On the whole, the value of these scientific men to the world did not seem to me to be considerable. I mean as _scientific men_--without any of the pretension or cant [Bo-zhe] of their class, individuals may be useful, and would be more useful without the false glamour of class-vanity. A man of brain and who really thinks and examines, if he have anything to say will say it, and it will be judged by its merit. But when men having _time_ and not knowing what to do with themselves, and having some knowledge of words and but _little brains_, see an _opening for imbecility_, and are received and praised and dubbed _Scientific_, because they devote time and waste a large quantity of paper to give the world _their thoughts_--it is doubtful whether the more harm or the more good be done. To be sure, the idle and empty man may be rendered supremely happy in his vanity, and may have been saved from some personal degradation or vicious inclination--but the world could have been well spared his _Catalogue of the Parasites_ on the Lobster, or his _Notes on the Habits of the Barn Swallow_, or his _Suggestions_ as to the proper use of smoke, or his _Hints_ upon the hybernation of Eels. No great harm is done, for nobody reads these things but the men of Science, who are obliged to keep up to the work of busy idleness, in reading for debate with each other and at the _Congress_. This body professes to teach the proper rules for physical improvement, and its members are natural philosophers. They do not, however, confine themselves to the investigation of natural phenomena--they range over the whole broad field of speculation as well, demanding to know the cause of all things, and the very essence, object, and end. Those who take upon themselves this wider inquiry, assume a dignity far above the mere _Scientists_--these deal with mere visible _forms_; but those with the _laws_ which underlie the forms, and with the source of Law, its origin, its object, and its end! These are PHILOSOPHERS! and when a man is a man of Science _and_ a philosopher, then no more is possible to human exaltation! I have sufficiently referred to the _works_ of these in another place. They cannot be wholly useless, if there really be a _brain_, honest and strong, at work. For to such patiently, humbly, earnestly, full of grateful recognition and conscious of the limitations of knowledge and of inquiry; seeking and looking out, with sad eyes, upon the vast world; to such, some new evidence of the grand order, some new and brilliant ray of divine illumination may come--_not_ to show _cause_ nor purpose, but to delight and tranquillise, to give new assurance of the Beneficent and Infinite Wisdom!