XVII. The great circles of the earth which give twelve divisions, and therefore prescribe the possible number of the winds 210 XVIII. The uses of wind and the illustration afforded of the wisdom of Providence. The crops are dependent on it. So is commerce. But we make the sea a highway to war and not to peace. We go to seek for death, as if it were not always near. Xerxes, Alexander, Crassus are warnings of the mischievous use of power to cross the sea. Better, perhaps, the winds had never been given at all. But the value of a natural gift must not be estimated by the depraved use of it. Every gift, even sight and speech, man has perverted in the same way 212 BOOK VI TREATING OF EARTHQUAKES CHAP. PAGE I. Earthquake at Pompeii and the alarm it caused, many giving up Campania as a residence altogether. If the solid earth fail, what can be done? Refuge from tempest and fire and thunderstorm and war is possible, but not from earthquake. But (1) the whole earth is subject to such movement: we cannot escape by changing our ground--Tyre, Asia Minor, Achaia have all suffered. (2) Death is the same in whatever form it come, the circumstances matter not, a stone is all one with a mountain 221 II. We cannot escape death. The hopeless find refuge in despair. The knowledge of our frailty and mortality is our true solace. Death must come, a death with circumstance is rather to be preferred than otherwise. In an earthquake the earth shows itself mortal as men are 225 III. Our fears are due to ignorance. Through lack of a philosophic view of the universe we consider phenomena strange which are merely rare, _e.g._ eclipses. Fear may be removed by knowledge 228 IV. The study of such problems is the very worthiest; it reveals the secrets of nature, and is disinterested. But it is highly profitable at the same time 229 V. Various explanations of _earthquakes_ have been suggested. The earlier ones are crude, but not therefore to be despised. Every subject develops as time goes on. Gratitude is due to the investigators who first dared to question nature 230 VI. The cause of earthquakes is by some said to be water. Thales of Miletus explains how this takes place, but he must be wrong: the analogy of a ship sailing the ocean will not apply to the earth (cp. III. xiii.) 231