This aphorism means that no great effects of nay
kid can be produced without knowledge. The progress of science increases the
power of man and enables him to make the powers of nature subservient to his
will.
If we wish to have a striking instance of the
truth of this-let us compare for a moment modem London with the state of
affairs that Caesar found when he visited the banks of the Thames two thousand
years ago. In muscular strength the ancient Britain’s, who fought in vain
against the Roman legions, were probably equal or superior to modern
Englishmen. Yet how little could their bodily powers achieve without the
guidance of knowledge! They could extract out of the earth a little iron, which
was so rare and valuable that they used it as a material for money and
ornaments. Their clothes were made of skins, and they knew how to doctorate
their bodies with blue wood. They crossed the Thames by swimming, or in small
boats which they constructed of wicker-work and covered with skins. Their towns
were protected by stockades and morasses, consisted of huts in which a single
aperture served the purpose of door and window.
Imagine the feelings with which one of these
ancient Britain’s would contemplate modem London. He would see the same sky’
and sea and river, and would meet men of the same stature as himself. But all else
would appear to have undergone a magical transformation. What were in his time
undergone a magic a transformation. What were in his time desolate mud banks
are now defended against the river by embankments of solid masonry beyond
which, on either side, he would see the churches, railway stations, factories,
hotels and private dwellings of a mighty city. He would wonder at the great
bridges with which the broad river is spanned, and at the iron ships coming in
from the sea against wind and tide without the help of sail or air. Wherever he
turned he would he struck dumb by the power over Nature exercised by human
beings closely resembling himself, except for the one material difference of
superior knowledge.
For the superior power which raise the modern civilized
man no far above his barbarous contemporaries and predecessors, is all derived
from increase of knowledge. By learning the properties of the magnetic needle,
the mariner has acquired the power of traversing the ocean in the darkest
night, when there are no stars visible. Knowledge of the properties of saltpeter
and dynamite enables the engineer to cut a path through the solid rock, so that
the locomotive may pass under the Alps or climb the mountain barrier of the Gaits.
By studying the properties of steam, modern inventors have learned to construct
engines by means of which distant parts of the earth have been brought into
close communion with each other; and knowledge of electricity is like to
produce in the future still greater progress in the same direction.
Object-lessons illustrating the power acquired by
knowledge crowd in upon the eyes in boundless profusion, as we pass through the
thickly populated centers of modern civilization, and see how human industry
has transformed the face of Nature. All the changes that man has effected by
working upon Nature are due to knowledge; and if the knowledge now possessed by
civilized men were suddenly lost, the whole world would release into barbarism.
fortunately, knowledge has fortified herself
against the possibility o such a catastrophe by the invention of the art of parting,
which secures future generations against the danger of losing the results of
the scientific discoveries of their predecessors.