But it is not presumptuous to
express the belief that, when our knowledge is more complete and our
obedience the expression of our knowledge, London will count her
centuries of freedom from typhus and cholera, as she now gratefully
reckons her two hundred years of ignorance of that plague which swooped
upon her thrice in the first half of the seventeenth century.
Surely there is nothing in these explanations which is not fully borne
out by the facts? Surely, the principles involved in them are now
admitted among the fixed beliefs of all thinking men? Surely, it is
true that our countrymen are less subject to fire, famine, pestilence,
and all the evils which result from a want of command over and due
anticipation of the course of Nature, than were the countrymen of
Milton; and health, wealth, and well-being are more abundant with us
than with them? But no less certainly is the difference due to the
improvement of our knowledge of Nature, and the extent to which that
improved knowledge has been incorporated with the household words of
men, and has supplied the springs of their daily actions.
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