from this mysterious house-fiend, save brute force?
Terror, torture, murder, must be the order of the day. Woman must be
crushed, at all price, by the blind fear of the man.

I shall say no more. I shall draw a veil, for very pity and shame, over
the most important and most significant facts of this, the most hideous
of all human follies. I have, I think, given you hints enough to show
that it, like all other superstitions, is the child--the last born and
the ugliest child--of blind dread of the unknown.

SCIENCE: A lecture delivered at the Royal Institution.

I said, that Superstition was the child of Fear, and Fear the child of
Ignorance; and you might expect me to say antithetically, that Science
was the child of Courage, and Courage the child of Knowledge.

But these genealogies--like most metaphors--do not fit exactly, as you
may see for yourselves.

If fear be the child of ignorance, ignorance is also the child of fear;
the two react on, and produce each other. The more men dread Nature, the
less they wish to know about her. Why pry into her awful secrets? It is
dangerous; perhaps impious. She says to them, as in the Egyptian temple
of old--"I am Isis, and my veil no mortal yet hath lifted." And why
should they try or wish to lift it? If she will leave them in peace,
they will leave her in peace. It is enough that she does not destroy
them. So as ignorance bred fear, fear breeds fresh and willing
ignorance.

And courage? We may say, and truly, that courage is the child of
knowledge. But we may say as truly, that knowledge is the child of
courage. Those Egyptian priests in the temple of Isis would have told
you that knowledge was the child of mystery, of special illumination, of
reverence, and what not; hiding under grand words their purpose of
keeping the masses ignorant, that they might be their slaves. Reverence?
I will yield to none in reverence for reverence. I will all but agree
with the wise man who said that reverence is the root of all virtues. But
which child reverences his father most? He who comes joyfully and
trustfully to meet him, that he may learn his father's mind, and do his
will: or he who at his father's coming runs away and hides, lest he
should be beaten for he knows not what? There is a scientific reverence,
a reverence of courage, which is surely one of the highest forms of
reverence. That, namely, which so reveres every fact, that it dare not
overlook or fa