48S Kirwfmi&n Sdciety f>f Dullin. 



although not understood. Nature proclaimed her wonderi^ 

 to an astonished world ; Terror enforced the belief of a su- 

 pernatural agent ; men sunk with re\'erential awe before 

 thai invisible power which they could neither discover nor 

 avoid, and their very ignorance compelled them to acknow- 

 ledge the great, the incomprehensible Creator of the world. 



Not so had the ancients been in possession of our expla- 

 nations of natqral phaenomena : they would have raise4 

 their thoughts no higher than effects, without r«;fltcting on 

 the necessity of an ultimate cause : in fine, they would 

 have sunk into the careless apathy of deism, perhaps of 

 atheism. 



In these early ages we find even the philosophical poetv 

 endeavouring to account for the formation and continuance 

 of the world without allowing the interference of a Divint 

 power. By their supposed success we find them in a great 

 degree divested of those terrors about futurity which other- 

 wise prove so powerful a check upon buman passions. Thii} 

 appears evidently from the following passage iji the •• Dc 

 Rerum Natura" of Lucretius : 



Nam simiil ac ratio tua coepit vociferari 

 Naturani rerum baud Divina meute toortam, 

 Diffugiunt aninii terroies, &c. 



Even the sweet Mantuan muse breathes the same spirit ia 

 that bea,utiful apostrophe near the conclusion of the secon4 

 Georgic : 



Felix, qui potuit rerum co^noscere causas, 

 . Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum 

 ■ Subjecit peclibus, strepitumque Acherontis av^ri ! 



Notwithstanding the deficiencies of the ancients, and 

 our necessary advantages over them, we sshouid not be in- 

 6aied with a conscousness of superiority : we should 

 survey their useful labours with gratitude and respect. If 

 we have surpassed them, they traced out our course, and 

 we enjoy lights which never shone upon them. What they 

 for ages sought with exemplary but unavailing perseverance, 

 we possess without a search, being presented with these 

 sublime truths by no less a promulgator than the Divine 

 Author of all knowledge. They are perhaps superior to u5 

 ifl constancy, application, and labour : and as to their de- 

 ficiencies, they should rather be attributed to want of neces- 

 sary means, than to any avoidable insufficiency. With 

 what rapture and amazement v.ould aftertimes have looked 

 upon Aristotle, Theophrastus, Pliny, or even Dioscorides, 

 had they possessed our stock of experience and observation'.- 

 Those classes of scienge which depend upon rea»oping» 



were 



