It addresses
itself to a select public only. Its mission is, at first, to fix, and
afterwards to enlarge, the circle of acquired knowledge.
The refutation of vulgar prejudices could not carry with it this high
bearing. It aspires only to disencumber the route before the march of
truth, to prepare the mind, to reform public opinion, to blunt
dangerous tools in improper hands. It is in social economy above all,
that these hand-to-hand struggles, these constantly recurring combats
with popular errors, have a true practical utility.
We might arrange the sciences under two classes. The one, strictly,
can be known to philosophers only. They are those whose application
demands a special occupation. The public profit by their labor,
despite their ignorance of them. They do not enjoy the use of a watch
the less, because they do not understand mechanics and astronomy. They
are not the less carried along by the locomotive and the steamboat
through their faith in the engineer and the pilot. We walk according
to the laws of equilibrium without being acquainted with them.
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