16 METEOROLOGY. 



and so for the rest ; in fact if any one study for liimself the effect of all 

 the planetary configurations connecting the superior and inferior 

 planets, as viewed from the earth, he cannot fail to recognize the 

 ahsurdity of attaching any importance to relations so varied and so 

 little founded on any real mutual state of approach or recess : astronomi- 

 cally, all these motions and configurations are mathematically deter- 

 mined, and beautifully harmonise by referring them to the sun, the 

 centre of the system, and to the mutually pertubating but ultimately 

 compensating periods among themselves, but astrologically, their places, 

 configurations, and supposed influences are chaotic and irreconcileable. 

 But again, the ever varying positions of the planets among themselves 

 renders it impossible that more than one observation can have been 

 made when their combined influence on the earth (speaking astrolo- 

 gically) was the same ; for instance, there has been but one conjunction 

 of the five principal planets since the christian era, and a long period 

 has yet to elapse before the whole five will again be in conjunction. 

 On this incommensurability of periods depends, as might be shown, 

 the stability of the entire planetary system: any particular aspect then 

 including all the planets, has existed but once during the long period 

 before referred to : if each planet then exert an influence modified 

 by its relation to others manifesting a diflferent or counter agency, it 

 is evident that the mingled result is, and has been momentarily varying 

 from century to century, and before the lapse of thousands of years 

 but one cycle of variation will be complete. The conjunctions of 

 Jupiter and Saturn, for instance, take place periodically five times in a 

 century, but every succeeding conjunction is effected under different 

 aspects to Mars, Venus, and the other planets ; the same will hold 

 good, concerning any pair of planets which we may select, becoming 

 of course more complex as we combine them beyond two, three, or 

 four; it will therefore, beyond doubt, require far more than astrological 

 skill to determine a priori, the occult nature of planetary combined 

 influence, of which neither history nor experience can furnish an 

 example. 



We are confessedly but in the infancy of the age of definite 

 electrical observation and experiment ; its various developements seem 

 to have sanctioned the conclusion that all the phenomena of electricity, 

 galvanism, and magnetism, are connected by one original and mutual 

 principle : we are informed that electricity cannot be elicited in the 



