3
COMMON KNOWLEDGE AND SCIENCE.
knowledge is rather brought than sought;
and such
ratiocination is little more than the working of a blind intellectual instinct. It is only when the mind passes beyond this condition that it begins to evolve science.
When simple curiosity
passes into the love of knowledge as such, and the gratification of the aesthetic sense of the beauty of com¬ pleteness and accuracy seems more desirable than the easy indolence of ignorance; when the finding out of the causes of things becomes a source of j‘03^, and he is counted happy who is successful in the search ; common knowledge of nature passes into what our forefathers called Natural Histoiy, from whence there is but a step to that which used to be termed Natural Philosophy, and now passes by the name of Physical Science. In this final stage of knowledge, the phenomena of nature are regarded as one continuous series of causes and effects ; and the ultimate object of science is to trace out that series, from the term which is nearest to us, to that which is at the furthest limit accessible to our means of investigation. The course of nature as it is, as it has been, and as it will be, is the object of scientific inquiry; whatever lies beyond, above, or below this, is outside science.
But
the philosopher need not despair at the limitation of his field of labour : in relation to the human mind Nature is boundless; and, though nowhere everywhere unfathomable.
inaccessible, she is
