A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



' I am sorry that I can find no planetary influences that 

 oppose your destiny your death will take place in 

 two years.' 



" The event justified the astrologic prediction ; George 

 IV. died on May 18, 1830, exactly two years from the 

 day on which he had visited the astrologer." 8 



This makes a very pretty story, but it hardly seems 

 like occult insight that an astrologer should have been 

 able to predict an early death of a man nearly seventy 

 years old, or to have guessed that his well-groomed 

 visitor "had, perhaps now possesses, wealth and 

 power." Here again, however, the point of view of 

 each individual plays the governing part in determin- 

 ing the importance of such a document. To the sci- 

 entist it proves nothing ; to the believer in astrology, 

 everything. The significant thing is that it appeared 

 shortly after the death of the monarch. 



On the Continent astrologers were even more in 

 favor than in England. Charlemagne, and some of 

 his immediate successors, to be sure, attempted to 

 exterminate them, but such rulers as Louis XI. and 

 Catherine de' Medici patronized and encouraged them, 

 and it was many years after the time of Copernicus 

 before their influence was entirely stamped out even 

 in official life. There can be no question that what 

 gave the color of truth to many of the predictions was 

 the fact that so many of the prophecies of sudden 

 deaths and great conflagrations were known to have 

 come true in many instances were made to come 

 true by the astrologer himself. And so it happened 

 that when the prediction of a great conflagration at a 



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