118 COSMOS 



belt of Orion (Jacob's stafi'), Cassiopeia, the Swan, the Scor 

 pion, the Southern Cross (owing to the striking difference 

 in its direction before and after its culmination), the South- 

 ern Crow^i, the Feet of the Centaur (the Twins, as it were, 

 of the Southern hemisphere), &c. 



Wherever steppes, grassy plains, or sand)^ wastes present 

 a far-extended horizon, those constellations Avhose rising or 

 setting corresponds with the busy seasons and requirements 

 of pastoral and agricultural life have become the subject of 

 attentive consideration, and have gradually led to a symbol- 

 izine: connection of ideas. Men thus became familiarized 

 with the aspect of the heavens before the development of 

 measuring astronomy. They soon perceived that besides 

 the daily movement from east to west, which is common to 

 all celestial bodies, the sun has a far slower proper motion in 

 an opposite direction. The stars which shine in the even- 

 ing sky sink lower every day, until at length they are wholly 

 lost amid the rays of the setting sun ; while, on the other 

 hand, those stars which were shining in the morning sky 

 before the rising of the sun, recede further and further from 

 it. In the ever-changing aspect of the starry heavens, suc- 

 cessive constellations are always coming to view. A slight 

 decree of attention suffices to show that these are the same 

 which had before vanished in the west, and that the stars 

 which are opposite to the sun, setting at its rise, and rising 

 at its setting, had about half a year earlier been seen in its 

 vicinity. From the time of Hesiod to Eudoxus, and from 

 the latter to Aratus and Hipparchus, Hellenic literature 

 abounds in metaphoric allusions to the disappearance of the 

 stars amid the sun's rays, and their appearance in the morn- 

 ing twilight — their heliacal setting and rising. An atten- 

 tive observation of these phenomena yielded the earliest ele- 

 ments of chronology, which were simply expressed in num- 

 bers, while mythology, in accordance with the more cheerful 

 or gloomy tone of national character, continued simultane- 

 ously to rule the heavens with arbitrary despotism. 



The primitive Greek sphere (I here again, as in the his- 

 tory of the physical contemplation of the universe,^ follow 

 the investigations of my intellectual friend Letronne) had be- 

 come gradually filled with constellations, without being in 

 any degree considered with relation to the ecliptic. Thus 

 Homer and Hesiod designate by name individual stars and 



* Cosmos, vol. ii,, p. 167. 



