genuine
offspring of immortal Jove, should honour the sacred source of lasting
fame.

_Hercules_.--Indeed, if writers employed themselves only in recording the
acts of great men, much might be said in their favour. But why do they
trouble people with their meditations? Can it signify to the world what
an idle man has been thinking?

_Cadmus_.--Yes, it may. The most important and extensive advantages
mankind enjoy are greatly owing to men who have never quitted their
closets. To them mankind is obliged for the facility and security of
navigation. The invention of the compass has opened to them new worlds.
The knowledge of the mechanical powers has enabled them to construct such
wonderful machines as perform what the united labour of millions by the
severest drudgery could not accomplish. Agriculture, too, the most
useful of arts, has received its share of improvement from the same
source. Poetry likewise is of excellent use to enable the memory to
retain with more ease, and to imprint with more energy upon the heart,
precepts of virtue and virtuous actions. Since we left the world, from
the little root of a few letters, science has spread its branches over
all nature, and raised its head to the heavens. Some philosophers have
entered so far into the counsels of divine wisdom as to explain much of
the great operations of nature. The dimensions and distances of the
planets, the causes of their revolutions, the path of comets, and the
ebbing and flowing of tides are understood and explained. Can anything
raise the glory of the human species more than to see a little creature,
inhabiting a small spot, amidst innumerable worlds, taking a survey of
the universe, comprehending its arrangement, and entering into the scheme
of that wonderful connection and correspondence of things so remote, and
which it seems the utmost exertion of Omnipotence to have established?
What a volume of wisdom, what a noble theology do these discoveries open
to us! While some superior geniuses have soared to these sublime
subjects, other sagacious and diligent minds have been inquiring into the
most minute works of the Infinite Artificer; the same care, the same
providence is exerted through the whole, and we should learn from it that
to true wisdom utility and fitness appear perfection, and whatever is
beneficial is noble.

_Hercules_.--I approve of science as far as it is assistant to action. I
like the improvement of navigation and