That there is a portion of truth at the bottom of all this, we should be
the last to deny. No respect is due to any employment of the intellect
which does not tend to the good of mankind. It is precisely on a level
with any idle amusement, and should be condemned as waste of time, if
carried beyond the limit within which amusement is permissible. And
whoever devotes powers of thought which could render to Humanity
services it urgently needs, to speculations and studies which it could
dispense with, is liable to the discredit attaching to a well-grounded
suspicion of caring little for Humanity. But who can affirm positively
of any speculations, guided by right scientific methods, on subjects
really accessible to the human faculties, that they are incapable of
being of any use? Nobody knows what knowledge will prove to be of use,
and what is destined to be useless. The most that can be said is that
some kinds are of more certain, and above all, of more present utility
than others. How often the most important practical results have been
the remote consequence of studies which no one would have expected to
lead to them! Could the mathematicians, who, in the schools of
Alexandria, investigated the properties of the ellipse, have foreseen
that nearly two thousand years afterwards their speculations would
explain the solar system, and a little later would enable ships safely
to circumnavigate the earth? Even in M.
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