DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.15#0218
THE ORIGIN OF THE WEEK. 205
phenomena which mark the changes of the seasons.
As Whewell well remarks of the year, the repeti-
tion of similar circumstances at equal intervals is
less manifest in this case (than in that of the day),
and, the intervals being much longer, some exertion
of memory becomes requisite in order that the
recurrence may be perceived. A child might easily
be persuaded that successive years were of unequal
length ; or, if the summer were cold, and the
spring ard autumn warm, might be made to be-
lieve, if all who spoke in its hearing agreed to
support the delusion, that one year was two. Of
course the recurrence of events characterising the
natural year is far too obvious to have been over-
looked even before men began to observe the
heavenly bodies at all. The tiller of the soil must
observe the right time to plant seeds of various
kinds that they may receive the right proportion
of the summer's heat; the herdsman could not but
note the times when his flocks and herds brought
forth their young. But no definite way of noting
the progress of the year by the movements of the
sun or stars ' would probably have suggested itself
until some time after the moon's motions had been
1 There are many reasons for believing, as I may one day take
an opportunity of showing, that the year was first measured by
the stars, not by the sun.
phenomena which mark the changes of the seasons.
As Whewell well remarks of the year, the repeti-
tion of similar circumstances at equal intervals is
less manifest in this case (than in that of the day),
and, the intervals being much longer, some exertion
of memory becomes requisite in order that the
recurrence may be perceived. A child might easily
be persuaded that successive years were of unequal
length ; or, if the summer were cold, and the
spring ard autumn warm, might be made to be-
lieve, if all who spoke in its hearing agreed to
support the delusion, that one year was two. Of
course the recurrence of events characterising the
natural year is far too obvious to have been over-
looked even before men began to observe the
heavenly bodies at all. The tiller of the soil must
observe the right time to plant seeds of various
kinds that they may receive the right proportion
of the summer's heat; the herdsman could not but
note the times when his flocks and herds brought
forth their young. But no definite way of noting
the progress of the year by the movements of the
sun or stars ' would probably have suggested itself
until some time after the moon's motions had been
1 There are many reasons for believing, as I may one day take
an opportunity of showing, that the year was first measured by
the stars, not by the sun.