It was not human
emotions and passions which discovered the motion of the earth, or
detected the evidence of its antiquity; which exploded Scholasticism,
and inaugurated the exploration of nature; which invented printing,
paper, and the mariner's compass. Yet the Reformation, the English and
French revolutions, and still greater moral and social changes yet to
come, are direct consequences of these and similar discoveries. Even
alchemy and astrology were not believed because people thirsted for gold
and were anxious to pry into the future, for these desires are as strong
now as they were then: but because alchemy and astrology were
conceptions natural to a particular stage in the growth of human
knowledge, and consequently determined during that stage the particular
means whereby the passions which always exist, sought their
gratification. To say that men's intellectual beliefs do not determine
their conduct, is like saying that the ship is moved by the steam and
not by the steersman. The steam indeed is the motive power; the
steersman, left to himself, could not advance the vessel a single inch;
yet it is the steersman's will and the steersman's knowledge which
decide in what direction it shall move and whither it shall go.
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