that while the farmer can repay himself by eating the ox, the
scientific man cannot repay himself by eating you; and so never gets
paid, in most cases, at all.

But as for mankind thriving by common sense: they have not thriven
by common sense, because they have not used their common sense
according to that regulated method which is called science. In no
age, in no country, as yet, have the majority of mankind been guided,
I will not say by the love of God, and by the fear of God, but even
by sense and reason. Not sense and reason, but nonsense and
unreason, prejudice and fancy, greed and haste, have led them to such
results as were to be expected--to superstitions, persecutions, wars,
famines, pestilence, hereditary diseases, poverty, waste--waste
incalculable, and now too often irremediable--waste of life, of
labour, of capital, of raw material, of soil, of manure, of every
bounty which God has bestowed on man, till, as in the eastern
Mediterranean, whole countries, some of the finest in the world, seem
ruined for ever: and all because men will not learn nor obey those
physical laws of the universe, which (whether we be conscious of them
or not) are all around us, like walls of iron and of adamant--say
rather, like some vast machine, ruthless though beneficent, among the
wheels of which if we entangle ourselves in our rash ignorance, they
will not stop to set us free, but crush us, as they have crushed
whole nations and whole races ere now, to powder. Very terrible,
though very calm, is outraged Nature.


Though the mills of God grind slowly,
Yet they grind exceeding small;
Though He sit, and wait with patience,