BOOK II.] History of Nature. 39 



CHAPTER VIII. 

 Of the Nature of Planets, and their Circuit. 



LET us return now to the Rest of Nature's Works. The 

 Stars, which we said were fixed in the World, are not (as the 

 common Sort thinketh) assigned to every one of us ; namely, 

 the bright for the rich ; the less for the poor : the dim for 

 the weak and feeble : neither shine they out more or less, 

 according to the Fortune of every one, nor arise they each 

 one together with that Person unto whom they are appro- 

 priated ; and die likewise with the same : nor yet as they set 

 and fall, do they signify that any Body is dead. There is 

 not so great a Society between Heaven and us, that, together 

 with the Necessity of our Death, the Light of the Stars 

 should fade. When they are thought to fall, they do but 

 shoot from them a Quantity of Fire out of that Abundance 

 of Nutriment which they have gotten by the Attraction of 

 Moisture unto them : like as we also observe in lighted 

 Lamps with the Liquor of Oil 1 . The celestial Bodies, which 

 frame the World, and are compact together, have an im- 

 mortal Nature : and their Power extendeth much to the 

 Earth : which by their Operations, Light and Greatness, 

 might be known, though they are so subtle ; as we shall in 

 due Place make Demonstration. The Mariner likewise of the 

 heavenly Circles shall be shewn more fitly in our "Geogra- 

 phical Treatise of the Earth ;" forasmuch as the Consideration 

 thereof appertaineth wholly thereunto : only we will not put 

 off the Devisers of the Zodiac, wherein the Signs are placed. 



The Obliquity of this, Anaximander the Milesian is 

 reported to have observed first, and thereby opened the Pas- 

 sage to Astronomy, and the Knowledge of these Things : 

 and this happened in the fifty-eighth Olympiad. Afterwards 

 Cleostratus marked the Signs therein ; and those first of 

 Aries and Sagittarius. As for the Sphere itself, Atlas devised 

 it long before. For the present we will leave the Body of 



1 See note 2, p. 63. 



