LECTURES AND ESSAYS 



THE BELFAST ADDRESS 5 



AN impulse inherent in primeval man 

 turned his thoughts and questionings 

 betimes towards the sources of natural 

 phenomena. The same impulse, in- 

 herited 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 resting 

 upon a cause. In forming their notions 

 of the origin of things, our earliest 

 historic (and doubtless, 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 difference 

 that the particular experiences which 

 furnished the warp and woof of their 

 theories were drawn, not from the study 

 of nature, but from what lay much 

 closer to them the observation of men. 

 Their theories accordingly took an an- 

 thropomorphic form. To supersensual 

 beings, which, "however potent and 

 invisible, were nothing but a species of 

 human creatures, perhaps raised from 

 among mankind, and retaining all human 

 passions and appetites," 2 were handed 

 over the rule and governance of natural 

 phenomena. 



Tested by observation and reflection, 

 these early notions failed in the long run 



to satisfy the more penetrating intellects 

 of our race. Far in the depths of 

 history we find men of exceptional 

 power differentiating themselves from 

 the crowd, rejecting these anthropo- 

 morphic notions, and seeking to con- 

 nect natural phenomena with their 

 physical principles. But, long prior to 

 these purer efforts of the understanding, 

 the merchant had been abroad, and 

 rendered the philosopher possible ; 

 commerce had been developed, wealth 

 amassed, leisure for travel and specula- 

 tion secured, while races educated under 

 different conditions, and therefore differ- 

 ently informed and endowed, had been 

 stimulated and sharpened by mutual 

 contact. In those regions where the 

 commercial aristocracy of ancient Greece 

 mingled with their eastern neighbours, 

 the sciences were born, being nurtured 

 and developed by free-thinking and 

 courageous men. The state of things 

 to be displaced may be gathered from a 

 passage of Euripides quoted by Hume : 

 "There is nothing in the world; no 

 glory, no prosperity. The gods toss all 

 into confusion ; mix everything with its 

 reverse, that all of us, from our ignorance 

 and uncertainty, may pay them the more 

 worship and reverence." Now, as science 

 demands the radical extirpation of caprice 

 and the absolute reliance upon law in 

 nature, there grew, with the growth of 

 scientific notions, a desire and determina- 

 tion to sweep from the field of theory 



Delivered before the British Association on Wednesday, August igth, 1874. 

 3 Hume, Natural History of Religion. 



