While astronomical sequences were still ascribed to volition, certain terrestrial sequences of a different kind, but some of them equally without complication, were interpreted in like manner. The solidification of water at a low temperature, is a phenomenon that is simple, concrete, and of much personal concern. But it is neither so frequent as those which we see are earliest generalized, nor is the presence of the antecedent so manifest. Though in all but tropical climates, mid-winter displays the relation between cold and freezing with tolerable constancy; yet, during the spring and autumn, the occasional appearance of ice in the mornings has no very obvious connexion with coldness of the weather. Sensation being so inaccurate a measure, it is not possible for the savage to experience the definite relation between a temperature of 32° and the congealing of water; and hence the long continued belief in personal agency. Similarly, but still more clearly, with the winds. The absence of regularity and the inconspicuousness of the antecedents, allowed the mythological explanation to survive for a great period. During the era in which the uniformity of many quite simple inorganic relations was still unrecognized, certain organic relations, intrinsically very complex and special, were generalized. The constant coexistence of feathers and a beak, of four legs with an internal bony framework, are facts which were, and are, familiar to every savage. Did a savage find a bird with teeth, or a mammal clothed with feathers, he would be as much surprised as an instructed naturalist. Now these uniformities of organic structure thus early perceived, are of exactly the same kind as those more numerous ones later established by biology. The constant {150} coexistence of mammary glands with two occipital condyles to the skull, of vertebræ with teeth lodged in sockets, of frontal horns with the habit of rumination, are generalizations as purely empirical as those known to the aboriginal hunter. The botanist cannot in the least understand the complex relation between papilionaceous flowers and seeds borne in flattened pods: he knows these and like connexions simply in the same way that the barbarian knows the connexions between particular leaves and particular kinds of wood. But the fact that sundry of the uniform relations which chiefly make up the organic sciences, were very early recognized, is due to the high degrees of vividness and frequency with which they were presented to consciousness. Though the connexion between the sounds characteristic of a certain bird, and the possession of edible flesh, is extremely involved, yet the two terms of the relation are conspicuous, often recur in experience, and a knowledge of their connexion has a direct bearing on personal welfare. Meanwhile innumerable relations of the same order, which are displayed with even greater frequency by surrounding plants and animals, remain