Page:Amazing Stories Volume 10 Number 13.djvu/17

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AN has had from the earliest times, the longing to peer into the future. This desire has existed for hundreds of centuries. In the poems of Homer we read of omens, based often on the flight of birds and on the examination of the entrails of sacrificed animals. This was not uneconomical for when through with the augury, the warriors feasted on the remains. If an eagle flew by, an augury of success or failure was at once deduced from its flight. Coming down to more recent times we have famous shrines of Apollo or Diana. All this we now consider very foolish and an indication of an ancient superstition. But some consideration is due to this criticism by twentieth century intellectuality. This consideration touches on present day astrology every bit as silly as the old-time predictions.

One of the leading dailies of the United States for a considerable period recently, published articles on what the stars are saying. The prophesies included what the year is likely to be and what would be the fate of the person born on the day, all of which was exquisitely ridiculous. It would seem natural to use the matter published in such a paper for the information of its great circle of readers as a criterion of the intelligence of a certain proportion of such people. If stars are telling us anything it must be told in a pretty loud voice and the sound waves must move with many times the velocity of light. This is a sort of a reductio ad absurdum. Or if it be taken that the telling is visual and communicated by light waves, years would be required for the voice of the stars to be brought to us. The waves of wireless messages move by the ether and it would require years for them to traverse the distance intervening between the earth and the nearest star.