THE SITRFACE OF THE GLOBE. 129 



the winter solstice; after which, the sun returns to us. In this man- 

 ner, by placing the inventors of the zodiac in a temperate climate, we 

 should have rains under Aquarius ; the birth of lambs and kids under 

 Gemini ; violent heats under Leo; harvests under the Virgin; hunting 

 under Sagittarius, &c.; and these emblems are perfectly appropriate. 

 By placing the colures at the commencement of the constellations, or, 

 at least, the equinox at the first stars of Aries, we should only arrive 

 in the first instance at 389 years before Christ, an epoch evidently too 

 modern, and which would render it necessary to refer to an entire 

 equinoctial period, or 26,000 years. But if it be supposed that the 

 equinox passed through the middle of the constellation, we should 

 reach nearly 1000 or 120O years more remote, to 1600 or 1700 years 

 before Christ; and this is the epoch which many celebrated men 

 thought have really to be that of the invention^ of the zodiac, the 

 honour of which, on very slight grounds, they have assigned to 

 Chiron. 



But Dupuis, who needed, for the origin which he pretended to attri- 

 bute to all religions, that astronomy, and particularly the figures of 

 the zodiac, should in some sort have preceded all other human institu- 

 tions, has sought another climate, to find other explanations for the 

 emblems, and to deduce for them another epoch. If, taking Libra 

 always as the equinoctial sign, but suppressing it at the vernal equi- 

 nox, it be asserted that the zodiac was invented in Egypt, we shall 

 find other proofs equally plausible for the climate of this country *. 

 Capricornus, or the animal with a fish's tail, will mark the commence- 

 ment of the elevation of the Nile at the summer solstice; Aquarius 

 and Pisces the increase and decrease of the inundation ; Taurus the 

 period of labour ; Virgo, the gathering in of the harvest ; and they 

 will mark them at the precise seasons when these operations actually 

 did take place. According to this hypothesis, the zodiac would have 

 15,000 f years for a sun supposed at the first degree of each sign ;■ 

 more than 16,000 for the middle; and only 4,000, in supposing that 

 the emblem was given to the sign, opposite to which the sun was J. 

 Dupuis has attached himself to 15,000 years, and on this date has 

 founded the whole system of his celebrated work. 



There were not wanting, however, persons who, admitting that the 

 zodiac was invented in Egypt, have imagined allegories applicable to 



* See the Memoir on the Origia of the Constellations, in Dupuis' Origin of 

 Worships, vol. iii, pp. 324, et seq. 



t See the Memoir referred to in the note above, vol. iii, p. 267- 

 + Dupuis himself suggested this second hypothesis, ibid, page 340. 



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