in any age who have not been afraid of Nature. How
few have set themselves, like Rarey, to tame her by finding out what she
is thinking of. The mass are glad to have the results of science, as
they are to buy Mr. Rarey's horses after they are tamed: but for want of
courage or of wit, they had rather leave the taming process to some one
else. And therefore we may say that what knowledge of Nature we have--and
we have very little--we owe to the courage of those men--and they have
been very few--who have been inspired to face Nature boldly; and say--or,
what is better, act as if they were saying--"I find something in me which
I do not find in you; which gives me the hope that I can grow to
understand you, though you may not understand me; that I may become your
master, and not as now, you mine. And if not, I will know: or die in the
search."

It is to those men, the few and far between, in a very few ages and very
few countries, who have thus risen in rebellion against Nature, and
looked it in the face with an unquailing glance, that we owe what we call
Physical Science.

There have been four races--or rather a very few men of each four
races--who have faced Nature after this gallant wise.

First, the old Jews. I speak of them, be it remembered, exclusively from
an historical, and not a religious point of view.

These people, at a very remote epoch, emerged from a country highly
civilised, but sunk in the superstitions of nature-worship. They invaded
and mingled with tribes whose superstitions were even more debased,
silly, and foul than those of the Egyptians from whom they escaped. Their
own masses were for centuries given up to nature-worship. Now among
those Jews arose men--a very few--sages--prophets--call them what you
will, the men were inspired heroes and philosophers--who assumed towards
nature an attitude utterly different from the rest of their countrymen
and the rest of the then world; who denounced superstition and the dread
of nature as the parent of all manner of vice and misery; who for
themselves said boldly that they discerned in the universe an order, a
unity, a permanence of law, which gave them courage instead of fear. They
found delight and not dread in the thought that the universe obeyed a law
which could not be broken; that all things continued to that day
according to a certain ordinance. They took a view of Nature totally new
in that age; healthy, human, cheerful, loving, trustful, a