Indeed (he continued) I should almost be tempted to affirm that in an
age when education is so generally diffused--when the art of printing
has brought the sources of information so near to the lips of all who
thirst for understanding--when so many of the secrets of nature have
been revealed--when the impalpable and all-pervading electricity, and
the infinite elasticity of steam, have been made subservient to
purposes of human utility,--the advantages of knowledge, in an
utilitarian point of view, the utter hopelessness of a successful
attempt on the part either of individuals or classes to maintain their
position in society if they neglect the means of self-improvement, are
truths too obvious to call for elucidation. I must say that it seems
to me that there is less risk, therefore, of our declining to avail
ourselves of our opportunities than there is of our misusing or
abusing them; that there is less likelihood of our refusing to grasp
the treasures spread out before us, than of our laying upon them rash
and irreverent hands, and neglecting to cultivate those habits of
patient investigation, humility, and moral self-control, without which
we have no sufficient security that even the possession of knowledge
itself will be a blessing to us. I was much struck by a passage I met
with the other day in reading the life of one of the greatest men of
his age and country--Watt--which seemed to me to illustrate very
forcibly the nature of the danger to which I am now referring as well
as its remedy. It is stated in the passage to which I allude, that
Watt took great delight in reading over the specifications of
inventions for which patent rights were obtained. He observed that of
those inventions a large proportion turned out to be entirely
worthless, and a source of ruin and disappointment to their authors.
And it is further stated that he discovered that, among these abortive
inventions, many were but the embodiment of ideas which had suggested
themselves to his own mind--which, probably, when they first presented