among men, the only appropriate comparison I can find for her is, to
liken her to such a peasant woman as one sees in the Alps, striding
ever upward, heavily burdened, and with mind bent only on her home; but
yet, without effort and without thought, knitting for her children. Now
stockings are good and comfortable things, and the children will
undoubtedly be much the better for them; but surely it would be
short-sighted, to say the least of it, to depreciate this toiling mother
as a mere stocking-machine--a mere provider of physical comforts?

However, there are blind leaders of the blind, and not a few of them,
who take this view of natural knowledge, and can see nothing in the
bountiful mother of humanity but a sort of comfort-grinding machine.
According to them, the improvement of natural knowledge always has
been, and always must be, synonymous with no more than the improvement
of the material resources and the increase of the gratification of men.

Natural knowledge is, in their eyes, no real mother of mankind, bringing
them up with kindness, and if need be, with sternness, in the way they
should go, and instructing them in all things needful for their
welfare; but a sort of fairy godmother, ready to furnish her pets with
shoes of swiftness, swords of sharpness, and omnipotent Aladdin's lamps,
so that they may have telegraphs to Saturn, and see the other side of
the moon, and thank God they are better than their benighted
ancestors. If this talk were true, I, for one, should not greatly care
to toil in the service of natural knowledge. I think I would just as
soon be quietly chipping my own flint axe, after the manner of my
forefathers a few thousand years back, as be troubled with the endless
malady of thought which now infests us all, for such reward. But I
venture to say that such views are contrary alike to reason and to
fact. Those who discourse in such fashion seem to me to be so intent