Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/99

Rh spiritualized man, spirit being absolute over matter. The same writer informs us that "Aries is the head-sign of the Grand Man; cardinal, masculine, equinoctial, and movable, the positive pole of the Fire Triplicity. People born under Aries are usually very executive, earnest, and determined, also noble, generous, magnetic, and have occult powers and metaphysical tastes. Good scholars and great talkers" The modern astrologer professes to predict the personal appearance, characteristic temperament, dominant faults, prevalent diseases, love affairs, and character of children born under each of the twelve signs.

This "craft by means whereof knaves practice on fools" is now enjoying a revival in both Europe and America. Several periodicals are devoted to its propaganda; as recently as August, 1897, a monthly magazine was started in New York city, and, as an inducement to subscribe, every one is promised, not a chromo, but a "Free Horoscope of Events for 1897 and 1898." In December, 1897, a society was formed by women in New York city to study the influences of the zodiac on human life and destiny; the society is called The Zodiac, and plans to hold monthly meetings at which each sign is to be studied in turn.

The "Faust Institute of Solar Biology, Occult Science, Astro-Phrenology, and Biblical History" situated in Philadelphia, employs a perambulating agent to lecture in the streets of Eastern cities to the admiring crowds that are attracted by a vividly colored diagram and by printed handbills. Those seeking more light are referred to "Professor Faust."

concludes an article in the Revue des Deux Mondes, on social conditions in Australia and New Zealand, with some observations on the effect of the enlargement of the sphere of occupations for women in the postponement of the age of marriage. In 1883 the proportion of married women who were minors in New South Wales was 28·17 per cent; in 1892 it had fallen to 23·55 per cent. A similar condition is found in Victoria, where the proportion of married women under twenty-one years of age was 21 per cent, and of those between twenty-one and twenty-five years old 43·2 per cent, from 1881 till 1890, while the corresponding figures in 1893 were only 17·4 and 39·8 per cent. In New Zealand, where the married women minors constituted 29·4 per cent of the total in 1882, they formed no more than 19·3 per cent in 1893. "When a woman earns her living herself," M. Leroy Beaulieu observes, "and custom allows her considerable independence, she is in less haste to marry; and often, too, marriage forces her to give up her calling." The fact that children are less numerous when marriages are so late is the principal objection brought against this system by the author. Yet, he remarks, we ought not to sacrifice the woman's independence or forbid her all occupation unrelated to housekeeping in order that more children may be born.