same length. The air was sometimes hot and sometimes cold. Some of the
stars rose and set like the sun; some were almost motionless in the sky;
some described circles round a central star above the north horizon. The
planets went on principles of their own; and in the elements there
seemed nothing but caprice. Sun and moon would at times go out in
eclipse. Sometimes the earth itself would shake under men's feet; and
they could only suppose that earth and air and sky and water were
inhabited and managed by creatures as wayward as themselves.

Time went on, and the disorder began to arrange itself. Certain
influences seemed beneficent to men, others malignant and destructive;
and the world was supposed to be animated by good spirits and evil
spirits, who were continually fighting against each other, in outward
nature and in human creatures themselves. Finally, as men observed more
and imagined less, these interpretations gave way also. Phenomena the
most opposite in effect were seen to be the result of the same natural
law. The fire did not burn the house down if the owners of it were
careful, but remained on the hearth and boiled the pot; nor did it seem
more inclined to burn a bad man's house down than a good man's, provided
the badness did not take the form of negligence. The phenomena of nature
were found for the most part to proceed in an orderly, regular way, and
their variations to be such as could be counted upon. From observing the
order of things, the step was easy to cause and effect. An eclipse,
instead of being a sign of the anger of Heaven, was found to be the
necessary and innocent result of the relative position of sun, moon, and
earth. The comets became bodies in space, unrelated to the beings who
had imagined that all creation was watching them and their doings. By
degrees caprice, volition, all symptoms of arbitrary action, disappeared
out of the universe; and almost every phenomenon in earth or heaven was
found attributable to some law, either understood or perceived to exist.