20 SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN MIND 



can be placed on record as to their nationality or the 

 ultimate origin of their family must not be regarded 

 as a ministration to idle curiosity, but as a piece of 

 our argument, playing an essential part in the struc- 

 ture of this book. It is not a fortuitous chance that 

 Origen, the earliest and most modern of the Fathers 

 of the Church, was born at Alexandria, of Greek 

 parents ; that Erigena was surnamed Scotus ; or that 

 Isaac Newton, who represents the supreme triumph 

 of mathematical and physical thought, should have 

 been tall, fair- or ruddy-haired and grey-eyed, and 

 should have first seen light on a Lincolnshire free- 

 hold, in the central home of that Anglo-Danish stock 

 which has proved the most fertile nursing mother of 

 pure science. Whoever is unable to appreciate the 

 inward meaning of these facts often deemed irrelev- 

 ant by folk who are prepared to see miracles every- 

 where will never comprehend the interrelations of 

 science and the human mind. 



Some sciences grow from foundations set on the 

 firm ground of the practical arts. Others, however 

 they may arise, take over their problems ready framed 

 by philosophy and all possible answers formulated by 

 different and contending schools of thought. Some 

 races have made natural science and the scientific 

 frame of mind part of the birthright of their children ; 

 and some men of science have known and described 

 Nature with the unerring instinct of children dwelling 

 on the perfections of a beloved parent. 



Guided by such clues as these, we shall follow in 

 detail the development of natural science in the 

 . human mind. 



