OCR Text |
Show 64 KATURE SUPERIOR TO AR'l'. tion," in our thinking, we ,,-ould have the consolation of knowing that we were in every instance "thinking rightly and to some purpose, "-that every thought would" tell" practically; and that alone would give us both collectedness and pleasure. As we would then never attempt any thing but what we felt confident we could do, we would always have the exultation of success to cheer us on. Now, it is only in the observation of nature that we can get that ready-mindedness which cheers us 01~ with the confidence that we are always thinking anght and to good purpose. Our business, if we are to conduct it in the most successful and proper manner, must not be half so wide in its range as a mind of even any ordinary capacity will wander; and as for the productions of art, though many of them are curious, and far from unworthy of our attention, in order that from them we may " learn to excel," they are at best but second-hand applications of those properties and principles which we find original and fresh when we turn to nature itself. ,.fhe very depth of human knowledge, and the very . height and perfection of human art, are, in truth, nothing more than the revealing and applyinO' of a few of the laws and principles of nature ; and though we often flatter ourselves that there is something profound in what we know, and mighty in what we do, it is still all in nature ; and what we call inventions, even clever ones, are only the applications of discoveries; and of discoveries which lie as much in the way of one man as another, if both are equally diligent in search of them. It is matter of common remark, that many of the m?st valuable discoveries, or applications of discovenes (call them inventions, if you will), have been made as it were by accident, by persons not having many of the ordinary pretensions to know ledge, or not being those to whom we would have looked for such discoveries or inventions. The mariner's 'I'Hl!; 1:1ELD OF' lJISCOV.ERY. 65 compass and quadrant ; the steam-engine, and the apparatus by m~a1~s of_ which it opens and shuts 1ts ?w1: valves; pnntmg m all its forms, and with all I~S 1~prov~mcnts; chronometers that keep correct time m sp1te of the changes of heat and of cold· an~, indeed, all the more wonderful and useful appli: catiOns that have been made of the properties of matter generally, or of the particular properties of particular kinds or combinations of matter, have almost all been the result of what we in common language, are in the habit of calling ckdnce: that is, they have been made by those who, as we say in common language, were not '· the most likely persons to make them." . But when we say that, we are wrong ; and the discoveries are not owino- to chance, any more than any thing else is so O\~ng. They ar~ the effects of causes, just as certainly as burnmg IS the effect of_ throwing a lighted brand among dry _straw or chips of wood, or as pain in the fingers IS the consequence of takin(J' hold of a live coal with them; and the persons0 who made those discoveries-every discovery that has been hitherto made, as well as all those who shall make ~uture ones, have done so, not by any thing that can m any way be c~lled chance, but simply because they were m the nght roa~ to the discovery-a road whteh all the rest of mankmd had missed. No man can go a determinate way to the discovery of that ~hich is not known, because, before he can go to It he must know both what and where it is· but where all is unknown, no man can tell what h~ rna~ not discover, if he has but field enough. The field for all discovery is nature; and, therefore, he whose observation commandB the most of that is the man ~ost in the way of useful discovery, whatever that d1scovery may be. Nvw the man who has it in his power to make usef~ discoveries is placed in the very hio-hest and happiest situation in which a man can b~ placed |