Page:Natural Phenomena and their Spiritual Lessons.djvu/28

16 Total ignorance, were it possible, would imply total helplessness,—total uselessness, also. To be useful at all, even to be human, something must be known and understood. No kind or degree of knowledge, however humble, is to be despised; while the more varied and the richer our stores, the better are we provided with useful appliances; and his possessions are large indeed who does not daily find himself ignorant of something desirable to be known. The sciences are of the utmost value to man's physical well-being and the foundation of his external interests. In the three kingdoms of nature, animal, vegetable, and mineral; and the various physical forces, such as heat, electricity, magnetism, and others; the bounty of divine Providence has stored the scene of this his first, lowest, and preparatory life with a copious supply of materials adapted to his necessities and advancement; but, to be used, they must be known and understood. Science, however, has nobler ends than material prosperity, or the gratification of the senses. Its successful pursuit, especially in its higher departments, as it requires, so does it form and exercise, some of the finest and highest of the intellectual powers; and it is certain that the acquisition of facts relating to man's natural life and the plane of its activities, in some of the various departments of knowledge, is an indispensable preliminary to the development of his faculties of rationality and intelligence. Even that degree of rationality which from its universality is styled common sense has a similar origin. Knowledge, great or small, is a body of which rational principles and conclusions, broad or narrow, are the soul; or, one is the creeping caterpillar, the other the beautiful, soaring