80 THE GREEK SCHOOL PHILOSOPHY. 



random classification is, however orderly and syste- 

 matic it may be. 



For instance, for a long period all unusual fiery 

 appearances in the sky were classed together as 

 meteors. Comets, shooting-stars, and globes of fire y 

 and the aurora borealis in all its forms, were thus 

 grouped together, and classifications of considerable 

 extent and minuteness were proposed with reference 

 to these objects. But this classification was of a 

 mixed and arbitrary kind. Figure, colour, motion, 

 duration, were all combined as characters, and the 

 imagination lent its aid, transforming these striking 

 appearances into fiery swords and spears, bears and 

 dragons, armies and chariots. The facts so classified 

 were, notwithstanding, worthless; and would not 

 have been one jot the less so, had they and their 

 classes been ten times as numerous as they were. 

 No rule or law that would stand the test of obser- 

 vation was or could be thus discovered. Such clas- 

 sifications have, therefore, long been neglected and 

 forgotten. Even the ancient descriptions of these 

 objects of curiosity are unintelligible, or unworthy 

 of trust, because the spectators had no steady con- 

 ception of the usual order of such phenomena. For, 

 however much we may fear to be misled by precon- 

 ceived opinions, the caprices of imagination distort 

 our impressions far more than the anticipations of 

 reason. In this case men had, indeed we may say 

 with regard to many of these meteors, they still 

 have, no science : not for want of facts, nor even for 



