That discoveries, innumerable, marvellous, and fruitful, await the
successful explorers of Nature no one can doubt. What would one not give
for a Science primer of the next century? for, to paraphrase a well-known
saying, even the boy at the plough will then know more of science than the
wisest of our philosophers do now. Boyle entitled one of his essays "Of
Man's great Ignorance of the Uses of Natural Things; or that there is no
one thing in Nature whereof the uses to human life are yet thoroughly
understood"--a saying which is still as true now as when it was written.
And, lest I should be supposed to be taking too sanguine a view, let me
give the authority of Sir John Herschel, who says: "Since it cannot but be
that innumerable and most important uses remain to be discovered among the
materials and objects already known to us, as well as among those which
the progress of science must hereafter disclose, we may hence conceive a
well-grounded expectation, not only of constant increase in the physical
resources of mankind, and the consequent improvement of their condition,
but of continual accession to our power of penetrating into the arcana of
Nature and becoming acquainted with her highest laws.
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