Page:Herschel - A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1831).djvu/80

 (60.) Armed with such powers and resources, it is no wonder if the enterprise of man should lead him to form and execute projects which, to one uninformed of their grounds, would seem altogether disproportionate. Were they to have been proposed at once, we should, no doubt, have rejected them as such: but developed, as they have been, in the slow succession of ages, they have only taught us that things regarded impossible in one generation may become easy in the next; and that the power of man over nature is limited only by the one condition, that it must be exercised in comformity with the laws of nature. He must study those laws as he would the disposition of a horse he would ride, or the character of a nation he would govern; and the moment he presumes either to thwart her fundamental rules, or ventures to measure his strength with hers, he is at once rendered severely sensible of his imbecility, and meets the deserved punishment of his rashness and folly. But if, on the other hand, he will consent to use, without abusing, the resources thus abundantly placed at his disposal, and obey that he may command, there seems scarcely any conceivable limit to the degree in which the average physical condition of great masses of mankind may be improved, their wants supplied, and their conveniences and comforts increased. Without adopting such an exaggerated view, as to assert that the meanest inhabitant of a civilized society is superior in physical condition to the lordly savage, whose energy and uncultivated ability gives him a natural predominance over his fellow denizens of the forest,—at least, if we compare