dnesday
evening, August 19, 1874.]

1.

AN impulse inherent in primeval man turned his thoughts and
questionings betimes towards the sources of natural phenomena. The
same impulse, inherited and intensified, is the spur of scientific
action to-day. Determined by it, by a process of abstraction from
experience we form physical theories which lie beyond the pale of
experience, but which satisfy the desire of the mind to see every
natural occurrence resting upon a cause. In forming their notions of
the origin of things, our earliest historic (and doubtless, we might
add, our prehistoric) ancestors pursued, as far as their intelligence
permitted, the same course. They also fell back upon experience; but
with this difference--that the particular experiences which furnished
the warp and woof of their theories were drawn, not from the study of
nature, but from what lay much closer to them--the observation of
men. Their theories accordingly took an anthropomorphic form. To
super-sensual beings, which, 'however potent and invisible, were
nothing but a species of human creatures, perhaps raised from among
mankind, and retaining all human passions and appetites,' were handed
over the rule and governance of natural phenomena. [Footnote: Hume,
'Natural History of Religion.]

Tested by observation and reflection, these early notions failed in
the long run to satisfy the more penetrating intellects of our race.
Far in the depths of history we find men of exceptional power
differentiating themselves from the crowd, rejecting these
anthropomorphic notions, and seeking to connect natural phenomena with
their physical principles. But, long prior to these purer efforts of
the understanding, the merchant had been abroad, and rendered the
philosopher possible; commerce had been developed, wealth amassed,
leisure for travel and speculation secured, while races educated under
different conditions, and therefore differently informed and endowed,
had been stimulated and sharpened by mutual contact. In those regions
where the commercial aristocracy of ancient Greece mingled with their
eastern neighbours, the sciences were born, being nurtured and
developed by free-thinking and courageous men. The state of things to
be displaced may be gathered from a passage of Euripides quoted by
Hume. 'There is nothing in the world; no glory, no prosperity. The
gods toss all into confusion; mix everything with its reverse, that
all of us, from