8KCT. ii.] DISSERTATION .SECOND. 43 



the course of every day's experience presented themselves, 

 they excited wonder or surprise, aud created an anxiety to 

 discover some principle which might connect them with the 

 appearances commonly observed. About these last, men 

 felt no desire to be farther informed ; but when the common 

 order of things was violated, and something new or singu- 

 lar was produced, they began to examine into the fact, and 

 attempted to inquire into the cause. Nobody sought to 

 know why a stone fell to the ground, why smoke ascended, 

 or why the stars revolved round the earth. But if a fiery 

 meteor shot across the heavens, — if the flames of a volcano 

 burst forth, — or if an earthquake shook the foundations of 

 the world, terrour and curiosity were both awakened ; and 

 when the former emotion had subsided, the latter was sure 

 to become active. Tims, to trace a resemblance between 

 the even;, with which the observer was most familiar, and 

 those to which he was less accustomed, and which had ex- 

 cited his wonder, was the first object of inquiry, and pro- 

 duced the first advances towards generalization and philo- 

 sophy. 1 



This principle, which it were easy to trace, from tribes 

 the most rude and barbarous, to nations the most highly 

 refined, was what yielded the first attempts towards classi- 

 fication and arrangement, and enabled man, out of individuals, 

 subject to perpetual change, to form certain fixed and per- 

 manent objects of knowledge, — the species, genera, orders, 

 and classes, into which he has distributed these individuals. 

 By this effort of mental abstraction, he has created to him- 

 self a new and intellectual world, free from those changes 

 and vicissitudes to which all material things are destined, 



1 La maraviglia 



Dell 'ignoranza e la figlia, 

 E del sapere 

 La madre. 



