No wonder, therefore, that he
is thrown into a panic by an eclipse, and thinks that the sun or the
moon would surely perish, if he did not raise a clamour and shoot
his puny shafts into the air to defend the luminaries from the
monster who threatens to devour them. No wonder he is terrified when
in the darkness of night a streak of sky is suddenly illumined by
the flash of a meteor, or the whole expanse of the celestial arch
glows with the fitful light of the Northern Streamers. Even
phenomena which recur at fixed and uniform intervals may be viewed
by him with apprehension, before he has come to recognise the
orderliness of their recurrence. The speed or slowness of his
recognition of such periodic or cyclic changes in nature will depend
largely on the length of the particular cycle. The cycle, for
example, of day and night is everywhere, except in the polar
regions, so short and hence so frequent that men probably soon
ceased to discompose themselves seriously as to the chance of its
failing to recur, though the ancient Egyptians, as we have seen,
daily wrought enchantments to bring back to the east in the morning
the fiery orb which had sunk at evening in the crimson west.
Pages:
890
891
892
893
894
895
896
897
898
899
900
901
902
903
904
905
906
907
908
909
910
911
912
913
914