desultory courses? Our modern philosopher does not disdain to draw his arguments from the refinements which science has introduced into such arts as smelting, bleaching, soap-boiling, and sugar-boiling. The applications of iodine to the cure of the goître, of lemon-juice to the prevention of scurvy, of the magnetic mask to protect the lungs of the needle-maker, of the safety-lamp to the preservation of the miner, afford him a benevolent pleasure, in the spectacle of human miseries alleviated, and of the substantial benefits flowing to the ignorant from what might at first sight appear to be only fanciful and wanton amusements of the intellects of the idle. We will give Mr. Herschel's account of a few of these cases. A soap-manufacturer remarks that the residuum of his ley, when exhausted of the alkali for which he employs it, produces a corrosion of his copper boiler for which he cannot account. He puts it into the hands of a scientific chemist for analysis, and the result is the discovery of one of the most singular and important chemical elements, iodine. The properties of this, being studied, are found to occur most appositely in illustration and support of a variety of new, curious, and instructive views then gaining ground in chemistry, and thus exercise a marked influence over the whole body of that science. Curiosity is excited: the origin of the new substance is traced to the sea-plants from whose ashes the principal ingredient of soap is obtained, and ultimately to the sea-water itself. It is thence hunted through nature, discovered in salt-mines and springs, and pursued into all bodies which have a marine origin; among the rest into sponge. A medical practitioner then calls to mind a reputed remedy for the cure of one of the most grievous and unsightly disorders to which the human species is subject-the goître-which infests the inhabitants of mountainous districts to an extent that in this favoured land we have happily no experience of, and which was said to have been originally cured by the ashes of burnt sponge. Led by this indication, he tries the effect of iodine on that complaint, and the result establishes the extraordinary fact that this singular substance, taken as a medicine, acts with the utmost promptitude and energy on goître, dissipating the largest and most inveterate in a short time, and acting (of course, like all medicines, even the most approved, with occasional failures) as a specific, or natural antagonist, against that odious deformity. It is thus that any accession to our knowledge of nature is sure, sooner or later, to make itself felt in some practical application, and that a benefit conferred on science by the casual observation or shrewd remark of even an unscientific or illiterate person infallibly repays itself with interest, though often in a way that could never have been at first contemplated.'-pp. 50-52. Who would have conceived that linen rags were capable of producing more than their own weight of sugar, by the simple agency of one of the cheapest and most abundant acids ?—that dry bones could could be a magazine of nutriment, capable of preservation for years, and ready to yield up their sustenance in the form best adapted to the support of life, on the application of that powerful agent, steam, which enters so largely into all our processes, or of an acid at once cheap and durable ?-that sawdust itself is susceptible of conversion into a substance bearing no remote analogy to bread; and though certainly less palatable than that of flour, yet no way disagreeable, and both wholesome and digestible as well as highly nutritive?'-pp. 64, 65. This is all most true and most valuable; and assuredly Bacon, and his disciple, Mr. Herschel, are not the philosophers whom we shall find dwelling too exclusively on such considerations. But we conceive that it would be to take an unworthy and ignoble view of the claims of knowledge and the grounds of its value, if we were to derive its importance from its applications alone. For men engaged in remote and abstruse researches, we sometimes hear a plea offered, in a tone of apology, that no one can foresee the possible results of a discovery, and that the most recondite and abstract speculations have often come, by some strange and circuitous route, to have a bearing on the uses of daily life. This is rightly said, but this is not all. The true and worthy claim of knowledge is that which every lover of it feels in his own heart; that it is valuable for its own sake; that truth is worth having because it is truth; the more worth having, the more pregnant and comprehensive the character which it possesses. Utilitarian moralists may maintain that we cannot have any wise motive of action except our own advantage; utilitarian philosophers may maintain that we cannot have any sufficient inducement for research except the tangible benefit of our expected discovery. The consciousness of every good man contradicts the former dogma; the irresistible impulse of every true philosopher-every man with the spirit of a discoverer-is inconsistent with the latter. Even if we were to confine ourselves to the pleasure produced, if we were to put the love of truth on a level with the love of turtle, still the former delicacy may probably be more widely and intensely relished, certainly more generally and equally diffused; and we do not see why the gratification which men may receive from knowing the laws which regulate the motions of light, is not as worthy our regard as that which they would derive from travelling from London to Brighton in an hour and a half, or from breakfasting on fresh strawberries every day in the year. But in fact the love of knowledge ought not to be degraded so far as to be weighed ounce for ounce against the pleasures of sense. It differs from them as a duty differs from an indulgence. Knowledge is followed because it is itself a good: it is an end, not a means. There There are affections directed towards it as distinctly marked, and as elevated in their kind, as any other portion of our mental constitution. We are its suitors for itself, and not for its dower; and if we were allowed to borrow Mr. Shandy's favourite quotation, and to translate as freely as he was in the habit of doing, we would say, Amicus Socrates,' utility is a pleasant companion, 'sed magis amica veritas,' but truth is a beloved friend. We rejoice here to borrow the truly dignified and philosophical expressions of Mr. Herschel. The question "cui bono" to what practical end and advantage do your researches tend? is one which the speculative philosopher who loves knowledge for its own sake, and enjoys, as a rational being. should enjoy, the mere contemplation of harmonious and mutually dependent truths, can seldom hear without a sense of humiliation. He feels that there is a lofty and disinterested pleasure in his speculations which ought to exempt them from such questioning; communicating as they do to his own mind the purest happiness (after the exercise of the benevolent and moral feelings) of which human nature is susceptible, and tending to the injury of no one, he might surely allege this as a sufficient and direct reply to those who, having themselves little capacity, and less relish for intellectual pursuits, are constantly repeating upon him this inquiry.'-p. 10. If we had here space for the discussion, it would be a curious question to examine whether the attention of men of science may not be directed towards this practical deduction, this application of science to arts and commerce, so far as to interfere with their success in ascending to laws of a more exalted generality and higher speculative beauty; and we might ask whether such a diverse tendency of the scientific intellect of different countries has operated to produce any differences which may be detected in the present condition of England, as to the cultivation of science, compared with other countries: but we must hasten to conclude. We have only a word or two to say on the style and manner of Mr. Herschel's treatise. Our men of science have not of late been considered remarkable for beauty or brilliancy of composition the mathematicians and physical philosophers, especially, have often been reproached with having their style tinged with French expressions, arising from the influence of the many excellent works in that language relating to their studies. If such was the rule, however, there were splendid exceptions in Davy, Playfair, Leslie, and Brewster; and new names, worthy of being classed with these, are now daily multiplying among us. We may allude in particular to the strong and masculine eloquence with which Sedgewick announces his masterly and comprehensive views, and the clear, elegant, varied diction of Lyell. Mr. : Herschel Herschel merits at least equal commendation for his sound, vigorous English, pregnant with thought and meaning, and very often marked with a well chosen pointedness of expression. Here and there, perhaps, we may detect a scientific Gallicism which has straggled in; as when he speaks of persons who have imagined processes,' meaning devised; and of the behaviour of a particle set in motion when it meets another lying in its way'-a phrase which would probably startle the mere English reader, though it may not be easy for him to suggest an adequate substitute. But, on the other hand, we find scattered through the work instances of vivid and happy illustration, where the fancy is usefully called into action, so as sometimes to remind us of the splendid pictures which crowd upon us in the style of Bacon, where the restlessness of the intellect appears to keep its chamber-fellow, the imagination, perpetually awake. We cannot better conclude our review of Mr. Herschel's delightful volume than by an extract from his first chapter,—one of the finest essays on the moral conduct of the intellect which has ever been produced. 'Nothing, then, can be more unfounded than the objection which has been taken, in limine, by persons, well meaning perhaps, certainly narrow-minded, against the study of natural philosophy, that it fosters in its cultivators an undue and overweening self-conceit, leads them to doubt the immortality of the soul, and to scoff at revealed religion. Its natural effect, we may confidently assert, on every well constituted mind, is, and must be, the direct contrary. No doubt the testimony of natural reason, on whatever exercised, must of necessity stop short of those truths which it is the object of revelation to make known; but, while it places the existence and principal attributes of a Deity on such grounds as to render doubt absurd and atheism ridiculous, it unquestionably opposes no natural or necessary obstacle to further progress: on the contrary, by cherishing as a vital principle an unbounded spirit of inquiry and ardency of expectation, it unfetters the mind from prejudices of every kind, and leaves it open and free to every impression of a higher nature which it is susceptible of receiving, guarding only against enthusiasm and self-deception by a habit of strict investigation, but encouraging, rather than suppressing, everything that can offer a prospect or a hope beyond the present obscure and unsatisfactory state. The character of the true philosopher is to hope all things not impossible, and to believe all things not unreasonable. He who has seen obscurities which appeared impenetrable in physical and mathematical science suddenly dispelled, and the most barren and unpromising fields of inquiry converted, as if by inspiration, into rich and inexhaustible springs of knowledge and power, on a simple change of our point of view, or by merely bringing to bear on them some principle which it never occurred before to try, will surely be the very last last to acquiesce in any dispiriting prospects of either the present or future destinies of mankind; while, on the other hand, the boundless views of intellectual and moral, as well as material, relations which open on him on all hands in the course of these pursuits, the knowledge of the trivial place he occupies in the scale of creation, and the sense continually pressed upon him of his own weakness and incapacity to suspend or modify the slightest movement of the vast machinery he sees in action around him, must effectually convince him that humility of pretension, no less than confidence of hope, is what best becomes his character.'-pp. 7, 8. ART. IV.-Doctrine de Saint Simon. Exposition. Première Année. 1828-1829. Seconde édition. Paris. 1830. WE alluded at the close of our late article on Babœuf's Conspiracy,' to the progress in France of a new sect, avowing religious and political views alike blasphemous and dangerous. That an adventurer-half profligate, half madmanshould have met with any considerable measure of success in the attempt to found a sect in that country in these days, is of itself a most remarkable circumstance. But the political branch, at least, of the heresy is so likely to find favour at this time among certain classes of our own population, that we have considered it our duty to devote a separate paper to the history and character of this Doctrine de Saint Simon.' Some of those continental statesmen and men of letters, whose hearts and understandings have been corrupted by the false philosophy of the age, have acted in our own days upon an opinion which they did not affect to disguise, that all religions are false, but that some religion is necessary for the well-being of society, and that the Roman Catholic, as being the most widely extended, and holding out the greatest attractions to the multitude, is the one which a politic government ought to encourage in preference to all others. Upon such an understanding it was that popery and atheism used formerly to fraternize in all Roman Catholic countries. The reigning Harlot tolerated no heresy, no open contradiction; but she exacted nothing more than a decent observance of forms, and was abundantly indulgent, both in theory and practice, to every imaginable license in other things. Nothing has yet occurred to interrupt this amicable understanding in Spain, nor in Italy, in which latter country it originated, and may be said to be established; it prevails, also, to a considerable extent in Romish Germany, and in a less degree in the Netherlands, for superstition has still a strong hold there upon the clergy and 2 E 2 middle |