ON IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 2T 



If the half savage Greek could share our feelings 

 thus far, it is irrational to doubt that he went further, 

 to find as we do, that upon that brief gladness there 

 follows a certain sorrow, the little light of awak- 

 ened human intelligence shines so mere a spark 

 amidst the abyss of the unknown and unknowable; 

 seems so insufficient to do more than illuminate the 

 imperfections that cannot be remedied, the aspira- 

 tions that cannot be realised, of man's own nature. 

 But in this sadness, this consciousness of the limita- 

 tion of man, this sense of an open secret which he 

 cannot penetrate, lies the essence of all religion; and 

 the attempt to embody it in the forms furnished by 

 the intellect is the origin of the higher theologies. 



Thus it seems impossible to imagine but that the 

 foundations of all knowledge secular or sacred 

 were laid when intelligence dawned, though the 

 superstructure remained for long ages so slight and 

 feeble as to be compatible with the existence of almost 

 any general view respecting the mode of governance 

 of the universe. No doubt, from the first, there were 

 certain phsenomena which, to the rudest mind, pre- 

 sented a constancy of occurrence, and suggested that a 

 fixed order ruled, at any rate, among them. I doubt 

 if the grossest of Fetish worshippers ever imagined 

 that a stone must have a god within it to make it fall, 

 or that a fruit had a god within it to make it taste 

 sweet. With regard to such matters as these, it is hardly 

 questionable that mankind from the first took strictly 

 positive and scientific views. 



But, with respect to all the less familiar occurrences 

 which present themselves, uncultured man, no doubt, 

 has always taken himself as the standard of compari- 

 son, as the centre and measure of the world ; nor could 



