But I have just been at Leyden and Amsterdam to ask after Galileo's cosmical system as I imagined I had heard of its being printed last year in Italy.
This general law, known as the principle of the "dissipation of energy," was first adequately pointed out by Lord Kelvin in 1852; and was applied by him to some of the principal problems of cosmical physics.
Mead's treatise on The Power of the Sun and Moon over Human Bodies (1704), equally inspired by Newton's discoveries, was a premature attempt to assign the influence of atmospheric pressure and other cosmical causes in producing disease.
Intellectual activity was not wanting, but the great achievements of the 18th century in philosophy and the moral sciences had fostered a love of abstract speculation; and some sort of cosmical or general system was thought indispensable in every department of special science.
As the year separated, as it were of itself, into twelve months, so the day was divided into twelve " double hours," and the great cosmical period of 43,200 years into twelve " sars."
