There is one God supreme over all gods, diviner than mortals, 

 Whose form is not like unto man's, and as unlike his nature ; 

 But vain mortals imagine that gods like themselves are begotten, 

 With human sensations and voice and corporeal members ; 

 So, if oxen or lions had hands and could work in man's fashion, 

 And trace out with chisel or brush their conception of Godhead, 

 Then would horses depict gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, 

 Each kind the divine with its own form and nature endowing. 



XENOPHANES of COLOPHON (six centuries B. c.), 

 Supernatural Religion, vol. i. p. 76. 



IX. 

 THE BELFAST ADDRESS* 



81. 



AN impulse inherent in primeval man turned his 

 ~L\. thoughts and questionings betimes towards the 

 sources of natural phenomena. The same impulse, 

 inherited and intensified, is the spur of scientific action 

 to-day. Determined by it, by a process of abstraction 

 from experience we form physical theories which lie 

 beyond the pale of experience, but which satisfy the 

 desire of the mind to see every natural occurrence rest- 

 ing upon a cause. In forming their notions of the 

 origin of things, our earliest historic (and doubtleas, 

 we might add, our prehistoric) ancestors pursued, as 

 far as their intelligence permitted, the same course. 

 They also fell back upon experience; but with this 



* Delivered before the British Association on Wednesday 

 evening, August 19, 1874. 



135 



