THE SCIENTIFIC LAW 105 



wise we shall be abruptly confuted by the fact that there are 

 many groups of sense-impressions which we receive and yet 

 have not classified and reduced to simple formulae. There 

 are many phenomena of which we can at present only 

 confess our ignorance. Compare, for example, what we 

 know of the tides and the weather. Had Odysseus and 

 his men been stranded high and dry by a spring tide on 

 the Thrinacian Isle they would probably have offered a 

 hecatomb to Poseidon praying him to send another spring 

 tide on the morrow. A modern mariner, more wise and 

 less pious than Odysseus, would have consumed the kine 

 of Helios in peace for a fortnight, and then have taken 

 his departure with comparative ease. On the other hand, 

 the modern mariner, like Odysseus of old, might still pray 

 for calm weather, thus projecting his inability to formulate 

 a scientific law into want of routine and possible anomy 

 (P- 95) in the sequence of his perceptions. If we believe 

 in the capacity of the reflective faculty for ultimately re- 

 ducing to a brief formula or law all types of phenomena, 

 if we believe in the co-ordination of perception and reflec- 

 tion, then the weather will not probably appear a very 

 strong argument against our hypothesis. It must at least 

 be confessed that the discovery of a hundred or a five 

 hundred years' period in the weather would sadly dis- 

 comfort those who delight in assuming that some one group 

 of perceptions at least must be beyond the analysis of the 

 reflective faculty. Yet such a discovery would not now 

 be more remarkable than that of the Chaldean Saros or 

 eclipse period ^ must have been to those who looked upon 

 eclipses as an arbitrary interference with their perceptions, 

 and prayed and drummed vigorously for a restoration of 

 the light of sun or moon. The coeval development of 

 the perceptive and reflective faculties associated with a 

 power of selecting sensations in the former is possibly an 

 important, but it may not be the sole, factor in the 

 marvellous power which the reason possesses of describing 



1 The Chaldeans had discovered that echpses of the sun and moon recur 

 in a cycle of eighteen years and eleven days, and were thus able to predict 

 the dates of their occurrence. 



