Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/19

Rh that it is absurd and ridiculous to imagine, the stars can have any influence at all upon human actions, thoughts, or inclinations; and whoever has not bent his studies that way, may be excused for thinking so, when he sees in how wretched a manner that noble art is treated, by a few mean illiterate traders between us and the stars; who import a yearly stock of nonsense, lies, folly, and impertinence, which they offer to the world as genuine from the planets, though they descend from no greater a height than their own brains.

I intend, in a short time, to publish a large and rational defence of this art, and therefore shall say no more in its justification at present, than that it has been in all ages defended by many learned men, and among the rest by Socrates himself; whom I look upon as undoubtedly the wisest of uninspired mortals: to which if we add, that those who have condemned this art, though otherwise learned, having been such as either did not apply their studies this way, or at least did not succeed in their applications, their testimony will not be of much weight to its disadvantage, since they are liable to the common objection, of condemning what they did not understand.

Nor am I at all offended, or do I think it an injury to the art, when I see the common dealers in it, the students in astrology, the maths