Comte's opinion, it is well for
mankind that, in those early days, knowledge was thought worth pursuing
for its own sake. Nor has the "foundation of Positivism," we imagine, so
far changed the conditions of human existence, that it should now be
criminal to acquire, by observation and reasoning, a knowledge of the
facts of the universe, leaving to posterity to find a use for it. Even
in the last two or three years, has not the discovery of new metals,
which may prove important even in the practical arts, arisen from one of
the investigations which M. Comte most unequivocally condemns as idle,
the research into the internal constitution of the sun? How few,
moreover, of the discoveries which have changed the face of the world,
either were or could have been arrived at by investigations aiming
directly at the object! Would the mariner's compass ever have been found
by direct efforts for the improvement of navigation? Should we have
reached the electric telegraph by any amount of striving for a means of
instantaneous communication, if Franklin had not identified electricity
with lightning, and Ampere with magnetism? The most apparently
insignificant archaeological or geological fact, is often found to throw
a light on human history, which M.
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