1 82 PHYSICAL SCIENCE BK. iv 



man who had prevailed upon it through the offering 

 of greater victims. 



VII 



1 CERTAIN writers seek for a rational explanation of 

 this practice. One school, adopting the only line 

 that comports with philosophy, deny the possibility 

 of making any bargain with hail and buying off 

 storms by paltry presents, true, though it be, that 

 gifts overcome even gods. Others affirm their 

 suspicion that blood itself contains a virtue potent 

 enough to avert and repel a cloud. But how, I ask, 

 should a drop or two of blood possess a virtue to 

 reach on high and influence the clouds ? Is it not 

 much easier to say, the whole thing is a parcel of 



2 lies ? But Cleonae was strict in dealing with its 

 warders who had received charge of looking out 

 beforehand for the storm, if it happened that 

 through their neglect the vineyards had been beaten 

 down or the crops laid. And among ourselves, too, 

 at Rome the laws of the Twelve Tables introduce 

 safeguards against the blighting of a neighbour s 

 crops by charms. Antiquity as yet untutored enter 

 tained the belief that rain could be attracted or 

 repelled by incantations. The impossibility of such 

 fancies is so evident that one need not enter a 



.school of philosophy in order to be taught how to 

 disprove them. 



VIII 



I SHALL add one more remark which you will be 

 very glad, I am sure, to approve and applaud. It 

 is asserted that snow is formed in the part of the 



