New scientific knowledge affords advantages to all classes of men; to the minister of religion, by supplying him with new illustrations of Creative power, in the greatness, smallness, and vast variety of nature; to the physician, by explaining to him more perfectly the structure and phenomena of the human body, and by providing him with new remedies; to the statesman and politician, by making known to him the great and increasing relations of science to national progress, by its influence upon wages, capital, the employment of workmen, the art of war, the means of communication with foreign countries, &c.; to the philanthropist, as an endless source of employment for poor persons, by the development of new discoveries, inventions, and improvements in arts and manufactories; to the military man, by affording him new engines and materials for warfare and defence; to the inventor, by supplying him with new discoveries upon which to found inventions; to the merchant and man of trade, by the influence of new products and processes upon the prices of his commodities; to the manufacturer, as a means of improving his materials,
apparatus, and processes; and to the investor of money, by assisting him to judge what new technical schemes are likely to succeed.
As the domain of rational enjoyment afforded by means of science gradually enlarges, that derivable from less intellectual sources will probably be modified; indeed this change is already progressing, and is manifested in the alterations occurring in theological views, and in the extensive adoption of scientific entertainments by religious bodies. The recognition of science by professors of religion is also shewn by the already extensive use of railways on Sundays as a means of conveyance to churches and chapels; also by the publication by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, of Manuals of Electricity, Astronomy, Botany, Chemistry, Crystallography, Geology, Physiology, Zoology, Matter and Motion, the Spectroscope, &c.
Having shewn some of the chief modes in which new scientific truth is a basis of mental and moral progress, it is not necessary to say much respecting the evil uses sometimes made of science, because every good thing is liable to be abused by ignorant or ill-intentioned persons. The abuses of scientific knowledge do not arise from the true spirit of research, viz., a desire for new knowledge on account of its intrinsic goodness and value to man, but from an absence of that sentiment. The Bremerhaven explosion, the assassination of the Czar, the uses of photography to forge letters of credit, and of the
telegraph in swindling operations, the employment of electro-gilding and silvering in coining base money, &c., &c., are all attributable to motives other than a love of science.
All the facts mentioned in this chapter, and the various points of essential similarity between physical, physiological, and mental phenomena, justify the conclusion that both moral and other mental actions, like physical and chemical ones, are obedient to the great principles of science. And from the evidence here adduced and alluded to, it is certain that those principles influence human progress, not only in a few conspicuous direct ways, but in a multitude of varied, deep-seated, and indirect ones.
If the statements made in this Chapter are true, that the innate properties of matter really are motive powers of the human organism, and the principles of science are regulators of mental and moral action; that Man is a feeble epitome of the principles and powers of inorganic matter; that the laws of Nature operate in utter disregard of his erroneous beliefs; that nearly all man's sins and sufferings are traceable to his ignorance and limited powers; that in proportion to his ignorance of science so is he unable to foresee the more remote consequences of his thoughts and acts; and if new knowledge does correct erroneous beliefs and purify human thought and action, it behoves teachers of morality to make themselves adequately acquainted with the principles and newest developments of science.