Locke seems hardly to realize all that is implied in scientific prevision or expectation of change.
The more extreme climates of arid regions on the margins of the tropics, by the unpredictable succession of droughts and floods, confound the prevision of uninstructed people, and make prudence and industry qualities too uncertain in their results to be worth cultivating.
More valid instances of the anticipation of modern discoveries may be found in his prevision that a small annual parallax would eventually be found for some of the fixed stars, and that extra-Saturnian planets would at some future time be ascertained to exist, and in his conviction that light travels with a measurable, although, in relation to terrestrial distances, infinite velocity.
Perhaps such scientific natures have some psychic prevision of the most tremendous problem of their lives.
Our author has incorporated it as describing the consummation of the prevision contained in xi.