HKB
APHORISM IX.
In Wonder all Philosophy began: in Wonder it ends: and Admiration fills up the interspace. But the first Wonder is the offspring of Ignorance: the last is the parent of Adoration. The first is the birth-throe of our knowledge: the last is its euthanasy and apotheosis.
Sequelæ: or Thoughts suggested by the preceding Aphorism.
As in respect of the first wonder we are all on the same level, how comes it that the philosophic mind should, in all ages, be the privilege of a few? The most obvious reason is this: The wonder takes place before the period of reflection, and (with the great mass of mankind) long before the individual is capable of directing his attention freely and consciously to the feeling, or even to its exciting causes. Surprise (the form and dress which the Wonder of Ignorance usually puts on) is worn away, if not precluded, by custom and familiarity. So is it with the objects of the senses, and the ways and fashions of the world around us; even as with the beat of our own hearts, which we notice only in moments of fear and perturbation. But with regard to the concerns of our inward being, there is yet another cause that acts in concert with the power in custom to prevent a fair and equal exertion of reflective thought. The great fundamental truths and doctrines of religion, the existence and attributes of God, and the life after death, are in Christian countries taught so early, under such circumstances, and in such close and vital association with whatever makes or marks reality for our infant minds, that the words ever after represent sensations, feelings, vital assurances, sense of reality--rather than thoughts, or any distinct conception. Associated, I had almost said identified, with the parental voice, look, touch, with the living warmth and pressure of the Mother, on whose lap the child is first made to kneel, within whose palms its little hands are folded, and the motion of whose eyes its eyes follow and imitate--(yea, what the blue sky is to the mother, the mother's upraised eyes and brow are to the child, the Type and Symbol of an invisible Heaven!)--from within and without, these great First Truths, these good and gracious Tidings, these holy and humanizing Spells, in the preconformity to which our very humanity may be said to consist, are so infused, that it were but a tame and inadequate expression to say, we all take them for granted. At a later period, in youth or early manhood, most of us, indeed, (in the higher and middle classes at least) read or hear certain PROOFS of these truths--which we commonly listen to, when we listen at all, with much the same feelings as a popular Prince on his Coronation Day, in the centre of a fond and rejoicing nation, may be supposed to hear the Champion's challenge to all the non-existents, that deny or dispute his Rights and Royalty. In fact, the order of Proof is most often reversed or transposed. As far, at least as I dare judge from the goings on in my own mind, when with keen delight I first read the works of Derham, Nieuwentiet, and Lyonet, I should say, that the full and life-like conviction of a gracious Creator is the Proof (at all events, performs the office and answers all the purpose of a Proof) of the wisdom and benevolence in the construction of the Creature.