y upon the time of the Plague and the Fire respectively,
that it was not wonderful if even the wiser sort were struck by the
coincidence and could scarcely regard it as accidental. It is not easy
for the student of science in our own times, when the movements of
comets are as well understood as those of the most orderly planets, to
place himself in the position of men in the times when no one knew on
what paths comets came, or whither they retreated after they had visited
our sun. Taught as men were, on the one hand, that it was wicked to
question what seemed to be the teaching of the Scriptures, that changes
or new appearances in the heavens were sent to warn mankind of
approaching troubles, and perplexed as they were, on the other, by the
absence of any real knowledge respecting comets and meteors, it was not
so easy as we might imagine from our own way of viewing these matters,
to shake off a superstition which had ruled over men's minds for
thousands of years.

No sect had been free from this superstition. Popes and priests had
taught their followers to pray against the evil influences of comets and
other celestial portents; Luther and Melanchthon had condemned in no
measured terms the rashness and impiety of those who had striven to show
that the heavenly bodies and the earth move in concordance with
law--those 'fools who wish to reverse the entire science of astronomy.'
A long interval had elapsed between the time when the Copernican theory
was struggling for existence--when, but that more serious heresies
engaged men's attention and kept religious folk by the ears, that
astronomical heresy would probably have been quenched in blood--and the
forging by Newton of the final link of the chain of reasoning on which
modern astronomy is based; but in those times the minds of men moved
more slowly than in ours. The masses still held to the old beliefs about
the heavenly bodies. Defoe, indeed, speaking of the terror of men at the
time of the Great Plague, says that they 'were more addicted to
prophecies and astrological conjurations, dreams, and old wives' tales,
than ever they were before or since.' But in reality, it was only
because of the great misery then prevailing that men seemed more
superstitious than usual; for misery brings out the superstitions--the
fetishisms, if we may so speak--which are inherent in many minds, but
concealed from others in prosperous times, out of shame, or perhaps a
worthier feeling. Even