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We have not the least reason, therefore, to doubt, that every good employment of the human understanding necessarily must and will, at some time or other, promote humanity. Since agriculture has prevailed, men and acorns have ceased to be food. Man found, that he could live better, more decently, and more humanely, on the pleasing gifts of Ceres, than on the flesh of his fellows, or the fruits of the oak; and was compelled so to live by the laws of men wiser than himself. After men had learned to build houses and towns, they ceased to dwell in caves: under the laws of a commonweal, the poor stranger was no longer liable to death. Thus trade brought nations together: and the more its advantages were generally understood; the less murders, oppressions, and deceptions, which are always signs of ignorance in commerce, would necessarily be practiced. Every addition to the useful arts secures men’s property, diminishes their labor, extends their sphere of activity, and necessarily lays therewith the foundations of farther cultivation and humanity. What labor was saved, for example, by the single invention of printing! What an extensive circulation of men’s ideas, arts, and sciences, did it promote? Were an European Kang-Ti now to attempt, to eradicate the literature of this quarter of the Globe, he would find it impossible. Had the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, the Greeks and Romans, possessed this art; the destruction of their literature would not have been so easy to their spoilers, if it could by any means have been accomplished. Let savage nations burst in upon Europe, they could not withstand our tactics; and no Attila will again extend his march from the shores of the Black Sea and the Caspian to the plains of Catalonia. Let monks, sybarites, fanatics, and tyrants, arise, as they will; it is no longer in their power, to bring back the night of the Middle Ages. Now as no greater benefit can be conceived to arise from any art, divine or human, than not merely to bestow on us light and order, but from its very nature to extend and secure them; let us thank the Creator, that he conferred understanding on mankind, and made art essential to it. In them we possess the secret and the means of securing order in the World.
Neither need we any way repine, that many excellently conceived theories, morals not excepted, have remained so long without being carried into practice among mankind. The child learns much, which the man alone can apply; but he has not therefore learned in vain. The youth heedlessly forgets, what at some future period he must take pains to recollect, or learn a second time. So no truth that is treasured up, nay no truth that is discovered, among a race continually renovating, is wholly in vain: future circumstances will render necessary what is now despised; and in the infinity of things every case must occur, that can in any way exercise the human species. As in the creation we first conceive the power, that formed Chaos, and then disposing wisdom, and harmonious goodness; so the natural order of mankind first develops rude powers: disorder itself must guide them into the path of understanding; and the farther the understanding pursues its work, the more it perceives, that goodness alone can bestow on it durability, perfection, and beauty.
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