Long before we can engage the curiosity of the child in the History of England--long before we can induce him to listen with pleasure to our stories even of Poictiers and Cressy--and (a fortiori) long before he can be taught an interest in Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights, he will of his own accord question us of the phenomena of nature--inquire how he himself came into the world-- delight to learn something of the God we tell him to adore--and find in the rainbow and the thunder, in the meteor and the star, a thousand subjects of eager curiosity and reverent wonder.

The why perpetually torments him;--every child is born a philosopher!--the child is the analogy of a people yet in childhood.

[186] XII.

It may follow as a corollary from this problem, that the Greeks of themselves arrived at the stage of philosophical inquiry without any very important and direct assistance from the lore of Egypt and the East.

That lore, indeed, awakened the desire, but it did not guide the spirit of speculative research.