cient states and the old theocracies did not deem man's personal happiness a sufficient motive for invoking to its promotion the studies of the philosopher and the countenance of rulers; that the contributions they have made to the humane sciences and arts are comparatively so unimportant, and that so few of those material comforts which, in our day, smooth man's path along the journey of life, can trace their genealogy beyond the last two or three centuries of his history.

We have thus far labored to present a negative statement of the law, according to which a degraded estimate of man's individual destiny acts upon those arts and sciences which most directly concern his personal happiness. We have shown what, in the absence of a proper social theory, the ancients did not achieve in the physical sciences. We now propose to state this law in a positive form, and from the facts which it is the boast of modern civilization to have supplied, to show how far the modern doctrine of political science, as it finds its expression under constitutional governments, is directly instrumental in encouraging industrial pursuits, and in directing the attention of men of science to the study of material nature.

It is now about three hundred years since the decisive blow was struck which was to emancipate the human mind from the fatal dominion of the past-since the principle was irrevocably established, that man was not intended by Providence merely as an appendage of some principality or power, a new member, an additional sense. a kind of supplementary instinct, provided to gratify the caprices or to work out the small ambitions of the few who, as accidents of accidents, were charged with the office of his government. It was not until after the fifteenth century that the modern doctrine of individual independence began to exhibit method, and to take impulse. Not that this class of opinions has been entirely the growth of the subsequent periodwhich is not the case-on the contrary, we may find the germ of the representative system, and of constitutional guaranties, one or both, more or less frequently exhibited in the monarchies, the feudalities, and, above all, in the ecclesiastical corporations of the middle ages at no time, however, before the

reformation, were they established-at no previous period were they beyond the reach of accidents which might have proved fatal to, or at least have procrastinated the day of their supremacy.

But the waters of European society were about to be troubled again to new and unwonted issues. The spirit which moved over that vast abyss of elemental strife into which the Roman civilization had dissolved, had said, let there be lights in the firmament of heaven to divide the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons, for days and for years-and it was so.

That Providence, which never designs what it does not provide means to execute, had already selected the agents who were to carry out its purposes. The fullness of time had arrived, when they were to go forth upon their mission, both to destroy and to fulfil. Society had been preparing for centuries the material wherewith the work of reconstruction was to go on; and all the nations of Europe-nay, of the whole civilized world, were called from their short-sighted ambitions, and from their enterprises of a day, to engage in or to observe the progress and the processes of this new creation.

The church and the schools were the two sanctuaries in which, at this period, all the venerable absurdities of ancient, social, and political philosophy that had survived the mutations of time, and the convulsions of nations, still found a refuge. But when Luther erected against the frowning towers and high places of the Italian Church the tremendous enginery of his passions, qualified, as they were, for their work of destruction and reform, by his impregnable honesty, and almost insane zealand when Bacon lifted up his voice against the organized absurdities of the schools. in the spirit of prophecy to which he had been inspired in the visions of his deep and comprehensive intellect-from that time forth, commences a new era in the history of humanity. Religion awoke from her enchantment of a thousand years, and the strong holds of superstition and idolatry, as if instinct with shame, fell confounded before her advancing footsteps. The temples and the altars, which still stood open to the worshippers of Aristotle, and which had reeked with the sacri

But more than all are we indebted to Bacon for the confident exhortations to self-reliance, which are given us in every page of his philosophy-and to his vigorous protest against the authority of the past. Luther had defended the freedom of conscience from the oppression of the Church. Bacon vindicated the freedom of the mind from the oppression of the schools. Luther taught all men to inquire for themselves in inatters of religion. Bacon taught all men to inquire for themselves into the laws of nature, and if need be, to put her to the torture for truth's sake, but never to trust to any authority, save that of their own senses, and their own judgment.

In 1776, we find the stars of Luther and Bacon in conjunction. They constellated the destiny of America. Freedom of conscience, and freedom of inquiry had, at this time, in our country, first discovered their mutual dependence, their common power, and their common destiny, and now sat down together to write out the formulas of the new science of government, and of industry, which they had called into being. They declared all mankind to be by nature, free and equal, before God and the law. They asserted man's capacity, and they established his right to govern himself. They discouraged all distinctions among men, save those which virtue and talent confer. They declared the happiness of each individual to be the interest of all; that the state existed only for man, not man for the state, and that laws should exist only to secure these results. Upon the basis of these new principles of social polity, the American people declared themselves a sovereign state.

But their whole inheritance was not yet made up. Accompanying this charter of human rights, which defined and settled his proper relations with the state, man received a new science to conduct and to assist him in the new career which was opened before hima science which was to enable him more completely to realize all the fruits

This was the science of Political Economy.

In the same year that America declared her independence, and therein her sense of the dignity and the importance of the individual man, Adam Smith published his Wealth of Nations, a work which, more than any other that has ever been written, deserves to be considered the novum organum of political economy. In the same year that we attained our political majority among the nations, endowed with a new system of polity, which made the happiness of mankind the sole business and end of government, the light of a new science was added to our inheritance, to complete the beneficent purpose of our fathers, and to light our footsteps-it is our privilege already to speak the language of history-to light our footsteps through a career of unexampled prosperity and honor.

At the great creation, the favorite and most exalted work of the divine energy, was reserved for the last. In the generations of the heavens, and the earth, man was made on the sixth day, and of all the works of God's hands, man alone was formed in his image. So in the generations of the nationsin the generations of society, man, the individual, was the last and greatest creation. No longer a supplementary being-a soldier-a priest-an implement-a craft-a complete man, himself the centre and the circumference of a system knowing no interest higher than his own, except that God's, in whose image he is created, and putting faith in no laws which do not recognize in man's happiness, the great end of their existence.

This we conceive to be the great result of modern history-its new theory of manhood, whereby each individual is made a law unto himself--a theory, which was enacted into a permanent tendency of our institutions, by the unanimous declaration of the thirteen United States of America in 1776.

From which we are permitted to conclude, that whereas, in the ancient

societies, man existed for the sake of the state, now the state exists only for the sake of the man. Whereas, the purpose of government was not man's happiness, but its own aggrandizement; now man's happiness only is consulted, and the aggrandizement of the state is deplored. Whereas, literature-science ―art—nay, religion itself, were encouraged, but as they subserved the purposes of the few, and strengthened their control over the many-now they are encouraged, and only so far encouraged as they tend to ameliorate and improve the condition of universal humanity.

The question now presents itself with which we are most immediately concerned. How do these new doctrines of government, and this new theory of man, influence the study and prosecution of physical science? How do they concern those who minister to and interpret the laws of material nature? What new encouragements do they offer? What new privileges do they grant the artizan, which were denied him under the old civilizations?

In the first place, they open the entire world of nature to his investigation. His new born individuality gives him the right to inquire into every thing that is to know the purpose of its being, and the law of its action. The wide champaign of the universe is before him; and neither state nor church -neither sect nor class, nor order of humanity, dare question his right to lay hold on the truth, wherever he may find it. From the philosopher, nature no longer claims to have any inviolable

secrets.

He has begun to learn the true dignity of his new vocation, which has placed him in a position to despise the temptations of patronage, and armed him with the strength to defy its frowns. He will speak his convictions if he choose about the motions of the earth, he course of the stars, the causes of the tides, without fear of the Inquisition or the terrors of the stake. He will speculate and write freely about the

constitution of our planet, its beginning and its end, its cause, its process and its result, without fear that he is perilling the salvation of souls, or his own peace or liberty.

We behold, in this enlarged freedom of inquiry, and the new realms of nature opened and to be opened to the investigations of philosophy, the first great result of the modern view of man's social and political destiny.

Again: Man, says the modern state, was never destined by nature for a drudge. It was not intended that any one class of humanity should be condemned to hew wood and draw water all their days for the convenience of another class, and without hope and without reward. The soul of man is endowed with certain tastes and susceptibilities which need to be gratified— which must be gratified-and to suppress which, is to deprive the hunian character of all its symmetry, and life of its most exalted pleasures. A blessing, therefore, saith the state, upon him who will reconcile the culture of man's spiritual tastes with the supply of his physical necessities.

Now, it unfortunately so happens, that, under no form of civilization of which we possess any knowledge, have the supply and the diffusion of the necessaries of life been sufficient to enable any considerable portion of our race to respect these claims of their higher natures. As we have before remarked, the great mass of society cannot presume to have any ideal life. The rewards, the distinctions, the triumphs which make up so large a proportion of the happiness enjoyed by men, are dead to them. They are forever possessed by their necessities; and in their incessant search after the means of living, they have been forced to forget the ends of life.†

The obvious, and, indeed, the only remedy for this lamentable social exigency, is to be found in the enlargement of our acquaintance with the powers aud the resources of nature, by

which a supply of the actual wants of life may be rendered more accessible to the industry of men.

The brief history of our own country shows that her institutions are in sympathy with this remedy; and we may behold a practical demonstration of its efficacy in the condition of society about us. When, in the history of the world, was so large a proportion of any people ever known to be engaged in productive labor, and in the industrial pursuits proper, as in this country at present? And where has the industrialist found so little in the character of his calling to contend with, and so much encouragement from every class of society to advance his social position? Men of science are, day by day, allying themselves with the practical operatives, to whose labors they give scope and elevation, and in exchange, they take to their own speculations practicability and result. This process of unifying their respective functions is going on, and will continue to go on as it has done, until every operative shall become a man of science, and every man of science, in turn, become an operative;-until our country shall be populated with intelligent and faithful observers, ready at all times to seize upon and avail themselves of every important fact which nature may unfold before them. And this leads us to the third influence of the modern theory of manhood upon the developement of physical science.

Every intelligent operative is himself the centre of a large sphere of important influences. When we consider the number of these centres, and their ever enlarging capacities for observation, how can we sufficiently estimate the importance of all the new facts which the industry of a country like America will accumulate year after year? or their value, in perfecting the practical education of the artisan, and in giving accuracy and breadth to the speculations of the philosopher. Without any political organization for the purpose; without court patronage ; without institutions of science supported by government; without men of science, the pensioners of royal bountybut by the simple enfranchisement of our natural impulses, not only every city, and every county, and every town, but, we may say, almost every man, has or will become an important aux

iliary in building up and propagating the useful arts and sciences throughout our land.

Our country has become a vast arena of endless experimentation. We can scarcely turn our eyes upon any object or upon any person but we are immediately transported by association to the machine-shop and to the laboratory; to the cunning artificer, or to the patient angler in the great deep of nature's unexplored domains. Every thing, in a word, gives evidence of a universal-a deep and an abiding interest in whatsoever will help us in subjugating and comprehending the phenomena of nature. Where so large a proportion of the public intelligence is quickened to this species of inquiry by so universal an interest in its results, the facilities for diffusing practical scientific information are of course indefinitely multiplied.

Indeed, even now, in our own country, these facilities are so abundant, that a new discovery is frequently domesticated as an art, before it finds a page to bear record of it in the annals of science. The moment an individual advances a step beyond the line of the mighty regiment of industrialists with whom he marches, he is put to the question. The burden of his communication is straightway heard and comprehended by all. It enters directly into the general fund of intelligence, and forms the basis of new projects and new discoveries; for the general intelligence is sufficient to take up and assimilate its more important features without delay or abatement. We can best understand the advantage of this general and educated interest in physical improvements, by observing the consequences of its absence.

The discovery of the earth's motion, by Copernicus, lay for upwards of eighty years idle and unavailable on the tables of some half dozen philosophers, before any successful attempt was made to use it for scientific purposes. At the time of its promulgation it did not explain any of the phenomena of planetary motion, then known, which were not equally explicable by the Ptolemaic hypothesis. So far behind its comprehension was even the scientific intelligence of the period, that the very system which consigned Galileo to the dungeons of the Inquisition, and to the