228 PHYSICAL SCIENCE BK. vi 



III 



1 IT will be useful also to be assured that none of 

 these things is the doing of the gods, and that the 

 moving of heaven or earth is no work of angry 

 deities. Those phenomena have causes of their 

 own. It is not by special command that they put 

 forth their rage, but, just as in our own bodies, the 

 disturbance arises from certain inherent imper 

 fections ; at the moment when they seem to inflict 

 injury, they sustain it. Through our ignorance of 

 the truth all these things are terrible, the more as 



2 their infrequency increases our alarm. Familiar 

 occurrences seem less serious ; the unusual causes 

 greater terror. But why is anything unusual in our 

 estimation ? The reason is that we grasp the 

 meaning of nature only superficially, and not 

 rationally ; we dwell too exclusively on what she 

 has done, and do not consider what she can do. 

 Accordingly, we pay the penalty of this neglect in 

 our terror of things that we suppose unprecedented, 

 when they are not really unprecedented, but merely 

 unusual. For instance, are not superstitious fears 

 inspired both privately and even for the safety of 

 the State, if either the sun has been seen in eclipse 

 or if the moon, whose obscuration is more frequent, 



3 has partially or wholly been concealed ? And is 

 not this far more so in the case of such sights 

 as we have spoken of: torches driven athwart 

 the heavens, the sky on fire over the greater part 

 of its extent, comets, mock suns, stars appearing 

 in the daytime, the sudden passage of stars that 

 mark their trail with a bright light ? Our wonder 



