230 SCIENCE. [x. 



tliat knowledge is the child of courage. Those Egyp- 

 tian 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. Eeverence ? 

 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 conies joyfully and trust- 

 fully 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 under- 

 lying them, which is worth years of thought to solve. 

 That is reverence; a reverence which is growing, 

 thank God, more and more common ; which will 

 produce, as it grows more common still, fruit which 

 generations yet unborn shall bless. 



But as for that other reverence, which shuts its eyes 

 and ears in pious awe what is it but cowardice decked 



