The fox that Darwin tells us about in his Voyage was literally lost in the presence of wonders. "In the evening," says the naturalist, "we reached the island of San Pedro. In doubling the point, two of the officers landed, to take a round of angles with the theodolite. A fox of a kind said to be peculiar on the island, and very rare in it, was sitting on the rocks. He was so intently absorbed in watching the work of the officers, that I was able, by quietly walking up behind, to knock him on the head with my geological hammer!"
"We on this globe," said Voltaire, speaking of the slender acquaintance of Europe with the Chinese Empire, "we on this globe are like insects in a garden--those who live on an oak seldom meet those who pass their short lives on an ash." "We are poor, silly animals," says Horace Walpole; "we live for an instant upon a particle of a boundless universe, and are much like a butterfly that should argue about the nature of the seasons, and what creates their vicissitudes, and does not exist itself to see an annual revolution of them." When Dr. Livingstone returned from Africa, after a stay of sixteen years as a missionary, he was induced to bring with him an intelligent and affectionate native, Sekwebu, who had been of great service to him. When they parted from their friends at Kilemane, the sea on the bar was frightful, even to the seamen. This was the first time Sekwebu had seen the sea. As the terrible breakers broke over them, he asked, wonderingly, "Is this the way you go? Is this the way you go?" exclaiming, "What a strange country is this--all water together!"
At sea, a person's eye being six feet above the surface of the water, his horizon is only two miles and four fifths distant; yet his tongue will as freely wag of the world as if it were all spinning under his eye. We freely discuss the ignorance of those we believe to be less intelligent than ourselves, never thinking that we are the cause of like amusement to those who are more intelligent than we are. Fewer laugh with us than at us. The grades are so many that contrast is more natural than comparison. Unfortunately, too, it is only in the descent that we can see, and that but a little way. We know it is up, up, that we would go, but the rounds of the ladder are but vaguely visible. But a small part, indeed, we perceive of the prodigious sweep from the lowest ignorance to possible intelligence. Happily, credulity fills the empty spaces, and, setting itself up for original wisdom, satisfies us with ourselves and ours. Thackeray, in one of his best novels, thus satirically screams out one of its uses: "Oh, Mr. Pendennis! if Nature had not made that provision for each sex in the credulity of the other, which sees good qualities where none exist, good looks in donkeys' ears, wit in their numskulls, and music in their bray, there would not have been near so much marrying and giving in marriage as now obtains, and as is necessary for the due propagation and continuance of the noble race to which we belong!" "I desire to die," said Horace Walpole, "when I have nobody left to laugh with me. I have never yet seen, or heard, anything serious that was not ridiculous.... Oh! we are ridiculous animals; and if angels have any fun in them, how we must divert them."