glowing stone or metal, so many times bigger than the earth--a proposition which, if it were true, would not teach a poor cowering savage to kindle a stick fire, nor make one olive-tree brighter with blossoms that promised a purer and a richer oil; while, if it were not true, then the whole of your lofty heliacal philosophy is only a blaze of lies. The whole history of modern science, indeed, before the establishment of the close and cautious method of experiment introduced by Bacon, shows that all physical inquiry starting from unproved assumptions, and ending in sweeping speculations, is only a sublime sort of idleness, and a procreation of cloud-phantoms. Socrates therefore acted wisely for his own time and place in saying to a people fond of {18} curious subtlety and unfruitful speculation. Let us have done with this lofty-sounding but essentially hollow talk about sun and moon and stars, and let us know something certain, and do something useful. This we shall achieve if we keep within our own lower sphere, and attend to our own work as men; let us order our houses well in the first place, and after that concern ourselves with the order of the universe; if, indeed, this does not rather belong to the gods, who may safely be left to do their cosmical work quietly, without any Anaxagoras or Archelaus to tempt with adventurous guesses the principles of their administration. Such was the thoroughly practical, and, if you will, thoroughly utilitarian tone which, taught by Xenophon, we justly view as the starting-point of the Socratic philosophy. And there can be no doubt man is so essentially a practical animal, that if even the accurate and curiously verified physical science of these latter days were as destitute of social applications and as barren of practical results as Greek science was in the days of Socrates, nine hundred and ninety-nine persons of those who now delight to dabble in chemistry and geology would leave these interesting sciences to the few men of a purely speculative character with whom mere knowledge is loved for itself. But when by geology we are enabled to unearth coals and gold, and know where to sink wells much more certainly than by the mediæval magic of the divining-rod; and when by chemistry we improve our stores, bleach our clothes, purify our infected chambers, and dye our cloth with hues of which even the most skilful of the lichen-gatherers in the Highland glens never dreamt--then, to use a bookseller’s phrase, you are {19} sure to interest a large public. But there is another view of the case, which places the Socratic philosopher on a much more lofty and honourable pedestal. For notwithstanding all the surprising discoveries and brilliant achievements of modern physical science, it must still remain true that “The proper study of mankind is man,”