reserved for a poor Genoese pilot, begging his way from court to court, and by the simple process of sailing on one course as long as he had water to float his ship, to discover a new world.

Our geographical knowledge shows us that we do not, like so many generations of our predecessors, live within the reach of other undiscovered continents; but we do unquestionably live, act, and speculate, within the reach of properties and powers of things, whose discovery and application (when they take place) will effect changes in society, as great as those produced by the magnet, the discovery of America, the art of printing, or the steamboat. We do doubtless live within the reach of undiscovered worlds of science, art, and improvement. No royal permission is requisite to launch forth on the broad sea of discovery that surrounds us,most full of novelty where most explored,-and it may yet be reserved for the modest and secluded lover of truth and votary of science, in the solitude of his humble researches, to lay open such laws of matter, as will affect the condition of the civilized world.

This, then, is the encouragement we have to engage in any wellconceived enterprise for the diffusion of useful knowledge and the extension of general improvement. Wherever there is a human mind possessed of the common faculties, and placed in a body organized with the common senses, there is an active, intelligent being, competent, with proper cultivation, to the discovery of the highest truths, in the natural, the social, and the political world. It is susceptible of demonstration,-if demonstration were necessary, that the number of useful and distinguished men, which are to benefit and adorn society around us, will be exactly proportioned, upon the whole, to the means and encouragements to improvement existing in the community; and every thing, which multiplies these means and encouragements, tends, in the same proportion, to the multiplication of inventions and discoveries useful and honorable to

man.

The mind, although it does not stand in need of high culture, to the attainment of great excellence, does yet stand in need of some culture, and cannot thrive and act without it. When it is once awakened, and inspired with a consciousness of its own powers, and nourished into vigor by the intercourse of kindred minds, either through books or living converse, it does not disdain, but it needs not, further extraneous aid. It ceases to be a pupil;

it sets up for itself; it becomes a master of truth, and goes fearlessly onward, sounding its way, through the darkest regions of investigation. But it is almost indispensable, that, in some way or other, the elements of truth should be imparted from kindred minds; and if these are wholly withheld, the intellect, which, if properly cultivated, might have soared with Newton to the boundaries of the comet's orbit, is chained down to the wants and imperfections of mere physical life, unconscious of its own capacities, and unable to fulfil its higher destiny.

Contemplate, at this season of the year, one of the magnificent oak trees of the forest, covered with thousands and thousands of acorns. There is not one of those acorns that does not carry within itself the germ of a perfect oak, as lofty and as wide spreading as the parent stock; which does not enfold the rudiments of a tree that would strike its roots in the soil, and lift its branches toward the heavens, and brave the storms of a hundred winters. It needs for this but a handful of soil, to receive the acorn as it falls, a little moisture to nourish it, and protection from violence till the root is struck. It needs but these; and these it does need, and these it must have; and for want of them, trifling as they seem, there is not one out of a thousand of those innumerable acorns, which is destined to become a tree.

Look abroad through the cities, the towns, the villages of our beloved country, and think of what materials their population, in many parts already dense, and every where rapidly growing, is, for the most part, made up. It is not lifeless enginery, it is not animated machines, it is not brute beasts, trained to subdue the earth: it is rational, intellectual beings. There is not a mind, of the hundreds of thousands in our community, that is not capable of making large progress in useful knowledge; and no one can presume to tell or limit the number of those who are gifted with all the talent required for the noblest discoveries. They have naturally all the senses and all the faculties-I do not say in as high a degree, but who shall say in no degree?-possessed by Newton, or Franklin, or Fulton. It is but a little which is wanted to awaken every one of these minds to the conscious possession and the active exercise of its wonderful powers. But this little, generally speaking, is indispensable. How much more wonderful an

instrument is an eye than a telescope! Providence has furnished this eye; but art must contribute the telescope, or the wonders of the heavens remain unnoticed. It is for want of the little, that human means must add to the wonderful capacity for improvement born in man, that by far the greatest part of the intellect, innate in our race, perishes undeveloped and unknown. When an acorn falls upon an unfavorable spot, and decays there, we know the extent of the loss;-it is that of a tree, like the one from which it fell;—but when the intellect of a rational being, for want of culture, is lost to the great ends for which it was created, it is a loss which no one can measure, either for time or for eternity.

LECTURE

ON THE WORKING MEN'S PARTY, DELIVERED BEFORE THE CHARLESTOWN LYCEUM, 6TH OCTOBER, 1830.

MAN is, by nature, an active being. He is made to labor. His whole organization,-mental and physical,-is that of a hardworking being. Of his mental powers we have no conception, but as certain capacities of intellectual action. His corporeal faculties are contrived for the same end, with astonishing variety of adaptation. Who can look only at the muscles of the hand, and doubt that man was made to work? Who can be conscious of judgment, memory, and reflection, and doubt that man was made to act? He requires rest, but it is in order to invigorate him for new efforts; to recruit his exhausted powers; and, as if to show him, by the very nature of rest, that it is Means, not End:-that form of rest, which is most essential and most grateful, sleep, is attended with the temporary suspension of the conscious and active powers, an image of death. Nature is so ordered, as both to require and encourage man to work. He is created with wants, which cannot be satisfied without labor; at the same time, that ample provision is made by Providence, to satisfy them with labor. The plant springs up and grows on the spot, where the seed was cast by accident. It is fed by the moisture, which saturates the earth, or is held suspended in the air; and it brings with it a sufficient covering to protect its delicate internal structure. It toils not, neither doth it spin, for clothing or food. But man is so created, that, let his wants be as simple as they will, he must labor to sup

ply them. If, as is supposed to have been the case in primitive ages, he lives upon acorns and water, he must draw the water from the spring; and, in many places, he must dig a well in the soil; and he must gather the acorns from beneath the oak, and lay up a store of them for winter. He must, in most climates, contrive himself some kind of clothing of barks or skins; must construct some rude shelter; prepare some kind of bed, and keep up a fire. In short, it is well known, that those tribes of our race, which are the least advanced in civilization, and whose wants are the fewest, have to labor the hardest for their support; but, at the same time, it is equally true, that, in the most civilized countries, by far the greatest amount and variety of work are done; so that the improvement, which takes place in the condition of man, consists, not in diminishing the amount of labor performed, but in enabling men to work more, or more efficiently, in the same time.—A horde of savages will pass a week in the most laborious kinds of hunting; following the chase day after day; their women, if in company with them, carrying their tents and their infant children on their backs; and all be worn down by fatigue and famine; and, in the end, they will, perhaps, kill a buffalo. The same number of civilized men and women would, probably, on an average, have kept more steadily at work, in their various trades and occupations, but with much less exhaustion; and the products of their industry would have been vastly greater; or, what is the same thing, much more work would have been done.

It is true, as man rises in improvement, he would be enabled, by his arts and machinery, to satisfy the primary wants of life, with less labor; and this may be thought to show, at first glance, that man was not intended to be a working being; because, in proportion as he advances in improvement, less work would be required to get a mere livelihood. But here we see a curious provision of nature. In proportion as our bare natural wants are satisfied, artificial wants, or civilized wants, show themselves. And, in the very highest state of improvement, it requires as constant an exertion to satisfy the new wants, which grow out of the habits and tastes of civilized life, as it requires, in savage life, to satisfy hunger and thirst, and keep from freezing. In other words, the innate desire of improving our condition keeps us all in a state of want. We