orce of which was never fully recognized until the
time of Galileo. This consists in the assertion that the brightness of
the Milky Way is merely due to the glow of many stars. The shadow-theory
of Anaxagoras would naturally cease to have validity so soon as the
sphericity of the earth was proved, and with it, seemingly, fell for the
time the companion theory that the Milky Way is made up of a multitude
of stars.

It has been said by a modern critic(1) that the shadow-theory was
childish in that it failed to note that the Milky Way does not follow
the course of the ecliptic. But this criticism only holds good so long
as we reflect on the true character of the earth as a symmetrical body
poised in space. It is quite possible to conceive a body occupying
the position of the earth with reference to the sun which would cast a
shadow having such a tenuous form as the Milky Way presents. Such a body
obviously would not be a globe, but a long-drawn-out, attenuated
figure. There is, to be sure, no direct evidence preserved to show that
Anaxagoras conceived the world to present such a figure as this, but
what we know of that philosopher's close-reasoning, logical mind gives
some warrant to the assumption--gratuitous though in a sense it be--that
the author of the theory of the moon's phases had not failed to ask
himself what must be the form of that terrestrial body which could cast
the tenuous shadow of the Milky Way. Moreover, we must recall that the
habitable earth, as known to the Greeks of that day, was a relatively
narrow band of territory, stretching far to the east and to the west.

Anaxagoras as Meteorologist

The man who had studied the meteorite of aegospotami, and been put by
it on the track of such remarkable inductions, was, naturally, not
oblivious to the other phenomena of the atmosphere. Indeed, such a mind
as that of Anaxagoras was sure to investigate all manner of natural
phenomena, and almost equally sure to throw new light on any subject
that it investigated. Hence it is not surprising to find Anaxagoras
credited with explaining the winds as due to the rarefactions of the
atmosphere produced by the sun. This explanation gives Anaxagoras full
right to be called "the father of meteorology," a title which, it may
be, no one has thought of applying to him, chiefly because the science
of meteorology did not make its real beginnings until some twenty-four
hundred years after the death of its first great votary