242 



♦ KNO^^VLEDGE ♦ 



[SErTEMBER 1, 1888. 



licrhtenment men should associate -with this Power these 

 imao-ined revehxtions, whose only support has heen the over- 

 weening- race-conceit of the Jews, and, later, the decisions 

 of bodies of ecclesiastics, who, in advocating the irreverent 

 doctrine that what is inconsistent with facts can be God's 

 Truth, were in reality insisting chiefly on their own claims 

 to reverence. 



The trouble has been that this fundamental error, and the 

 errors of detail which have been based upon it, have been 

 treated as though on them religion itself depended, instead 

 of their being the deadweights by which the downfall of true 

 religion has again and again bceu threatened. 



It is hardly necessary to say, however, that science has 

 no quarrel with such passages in those always interesting 

 and sometimes grand old writings as are scientifically un- 

 sound. Science no more desires to show that its teachings 

 are an advance on those which seemed plausible and even 

 reasonable in the days of ancient Babylon and Egypt, than 

 the astronomy of to-day desu-es to show tliat as a science 

 it is more e.xact than the astronomy of vShakespeare. There 

 is a great charm in those old-world ideas. Apart from their 

 beauty, they are worthy of scientific study as illustrating 

 the progress and development of the human mind. They 

 suggested highly poetical thoughts to the men of old times — 

 thoughts probably far more impressive than any which have 

 been suggested by the science of our own lime, full though 

 it is of beauty and of poetry for u=;. 



But science proclaims her right to pursue her researches 

 altogether unhampered by the ideas of others as to the value 

 of those ancient quasi-scientific speculations. " Why do the 

 [dogmatic] nations furiously rage together and the [un- 

 scientific] heathen imagine a vain thing 1 " If they are 

 right, it is all right ; they are bound to come out right in 

 the long run — a result for which they ought to be able to 

 wait, possessing their souls in patience. If they are wrong, 

 they have still more ferious occasion to consider their posi- 

 tion. Whether science be right or wrong, science can never 

 be justly accused of irreverence. Science reads what she 

 knows to be God's work ; and if she err in her interpreta- 

 tion, God who supplied the evidence, and gave to man those 

 powers by which he has been enabled to read it, will not be 

 angry with His creatures' weakness. But they who, not in 

 conscious weakness working for the truth, nor in the dark- 

 ness seeking out the light, but possessed by the pride of 

 ignorance, claim to denounce their fellow-men's researches, 

 and, loving darkness, confidently call their darkness God's 

 own light — if t/i^se should be found in error, may not the 

 sin of presumption be charged to them ? — though not by 

 science (otherwise occupied), yet by the passionless judgment 

 of pure Truth. The answer of the earnest student of God's 

 laws in nature, under the rebuke of these (the real infidels, 

 since they have no faith in God's work ; the real sceptics, 

 since they are ever doubting whether men can safely studv 

 God's ways), should be : — 



I claim the right of weakness — T, the babe, 

 Call on mj' sire to shield me from the ills 

 That still beset my path, not trying me 

 With snares beyond my wisdom or my strength. 



Brother, thy heart is troubled at my word ; 

 Sister. I see the cloud is on thy brow. 

 God will not blame me — He who sends not peace, 

 But sends a sword, and bids us strilce amain 

 At Error's gilded crest. 



My life shall be a challenge, not a truce ! 

 This is my homage to the mightier powers, 

 To ask my boldest question, undismayed 

 By muttered threats that some hysteric sense 

 Of wrong or insult will convulse the throne 

 AVhere Wisdom reigns supreme. 



ASTROLOGICAL FANCIES. 



jD Paracelsus, explaining, after the confident 

 manner of his day, the claims of astrology 

 to respectful attention, stated that " whereas 

 astronomy deals only with the physical 

 aspect of planets and stars, astrology, nobler 

 and higher, deals with the psychical in- 

 fluences which the souls of the heavenly 

 oris cxeit upon the microcosm of man." Observe, man'.s 

 microcosni ; nothing short of that. There is something 

 more impressive in the thought that the souls of the sun 

 and moon and planets act not only upon each other, but on 

 the microcosm of man, than even in those sesquipedalian 

 terms of which Guy Mannering made such impressive use 

 in his famous controversy with Dominie Sampson, " signs 

 and planets, in aspects sextile, quartile, trine, conjoined, or 

 opposite ; houses of heaven, with their cusps, hours, and 

 minutes; Almuten, Almochoden, Anahibazon, Catahibazan, 

 and a thousand other terms of equal sound and significance." 

 These may overwhelm and stupefy ; but for real impressive- 

 ness naught can surpass the macrocosmic influences of the 

 celestial orbs on microcosmic man — a conception which it is 

 not given to any man to iaterjjret or understand, whereas 

 Anahibazon and Catahibazou when translated into the ver- 

 nacular are found to be rather commonplace than other- 

 wise. 



But in all seriousness, astrology in its inception was a 

 science — if one ought not rather to call it a religion — 

 deserving of respectful consideration, to say the least. Direct 

 observation was all in favour of the belief that the heavenly 

 bodies influence in a most special manner the fortunes of 

 men. The chief of all the heavenly bodies, the sun, pro- 

 duces such manifest effects both in his daily and his yearly 

 course ; the moon seems so obviously powerfitl over the 

 waters of the sea and in other ways, that it was the most 

 natural thing in the world to assume that the other celestial 

 orbs also have their special influences, though it might not 

 seem quite so obvious what those influences were. 



We have, however, to go somewhat farther back for the 

 real beginning of that faith in the powers of the heavenly 

 bodies which so long prevailed among men, and still seems 

 loth to die. There was more in the feeling than the mere 

 result of reasoning applied to observed facts. Astrology 

 was at the beginning a form of animistic i-eligion, and that 

 form which had widest range among the races of men, and 

 penetrated most deeply into their hearts. In the cbildliood 

 of each race, as in the childhood of the individual man, all 

 natural objects were personified. There was nothing mys- 

 terious or perplexing in the process. Every one of us who 

 has a fairly good memory, going back to his quite small 

 childhood, knows just how the personification came about. 

 The young child recognises will and power in all things 

 which teem to act and move of themselves, and retains the 

 idea long after the real source of such apparently inde- 

 pendent power of action has been explained to him. The 

 child-man is impressed in like manner with the feeling that 

 all which lives and moves around him acts, as he himself 

 does, in response to the p!om|)tiugs of individual will. He 

 sees, in ])articular, power outside himself in all that in- 

 fluences his fortunes ; and noting, more or less consciously, 

 how the fortunes of the human race are influenced by the 

 proces.'es of nature, he sees, in myriad forms, a " power not 

 ourselves," and not always, apparently, " making for good." 

 The flerce roar of the hurricane suggests a hostile power, 

 and the destruction wrought by the storm confirms the 

 belief in a wrathful being, which has wrought its evil 

 ■will on men and animals. The crash of thunder and the 

 blasting stroke of lightning correspond in like manner 



