Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/160

86 powers attributed to several of them, to allay storms, to raise gales, to appease commotions of people, to make plagues cease."

One of the ancientest of these was Thales: he was so deeply skilled in astronomy, that by the sun's annual course, he found out the equinoxes and solstices; he is said also first to have foretold eclipses; some geometrical properties of scalene triangles are ascribed to him, and challenged by : nice we are sure they were not, because the theorem of Pythagoras was not then found out.

When Sir William Temple extolled the skill of these ancient sages in foretelling changes of weather, he seems to have forgotten that he was in England, and fancied that these old philosophers were there too. The climates of Asia Minor and Greece are not so various as ours, and at some stated times of the year, of which the recurrent winds give them constant warning, they are often troubled with earthquakes, and always with violent tempests; so that by the conjectures that we are here able to make of the weather, at some particular seasons, though we labour under so great disadvantages, we may easily guess how much