

67() JASTROW— HEPATOSCOPY AND ASTROLOGY [December 4, 



passed must not, however, lead us to the conckision, which would be 

 decidedly false, that astrology when it passed over to the West 

 became wholly at the mercy of professional tricksters. This is but 

 one phase of the subject which, seriously cultivated by Greek physi- 

 cists, became bound up as we have seen with advanced forms of 

 astronomy, mathematics and philosophical speculation. It is the 

 old Babylonian astrology directly imported by " Chaldaeans " as 

 professional astrologers that degenerated into a dishonest trade, 

 whereas the modification of the Babylonian system under the in- 

 fluence of the Greek scientific spirit was raised to the dignity of a 

 genuine science ; and belief in it remained an integral part of science 

 throughout the middle ages. In our days when the new scientific 

 spirit has definitely broken with astrology, we are witnessing a 

 process not unlike that which set in when faith in the Babylonian 

 system declined in the land of its birth. Whatever justifiable basis 

 (if any) it may have had is entirely obscured by those who exploit 

 it as a profession. The modern " astrologers " are not the Greek 

 astronomers attaching to their science a divinatory aspect, but the 

 old barn-priests in a new garb, plying a trade that flourishes through 

 the readiness of people to be deceived — a readiness that amounts 

 almost to willingness. Why then, it may be asked, search out the 

 follies and superstitions of the past ? Bouche-LeclercqJ^ supplies us 

 with the answer when he says " that it is not a waste of time to find 

 out how other people wasted theirs." 



" " L'Astrologie Grecque," p. ix. 



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