222 PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 



moisture are generative and creative elements ; hence the ancients, 

 says Proclus, deemed Jupiter, and Venus, and the Moon to have a 

 good power ; Saturn and Mercury, on the other hand, had an evil 

 nature. 



Other distinctions of the character of the stars are enumerated, 

 equally visionary, and suggested by the most fanciful connections. 

 Some are masculine, and some feminine : the Moon and Venus are of 

 the latter kind. This appears to be merely a mythological or ety- 

 mological association. Some are diurnal, some nocturnal : the Moon 

 and Venus are of the latter kind, the Sun and Jupiter of the former ; 

 Saturn and Mars are both. 



The fixed stars, also, and especially those of the zodiac, had especia 

 influences and subjects assigned to them. In particular, each sign was 

 supposed to preside over a particular part of the body ; thus Aries had 

 the head assigned to it, Taurus the neck, and so on. 



The most important part of the sky in the astrologer's consideration, 

 was that sign of the zodiac which rose at the moment of the child's 

 birth ; this was, properly speaking, the horoscope, the ascendant, or the 

 first house ; the whole circuit of the heavens being divided into twelve 

 houses, in which life and death, marriage and children, riches and hon- 

 ors, friends and enemies, were distributed. 



We need not attempt to trace the progress of this science. It pre- 

 vailed extensively among the Arabians, as we might expect from the 

 character of that nation. Albumasar, of Balkh in Khorasan, who 

 flourished in the ninth century, who was one of their greatest astron- 

 omers, was also a great astrologer ; and his work on the latter subject, 

 " De Magnis Conjunctionibus, Annorum Revolutionibus ac eorum Per- 

 fectionibus," was long celebrated in Europe. Aboazen Haly (the wri- 

 ter of a treatise " De Judiciis Astrorum"), who lived in Spain in the 

 thirteenth century, was one of the classical authors on this subject. 



It will easily be supposed that when this apotelesmatic or judicial 

 astrology obtained firm possession of men's minds, it would be pursued 

 into innumerable subtle distinctions and extravagant conceits ; and the 

 more so, as experience could offer little or no check to such exercises of 

 fancy and subtlety. For the correction of rules of astrological divination 

 by comparison with known events, though pretended to by many pro- 

 fessors of the art, was far too vague and fallible a guidance to be of 

 any real advantage. Even in what has been called Natural Astrology, 

 the dependence of the weather on the heavenly bodies, it is easy to see 

 what a vast accumulation of well-observed facts is requisite to establish 



