PHYSICAL AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES.
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be most expressively intimated in the incidental phraseof Pliny , occuring in a passage before quoted : — “ au-sus rem etiam Deo improbam — the notion of a sortof irreligious presumption in attempting to penetrate themysteries of nature. As if those very mysteries werenot the actual indications of Divine power ; and the em-ployment of our reasoning faculties in investigating them,the dedication of those powers to the highest purposefor which they are bestowed upon us.
And while superstition thus checks enquiry, it at thesame time conjures up a train of miserable and perni-cious delusions, which that very enquiry would be themost efficacious means of dispelling. The impressionsso powerfully influencing the untaught mind are always(as we have observed) those made by the more uncommonand striking phenomena. But it is from patiently tracingthe resemblances between the common events of nature,and those apparently more marvellous occurrences whichare sometimes presented, that the advance is made to-wards a knowledge of their common causes; and towardsa perception of that unfailing unity of design, and uni-formity of operation, which constitute the firm basis of arational notion of the one great First Cause, and, by con-sequence, of all enlightened religion. But the ignorantmind, giving way to the momentary impression, usuallyone of terror rather than admiration, created by the sud-den manifestation of some rare phenomenon, in this waysoon conjures up for itself all the phantoms of a blindsuperstition. Untaught how to connect real causes andeffects, the votary of this delusion soon begins to investwith such supposed connection circumstances the mostentirely separate. Men, incapable of understanding theeffect of the moon on the tides, were firm in the per-suasion of the influence of the stars on their fortunes.They would listen with overwhelming awe to the re-sponse of an oracle, and bow with adoration before thehealing virtue of a charm or a relic, while they couldnot hear the great truths which the universal voice ofnature proclaims to them, nor trace the divine hand ino 2