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    On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge
    On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge
    On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge
    Ebook42 pages30 minutes

    On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge

    By Thomas Henry Huxley

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 15, 2013
    On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge

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      Book preview

      On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge - Thomas Henry Huxley

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of On the Advisableness of Improving Natural

      Knowledge, by Thomas H. Huxley

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

      Title: On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge

      Author: Thomas H. Huxley

      Release Date: January 6, 2009 [EBook #2934]

      Last Updated: January 22, 2013

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IMPROVING KNOWLEDGE ***

      Produced by Amy E. Zelmer, and David Widger

      ON THE ADVISABLENESS OF IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE

      By Thomas H. Huxley

      [1]

      This time two hundred years ago—in the beginning of January, 1666—those of our forefathers who inhabited this great and ancient city, took breath between the shocks of two fearful calamities: one not quite past, although its fury had abated; the other to come.

      Within a few yards of the very spot on which we are assembled, so the tradition runs, that painful and deadly malady, the plague, appeared in the latter months of 1664; and, though no new visitor, smote the people of England, and especially of her capital, with a violence unknown before, in the course of the following year. The hand of a master has pictured what happened in those dismal months; and in that truest of fictions, 'The History of the Plague Year', Defoe shows death, with every accompaniment of pain and terror, stalking through the narrow streets of old London, and changing their busy hum into a silence broken only by the wailing of the mourners of fifty thousand dead; by the woful denunciations and mad prayers of fanatics; and by the madder yells of despairing profligates.

      But about this time in 1666, the death-rate had sunk to nearly its ordinary amount; a case of plague occurred only here and there, and the richer citizens who had flown from the pest had returned to their dwellings. The remnant of the people began to toil at the accustomed round of duty, or of pleasure; and the stream of city life bid fair to flow back along its old bed, with renewed and uninterrupted vigour.

      The newly kindled hope was deceitful. The great plague, indeed, returned no more; but what it had done for the Londoners, the great fire, which broke out in the autumn of 1666, did for London; and, in September of that year, a heap of ashes and the indestructible energy of the people were all that remained of the glory of five-sixths of

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