Page:Amazing Stories Volume 10 Number 13.djvu/19

Rh for in older times by the attempt at interpreting the simplest natural things as disclosing things to come. The flight of birds, as already alluded to, is often introduced in Homer's poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. The composing of these poems, which some claim to have preceded their writing, and to have been recited from memory, goes nearly three thousand years back from the present time.

But astrology, which is largely contemporaneous with astronomy of serious nature, figures as a sort of "twin sister" "a swart, sour visaged maid" as Coleridge might lend us his words, for it has followed astronomy up to rather surprisingly recent times. Astrology still exists. Any number of people believe in it, but it is fair to say that any relationship with the science of astronomy was severed long ago. It is certainly a great enough triumph of astronomy to determine the distance of planets and stars, to apply spectroscopy to find how fast they are moving through space directly towards us or away from us by Doppler's principle, as the case may be, to determine what elements are in them, what their temperature is, how great is their mass, this range of work gives us enough to wonder at, if we have not lost the faculty of astonishment. But to say that, because in their regular motions in their orbits, planets come in line with each other or with the earth, they tell us anything about the immediate future, whether business is to be good or bad, whether wars are imminent and similar things, all this is absurd. And this is so thoroughly disproved, both by reason and observations, that astrology should have been disproved long ago, and it is curious enough that many still uphold it.

A psychologist in a recent work on the subject of his profession puts the need of some form of belief in the spiritual very strongly in stating that agnosticism is an intellectual disease and faith even in such fallacies as numerology, astrology, phrenology and other cults, is better than no faith at all.

Astrology is supposed to be based on the movements and relative positions of celestial bodies. The nearest of these is millions of miles away, but the moon, within a more reasonable distance, seems not to interest the astrologers. Perhaps if there were several moons, they might be more interested, but in one sense of the word they cannot be called lunatics; this is because professional astrologers receive compensation for their predictions. But imagine how fertile a field, for prognostications, astrologers on Saturn or Jupiter would find in the various moons of those planets.

There is one branch of predictional service which is based on a good practical foundation, and which is maintained by governments all over the world. This is the weather service. Innumerable stations are now established far and wide, in which observers report atmospheric conditions, such as temperature, barometric height, wind direction and velocity, rainfall and humidity and other factors of the atmospheric conditions. There are a great number of Weather Bureau Stations, as they are termed, all over the civilized area of the earth. Many observations are taken daily and self-registering instruments supplement personal readings. Based upon these observations an elaborate system of prognostications is made. Sometimes in abbreviated form, the daily papers are supposed to tell the readers whether it is going to be a day