On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures by Charles Babbage (english books to improve english TXT) 📕

may supply the power necessary for their condensation. Thus, in a

future age, power may become the staple commodity of the

Icelanders, and of the inhabitants of other volcanic

districts;(6*) and possibly the very process by which they will

procure this article of exchange for the luxuries of happier

climates may, in some measure, tame the tremendous element which

occasionally devastates their provinces.

466. Perhaps to the sober eye of inductive philosophy, these

anticipations of the future may appear too faintly connected with

the history of the past. When time shall have revealed the future

progress of our race, those laws which are now obscurely

indicated, will then become distinctly apparent; and it may

possibly be found that the dominion of mind over the material

world advances with an everaccelerating force.

Even now, the imprisoned winds which the earliest poet made

the Grecian warrior bear for the protection of his fragile bark;

or those which, in more modern times, the Lapland wizards sold to

the deluded sailors—these, the unreal creations of fancy or of

fraud, called at the command of science, from their shadowy

existence, obey a holier spell: and the unruly masters of the

poet and the seer become the obedient slaves of civilized man.

Nor have the wild imaginings of the satirist been quite

unrivalled by the realities of after years: as if in mockery of

the College of Laputa, light almost solar has been extracted from

the refuse of fish; fire has been sifted by the lamp of Davy, and

machinery has been taught arithmetic instead of poetry.

467. In whatever light we examine the triumphs and

achievements of our species over the creation submitted to its

power, we explore new sources of wonder. But if science has

called into real existence the visions of the poet—if the

accumulating knowledge of ages has blunted the sharpest and

distanced the loftiest of the shafts of the satirist, the

philosopher has conferred on the moralist an obligation of

surpassing weight. In unveiling to him the living miracles which

teem in rich exuberance around the minutest atom, as well as

throughout the largest masses of ever-active matter, he has

placed before him resistless evidence of immeasurable design.

Surrounded by every form of animate and inanimate existence, the

sun of science has yet penetrated but through the outer fold of

nature’s majestic robe; but if the philosopher were required to

separate, from amongst those countless evidences of creative

power, one being, the masterpiece of its skill; and from that

being to select one gift, the choicest of all the attributes of

life; turning within his own breast, and conscious of those

powers which have subjugated to his race the external world, and

of those higher powers by which he has subjugated to himself that

creative faculty which aids his faltering conceptions of a deity,

the humble worshipper at the altar of truth would pronounce that

being, man; that endowment, human reason.

But however large the interval that separates the lowest from

the highest of those sentient beings which inhabit our planet,

all the results of observation, enlightened by all the reasonings

of the philosopher, combine to render it probable that, in the

vast extent of creation, the proudest attribute of our race is

but, perchance, the lowest step in the gradation of intellectual

existence. For, since every portion of our own material globe,

and every animated being it supports, afford, on more

scrutinizing enquiry, more perfect evidence of design, it would

indeed be most unphilosophical to believe that those sister

spheres, obedient to the same law, and glowing with light and

heat radiant from the same central source—and that the members

of those kindred systems, almost lost in the remoteness of space,

and perceptible only from the countless multitude of their

congregated globes should each be no more than a floating chaos

of unformed matter; or, being all the work of the same Almighty

Architect, that no living eye should be gladdened by their forms

of beauty, that no intellectual being should expand its faculties

in decyphering their laws.

NOTES:

1. Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on some

of its Causes. 8vo. 1830. Fellowes.

2. The Duke of Sussex was proposed as President of the Royal

Society in opposition to the wish of the Council in opposition to

the public declaration of a body of Fellows, comprising the

largest portion of those by whose labours the character of

English science had been maintained The aristocracy of rank and

of power, aided by such allies as it can always command, set

itself in array against the prouder aristocracy of science. Out

of about seven hundred members, only two hundred and thirty

balloted; and the Duke of Sussex had a majority of eight. Under

such circumstances, it was indeed extraordinary, that His Royal

Highness should have condescended to accept the fruits of that

doubtful and inauspicious victory.

The circumstances preceding and attending this singular

contest have been most ably detailed in a pamphlet entitled A

Statement of the Circumstances connected with the late Election

for the, Presidency of the Royal Society, 1831, printed by R.

Taylor, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street. The whole tone of the tract

is strikingly contrasted with that of the productions of some of

those persons by whom it was His Royal Highness’s misfortune to

be supported.

3. The second meeting took place at Oxford in June, 1932, and

surpassed even the sanguine anticipations of its friends. The

third annual meeting will take place at Cambridge in June 1833.

4 The advantages likely to arise from such an association, have

been so clearly stated in the address delivered by the Rev. Mr

Vernon Harcourt, at its first meeting, that I would strongly

recommend its perusal by all those who feel interested in the

success of English science. Vide First Report of the British

Association for the Advancement of Science, York. 1832.

5 In 1828, the author of these pages visited Ischia, with a

committee of the Royal Academy of Naples, deputed to examine the

temperature and chrmical constitution of the springs in that

island. During the few first days, several springs which had been

represented in the instructions as under the boiling temperature,

were found, on deepening the excavations, to rise to the boiling

point.

6 See section 351.

THE END.

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by Charles Babbage