such a line of research is doI to be abandoned ; for, if you fight against clear evidence, you never can enjoy genuine peace of mind. £1 An_eclipse of the sun or moon may be due to the extinction of their light, just as within our own experience this is observed to happen ; and again by interposition of something else — whether it be the earth or some other invisible body like it. And thus we must take in conjunction the explanations which agree with one another, and remember that the concurrence of more than one at the same time may not impossibly happen. [He says the same in Book XII. of his " De S'atura," and further that the sun is eclipsed ivhen the moon throrvs her shadoiv over him. and the moon is eclipsed by the shadorv of the earth ; or again, eclipse may be due to the moons ivithdrarval, and this is cited by Diogenes the Epicurean in the first book of his " Epilecta."] " And further, let the regularity of their orbits be explained in the same way as certain ordinary incidents within our own experience ; the divine nature jrmst not on any account be adduced to explain this, l)u t must be kept free from the task and in perfect buss" ! Unless this be done, the whole study of celestial phenomena will be in vain, as indeed it has proved to be with some who did not lay hold of a possible method, but fell into the folly of supposing that these events happen in one single way only and of rejecting all the others which are possible, suffering themselves to be carried into the realm of the unintelligible, and being unable to take a comprehensive view of the facts which must be taken as clues to the rest, '"The variations in the length of nights and days