de from the multitude, and put His fingers into his ears,
and He spit, and touched his tongue; and looking up to heaven, He
sighed, and said, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And straightway his
ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he
spake plain. . . . And they were beyond measure astonished, saying, He
hath done all things well: He maketh both the deaf to hear, and the
dumb to speak.

Our greatest living philologer has said, and said truly--"If wonder
arises from ignorance, it is from that conscious ignorance which, if we
look back at the history of most of our sciences, has been the mother of
all human knowledge. Till men began to wonder at the stratification of
rocks, and the fossilization of shells, there was no science of Geology.
Till they began to wonder at the words which were perpetually in their
mouths, there was no science of Language."

He might have added, that till men began to wonder at the organization of
their own bodies, there was no science of healing; that in proportion as
the common fact of health became mysterious and marvellous in their eyes,
just in that proportion did they become able to explain and to conquer
disease. For there is a deep difference between the wonder of the
uneducated or half-educated man, and the wonder of the educated man.

The ignorant in all ages have wondered at the exception; the wise, in
proportion as they have become wise, have wondered at the rule.
Pestilences, prodigies, portents, the results of seeming accidents,
excite the vulgar mind. Only the abnormal or casual is worthy of their
attention. The man of science finds a deeper and more awful charm in
contemplating the results of law; in watching, not what seem to be
occasional failures in nature: but what is a perpetual and calm success.

The savage knows not, I am told, what wonder means, save from some
prodigy. Seeing no marvel in the daily glory of the sunlight, he is
startled out of his usual stupidity and carelessness by the occurrence of
an eclipse, an earthquake, a thunderbolt. The uneducated, whatever their
rank may be, are apt to be more interested by the sight of deformities,
and defects or excesses in nature, than by that of the most perfect
normal and natural beauty.

Those, in the same way, who in the infancy of European science, thought
it worth while to register natural phenomena, registered exclusively the
exceptions. Eclipses, meteors, auroras, e