He would defend himself, probably, if he had a smattering of science, by saying that experience teaches us that Nature works by ‘invariable laws’; by which he would mean, usually unbroken customs; and that he has, therefore, a right to be astonished if they are broken.  But he would be wrong.  The just cause of astonishment is, that the laws are, on the whole, invariable; that the customs are so seldom broken; that sun and moon, plants and animals, grains of dust and vesicles of vapour, are not perpetually committing some vagary or other, and making as great fools of themselves as human beings are wont to do.  Happily for the existence of the universe, they do not.  But how, and still more why, things in general behave so respectably and loyally, is a wonder which is either utterly inexplicable, or explicable, I hold, only on the old theory that they obey Some One—­whom we obey to a very limited extent indeed.  Not that this latter theory gets rid of the perpetual and omnipresent element of wondrousness.  If matter alone exists, it is a wonder and a mystery how it obeys itself.  If A Spirit exists, it is a wonder and a mystery how He makes matter obey Him.  All that the scientific man can do is, to confess the presence of mystery all day long; and to live in that wholesome and calm attitude of wonder which we call awe and reverence; that so he may be delivered from the unwholesome and passionate fits of wonder which we call astonishment, the child of ignorance and fear, and the parent of rashness and superstition.  So will he keep his mind in the attitude most fit for seizing new facts, whenever they are presented to him.  So he will be able, when he doubts of a new fact, to examine himself whether he doubts it on just grounds; whether his doubt may not proceed from mere self-conceit, because the fact does not suit his preconceived theories; whether it may not proceed from an even lower passion, which he shares (being human) with the most uneducated; namely, from dread of the two great bogies, Novelty and Size—­novelty, which makes it hard to convince the country fellow that in the Tropics great flowers grow on tall trees, as they do here on herbs; size, which makes it hard to convince him that in far lands trees are often two and three hundred feet high, simply because he has never seen one here a hundred feet high.  It is not surprising, but saddening, to watch what power these two phantoms have over the minds of those who would be angry if they were supposed to be uneducated.  How often has one heard the existence of the sea-serpent declared impossible and absurd, on these very grounds, by people who thought they were arguing scientifically:  the sea-serpent could not exist, firstly because—­because it was so odd, strange, new, in a word, and unlike anything that they had ever seen or fancied; and, secondly, because it was so big.  The first argument would apply to a thousand new facts, which