xi.] REVERENCE AND HUMILITY. 283 



edge of darkness ; and see before our feet a bottomless 

 abyss, down which our feeble lanthorn will not throw 

 its light a yard. 



Such is true science. Is it a study to make men 

 conceited and self-sufficient ? Believe it not. If a 

 scientific man, or one who calls himself so, be con- 

 ceited, the conceit was there before the science ; part 

 of his natural defects : and if it stays there long after 

 he has really given himself to the patient study of 

 nature, then is he one of those of whom Solomon has 

 said : " Though you pound a fool in a mortar among 

 wheat with a pestle, yet will not his folly depart from 

 him." 



For what more fit to knock the conceit out of a 

 student, than being pounded by these same hard facts 

 which tell him just enough to let him know how 

 little he knows ? What more fit to make a man 

 patient, humble, reverent, than being stopped short, 

 as every man of science is, after each half-dozen steps, 

 by some tremendous riddle which he cannot explain 

 which he may have to wait years to get explained 

 which as far as he can see will never be explained 

 at all ? 



The poet says : " An undevout astronomer is mad," 

 and he says truth. It is only those who know a little 

 of nature, who fancy that they know much. I have 

 heard a young man say, after hearing a few popular 

 chemical lectures, and seeing a few bottle and squirt 

 experiments : Oh, water water is only oxygen and 

 hydrogen ! as if he knew all about it. While the true 

 chemist would smile sadly enough at the youth's 

 hasty conceit, and say in his heart : " Well, he is a 

 lucky fellow. If he knows all about it, it is more 



