444 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 
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 
supersensual 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. 
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 there- 
fore 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 neighbors, 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 our ignorance and uncertainty, may 
pay them the more worship and reverence." Now as 
science demands the radical extirpation of caprice, and the 
absolute reliance upon law in nature, there grew with the 
growth of scientific notions, a desire and determination to 
sweep from the field of theory this mob of gods and demons, 
and to place natural phenomena on a basis more congruent 
with themselves. 
The problem which had been previously approached 
from above, was now attacked from below; theoretic effort 
*Huine, " Natural History of Religion.' 1 
