Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/805

Rh by the employment of signs, which flutter the fancy, and of which we form ideas like those which the objects them selves presented at first to our imagination. If to these two elements vague experience and the misleading use of signs we add the instinctive impulse which led primitive man to imagine a universe created according to the analogy of his mind, we have before us the three causes which led the Indians, Greeks, Egyptians, Chaldeans, and their Alexandrian disciples, the Arabs and their followers, during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, to lend themselves to the illusions of astrology, and by a preposterous philo sophy to deduce the laws of nature from a theory of morals. Astrology is generally divided into natural astrology, the science which predicts the motions of heavenly bodies and eclipses of sun and moon, and judicial astrology, which studies the influence of constellations on the destiny of men and empires. But it is obvious that both of these branches presuppose an advanced stage of astronomical knowledge, and a state of society not necessarily better, but more complex than that in which the first worshippers of the heavens were placed. It follows, then, that both natural astrology and judicial astrology must have been preceded by a science less learned in heavenly motions, and at the same time (as we shall attempt to show) more moral in the best sense of the word. Astronomers have taken very little pains to trace their favourite science to its source by help of the copious astrological commentaries in which the earliest observers embodied their theories of the Leavens. Philosophers, with the single exception of Scho penhauer, have shown the same indifference. Of modern writers who have treated of astrology, some, like M. Alfred Maury, have sought to place its errors in a ridiculous light ; others, like Euscbe Salverte, have exposed the quackeries which rendered it a possible profession ; and lastly, a few, like Eliphas Ldvi and M. P. Christian, simply attempt to build up again with words a belief which has ceased to rest either on facts or ideas. Neither class of writers is likely to advance the history of human reason. The time has come for a calm and dispassionate survey of an illusion which for a while seemed probable, and may even be said to have done good service in its day. How did the error arise? Whence its persistency 1 These are questions which demand an answer, if only in order to preserve modern science from illusions which, though differing in form, are in their essence similar. M. Alfred Maury begins his treatise by examining what are the beliefs of savages on the subject of magic and as trology. So too M. F. Hb fer, in his History of Astronomy, well remarks : &quot; If we wish to seek for the origin of the science, let us place a child or a savage in presence of the earth and the heavens, and ask what thoughts these sug gest to him. We shall then obtain a clue to guide us on our path.&quot; We shall do well to follow the example of MM. Maury and Hofer, provided we do not confuse the savage of a superior and the savage of an inferior race, or the ancient savage and the modern child. But how can we question the ancient savage? Only by help of his cosmogonies. It was long before man learned to distinguish the planets from the fixed stars ; even then, as the word TrAavTjTes proves, he assigned to them an erratic instead of a regu lar motion. Further, we must bear in mind that the first star-gazers had no knowledge of optics, physics, or meteor ology, to teach them that the blue of the firmament is a subjective phenomenon caused by the light traversing our atmosphere before it strikes the optic nerve ; that its regular spherical form is an effect of perspective ; that winds, clouds, and northern lights are terrestrial phenomena related to astronomy, but distinct from the science of the true heavens. The ancestors of the subhV* 1 and child like bards of the Rig-Veda deified the morning glow Arustra, and the diurnal and nocturnal heavens as the twin brethren who had been nursed on the bosom of Aditi. Aditi with them is the space beyond the horizon. Aditi is the sky, ^heaven. Aditi ia mother, father, son. The gods were Adityas, i.e., children of Aditi. Aditi, in a word, was boundless space, but space endowed with life, form, and power, the power, namely, of delivering men from the heaviest of their chains, that i.;, sin. Aditi, too, is the mother of storms (Rudras). With the original Aryans storms represented the fecundating principle. Thus they pictured the storm among the clouds under the lively image of a bull among cows. Hence the celestial animals. The horse had been already placed in heaven to represent the sun (Asvd). The fire of the hearth, too, which they produced by rubbing two sticks together, was as much a god as Varuna and Mitra, and worshipped as Agni, one of the Adityas. Such was the innocent childhood of the Hindus, which originated a poetical mythology so closely allied to science, so rich in moral lessons, could such innocence last? Let us pass on to astrology as we find it among the Etruscans. We shall see the moral astrology of the primi tive Aryans changed into political astrology. The word templum, the diminutive of tempus, as Varro tells us (dc Ling. Lat. lib. vi.), signified 1, a division of the sky; 2, a spot on earth marked out by auspices ; 3, by analogy, a spot below the earth. The augur with a staff (lituus) traced a line from north to south called cardo, and another from east to west called decumanus. Thus a temple con sisted in marking out a spot ; the entry was from the south, the sanctuary was at the north, propitious signs came from the east, uupropitious from the west. The same precautions which, according to Columella, agriculturists took in trans planting a tree to preserve the same aspect for roots and branches, the Romans, as disciples of the Etruscans, observed in fixing the site of their camps, their towns, &c., and not only this, but their observation of the flight of birds, their curious commentaries on the various forms of thunder and lightning, may all be reckoned as parts of astrology, inas much as to the Etruscan bards air and thunder appeared celestial phenomena. Just as Chinese astrologists pro fessed the power of producing or averting eclipses, the Etruscan priests asserted that they could draw down or divert lightning. In fact, such claims are a common cha racteristic of what we have ventured to call political astro logies : everywhere political astrologists have laid claim to the production of phenomena which calculation, empiricism, or good fortune has enabled them to predict. If perchance their prediction failed, they saved their credit by saying that by their art they had averted the impending disaster. The Etruscans called their deities consentes, sharers of the destinies of their race, and believed that they were fated to perish after a reign of GOOD years. This doctrine of the renovation of heaven, earth, and gods, is found to pre vail wherever politics, the growth of conquest, have sup planted the simple and childlike faith which springs up of itself among an innocent and unconquered race. When a nation left its home, that land and sky which both wit nessed the birth of its religion, and was part and parcel of that religion, its priests gradually lost faith in their religion, and began to mix up politics with religion ; its astrologers, whose business it was to interpret the signs of the heavens, felt that their power was doomed, and pre dicted a universal ruin, in which the nation, its religion, its gods, and heaven itself, were involved. But hope, which springs eternal in the human breast, made them add to their prophecy, that after the exhaustion of evil and the death of perverted races, a new order of things should be born. This is the creed of Hesiod s sublime cosmogony ; 