Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/479

Rh abusive language employed; as for the almanac, everybody knew that almanacs were frequently published under the names of people who had long been dead.

An adequate account of the superstitions of astrology would make a volume, and it would be easy to compile a list of one hundred lunar superstitions that still govern the actions of the uninformed. For example, the new moon if first seen over the right shoulder will bring good luck. If seen over the left shoulder, bad luck. Meat killed when the moon is waning shrinks in the pot. Whatever grows above ground must be planted when the moon is waxing. Whatever grows underground must be planted when the moon is waning. One of the commonest lunar superstitions is that the changes of the moon, at the quarter, affect the weather, and many of our almanacs still publish so-called "Herschel's weather tables," for foretelling changes of the weather, not only throughout all the lunations of the year, but for all future time. We are assured by the almanac makers that the tables are the result of careful consideration of the attractions of the sun and the moon "and so near the truth as to seldom or never fail." Belief in the moon's influence over terrestrial conditions is a mild lunacy by no means wholly confined to the ignorant. A tabulated meteorological record, kept at Greenwich running back for forty years, shows that there are no constant relations between the moon's columns and those recording the readings of the instruments. In other words, lunar meteorological influences are almost inappreciable. Idle fancies are still cherished that the mind and body are affected by the light of the moon, that the rays sometimes produce blindness by shining on the sleeper's eyes, and that death occurs at the time of the changes of tide.

When Copernicus published his work on the "Revolutions of the Heavenly bodies," in 1543, he was already on his deathbed. A few men of learning read it, the doctors of the church rejected it, and it received but little attention until the time of Bruno, Galileo and Kepler, half a century later. During the previous thirteen hundred years the astronomical system of Ptolemy had been regarded with superstitious reverence. It was natural that a geocentric and anthropocentric universe should be drawn, because these errors were conducive to man's interests, pleasing to his extreme egotism, and resulted in the apotheosis of himself. The anthropocentric dogma culminated in the belief that man was the preordained center and aim of all creation, while the new heliocentric mechanism of the planetary system relegated both the earth and man to subordinate positions.

In 1610 Galileo ascended the tall campanile of St. Mark's, in Venice, and with his newly devised telescope showed the assembled noblemen and senators that Venus was a crescent, Jupiter the center of a miniature Copernican system, the moon had tall mountains casting dark shadows across her surface, that the star cluster of the Pleiades