Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/404

388 number seven as determining the division of time with celestial phenomena comes with a much greater air of probability when presented pure and simple: the rising and setting of the sun determined the days; the waxing and waning of the moon determined the months; and the position of the sun among the fixed stars divided the years. So that when it is suggested that the number of planetary bodies settled the length of the week, it is impossible to deny that the proposal comes before us with much a priori probability.

It is not necessary to refuse all sanction to the notion that the happy fact that 4x7=28, or that four weeks, each of seven days, roughly constitute a month, and that so, the artificial division of weeks had a convenient relation to the natural division of months, had something to do with stamping the number seven as the basis for the counting of days. Nor would it, perhaps, be possible to entirely deny the position of one who should argue that this convenient quadri-partition of the month was first in order of time, and that the dedication of the seven days of the week to the seven heavenly bodies followed afterward. I do not suspect that this actually was so; yet if it were asserted to be the more probable course of things, I do not know that the assertion could be positively disproved. But, whichever may have been the actual order of proceeding, what I desire now to enforce is equally true, namely, that the two astronomical considerations, namely, the number of planetary bodies known to the ancients and the period of the moon, may be regarded as co-operative, and as tending together to fix more distinctly the number of days in the week.

It would be entirely in accordance with the spirit of ancient religion, or superstition, to connect the days of the week, when once settled down to the number seven, with the thought of dedication to different deities, rather than with the mere fact of the existence of seven planetary bodies; and this state of things we find in the days of the week as used in the Roman Empire and among our Norse and Saxon ancestors. One may perhaps venture to guess that such an adaptation as this would naturally take place in any polytheistic country, which adopted the division of the days by seven; the more so, as several of the seven jilanets are not conspicuous as phenomena; and so the number seven, as derived from the heavens, would commend itself chiefly to the few who carefully observed, and would not be deeply impressed upon the people at large. The few would observe the planets, and dedicate the days to planetary deities; the many would know nothing about the planets, would regard the days as sacred to their gods.

Having thus far dealt with the week on general grounds, I now pass on to make some remarks upon it in connection with Holy Scripture.

In the first place, as has been remarked by the commentators, and as is apparent to careful readers, it would seem that some notion of the week of seven days was current among the people whose history