C. that any notice was taken of
the every-day matters of wind and heat and rain.
Aristotle, the Gradgrind of philosophers, first noted down the known
facts on this subject in his work _On Meteors_. His theories and
deductions were necessarily erroneous, but he struck the foundation of
all science, the collection of known facts. Theophrastus, one of his
pupils, made a compilation of prognostics concerning rain, wind
and storm, and there investigation ceased for ages. For nearly two
thousand years the citizens of the world rose every morning to rejoice
in fair weather or be wet by showers, to see their crops destroyed
by frost or their ships by winds, and never made a single attempt to
discover any scientific reason or rules in the matter--apparently
did not suspect that there was any cause or effect behind these daily
occurrences. They accounted for wind or rain as our grandfathers did
for a sudden death, by the "visitation of God." In fact, Nature--which
is the expression of Law most inexorable and minute--was the very last
place where mankind looked to find law at all.
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