x.] JEWISH SAGES AND NATURE-WOfidg^.. 233 ' - 



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Jews arose men a very few sages prop)iets 'call/ "/ , . 



ill, the men were inspired ne*oj6s,and 



tliem what you will 

 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 per- 

 manence 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 accord- 

 ing to a certain ordinance. They took a view of Nature 

 totally new in that age; healthy, human, cheerful, 

 loving, trustful, and yet reverent identical with that 

 which happily is beginning to prevail in our own day. 

 They defied those very volcanic and meteoric phe- 

 nomena of their land, to which their countrymen were 

 slaying their own children in the clefts of the rocks, 

 and, like Theophrastus's superstitious man, pouring 

 their drink-offerings on the smooth stones of the valley; 

 and declared that, for their part, they would not fear, 

 though the earth was moved, and though the hills were 

 carried into the midst of the sea ; though the waters 

 raged and swelled, and the mountains shook at the 

 tempest. 



The fact is indisputable. And you must pardon me 

 if I express my belief that these men, if they had felt 

 it their business to found a school of inductive physical 

 science, would, owing to that temper of mind, have 

 achieved a very signal success. I ground that opinion 

 on the remarkable, but equally indisputable fact, that 

 no nation has ever succeeded in perpetuating a- school 



