Chemistry and Biology, and, I may add, to New Astronomy, and to-day as a science it embraces land and sea; and, like Chemistry and the other sciences, it is very progressive in its nature, divulging its secrets bit by bit. There is no finality in science, "for we are ancients of the earth, and in the morning of the time," and there is no royal road to geographical science. It is not like poetry, an intuitive perception. It is the one great attribute of Nature, that, like a coy maiden, she never dispenses her favours to the careless or the indifferent. He who would become an adept in interpreting her secret must (to borrow a line from the poet Burns) "assiduous wait upon her." Not to be content with an occasional mild flirtation, but to be an ardent votary and sincere seeker after truth, and have for his motto that noble line from Tennyson: "Let knowledge grow from more to more. How pleasant are the ways which lead to knowledge!"
In my younger days, we used to sing in the old Scotch Kirk a paraphrase of Scripture setting forth the beauties of Divine wisdom —
"Her ways are ways of pleasantness and all
"Her paths are peace."
And so it is with knowledge, "Her ways," etc.
It may happen, as it often does happen in our work-a-day world, that we meet with crosses and troubles, but when these assail us, we have, in the pursuit and enjoyment of knowledge, the purest consolation, and which will enable us to rise on the stepping-stones of our worldly selves to higher things.
The present age is characterised by an intensely intellectual activity. The ordinary mind is bewildered by the daily discoveries and inventions of science. Some of these are so far-reaching that we ask ourselves when the limit to these wonders will be reached, and whether we will yet attain to a more divine intelligence, so that we may fathom those great mysteries, Time and Space.
We have a complacent feeling that Providence has hitherto kept many secrets of Nature under lock and key for our special behoof; that all through the ages men groped their way from the cradle to the grave, enveloped in the murkiest ignorance.
But we are beginning to have an uneasy feeling or suspicion that in many of our intellectual triumphs we have been forestalled. The Chinese claim many of our good things, and their claims cannot be altogether ignored. We cannot dispute their title to the mariner's compass, the discovery of which is not due to modern civilisation, but is mentioned, as illustrating the case in point. Also the hieroglyphics of old Nile, and the clay tablets of Babylon, and Nineveh, are making us reluctantly aware, that those old Eastern people knew more than we are inclined to credit them with.
