Madam How and Lady Why; Or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for ChildrenKingsley, Charles
History
Madam How and Lady Why; Or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children
Kingsley, Charles
Geology -- Juvenile literature; Natural history -- Juvenile literature
Of course. If we thought and searched over the Universe--ay, I believe,
only over this one little planet called earth--for millions on millions
of years, we should not get to the end of our searching. The more we
learnt, the more we should find there was left to learn. All things, we
should find, are constituted according to a Divine and Wonderful Order,
which links each thing to every other thing; so that we cannot fully
comprehend any one thing without comprehending all things: and who can do
that, save He who made all things? Therefore our true wisdom is never to
fancy that we do comprehend: never to make systems and theories of the
Universe (as they are called) as if we had stood by and looked on when
time and space began to be; but to remember that those who say they
understand, show, simply by so saying, that they understand nothing at
all; that those who say they see, are sure to be blind; while those who
confess that they are blind, are sure some day to see. All we can do is,
to keep up the childlike heart, humble and teachable, though we grew as
wise as Newton or as Humboldt; and to follow, as good Socrates bids us,
Reason whithersoever it leads us, sure that it will never lead us wrong,
unless we have darkened it by hasty and conceited fancies of our own, and
so have become like those foolish men of old, of whom it was said that
the very light within them was darkness. But if we love and reverence
and trust Fact and Nature, which are the will, not merely of Madam How,
or even of Lady Why, but of Almighty God Himself, then we shall be really
loving, and reverencing, and trusting God; and we shall have our reward
by discovering continually fresh wonders and fresh benefits to man; and
find it as true of science, as it is of this life and of the life to
come--that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the
heart of man to conceive, what God has prepared for those who love Him.
FOOTNOTES
{1} I could not resist the temptation of quoting this splendid
generalisation from Dr. Carpenter's Preliminary Report of the Dredging
Operations of H.M.S. "Lightening," 1868. He attributes it, generously,
to his colleague, Dr. Wyville Thomson. Be it whose it may, it will mark
(as will probably the whole Report when completed) a new era in
Bio-Geology.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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