_Mr. Fax._ In many cases science is both morally and politically neutral, and its speculations have no connection whatever with the business of life. _Mr. Forester._ It is true; and such speculations are often called sublime: though the sublimity of uselessness passes my comprehension. But the neutrality is only apparent: for it has in these cases the real practical effect, and a most pernicious one it is, of withdrawing some of the highest and most valuable minds from the only path of real utility, which I agree with you to be that of moral and political knowledge, to pursuits of no more real importance than that of keeping a dozen eggs at a time dancing one after another in the air. _Mr. Fax._ If it be admitted, on the one hand, that the progress of luxury has kept pace with that of physical science, it must be acknowledged, on the other, that superstition has decayed in at least an equal proportion; and I think it cannot be denied that the world is a gainer by the exchange. _Mr. Forester._ The decay of superstition is immeasurably beneficial; but the growth of luxury is not, therefore, the less pernicious. It is lamentable to reflect that _there is most indigence in the richest countries_;[125] and that the increase of superfluous enjoyment in the few is counterbalanced by the proportionate diminution of comfort in the many. Splendid equipages and sumptuous dwellings are far from being symbols of general prosperity. The palace of luxurious indolence is much rather the symbol of a thousand hovels, by the labours and privations of whose wretched inhabitants that baleful splendour is maintained. Civilisation, vice, and folly grow old together. Corruption begins among the higher orders, and from them descends to the people; so that in every nation the ancient nobility is the first to exhibit symptoms of corporeal and mental degeneracy, and to show themselves unfit both for council and war. If you recapitulate the few titled names that will adorn the history of the present times, you will find that almost all of them are new creations. The corporeal decay of mankind I hold to be undeniable: the increase of general knowledge I allow: but reason is of slow growth; and if men in general only become more corrupt as they become more learned, the progress of literature will oppose no adequate counterpoise to that of avarice, luxury, and disease. _Mr. Fax._ Certainly, the progress of reason is slow, but the ground which it has once gained it never abandons. The interest of rulers, and the prejudices of the people, are equally hostile to everything that comes in the shape of innovation; but all that now wears the strongest sanction of antiquity was once received with reluctance under the semblance of novelty: and that reason, which in the present day can scarcely obtain a footing from the want of precedents, will grow with the growth of years, and become a precedent in its turn.[126]