ORIGIN OF THE CALENDAR AND ASTROLOGY. 827 



only in the morning or at evening twilight, when it was noticed what 

 bright star was visible near the horizon immediately before sunrise or 

 after sunset. The apparent movement of the sun in the sky made 

 itself manifest from the fact that the stars which were discernible in 

 the western horizon shortly after sunset ceased to be visible after some 

 days, the sun seeming to approach them, and that those observable in 

 the eastern horizon shortly before sunrise gradually remained longer 

 visible in the dawn, the sun appearing to recede from them. 



In Egypt, for example, it was noticed that the overflowing of the 

 Nile which is the result of certain tolerably regular changes in the 

 weather, caused by the position of the sun always occurred on those 

 days on which the bright light of Sirius was again visible in the morning 

 twilight. In Greece it was likewise observed that those risings and 

 settings of the Pleiades, of Orion, Arcturus, and others, which occurred 

 in the morning or evening twilight, were related to certain yearly 

 variations of heat, and to the directions of great atmospheric currents, 

 and were, therefore, convenient guides in agriculture and navigation. 



As the calendar advanced, however, in the predetermination of 

 days and phenomena on which periods of human labor were dependent, 

 the attention of the majority of men was diverted more and more 

 from the direct observation of the moon, the sun, and stars, resting 

 contented with what was stated in the calendar, so that even in the 

 civilization of the present day an evening is accepted as clear if moon- 

 shine is set down in the almanac. The sun, moon, and stars, together 

 with those other wandering bodies in the heavens, the planets, won 

 a new significance through the origin of astrology, which advances 

 in the following manner with the progress in calendar calculations : 



The publication of arranged calendar matter and the constant im- 

 provement in the same were owing chiefly to the efforts of wise men, 

 in early Greece, for instance, to the zealous labors of the priesthood at 

 Delphi, who justly esteemed an established calendar a potent element 

 of national unity and order, and as a means of security against the 

 power and influence of those fostering secret teaching. Among other 

 people, as the Romans, the selfish and ignorant priesthood deemed it 

 for their interests to allow such determinations to remain in obscu- 

 rity, or, on the ground of real or fictitious observations, to regulate 

 the calendar as they desired. In fact, the influence of the seers and 

 priests upon the people would be greatly lessened if the knowledge, 

 which they had acquired of the times of revolution of heavenly bodies 

 and the chronological periods dependent thereon, were to become the 

 property of all ; and this loss would be still more augmented, when 

 the unavoidable inaccuracies of these public observations became after 

 a time recognizable, rendering repeated changes in the calendar neces- 

 sary, or when, in consequence of this, several systems of reckoning 

 time strove for preference. 



The difficulty lay chiefly in the fact that the light phases of the 



