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The Sciences: Astrology

Just, however, as Chemistry rose on the fancy about the philosopher's stone, and medicine out of the dream about the elixir of immortality; so the pursuits of Astrology created the perfection of her daughter, Astronomy. For we find, that, 4 or 5000 years ago, the mean motions of the Sun, Moon, and Planets, were known to a second just as at present; and the motions of the Earth's and Moon's nodes, the latitudes of the planets, etc., were all adopted by astrologers in preparing horoscopes for any time past or future.

Nothing, therefore, can be more impertinent than the assertion of modern writers, that the accuracy of astronomical prediction arises from any modern theory. Theory may have suggested unexplored corners, and increased the tables; but astronomy is strictly a science of observation, and far more indebted to the false theory of astrology, than to the equally false and fanciful theory of any modern.

Astrology and Astronomy took their rise in the East, where the splendor of the heavens far exceeds what our atmosphere permits. Their theory may be supposed to be that of Pythagoras, since he had been a soldier in the Persian service, before he became a teacher of philosophy among the Greeks, who stole freely from the East. Ptolemy, in the native country of all superstition, has preserved to us the whole science of Astrology; but ambition led him, as is believed, to invent a new system, in which he made the Earth the centre with sundry mistakes, which the telescope would have prevented. This passed current for 1400 years, till Copernicus, in 1570, revived the Pythagorean system, in the face of which Tycho Brahe started another, now forgotten. Down to this time, in spite of Bacon, the Catholic Church, and Tycho Brahe, the Copernican system has prevailed. But a reasonable motion of the Sun through space, discovered and established by Sir W. Herschel and others, tends to deprive us of those pretty pictures in concentric circles, except as resultants, which we have for two centuries been in the habit of calling the Solar System. For if the Sun has any power, it must be derived from motion; and if acting on bodies at a distance, like Jupiter on his moons, or the Earth on its moon, there must be an intervening medium to conduct its momentum through its system. The discovery of the motion of the Sun towards the constellation Hercules, gives, therefore, its due place to Motion as the source of all material power; for it is absurd to imagine power in the Sun without motion.

Bailly maintains, from oriental records, that astronomy was cultivated in Egypt and Chaldea 2800 в. c. In Persia, 3209. In India 3101, and in China 2952. The Indian tables of great antiquity make the tropical year within 1' 53" of our best tables. Other tables, equally accurate, appear to Bailly, Playfair, and other authorities, to have been constructed 3102 B. C. One of their zodiacs places Aldebaran 40' before the vernal equinox, which carries it back to 3163 B. C. Other coincidences are astonishing, and prove the length of their observations and the perfection of their instruments. Thus the place of the Sun agrees with our best tables within 46' 54", and the Moon within 37', yet our tables include minute anomalies of recent discovery. The first recorded observatory was on the temple of Belus; the tomb of Osymandias, in Egypt, was another, and it contained a golden circle 200 feet in diameter, and that at Benares was at least as ancient as those.