ras. The assertion that
he actually predicted this fall in any proper sense of the word would
be obviously absurd. Yet the fact that his name is associated with it
suggests that he had studied similar meteorites, or else that he studied
this particular one, since it is not quite clear whether it was before
or after this fall that he made the famous assertion that space is full
of falling stones. We should stretch the probabilities were we to assert
that Anaxagoras knew that shooting-stars and meteors were the same,
yet there is an interesting suggestiveness in his likening the
shooting-stars to sparks leaping from the firmament, taken in connection
with his observation on meteorites. Be this as it may, the fact that
something which falls from heaven as a blazing light turns out to be
an iron-like mass may very well have suggested to the most rational
of thinkers that the great blazing light called the sun has the same
composition. This idea grasped, it was a not unnatural extension to
conceive the other heavenly bodies as having the same composition.

This led to a truly startling thought. Since the heavenly bodies are
of the same composition as the earth, and since they are observed to
be whirling about the earth in space, may we not suppose that they were
once a part of the earth itself, and that they have been thrown off by
the force of a whirling motion? Such was the conclusion which Anaxagoras
reached; such his explanation of the origin of the heavenly bodies. It
was a marvellous guess. Deduct from it all that recent science has shown
to be untrue; bear in mind that the stars are suns, compared with which
the earth is a mere speck of dust; recall that the sun is parent, not
daughter, of the earth, and despite all these deductions, the cosmogonic
guess of Anaxagoras remains, as it seems to us, one of the most
marvellous feats of human intelligence. It was the first explanation of
the cosmic bodies that could be called, in any sense, an anticipation of
what the science of our own day accepts as a true explanation of cosmic
origins. Moreover, let us urge again that this was no mere accidental
flight of the imagination; it was a scientific induction based on the
only data available; perhaps it is not too much to say that it was the
only scientific induction which these data would fairly sustain. Of
course it is not for a moment to be inferred that Anaxagoras understood,
in the modern sense, the character of that whirlin