82 IS IT GOING TO RAIN? 



foggy. More than that, the philosophy is simple 

 and comprehensive, which Goethe said was the main 

 matter in such things. Goethe's explanation is still 

 more picturesque, but I doubt if it is a bit better phi- 

 losophy. " I compare the earth and her atmosphere," 

 he said to Eckermann, " to a great living being per- 

 petually inhaling and exhaling. If she inhale she 

 draws the atmosphere to her, so that coming near her 

 surface it is condensed to clouds and rain. This state 

 I call water-affirmative." The opposite state, when 

 the earth exhales and sends the watery vapors upward 

 BO that they are dissipated through the whole space of 

 the higher atmosphere, he called " water-negative." 



This is gQ^d-literature, and worthy the great poet ; 

 the science of it I would not be so willing to vouch 

 for. 



The poets, more perhaps than the scientists, have 

 illustrated and held by the great law of alternation, 

 of ebb and flow, of turn and return, in nature. An 

 equilibrium, or what is the same thing, a straight 

 line, nature abhors more than she dose a vacuum. If 

 the moisture of the air were uniform, or the heat 

 uniform, that is, in equilibria, how could it rain? 

 what would turn the scale? But these things are 

 heaped up, are in waves. There is always a prepon- 

 derance one way or the other ; always " a steep in- 

 equality." Down this incline the rain comes, and up 

 the other side it goes. The high barometer travels 

 like the crest of a sea, and the low barometer like 

 the trough. When the scale kicks the beam in one 



