LE ROY C. COOLEY. 29 



festivals, we may call the study of them astronomy. 

 But this was a very subordinate purpose of the early star- 

 gazers. A preposterous philosophy led them to allot to 

 the stars the moral control of the inhabitants of the 

 earth ; and that study of the heavens which was pur- 

 sued with a view to detect the system of this stellar in- 

 fluence, and secure the ability to forecast the destinies of 

 men and nations by if, was astrology. Astrology and 

 not astronomy was the chief pursuit in the most ancient 

 times of which we speak. 



But at length a better period of the human mind 

 dawned in Greece. The study of stellar motions then be- 

 gan to counteract the study of stellar influences. Cicero 

 tells us that " Eudoxus rejected the pretensions of the 

 Chaldeans : " and, it is certain that Aristarchus, Hippar- 

 chus and Ptolemy, among other successors of Eudoxus, 

 largely advanced in the real knowledge of the heavenly 

 bodies. Astronomy, and not astrology, was the chief 

 pursuit of the ancient Grecian student of the skies. 



And yet during the later periods of ancient Greece, 

 when the minds of her philosophers had become specu- 

 lative and unstable ; when the professors who taught in 

 the famous schools of Athens and Alexandria no longer 

 tried to find out new facts for themselves, but w T ere con- 

 tent to repeat the observations of Aristotle and Ptol- 

 emy ; when, in a word, the Greeks had lost their love 

 for discovery of truth — then the realities of astronomical 

 science were again overborne by the illusions of astrol- 

 ogy. ' ; For my own part," says Tacitus, " I doubt but 

 certainly the majority of mankind cannot be weaned 

 from the opinion that, at the birth of each man, his 

 future destiny is fixed. Though some things may fall 

 out differently from their predictions by the ignorance of 

 those who profess the art ; and that, thus, the art is 

 unjustly blamed, confirmed as it is by noted examples in 

 all' ages." (Whewell Hist. Ind., Sec. I., 298). During 



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