last born and the ugliest child--of blind dread of the unknown.

SCIENCE {229}

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 falsify it, seem it never so minute; which feels that because it
is a fact it cannot be minute, cannot be unimportant; that it must
be a fact of God; a message from God; a voice of God, as Bacon has
it, revealed in things; and which therefore, just because it stands
in solemn awe of such paltry facts as the Scolopax feather in a
snipe's pinion, or the jagged leaves which appear capriciously in
certain honeysuckles, believes that there is likely to be some deep
and wide secret underlyin