146 OF LAWS IN GENERAL. 



it be admitted that by the aboriginal man, as by the child, 

 the co-existent properties of large surrounding objects are 

 noticed before those of minute objects, and that the external 

 relations which bodies present are generalized before their 

 internal relations, it must be admitted that in subsequent 

 stages of progress, the comparative conspicuousness of rela 

 tions has greatly affected the order in which they w r ere 

 recognized as uniform. Hence it happened that after the 

 establishment of those very manifest sequences constituting 

 a lunation, and those less manifest ones marking a year, and 

 those still less manifest ones marking the planetary periods, 

 astronomy occupied itself with such inconspicuous sequences 

 as those displayed in the repeating cycle of lunar eclipses, 

 and those which suggested the theory of epicycles and eccen 

 trics ; while modern astronomy deals with still more incon 

 spicuous sequences, some of which, as the planetary rotations, 

 are nevertheless the simplest which the heavens present. In 

 physics, the early use of canoes implied an empirical know 

 ledge of certain hydrostatic relations that are intrinsically 

 more complex than sundry static relations not empirically 

 known ; but these hydrostatic relations were thrust upon 

 observation. Or, if we compare the solution of the problem 

 of specific gravity by Archimedes with the discovery of at 

 mospheric pressure by Torricelli (the two involving me 

 chanical relations of exactly the same kind), we perceive that 

 the much earlier occurrence of the first than the last was 

 determined, neither by a difference in the irbearings on per 

 sonal welfare, nor by a difference in the frequency with 

 which illustrations of them came under observation, nor by 

 relative simplicity ; but by the greater obtrusiveness of the 

 connexion between antecedent and consequent in the one case 

 than in the other. Among miscellaneous illustrations, it 

 may be pointed out that the connexions between lightning 

 and thunder, and between rain and clouds, were recognized 

 long before others of the same order, simply because they 



