116 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF 



The only more ancient Chinese observation, which does not bear in 

 itself the proof of its own falsity, is that of the observation calcu- 

 lated by Tcheou-Kong, about 1100 before Christ/^and even that is 

 incorrect *. 



Our readers may thus judge that the inferences drawn from the high 

 perfection of the astronomy of ancient people are not more conclusive 

 in favour of the excessive antiquity of these people than the testimo- 

 nies which they have adduced in their own favour. 



But what would this astronomy prove if it were even more perfect I 

 Have we calculated the progress which a science could make in the 

 bosom of nations which, in some sort, had no other; when the 

 serenity of the sky, the wants of a pastoral or agricultural life, and 

 superstition, made the stars an object of universal contemplation ^ 

 when colleges of the most respected men were charged with keeping 

 a register of interesting phenomena, and of transmitting their memory 

 of them; where the inheritance of the profession caused children to 

 be brought up from the cradle in the knowledge acquired by their 

 fathers ? If, amongst the multitude of persons solely occupied with 

 astronomy, there were one or two expert geometricians, even then all 

 that these people knew might have been discovered in a few centuries. 



We may learn that, since the Chaldeans, real astronomy has had 

 only two epochs, that of the Alexandrian school, which lasted 400 

 years, and our own, which has not lasted so long. The age of the 

 Arabs scarcely added any thing to it. The other ages have been mere- 

 nullities with respect to it. Only three hundred years have intervened 

 between Copernicus and the author of La Mecanique Celeste (La- 

 place), and yet did the Indians require thousands of years to arrive 

 at their crude theories f. 



The Astronomical Monuments left by the Ancients have not the exces- 

 sively remote Dates generally attributed to them. 

 Recourse has been had to another species of argument. It is pre- 

 tended that, independently of the knowledge which these nations 

 might have attained, they have left monuments which bear, by the 

 state of the heavens which they represent, a certain and remote date ; 

 and the zodiacs engraved in two temples of Upper Egypt have ap- 

 peared for some years to afford, on this point, most perfectly conclu- 

 sive proofs. They present the same zodiacal figures that we now 

 use, but arranged in a peculiar manner. It has been thought that this 



* See in " La Connoissance des Temps,' of 1809, p. 382, and in M. Delambre's 

 ' History of Ancient Astronomy,' v. i, p. 391, extracted from a Memoir of P. Gautil, 

 on the observations of the Chinese. 



t The English translator (Jameson) of this Diseourse quotes, on this point, the 

 example of the celebrated James Ferguson, who was a shepherd in his youth, and 

 ■who, whilst watching his flocks at night, had conceived the idea of a chart of the 

 heavens, and drew it perhaps more correctly than any Chaldean astronomer. A 

 similar account is given of Jamerey Duval. 



