48. There remain those branches of knowledge which per-
CHAP. XXXI.] OF THE MECHANICAL ARTS. 67 convenient and becoming to neglect it. It involves, moreover, in addition to a description of the present state of things, something like a narrative of the past also ; because one maygo back from the present position and motion of the stars, and trace by rule their past movements. It involves also regular anticipations of the future, not in the way of forebodings and omens, but by way of sure calculation ; not with the design of drawing any information from them as to our own acts and fates, in the absurd fashion of the gmctliliaci, but only as to the motions of the heavenly bodies themselves. For, as the man who computes the moon's age can tell, when he has found out her age to-day, what her age was any number of years ago, or what wiU be her age any number of years hence, in just the same way men who are skilled in such computations are accustomed to answer like questions about every one of the heavenly bodies. And I have stated what my views are about aU this knowledge, so far as regards its utility.
Chap. xxx.— What the mechanical arts contribute to exerjetlcs.
47. Further, as to the remaining arts, whether those by which something is made which, when the effort of the workman is over, remains as a result of his work, as, for example, a house, a bench, a disli, and other things of that kind ; or those which, so to speak, assist God in His operations, as medicine, and agriculture, and navigation ; or those whose sole result is an action, as dancing, and racing, and wrestling ;—in all these arts experience teaches us to infer the future from the past. For no man who is skilled in any of these arts moves y his limbs in any operation without connecting the memory of the past with the expectation of the future. Now of these arts a very superficial and cursory knowledge is to be acquired, not with a view to practising them (unless some duty compel us, a matter on which I do not touch at present), but with a view to forming a judgment about them, that we may not be wholly ignorant of what Scripture means to convey when it employs figures of speech derived from these arts.
Chap. xxxt.— Use of dialectics. Offallacies.
48. There remain those branches of knowledge which per-