Page:Women and Representative Government.pdf/7

 and unquestioned, that all natural phenomena were the direct result of the personal intervention of gods and semi-divine beings. Then came slowly and hesitatingly the beginning of what we have now learned to call 'natural science;' and, little by little, the most cultivated classes began to seek to explain things according to some rational theory of the universe. They ceased to regard the personal intervention of Zeus or Demeter or Athene as a satisfactory explanation of the cause of storms, the fertility of the earth, and other similar things. It is, however, remarkable that Socrates, although he lived well within the time when this dawn of natural science had begun, only partially discerned its future sway. He taught that there were two classes of phenomena, one produced by natural causes and one resulting from divine interposition; and he held that 'physics and astronomy belonged to the divine class of phenomena, in which human research was insane, fruitless, and impious.' Now is it not possible to take both courage and warning from this?—courage, not to limit our hopes for the future, not to say this aim is too high ever to be realised: and warning to have no popes in our protestant minds? The best and wisest of human beings is liable to err. Let us think for ourselves—weigh diligently the reasons of the faith that is in us, and strive earnestly for all things that we believe to be just and reasonable.