r ON IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 35 



For example, what could seem wiser, from a 

 mere material point of view, more innocent, from 

 a theological one, to an ancient people, than 

 that they should learn the exact succession of 

 the seasons, as warnings for their husbandmen; 

 or the position of the stars, as guides to their 

 rude navigators ? But what has grown out of 

 this search for natural knowledge of so merely 

 useful a character ? You all know the reply. 

 Astronomy, which of all sciences has filled men's 

 minds with general ideas of a character most / 

 foreign to their daily experience, and has, more 

 than any other, rendered it impossible for them 

 to accept the beliefs of their fathers. Astronomy, 

 which tells them that this so vast and seemingly 

 solid earth is but an atom among atoms, whirling, 

 no man knows whither, through illimitable space ; 

 which demonstrates that what we call the peaceful 

 heaven above us, is but that space, filled by an 

 infinitely subtle matter whose particles are 

 seething and surging, like the waves of an angry 

 sea ; which opens up to us infinite regions where 

 nothing is known, or ever seems to have been 

 known, but matter and force, operating accord- 

 ing to rigid rules ; which leads us to con- 

 template phsenomena the very nature of which 

 demonstrates that they must have had a be- 

 ginning, and that they must have an end, but 

 the very nature of which also proves that the 

 beginning was, to our conceptions of time, 



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