143 OF LA.WS IN GENERAL. 



on sun and rain while yet comets were regarded as signs of 

 divine wrath. 



That races living- inland must long have remained ignorant 

 of the daily and monthly sequences of the tides, and that 

 tropical races could not early have comprehended the pheno 

 mena of northern winters, are extreme illustrations of the 

 influence which relative frequency has on the recognition of 

 uniformities. Animals which, where they are indigenous, 

 call forth no surprise by their structures or habits, because 

 these are so familiar, when taken to countries where they 

 have never been seen, are looked at with an astonishment 

 approaching to awe are even thought supernatural : a fact 

 which will suggest numerous others that show how the local 

 ization of phenomena in part controls the order in which they 

 are reduced to law. Not only however does their localization 

 in space affect the progression, but also their localization in 

 time. Facts which are rarely if ever manifested in one era, 

 are rendered very frequent in another, simply through the 

 changes wrought by civilization. The lever, of which the 

 properties are illustrated in the use of sticks and weapons, is 

 vaguely understood by every savage on applying it in a 

 certain way he rightly anticipates certain effects ; but the 

 wheel- and- axle, pulley, and screw, cannot have their powers 

 either empirically or rationally known till the advance of the 

 arts has more or less familiarized them. Through those 

 various means of exploration which we have inherited and 

 added to, we have become acquainted with a vast range of 

 chemical relations that were relatively non-existent to the 

 primitive man. To highly-developed industries we owe both 

 the substances and the appliances that have disclosed to us 

 countless uniformities which our ancestors had no oppor 

 tunity of seeing. These and like instances that will occur 

 to the reader, show that the accumulated materials, and pro 

 cesses, and products, which characterize the environments of 

 complex societies, greatly increase the accessibility of various 



