or pastoral condition; it is the foundation of our wealth and the
condition of our safety from submergence by another flood of barbarous
hordes; it is the bond which unites into a solid political whole,
regions larger than any empire of antiquity; it secures us from the
recurrence of the pestilences and famines of former times; it is the
source of endless comforts and conveniences, which are not mere
luxuries, but conduce to physical and moral well-being. During the
last fifty years, this new birth of time, this new Nature begotten by
science upon fact, has pressed itself daily and hourly upon our
attention, and has worked miracles which have modified the whole
fashion of our lives.

[Sidenote: These results often too much regarded;]

What wonder, then, if these astonishing fruits of the tree of
knowledge are too often regarded by both friends and enemies as the
be-all and end-all of science? What wonder if some eulogise, and
others revile, the new philosophy for its utilitarian ends and its
merely material triumphs?

[Sidenote: for scientific research rarely directed to practical ends]

In truth, the new philosophy deserves neither the praise of its
eulogists, nor the blame of its slanderers. As I have pointed out, its
disciples were guided by no search after practical fruits, during the
great period of its growth, and it reached adolescence without being
stimulated by any rewards of that nature. The bare enumeration of the
names of the men who were the great lights of science in the latter
part of the eighteenth and the first decade of the nineteenth
century, of Herschel, of Laplace, of Young, of Fresnel, of Oersted, of