(Read before the students of Hampden-Sidney College, Virginia, in 1837)

Complete. From the text published in the Southern Literary Messenger for November, 1837.

Gentlemen:—
BEFORE we part, I am anxious to give you a brief historical sketch of the subjects we have studied during the past year, previous to awarding to the successful candidate the prize for which you have all contended with such emulation.

  Of the science of those ages appropriately and emphatically called the dark, I need hardly speak. The fanatical spirit of the times brought its own destruction; the invasion of the west of Europe by the Mohammedans and the Saracenic conquests ended in the intrusions of the Crusaders. But if these infidels had brought the Koran, they had brought too their books of astronomy and algebra. How true it is that the dispensations of an ever-watchful Providence accompany evil with good, and cause light to spring out of darkness. The sword of Charles Martel saved Europe from the persecutions of the prophet; but the Franks and Saxons had insensibly imbibed a taste for the more solid learning of the Spanish Moors. A great change too had taken place in the social relations of domestic life, and the disenthrallment of the fair sex from the degrading bondage in which it was held contributed in no small measure to the advancement to which the moral world was progressing. The right of inheritance of property, and the possession of lands, a right first given in the later Roman Empire, was of less importance to the elevation of woman than the chivalrous feeling which began to infect the soldiers of every country. The change thus commencing was felt in every department of life. In England parents were forbidden any longer to expose their own children for public sale,—a degrading practice, which heretofore had been lawful. The introduction of silk into the southern provinces of Europe brought with it luxury in dress; and the invention of a new system of music by Aretin, aided in no small degree to develop those finer feelings of the heart—those feelings which music alone can touch. Nor was the improvement confined to the refinements of life; the Saracen had brought with him the arithmetic of Arabia, and had taught the Spaniards the use of the Eastern notation. As if too, to prepare the way for the grandest of all human inventions, a discovery was brought from the East that the papyrus of Egypt and the parchment of Europe might be replaced by a substance made from cotton; and shortly after, paper was made from linen rags.

  Looking back to this period of intellectual infancy, there are many amusing incidents to be met with. Even the language which we speak was so poor and barren that the composition of the commonest surnames was uninvented; for it was not until the beginning of the thirteenth century that surnames were generally used as distinctive appellations. Improvement, which everywhere was germinating, was cherished by many of the crowned heads of Europe. Alphonso, King of Castile, imitating the example of some of the monarchs of Asia, was not only a zealous student of nature, but was even the author of the famous astronomical tables which bear his name.

  At the close of the thirteenth century the human intellect awoke from its sleep. The Monk of Pisa who invented spectacles—a most divine invention which gave sight to the blind—may be said, without any exaggeration, to have furnished eyes to the soul as well as the body. Shall we ascribe too much importance to this invention, if we impute to it the effect of drawing men’s thoughts from the crudities of the metaphysical dogmas of the schools, to an investigation of the eternal truths of nature? It led the way to the bright career of discovery and invention. The magnetic needle came into common use, and the mariner, trusting to this mysterious guide, boldly crossed the broadest seas; the ships of the enterprising Venetians, passing beyond the utmost boundary of geographical knowledge, brought home the strange story of the discovery of Greenland and its desolate inhabitants. The lucubrations of the alchemists, too, were about to develop a capital result, not, indeed, the making of gold, but a result whose effect was to destroy forever the distinction of physical power: the savage was no longer to triumph over the civilized man, nor were the works of art or of science ever again to be endangered by an irruption of ignorant barbarians. The power of man, his mere physical power, was indefinitely exalted, and the force which nature had denied him in making him one of the weakest of creatures was compensated by science more than a thousandfold when she gave him gunpowder. To this period, too, we are to refer another invention of vast benefit,—the mode of consuming pit coal,—an invention which has exercised an immense influence over the condition of nations, and to which the country from whence we all draw our descent mainly owes her position in arts and arms.

  Next came the “Great Epoch.” Gunpowder had given to man a kind of earthly omnipotence; printing was to give his works immortality, to diffuse throughout all the ramifications of society the knowledge that had been hoarded up by a few. No more might the philosopher fear lest his labors, in the conflicting interests of nations or passions of party, should be lost. Civilized man could spread out and perpetuate his intellectual productions. If there be any great landmark in the history of the earth—anything that points out the distinctive character of one age from another, surely it is to be met with in these great discoveries. We are not to suppose that men now possess more ability than at earlier ages. At a remote period, the Chaldeans had discovered the true system of the world and had built up theories which are now being confirmed. They wanted, however, the physical powers to disseminate their knowledge, and to protect themselves from the destruction that menaced them from more ignorant nations. Before the invention of printing and gunpowder, the world’s history was a perpetual squabble of one prince with another, one nation with its rival. With a few exceptions, its philosophy was a vain show, a thing not applicable to the comforts or purposes of life. Notions of military glory made conquest the end of human ambition and of human happiness; and he who had murdered most, and burned most, and ruined most, and pillaged most, was the greatest man; it was a conquest of man over his fellow, a conquest not less disgraceful to the vanquished than to the victor. Instead of subduing nature, and thereby raising the standard of power and wisdom, all the bad passions that can be engendered in the breast of mortals bore sway, and rapine and murder required no apology, provided the scale on which they were carried was sufficiently large. How greatly changed was the world at the epoch of which I speak; men began to find out that there were ways to be powerful without the destruction of their rivals, and that to conquer Nature with her own weapons was the only mode to be truly great. And now for awhile the results of successful experiment followed each other with rapidity, not only in those giant discoveries which had regenerated the world, but also in the arts of peace,—the arts that adorn civilized life. The construction of maps and charts which was introduced tended in no small degree to hasten the discovery of America. Engraving on copper gave a new impulse to painting, and secured faithful representations of natural objects where words and printing might fail to describe them. Navigation felt the great improvements that astronomy, magnetism, geography, and printing had bestowed. Vasco de Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope and anchored his ships in the Indian seas; and to Castile and Leon, Columbus gave a new world.

  The posterity of men who had thus signalized and adorned their age did them no disgrace. Magellan, a Portuguese aspiring to the fame of Columbus, sailed through the straits that still bear his name; and Europe saw with astonishment ships which had circumnavigated the world. The telescope was produced—watches were first made—the variation of the compass assigned—and improvement extended even to the minor arts; skewers which had been used by ladies were banished, and the common brass pin substituted in their stead. It is a truth that whatever improvements take place in the condition of men originate with themselves; and all governments have been found either to oppose, or only to yield slowly to them. For teaching the true system of the world—for the discovery of the secondary planets, the moons of Jupiter—for showing spots on the sun, the holy inquisition laid violent hands on Galileo, an immortal man, and the same government that was forced by the times to establish in England by act of Parliament the “Book of Common Prayer,” caused to be burned by the common hangman the books of astronomy and geography, because they were “infected with magic.” But the persecutions which were endured by philosophers from the malice of princes could neither rein nor stop the progress of knowledge. Decimal arithmetic with all its advantages was promulgated, and soon after a Scotch baron invented logarithms; the thermometer made its appearance in Holland; and that maritime spirit which had doubled the capes of South Africa and South America already sought a northwest passage to India and projected a visit to the North Pole. Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood,—a discovery that has done more for the advancement of medical science than almost all that preceded it. Torricelli invented the barometer, and proved that air possessed weight; Huygens invented the pendulum clock; Otto Guerick constructed the first air pump, and exposed bodies to a vacuum. The current of discovery was now fairly in motion—scientific associations were springing up in every country; and had things still gone on even in their usual channel, the accumulation of knowledge would have been great. But a propitious event occurred—for at the close of 1642 Isaac Newton was born,—a man whom God made to comprehend his works.

  I might here expatiate at length on the consequent development of all parts of natural science,—not only those cultivated by this great man, but those too surveyed by his disciples. I might point your attention to the discovery they made of the system of the universe; how they weighed worlds, and told their distances and magnitudes. I might describe how they effected the analysis of light, and gave us the reflecting and achromatic telescopes; but time would fail me. I come, therefore, to confine myself more strictly to the limits I have proposed, to examine whether the legacy of knowledge handed down has been improved. Science should neither stand still nor be on the decline, but progress forward, and push her conquests in the unexplored region of knowledge. How much greater are our inducements than those of our earlier philosophers! We have learned from their experience how vast a treasure we are the guardians of,—a treasure obtained by years of anxiety, thought, and pain. Let us recollect how short the span of life, and let us gather from what we are now to consider a fresh determination to do our duty to the future. Man is born but to die; he comes forward on the stage of life and has his day. Every moment the elements that are around him contend with him for mastery and solicit his destruction. Should he escape the repeated irruptions of disease, the years that pass slowly over him wear him away; one by one, all his faculties leave him; his animal life decays, and at last becomes extinct; his remaining functions are slowly and imperfectly performed. Nature, always provident, takes from him the knowledge of his end, or even makes that end desirable. The ties of his youth are broken, the endearments of other times have ceased to exist, and the terrors that youth and health have planted over the tomb are forgotten; the tranquil slumber of death comes calmly to close the troubles of life, and the old man sinks down in the lap of his mother earth and quietly sleeps in her bosom. Then, seeing these things are so, let us resolve to discharge our duty to the future,—to transmit what we have received, not only unimpaired, but with an honorable increase.

  An examination into the history of science during the last century is a theme of deep interest. That moral revolution which is shaking the world is the legitimate offspring of the physical changes which philosophers have brought about—the lineal descendant of those capital discoveries of which I have been speaking. We are the witnesses of that grand political drama which is passing in the world, producing both evil and good. Opening with a declaration of the independence of the North American States, it has shown us the ruin of ancient monarchies on the other continent. We know not what may be the catastrophe. The low murmur of a coming tempest is heard all over the world—a prelude of the conflict of intellect with power. Political systems, which have braved the storm and the battle for a thousand years, and which their founders expected would last forever, are fast changing. The Anglo-Saxon, the son of Freedom, has secured himself in his island fortress on the west of Europe; he has brought his language, his laws, and his science, and driven the red man from these forests; he has planted himself in the remote islands of the great Pacific, and is there founding future empires; he has seized on the happy plains of India, and is there lord of the soil; his enterprise has colonized the burning climates of Africa; his ships cover the ocean, what region on earth has not seen the flag of St. George and the banner with the stars? Born the champion of freedom—the protector of science—from all points on the surface of the earth he is exercising a silent, but a prodigious influence on the destinies of man; his commercial relations bind men of every country, of every color, and every faith to him. He is, as it were, the heart of the universe; and if anything affect his condition, the disorder will be felt to the extremest parts of the body.

  The history of the last century is full of discovery—discovery applied to the purposes of life, it is characterized by capital inventions which will rival those of all remoter periods, and raise man higher in point of power and wisdom. Shall I be blamed if I say that some of these discoveries are godlike? If they do not confer immortality, they prolong the duration of life, and increase the sum of human happiness by banishing disease; they confer power only limited by will; they destroy distance; and if they cannot increase time they crowd the works of a century into a few days—they reveal to us what has occurred thousands of years before our own existence, and enable us, with the sure faith of a prophet, to divulge events that shall happen thousands of years to come.

  There was a disease which made terrific eruptions at irregular periods throughout the world; without respect of person, or color, or age, its course was marked with desolation. The smallpox, a sound of ominous import, made the wise tremble, and the giddy pause. During the period of which I speak, vaccination has been introduced, and this pestilence almost banished from the face of the earth. Had Jenner lived in the days of the Greeks, he would have shared the honors of Hercules and Æsculapius. The sulphate of quinia, a substance which has been discovered during the present century, has rendered regions where the white man could not live, habitable and healthy. The sulphate of morphia gives him relief from pain in the hour of sickness and anguish on the bed of death. Nor has the philosopher’s success been confined to the cure; it has gained a nobler end—the prevention of disease. A ship could not sail a distant voyage without the certainty of losing a large part of her crew by the sea scurvy: Admiral Hosier, a century ago, sailed to the West Indies with seven ships of the line: “He buried his crews twice, and died himself of a broken heart.” A preventative of this devastation has been found, and vessels circumnavigate the world, and stay years from home without a solitary case of sickness from this cause.

  And speaking of ships on the seas brings to my mind how difficult it was but a short time ago to assign their place; or for the sailor to know distinctly where he was; without a guide, save his compass, he was alone on a deep and trackless element. The rapid improvements of astronomy have enabled us to give rules for finding the position of a ship, by observations made on the moon. How strange to the ignorant man is this, to know one’s position on a boundless sea, by making observations on the moon, and drawing conclusions on the faith of some distant astronomer’s calculations in his study. “Yet the alternative of life and death, wealth and ruin, are daily and hourly staked with perfect confidence on these marvelous computations, which might almost seem to have been devised to show how closely the extremes of speculative refinement and practical utility can be brought to approximate.”

  Connected with this is the invention of the chronometer, an instrument which emulates in accuracy of the division of time—the revolutions of the heavens. This capital instrument has been brought, in the period of which I speak, to a great degree of perfection. A similar improvement has taken place in all kinds of mechanical combinations. Babbage’s calculating engine is an example in point; it is engaged in performing intricate computations for mathematical tables—its results coming out with rigorous precision. Not only does this system of wheels calculate, as though it were a living and a reasoning thing, but even writes down and prints off its labors. Consider for a moment how much we are in advance of former generations, in the arrangement of materials that have been known time out of mind. Would Archimedes have believed it possible to produce a machine that could perform computations with more accuracy than the most skillful geometer?

  We have made ourselves, too, masters of another element. Chemistry has shown us the method of elevating ourselves above the highest mountains, and to float in the air where the clouds are beneath our feet, and an everlasting sunshine above us. The gas balloon has yet to assume that importance to which as a great invention it will assuredly attain.

  Nature knows no distinction of great and small; these are terms invented by man and to which he can scarcely assign a meaning. In the mechanism of this universe, the sudden transition from what is immensely great to what is infinitely small meets him at every step, and in the extremes he is utterly lost. By rapidity of motion the most enormous distances are traversed. It takes but little over eight minutes for light to pass from the sun to the earth; the forest oak requires a thousand years to raise its branches a few feet above the soil. And man, too, has taught himself a way almost to annihilate geographical distances. A single hour is enough to carry him over a degree on the earth’s surface; yet the railroad and its locomotive are but the invention of yesterday. Will not they have a moral effect, rivaling that of the press?—an effect, too, far more general; for, to feel the benefit of printing, a long course of previous education is required which the civilized man alone possesses; but the steamboat and the locomotive bring the same blessing to the savage and the civilized, to the ignorant and the wise.

  If the invention of printing was an epoch in our history, the invention of steam engines was hardly less important; they give us an unlimited power which we wield at pleasure, and yet are faithful slaves.

  In the telegraph and semaphore we possess the means of instantaneous communication. The distance from London to the Navy Yard at Portsmouth is seventy-two miles; yet, years ago, when the semaphore was a recent invention, a message could be sent and an answer returned in fifty-six seconds. In the art of printing itself,—that art which seemed to lack nothing of perfection,—important additions have been made. Lithography, or printing from stone, whilst it unites the finish of copperplate engraving and mezzotinto, enables us to give autograph copies, or printed pages at pleasure. It is unquestionably one of the most elegant of modern inventions, and one of the greatest promise.

  The safety lamp of Davy will forever stand forth a bright monument of this era; the fate of the miner is shut up in that little cage of wire gauze; the lives of hundreds, and the happiness of thousands, are due to this philanthropic invention. The lifeboat too, that cannot sink—that has saved many from a watery grave, should surely not pass unnoticed.

  I might here speak of the computation of the chances of mortality and the foundation of policies of assurance. These enable us from distress and death to draw comfort and support for the living, and that upon no gambling or other unrighteous principle. I might speak of the invention of bleaching by chlorine,—an art which gives to the fabrics of Europe their widespread celebrity. I might speak of the manufacture of sugar from linen rags, or shreds of paper, or enlarge on the impossibility of famine ever occurring, since a mode has been found of converting common sawdust into wholesome, nutritious bread. To these and many other such inventions and discoveries I have already called your attention in this course of lectures: I hasten, therefore, to a conclusion.

  Permit me to offer you a few words of advice by way of closing these remarks. All our measures of time and space are fitted for our own condition, and bear with them the frail marks of humanity. Created to inherit a beautiful world, but only the tenants of a few days, we are prone to look upon all things as mortal as ourselves. The rising and setting of the sun, the blooming and fading of flowers, these are things that daily remind us of the shortness of our own time; nor do we ever cast aside the impression they make—and we persuade ourselves that a day must very soon come that shall see all this order and harmony of the world finished. There is, too, a mournful pleasure in these contemplations—a pleasure that we all feel in thinking that everything around us must perish like ourselves. We try to forget that this vast machine, whose wheels have been working thousands of years, shows no marks of disarrangement. We have existed for some six thousand years; but because that appears to us long, has decrepitude come upon the world? In that time the double star y, Leonis, has only performed five of its revolutions, and y, Virginis, little more than nine. Is it a supposition at all warranted by what we see of the perfect structure of the universe, to conclude that its parts cannot hang together till some of them have performed half a dozen revolutions? The universe is not so crazy a machine. Remember, then, we are only the possessors of the present moment. We owe a great duty to the future: let us perform it.

    Gifted as we are with hands to effect our wishes, and the means of transporting ourselves superior to a great many of the brutes, those hands and all those appliances have not made us what we are; they have not taught us to grasp the heavens, and enumerate distances that defy imagination; they have not given us the power of prophecy, nor have they granted us that omnipresence which the mind of the astronomer almost possesses. We may be creatures of passion and pain, like our inferiors; nay, even like them, the very mode and manner of our existence may be the result of simple and uniform laws: but yet there is a something in us that guides us in passion; a something that takes the sting from sorrow, and bids us pursue the great end of existence here and hereafter—happiness. And on a calm evening, when we look into the blue vault above us, there is a quiet sensation that comes upon us all. The stars that roll on eternally in the sky—the infinity of space before us—the speck on which we stand, an island in the abyss—the mere atom that we are: and yet we claim kindred with all that is great and vast, and know that we have a communion and fellowship with them, and are a part of the gigantic scheme. Nor will the stillness of death end the part that we have to perform—all around us is in motion and change; and beyond us, in worlds whose existence the telescope alone reveals, where we might look for silence and repose, the first evidence we have of existence is the proof of life. Star revolving around star in new and unusual modes—systems, with double, triple, and many suns, that beam with party-colored rays; all these things prepare us to know that death is not an utter destruction. The voice of nature tells us that the mind is not a result of any system of corporeal organization,—in its own state every creature is as highly and as perfectly organized as we, and the sensory organs of many are even more developed than ours,—the informing principle that is in us is a thing distinct—not a mere secretion of medullary matter—not the product of a conflict of voltaic currents,—it is a something that knows its own existence, that shudders at the word annihilation, and proudly claims kindred with infinitude and eternity.

  Whatever may be our lot in life, and what the true purpose of our existence, an inevitable fate attends us—a fate which bears with it all the marks of eventuating as a result of a law of nature; and these are laws, which unlike those framed by human legislators, it is impossible for us to break. Though we may be powerful, and possessed of a reason capable of making us acquainted with the universe, there is not one of these regulations which we can infringe. “Thou shalt not change or destroy it,” is written on every material atom—“Thou shalt be born and die,”—these are decrees against which we would struggle in vain. Over the destinies of our own race they have given us a power; and though we are suffered to be spectators of the existence of other worlds, they restrain us to our own. These eternal decrees show us the limits of our condition; nor should we repine. Do not the sunshine and the storm, and spring, and summer, and autumn, and winter, come as they did a thousand years ago? Do not the same stars shine afar in the night, and the same suns ripen the fruits of the earth?” There is something in the calm regularity of these laws that persuades us to commit ourselves unreservedly to their operation.”

  I have thus endeavored to trace the road by which we have become possessed of the only human knowledge which is really valuable; it is an imperfect sketch. Of the material constitution of the world, what do we know? We are infants in science; yet how wide is the difference between the student of nature and the ignorant man. Can he believe that the particles of the bodies around us are so small that the distance between those which are nearest is infinitely great compared with their own size? We may, perhaps, make him learn that a gnat, when flying, beats the air with its wing a hundred times in a second; but what will he say when we tell him that a wave of red light trembles four hundred eighty-two millions of millions of times in a second, or a wave of violet light seven hundred seven millions of millions of times in a second. Yet these are things of which he may satisfy himself; and surely to cultivate these pursuits will tend to make him not only a wiser, but a better man.

  Finally, therefore, let me urge the pursuit of these objects upon you; there is no mystery around them—but then there is no royal road to them. From the experience of a few short years I can recommend them to you as a pleasure in prosperity—a comfort in affliction. You owe to the future a debt—prepare to pay it. Cultivate the intellect heaven has lent you, remembering it is also the property of posterity. Knowledge offers you wealth and power. Choose then whether you will accept them.