ril; 'and in the history of all ages, the clean tight
dapper little fellow hath proved an overmatch for his burly antagonist.
I need only instance, out of Holy Writ, the celebrated downfall of
Goliath and of another lubbard, who had more fingers in his hand, and
more inches to his stature, than ought to belong to an honest man, and
who was slain by a nephew of good King David; and of many others whom I
do not remember; nevertheless, they were all Philistines of gigantic
stature. In the classics, also, you have Tydeus, and other tight compact
heroes, whose diminutive bodies were the abode of large minds.'

[13] It is likely that Swedenborg in his youth studied astrology, for in
his visions the Mercurial folk have this desire of knowledge as their
distinguishing characteristic.

[14] It is singular that, when there is this perfectly simple
explanation of the origin of the nomenclature of the days of the week,
an explanation given by ancient historians and generally received,
Whewell should have stated that 'various accounts are given, all the
methods proceeding upon certain arbitrary arithmetical processes
connected in some way with astrological views.' Speaking of the
arrangement of the planets in the order of their supposed distances, and
of the order in which the planets appear in the days of the week, he
says, 'It would be difficult to determine with certainty why the former
order was adopted, and how and why the latter was derived from it.' But,
in reality, there is no difficulty about either point. The former
arrangement corresponded precisely with the periodic times of the seven
planets of the old Egyptian system (unquestionably far more ancient than
the system adopted by the Greeks), while the latter springs directly
from the former. Assign to the hours of the day, successively, the seven
planets in the former order, continuing the sequence without
interruption day after day, and in the course of seven days each one of
the planets will have ruled the first hour of a day, in the
order,--Saturn, the sun, the moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, and Venus.
What arbitrary arithmetical process there is in this it would be
difficult to conceive. Arithmetic does not rule the method at all. Nor
has any other method ever been suggested; though this method has been
presented in several ways, some arithmetical and some geometrical. We
need then have no difficulty in understanding what seems so perplexing
to Whewell, the universali