200 THEORY OF THE EARTH. 



nations who were not in any degree in possession 

 of others ; to whom the serenity of the sky, the 

 necessities of the pastoral or agricultural life, and 

 their superstitious ideas, would render the stars 

 an object of general attention ; where colleges, or 

 societies of the most respectable men among them, 

 were charged with keeping a register of interest- 

 ing phenomena, and transmitting their memory ; 

 and where, from the hereditary nature of the pro- 

 fession, the children were brought up from the 

 cradle in the knowledge of facts ascertained by 

 their parents? Supposing that, among the nume- 

 rous individuals of whom the cultivation of astro- 

 nomy was the sole occupation, there should hap- 

 pen to be one or two possessed of extraordinary 

 talents for geometry, all the knowledge acquired 

 by these nations might be attained in a few cen- 

 turies. 



Since the time of the Chaldeans, real astronomy 

 has only had two eras, that of the Alexandrian 

 school, which lasted 400 years, and that of our 

 own times, which has not existed so long. The 

 learned period of the Arabians scarcely added 

 any thing to it ; and the other ages have been 

 mere blanks with regard to it. Three hundred 

 years did not intervene between Copernicus and 

 the author of the Mecanique Celeste ; and can 

 it be believed that the Indians required thousands 

 of years to arrive at their crude theories ? 



