In like manner, any one who tries to live upon the face of this earth without attention to the laws of nature will live there for but a very short time, most of which will be passed in exceeding discomfort; a peculiarity of natural laws, as distinguished from those of human enactment, being that they take effect without summons or prosecution. In fact, nobody could live for half a day unless he attended to some of the laws of nature; and thousands of us are dying daily, or living miserably, because men have not yet been sufficiently zealous to learn the code of nature. It has already been seen that the practice of all our arts and industries depends upon our knowing the properties of natural objects which we can get hold of and put together; and though we may be able to exert no direct control over the greater natural objects and the general succession of causes and effects in nature, yet, if we know the properties and powers of these objects, and the customary order of events, we may elude that which is injurious to us, and profit by that which is favorable. Thus, though men can nowise alter the reasons or change the process of growth in plants, yet having learned the order of nature in these matters, they make arrangements for sowing and reaping accordingly; they can not make the wind blow, but when it does blow they take advantage of its known powers and probable direction to sail ships and turn wind-mills; they can not arrest the lightning, but they can make it harmless by means of conductors, the construction of which implies a knowledge of some of the laws of that electricity of which lightning is one of the manifestations. Forewarned is forearmed, says the proverb; and knowledge of the laws of nature is forewarning of that which we may expect to happen, when we have to deal with natural objects. No line can be drawn between common knowledge of things and scientific knowledge; nor between common reasoning and scientific reasoning. In strictness all accurate knowledge is science; and all exact reasoning is scientific reasoning. The method of observation and experiment, by which such great results are obtained in science, is identically the same as that which is employed by every one, every day of his life, but refined and rendered precise. If a child acquires a new toy, he observes its characters and experiments upon its properties; and we are all of us constantly making observations and experiments upon one thing or another.