PREFACE. In the primitive ages of the world, when meu gazed on the wonders of nature with the freshness of childhood, and before the vivid information of the senses had become obscured by fabulous traditions, all their physical and metaphysical theories were founded on the belief that solar fire is the efficient cause of motion and life throughout creation. This belief, so manifestly the result of observation and experience, was constantly forced upon their minds with all the evidence of a living reality ; and prevailed for thousands of years in every quarter of the habitable globe. Nor is there anything so strikingly obvious to the unsophisticated common sense of mankind, as the omnipresent influence of the sun, which is perpetually exerting a tranquil, yet omnipotent energy, throughout the air, the ocean, and the solid ground. He regulates all the phenomena of climate and season, evaporation and rain, the circulations of the atmosphere, b |