Of course this is quite consistent with their
being of immense importance as an instrument to something else; but it
is the few who have the aptitude for thus using them, not the bulk of
mankind.
The natural sciences do not, however, stand on the same footing with
these instrument-knowledges. Experience shows us that the generality of
men will find more interest in learning that, when a taper burns, the
wax is converted into carbonic acid and water, or in learning the
explanation of the phenomenon of dew, or in learning how the circulation
of the blood is carried on, than they find in learning that the genitive
plural of _pais_ and _pas_ does not take the circumflex on the
termination. And one piece of natural knowledge is added to another, and
others are added to that, and at last we come to propositions so
interesting as Mr. Darwin's famous proposition that "our ancestor was a
hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably
arboreal in his habits." Or we come to propositions of such reach and
magnitude as those which Professor Huxley delivers, when he says that
the notions of our forefathers about the beginning and the end of the
world were all wrong and that nature is the expression of a definite
order with which nothing interferes.
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