Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/68

32 is the grandchild of judgment—and often an erroneous one—and certainly not of one's own. To trust to one's feeling—means to obey one's grandfather and grand-mother and their ancestors in a higher degree than the gods that dwell within us, namely our reason and experience.

A foolish piety with hidden pupose.— Are the inventor's of ancient civilisation, the earliest makers of tools and measuring lines, of vehicles, ships and houses, are the first observers of the celestial order and the multiplication tables, indeed, something quite different from an incomparably higher than the inventors and observers of our own age? Are these first steps, in the department of (discoveries, really of a value uneqalled by our travels and circumnavigations of the globe? Such is the voice of prejudice, such the argument for the disregard of the modern mind. And yet it is quite evident that chance, in the days of yore, was the greatest of all discoverers and observers, and the benevolent prompter of those ingenious ancients, and that, for the most insignificant invention which is now made, a greater intelligence, discipline, and scientific imagination are required than the sun and total existing in previous ages amounted to.

Erroneous conclusions from usefulness. When we