ughty contempt of little pleasures, even whilst they indulge in
them. The effect is greatly to raise the general pitch of society. In
aristocratic ages vast ideas are commonly entertained of the dignity,
the power, and the greatness of man. These opinions exert their
influence on those who cultivate the sciences, as well as on the rest
of the community. They facilitate the natural impulse of the mind to the
highest regions of thought, and they naturally prepare it to conceive
a sublime--nay, almost a divine--love of truth. Men of science at such
periods are consequently carried away by theory; and it even happens
that they frequently conceive an inconsiderate contempt for the
practical part of learning. "Archimedes," says Plutarch, "was of so
lofty a spirit, that he never condescended to write any treatise on the
manner of constructing all these engines of offence and defence. And as
he held this science of inventing and putting together engines, and all
arts generally speaking which tended to any useful end in practice, to
be vile, low, and mercenary, he spent his talents and his studious hours
in writing of those things only whose beauty and subtilty had in them
no admixture of necessity." Such is the aristocratic aim of science; in
democratic nations it cannot be the same.

The greater part of the men who constitute these nations are extremely
eager in the pursuit of actual and physical gratification. As they are
always dissatisfied with the position which they occupy, and are always
free to leave it, they think of nothing but the means of changing their
fortune, or of increasing it. To minds thus predisposed, every new
method which leads by a shorter road to wealth, every machine which
spares labor, every instrument which diminishes the cost of production,
every discovery which facilitates pleasures or augments them, seems to
be the grandest effort of the human intellect. It is chiefly from
these motives that a democratic people addicts itself to scientific
pursuits--that it understands, and that it respects them. In
aristocratic ages, science is more particularly called upon to furnish
gratification to the mind; in democracies, to the body. You may be sure
that the more a nation is democratic, enlightened, and free, the greater
will be the number of these interested promoters of scientific genius,
and the more will discoveries immediately applicable to productive
industry confer gain, fame, and even power on their a