NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 723 



deaths of Prometheus, Atreus, Hercules, iEsculapius, and Alexander 

 the Great. The Roman legends held that, at the death of Romulus, 

 there was darkness for six hours. The lives of the Csesars give por- 

 tents of all three kinds ; for, at the death of Julius, the earth was 

 shrouded in darkness, the birth of Augustus was heralded by a star, 

 and the downfall of Nero by a comet. Nor has this mode of think- 

 ing: ceased in modern times. A similar claim was made at the exe- 

 cution of Charles I, and Increase Mather thought an eclipse in Massa- 

 chusetts an evidence of the grief of Nature at the death of Presi- 

 dent Chauncey, of Harvard College.* Traces of this feeling have 

 come down to our own times. The beautiful story of the sturdy Con- 

 necticut statesman who, when his associates in the General Assembly 

 were alarmed by a general eclipse, and thought it the beginning of 

 the day of judgment, ordered in candles, purposing in any case to be 

 found doing his duty, marks probably the last noteworthy effect of 

 the old belief in the civilized world. 



In these beliefs regarding meteors and eclipses there was little cal- 

 culated to do harm by arousing that superstitious terror which is 

 the worst breeding-bed of cruelty. Far otherwise was it with the 

 beliefs regarding comets. During many centuries they brought 

 terrors which developed the direst superstition and fanaticism ; the 

 ancient records of every continent are full of these. One great man, 

 indeed, in the Roman Empire had the scientific instinct and pro- 

 phetic inspiration to foresee that at some future time the course of 

 comets would be found in accordance with natural law.f But this 

 thought of Seneca was soon forgotten ; such an isolated utterance 

 could not stand against the mass of superstition which upheld the 

 doctrine that comets are " signs and wonders." The belief that every 

 comet is a ball of fire, flung from the right hand of an angry God to 

 warn the groveling dwellers of earth, was received into the early 

 Church, transmitted through the middle ages to the Reformation 

 period,^ and in its transmission and reception was made all the more 

 precious by supposed textual proofs from Scripture. The great fathers 

 of the Church committed themselves unreservedly to this doctrine. 

 Tertullian * declared that " comets portend revolutions of kingdoms, 

 pestilence, war, winds, or heat." Origen || insisted that they indicate 

 " catastrophes and the downfall of empires and worlds." The Ven- 

 erable Bede, A so justly dear to the English Church, made in the ninth 



* He thought, too, that it might have something to do with the deaths of sundry civil 

 functionaries of the colony. See his discourse concerning comets, 1682. 



) See Watson " On Comets," p. 46, with Glaisher's translation of Seneca's prediction. 

 \ For this feeling in antiquity see Guillemin, " The World of Comets," translated 

 by Glaisher, chaps, i and ii ; also Watson " On Comets," preliminary chapters. 



* For Tertullian, see " Ad Scapul," 3. 



|| For Origen, see " De Principiis," i, 754 ; also Maury, " Legendes pieuses du Moycn 

 Age," p. 203, and note. 



A For Bede, see his " De Natura Rerum," chap. xxiv. 



