That rrogant spirit of
incredulity, which rejects facts without attempting to investigate them, is
in some cases almost more injurious than an unquestioning credulity. Both
are alike detrimental to the force of investigation. Notwithstanding that
for more than two thousand years the annals of different nations had
recorded falls of meteoric stones, many of which had been attested beyond
all doubt by the evidence of irreproachable eye-witnesses -- notwithstanding
the important part enacted by the B??tylia in the meteor-worship of the
ancients -- notwithstanding the fact of the companions of Cortez having see
an a?‘rolite at Cholula which had fallen on the neighboring pyramid --
notwithstanding that califs and Mongolian chiefs had caused swords to be
forged from recently-fallen meteoric stones -- nay, notwithstanding that
several persons had been struck dead by stones falling from heaven, as for
instance, a monk at Crema on the 4th of September, 1511, another monk at
Milan in 1650, and two Swedish sailors on board ship in 1674, yet this great
cosmical phenomenon remained almost wholly unheeded, and its intimate
connection drawn to the subject by Chladni, who had already gained immortal
renown by his discovery of the sound-figures. He who is penetrated with a
sense of this mysterious connection, and whose mind is open to deep
impressions of nature, will feel himself moved by the deepest and most
solemn emotion at the sight of every star that shoots across the vault of
heaven, no less than at the glorious spectacle of meteoric swarms in the
November phenomenon or on St.
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