And if he asked how this had come
about, we should have to explain that the improvement of natural
knowledge has furnished us with dozens of machines for throwing water
upon fires, any one of which would have furnished the ingenious Mr.
Hooke, the first "curator and experimenter" of the Royal Society, with
ample materials for discourse before half a dozen meetings of that
body; and that, to say truth, except for the progress of natural
knowledge, we should not have been able to make even the tools by which
these machines are constructed. And, further, it would be necessary to
add, that although severe fires sometimes occur and inflict great
damage, the loss is very generally compensated by societies, the
operations of which have been rendered possible only by the progress of
natural knowledge in the direction of mathematics, and the accumulation
of wealth in virtue of other natural knowledge.
But the plague? My Lord Brouncker's observation would not, I fear, lead
him to think that Englishmen of the nineteenth century are purer in
life, or more fervent in religious faith, than the generation which
could produce a Boyle, an Evelyn, and a Milton.
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