which he is himself so tiny yet so wondrous a part.
From the earliest times the ultimate purpose of all scientific research
has been to elicit fragmentary or partial responses to this question,
and philosophy has ever busied itself in piecing together these several
bits of information according to the best methods at its disposal, in
order to make up something like a satisfactory answer. In old times the
best methods which philosophy had at its disposal for this purpose
were such as now seem very crude, and accordingly ancient philosophers
bungled considerably in their task, though now and then they came
surprisingly near what would to-day be called the truth. It was natural
that their methods should be crude, for scientific inquiry had as yet
supplied but scanty materials for them to work with, and it was only
after a very long course of speculation and criticism that men could
find out what ways of going to work are likely to prove successful and
what are not. The earliest thinkers, indeed, were further hindered from
accomplishing much by the imperfections of the language by the aid of
which their thinking was done; for science and philosophy have had to
make a serviceable terminology by dint of long and arduous trial
and practice, and linguistic processes fit for expressing general or
abstract notions accurately grew up only through numberless failures and
at the expense of much inaccurate thinking and loose talking. As in most
of nature's processes, there was a great waste of energy before a good
result could be secured. Accordingly primitive men were very wide of the
mark in their views of nature. To them the world was a sort of enchanted
ground, peopled with sprites and goblins; the quaint notions with which
we now amuse our children in fairy tales represent a style of thinking
which once was current among grown men and women, and which is still
current wherever men remain in a savage condition. The theories of the
world wrought out by early priest-philosophers were in great part made
up of such grotesque notions; and having become variously implicated
with ethical opinions as to the nature and consequences of right and
wrong behaviour, they acquired a kind of sanctity, so that any thinker
who in the light of a wider experience ventured to alter or amend the
primitive theory was likely to be vituperated as an irreligious man or
atheist. This sort of inference has not yet been wholly abandoned,
even in civilized comm