strange, unusual, contrary to their idea of the order of things.

It cannot then furnish matter for surprise, if we behold men in the
present day trembling at the sight of those objects which have formerly
filled their fathers with dismay. _Eclipse, comets, meteors_, were, in
ancient days, subjects of alarm to all the people of the earth: these
effects, so natural in the eyes of the sound philosopher, who has by
degrees fathomed their true causes, have yet the right, possess the
power, to alarm the most numerous, to excite the fears of the least
instructed part of modern nations. The people of the present day, as
well as their ignorant ancestors, find something marvellous, believe
there is a supernatural agency in all those objects to which their eyes
are unaccustomed; they consider all those unknown causes as wonderful,
that act with a force of which their mind has no idea it is possible the
known agents are capable. The ignorant see wonders _prodigies,
miracles_, in all those striking effects of which they are unable to
render themselves a satisfactory account; all the causes which produce
them they think _supernatural_; this, however, really implies nothing
more than that they are not familiar to them, or that they have not
hitherto witnessed natural agents, whose energy was equal to the
production of effects so rare, so astonishing, as those with which their
sight has been appalled.

Besides the ordinary phenomena to which nations were witnesses without
being competent to unravel the causes, they have in times very remote
from ours, experienced calamities, whether general or local, which
filled them with the most cruel inquietude; which plunged them into an
abyss of consternation. The traditions of all people, the annals of all
nations, recal, even at this day, melancholy events, physical disasters,
dreadful catastrophes, which had the effect of spreading universal