Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/807

Rh day, or the day of Soetere, was identified with the Sabbath, and Sunday with the Lord s day ; the day of Venus with that of Friga, the goddess of love (Friday) ; Jove s with that of the Norse Thor (Thursday) ; Mercury s with that of Woden, the god who grants wishes (Wednesday); and Mars s with that of Tiw, the god of war (Tuesday). The Latin division of days into dies fasti and nefasti has perpetuated the same distinction of lucky and unlucky days which in spired Ilesiod s Works and Days. Many a tradesman at Home must have made the same complaint as La Fontaine s cobbler, &quot; On nous mine en fetes. 1 With the Arabs Tues day and Wednesday were the days for blood-letting, Mars being the lord of iron and blood, and Mercury of the humours. Even at the present day, travellers tell us, when an auspicious day has been proclaimed by the astrologers, the streets of Baghdad may be seen running with blood from the barbers shops. We see how soon the invention of the week became the engine of politicians and astrologers. Our investigations have now brought us to judicial astrology, which is nothing else than the corruption of the purer astrology, the various phases of which we have attempted to trace. In a book published at Geneva in 1643, the year of Conde s great victory, and of the succes sion of Louis XIV., entitled Janua Aurea reserata quatuor linguarum, 12mo, by J. A. Comenius, we find the follow ing definition: &quot; Astronomus sidentm meatus sen motus considerat : Astrologus eorumdem efficaciam, influxum, et efcctum.&quot; Kepler was more cautious in his opinion ; he spoke of astronomy as the wise mother, and astrology as the foolish daughter, but he added that the existence of the daughter was necessary to the life of the mother. Tycho Brahe and Gassendi both began with astrology, and it was only after pursuing the false science, and finding it wanting, that Gassendi devoted himself to astronomy. In their numerous allusions to the subtle mercury, which the one makes when treating of a means of measuring time by the c fflux of the metal, and the other in a treatise on the transit of the planet, we see traces of the school in which they served their first apprenticeship. Huyghens, more over, in his great posthumous work, Cosmotheoros, seu de terns coslestibus, shows himself a more exact observer of astrological symbols than Kircher himself in his Iter txstaticum. In that remarkable discussion on the plurality of worlds, which was at once translated into French, and afterwards reproduced in a popular form by Fontenelle, Huyghens contends that between the inhabitants of differ ent planets there need not be any greater difference than exists between men of different types on the earth. &quot; There are on the earth,&quot; continues this rational interpreter of the astrologers and chiromancers, &quot; men of cold tempera ment who would thrive in Saturn, which is the furthest planet from, the sun, and there are other spirits warm and ardent enough to livo in Venus.&quot; Astrology among the Egyptians, the Chaldeans, and at Alexandria, had estab lished a complete parallelism between men of different types and the planets, on the basis of their relative distance from the sun. These different types of character had been fixed by the Greeks in their conception of the planetary gods, Apollo, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, and Venus. To these the cabalists added the moon, as the planet corre sponding to the phlegmatic temperament of the northern races. Apollo represented the nervous physique which Carus has rightly pronounced the most intellectual. But whence did the notion of this parallelism originate ] The solution of this problem will elucidate the practical side of astrology. Let us once more revert to the first infancy of science. From the general tendency of primitive man to bring all knowledge under a single head, we may safely conclude that the first study of the heavens embraced and dominated over every other attempt at science. The co^mogcnista pretended to explain the earth by the heavens, but as they were bound to proceed from the known to the unknown, they did, in fact, explain the heaven by the earth and, in particular, by men. Hence, in many mythologies, the universe is an egg, and in that of Finland a duck s egg, the spots on the shell representing the constellations. Later on we find the eternal revolution and renovation of the universe symbolised by a serpent biting its tail Lastly, the universe as a perfect and harmonious order, a KcV/io?, is conceived as the highest organism to be found on earth, a huge animal. This cosmical animal in turn, owing to the interlacing of religious ideas, images, and symbols, was supposed to influence the different parts of the body. This gives us the clue to the first steps of medical science, which, like the other sciences, began by being astrological. In short, the first encyclopaedia was astrology. There is a well-known story of the case of two brothers who fell ill at the same instant. Posidonius the astrologer, on being consulted, pronounced that they were born under the same constellation. Hippocrates the physician concluded from the coincidence that they must be twins ; yet even Hippo crates could not rid himself of the terrestrial theory of the heavens. (See chap. 11, de auris, de aquis, de locis.) The Egyptians peopled the constellations of the zodiac with genii; the ram (Armim) was lord of the head; the bull (Apis), of the neck and shoulders; the twins (Hercules and Apollo), of the arms and hands ; and lastly, to the fishes were assigned the feet. The Persians, again, ascribed to the empyrean generally the influence over the citadel of the body the head. Dionysius the Areopagite, indulging his religious proclivities, established hierarchies of genii in the constellations. The Assyrians were led by their form of government to place thirty-six conciliar-gods in the twelve signs of the zodiac, and to the interpreter-gods, whose province it was to inspect and survey the various divisions of the heavens, they allotted the wandering planets. Whenever a new discovery was made in medicine or science, the province of the god-stars was immediately enlarged ; thus the Egyptians, observing the symmetry of the human body, and connecting this with the dualism of human faculties, at once made the sun (Jia) the lord of the forehead, the moon mistress of the brain, and Mercury of the tongue ; but to Saturn they assigned only the left eye ; to Jupiter was given the right ; Mars had the right nostril, Venus the left. Meanwhile, in another quarter of the globe a religion was growing up, a religion of mild anthropomorphism, wholly removed from Oriental transcendentalism. It is in Greece, whose deities had been gradually moulded and drilled so as to serve as types of men and manners, that we must look for the key of astrology. Jupiter, the embodiment of authority, and Cronos, or Saturn, the impersonation of malignant opposition to authority, are the two most prominent figures of ancient mythology. Venus was placed below Mars ; that is, the sensual passion was subjected to martial ardour. The astrologers of the Uenaissance deviated from the Egyptians in assigning the right nostril to Venus, and the left to Mars : the reason was, that, with Cardan and Vauini, Venus represented rather the German Friga than the Eastern Mylitta, chaste love rather than luxury. Those of our readers who wish to learn further the opinion of Cardan and Vanini, we would refer to the Amphitheatrum aternce Providential and De admirandis natural regime deaique mortalium arcanis libri quatuor, in which the mocking astrologer breaks a lance with the too subtle philosopher. The quarrel between two learned doctors of the art naturally resulted in the death of the patient. Astrology, already at its last gasp, could not bear such rude treatment. Vanini, the Lucian among astrologers, the hero, who 