Charles Kingsley

“ And if you emigrate, you will soon find out, if you have eyes and common sense, that the vegetable wealth of the world is no more exhausted than its mineral wealth. Exhausted? Not half of it—I believe not a tenth of it—is yet known. Could I show you the wealth which I have seen in a single Tropic island, not sixty miles square—precious timbers, gums, fruits, what not, enough to give employment and wealth to thousands and tens of thousands, wasting for want of being known and worked—then you would see what a man who emigrates may do, by a little sound knowledge of botany alone. ”

“ Examine any average limestone quarry from Bristol to Berwick, and you will see there all that I have been describing; that is, all of it which is not soft animal matter, certain to decay. You will see the lime-mud hardened into rock beds; you will see the shells embedded in it; you will see the corals in every stage of destruction; you will see whole layers made up of innumerable fragments of Crinoids—no wonder they are innumerable, for, it has been calculated, there are in a single animal of some of the species 140,000 joints—140,000 bits of lime to fall apart when its soft parts decay. ”

“ Little, indeed, can he learn of the planet on which he lives. Little in that direction is given to him, and of him little shall be required. But to him, for that very reason, all that can be given should be given; he should have every facility for learning what he can about this earth, its composition, its capabilities; lest his intellect, crushed and fettered by that artificial drudgery which we for a time miscall civilisation, should begin to fancy, as too many do already, that the world is composed mainly of bricks and deal, and governed by acts of parliament. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The civilised world is learning, thank God, more and more of the importance of physical science; year by year, thank God, it is learning to live more and more according to those laws of physical science, which are, as the great Lord Bacon said of old, none other than “Vox Dei in rebus revelata”—the Word of God revealed in facts; and it is gaining by so doing, year by year, more and more of health and wealth; of peaceful and comfortable, even of graceful and elevating, means of life for fresh millions. ”

“ All know its softly-rounded downs, its vast beech woods, its short and sweet turf, its snowy cliffs, which have given—so some say—to the whole island the name of Albion—the white land. But all do not, perhaps, know that till we get to the chalk no single plant or animal has been found which is exactly like any plant or animal now known to be living. ”

“ You may find about the world—you may see even in England alone—every gradation between coal and growing forest. You may see the forest growing in its bed of vegetable mould; you may see the forest dead and converted into peat, with stems and roots in it; that, again, into sunken forests, like those to be seen below high-water mark on many coasts of this island. You find gradations between them and beds of lignite, or wood coal; then gradations between lignite and common or bituminous coal; and then gradations between common coal and culm, or anthracite, such as is found in South Wales. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The sandstone and marls are immensely older than the boulder-clay. They are, humanly speaking, some four or five worlds older.
What do I mean? This—that between the time when the one, and the time when the other, was made, the British Islands, and probably the whole continent of Europe, have changed four or five times; in shape; in height above the sea, or depth below it; in climate; in the kinds of plants and animals which have dwelt on them, or on their sea-bottoms. And surely it is not too strong a metaphor, to call such changes a change from an old world to a new one. ”

“ The art of seeing, the art of knowing what you see; the art of comparing, of perceiving true likenesses and true differences, and so of classifying and arranging what you see: the art of connecting facts together in your own mind in chains of cause and effect, and that accurately, patiently, calmly, without prejudice, vanity, or temper—this is what is wanted for true freedom of mind. But accuracy, patience, freedom from prejudice, carelessness for all except the truth, whatever the truth may be—are not these the virtues of a truly free spirit? ”

“ But here some of my readers may ask, as they have a perfect right to ask, why I wish young men to learn Natural Science at all? What good will the right understanding of geology, or of astronomy, or of chemistry, or of the plants or animals which they meet—what good, I say, will that do them?
In the first place, they need, I presume, occupation after their hours of work. If any of them answer: “We do not want occupation, we want amusement. Work is very dull, and we want something which will excite our fancy, imagination, sense of humour. ”

“ It may be our own weakness; but you are really going on too fast and too far for our small imaginations. Have you not played with us, as well as argued with us, till you have inveigled us step by step into a conclusion which we cannot and will not believe? That all this land should have been sunk beneath an icy sea? That Britain should have been as Greenland is now? ”

“ There are cases in which nature does try to thrust one rock under another. But to do that she requires a force so enormous, compared with what is employed in laying one rock on another, that (so to speak) she continually fails; and instead of producing a volcanic eruption, produces only an earthquake. Of that I may speak hereafter, and may tell you, in good time, how to distinguish rocks which have been thrust in from beneath, from rocks which have been laid down from above, as every rock between London and Birmingham or Exeter has been laid down. ”

“ But, even if you are no mineralogist, common sense will tell you, that if they were all concreted out of the same clay, it is most likely that they would be all of the same kind, and not of a dozen or more different kinds. Common sense will tell you, also, that if they were all concreted out of the same clay, it is a most extraordinary coincidence, indeed one too strange to be believed, if any less strange explanation can be found—that they should have taken the composition of different rocks which are found all together in one group of mountains to the northward. ”

“ If it go up to the physical heaven, and float (as it actually often does) far above the clouds, in those higher strata of the atmosphere which the aeronaut has never visited, whither the Alpine snow-peaks do not rise, even there it will be obeying physical laws which we term hastily laws of Nature, but which are really the laws of God: and if it go down into the physical abyss; if it be buried fathoms, miles, below the surface, and become an atom of some rock still in the process of consolidation, has it escaped from God, even in the bowels of the earth? ”

“ Then, as I said just now, I know no study so able to give that free habit of mind as the Study of Natural Science.
Equality, too: whatever equality may or may not be just, or possible; this at least, is just, and I hope possible; that every man, every child, of every rank, should have an equal chance of education; an equal chance of developing all that is in him by nature; an equal chance of acquiring a fair knowledge of those facts of the universe which specially concern him ”

“ It is because it is the science from which you will learn most easily a sound scientific habit of thought. I say most easily; and for these reasons. The most important facts of geology do not require, to discover them, any knowledge of mathematics or of chemical analysis; they may be studied in every bank, every grot, every quarry, every railway-cutting, by anyone who has eyes and common sense, and who chooses to copy the late illustrious Hugh Miller, who made himself a great geologist out of a poor stonemason. ”

“ And so arose a puzzle as to how coral rock is often found of vast thickness, which Mr. Darwin explained. His theory was, and there is no doubt now that it is correct, that in these cases the sea-bottom is sinking; that as it sinks, carrying the coral beds down with it, the coral dies, and a fresh live crop of polypes builds on the top of the houses of their dead ancestors: so that, as the depression goes on, generation after generation builds upwards, the living on the dead, keeping the upper surface of the reef at the same level, while its base is sinking downward into the abyss. ”

“ I do not ask him to imitate the boy who, cliff-bred from his youth, used to spend stolen hours on the house-top, with his back against a chimney-stalk, transfiguring in his imagination the roof-slopes into mountain-sides, the slates into sheets of rock, the cats into lions, and the sparrows into eagles. ”

“ Can you not form yourselves into a Natural Science club, for buying such things and lending them round among your members; and for discussion also, the reading of scientific papers of your own writing, the comparing of your observations, general mutual help and mutual instructions? Such societies are becoming numerous now, and gladly should I see one in every town. For in science, as in most matters, “As iron sharpeneth iron, so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.” ”

“ If you go to the Alps at certain seasons, and hear the thunder of the falling rocks, and see their long lines—moraines, as they are called—sliding slowly down upon the surface of the glacier, then you will be ready to believe the geologist who tells you that frost, and probably frost alone, has hewn out such a peak as the Matterhorn from some vast table-land; and is hewing it down still, winter after winter, till some day, where the snow Alps now stand, there shall be rolling uplands of rich cultivable soil. ”