Fbbbcaby 1, 1900.] 



KNOWLEDGE. 



37 



first germ of the notion of Astrology. For the seasons 

 in their course naturally bring with them their own 

 characteristics — seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, 

 drought and flood, fevers and agues, and the like; and 

 it would bo easy to associate these vai'ions phenomena 

 with special stars, and to ascribe them to the stellar 

 influence. 



Such astrology, however, would be a purely stellar as- 

 trologv, not susceptible of very much development. 

 Astrology, as we know it, on the other hand, is almost 

 exclusively planetai-y, and very nearly independent of 

 anv such simple considerations as the return of the 

 stars to their heliacal rising at the end of the year. 



Another application of Astronomy which must have 

 been considerably later than that of its use for the 

 determination of the calendar, and yet which was cer- 

 tainlv an early one, is its use in navigation, taking the 

 word in a wide sense to mean not merely the steering 

 of a ship across the sea but also a caravan across the 

 desert. Here it must have been early appreciated that 

 the stars afford absolutely the best finger-posts by which 

 to cross the pathless and monotonous ocean, and no 

 doubt it was soon luiderstood that not only did thcv 

 give the means for determining the cardinal points 

 but also for ascertaining the latitude of the traveller. 

 The sailor who was thoroughly acquainted with the 

 stars would have no difficulty in navigating from one 

 port of which he knew the latitude to any other whose 

 latitude was also known. He had but to sail north or 

 south until the elevation of the Fole Star assured him 

 that he was on the proper circle, and then he would 

 sail east or west, as the case might be. 



There must have been a very wide demarcation in 

 early times between the Astronomy of the Calendar, 

 without doubt in the hands of a small and mysterious 

 cult, and the Astronomy of Navigation necessarily in 

 the keeping of practical sailors. The latter would cer- 

 tainly have not Ien<- itself to astrological ideas, and 

 though we mav owe several of our constellations to 

 these early sailors they are not likely to have done 

 much to give the science a fortune-telling character. 



Very different indeed would have been the position 

 of the priestly astronomers if by dint of careful obser- 

 vation and research they were able to go beyond their 

 original work of arranging the calendar, and were 

 able not only to divine the causes of eclipses but to 

 foretell them. If they attained to this mastery of the 

 laws of Nature then they had a power in their hands 

 which could be readily used for political or religious 

 effect to an almost unlimited extent, and which would 

 at the same time serve as a foundation upon which an 

 infinitude of further claims might be safely based. To 

 this very day no astronomical feat whatsoever obtains 

 such wide and complete popular recognition as the com- 

 putation of the time of an eclipse, and in those early 

 ages the occurrence of an eclipse in accordance with 

 prediction must not only have seemed to invest the 

 astronomer himself with superhuman powers, but must 

 have convinced the people beyond all chance of con- 

 futation that the movements of the heavenly bodies 

 were intimately connected with the affairs of men. The 

 successful prediction of an eclipse was probably regai'ded 

 at once as a certificate of the skill of the Astrologer 

 and a demonstration of the reality of Astrology. 



Nevertheless, when once the imposture had been 

 fairly set afoot of predicting the fortunes and fates of 

 men from the movements of the heavenly bodies, the 

 predictors must have speedily found themselves short of 

 material upon which to go. The return of stars to 



their heliacal risings in the course of the year would 

 be far too regular a phenomenon for anything but 

 general prophecies to have been based upon it, and 

 eclipses are too rare for anything but occasional use. 

 The sheer necessity which a fortune-teller would have 

 for a wide range of combinations, applicable at any 

 and every moment, must have driven the old soo' hsayers 

 and seers to the use of the planets as their stock in 

 trade, directly the science of actual observation had 

 been so far advanced, that they could both predict a 

 planet's place in the future, or calculate back its 

 position in the past. The infinite diversity of grouping 

 which the planets offei-cd, lent itself so precisely to the 

 needs of the imposture that once started the pseudo- 

 science developed with amazing rapidity. 



The rise of Astrology would seem to have meant a 

 complete arrest of the development of the parent science 

 — Astronomy. The Astrologer needed his tables of the 

 sun, moon, and planets. He required some instrument 

 for observing the altitude and azimuth of a celestial 

 object. Ability to make at least an approximate deter- 

 mination of time was a desideratum, but given a science 

 which would supply him with this infonnation, and he 

 stood in need of nothing more. He boldly translated 

 the celestial movements into terms of human history, 

 and predicted wars and revolutions, plenty or famines, 

 as the result of the planetary positions. It did not 

 occur to him to follow these positions for themselves 

 or to speculate as to how they were brought about. 

 Had a doubt as to the Ptolemaic system been suggested 

 to him it would, likely enough, have seemed idle and 

 abstract controversy. The astrological significance of a 

 given position of Mars was just the same, whether its 

 real centre of motion was the earth or the sun. As- 

 tronomy, therefore, which had made so great a progress 

 before Astrology could have made a start, remained 

 perfectly dormant during the long ages when men 

 studied the heavens not to get a better knowledge of the 

 laws of Nature but simply, if possible, to lift the veil 

 which hid their own future. And when once again 

 men began to inquire as to the real physical meaning of 

 the movements of the planets. Astrology decayed as 

 rapidly as it had grown. The arguments of Coper- 

 nicus, the telescopic discoveries of Galileo, the laws of 

 Kepler, though they have no direct bearing on the 

 truth or falsity of Astrology, yet by directing men's 

 minds to the true problems which the heavens offer, 

 speedily put an end to the absurd inventions which had 

 enchained men's minds for so many generations. 



"We are able to indicate roughly how far back both 

 Astronomy and Astrology arc traceable. Assume the 

 mapping of the constellations amongst the first of As- 

 tronomical operations. Now the old constellations 

 which have been handed down to us through the 

 medium of the Greeks, from the old inhabitants of 

 Mesopotamia, received their completion not quite 3000 

 years B.C. This we know, since, as has been frequently 

 pointed out, the region in the Southern heavens which 

 the Astronomers of old left unmapped, is one the centre 

 of which coincided with the Southern Pole a little less 

 than 5000 years ago. This then gives us the date of 

 the completion of "the constellations. How long they 

 had taken to map out we cannot tell, whether it was a 

 few months, a few years, or several centuries. Yet; we 

 can be sure that it was not an indefinitely long time, 

 for whilst many tradition.^ in different forms remind us 

 that Taurus was once the equinoctial constellation, there 

 is no tradition that Gemini ever held that place. 



When we come to Astrology, however, we find the 



