30 IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 



always taken himself as the standard of comparison, as 

 the centre and measure of the world; nor could he well 

 avoid doing so. And finding that his apparently un- 

 caused will has a powerful effect in giving rise to many 

 occurrences, he naturally enough ascribed other and 

 greater events to other and greater volitions, and came 

 to look upon the world and all that therein is, as the 

 product of the volitions of persons like himself, but 

 stronger, and capable of being appeased or angered, as he 

 himself might be soothed or irritated. Through such 

 conceptions of the plan and working of the universe all 

 mankind have passed, or are passing. And we may now 

 consider what has been the effect of the improvement 

 of natural knowledge on the views of men who have 

 reached this stage, and who have begun to cultivate 

 natural knowledge with no desire but that of ''increasing 

 God's honour and bettering man's estate." 



For example, what could seem wiser, from a mere ma- 

 terial 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 char- 

 acter? 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 dem- 

 onstrates 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 



