a station apart, rising
over all the Great Teachers of mankind, and spoken
of reverently, as if Newton and Laplace were
not the names of mortal men.

The highest of all our gratifications in the con-
templations of science remains : we are raised by
them to an understanding of the infinite wisdom
and goodness which the Creator has displayed in
liis works. Not a step can we take in any di-
rection without perceiving the most extraordinary
traces of design ; and the skill everywhere conspi-
cuous is calculated, in so vast a proportion of
instances, to promote the happiness of living crea-
tures, and especially of our own kind, that we can
feel no hesitation in concluding that, if we knew
the whole scheme of Providence, every part would
be found in harmony with a plan of absolute bene-
volence. Independently, however, of this most
consoling inference, the delight is inexpressible of
being able to follow, as it were, with our eyes, the
marvellous works of the Great Architect of Nature
— to trace the unbounded power and exquisite skill
which are exhibited in the most minute, as well as
the mightiest parts of his system. The pleasure
derived from this study is unceasing, and so various,
that it never tires the appetite. But it is unlike
the low gratifications of sense in another respect :
while those hurt the health, debase the understand-

116 PLEASURES OF SCIENCE.

ing-, and corrupt the feelings, this elevates and
refines our nature, teaching us to look upon all
earthly objects as insignificant, and below our
notice, except the pursuit of knowledge and the
cultivation of virtue; and giving a dignity and
importance to the enjoyment of life, which the
frivolous and the grovelling cannot even com-
prehend.

Let us, then, conclude, that the Pleasures of
Science go hand in hand with the solid benefits
derived from it ; that they tend, unlike other gra-
tifications, not only to make our lives more agree-
able, but better ; and that a rational being is bound
by every motive of interest and of duty, to direct
his mind towards pursuits which are found to be
the sure path of Virtue as well as of Happiness.

OBJECTS,

PLEASURES, AND ADVANTAGES

OF

POLITICAL SCIENCE.

( 119 )

OBJECTS, &c.

The Sciences which form the subject of our most
useful study, and which, next to the cultivation of
religion and the practice of virtue, are the source
of our purest enjoyments in this world, may be
divided into three great classes or branches, ac-
cording to their several objects. Those objects are —
the Relations of Abstract Ideas — the Properties of
Matter — the Qualities of Mind. All the subjects
of scientific research may be classed under one or
other of these three heads ; and all the sciences
may, accordingly, be ranged under one or other
branch of a corresponding threefold division.

To the first branch belong the abstract ideas of
quantity — that is, of space in its diflPerent forms
and portions ; and of these the science of Geometry
treats ; — the abstract ideas of number, which form
the subject of Arithmetic, general or particular,
the one called Algebra, the other Common Arith-
metic, the comparison and classification of all
ideas, generally, whether abstract or not, and
whether relating to matter or mind ; and this forms

120 OBJECTS, PLEASURES, AND

the subject of Logic, or the science of reasoinrig
and classification.

The first branch deals with mere abstract ideas,
and has no necessary reference to actual existences ;
these form the subjects of the other two, which, ac-
cordingly, do not, like the former, rest wholly
upon reasoning, but depend upon experience also.
The one branch relating to matter, its properties
and motions, is termed Physics,* or Natural Philo-
sophy ; the other, relating to the nature and affec-
tions of the mind, is termed Metaphysics or
Psychology, "f or Moral or Mental Philosophy.

Physical or Natural Philosophy is subdivided
into various branches : one, for example, treating of
weight and motion, is called Dynamics, or
Mechanics and Statics ; another, treating of the
heavenly bodies, is termed Astronomy ; another, of
light, is termed Optics ; another, of the qualities
and composition of substances, called Chemistry ;
another, of the properties of living bodies, called
Anatomy and Physiology ; another, of the classifi-
cation of substances and animals, called Natur^il
History. To all of these accurate observation and
experiment may be applied, and to some of them
mathematical principles, by which extraordinary

* From the Greek word signifying natural objects or
qualities.

t From the Greek word signifying to discourse of the
soul or miiid.

ADVANTAGES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. 121

progress has been made in extending our knowledge
of the laws of nature.

Moral or Mental Philosophy consists of two

great subdivisions : one treating of the powers,

faculties, and affections of the mind — that is, its

intellectual as well as its moral or active powers —

the faculties of the understanding and those of the

will, or our appetites and feelings as well as our

intellects — and this branch treats of all spiritual

existences, from the Great First Cause, the Creator

and Preserver of the universe, to the mind of man

and his habits, and down to the faculties and the

instincts of the lower animals. This division is

sometimes called Psychology, when that phrase is

not used for the whole of moral science. The other

subdivision treats of our duties towards the Deity

and towards our fellow-creatures, and is generally

termed Ethics.* But perhaps the better and more

correct division of the whole of Moral Philosophy

is to consider it in two points of view — as it treats

of man in his individual capacity ; and man as a

member of society. This last branch is termed

Political I Science, and forms the subject of the

following Discourse.

We have already adverted to one important cir-

* Fi'om the Greek for morals.

t From the Greek for city or state — the different commu-
nities in Greece having originally been cities and their
adjoining territories.

122 OBJECTS, PI.EASURES, AND

cumstance which distinguishes both the two branches
of science which treat of actual existences from
those which treat of abstract ideas and their rela-
tions. The truths of both Natural and Moral
Philosophy differ from those of abstract science in
this important particular, that they partly depend
on experience and not exclusively on reasoning;
they are contingent, and not necessary; the world,
moral and material, might have been so constructed
as to render untrue all things now known to be true
respecting it ; whereas the truths of abstract science,
arithmetic for example, are independent of all
contingencies, and do not result from any experi-
ence, and could not possibly have been different
from what they are. It is easy to conceive a world
in which bodies should attract each other by a
wholly different law from that of gravitation ; but
we cannot form to ourselves the idea of any state
of things in which two and two should not be equal
to four, nor the three angles of a triangle equal to
two right angles. It follows that, in the sciences
both of matter and of mind, we must be content
with evidence of an inferior kind to that which the
mathematical sciences employ ; and resting satisfied
with as high a degree of probability as we can
attain, must draw our practical conclusions with
the hesitation which such a liability to error
naturally prescribes.

The first, or abstract branch, is capable of appli-

ADVANTAGES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. 123

cation to the other two. The precision with which
the qualities and the functions of matter are
observable, and the ease with which these may be
subjected to experiment, enable us to investigate
them with great facility, and to draw our general
conclusions with much certainty. But this power
is greatly increased by the use of mathematical
principles, which enable us to deduce general
inferences from observed facts, the truth of which
facts being admitted, those inferences follow as
absolute and necessary, and not as matter of con-
tingent truth. Thus the observations of astronomers
show certain appearances of the heavenly bodies ;
the observations of mechanicians show certain things
respecting falling bodies on our globe. But sup-
pose the truth of such observations to be admitted,
mathematical reasoning shows, without the possi-
bility of error or of doubt, that the power of gra-
vitation extends to the heavens, and that the planets
wheel round the sun as their centre by the same
power which makes a stone fall to the ground if
unsupported. This inference is a certain and ne-
cessary truth, if the facts be true which our obser-
vation teaches ; and such a mixture of necessary
with contingent truths, forms a very large portion
of Physics, or Natural Philosophy. But it is only
in a few cases that we can obtain the aid of mathe-
matical reasoning to render our inferences certain
and necessary from facts observed in the science of

124 OBJECTS, PLEASURES, AND

mind, as it is also comparatively few observations
and experiments that we are enabled to make upon
its qualities. Hence there is a far less degree of
certainty in this than we can attain in the physical
sciences, and hence we ought to be doubly on our
guard against dogmatism and intolerance of other
men's opinions in all the departments of this less
€xact philosophy. The controversies which have
oftentimes arisen among metaphysicians, strongly
illustrate how little the positive dogmatism and
exclusive intolerance of men holding one class of
opinions towards those who held another, was in
proportion to the degree of evidence upon which
their inquiries proceeded. Mathematicians who
run hardly any risk of error — naturalists who run
but little more — have never been so bigoted and so
uncharitable as those whose speculations are fated
to be always involved in more or less of doubt ; and
when we come to political reasoners, we find, be-
side the intolerance of metaphysicians, a new source
of error and of fault in the excitement which the
interests of men, real or supposed, lend to their
passions.

It would, however, be an equally groundless and
a very pernicious error to run from the extreme of
dogmatism into the extreme of scepticism, and to
suppose that because the evidence upon which our
conclusions in moral science rest is inferior to the
proofs of mathematical, and even of physical truth,

ADVANTAGES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. 125

therefore we cannot trust the deductions of ethical
principles, or their applications to the affairs of men
as members of political communities. The more
nice and subtle points of metaphysical philosophy
are those upon which the chief doubts prevail.
Some portions of psychology are placed above the
reach of the human faculties, as indeed are some of
the more intimate qualities of matter ; and it is
eminently improbable that we shall ever be able to
ascertain the essential nature of mind ; but so no
more are we ever likely to ascertain the ultimate
cause of gravitation, or to penetrate into the laws
which govern the primary combinations of material
particles. Still, the more important, because the
more practical, subjects of our inquiries into the
nature of the human mind, the laws which govern
man's habits as an individual, and the principles of
human action upon which the structure of society
and its movements depend, are not placed on such
unapproachable heights. Within certain limits,
safe conclusions can be drawn respecting these im-
portant matters. Facts may be observed, collected,
and generalized, not, certainly, with the perfect ac-
curacy which can be attained in the inductions of
physical science, yet still with sufficient correctness
to form the groundwork of safe practical inferences.
General principles of Moral and Political Science
may thus be established, by reasoning upon the
results of experience ; and from those principles,

G

126 OBJECTS, PLEASURES, AND

rules for our guidance maybe drawn, highly useful
both in the regulation of the individual understand-
ing, and in managing the concerns of communities
of men. To deny that Morals and Politics may be
reduced to a science, because the truths of Natural
Philosophy rest upon more clear evidence and as-
sume a more precise form, would be as absurd as to
deny that experimental science is deserving of the
name, because its proofs are more feeble, and its
propositions less definite and less closely connected
together than those of pure mathematics.

But it is more especially with Political Phi-
losophy that we have now to do ; and there are
many reasons why its truths should be better capa-
ble of clear demonstration and of distinct statement
than those of the other branches of Moral or Ethical
Science.

1. In the first place, although each individual by
his consciousness is continually in a situation that
enables him to make observations on the human
faculties by attending to the operations of his own
mind, yet we know that hardly any habit is later
acquired by the few who ever learn it at all, than
the habit of turning the observation inwards, and
making the mind the subject of its own contempla-
tions. It is a process, indeed, which not one person
in a hundred thousand ever thinks of undertaking.
But the bulk of mankind are political observers.
The operations of government, the habits and pro-

ADVANTAGES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. 127

ceedings of the people, the conduct of communities,
their fortunes and their fate, form the daily subject
of reflection with all persons even of an ordinary
degree of intelligence in every civilized country,
and do not escape the observation of the bulk of the
people, even in communities subject to such re-
straints from the structure of their governments, as
to render the open discussion of such matters hardly
possible in any class of society. Hence the obser-
vation of facts on political subjects is performed
almost universally at all times, whether these facts
are collected and classified or not.

2. It follows, in the next place, that the appetite
for knowledge of this description is far more gene-
rally diffused than for either moral or ethical know-
ledge ; that numberless bodies of men in every
country conceive themselves interested in political
subjects, who would regard metaphysical specu-
lations as wholly foreign to their concerns ; and
that there prevails everywhere a strong desire for
such information, unless in places where mis-
government may have actually reduced the minds
of the community to a state bordering upon the
dulness and insensibility of the brute creation.

o. Thirdly. The facts on which Political Science
rests are more plain, manifest, and tangible, than
those which form the subject of Moral Philosophy
in its other branches. Those facts are more obvious ;
they are perceptible in most cases to the senses ;

G 2

128 OBJECTS, PJLEASURES, AND

they are reducible to number and measure. The
accumulation or diminution of public wealth, — the
prosperity or suffering of the people, — the pro-
gress of population, — the quiet or disturbed state of
a country, — the prevalence of one portion or order
of a state over the others, — the effect of a particular
form of government, — the changes consequent
upon its altered structure ; all these are matters of
distinct observation, and most of them subject to
exact calculation. But these, and such as these,
are the facts upon which the doctrines of Political
Science are grounded, and these doctrines are the
results of reasoning upon such facts.

4. Fourthly. The mere facts themselves con-
nected with political science are far more important
and far more interesting than those on which the
other branches of moral philosophy rest. The pe-
culiar action of the intellectual faculties, or of the
feelings and passions, is not a subject of great ex-
tent. All we know of it is soon told, and there is
but little variety in different individuals as far as it
is concerned. Different characters may be de-
scribed, and the history of individuals affords gTcat
entertainment, as well as the matter of much in-
teresting reflection ; but unless their actions are
also comprehended in the narrative, the interest
flags, and the story can scarcely go on ; and those
actions almost always come within the province of
Political Science. The intellectual or moral habits

ADVANTAGES OF POLITICAL SCIE^X•E. 129

of men as indiv'iduals, apart from their conduct,
form a small and not an extremely interesting-
chapter in the history of man. But how different
are those facts with which the political observer is
concerned ! The mere history of national aifairs —
the narrative of those public events which take
place — the changes in the condition and fortunes
of whole communities — their relations with each
other, whether in peace or war — the rise and decay
of great institutions affecting the welfare of mil-
lions— the progress of a policy upon which the
liappiness, nay, the verj^ existence of whole nations
depends — the varieties in the governments under
which they live — the influence of those Govern-
ments upon the condition of the people — the effects
which they produce upon their intercourse with
other countries, — all these are subjects of most
interesting contemplation in themselves, as mere
facts, wholly independent of any general views to
which they may lead, or of any practical conclu-
sions which may be derived from them.

Mr. Hume has written an ingenious and a sound
dissertation, to prove that Politics — meaning the
branch which treats of the structure of govern-
ments— may be reduced to a science ; and he illus-
trates this by deducing from Political History cer-
tain general principles which must at all times and
in all circumstances hold true. But whether he be
right or not, even if there were no means of draw-
ing such strictly and universally true inferences, at

130 OBJECTS, PLEASURES, ANB

least the importance of the facts which the political
reasoner deals with must be confessed, and the great
interest which attaches to the mere knowledge of
those facts cannot be doubted.

5. Lastly. We may observe that, the facts in
question being of a public nature, and so knov/n to
the world at large, a better security is afforded for
their being accurately observed and truly recorded.
History, statistics, the narrative of public evesrits,
the details of national affairs, — these are the sources
from which the political reasoner draws his facts.
Established institutions, bodies of law, universal^
known customs, wars, treaties, the manifest state of
the world in its various regions at different times,
these are the facts upon which the political phi-
losopher reasons, which he generalizes, from which
he draws his conclusions, on which he builds his
systems. But we shall be the better able to appreciate
the peculiar excellence of this study if we now take
a survey of the science itself, and thus present, as
it were, a map of it to the eye, with the natural
limits and boundaries of the various provinces into
which it is divided.

The great family of mankind dispersed over
the earth occupy its various portions in various
bodies or communities, each bound together by
certain ties, and bearing in those portions a
general resemblance to, or having distinctive fea-
tures in which they differ from, the rest. These
communities differ in their customs, character, and

ADVANTAGES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. 131

institutions ; in their general circumstances and
degree of civilization. The nature of their insti-
tutions,— of the various establishments for public
purposes which exist for the management of their
common affairs, — of the regimen under v/hich and
the rules by which the members of eacli community^
whether compelled by force, or agreeing volun-
tarily, continue to live ; — in a word, the Domestic
Management of each state — forms the subject of
the first great branch or province of Political
Science. The second relates to the intercourse of
different communities with each other ; the mutual
relations of the different communities ; the piin-
ciples or rules established for their demeanour to-
wards one another ; — in a word, the external affairs
of each state, but the national concerns of the whole
considered as one general community, the memljers
of Avhich are not individuals but separate states.
The former province is called Domestic Policy —
the latter. Foreign or International Policy.

Domestic Policy is subdivided into two branches.

Each community must be subject to some kind
of rule, or regimen, or government ; some force
established for restraining the excesses of indi-
viduals, for preventing wrongs and creating and
protecting rights, and for superintending those
things which are necessary to the public security
and conducive to the public benefit, but which,
if left to individuals, never could be accomplished

182 OBJECTS, PliEASURES, AND

at all, and finally, for representing the community
in its intercourse with other states. The nature of
this rule or government differs in different countries
from the accidents of events, and from the pecu-
liarities of natural situation and of national
character. The different forms of government, —
the distribution in each state of the power by which
its people are ruled, — the arrangements M^hich result
from these diversities, — their influence upon the
security, improvement, comfort, and happiness of
the people in each — are the facts from which the
principles must be drawn which constitute the
Science of Government.

This science, then, forming the first great sub-
division of Domestic and National Polity, treats of
two important matters, — first, the Principles relat-
ing to the establishment of all Government gene-
rally, and on which the establishment of the social
relation, the formation of any connection between
the ruler and the people, depends ; and, secondly,
the principles relating to the distribution of power
in different states, — in other words, the different
Constitutions or Forms of Government in different
countries.

But there is another great subdivision of Domes-
tic Polity, not inferior in importance to the former,
and, although intimately connected with it, yet
easily distinguishable from it. The manner in
vrhich men manage their private concerns, — the

ADVANTAGES OF POLiITICAL SCIENCE. 133

course they pursue in their dealings with each
other, — their way of exerting their industry for
their subsistence, or comfort, or indulgence, —
these proceedings may take place independent of
the form of government under which they live ;
and, indeed, as no ruler has anything to do with
them, if each government did its duty, these pro-
ceedings would go on nearly in the same way under
all governments, and only be affected incidentally
by the difference in the form of each. Although,
therefore, the interference of governments directly,
and their influence indirectly, may affect men's
conduct of their own affairs, still 4he principles
which regulate that conduct, and the effects result-
ing from it, form a subject of consideration
evidently distinguishable from that of government.
This subject, then, relates to the wealth, the popu-
lation, the education, of the people ; and the con-
duct of the government, in respect to these particu-
lars, forms an important part of the discussion.
This branch of the subject is termed Economics, or
Political Economy, because it relates to the
management of a nation's domestic affairs as private
economy does to the affairs of a family. The most
important subject of Political Economy is the
accumulation and distribution of wealth, in all its
branches, including foreign and colonial as well as
domestic commerce. But it also treats of the prin-
ciples which regulate the maintenance, increase, or

G 3

134 OBJECTS, PLEASURES, AND

diminution of population, — the religious and civil
education of the people, — the provisions necessary
for securing the due administration of justice, civil
and criminal, and, as subservient to these, the
maintenance of police — the measures required for
supporting the public expenditure or the financial
system — the precautions necessary for the public
defence or the military system — and generally all
institutions, whether supported by private exertions
or by the state, the objects of which are of a public
nature.*

Intimately connected vv^ith Political Economy,
and, indeed, running as it were through all its sub-
divisions, is Political Arithmetic, or the applica-
tion of figures to the various subjects of which
Political Economy treats, — -as the details of public
wealth, commerce, education, finance, population,
civil and military establishments, all of which may
be made more or less the subject of calculation
from given facts. Statistics, or the record
of all the facts relating to the actual situation
of different countries, in these several respects,
is, properly speaking, a branch of Political Arith-
metic.

The function of making those laws which are

* These subjects may be separated from Political
Economy and treated under the head of Functions of Govern-
ment ; they come under what the French call le Proit
Administratif,

ADVANTAGES OP POLITICAL SCIENCE. 135

required from time to time for the government of
a community, is vested in the supreme power of
the State ; and the important office of Legislation,
accordingly, is variously performed in different
countries according to the different constitutions of
each. In all States a great portion of the law is
derived from custom, handed down by tradition and
acted upon in practice, through a succession of
ages. This is called Common or Unwritten Law,
as contradistinguished from Statute or Written
Law; and though some nations have from time
to time reduced to writing the provisions of the
Common Law, thus furnishing themselves with
Codes which comprehended all their laws, yet in
all Systems of Law the distinctions between the
two species may be traced ; and even where a Code
exists, it is known what portions of it were once
Customary or Common Law, because the other, or
Statutory enactments, are known to have been first
introduced at a particular time, wliereas the Com-
mon Law had been used before it was reduced into
writing. The different laws of each State range
themselves under the various heads to which they
belong, those heads being the different subdivisions
of the two great branches of Domestic Policy —
the Political and Economical — already referred to.
But there are certain general principles of Legis-
lation which are of universal application, just as
there are certain principles relating to Govern-

136 OBJECTS, PLEASURES, AND

ment, and certain principles relating to Economics,
which are general, and do not depend upon the
particular institutions established, or the particular
sj^stems adopted in different countries. The science
of Jurisprudence treats of those general principles,
and may be reckoned an appendix, but a most im-
portant one, to the branch of Domestic Policy.

The other main branch of Political Science con-
siders nations as individuals forming a portion of a
larger community — a community of nations ; and
treats of the principles which ought to govern them
in their mutual intercourse. Those views which
form the foundation of this science of Foreign or
International Policy, are evidently, from, their
nature, a refinement introduced in a late peyiod of
society, because those views assume that communi-
ties, each of which is supreme and can have no
superior on earth, are willing to regard themselves
as subject to certain rules in their intercourse with
other nations, — rules which no common chief can
enforce, but the observance of which is rendered
expedient by the interests of all, and which, there-
fore, are generally regarded as binding.

These rules are either those of sound policy or
those of strict justice. The former class presents
certain maxims as useful in regulating the conduct
of nations towards each other, in order to provide
for the general security, by preventing any one
from becoming too powerful, and thus dangerous to

ADVANTAGES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. 137

the independence of the others. The latter class
acknowledges certain rights as belonging to each
community, and denounces the infraction of these
rights as a public wrong, giving the injured party
a title to seek redress by force. Thus this Second
^'jJranch of political science consists of two subdivi-
sions,— the one treats of the principles of poZicy
which should guide nations in their mutual inter-
course of peace and war, in the negotiation of
treaties, the formation of alliances offensive and
defensive, the combination of weak States to resist
a stronger one, the precautions necessary for pre-
venting too great acquisition of strength by any
one State to the derangement of what is termed the
general Balance of Power. These principles form
the subject of Foreign Policy. The other subdi-
vision treats of the rights of nations, — those rights
in peace and war which are by common consent
admitted to belong to each, because the common
interests of humanity, the prevention of war, and
the mitigation of its evils w^hen it does occur,
require some such general understanding and con-
sent ; and the rules relating to this second sub-
division are called the Law of Nations or Inter-
national Law— of which the true description is,
that it forms the code by which the great com-
munity of nations are governed, or ought to be
governed, in their conduct towards each other, as
Municipal Law is the code by which the individual

138 OBJECTS, PLEASURES, AND

members of any particular community are governed
ill their intercourse v/ith one another. It is a very
common error to confound with this branch of law
many of the general principles of jurisprudence
applicable to all nations, and to term these a por-
tion of the Law of Nations.*

It is obvious that of all sciences which form the
subject of human study, none is calculated to afford
greater pleasure, and few so great to the student,
as the important one of which we have just been
describing the nature and the subdivisions. In
common with the different branches of Natural
Philosophy, it possesses all the interest derived
from the contemplation of important truths, the
first and the purest of the pleasures derived from
any department of science. There is a positive
pleasure in that exercise of the mental faculties
which the investigation of mathematical and phj^si-
cal truth affords. The contemplation of mathe-
matical and physical truths is, in itself, always
pleasing and wholesome to the mind. There is a
real pleasure in tracing the relations between

'' In the following series the subject of Jurisprudence and
International Law will be only treated incidentally, as the
other matters to which they relate require, and not under
separate heads. The same may be said of the other division
of the second branch, namely, Foreign Policy, a conduct pre-
scribed to nations by their mutual interests in their mutual
intercourse.

ADVAKTAGES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. 139

figures and between substances, the resemblances
unexpectedly found to exist among those which
seem to differ, the precise differences found to exist
between one figure and another, or one body and
another. Thus, to find that the sum of the angles
of all triangles, be their size or their form what it
may, is uniformly tlie same, or that all circles,
from the sun down to a watch-dial, are to eacli
other in one fixed proportion, as the squares of their
diameters, is a matter of pleasing contemplation
which we are glad to learn and to remember from
the very constitution of our minds. So there is a
great, even an exquisite pleasure in learning the
composition of bodies, in knowing, for instance,
that water, once believed to be a simple element, is
composed of the more considerable of two sub-
stances, which make, when united with heat in a
certain form, the air we burn and the air we breathe ;
that rust is the combination of this last substance
with metals ; that flame is supported by it ; that
respiration is performed by means of it ; that rust-
ing, breathing, and burning, are all processes of the
same kind ; that two of the alkaline salts are them-
selves rusts of metals, one of these metals being
lighter than water, burning spontaneously when
exposed to the air, without any heat, and forming
the salt by its combination. To know these tilings,
and to contemplate such relations between bodies
or operations seemingly so unlike, is in a higli

140 OBJECTS, PLEASURES, AND

degree delightful, even if no practical use could be
made of such knowledge. So the sublime truths of
astronomy afford extensive gratification to the stu-
dent. To find that the planets and the comets
which wheel round the sun with a swiftness im-
mensely greater than that of a cannon-ball, are
retained in their vast orbits by the same power
which causes a stone to fall to the ground ; that
this power, with their various motions, moulds
those bodies into the forms they have assumed ;
that their motions and the arrangement of their
paths cause their mutual action to operate in such a
manner, as to make their course constantly vary,
but also to prevent them from ever deviating
beyond a certain point, and that the deviation
being governed by fixed rules, never can exceed in
any direction a certain amount, so as to preserve
the perpetual duration of the system ;- — such truths
as these transport the mind with amazement, and
fill it with a pure and unwearying delight. This is
the first and most legitimate pleasure of philosophy.
As much and the like pleasure is afforded by con-
templating the truths of Moral Science. To trace
the connection of the mental faculties with each
other ; to mark how they are strengthened or
enfeebled ; to observe their variety or resemblance
in different individuals ; to ascertain their influence
on the bodily functions, and the influence of the
body upon them ; to compare the human with the

ADVANTAGES OP POIilTICAL, SCIENCE. 141

brute mind ; to pursue the various forms of animal
instinct ; to examine the limits of instinct and
reason in all tribes ; — these are the sources of as
pleasing contemplation as any which the truths of
abstract or of physical science can bestow ; from
these contemplations we reap a gratification un-
alloyed with any pain, and removed far above all
risk of the satiety and disgust to which the grosser
indulgences of sense are subject. But the study of
Political Science is equally fertile in the materials
of pleasing contemplation. The examination of
those principles which bind men together in com-
munities, and enable them to exercise their whole
mental powers in the most effectual and worthy
manner ; the knowledge of the means by which
their happiness can be best secured and their virtues
most promoted ; the examination of the various
forms in which the social system is found to exist ;
the tracing all the modifications which the general
principles of ethics and of polity undergo in every
variety of circumstances, both physical and moral ;
the discovery of resemblances in cases where
nothing but contrasts might be expected; the
observation of the effects produced by the diver-
sities of political systems ; the following of schemes
of polity from their most rude beginnings to their
greatest perfection, and pursuing the gradual
development of some master-principle through all
the stages of its progress — these are studies which

142 OBJECTS, FliEASUHES, AND

v/ould interest a rational being, even if he could
never draw from them any practical inference for
tlie government of his own conduct, or the improve-
ment of the society he belonged to — nay, even if
he belonged to another species and was merely sur-
veying the history and the state of human society
as a curious observer, in like manner as we study
the works of the bee, the beaver, and the ant. How
prodigiously does the interest of such contempla-
tions rise when it is the political habits of our own
species that v/e are examining, and when, beside
the sympathy naturally felt in the fortunes of our
fellow-creatures of other countries, at every step of
our inquiry we enjoy the satisfaction of comparing
their institutions with our own, of marking how far
they depart from the same model, and of tracing
the consequences of the variety upon the happiness
of millions of beings like ourselves ! How analogous
is this gratification to tlie kindred pleasure derived
from Comparative Anatomy, which enables us to
mark the resemblances and the differences in struc-
ture and in functions between the frame of other
anim^als and our own !

From the contemplation of political truth our
minds rise naturally, and by a process also of legiti-
mate reasoning like that which discovers those
truths, towards the great Creator of the universe,
the Source of all that we have been surveying by
the light of science — the Almighty Being who

ADVANTAGES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. 143

made the heavens and the earth, and sustains the
frame of the world by the word of His power.
But He also created the mind of man, bestowed
upon him a thinking, a reasoning, and a feeling
nature, placed him in a universe of wonders, en-
dowed him with faculties to comprehend them, and
to rise by his meditation to a knowledge of their
Great First Cause. The Moral world, then, affords
additional evidence of the creating and preserving
power, and its contemplations also raise the mind
to a communion with its Maker. Shall any doubt
be entertained that the like pleasing and useful
consequences result from a study of Man in his
political capacity, and a contemplation of the struc-
ture and functions of the Political world ? The
nice adaptation of our species for the social state ;
the increase of our powers, as well as the multi-
plication of our comforts and our enjoyments, by
union of purpose and action ; the subserviency of
the laws governing the nature and motions of the
material world to the uses of man in his social
state ; the tendency of his mental faculties and
moral feelings to further the progress of social
improvement ; the predisposition of political com-
binations, even in unfavourable circumstances, to
produce good, and the inherent powers .by which
evil is avoided, compensated, or repaired ; the
singular laws, partly physical and partly moral, by
which the numbers of mankind are maintained, and

144 OBJECTS, PliEASURES, AND

the balance of the sexes preserved with unerring
certainty ; — these form only a portion of the mar-
vels to which the eyes of the political observer are
pointed, and by which his attention is arrested ; for
there is hardly any one political arrangement which
by its structure and functions does not shed a light
on the capacities of human nature, and illustrate
the power and the wonders of the Providence to
which man looks as his Maker and Preserver. Such
contemplations connected with all the branches of
science, and only neglected by the superficial or
the perverted, are at once the reward of philo-
sophic labour, the source of true devotion, the
guide of wise and virtuous conduct: they are the
true end of all our knowledge, and they give to
each portion of it a double value and a higher
relish.

The last — ^but in the view of many, probably
most men, the most important — advantage derived
from the sciences is their practical adaptation to
the uses of life. It is not correct — it is the very
reverse of the truth — to represent this as the only
real, and, as it were, tangible profit derived from
scientific discoveries or philosophical pursuits in
general. There cannot be a greater oversight or
greater confusion of ideas than that in which such
a notion has its origin. It is nearly akin to the
fallacy which represents profitable or productive
labour as only that kind of labour by which some

ADVANTAGES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. 145

substantial or material thing is produced or fa-
shioned. The labour which of all others most
benefits a community, the superior order of labour
which governs, defends, and improves a state, is by
this fallacy excluded from the title of productive,
merely because, instead of bestowing additional
value on one mass or parcel of a nation's capital,
it gives additional value to the whole of its pro-
perty, and gives it that quality of security without
which all other value would be worthless. So they
who deny the importance of mere scientific contem-
plation, and exclude from the uses of science the
pure and real pleasure of discovering, and of learn-
ing, and of surveying its truths, forget how many
of the enjoyments derived from what are called the
practical applications of the sciences, resolve them-
selves into gratifications of a merely contemplative
kind. Thus, the steam-engine is confessed to be
the most useful application of machinery and of
chemistry to the arts. Would it not be so if steam-
navigation were its only result, and if no one used
a steam-boat but for excursions of curiosity or
of amusement? Would it not be so if steam-
engines had never been used but in the fine arts ?
So a microscope is a useful practical application of
optical science as well as a telescope — and a tele-
scope would be so, although it were only used in
examining distant views for our amusement, or in
showing us the real figures of the planets, and were

146 OBJECTS, PLEASURES, AND

of no use in navigation or in war. The mere
pleasure, then, of tracing relations, and of contem-
plating general laws in the material, the moral,
and the political world, is the direct and legitimate
value of science ; and all scientific truths are
important for this reason, whether they ever lend
any aid to the common arts of life or no. In like
manner the mental gratification afforded by the
scientific contemplations of Natural Religion are
of great value, independent of their much higher
virtue in mending the heart and improving the
life. — towards which important object, indeed, all
the contemplations of science more or less directly
tend, — and in this higher sense all the pleasures of
science are justly considered as Practical Uses.

But the applications to the common affairs of
life, which generally go by that name, are also of
great value. The Physical Sciences are profusely
rich in these. The speculations of the moralist
are also of great value in teaching us the discipline
of the understanding, in improving the feelings,
and in cultivating virtuous sentiments ; they are of
still greater service in helping those concerned
about the government of men. But the study of
Political Philosophy is certainly, of all others,
the most fruitful in beneficial results of what is
usually called a practical kind. If almost pro-
verbially "the proper study of mankind is man,"
the most important application of the doctrines

ADVANTAGES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. 147

which moral science teaches respecting his nature
is unquestionably that whereby we learn his posi-
tion, habits, interests, rights, and duties as the
member of a civil community. The science which
treats of the structure of government, which makes
the experience of one age or nation benefit anotlier,
and save it the price, and inconvenience, and delay
of failure, pointing out the errors committed in
various systems of civil or commercial polity, show-
ing how these are to be corrected or shunned, and
showing how such systems may most effectually
and most safely be improved so as to secure the
happiness of the people — the science which ex-
pounds the best modes of legislation, the true
principles of jurisprudence, the more efficacious
manner of executing, as well as of making laws —
which defines the rights of the people and their
duties, as well as those of their rulers, explains
the rights of one nation with respect to another,
and shows both the duty and the wisdom of com-
bining order with freedom at home, and inde-
pendence with peace abroad : — surely this science,
if it be not, of all others, the most useful to every
state, nay to every individual citizen at every
period, at least yields to none in real practical
importance. The benefits which it helps us to
obtain, the errors which it leads us to correct, the
dangers which it enables us to avoid, are the most
important, because those benefits, and errors, and

148 OBJECTS, PLEASURES, AND

dangers affect the whole affairs of nations, and
nearly concern every individual member of the
community directly or indirectly. Nothing can
be more plain than this proposition ; but inci-
dentally it will derive additional illustration when
we now proceed to consider the objections which
have been sometimes raised against teaching it. To
take only one illustration at present — how nearly
does the advantage resulting from the examination
of foreign constitutions resemble the benefits de-
rived to human Physiology from studying the
anatomy of the lower animals ! This branch of
Political Science may be justly termed the Com-
parative Anatomy of Government ; and if studied
with a constant regard to general principles of
policy, their illustration from the structure and
functions of various systems of polity, and the
modification they undergo by the diversities of each,
this science is calculated to throw useful light on
the general subject of Political Philosophy, and
lend us valuable improvement to the knowledge
of our own system, exactly as the Comparative
Anatomy of the body extends our knowledge of
Physiology, and improves our acquaintance with
the human frame.

No one has ever, in any free state, hardly in any
civilized country, denied the advantages of Political
Science, or objected to its being learnt by certain
classes ; nothing so absurd was ever yet attempted.

ADVA]S'TAGES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. 149

But an opinion at one time prevailed, and it still
has some adherents, that political subjects are not
fit for discussion among" the great body of the
people, and that, therefore, many who do not deny
the propriety of instructing them in other branches
of knowledge, have objected to their being taught
the doctrines of Political Philosophy. The rich
and the powerful might study such matters ; the
rulers and the lawgivers of the country, or the
upper classes of the community, might learn them,
and treatises might be written for, or lectures
delivered to, them and their children, or addressed
to other select circles, upon the great subjects of
National Polity : but the people were to care for
none of these things, — they might read a newspaper
or attend an election meeting ; but political know-
ledge was a thing above their reach and out of
their line, — a thing for their betters, and with
which it was both useless and perilous for the
working classes to meddle. The time is certainly
past and gone, never to return, when such prepos-
terous doctrines could find any general acceptance
in this country or in France ; though in other parts
of Europe they still are found to pass current.
Yet even in France, Germany, and England her-
self, a modification of the same fallacy is to be
traced as influencing the judgments of many re-
spectable men, even of some whose general opinions
are not bigoted or illiberal : it leads to the enter-

150 OBJECTS, PLEASURES, AND

taining a strong prejudice against the diffusion ol
political knowledge, to a wish that the people at
large could be cured of their taste for it, and to an
alarm at the dangers likely to result from it to the
peace and good order of society. It becomes a
duty, therefore, to examine a little more closely
this objection, and see whetJier it really has any
force. Let us begin by stating the argument used
by the objectors; but, first of all, let us observe
that the main objection is to Politics, as contra-
distinguished from Political Economy ; that is, to
the first subdivision of the great branch of Domestic
Policy. Of its other subdivisions. Economic
Science, and of the second branch, International
Policy, the objectors are more careless, and some
would rather have the former of these — Political
Economy — taught, provided Politics, commonly so
called, — that is, the principles, and structure, and
functions of government, were exempt from the
public scrutiny, and withdrawn from the province
of the popular teacher.

The argument of the objectors is this, — No
human institution is or can be perfect: and the
governments established in all the countries of
Europe having their origin in early and unen-
lightened times, necessarily partake more or less
largely of the imperfection incident to the works
of man. They present, therefore, many points of
objection to those who live in a more refined perjnd

ADVANTAGES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. 151

of society ; nor is it possible to deny that many
things would be avoided as absurd or pernicious in
the present times, if we had now to frame, for the
first time, our political institutions. It thus becomes
impossible to examine either our own or other
systems of government without pointing out many
faults in them ; nor can the sound principles of
civil polity be unfolded without leading to infer-
ences disparaging to the system we live under.
Nay, it would be impossible, and, if it were
possible, it would be dishonest to shun the reference
to existing circumstances and the established order
of things in explaining the fundamental principles
of sound policy, against which the institutions of
the state are found clearly to sin. Hence it is
argued, that the people, being thus taught, are
rendered discontented with their government, and
excited to a desire of change.

1. We may begin by observing that much of the
real force of this objection is presented against a
factious, unfair, exaggerated discussion of political
subjects, undertaken in the disguise of a fair and
honest course of instruction. That treatises, and
still more, lectures to the people, may have a per-
nicious effect if the teacher abuses his 'office, and
makes himself a partisan or a demagogue, is not
denied. But it by no means follows that the
science of government may not safely be taught.
For, after all, it is a practical, an experimental

H 2

152 OBJECTS, PLEASURES, AND

science. If there be no real mischiefs occasioned
by any alleged defects in any given system of
polity, — if the evils charged upon it are merely
speculative and almost nominal, — if the people do
not feel any inconvenience from them, — if they
produce no consequences vi^hich are generally seen,
and by all who observe them freely admitted, —
nay, if the evils be not actually felt as well as
remarked and confessed, — we may be well assured
that the allegation of the defects existing will be
received as groundless, because, practically speak-
ing, the arrangement called in question is not
defective. No argument in a speech, no exhortation
in a treatise or a lecture, can make men think they
are oppressed, or ill governed, or suffering in any
way, when they are in reality free and happy ; or
can succeed to a considerable extent in persuading
the audience or the disciples that they are uncom-
fortably circumstanced, and ought to be discon-
tented, when they know and feel that they are
living at their ease and ought to be satisfied.

2. But suppose the defects do exist, and that the
people suffer under them, it is fit and proper that
the causes of the evil should be probed, and should
be pointed out without any reserve. It is certain
that the not doing so will never prevent the people
from feeling discontented ; on the contrary, if they
are left to feel the pressure, and do not know dis-
tinctly from whence it proceeds, both their discon-

ADVANTAGES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. 153

tent is likely to be increased beyond its just amount,
and it is likely to take a wrong direction. The
lessons taught by honest and skilful instructors will
both reduce the complaint within the bounds of
moderation, and prevent blame from being imputed
to harmless measures, inoffending men, and unex-
ceptionable institutions. If any illustration were
wanting of the dangers to which the peace as well
as the general prosperity of a country may be ex-
posed from popular ignorance, we might instance
the disturbances so often arising in all parts of the
world from the popular indignation against the
exporters of corn during a scarcity, or the use of
machinery in times of manufacturing distress. But
ignorance of the nature of government may produce
the like mischiefs.

The necessity of some considerable degree of re-
straint to the well-being of society — the impossi-
bility of the supreme power being left in the hands
of the whole people — the fatal effects of disregard-
ing the right of property, the great corner-stone of
all civil society — the interest which all classes down
to the humblest have in the protection afforded by
law to the accumulation of capital — the evils of
resistance to established government unless in ex-
treme and therefore very rare cases — the particular
interest which the whole people, low as well as
high, must ever have in general obedience to the
supreme power in the state — the almost uniform

154 OBJECTS, PLEASURES, AND

necessity of making all changes, even the most sa-
lutary, in any established institution, gradually and
temperately — all these are the very first lessons
which every political teacher must inculcate if he
be fit for his office, and commonly honest, and he
cannot move many steps in any direction through
his subject, without finding occasion to illustrate
and to enforce these fundamental lessons by the
constant experience of mankind. But what are
these lessons ? They are the very doctrines of
good order and of peaceful conduct ; they are the
most powerful incentives to submission — a submis-
sion the more to be relied on, because it is rational,
and results from an appeal to men's reason, not
from an overruling force — the well considered sub-
mission of well-informed and therefore well-dis»
posed men, not the blind obedience of ignorant
slaves. Let the body of the people be kept ever so
much in the dark upon the nature of government
and the state of their own concerns, the existence
of evils being admitted, the smarting under them
will come without any teaching ; but the more they
learn the better they will be able quietly to bear
them. Let the people be ever so ignorant, the
sense of their own exclusion from a power which
they see their superiors exercise, one of the hardest
things to bear— the comparison of the poor man's
lot with that of his wealthy neighbour, the very
hardest portion of their lot^ and that which must

ADVANTAGES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. 155

ever expose society to its greatest perils — will be
always sure to strike their minds ; and unless they
are curbed by an overwhelming force, can never
operate without the most mischievous tendency to
the peace of society, until the foundations of go-
vernment and the nature of the social compact, as
well as the principles of Economical Science, are
fully learnt by the mass of the people. There
wants no teacher to make a poor man begrudge his
powerful and wealthy neighbour both his actual
share in the government and his disproportionate
share in the good things of this life : but the
teacher must have ill performed his task if he has
left any doubt in the mind of the poorest man who
hears or who reads him, that the misery of all classes
must follow from insurrection and anarchy ; that
unequal distribution of power is necessary for ail
government, and unequal distribution of property
essential to its very existence, the idea of too much
and too little being utterly inconsistent with its
very nature ; that upon its existence depends the
whole fabric of society ; and that a general division
of possessions would make the country a scene of
profligate extravagance for one year, and of uni-
versal desolation the next — a bedlam for one short
season, and a charnel-house ever after.

3. The contemplation of the structure of other
governments as well as of that under which we live,
and the comparison of the defects and advantages of

156 OBJECTS, PLEASURES, AND

our own with those of other systems, can hardly
fail to produce a happy effect upon the dispositions
of any people in tolerably happy circumstances.
Our countrymen, for example, when they perceive
the immeasurable superiority of the British over so
many other forms of government, cannot avoid
drawing from the comparison powerful motives for
contentment, and strong reasons why they should
bear with subordinate evils rather than run the risk
of losing a great good. All foreign experience,
too, and all past history, inculcates the necessity of
sober and cautious proceeding, where admitted evils
are to be removed, or valuable improvements to be
introduced. Nor can it escape observation, that
many of those things which the superficial and ig-
norant are prone to regard as improvements, are
easily shown, by a deeper examination of the sub-
ject, to be either useless or hurtful. Hence un-
taught men often long after some foreign institution
about which they know little ; whereas a full and
systematic acquaintance with the subject would
show them that the different habits and various cir-
cumstances of the foreign nation, in other parti-
culars., render the thing in question beneficial there,
which here would be noxious.

4. It would be endless to show in how many
particulars a people would be more easily and safely
governed, if political knowledge were fully and
widely diffused among them. The first instances

ADVANTAGES OP POLITICAL SCIENCE. 157

that occur are drawn from the evil influence of ig-
norance and prevailing errors upon subjects of
Economical Science. The great mischief arising
from the labouring part of the community being
unacquainted with the nature of wages, and the
principles on which their rate depends, are well
known. The unlimited supply of labour which
their imprudent marriages, and repugnance to
change their residence or their occupation, are con-
stantly bringing into the market, really is the
main cause of the depression of the working classes ;
for it keeps down their earnings to the very lowest
amount of subsistence on which human life can be
maintained. Could anything be more happy, both
for themselves and for the peace of society, than
such a thorough knowledge of this subject as would
check the master evil which now pervades all the
lower ranks of society ? — In like manner, the out-
cry raised in favour of unlimited provision for the
poor, and against the reasonable, indeed the neces-
sary rule which would confine each man to living
upon the produce of his own industry, or the in-
come of his own property, never could arise, at
least never could have any success, but among the
the most ignorant of mankind. — So, the strange
delusions propagated by some wild visionaries, and
by some ill-disposed men, that labour alone gives a
right to enjoyment, and that the existence of accu-
mulated capital is a grievance and an abuse, could

h3

158 OBJECTS, PLEASURES, AND

not have the least success with men who had
been taught to reflect that the accumulation
of capital is the necessary consequence of the
existence of property and its secure possession,
and that no classes have a stronger interest in
the protection of capital than the labourers whom
it must necessarily always be employed in sup-
porting.— The rage against machinery ; the objec-
tions to a free export of grain; nay, the exag-
gerated views of even just and true doctrines,
as that which condemns the corn laws ; afford addi-
tional illustrations of the mischiefs which ignorance
of economical science is calculated to produce. —
To take one more example, but a very striking one,
— the popular prejudice against usury, and the
notion that limiting the rate of interest protects
distressed borrowers, prevented any attempt to
amend the law in that important particular for many
years after Mr. Bentham had demonstrated that the
distressed borrower suffers far more under this pres-
sure than the wealthy lender, and after the first
mercantile authority in the world* had pronounced
Mr. Bentham's ' Defence of Usury ' unanswered,
because unanswerable. Nor have the higher classes
yet thrown off these prejudices so far as to remove
altogether one of the greatest practical defects in
our commercial jurisprudence.

* The late Sir Francis Baring.

ADVANTAGES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. 159

But the teaching of other branches of Political
Science is equally beneficial to the cause of good
government. It may safely be affirmed that no
outcry against any impost required for the public
service ever could be raised among a people well
informed on the necessity of maintaining the esta-
blishments required for the public service ; and that
such schemes as the Excise never could for years
have been defeated, and afterwards made for half a
century the object of popular hatred, sometimes the
ground of insurrection, in a well-informed commu-
nity. So the vulgar prepossession in favour of
law-taxes, as tending to check litigiousness, could.,
only among a very ill-informed people have sup-
ported, till a late period, an impost notoriously the
very worst that ever was invented, and the direct
tendency of which is to prevent justice from being
obtained by the poor man. — The cry of sacred
chartered rights being violated by a reform in a
monopolizing Company's administration of India,
drove a ministry from power three score years ago ;
and assuredly it could never have seduced any but
a very ignorant people. Accordingly, there was
just as much violence done to the Company's
charter, the year after, by the successors of that
ministry, without any kind of umbrage being given
to the most sensitive persons in the country. — The
classes of society were among the most ignorant of
mankind, which about the same time were seized

160 OBJECTS, PLEASURES, AND

with such an alarm lest Popery should be made, by-
main force, the religion of the people, that they
attempted to fire London, did burn the Catholic
chapels in Edinburgh, and drove into retirement
the most accomplished member of the Scottish
Church, — the illustrious historian whose works shed
a lustre on the name of his country.* Nor were
those better informed who, thirty years later, helped
a party in the state to remove their adversaries
from the government, and seize upon their places,
upon the outcry of a like danger threatening the
religion of the country in consequence of a very in-
significant bill, which its adversaries passed into a
law a few years afterwards without one word being
ever whispered against it. — But let us consider only
how many measures every government is compelled
to postpone, contrary to its fixed and clear opinions,
merely because the public mind will not bear them
in its present state of information. Men may differ,
for example, as to the propriety of retaining certain
colonial possessions at a vast expense, with great
loss to our trade, and with considerable risk of hos-
tile operations becoming necessary. But even if
all statesmen of any note were agreed that those
distant possessions should be abandoned, what mi-
nister would venture to give up the country where
Wolfe gained his victory and met his end, — an

* Robertson.

ADVANTAGES OP POLITICAL SCIENCE. 161

event that has consecrated the spot in the affections
of the people, and makes them blind to all conse-
quences and deaf to all reason ? — So it might be of
great benefit to give up Gibraltar ; but the people
must have learnt many a lesson of political wisdom
before it would be safe for any administration to
propose its cession, how ample soever might be the
benefits of the measure. Lord Chatham was as bold
a minister, and one as regardless of consequences
when he saw his course clear before him, as ever
presided over the affairs of this country; — yet,
when, in order to gain the invaluable co-operation
of the Spanish branch of the Bourbons, and rescue
Europe from the depression consequent upon its
disjointed state, he perceived the expediency of
offering up Gibraltar for Minorca, a letter from
him to our ambassador at Madrid remains, in which
he broaches the subject with a degree of fear and
trembling that indicates how frightful he deemed
the risk he ran of exciting the national feelings of
England against him to overwhelm his government.
Such alarms could have no place among a people,
the bulk of whom, well informed upon political
subjects, were accustomed to consult the real in-
terests of the country, and incapable of being led
astray either by vague apprehensions, or the cla-
mours which designing knaves might raise to delude
them. — But of the many evils which popular ig-

162 OBJECTS, PLEASURES, AND

norance creates in human society, there is none so
pernicious as its influence upon those national feel-
ings in which commercial restraints, and, above ail,
wars, have their origin. The fear of benefiting
other nations, and aiding our competitors by our
trade, is at the bottom of the former ; the latter are
too frequently occasioned by national animosities,
by hatred of our neighbours merely because they
are our neighbours ; and it may be remarked that
both commercial and political jealousies chiefly
operate against those who, for the very reason that
they are our near neighbours, are our best customers,
and should, for the benefit of both parties, be our
firmest friends. The history of our species is a
history of the evils that have flowed from a source
as tainted as it is abundant. To go no further back
than a century ago, — Walpole was first hurried
into a war which its chief supporters afterwards
admitted* to have been as groundless as it was im-
politic, by a senseless cry against the Spaniards,
raised by a few smugglers, who took advantage of
our people's ignorance to excite their feelings of
honour and revenge, and profligately encouraged

* Mr. Burke relates this striking instance of the crimes of
party : to turn out Walpole, his adversaries raised the war-
whoop ; they broke the peace of twenty years to obtain power.
This those party-leaders admitted to him in discussing this
disgraceful passage of party history.

ADVANTAGES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. 163

by a political party who turned to their own per-
sonal advantage the greatest injury they could in-
flict upon their country. — The most unfortunate and
impolitic war ever waged by this country was
popular in the extreme at first ; and no minister
could have stood up against the supremacy of the
mother-country over thirteen colonies, while all the
ignorant members of the community believed that
they had an interest in levying taxes by force from
the American colonies in aid of the mother-country.
— Nor is it any diminution of the evils which are
produced by want of political knowledge, that
wars, in themselves just and necessary, may at first
be favoured by the people, and then abandoned at
a time when the best interests of the state require
them to be persevered in. An unreflecting, be-
cause an uninformed, nation is at all times liable to
commit this error, than which none can be greater
excepting that most grievous of all faults, the
rushing into a contest without cause.

5. It may be said that there is this peculiar to
a course of political instruction, that many of the
principles explained in it are those which the ex-
isting parties in the state are at the time appealing
to, and disputing about, — many of the illustrations
used in expounding those principles are the very
topics of most vehement discussion among the prac-
tical statesmen and factions of the day. The whole
subject, it may be argued, is more or less contro-

164 OBJECTS, PLEASURES, AND

versial, and the controversy is one in which, as it
involves men's real or supposed interests, and con-
sequently engages their passions deeply, no in-
structor can easily avoid taking a side, and no au-
dience can help being swayed by the prevailing
sentiments of the times ; so that instruction becomes
difficult, from the interference of party prejudice
in both the teacher and the pupil, while a factious
spirit is sure to be fostered, and unkindly feelings
to be exacerbated, if not engendered. In this re-
mark there is, unquestionably, much truth ; it refers
to the principal difficulty that attends political in-
struction. But it can never be allowed to prove
that no such instruction should be conveyed ;
it only warns us to guard as much as possible
against falling into the error which it points out.
If it were suffered to operate as a conclusive reason
against teaching politics, this would follow — that
upon the things most necessary to be known ignor-
ance is better than knowledge, — that in proportion
as the subject is more interesting to men, they
should take the less pains to understand it. But
that is not all : it would also follow that, upon
topics calculated to excite strong feelings, it is
better and safer for the people to be kept in the
dark. For by the supposition which forms the
ground of the whole objection, you cannot keep the
people from taking an interest in these subjects ;
you cannot help their being excited and split into

ADVANTAGES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. 165

parties ; their being so is the very origin of the
remark with which we are dealing. Then, because
such excitement and such party differences prevail,
is there any common sense in prescribing an entire
ignorance of the questions those dissensions relate
to, as a likely means of allaying them ? Are poli-
tical differences the more sure to be reconciled by
keeping those who are split by them in ignorance
of the subjects under dispute ? Are men more
likely to agree upon any matter the less they know
about it ? The people, it seems, feel strongly upon
certain subjects, and are much divided in opinion,
many being for a certain course of policy, many
against it. The argument is, that for the purpose
of bringing about an understanding, and making
all in its favour, or all join in rejecting it, or all
unite in preferring some middle course safely placed
at a distance from either extreme, the parties should
be prevented from comprehending the nature of the
measure in question, and kept in ignorance of all
the arguments for it, all the arguments against it,
and all the arguments for a middle course. Once
upon a time, says the old fable, two gallant knights
met upon a plain where a shield stood upright ;
and one of them having called it a white shield, the
other asserted it to be black, whereupon they pre-
pared to fight after the manner of that age, still
somewhat in vogue at the present day. But a
dervise or priest came up, and, having learnt the

166 OBJECTS, PLEASURES, AND

cause of their quarrel, suggested that each had
better look at both sides of the buckler — when they
found that each knight was right — the one side
being pure white, the other jet black. The mi-
nister of peace performed his duty wisely ; but our
objectors, and some of them nominally of the same
vocation with the dervise, have no better expedient
to propose than that the shield should be covered
up from both combatants, and the fight go on.

It must on all hands be admitted that there is no
greater evil in any country than party violence —
the abuse of that which, if kept within due bounds^
is an advantage, and may be the means of preserv-
ing public liberty and promoting general improve-
ment, namely, the honest combination of statesmen
for patriotic purposes. This becomes an intolerable
evil when it is made the mere engine of selfish men
for giving power and profit to themselves at the
expense of the public good, and by the subservient
agency of the people whose interests are sacrificed
to the views of their leaders. Opinions are then
assumed, in order to marshal politicians in bands
and separate them from others. Place is the real
object ; principle the assumed pretext. The people,
instead of thinking for themselves, are made the
dupes and the tools of others, — hurried into all the
follies of which thoughtless men are capable, and
into as many excesses as their designing leaders
dare let them commit consistently with their own

ADVANTAGES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. 167

safety, and without the least regard for that of their
followers. Now, nearly the whole influence of
such party chiefs is grounded upon the political ig-
norance of the people at large ; and the permission
thus assumed to make and dictate their opinions.
In such a state of things Dean Swift's saying is
correct, that " Party is the madness of many for
the gain of a few ;" and such a state of things could
not exist among a people politically educated. As
the navigators who first visited the South Sea
Islands could purchase the lands, goods, and chat-
tels of the natives for a red feather, our ancestors
four centuries ago could butcher one another by
thousands, and extirpate nine-tenths of the nobility
of the country in a few years for a red or a white
rose ; but the wars of Lancaster and of York could
no more be waged in our time, than the South Sea
islanders, after being civilized, can be induced to
barter their property for nothing ; and the day will
come when other party differences will be regarded
with the same contempt with which we now regard
the factions of the Henrys and the Edwards.

6. This leads to the important remark, that the
question is no longer left open ta us whether the
people shall be taught politics or not. Taught
they must be ; and the only question is, whether
they shall be well taught, or ill instructed and
misinformed. Do what you will, somebody will
take the part of public instructor. It is an office

168 OBJECTS, PliEASURES, AND

that any man in a free country may assume, and it
is one which almost every one thinks himself qua-
lified to fill. If the people are not taught sound
doctrine upon the subject, by calm and tolerably
impartial men, they will inevitably listen to guides
of a far different description, and will fall a prey
to the more violent and the more interested class of
politicians, to the incentives of agitators, the arts
of impostors, and the nostrums of quacks. If,
indeed, a teacher so far violates his duty, as to give
partial, inflamed, untrue accounts of the subject
he handles — if he keeps out of view the facts
which history has stored up in illustration of the
tendency of particular systems — if he inflames the
passions of an unthinking multitude, and converts
a course of instruction into an engine of faction, —
then he may do mischief, as all men may who are
guilty of fraudulent and mischievous actions upon
false pretences. But this possibility only furnishes
a reason against misinstructing the people, not
against teaching them ; it warns us to avoid im-
postors, not instructors ; it shows that politics may
be ill and dishonestly taught, as religion, or even
morality itself may be ; not that politics should be
left untaught any more than morals and religion.
And assuredly we may rest satisfied of one thing ;
the difficulty is far greater, of making a course of
lectures the means of propagating, by foul means,
any system of opinions, than the difficulty of de-

ADVANTAGES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. 169

ceiving the people in any other way. The shame,
upon the detection of such a design, is far greater,
and the chances of its being detected are more
numerous. The good dervise, of whom the legend
speaks, took the honest and the rational course ;
he was a fair as well as a wise teacher. Had he,
like the Levite in the parable, kept aloof and
passed on the other side, while the work of death
was going on, he would have been a weak, and a
timid, and a selfish man. But had he interfered
to prevent the combatants looking on both sides —
had he, who saw the shield in either direction,
persuaded each knight that he was in the right, and
that the other was in the wrong, he would have
been justly execrated as a dishonest guide — his
treachery would have been speedily discovered —
and both parties would have joined in scorning
and in punishing him. Let it not, however, be
supposed that any course of political lessons can be
given with no leaning to one set of doctrines rather
than another. Such a thing is hardly possible,
consistently with honesty ; and, were it possible,
it would not be at all desirable. On a subject like
this every one who has well considered it must
have formed his opinions ; and he must,- therefore,
conscientiously believe those opinions to be right —
nay, to be the only right and safe ones for the
people to entertain. It is therefore his bounden
duty to declare his sentiments ; and it is infinitely

170 OBJECTS, PLEASURES, AND

more fair, more honest, and more useful, as well as
safer, that he should declare them openly, dis-
tinctly, and manfully, after stating the whole case,
and the reasons on both sides, than that he should
give a partial view of the argument, and leave the
audience to draw its own conclusions — that is,
his own conclusions. He is a teacher, not a par-
tisan ; he is fairly to expound the views and the
arguments of others with whom he differs ; and he
is to give his reasons for retaining his own senti-
ments. From so open and honest a course of pro-
ceeding no mischief whatever can be apprehended,
and no other course can be called Instruction.
Can any one doubt that it is best for the people
and safest for the government that this course
should be pursued upon all political subjects, and
most of all upon those subjects which are the most
calculated to excite deep interest and rouse strong
feelings? What better means can be devised of
showing the public how much it is their interest to
inquire and judge for themselves? "What better
security can be devised against the efforts of violent
and intriguing men ? What more sure remedy
against the arts of political empirics, whose natural
prey is, and ever will be, the ignorant vulgar — but
who in vain display their wares before well-
informed and reasoning men ?

These considerations may serve to show, not
merely that the Political Education of the people

ADVANTAGES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. l7l

is attended with none of the danger to the peace of
society which the objectors apprehend, but that a
positive security is afforded by it against the very
worst dangers to which the cause of good order in
any community can be exposed. But we must go
yet a step further, and observe that the right of the
people to be instructed as to the public interests,
and the duty of their superiors to educate them in
Political Science, rests upon higher ground than
has yet been taken.

The force of public opinion must be acknow-
ledged in every government, save only that of the
most purely despotic form. It has more or less a
direct influence, according to the nature of the con-
stitution under which the people live ; and the
momentum with which it acts varies, under the
same kind of constitution, according to the degree
in which the people are educated. But even in
countries that enjoy little constitutional freedom,
the public voice, when raised, is effectual ; and
even the most ignorant nation has a will which its
rulers must not venture entirely to disobey : nay,
in absolute monarchies, where public opinion forms
the only check on misgovernment, and the people
seldom exert any influence, yet, when they do in-
terfere, it is oftentimes with terrible effect. Nor is
any interposition likely to be withheld merely be-
cause, from the popular ignorance, it happens to be
uncalled for or exerted in a wrong direction. How

172 OBJECTS, PLEASURES, AND

important, therefore, is it, with a view to the
people's only safeguard, and the ruler's only curb, that
they should be well-informed upon their political
interests ! But how immeasurably more important
is it in countries living under a free government,
that those whom the constitution recognises as
sharers, more or less directly, in the supreme power,
should have a correct knowledge of the state of
their own affairs, and the principles upon which
their rights and their interests depend ! It must
be observed that no government, even the freest,
can be in the hands of the people at large ; and that
grand improvement of modern times, the represen-
tative system, by which extent of territory can be
safely combined with a popular constitution, still
leaves the exercise of supreme power in the hands
of persons delegated to govern — even where there
are none but elective magistrates, that is, even in
republican constitutions. Those delegates, then,
be they executive, or judicial, or legislative, require
the vigilant superintendence of the community, in
order to prevent errors or abuses, to quicken their
diligence or to control their faults, during the term
of their office. This superintendence is most
wholesome if exercised by an enlightened people,
and affords the only effectual security for constant
good government — the only real safeguard for
popular rights. How many fatal errors would
rulers of all kinds, and in all ages — whether

ADVANTAGES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. 173

Consuls and Senates, or Archons and Assemblies of
the people, or Monarchs and their Councils, or
Kings and their Parliaments, or Presidents and
Chambers, have been prevented from falling into ;
and how many foul crimes, both against the inter-
ests of their subjects, and against the peace and
happiness of the world, would they have been de-
terred from committing had the nations submitted
to their care been well instructed in the science of
public policy, acquainted with their true interests,
aware of the things most dangerous to their liberties,
and impressed with that sense of duty to their spe-
cies which an enlarged knowledge of Political
Philosophy can alone bestow ! Take, again, the
instance of war — that game, as has been well said,
at which kings could never play were their subjects
wise — how melancholy is it to reflect that nearly
all the devastation which it has spread over the
earth would have been spared, with the countless
mischiefs following in its train, had only the same
enlightened views prevailed which have already
resulted partly from sad experience, partly from
diffused information, and which seem, at the present
day, to have, at least for a v/hile, taught men the
guilt as well as the folly of war ! But experience
is a costly as well as an effectual teacher ; and the
same lesson might have been wholly learnt without
the heavy price that has been paid for it. Expe-
rience, too, is a teacher whose lessons are forgotten

I

174 OBJECTS, PLEASURES, AND

in the course of a little time ; as the memory of
wounds and the fear of fighting wear out with the
pain they occasion. Nothing, then, can effectually
and permanently instil the sound doctrines of peace
and of justice into any people but an extensive
Political Education, to instruct them in their
interests and their duties. It is the same with the
frauds as with the oppressions of statesmen. The
sacrifice of the many to the few would be impossible
in a well-informed country. That game of party^
in which the interests of the people are the counters,
and the power and pelf of the gamesters themselves
the only thing they play for, though not the only
stake they risk, never could be played to the
destruction of public virtue and the daily peril of
the general good, were the people well acquainted
with the principles which should govern the
administration of their concerns ; and possibly it is
an instinctive apprehension of this truth that has
made all parties so averse to the general diffusion
of political knowledge.

But it is not merely as a control on the misma-
nagement of their affairs, and a check to encroach-
ments on their rights, that the interposition of the
people is required in every country, and is the
very life and soul of each constitutional system ;
they ought to promote the progress of improvement,
by urging their rulers to better by all means the con-
dition of those under their care, and, above every-

ADVANTAGES OF POLITICAl, SCIEINCE. l7o

thing, to amend the errors of their political system.
As all government is made for the benefit of the
community, the people have a right, not only to be
governed, but to be well governed ; and not only
to be well governed, but to be governed as well as
possible; that is, with as little expense to their
natural freedom and their resources as is consistent
with the nature of human affairs. Towards this
point of perfection all nations ought constantly to
be directing their course. But the rulers having
no interest of the kind — nay, rather an interest in
keeping things as they are, if not making them go
backwards — unless the people interfere, little pro-
gress will be made in that direction, and some risk
always incurred of losing the ground already gained.
Surely, then, nothing can be more manifest than
that full and sound political information is necessary
for those whose strongly pronounced desire of im-
provement is the best security for the progress of
all national reform. The diffused knowledge of the
general principles of policy, and an intimate
acquaintance with what has been done in other
countries, and with the results produced, becomes
as sure a source of political improvement as the
diffused knowledge of mechanical science, and an
acquaintance with the inventions of foreigners, is
the source of almost all improvement in the arts.
The education of particular classes alone may, no
doubt, be better than the general prevalence of

I 2

176 OBJECTS, PLEASURES, AND

political ignorance ; but as those classes for the
most part have particular interests, and each has its
own purposes to serve, the only security for im-
provements which may benefit the whole body of
the people, is for the whole body of the people to
understand in what their true interests consist.

In truth a greater absurdity cannot well be
imagined, than attempting to keep the bulk of
mankind in ignorance of all that appertains to
State Affairs. State affairs are their own affairs.
An absolute Prince* once exclaimed, " The State !
I am the State ! " But the people may most
justly exclaim, " We are the State." For them
laws are made ; for them governments are consti-
tuted. To secure their peace, and protect them
from injury without and within the realm, rules
are appointed, revenues raised, police established,
armies levied. To exclude them from the super-
intendence of their own affairs is as if the owner
of an estate were refused the inspection of his ac-
counts by his steward. To prevent them from
understanding the principles on which their affairs
are administered, is as if the owner of an estate
were suffered to know what his steward was doing,
but debarred from all understanding of what he
ought to do. To prevent them from knowing
what are the institutions and the condition of

* Louis XIV.

ADVANTAGES OF POI.IT1CAL SCIENCE. 177

foreign nations, is as if the owner of an estate
were precluded from knowing how his neighbour's
property was managed, what rent he got for his
land, what salaries he paid his agents. In every
country, whatever be the form of its government,
and however little of a popular cast, this is the
amount, and this is the aspect of the absurdity pro-
pounded by those who would prohibit the Political
Education of the People. But incomparably
grosser is the absurdity of keeping the people in
ignorance where the constitution of the govern-
ment is of a popular kind. There, the people are
called upon to bear a share in the management of
their own affairs, to attend public meetings, to serve
in offices, to vote in the choice of lawgivers. There
may be some consistency in excluding them from
all the knowledge that would fit them for perform-
ing those high political functions, while you also
exclude them from all exercise of the functions
themselves. But to make them political function-
aries, and to leave them in ignorance of political
subjects, is little less absurd than it would be to
keep the owner of an estate ignorant of farming,
and expect him to superintend the management
of his farms. But if it be said that there is no
occasion for all the community learning Political
Philosophy any more than there is for all a land-
owner's family inspecting his accounts and under-
standing agTiculture ; the answer is obvious, that

178 OBJECTS, PLEASURES, AND

all the community, and not particular classes, are
the parties interested in State affairs ; and that if
any family can be found in which all the members,
servants included, have their several shares in the
property of the estate, then, beyond all question,
each member, down to the humblest menial, how-
ever inconsiderable his share of the property, would
be entitled to inspect the accounts — would be
directly interested in superintending- the manage-
ment— and would be unspeakably foolish to remain
in ignorance of the principles on which farms
should be managed, and the condition and manage-
ment of the other estates in the neighbourhood.

Nor can any the least risk arise to the peace and
good order of society from the humbler classes
occupying themselves with such pursuits ; any, the
least, risk of their grudging their superiors the
benefits and the privileges of their station, or seek-
ing to displace them, and shake the stability of the
national system. Imperfect knowledge of Political
Philosophy, a superficial acquaintance with what is
passing in other countries, and what has, in past
times, been the history of their own, may expose
them to be misled by designing men, or to become
the dupes of their own irregular desires and ground-
less fancies. Such errors are inseparable from all
learning, because they are the consequences of the
imperfect information with which learners must
begin ; they overshadow the dawn of all intellec-

ADVANTAGES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. {79

tual improvement ; they cloud the mind before the
sun has yet arisen ; but they offer the same ob-
stacles to knowledge in all its branches, and are as
much objections to moral, and even to religious,
instruction, as to the study of Political Science.
The risk — the temporary and inconsiderable risk —
is admitted ; the guarantee is certain, and it is easy.
An imperfect light is dangerous. In the twilight
men's steps falter ; and, as they dimly see, they
doubtfully grope their way. Then let in more
light ! That is the cure for the evil ; and that is
the answer to the objection. But of one thing we
may be well assured : be the dangers ever so
great of instructing the people on that wdiich it
most concerns them to know — be the hazards aris-
ing from the circulation of free opinions and the
diffusion of political knowledge among the people
a thousand times more imminent than they have
<3ver been painted by alarmed and short-sighted
men ; we cannot prevent the evil, be it ever so
appalling, and are left to apply the only remedy —
'• Let there be light." In vain you seek to put
down such doctrines by force ; even to quell the
uproar of admitted errors by force is of no avail
in maintaining quiet. Eather say, force alone has
the pov^er greatly and widely to disseminate
falsehood. Doctrines ever so fantastical, ever so
wild — tenets as dull as they are groundless, as re-
volting as they are untrue — systems as rotten as

180 OBJECTS, PLEASURES, AND

they are deformed — follies which, left to themselves,
must quickly die a natural death — all are capable
of being forced onward to success by injudicious
attack. The rod of power, like the magician's
wand, can change deformity into beauty, lend
strength to the rottenness, give currency to the
dulness, and life to the decay of errors, which
nothing else could recommend, or circulate, or pre-
serve. To oppose the progress of truth — to sup-
press the communication of opinions — to obstruct
the diffusion of knowledge — is not so pernicious,
but is quite as ineifectual an exercise of the perse-
cuting power.

It remains to mark the most salutary effects of
an extensive diffusion of Political Knowledge — the
most salutary, because unalloyed by even any the
least and most transient inconvenience. An en-
larged view of their own best interests must give
the people sound and enlightened feelings respect
ing the merits of human conduct, and form in them
the habit of justly estimating the character and the
conduct of the men who guide the affairs of nations.
The mischiefs are incalculable which have resulted
to our species, from the habitual false judgments
formed on this important subject by the bulk
of mankind ; and it must in fairness be confessed
that the great crimes which have been committed
by statesmen in all ages, have been mainly caused
by the encouragement which the people hare given

ADVANTAGES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. l8l

ij the criminals. Dazzled by success, subdued by
the spectacle of triumphant force, stricken with
wonder at the mere exercise of great faculties, and
the sight of the events which they brought about,
men have withdrawn their eyes from the means
used to attain those ends, and lost their natural
hatred of vice in their admiration of genius and
their sense of power. No disgust at meanness, no
scorn of treachery, no horror of cruelty, has hitherto
availed against the false lustre shed over despicable
and detestable deeds by brilliant capacity crowned
with victory. But that is not all the folly com-
mitted by imreflecting men. The most absolute
disregard to their own interests has been coupled
with their misplaced admiration of successful guilt.
The crimes which dazzled them were perpetrated
at their cost ; the price paid was their own long,
and boundless, and bitter suffering. For all that
was done amiss and for all themselves admired,
they themselves paid. Their own best interests
were sacrificed quite as much as principle and duty
were violated. They have lavished upon tyrants,
and conquerors, and intriguers, who were their
worst enemies, their loudest applause ; for those
pests of the world reserving the fame that should
have been kept sacred to virtuous and beneficent
deeds; and confining the title of *' Great" — the
prize that all generous natures strive after — to
those whose lives were spent in working their

I 3

182 ADVANTAGES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE.

misery and tlieir ruin. This preposterous com-
bination in which the people have so long been
leagued to call things by their wrong names, to
praise the wrong men, to suffer that the scourges
of their kind, the enemies of peace and freedom
and virtue, should not merely escape reprobation,
but should monopolize all the places in the Temple
of Fame, has been the fruitful source of human
misery and national crimes, and it has been the
result of nothing but the darkest ignorance. The
knovrledge of Political Science, which teaches the
people their true interests, can alone rescue them
from the error of ages- — restore public virtue to
the pedestal which successful vice has so long
usurped — and secure on a lasting foundation the
peace and the happiness of the world.

THE END.

( 183 )

INDEX

TWO DISCOURSES OF THE OBJECTS, PLjSASURES,

AND ADVANTAGES OF SCIENCE, AND

OF POLITICAL SCIENCE.

Absurdity of trying to keep tlie masses in political igno-
rance, 176; this absurdity grosser as the constitution is
more popular, 177

Accelerated motion, example of, in the falling stone, 33

Advantages and pleasures of science, 95

Air, the cause of vegetation, 108

Algebra naturally springs from arithmetic, 13 ; notation of,
and nature of its operations, 14 ; its superiority to
arithmetic in solving problems, and as an instrument of
discovery, illustrated, 15

Anatomy, definition of, 37

Animals, fitness of, to the circumstances in which they are
found, 88

Ants, labours and policy of, 83 : their nests, ib. ; keep
slaves to prepare their food, 84 ; become torpid at the
same degree of cold as their insect slaves, ib. ; their
gigantic size in tropical countries, 84 ; dimensions, siege,
and bombardment of an ant-hill in South America, 85

Apologue of the two knights and the shield, or look on both
sides, 165

Archimedes, boast of, 56

184 INDEX.

Arithmetic, the nature and objects of, 12; how it differs

from algebra, 13
Arithmetical or numerical truths independent of the existence

of matter or of space, 27, 28
Arkwright; his practical knowledge of machinery, 101
Astronomy, the objects of, 49 ; vast extent of the views

afforded by, 52; ennobling nature of the study of, 114;

quantity of matter in the sun, Jupiter, and Saturn, ib. ;

relative weights of the same substance on the earth and

planets, ib.
Attraction, law of, stated, 39, 41 ; influence and universality

of, 42, 43, 110 ; the cause of tides, 48
Axles of machinery ; advantage of their being hollow, 7

Balance of power, 137

Beavers, habits of, 85; their skill in engineering and
architecture, 86 ; their food, 87 ; division of labour, ib. ;
the overseers, 88

Bee, construction of the cell of the, 73 ; the roof and floor,
74 ; evidence of design, ib. ; angles of inclination of the
planes of the roof, ib. ; dimensions of the cell, ib. ; method
, of gathering honey, &c., 76 ; mode of making a queen-
bee, 82 ; grief for her loss, 83 ; opposition or obedience
to a usurper a matter of time, ib.

Bejuco plant, abundance of juice in the, 94

Bentham's 'Defence of Usury,' allusion to, 158

Birds, provided with an apparatus for flattening or rounding
the eye, 68 ; the third eyelid, its use and motion, 70 ;
their bones largest in proportion to their weight, advantage
of this, 72; means by which they mount and descend
with greater or less rapidity, ib.

Bones of animals, why hollow, 72

Botany, defined, 37 ; its connection with chemistry, 38

Camel, appropriateness of the hoof and water-apparatus
of the, 88 ; cushion of the foot of the, ib.

INDEX. 185

Catenary, illustrations of the curve so called, 25

Caution inculcated in introducing political reforms and im-
provements, 156

Chatham, Lord, proposal of, to give up Gibraltar for Mi-
norca, 161

Chemistry, the objects of, 36 ; knowledge of, useful to
bleachers, dyers, engineers, farmers, cooks, &c., 99; the
wonderful discoveries of, 106, 107

Circle, the, and its fundamental properties, 21 ; the angle
in a semicircle, 21 ; illustration of the theorems that
circles are to one another as the squares of their radii,
21 ; and that circumferences are as the radii, 22

Comets move in very elongated ellipses, 43 : in what they
differ from the planets, ib. ; their periodic times, 44 ;
astounding velocity of their motion, ih. ; subject to the
universal law of attraction, 45 ; their amazing distance in
aphelion, 51 ; and velocity in perihelion, ih.

Common and statute law, distinguished, 135

Comparative anatomy, defined, 37

Cookery, the art of, improved by a knowledge of chemistry,
100

Crimes of statesmen caused by the encouragement given by
the people, 180; to their own cost, 181

Cuckoo, nest chosen by the, to deposit her eggs, 91

Curves, infinite variety of, 22 ; notice of those most com-
monly seen, 22-25

Cycloid, mode of generating the, 25 ; remarkable property of
the, ib.', the curve of equal times, 63; and of quickest
descent, 64 ; eagle believed to move in this curve, ib.

Delusions propagated by political quacks and incendiaries, 1 57

Devastations of war, the consequence of want of enlighten-
ment, 173

Difference between the states of mind produced by noveL
reading and scientific study, 112

Difference between mathematical and physical truths, 25-36

186 INDEX.

Diffusion of sound political knowledge the best security
against designing demagogues, 1 70

Discoveries and improvements seldom made except by per-
sons of competent knowledge, 101

Dogmatism, caution against, in metaphysical inquiries,
124

Domestic policy of a state, defined, 131 ; sub-division of,
132

Duck, peculiar formation of the bill of the, 91

Duty of a government to give instruction in political science,
171

Duty of providing subsistence for one's self and dependents,
97 ; habits of regular labour flowing from the exercise of
this, 98

Dynamics, definition of, 39 ; motion round a centre of at-
traction, ih. ; law of attraction stated, ih. ; a body acted
on by this law will describe a circle, an ellipse, parabola,
or hyperbola, according to the amount and direction of the
original projective force, 40 ; elliptic orbit described, ih. ;
enunciation of the law expressing the relation between the
squares of the periodic times and the cubes of the mean
distances, ih. ; law of gravity, 41 ; the moon subject to
this law, 42 ; her orbit shown to be an ellipse, ih. ; all the
planetary orbits elliptic, ih. ; influence and universality of
attraction, ih. and 43

Earth, the figure of, 48 ; diameter of, 50"; distance from the

sun, ih. ; velocity of revolution, ih. ; diurnal rotation, 51
East India Company's charter, reform of, 159
Electricity discovered by Dr. Franklin, 60 ; the same matter

with lightning, 108
Ellipse, or oval, mode of describing the, 23 ; fundamental

property of the, ih. ; generated from the section of a cone,

24
Evil effects of a general division of property, 155
Excise, popular hatred of the, 159

INDEX. 187

Eye, structure of the, 67 ; its liquid magnifiers, 68 ; eyes of
birds, 69

Figures with which to fill a certain space without loss of
room, 73

Fishes, remarkable adaptation of the head to facilitate their
motion, 64 ; use of air-bladder for rising and sinking, 72 ;
some have no air-bladders, 73

Fixed stars, conjectures about the, 49 ; their prodigious num-
ber, 50 ; and vast distances, 51

Flat fish, why they keep to the bottom, 73

Flies, how they walk up perpendicular surfaces, &c., ex-
plained, 76, 77

Fly-catcher, apparatus of the, for taking its food, 92

Force unable to stop the progress of error, much less that of
knowledge and truth, 179

Foreign or international policy defined, 131 ; nature of inter-
national laws, 136 ; the balance of power, 137 ; the rights
of nations, ih.

Fundamental lessons in politics, 153

Galvanism, discovery of, 60 ; improvements in chemistry
owing to, ih.

Gastric juice, properties of the, 80 ; different in different ani-
mals, 81 ; correspondence between it and the other parts of
the body, ih.

Geometrical truths, independent of the properties or even the
existence of matter, 25, 26

Geometry, defined, 18; property of the right-angled triangle,
19 ; application of this property to the measuring of inac-
cessible heights and distances, 20 ; the circle and its pro-
perties, 21 ; the conic sections, 22-24 ; the cycloid and cate-
nary, 25

Glow-worm, difference between the male and female, 91

Gravitation, universality of this principle, 48 ; cause of the
tides, of the figure of the planets, ih.

188 INDEX.

Gravity of bodies defined, 'U ; varies as the inverse square of
the distance, ih. ; the moon affected by gravity, 42 ; its all-
comprising influence, 110

Handicraftsman, the, must not be content to know the rule

without the reason, 100 ; first use of his learning the

principles of science, ih. ; hereby enabled to become an

improver of his art, ib. ; instances, 101, 102
Heat, fluidity, and expansion arise from the same cause,

108
Hexagon, advantage of this figure in filling up a certain

space, 73 ; bee's cell of this shape, ih.
Home, Sir Everard, discovery by, regarding the locomotion

of insects, 76
Horse, the, provided with a third eyelid, 70 ; its use and

motion, ih. ; skilful structure of the limbs of the, 89 ;

slanting bones of the foot with their elastic spring, ih. ;

consequences of unskilful shoeing, ih. ; expanding shoe, ih.
Howard, Edward, Inventor of the Process of Refining

Sugar, 102
Humes Treatise on Politics, the object of, 129
Hydraulics, defined, 57
Hydrodynamics, defined, 56 ; divided into three branches,

57
Hydrostatics, defined, 57 ; fluid pressure proportional to

depth, ih. ; the paradox, ih.
Hyperbola, one of the conic sections, 24; ready way of

getting the figure of this curve, ih. ; resembles the ellipse

and circle in many of its properties, ib.

Ignorance, the cause of tyrants being praised and conquerors
applauded, 181 ; the source of human misery and national
crime, 182
Importance of the practical applications of science, 9
Importance of scientific truths exemplified, 50, 56

INDEX. 189

Impregnation of plants, 79
Imprudent marriages, mischievous effects of, 157
International law, nature of, 136 ; the subjects of which it
treats, 137

Jupiter, his vast size, 50 ; distance from the Sun, ib.
Jurisprudence, the science of, defined, 136

Knight, Mr. ; his explanation of the impregnation of plants,

79
Knowledge, pure pleasures of, 103 j every one capable of

these, 104

Latitude and Longitude defined, 52 ; mode of finding the,
at sea, ib.

Law of Nations defined, 137

Lever, the, defined, 54 ; its properties and uses, 53, 54 •
why called a mechanical power, 55 ; combinations of
levers, 56

Lichen, the rein-deer's food, in fall growth during the win-
ter, 90

Light, refraction of, 67 ; rays composing white light differ-
ently refrangible, ib. ; telescopes, 68

Light, necessary to the growth of plants, 78

Logarithms, method of, illustrated, 16, 17 ; saving of labour
and time from their use in calculation, 18

Lizards, their power of climbing explained, 77

Malouet, M., description of an ant's nest by, 84

Man, the two-fold nature of, 96 ; his senses and their proper

use, ib. ; his understanding and its refined enjoyments, 97 :

his attributes and position, 143 ; high rewards for the

cultivation of his faculties, 144
Mathematical demonstration, the nature of, and delight

afforded by. III

190 INDEX.

Mathematical truths wholly independent of the existence of
matter, 25-27 ; depend only on reasoning, 29 ; every
link in this reasoning, necessarily and undeniably true
29, 30; possibility of discovering these truths without
knowing anything of matter, conceivable, 31

Mathematics, defined, 1 1 ; divided into two great branches,
12; pure and mixed, distinction between, 35; pleasures
afforded by, in gratifying our curiosity, 107

Mechanics, the objects of, 53 ; fundamental principle of the
science, ib. ; the lever and its properties, 54 ; the wheel
and axle, 56

Medicine, objects of the science of, 37

Mental Philosophy less exact than Physical Philosophy,
124 ; dogmatism to be guarded against, ih. ; difficulties of
the science and mode of study, 125 ; the intellectual
faculties, moral faculties, duties, 95

Metaphysics, the objects of, stated, 120, 121

Mind, certainty of the existence of the, 96 ; its refined en-
joyments, 97 ; reward consequent on the pursuit of these,
ih.; its extraordinary powers illustrated, 113, 114; made
a subject of observation by few, 126

Mineralogy, definition of, 37 ; its relation to chemistry, 38

Mischiefs arising from ignorance of political economy, 157,
158

Moon, the, proved from observations to be affected by gra-
vity, 41 ; observed also to be subject to the law, which
expresses the relation between the periodic times and the
mean distances, 42 ; hence her orbit an ellipse, ih. ; nature
of her surface, 52 ; tables of her motions of the greatest
importance at sea, ih.

Moral or Mental Philosophy defined, 11 ; its two great
branches, 121; the truths of, contingent, not necessary,
122 ; difference between the nature of these truths and
those of abstract science, ih.

INDEX. 191

Moral World, evidences of the, in favour of the existence

of an Almighty Creator, 143
Municipal Law defined, 137

Natural History, application of this term, 37; defined, 62
Natural or Physical Philosophy defined, 1 1 ; subdivisions
of, 36, 37, 120; shown to consist of a mixture of contin-
gent with necessary truths, 123
Natural Science, some branches of, not to be understood
without Mathematics, 61; others need no such aid, ih.]
some branches useful to particular classes, ib. ; others
easily understood by all, 62 ; applied to the animal and
vegetable world, ih. ; seemingly wonderful discoveries of,
106 ; pleasures of, 108
Nautilus, sailing apparatus of the, 91

Necessity of having some acquaintance with the Sciences,
before a distinct idea can be formed of the pleasures and
advantages derived from the study of them, 7
Necessity of reform and the duty of reforming, 175
Nepenthes distillatoria, natural tankards of the, 94 ; the

tankard-lid and its use, ib.
Newspapers, the pleasures arising from the perusal of, 104
Newton, Sir Isaac, discovers the principle of attraction, 48 ;
concludes that the globe is not a perfect sphere, ib. ; de-
composes white light, 59 ; instance of his unrivalled saga-
city, 60

Objections to the difi'usion of political knowledge stated and

considered, 149-170
Optics defined, 59 ; composition of white light, ib.
Orbits of the planets, ellipses, 42 ; irregularities owing to

mutual attraction, 45 ; these irregularities subject to a law

of correction, 46 ; statement of this law, 47
Ostrich, mode of hatching of the, 91

192 INDEX.

Palo de Vaca, milk of the, 94

Parabola, frequent occurrence of the, 22 ; its properties illus-
trated in the doctrine of projectiles, ih. ; angle of longest
range for guns, fire-hose, &c., 23 ; the curve a section of
a cone, 24

Party prejudice, caution against, 164 ; how it is to be allayed,
165; apologue of the two knights and the shield, ib.

Party violence, evils of, 166 ; to be softened down by educa-
tion, 167 ; illustrated by the wars of the Roses, ib.

Peculiarities of a course of political instruction, 163 ; danger
of exciting party prejudice and unkindly feelings, 164 ;
this danger not to be suffered to operate against giving
such instruction, ib.

People more easily governed if politically instructed, 156

Philosopher, meaning of this name, and to whom it is due,
113

Philosophy in its fundamental branches forbidding from the
mental effort required for their comprehension, 10 ; but
its humblest lessons impart incalculable pleasure, 1 1 ;
further advantages of, 62 ; the object of, to trace unex-
pected resemblances, 107-109

Physical truths depend entirely on observation and experi-
ments, 31 ; are truths established by mathematical reason-
ing applied to observed facts, 34, 35

Plants, necessity of light to, 78 ; impregnation of, 79 ; pro-
vision made to prevent the male and female blossoms of
the same tree from breeding together, 79 ; remarkable in-
stances of design and appropriate contrivance in, 92 ; pro-
vide drink and food in parched and desert countries,
93-95

Planets gravitate towards the sun, 42 ; move in elliptic
orbits, ib. ; perturbations caused by their mutual attrac-
tion, 45 ; these perturbations subject to a law which
corrects them, 46 : their diameters, distance from the sun.

INDEX. 193

comparative bulks and rates of motion in their orbits,
50.

Pleasures which attend the gaining of knowledge for its own
sake, 7 ; their pure, disinterested, and exalted nature, 8, 9 ;
those derived from knowledge, 103, 104; from the dis-
covery of unexpected resemblance, 107-110; from a com-
prehension of the investigations and demonstrations of
science, 110-112; from science in enabling us to trace the,
evidences of design, of skill, of wisdom in the Creator's
works, 115 ; these pleasures contrasted with those of sense,
116; those arising from mathematical and physical re-
searches, 138; from a knowledge of chemistry, 139; from
an acquaintance with the wonders of astronomy, 140 ;
from contemplating the truths of moral science, ih. ; from
an examination of the principles of political science, 141

Pneumatics defined, 57 ; pressure of air, 58 ; ascent of water
in pumps, ih, ; ascent of mercury in the barometer, 58 ;
piston in the atmospheric steam-engine, ih. : pressure of
air exemplified in the locomotion of certain animals, 59

Political arithmetic, meaning of, 134

Political economy, the province of, defined, 133

Political education the only guarantee for peace and justice,
1 74 ; the only security against the frauds and mismanage-
ment of statesmen, ih.

Political facts universally observed, 126; more obvious t?ian
those of mental philosophy, 127

Political instruction, not only necessary, but unavoidable,
167; importance of this instruction being imparted by
conscientious teachers and not by unreasoning partisans,
168 ; the duty of the wise teacher, 169

Political knowledge more generally difiused than moral or
ethical knowledge, 127 ; necessary for, and owing to, the
whole body of the people, 175; salutary effects of the
diffusion of, 180

Political philosophy most fruitful of all the sciences in prac-

194 INDEX.

tical advantages, 146 ; recapitulation of these, 147 ; con-
trasted with physiology and comparative anatomy, 148;
objections against teaching this science considered, 149

Political science, divisions of, 95; definition of, 121 ; method
of getting at the general principles of, 125; its truths
more clearly demonstrable than those morals or ethics,
126; facts on which it is grounded, 128; importance of
those facts and of those of metaphysical and ethical
inquiries contrasted, ih., 129 ; general view of the science,
130 ; its two great branches, 131 ; the diflFusion of, bene-
ficial to the cause of good government, 159

Political truths, evidence afforded by, in favour of the ex-
istence of God, 143

Pollen of plants, nature of the, 79 ; its globules little air-
balloons, ih.

Poor, the ; what they suffer, and what they have to learn
politically, 154, 155

Popular ignorance, dangers from, illustrated, 153; often re-
tards measures of government, 160; the cause of com-
mercial restraints and of wars, 162

Potassium, the properties of, 61, 107

Practical advantages derived from science considered, 144 ;
notion that these are its only real advantages combated,
145

Prejudice against the diffusion of political knowledge, 149

Pressure of air, 59 ; effects of this pressure, 75 ; its service
to the bee, 76 ; further illustration of, in the locomotion of
animals, t6.-78

Properties of matter learnt by experience, 32 ; cannot be
guessed or deduced from reason, ih. ; that they might have
been different from what they are, conceivable, 33

Psychology and Ethics defined, 121

Pure Mathematics defined, 119 ; excellence of, as an instru-
ment of discovery when applied to observed facts, 123
seldom applicable in mental philosophy, 124

INDEX. 195

Public Opinion, the innxience of, varies as the government,
171 ; the people's safeguard, the ruler's curb, 172 ; its im-
portance under a free government, ih.

Queen-bee, mode of making a, 82 ; confusion consequent on

her loss, 83
Quills of birds, reason of their strength, 71, 72

Heading romances, newspapers, ghost-stories, gratification
resulting from, 104, 105

Refraction of light, 67

Eein-deer, structure of the hoof of the, 90 ; food of the, ib.

Religious bigotry, illustrations of, 160

Representative system, the, necessitates a vigilant super-
intendence by the constituents, 172; important that those
■who superintend should be enlightened, 1 73

Resemblance between the crawling of a fly and the working
of the old atmospheric steam-engine, 109

Retarded motion illustrated, 33

Right of the people to be instructed in political science, 171

Right-angled triangle, property of the, 1 9 ; applications of
this to the measurement of heights and distances, 20

Risk to the peace of society from the masses studying poli-
tical science considered, 1 78 ; the guarantee is in impart-
ing sound and full instruction, 179

Safety-lamp, invention of the, 102
Science and knowledge, difference between, 9
Science, necessity of to the liberal professions, 98 ; its utility'-
to most men, ih. ; to engineers, watchmakers, carpenters,
masons, &c., 99 ; necessity of acquiring the principles of,
100 ; first use of learning these principles, ih. ; practical
advantages of, 101, 102 ; pleasures arising from being able
to follow out its investigations and demonstrations, 110 —
112

196 INDEX.

Sciences, the, divided into three great classes, 1 1 ; distribu-
tion of, necessarily imperfect, 37 ; the branches touch and
assist one another, 38 ; divided into pure mathematics,
natural philosophy, and moral philosophy, 119

Scientific studies, use and pleasure of, illustrated, 96-116.

Scientific truths important, whether of practical application
or not, 146

Sea animals, their power of climbing explained, "7

Snipe, bill of the, 92 ; cause of its sensibilit)', ib.

Solar system defined, 43

Solid of least surface, 64 ; of least resistance, 65 ; fishes*
head, ib.

State afiairs, all the community interested in, ther ifore all
should be able to examine, 178

Statistics, the objects of, 134

Sugar-refining, the process of, 102

Supreme power in a state, 135

Swallow of Java, curious provision of materials for the nest
of the, 92 ; its nest prized as delicate food, ib.

Tapioca tree, pith of the, used as food, 95

Telescopes, imperfection of, 67; improved by Dollond, 68;
and by Blair, ib.

Toucan or egg-sucker, delicate nerve- work of the bill of the,
92

Trammels or elliptic compasses used for describing ellipses,
23

Tubes stronger than solid rods of the same length and quan-
tity of matter, 7 1

Unequal distribution of power and property necessary for

all government, 155
Unexpected resemblances disclosed by natural philosophy,

108, 109
Usury, popular pi-ejudice against, 1 58

, INDEX. 197

Vanilla plant, use of tne tendrils of the, 80
Virginia creeper, climbing members of the. 80

Waipole hurried into war by a senseless cry against the

Spaniards, 162
Water, composition of, 139

Water-with of Jamaica; great abundance of sap in the, 94
Watt; his improvements of the steam-engine the results of

scientific skill, 101
Wheel and axle, the, shown to be a combination of levers, 56
White light, a mixture of all others, 106
Wild-pine of the West Indies, seeds of the, 93; its bag-like

leaves filled with water, ih.

Zoology, objects of the science of, 37 ; its relation to com-
parative anatomy, 38

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