The simple fact of its first condition would now seem to most men as exaggerated fancies, if given in the simplest forms of truthful statement.

With all the mighty faculties to which it has come; with its capacity to count, name, measure and weigh stars that Adam, nor Moses, nor Solomon ever saw; with all the forces of nature it has subdued to the service of man, it cannot tell what simplest facts of the creation had to be ascertained by its first, feeble and confused reasonings.

No one of to-day can say how low down in the scale of intelligence the human mind began to exercise its untried faculties; what apposition and deduction of thoughts it required to individualise the commonest objects that met the eye; even to determine that the body it animated was not an immovable part of the earth itself; to obtain fixed notions of distance, of color, light, and heat; to learn the properties and uses of plants, herbs, and fruits; even to see the sun sink out of sight with the sure faith that it would rise again.

It was gifted with no instinct, to decide these questions instantly and mechanically.

They had all to pass through the varied processes of reason.