Product Synopsis

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1884. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... VII. THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 1874. N impulse inherent in primeval man turned his thoughts and questionings betimes towards the sources of natural phenomena. The same impulse, inherited and intensified, is the spur of scientific action to-day. Deter mined 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 weft 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 anthropomorphic form. To supersensual beings, which, 'however potent and invisible, **1^ were nothing but a species of human creatures, perhaps raised from among mankind, and retaining all human passions and appetites,'1 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 pene 1 Hume, 'Natural History of Religion.' trating intellects of our race. Far in the depths of history we find men of exceptional power differentiating themselves from the crowd, rejecting these anthropomorphic notions, and seeking to connect 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 develope...