Town Geology | Page 7

dare say some of my readers, especially the younger ones, will demur
to that last speech of mine. Well, I hope they will not be angry with me
for saying it. I, at least, shall certainly not he angry with them. For
when I was young I was very much of what I suspect is their opinion. I
used to think one could get perfect freedom, and social reform, and all
that I wanted, by altering the arrangements of society and legislation;
by constitutions, and Acts of Parliament; by putting society into some
sort of freedom-mill, and grinding it all down, and regenerating it so.
And that something can be done by improved arrangements, something
can be done by Acts of Parliament, I hold still, as every rational man
must hold.
But as I grew older, I began to see that if things were to be got right,
the freedom-mill would do very little towards grinding them right,
however well and amazingly it was made. I began to see that what sort
of flour came out at one end of the mill, depended mainly on what sort
of grain you had put in at the other; and I began to see that the problem
was to get good grain, and then good flour would be turned out, even
by a very clumsy old-fashioned sort of mill. And what do I mean by
good grain? Good men, honest men, accurate men, righteous men,
patient men, self-restraining men, fair men, modest men. Men who are
aware of their own vast ignorance compared with the vast amount that
there is to be learned in such a universe as this. Men who are
accustomed to look at both sides of a question; who, instead of making
up their minds in haste like bigots and fanatics, wait like wise men, for
more facts, and more thought about the facts. In one word, men who
had acquired just the habit of mind which the study of Natural Science
can give, and must give; for without it there is no use studying Natural
Science; and the man who has not got that habit of mind, if he meddles
with science, will merely become a quack and a charlatan, only fit to

get his bread as a spirit-rapper, or an inventor of infallible pills.
And when I saw that, I said to myself--I will train myself, by Natural
Science, to the truly rational, and therefore truly able and useful, habit
of mind; and more, I will, for it is my duty as an Englishman, train
every Englishman over whom I can get influence in the same scientific
habit of mind, that I may, if possible, make him, too, a rational and an
able man.
And, therefore, knowing that most of you, my readers--probably all of
you, as you ought and must if you are Britons, think much of social and
political questions---therefore, I say, I entreat you to cultivate the
scientific spirit by which alone you can judge justly of those questions.
I ask you to learn how to "conquer nature by obeying her," as the great
Lord Bacon said two hundred and fifty years ago. For so only will you
in your theories and your movements, draw "bills which nature will
honour"--to use Mr. Carlyle's famous parable--because they are
according to her unchanging laws, and not have them returned on your
hands, as too many theorists' are, with "no effects" written across their
backs.
Take my advice for yourselves, dear readers, and for your children after
you; for, believe me, I am showing you the way to true and useful, and,
therefore, to just and deserved power. I am showing you the way to
become members of what I trust will be--what I am certain ought to
be--the aristocracy of the future.
I say it deliberately, as a student of society and of history. Power will
pass more and more, if all goes healthily and well, into the hands of
scientific men; into the hands of those who have made due use of that
great heirloom which the philosophers of the seventeenth century left
for the use of future generations, and specially of the Teutonic race.
For the rest, events seem but too likely to repeat themselves again and
again all over the world, in the same hopeless circle. Aristocracies of
mere birth decay and die, and give place to aristocracies of mere wealth;
and they again to "aristocracies of genius," which are really
aristocracies of the noisiest, of mere scribblers and spouters, such as

France is writhing under at this moment. And when these last have
blown off their steam, with mighty roar, but without moving the engine
a single yard, then they are but too likely to give place to the worst of
all aristocracies, the aristocracy