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HISTORICAL VIEW OF THE

quiries, in what direction he must carry them on, or bywhat rules he must be guided. He was like a travellergoing forth to explore a vast and unknown wilderness,in which a multitude of great and interesting objectspresented themselves on every side, while there was nopath for him to follow, no rule to direct his survey.” *But, amid all this variety of objects, the selection ofthose to which the attention should be directed, willhardly be a matter of deliberate choice. The mind willalways be more powerfully excited by those phenomenawhich are rare, sudden, and imposing ; and the curiositywill be dead to those which are daily surrounding us.Hence, in the earlier stages of knowledge, awe and won-der are first excited by the blaze of a meteor, the ex-plosion of thunder, or the eruption of a volcano ; butno admiration is called forth by the falling of a stone tothe ground, or our vision of the face of nature. Sur-prise at length gives way to a spirit of curiosity : thisin like manner is always at first directed to enquire intothe causes of the most marvellous, rather than of themost common events; and it is little considered that itis from these last that we can alone reason to the causesof the first. When, however, in any case curiosity isonce excited, there is always some hope that rationalenquiry may in time follow ; or, as an Italian poet ex-presses.it, —

“ LamaravigliaDell’ ignoranza e* la figlia,

E del saperehi madre.”

But as awe and wonder are the first powerful emo-tions called forth by the great phenomena of the naturalworld, it too commonly happens that from this source avery different spirit from that of rational curiosity takesits rise—the feeling of superstition. And, perhaps, ofall causes tending to check the spirit of enquiry into thelaws of the material world, and the causes of physicalphenomena, none is more powerful or extensive in itsoperation. The origin of this impression would seem to* Dissertation on the Progress of Science, p. 56.