416 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



be guarded against and mitigated. Such lines as the following from 

 Bryant could not have been written by a Greek poet since they express 

 sentiments to which entire antiquity was a stranger: 



Look on this beautiful world and read the truth 



On her fair page; see, every season brings 



New change to her, of everlasting youth; 



Still the green soil with living joyous things 



Swarms; the wide air is full of joyous wings, 



And myriads still are happy in the sleep 



Of oean's azure gulfs, and where he flings 



The restless surge, eternal love doth keep, 



In his complacent arms, the earth, the air, the deep. 



The same affirmation may be made of Bryant's ' To a Cloud/ ' To 

 a Waterfowl/ and other of his poems not a few ; or of Shelley's ' Cloud ' 

 or the ' Skylark/ and many more. In Plato's Phsedrus, one of the 

 characters says : " Here is this lofty and spreading plane-tree, and the 

 agnus castus high and clustering, and the fullest blossom and the 

 greatest fragrance; and the stream which flows beneath the plane- 

 tree is deliriously cool to the feet. . . . How delightful is the breeze; 

 and there is a sound in the air shrill and summer-like which makes 

 answer to the cicadas." Here we have, it is true, a flash of the love 

 of nature. But some centuries later Plutarch refers to this passage as 

 rather silly. While we are not sure that he is uttering his own senti- 

 ments, such seems to be the case. 



In reading Greek authors we are perpetually confronted by the fact 

 that they were acute thinkers and poor observers. They used their 

 minds a great deal more than their senses. When they undertake to 

 explain phenomena, they usually try to think out an explanation 

 instead of first taking care that the phenomena in question have been 

 correctly observed and registered. As for the Romans, not one of 

 them ever had an original idea except on matters that could be turned 

 to practical use. 



Tacitus, for example, says that north of the Orkneys the waters are 

 so sluggish, according to report, that they yield with difficulty to the 

 oar and are not even raised by the wind. He then proceeds to assign as 

 a probable reason that the extreme depth of the water makes it difficult 

 to set in motion. Equally lucid is his explanation of the long days in 

 the same region. Believing that night is produced by shadow, he tells 

 us that owing to the flatness of the earth the darkness does not rise 

 sufficiently high to reach the sky and the stars. He did not know that 

 the nights are equally long. The Greek original from which our word 

 eclipse is derived means a ' leaving ' or ' departure.' So Herodotus, 

 when speaking of an eclipse, says, the sun " Suddenly quitted his seat 

 in the heavens and disappeared, though there were no clouds in 

 sight, hut the sky was clear and serene." This is quite equal to an 

 argument I once heard upon the question whether the moon is in- 

 habited. The rustic logician declared that such could not be the case 



