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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Astronomical Myths, by John F. Blake
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Astronomical Myths
+       Based on Flammarions's History of the Heavens
+
+Author: John F. Blake
+
+Release Date: June 22, 2011 [EBook #36495]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ASTRONOMICAL MYTHS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eric Hutton and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  ASTRONOMICAL MYTHS.
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+  [Illustration: THE CLIFFS OF FLAMANVILLE.]
+
+
+
+  ASTRONOMICAL MYTHS,
+
+  BASED ON
+  FLAMMARION'S
+  "HISTORY OF THE HEAVENS."
+
+  BY
+
+  JOHN F. BLAKE.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  London:
+  MACMILLAN AND CO.
+  1877.
+
+
+
+  LONDON:
+  R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS,
+  BREAD STREET HILL,
+  QUEEN VICTORIA STREET.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The Book which is here presented to the public is founded upon a French
+work by M. Flammarion which has enjoyed considerable popularity. It
+contained a number of interesting accounts of the various ideas,
+sometimes mythical, sometimes intended to be serious, that had been
+entertained concerning the heavenly bodies and our own earth; with a
+popular history of the earliest commencement of astronomy among several
+ancient peoples. It was originally written in the form of conversations
+between the members of an imaginary party at the seaside. It was
+thought that this style would hardly be so much appreciated by English
+as by French readers, and therefore in presenting the materials of the
+French author in an English dress the conversational form has been
+abandoned. Several facts of extreme interest in relation to the early
+astronomical myths and the development of the science among the ancients
+having been brought to light, especially by the researches of Mr.
+Haliburton, a considerable amount of new matter, including the whole
+chapter on the Pleiades, has been introduced, which makes the present
+issue not exactly a translation, but rather a book founded on the French
+author's work. It is hoped that it may be found of interest to those who
+care to know about the early days of the oldest of our sciences, which
+is now attracting general attention again by the magnitude of its recent
+advances. Astronomy also, in early days, as will be seen by a perusal of
+this book, was so mixed up with all the affairs of life, and contributed
+so much even to religion, that a history of its beginnings is found to
+reveal the origin of several of our ideas and habits, now apparently
+quite unconnected with the science. There is matter of interest here,
+therefore, for those who wish to know only the history of the general
+ideas of mankind.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE ANNUAL REVOLUTION OF THE EARTH ROUND THE SUN, WITH
+THE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC AND THE CONSTELLATIONS.]
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+  THE CLIFFS OF FLAMANVILLE                              _Frontispiece._
+  THE ANNUAL REVOLUTION OF THE EARTH ROUND THE SUN, WITH
+        THE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC AND THE CONSTELLATIONS         Page   ix
+  THE EARTH'S YEAR, AND THE MONTHS                              "    xiv
+  AN ASTRONOMER AT WORK                                To face page    1
+  THE NORTHERN CONSTELLATIONS                                 "       49
+  THE CONSTELLATIONS FROM THE SEA-SHORE                       "       65
+  THE ZODIAC OF DENDERAH                                      "      102
+
+     I. BABYLONIAN ASTRONOMERS                                        19
+    II. DRUIDICAL WORSHIP                                             37
+   III. CHALDEAN ASTRONOMERS                                          87
+    IV. THE ZODIAC AND THE DEAD IN EGYPT                             108
+     V. THE LEGENDS OF THE DRUIDS                                    123
+    VI. THE NEMÆAN LION                                              146
+   VII. HEAVENS OF THE FATHERS                                       191
+  VIII. DEATH OF COPERNICUS                                          208
+    IX. THE SOLAR SYSTEM                                             225
+     X. THE DISCOVERY OF THE TELESCOPE                               227
+    XI. THE FOUNDATION OF THE PARIS OBSERVATORY                      229
+   XII. THE LEGEND OF OWEN                                           315
+  XIII. CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS AND THE ECLIPSE OF THE MOON             336
+   XIV. PRODIGIES IN THE MIDDLE AGES                                 358
+    XV. AN ASTROLOGER AT WORK                                        385
+   XVI. THE END OF THE WORLD                                         429
+
+   1. THE EARLIEST (ARYAN) REPRESENTATION OF THE EARTH                12
+   2. ANCIENT GAULISH MEDALS,  BEARING  ASTRONOMICAL SIGNS            42
+   3. ANCIENT CELESTIAL SPHERE                                        58
+   4. POSITIONS OF THE GREAT BEAR ON SEPTEMBER 4                      62
+   5. CONSTELLATION OF THE BEAR                                       63
+   6. CONSTELLATION OF ORION                                          73
+   7. CHART OF CONSTELLATIONS IN SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES  78
+   8. FLAMSTEED'S CHART                                               79
+   9. ARABIAN SPHERE OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY                          84
+  10. ANCIENT CHINESE PIECES OF MONEY, BEARING REPRESENTATIONS OF
+        THE ZODIAC                                                    93
+  11. THE ZODIAC                                                      96
+  12. DIAGRAM ILLUSTRATING THE POSITION OF CERTAIN STARS, B.C. 1200   98
+  13. CURIOUS FIFTEENTH CENTURY FIGURE, REPRESENTING ELEVEN
+        DIFFERENT HEAVENS                                            150
+  14. PTOLEMY'S ASTRONOMICAL SYSTEM                                  181
+  15. THE EPICYCLES OF PTOLEMY                                       184
+  16. HEAVENS OF THE MIDDLE AGES                                     188
+  17. EMBLEMATIC DRAWING FROM ANCIENT ASTRONOMICAL WORK              193
+  18. EGYPTIAN SYSTEM                                                194
+  19. CAPELLA'S SYSTEM                                               195
+  20. THE COPERNICAN SYSTEM                                          205
+  21. TYCHO BRAHE'S SYSTEM                                           212
+  22. DESCARTES' THEORY OF VORTICES                                  216
+  23. VORTICES OF THE STARS                                          218
+  24. VARIATION OF DESCARTES' THEORY                                 219
+  25. THE EARTH FLOATING                                             237
+  26. THE EARTH WITH ROOTS                                           237
+  27. THE EARTH OF THE VEDIC PRIESTS                                 238
+  28. HINDOO EARTH                                                   239
+  29. THE EARTH OF ANAXIMANDER                                       240
+  30. PLATO'S CUBICAL EARTH                                          241
+  31. EGYPTIAN REPRESENTATION OF THE EARTH                           243
+  32. HOMERIC COSMOGRAPHY                                            247
+  33. THE EARTH OF THE LATER GREEKS                                  256
+  34. POMPONIUS MELA'S COSMOGRAPHY                                   257
+  35. THE EARTH'S SHADOW                                             262
+  36. DITTO                                                          263
+  37. DITTO                                                          264
+  38. DITTO                                                          264
+  39. THE COSMOGRAPHY OF COSMAS                                      268
+  40. THE SQUARE EARTH                                               269
+  41. EXPLANATION OF SUNRISE                                         271
+  42. THE EARTH AS AN EGG                                            273
+  43. THE EARTH AS A FLOATING EGG                                    274
+  44. EIGHTH-CENTURY MAP OF THE WORLD                                276
+  45. TENTH-CENTURY MAPS                                             277
+  46. THE MAP OF ANDREA BIANCO                                       283
+  47. FROM THE MAP IN HEREFORD CATHEDRAL                             285
+  48. DITTO                                                          286
+  49. COSMOGRAPHY OF ST. DENIS                                       291
+  50. THE MAP OF MARCO POLO                                          293
+  51. MAP ON A MEDAL OF CHARLES V                                    294
+  52. DANTE'S INFERNAL REGIONS                                       311
+  53. PARADISE OF FRA MAURO                                          322
+  54. THE PARADISE OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY                          324
+  55. REPRESENTATION OF A COMET, SIXTEENTH CENTURY                   349
+  56. AN EGG MARKED WITH A COMET                                     352
+  57. THE ROMAN CALENDAR                                             403
+  58. DIAGRAM ILLUSTRATING THE ORDER OF THE DAYS OF THE WEEK         413
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE EARTH'S YEAR, AND THE MONTHS.]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+  CHAPTER I.
+  THE FIRST BEGINNINGS OF ASTRONOMY                                    1
+
+  CHAPTER II.
+  ASTRONOMY OF THE CELTS                                              29
+
+  CHAPTER III.
+  ORIGIN OF THE CONSTELLATIONS                                        49
+
+  CHAPTER IV.
+  THE ZODIAC                                                          89
+
+  CHAPTER V.
+  THE PLEIADES                                                       111
+
+  CHAPTER VI.
+  THE NATURE AND STRUCTURE OF THE HEAVENS ACCORDING TO THE ANCIENTS  138
+
+  CHAPTER VII.
+  THE CELESTIAL HARMONY                                              161
+
+  CHAPTER VIII.
+  ASTRONOMICAL SYSTEMS                                               179
+
+  CHAPTER IX.
+  THE TERRESTRIAL WORLD OF THE ANCIENTS.--COSMOGRAPHY AND GEOGRAPHY  231
+
+  CHAPTER X.
+  COSMOGRAPHY AND GEOGRAPHY OF THE CHURCH                            258
+
+  CHAPTER XI.
+  LEGENDARY WORLDS OF THE MIDDLE AGES                                300
+
+  CHAPTER XII.
+  ECLIPSES AND COMETS                                                330
+
+  CHAPTER XIII.
+  THE GREATNESS AND THE FALL OF ASTROLOGY                            360
+
+  CHAPTER XIV.
+  TIME AND THE CALENDAR                                              387
+
+  CHAPTER XV.
+  THE END OF THE WORLD                                               418
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: AN ASTRONOMER AT WORK.]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+HISTORY OF THE HEAVENS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE FIRST BEGINNINGS OF ASTRONOMY.
+
+
+Astronomy is an ancient science; and though of late it has made a fresh
+start in new regions, and we are opening on the era of fresh and
+unlooked-for discoveries which will soon reveal our present ignorance,
+our advance upon primitive ideas has been so great that it is difficult
+for us to realize what they were without an attentive and not
+uninstructive study of them. No other science, not even geology, can
+compare with astronomy for the complete revolution which it has effected
+in popular notions, or for the change it has brought about in men's
+estimate of their place in creation. It is probable that there will
+always be men who believe that the whole universe was made for their
+benefit; but, however this may be, we have already learned from
+astronomy that our habitation is not that central spot men once deemed
+it, but only an ordinary planet circulating round an ordinary star, just
+as we are likely also to learn from biology, that we occupy the
+position, as animals, of an ordinary family in an ordinary class.
+
+That we may more perfectly realize this strange revolution of ideas, we
+must throw ourselves as far as possible into the feeling and spirit of
+our ancestors, when, without the knowledge we now possess, they
+contemplated, as they could not fail to do, the marvellous and
+awe-inspiring phenomena of the heavens by night. To them, for many an
+age, the sun and moon and stars, with all the planets, seemed absolutely
+to rise, to shine, and to set; the constellations to burst out by night
+in the east, and travel slowly and in silence to the west; the ocean
+waves to rise and fall and beat against the rock-bound shore as if
+endowed with life; and even in the infancy of the intellect they must
+have longed to pierce the secrets of this mysterious heavenly vault, and
+to know the nature of the starry firmament as it seemed to them, and
+the condition of the earth which appeared in the centre of these
+universal movements. The simplest hypothesis was for them the truth, and
+they believed that the sky was in reality a lofty and extended canopy
+bestudded with stars, and the earth a vast plain, the solid basis of the
+universe, on which dwelt man, sole creature that lifted his eyes and
+thoughts above. Two distinct regions thus appeared to compose the whole
+system--the upper one, or the air, in which were the moving stars, the
+lights of heaven, and the firmament over all; and the lower one, or
+earth and sea, adorned on the surface with the products of life, and
+below with the minerals, metals, and stones. For a long time the various
+theories of the universe, grotesque and changing as they might be, were
+but modifications of this one central idea, the earth below, the heavens
+above, and on this was based every religious system that was
+promulgated--the very phrases founded upon it remaining to this day for
+a testimony to the intimate relation thus manifested between the infant
+ideas in astronomy and theology. No wonder that early revolutions in the
+conceptions in one science were thought to militate against the other.
+It is only when the thoughts on both are enlarged that it is seen that
+their connection is not necessary, but accidental, or, at least,
+inevitable only in the infancy of both.
+
+It is scarcely possible to estimate fully the enormous change from
+these ideas representing the appearances to those which now represent
+the reality; or to picture to ourselves the total revolution in men's
+minds before they could transform the picture of a vast terrestrial
+surface, to which the sun and all the heavenly bodies were but
+accessories for various purposes, to one in which the earth is but a
+planet like Mars, moving in appearance among the stars, as it does, and
+rotating with a rapidity that brings a whole hemisphere of the heavens
+into view through the course of a single day and night. At first sight,
+what a loss of dignity! but, on closer thought, what a gain of grandeur!
+No longer some little neighbouring lights shine down upon us from a
+solid vault; but we find ourselves launched into the sea of infinity;
+with power to gaze into its almost immeasurable depths.
+
+To appreciate rightly our position, we have to plant ourselves, in
+imagination, in some spot removed from the surface of the earth, where
+we may be uninfluenced by her motion, and picture to ourselves what we
+should see. Were we placed in some spot far enough removed from the
+earth, we should find ourselves in eternal day; the sun would ever
+shine, for no great globe would interpose itself between it and our
+eyes; there would be no night there. Were we in the neighbourhood of the
+earth's orbit, and within it, most wonderful phenomena would present
+themselves. At one time the earth would appear but an ordinary planet,
+smaller than Venus, but, as time wore on, unmeasured by recurring days
+or changing seasons, it would gradually be seen to increase in size--now
+appearing like the moon at the full, and shining like her with a silver
+light. As it came nearer, and its magnitude increased, the features of
+the surface would be distinguished; the brighter sea and the darker
+shining continents, with the brilliant ice-caps at the poles; but,
+unlike what we see in the moon, these features would appear to move,
+and, one after another, every part of the earth would be visible. The
+actual time required for all to pass before us would be what we here
+call a day and night. And still, as it rotates, the earth passes nearer
+to us, assumes its largest apparent size, and so gradually decreasing
+again, becomes once more, after the interval we here call a year, an
+ordinary-looking star-like planet. To us, in these days, this
+description is easy of imagination; we find no difficulty in picturing
+it to ourselves; but, if we will think for a moment what such an idea
+would have been to the earliest observers of astronomy, we shall better
+appreciate the vast change that has taken place--how we are removed from
+them, as we may say, _toto coelo_.
+
+But not only as to the importance of the earth in the universe, but on
+other matters connected with astronomy, we perceive the immensity of the
+change in our ideas--in that of distance, for instance. This celestial
+vault of the ancients was near enough for things to pass from it to us;
+it was in close connection with the earth, supported by it, and
+therefore of less diameter; but now, when our distance from the sun is
+expressed by numbers that we may write, indeed, but must totally fail to
+adequately appreciate, and the distance from the _next_ nearest star is
+such, that with the velocity of light--a velocity we are accustomed to
+regard as instantaneous--we should only reach it after a three years'
+journey, we are reminded of the pathetic lines of Thomas Hood:
+
+  "I remember, I remember, the fir trees straight and high,
+  And how I thought their slender tops were close against the sky;
+  It was a childish fantasy, but now 'tis little joy,
+  To know I'm further off from heaven than when I was a boy."
+
+The astronomer's answer to the last line would be that as far as the
+material heaven goes, we are just as much in it as the stars or as any
+other member of the universe; we cannot, therefore, be far off or near
+to it.
+
+It is probable that we are even yet but little awake to true cosmical
+ideas in other respects;--as to velocity, for instance. We know indeed,
+of light and electricity and the motions of the earth, but revelations
+are now being made to us of motions of material substances in the sun
+with such velocities that in comparison with them any motions on the
+earth appear infinitesimally small. Our progress to our present notions,
+and appreciations of the truth of nature in the heavens, will thus
+occupy much of our thoughts; but we must also recount the history of the
+acquirement of those facts which have ultimately become the basis for
+our changes of idea.
+
+Our rustic forefathers, whatever their nation, were not so enamoured of
+the "wonders of science"--that their astronomy was greatly a collection
+of theories, though theories, and wild ones, they had; it was a more
+practical matter, and was believed too by them to be more practical than
+we now find reason to believe to be the case. They noticed the various
+seasons, and they marked the changes in the appearances of the heavens
+that accompanied them; they connected the two together, and conceived
+the latter to be the cause of the former, and so, with other apparently
+uncertain events. The celestial phenomena thus acquired a fictitious
+importance which rendered their study of primary necessity, but gave no
+occasion for a theory.
+
+That we may better appreciate the earliest observations on astronomy, it
+may be well to mention briefly what are the varying phenomena which may
+most easily be noticed. If we except the phases of the moon, which
+almost without observation would force their recognition on people who
+had no other than lunar light by night, and which must therefore, from
+the earliest periods of human history have divided time into lunar
+months; there are three different sets of phenomena which depend on the
+arrangement of our planetary system, and which were early observed.
+
+The first of these depends upon the earth's rotation on its axis, the
+result of which is that the stars appear to revolve with a uniform
+motion from east to west; the velocity increasing with the distance from
+the pole star, which remains nearly fixed. This circumstance is almost
+as easy of observation as the phases of the moon, and was used from the
+earliest ages to mark the passage of time during the night. The next
+arises from the motion of the earth in her orbit about the sun, by which
+it happens that the earth is in a different position with respect to the
+sun every night, and, therefore, a different set of stars are seen in
+his neighbourhood; these are setting with him, and therefore also a
+different set are just rising at sunset every evening. These changes,
+which would go through the cycle in a year, are, of course, less
+obvious, but of great importance as marking the approach of the various
+seasons during ages in which the hour of the sun's rising could not be
+noted by a clock. The last depends on the proper motions of the moon and
+planets about the earth and sun respectively, by reason of which those
+heavenly bodies occupy varying positions among the stars. Only a careful
+and continuous scrutiny of the heavens would detect these changes,
+except, perhaps, in the case of the moon, and but little of importance
+really depends on them; nevertheless, they were very early the subject
+of observation, as imagination lent them a false value, and in some
+cases because their connection with eclipses was perceived. The
+practical cultivation of astronomy amongst the earliest people had
+always reference to one or other of these three sets of appearances, and
+the various terms and signs that were invented were intended for the
+clearer exposition of the results of their observations on these points.
+
+In looking therefore into extreme antiquity we shall find in many
+instances our only guide to what their knowledge was is the way in which
+they expressed these results.
+
+We do not find, and perhaps we should scarcely expect to find, any one
+man or even one nation who laid the foundation of astronomy--for it was
+an equal necessity for all, and was probably antecedent to the practice
+of remembering men by their names. We cannot, either, conjecture the
+antiquity of ideas and observations met with among races who are
+themselves the only record of their past; and if we are to find any
+origins of the science, it is only amongst those nations which have been
+cultivators of arts by which their ancient doings are recorded.
+
+Amongst the earliest cultivators of astronomy we may refer to the
+Primitive Greeks, the Chinese, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, and the
+Aryans, and also to certain traditions met with amongst many savage as
+well as less barbarous races, the very universality of which proclaims
+as loudly as possible their extreme antiquity.
+
+Each of the four above-mentioned races have names with which are
+associated the beginnings of astronomy--Uranus and Atlas amongst the
+Greeks; Folic amongst the Chinese; Thaut or Mercury in Egypt; Zoroaster
+and Bel in Persia and Babylonia. Names such as these, if those of
+individuals, are not necessarily those of the earliest astronomers--but
+only the earliest that have come down to us. Indeed it is very far from
+certain whether these ancient celebrities have any real historical
+existence. The acts and labours of the earliest investigators are so
+wrapped in obscurity, there is such a mixture of fable with tradition,
+that we can have no reliance that any of them, or that others mentioned
+in ancient mythology, are not far more emblematical than personal. Some,
+such as Uranus, are certainly symbolical; but the very existence of the
+name handed down to us, if it prove nothing else, proves that the
+science was early cultivated amongst those who have preserved or
+invented them.
+
+If we attempt to name in years the date of the commencement--not of
+astronomy itself--for that probably in some form was coeval with the
+race of man itself, but of recorded observations, we are met with a new
+difficulty arising from the various ways in which they reckoned time.
+This was in every case by the occurrence of the phases of one or other
+of the above-mentioned phenomena; sometimes however they selected the
+apparent rotation of the sun in twenty-four hours, sometimes that of the
+moon in a month, sometimes the interval from one solstice to the next,
+and yet they apparently gave to each and all of these the same
+title--such as _annus_--obviously representing a cycle only, but
+without reference to its length. By these different methods of
+counting, hopeless confusion has often been introduced into chronology;
+and the moderns have in many instances unjustly accused the ancients of
+vanity and falsehood. Bailly attempted to reconcile all these various
+methods and consequent dates with each other, and to prove that
+practical astronomy commenced "about 1,500 years before the Deluge, or
+that it is about 7,000 years old;" but we shall see reason in the sequel
+for suspecting any such attempt, and shall endeavour to arrive at more
+reliable dates from independent evidence.
+
+Perhaps the remotest antiquity to which we can possibly mount is that of
+the Aryans, amongst whom the hymns of the _Rig Veda_ were composed. The
+short history of Hebrew and Greco-Roman civilization seems to be lost in
+comparison with this the earliest work of human imagination. When
+seeking for words to express their thoughts, these primitive men by the
+banks of the Oxus personified the phenomena of the heavens and earth,
+the storm, the wind, the rain, the stars and meteors. Here, of course,
+it is not practical but theoretical astronomy we find. We trace the
+first figuring of that primitive idea alluded to before--the heaven
+above, the earth below. Here, as we see, is the earth represented as an
+indefinite plane surface and passive being forming the foundation of
+the world; and above it the sky, a luminous and variable vault beneath
+which shines out the fertile and life-giving light. Thus to the earth
+they gave the name P'RTHOVI, "the wide expanse;" the blue and
+star-bespangled heavens they called VARUNA, "the vault;" and beneath it
+in the region of the clouds they enthroned the light DYAUS, _i.e._ "the
+luminous air."
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
+
+From hence, it would appear, or on this model, the early ideas of all
+peoples have been formed. Among the Greeks the name for heaven expresses
+the same idea of a hollow vault ([Greek: koilos], hollow, concave) and
+the earth is called [Greek: gê], or mother. Among the Latins the name
+_coelum_ has the same signification, while the earth _terra_ comes
+from the participle _tersa_ (the dry element) in contradistinction to
+_mare_ the wet.
+
+In this original Aryan notion, however, as represented by the figure, we
+have more than this, the origin of the names _Jupiter_ and _Deus_ comes
+out. For it is easy to trace the connection between _Dyaus_ (the
+luminiferous air) and the Greek word _Zeus_ from whence _Dios_, [Greek:
+_theos_], _Deus_, and the French word _Dieu_, and then by adding _pater_
+or father we get _Deuspater_, _Zeuspater_, Jupiter.
+
+These etymologies are not however matters beyond dispute, and there are
+at least two other modes of deriving the same words. Thus we are told
+the earliest name for the Deity was Jehovah, the word _Jehov_ meaning
+father of life; and that the Greeks translated this into _Dis_ or
+_Zeus_, a word having, according to this theory, the same sense, being
+derived from [Greek: zaô] to live. Of course there can be no question of
+the later word _Deus_ being the direct translation of _Dios_.
+
+A third theory is that there exists in one of the dialects which formed
+the basis of the old languages of Asia, a word _Yahouh_, a participle of
+the verb _nîh_, to exist, to be; which therefore signifies the
+self-existent, the principle of life, the origin of all motion, and this
+is supposed to be the allusion of Diodorus, who explaining the theology
+of the Greeks, says that the Egyptians according to Manetho, priest of
+Memphis, in giving names to the five elements have called the spirit or
+ether Youpiter in the _proper sense_ of the word, for the spirit is the
+source of life, the author of the vital principle in animals, and is
+hence regarded as the father or generator of all beings. The people of
+the Homeric ages thought the lightning-bearing Jupiter was the
+commencement, origin, end, and middle of all things, a single and
+universal power, governing the heavens, the earth, fire, water, day and
+night, and all things. Porphyry says that when the philosophers
+discoursed on the nature and parts of the Deity, they could not imagine
+any single figure that should represent all his attributes, though they
+presented him under the appearance of a man, who was _seated_ to
+represent his immovable essence; uncovered in his upper part, because
+the upper parts of the universe or region of the stars manifest most of
+his nature; but clothed below the loins, because he is more hidden in
+terrestrial things; and holding a sceptre in his left hand, because his
+heart is the ruler of all things. There are, besides, the etymologies
+which assert that Jupiter is derived from _juvare_ to help, meaning the
+assisting father; or again that he is _Dies pater_--the god of the
+day--in which case no doubt the sun would be alluded to.
+
+It appears then that the ancient Aryan scheme, though _possibly_
+supplying us with the origin of one of the widest spread of our words,
+is not universally allowed to do so. This origin, however, appears to
+derive support from the apparent occurrence of the original of another
+well-known ancient classical word in the same scheme, that is Varuna,
+obviously the same word as [Greek: Ouranos], and Uranus, signifying the
+heavens. Less clearly too perhaps we may trace other such words to the
+same source. Thus the Sun, which according to these primitive
+conceptions is the husband of the Earth, which it nourishes and makes
+fruitful, was called _Savitr_ and _Surya_, from which the passage to the
+Gothic _Sauil_ is within the limits of known etymological changes, and
+so comes the Lithuanian _Saull_, the Cymric _Haul_, the Greek _Heilos_,
+the Latin _Sol_, and the English _Solar_. So from their _Nakt_, the
+destructive, we get _Nux_, _Nacht_, _Night_. From _Glu_, the Shining,
+whence the participle _Glucina_, and so to _Lucina_, _Luena_, _Luna_,
+_Lune_.
+
+Turning from the ancient Aryans, whose astronomy we know only from poems
+and fables, and so learn but little of their actual advance in the
+science of observation, we come to the Babylonians, concerning whose
+astronomical acquirements we have lately been put in possession of
+valuable evidence by the tablets obtained by Mr. Smith from Kouyunjik,
+an account the contents of which has been given by Mr. Sayce (_Nature_,
+vol. xii. p. 489). As the knowledge thus obtained is more certain, being
+derived from their actual records, than any that we previously
+possessed, it will be well to give as full an account of it as we are
+able.
+
+The originators of Babylonian astronomy were not the Chaldæans, but
+another race from the mountains of Elam, who are generally called
+Acadians. Of the astronomy of this race we have no complete records, but
+can only judge of their progress by the words and names left by them to
+the science, as afterwards cultivated by the Semitic Babylonians. These
+last were a subsequent race, who entering the country from the East,
+conquered the original inhabitants about 2000 B.C., and borrowed their
+civilization, and with it their language in the arts and sciences. But
+even this latter race is one of considerable antiquity, and when we see,
+as we shortly shall, the great advances they had made in observations of
+the sun and moon, and consider the probable slowness of development in
+those early ages, we have some idea of the remoteness of the date at
+which astronomical science was there commenced. Our chief source of
+information is an extremely ancient work called The _Observations of
+Bell_, supposed to have been written before 1700 B.C., which was
+compiled for a certain King Saigou, of Agave in Babylonia. This work is
+in seventy books or parts, and is composed of numerous small earthen
+tablets having impressed upon them the cuneiform character in which
+they printed, and which we are now able to read. We generally date the
+art of printing from Caxton, in 1474, because it took the place of
+manuscript that had been previously in use in the West; but that method
+of writing, if in some respects an improvement on previous methods of
+recording ideas as more easily executed, was in others a retrogression
+as being less durable: while the manuscripts have perished the
+impressions on stone have remained to this day, and will no doubt last
+longer than even our printed books. These little tablets represented so
+many leaves, and in large libraries, such as that from which those known
+have been derived, they were numbered as our own are now, so that any
+particular one could be asked for by those who might wish to consult it.
+The great difficulty of interpreting these records, which are written in
+two different dialects, and deal often with very technical matters, may
+well be imagined. These difficulties however have been overcome, and a
+good approach to the knowledge of their contents has been made. The
+Chaldæans, as is well known, were much given to astronomy and many of
+their writings deal with this subject; but they did practical work as
+well, and did not indulge so much in theory as the Aryans. We shall have
+future occasion in this book to refer to their observations on various
+points, as they did not by any means confine themselves to the simplest
+matters; much, in fact, of that with which modern astronomy deals, the
+dates and duration of eclipses of the sun and moon, the accurate
+measurement of time, the existence of cycles in lunar and solar
+phenomena, was studied and recorded by them. We can make some approach
+to the probable dates of the invention of some part of their system, by
+means of the signs of the Zodiac, which were invented by them and which
+we will discuss more at length hereafter. We need only say at present
+that what is now the sign of spring, was not reckoned so with them, and
+that we can calculate how long ago it is that the sign they reckoned the
+spring sign was so.
+
+Semiramis also raised in the centre of Babylon a temple consecrated to
+Jupiter, whom the Babylonians called Bel. It was of an extraordinary
+height and served for an observatory. The whole edifice was constructed
+with great art in asphalte and brick. On its summit were placed the
+statues of Jupiter, Juno, and Rhea, covered with gold.
+
+The Egyptians have always been named as the earliest cultivators of
+astronomy by the Grecian writers, by whom the science has been handed
+down to us, and the Chaldæans have even been said to have borrowed from
+them. The testimony of such writers however is not to be received
+implicitly, but to be weighed with the knowledge we may now obtain, as
+we have noticed above with respect to the Babylonians, from the actual
+records they have left us, whether by actual records, or by words and
+customs remaining to the present day.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE I.--BABYLONIAN ASTRONOMERS.]
+
+Herodotus declares that the Egyptians had made observations for 11,340
+years and had seen the course of the sun change four times, and the
+ecliptic placed perpendicular to the equator. This is the style of
+statement on which opinions of the antiquity of Egyptian astronomy have
+been founded, and it is obviously unworthy of credit.
+
+Diodorus says that there is no country in which the positions and
+motions of the stars have been so accurately observed as in Egypt
+(_i.e._ to his knowledge). They have preserved, he says, for a great
+number of years registers in which their observations are recorded.
+Expositions are found in these registers of the motions of the planets,
+their revolutions and their stations, and, moreover, the relation which
+each bears to the birthdays of animals, and its good or evil influence.
+They often predicted the future with success. The earthquakes,
+inundations, the appearance of comets, and many other phenomena which it
+is impossible for the vulgar to know beforehand, were foreseen by them
+by means of the observations they had made over a long series of years.
+
+On the occasion of the French expedition to Egypt, a long passage was
+discovered leading from Karnak to Lucksor. This passage was adorned on
+each side of the way with a range of 1600 sphinxes with the body of a
+lion and the head of a ram. Now in Egyptian architecture, the ornaments
+are never the result of caprice or chance; on the contrary, all is done
+with intention, and what often appears at first sight strange, appears,
+after having been carefully examined and studied, to present allegories
+full of sense and reason, founded on a profound knowledge of natural
+phenomena, that the ornaments are intended to record. These sphinxes and
+rams of the passage were probably the emblems of the different signs of
+the Zodiac along the route of the sun. The date of the avenue is not
+known; but it would doubtless lead us to a high antiquity for the
+Egyptian observations.
+
+The like may be said of the great pyramid, which according to Piazzi
+Smyth was built about 2170 B.C. Certainly there are no carvings about it
+exhibiting any astronomical designs; but the exact way in which it is
+executed would seem to indicate that the builders had a very clear
+conception of the importance of the meridian line. It should, however,
+be stated that Piazzi Smyth does not consider it to have been built by
+the Egyptians for themselves; but under the command of some older race.
+
+There seem, however, to be indications in various festivals and
+observances, which are met with widely over the earth's surface, as will
+be indicated more in detail in the chapter on the Pleiades, that some
+astronomical observations, though of the rudest, were made by races
+anterior even to those whose history we partially possess; and that not
+merely because of its naturalness, but because of positive evidence, we
+must trace back astronomy to a source from whence Egyptians, Indians,
+and perhaps Babylonians themselves derived it.
+
+The Chinese astronomy is totally removed from these and stands on its
+own basis. With them it was a matter concerning the government, and
+stringent laws were enforced on the state astronomers. The advance,
+however, that they made would appear to be small; but if we are to
+believe their writers, they made observations nearly three thousand
+years before our era.
+
+Under the reign of Hoangti, Yuchi recorded that there was a large star
+near the poles of the heavens. By a method which we shall enlarge upon
+further on, it can be astronomically ascertained that about the epoch
+this observation was said to be made there was a star ([Greek: a]
+Draconis) so near the pole as to appear immovable, which is so far a
+confirmation of his statement. In 2169 the first of a series of eclipses
+was recorded by them; but the value of their astronomy seems to be
+doubtful when we learn that calculation proves that not one of them
+previous to the age of Ptolemy can be identified with the dates given.
+
+Amongst all nations except the Chinese, where it was political, and the
+Greeks, where it was purely speculative, astronomy has been intimately
+mixed with religious ideas, and we consequently find it to have taken
+considerable hold on the mind.
+
+Just as we have seen among the Indians that the basis of their
+astronomical ideas was the two-fold division into heaven and earth, so
+among other nations this duality has formed the basis of their
+religion. Two aspects of things have been noticed by men in the
+constitution of things--that which remains always, and that which is
+merely transitory, causes and effects. The heaven and the earth have
+presented the image of this to their minds--one being the eternal
+existence, the other the passing form. In heaven nothing seems to be
+born, increase, decrease, or die above the sphere of the moon. That
+alone showed the traces of alteration in its phases; while on the other
+hand there was an image of perpetuity in its proper substance, in its
+motion, and the invariable succession of the same phases.
+
+From another point of view, the heavens were regarded as the father, and
+the earth as the mother of all things. For the principle of fertility in
+the rains, the dew and the warmth, came from above; while the earth
+brought forth abundantly of the products of nature. Such is the idea of
+Plutarch, of Hesiod, and of Virgil. From hence have arisen the fictions
+which have formed the basis of theogony. Uranus is said to have espoused
+Ghe, or the heavens took the earth to wife, and from their marriage was
+born the god of time or Saturn.
+
+Another partly religious, and partly astronomical antagonism has been
+drawn between light and darkness, associated respectively with good and
+evil. In the days when artificial lights, beyond those of the flickering
+fire, were unknown, and with the setting of the sun all the world was
+enveloped in darkness and seemed for a time to be without life, or at
+least cut off entirely from man, it would seem that the sun and its
+light was the entire origin of life. Hence it naturally became the
+earliest divinity whose brilliant light leaping out of the bosom of
+chaos, had brought with it man and all the universe, as we see it
+represented in the theologies of Orpheus and of Moses; whence the god
+Bel of the Chaldeans, the Oromaza of the Persians, whom they invoke as
+the source of all that is good in nature, while they place the origin of
+all evil in darkness and its god Ahrinam. We find the glories of the sun
+celebrated by all the poets, and painted and represented by numerous
+emblems and different names by the artists and sculptors who have
+adorned the temples raised to nature or the great first cause.
+
+Among the Jews there are traditions of a very high antiquity for their
+astronomy. Josephus assures us that it was cultivated before the Mosaic
+Deluge. According to him it is to the public spirit and the labour of
+the antediluvians that we owe the science of astrology: "and since they
+had learnt from Adam that the world should perish by water and by fire,
+the fear that their science should be lost, made them erect two columns,
+one of brick the other of stone, on which they engraved the knowledge
+they had acquired, so that if a deluge should wash away the column of
+brick, the stone one might remain to preserve for posterity the memory
+of what they had written. The prescience was rewarded, and the column of
+stone is still to be seen in Syria." Whatever we may think of this
+statement it would certainly be interesting if we could find in Syria or
+anywhere else a monument that recorded the ancient astronomical
+observations of the Jews. Ricard and others believe that they were very
+far advanced in the science, and that we owe a great part of our present
+astronomy to them; but such a conjecture must remain without proof
+unless we could prove them anterior to the other nations, whom, we have
+seen, cultivated astronomy in very remote times.
+
+One observation seems peculiar to them, if indeed it be a veritable
+observation. Josephus says, "God prolonged the life of the patriarchs
+that preceded the deluge, both on account of their virtues, and to give
+them the opportunity of perfecting the sciences of geometry and
+astronomy which they had discovered; which they could not have done if
+they had not lived for 600 years, because it is only after the lapse of
+600 years that the _great year_ is accomplished."
+
+Now what is this great year or cycle of 600 years? M. Cassini, the
+director of the Observatory of Paris, has discussed it astronomically.
+He considers it as a testimony of the high antiquity of their astronomy.
+"This period," he says, "is one of the most remarkable that have been
+discovered; for, if we take the lunar month to be 29 days 12h. 44m. 3s.
+we find that 219,146-1/2 days make 7,421 lunar months, and that this
+number of days gives 600 solar years of 365 days 5h. 51m. 36s. If this
+year was in use before the deluge, it appears very probable it must be
+acknowledged that the patriarchs were already acquainted to a
+considerable degree of accuracy with the motions of the stars, for this
+lunar month agrees to a second almost with that which has been
+determined by modern astronomers."
+
+A very similar argument has been used by Prof. Piazzi Smyth to prove
+that the Great Pyramids were built by the descendants of Abraham near
+the time of Noah; namely, that measures of two different elements in the
+measurement of time or space when multiplied or divided produce a number
+which may be found to represent some proportion of the edifice, and
+hence to assume that the two numbers were known to the builders.
+
+We need scarcely point out that numbers have always been capable of
+great manipulation, and the mere fact of one number being so much
+greater than another, is no proof that _both_ were known, unless we knew
+that _one_ of them was known independently, or that they are intimately
+connected.
+
+In the case of Josephus' number the cycle during which the lunar months
+and solar years are commensurable has been long discussed and if the
+number had been 19 instead of 600, we should have had little doubt of
+its reference; yet 600 is a very simple number and might refer to many
+other cycles than the complicated one pointed out by M. Cassini. A
+similar case may be quoted with regard to the Indians, which, according
+to our temperament, may be either considered a proof that these
+reasonings are correct, or that they are easy to make. They say that
+there are two stars diametrically opposite which pass through the zodiac
+in 144 years; nothing can be made of this period, nor yet of another
+equally problematical one of 180 years; but if we multiply the two
+together we obtain 25,920, which is very nearly the length of the cycle
+for the precession of the equinoxes.
+
+In this review of the ancient ideas of different peoples, we have
+followed the most probable order in considering that the observation of
+nature came first, and the different parts of it were afterwards
+individualized and named. It is proper to add that according to some
+ancient authors--such as Diodorus Siculus--the process was considered to
+have been the other way. That Uranus was an actual individual, that
+Atlas and Saturn were his sons or descendants or followers, and that
+because Atlas was a great astronomer he was said to support the heavens,
+and that his seven daughters were real, and being very spiritual they
+were regarded as goddesses after death and placed in heaven under the
+name of the Pleiades.
+
+However, the universality of the ideas seems to forbid this
+interpretation, which is also in itself much less natural.
+
+These various opinions lead us to remark, in conclusion, that the
+fables of ancient mythological astronomy must be interpreted by means of
+various keys. Allegory is the first--the allegory employed by
+philosophers and poets who have spoken in figurative language. Their
+words taken in the letter are quite unnatural, but many of the fables
+are simply the description or explanation of physical facts.
+Hieroglyphics are another key. Having become obscure by the lapse of
+time they sometimes, however, present ideas different from those which
+they originally expressed. It is pretty certain that hieroglyphics have
+been the source of the men with dogs' heads, or feet of goats, &c.
+Fables also arise from the adoption of strange words whose sound is
+something like another word in the borrowing language connected with
+other ideas, and the connection between the two has to be made by
+fable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ASTRONOMY OF THE CELTS.
+
+
+The numerous stone monuments that are to be found scattered over this
+country, and over the neighbouring parts of Normandy, have given rise to
+many controversies as to their origin and use. By some they have been
+supposed to be mere sepulchral monuments erected in late times since the
+Roman occupation of Great Britain. Such an idea has little to rest upon,
+and we prefer to regard them, as they have always been regarded, as
+relics of the Druidical worship of the Celtic or Gaulish races that
+preceded us in this part of Europe.
+
+If we were to believe the accounts of ordinary historians, we might
+believe that the Druids were nothing more than a kind of savage race,
+hidden, like the fallow-deer in the recesses of their woods. Thought to
+be sanguinary, brutal, superstitious, we have learned nothing of them
+beyond their human sacrifices, their worship of the oak, their raised
+stones; without inquiring whether these characteristics which scandalize
+our tastes, are not simply the legacy of a primitive era, to which, by
+the side of the tattered religions of the old Paganism, Druidism
+remained faithful. Nevertheless the Druids were not without merit in the
+order of thought.
+
+For the Celts, as for all primitive people, astronomy and religion were
+intimately associated. They considered that the soul was eternal, and
+the stars were worlds successively inhabited by the spiritual emigrants.
+They considered that the stars were as much the abodes of human life as
+our own earth, and this image of the future life constituted their power
+and their grandeur. They repelled entirely the idea of the destruction
+of life, and preferred to see in the phenomena of death, a voyage to a
+region already peopled by friends.
+
+Under what form did Druidical science represent the universe? Their
+scientific contemplation of the heavens was at the same time a religious
+contemplation. It is therefore impossible to separate in our history
+their astronomical and theological heavens.
+
+In their theological astronomy, or astronomical theology, the Druids
+considered the totality of all living beings as divided into three
+circles. The first of these circles, the circle of immensity, _Ceugant_,
+corresponding to incommunicable, infinite attributes, belonged to God
+alone; it was properly the absolute, and none, save the ineffable
+being, had a right there. The second circle, that of blessedness,
+_Gwyn-fyd_, united in it the beings that have arrived at the superior
+degrees of existence; this was heaven. The third, the circle of voyages,
+_Abred_, comprised all the noviciate; it was there, at the bottom of the
+abysses, in the great oceans, as Taliesin says, that the first breath of
+man commenced. The object proposed to men's perseverance and courage was
+to attain to what the bards called the point of liberty, very probably
+the point at which, being suitably fortified against the assaults of the
+lower passions, they were not exposed to be troubled, against their
+wills, in their celestial aspirations; and when they arrived at such a
+point--so worthy of the ambition of every soul that would be its own
+master--they quitted the circle of Abred and entered that of Gwyn-fyd;
+the hour of their recompense had come.
+
+Demetrius, cited by Plutarch, relates that the Druids believed that
+these souls of the elect were so intimately connected with our circle
+that they could not emerge from it without disturbing its equilibrium.
+This writer states, that being in the suite of the Emperor Claudius, in
+some part of the British isles, he heard suddenly a terrible hurricane,
+and the priests, who alone inhabited these sacred islands, immediately
+explained the phenomenon, by telling him that a vacuum had been produced
+on the earth, by the departure of an important soul. "The great men," he
+said, "while they live are like torches whose light is always
+beneficent and never harms any one, but when they are extinguished their
+death generally occasions, as you have just seen, winds, storm, and
+derangements of the atmosphere."
+
+The palingenetic system of the Druids is complete in itself, and takes
+the being at his origin, and conducts him to the ultimate heaven. At the
+moment of his creation, as Henry Martyn says in his Commentary, the
+being has no conscience of the gifts that are latent in him. He is
+created in the lowest stage of life, in _Annwfn_, the shadowy abyss at
+the base of _Abred_. There, surrounded by nature, submitted to
+necessity, he rises obscurely through the successive degrees of
+inorganic matter, and then through the organic. His conscience at last
+awakes. He is man. "Three things are primarily contemporaneous--man,
+liberty, and light." Before man there was nothing in creation but fatal
+obedience to physical laws; with man commences the great battle between
+liberty and necessity, good and evil. The good and the evil present
+themselves to man in equilibrium, "and he can at his pleasure attach
+himself to one or the other of them."
+
+It might appear at first sight that it was carrying things too far to
+attribute to the Druids the knowledge, not indeed of the true system of
+the world, but the general idea on which it was constructed. But, on
+closer examination, this opinion seems to have some consistency. If it
+was from the Druids that Pythagoras derived the basis of his theology,
+why should it not be from them that he derived also that of his
+astronomy? Why, if there is no difficulty in seeing that the principle
+of the subordination of the earth might arise from the meditations of an
+isolated spirit, should there be any more difficulty in thinking that
+the principles of astronomy should take birth in the midst of a
+corporation of theologians embued with the same ideas as the
+philosophers on the circulation of life, and applied with continued
+diligence to the study of celestial phenomena. The Druid, not having to
+receive mythological errors, might be led by that circumstance to
+imagine in space other worlds similar to our own.
+
+Independently of its intrinsic value, this supposition rests also upon
+the testimony of historians. A singular statement made by Hecatæus with
+regard to the religious rites of Great Britain exhibits this in a
+striking manner. This historian relates that the moon, seen in this
+island, appears much larger than it does anywhere else, and that it is
+possible to distinguish mountains on its surface, such as there are on
+the earth. Now, how had the Druids made an observation of this kind? It
+is of not much consequence whether they had actually seen the lunar
+mountains or had only imagined them, the curious thing is that they were
+persuaded that that body was like the earth, and had mountains and
+other features similar to our own. Plutarch, in his treatise _De facie
+in orbe Lunæ_, tells us that, according to the Druids, and conformably
+to an idea which had long been held in science, the surface of the moon
+is furrowed with several Mediterraneans, which the Grecian philosophers
+compare to the Red and Caspian seas. It was also thought that immense
+abysses were seen, which were supposed to be in communication with the
+hemisphere that is turned away from the earth. Lastly, the dimensions of
+this sky-borne country were estimated; (ideas very different to those
+that were current in Greece): its size and its breadth, says the
+traveller depicted by the writer, are not at all such as the geometers
+say, but much larger.
+
+It is through the same author, who is in accordance in this respect with
+all the bards, that we know that this celestial earth was considered by
+the theologians of the West as the residence of happy souls. They rose
+and approached it in proportion as their preparation had been complete,
+but, in the agitation of the whirlwind, many reached the moon that it
+would not receive. "The moon repelled a great number, and rejected them
+by its fluctuations, at the moment they reached it; but those that had
+better success fixed themselves there for good; their soul is like the
+flame, which, raising itself in the ether of the moon, as fire raises
+itself on that of the earth receives force and solidity in the same way
+that red-hot iron does when plunged into the water."
+
+They thus traced an analogy between the moon and the earth, which they
+doubtless carried out to its full development, and made the moon an
+image of what they knew here, picturing there the lunar fields and
+brooks and breezes and perfumes. What a charm such a belief must have
+given to the heavens at night. The moon was the place and visible pledge
+of immortality. On this account it was placed in high position in their
+religion; the order of all the festivals was arranged after that which
+was dedicated to it; its presence was sought in all their ceremonies,
+and its rays were invoked. The Druids are always therefore represented
+as having the crescent in their hands.
+
+Astronomy and theology being so intimately connected in the spirit of
+the Druids, we can easily understand that the two studies were brought
+to the front together in their colleges. From certain points of view we
+may say that the Druids were nothing more than astronomers. This quality
+was not less striking to the ancients in them than in the Chaldæans. The
+observation of the stars was one of their official functions. Cæsar
+tells us, without entering more into particulars, that they taught many
+things about _the form and dimensions of the earth, the size and
+arrangements of the different parts of heaven, and the motions of the
+stars_, which includes the greater part of the essential problems of
+celestial geometry, which we see they had already proposed to
+themselves. We can see the same fact in the magnificent passage of
+Taliesin. "I will ask the bards," he says in his _Hymn of the World_,
+"and why will not the bards answer me? I will ask of them what sustains
+the earth, since having no support it does not fall? or if it falls
+which way does it go? But what can serve for its support? Is the world a
+great traveller? Although it moves without ceasing, it remains tranquil
+in its route; and how admirable is that route, seeing that the world
+moves not in any direction." This suffices to show that the ideas of the
+Druids on material phenomena were not at all inferior to their
+conceptions of the destiny of the soul, and that they had scientific
+views of quite another origin from the Alexandrian Greeks, the Latins,
+their disciples, or the middle ages. An anecdote of the eighth century
+furnishes another proof in favour of Druidical science. Every one knows
+that Virgilius, bishop of Salzburg, was accused of heresy by Boniface
+before the Pope Zacharias, because he had asserted that there were
+antipodes. Now Virgilius was educated in one of the learned monasteries
+of Ireland, which were fed by the Christian bards, who had preserved the
+scientific traditions of Druidism.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE II.--DRUIDICAL WORSHIP.]
+
+The fundamental alliance between the doctrine of the plurality of worlds
+and of the eternity of the soul is perhaps the most memorable character
+in the thoughts of this ancient race. The death upon earth was for them
+only a psychological and astronomical fact, not more grave than that
+which happened to the moon when it was eclipsed, nor the fall of the
+verdant clothing of the oak under the breath of the autumnal breeze. We
+see these conceptions and manners, at first sight so extraordinary,
+clothe themselves with a simple and natural aspect. The Druids were so
+convinced of the future life in the stars, that they used _to lend money
+to be repaid in the other world_. Such a custom must have made a
+profound impression on the minds of those who daily practised it.
+Pomponius Mela and Valerius Maximus both tell us of this custom. The
+latter says, "After having left Marseilles I found that ancient custom
+of the Gauls still in force, namely, of lending one another money to be
+paid back in the infernal regions, for they are persuaded that the souls
+of men are immortal."
+
+In passing to the other world they lost neither their personality, their
+memory, nor their friends; they there re-encountered the business, the
+laws, the magistrates of this world. They had capitals and everything
+the same as here. They gave one another rendezvous as emigrants might
+who were going to America. This superstition, so laudable as far as it
+had the effect of pressing on the minds of men the firm sentiment of
+immortality, led them to burn, along with the dead, all the objects
+which had been dear to them, or of which they thought they might still
+wish to make use. "The Gauls," says Pomponius Mela, "burn and bury with
+the dead that which had belonged to the living."
+
+They had another custom prompted by the same spirit, but far more
+touching. When any one bade farewell to the earth, each one charged him
+to take letters to his absent friends, who should receive him on his
+arrival and doubtless load him with questions as to things below. It is
+to Diodorus that we owe the preservation of the remembrance of this
+custom. "At their funerals," he says, "they place letters with the dead
+which are written to those already dead by their parents, so that they
+may be read by them." They followed the soul in thought in its passage
+to the other planets, and the survivors often regretted that they could
+not accomplish the voyage in their company; sometimes, indeed, they
+could not resist the temptation. "There are some," says Mela, "who burn
+themselves with their friends in order that they may continue to live
+together." They entertained another idea also, which led even to worse
+practices than this, namely, that death was a sort of recruiting that
+was commanded by the laws of the universe for the sustenance of the army
+of existences. In certain cases they would replace one death by another.
+Posidonius, who visited Gaul at an epoch when it had not been broken up,
+and who knew it far better than Cæsar, has left us some very curious
+information on this subject. If a man felt himself seriously warned by
+his disease that he must hold himself in readiness for departure, but
+who, nevertheless, had, for the moment, some important business on hand,
+or the needs of his family chained him to this life, or even that death
+was disagreeable to him; if no member of his family or his clients were
+willing to offer himself instead, he looked out for a substitute; such a
+one would soon arrive accompanied by a troop of friends, and stipulating
+for his price a certain sum of money, he distributed it himself as
+remembrances among his companions,--often even he would only ask for a
+barrel of wine. Then they would erect a stage, improvise a sort of
+festival, and finally, after the banquet was over, our hero would lie
+down on the shield, and driving a sword into his bosom, would take his
+departure for the other world.
+
+Such a custom, indeed, shows anything but what we should rightly call
+civilization, however admirable may have been their opinions; but it
+receives its only palliation from the fact that their indifference to
+death did not arise from their undervaluing life here, but that they had
+so firm a belief in the existence and the happiness of a life hereafter.
+
+That these beliefs were not separated from their astronomical ideas is
+seen from the fact that they peopled the firmament with the departed.
+The Milky Way was called the town of Gwyon (Coër or Ker Gwydion, Ker in
+Breton, Caer in Gaulish, Kohair in Gaelic); certain bardic legends gave
+to Gwyon as father a genius called Don, who resides in the constellation
+of Cassiopeia, and who figures as "the king of the fairies" in the
+popular myths of Ireland. The empyrean is thus divided between various
+heavenly spirits. Arthur had for residence the Great Bear, called by
+the Druids "Arthur's Chariot."
+
+We are not, however, entirely limited to tradition and the reports of
+former travellers for our information as to the astronomy of the Druids,
+but we have also at our service numerous coins belonging to the old
+Gauls, who were of one family with those who cultivated Druidism in our
+island, which have been discovered buried in the soil of France. The
+importance which was given to astronomy in that race becomes immediately
+evident upon the discovery of the fact that these coins are marked with
+figures having reference to the heavenly bodies, in other words are
+astronomical coins. If we examine, from a general point of view, a large
+collection of Gaulish medals such as that preserved in the National
+Museum of Paris, we observe that among the essential symbols that occupy
+the fields are types of the Horse, the Bull, the Boar, the Eagle, the
+Lion, the Horseman, and the Bear. We remark next a great number of
+signs, most often astronomical, ordinarily accessory, but occasionally
+the chief, such as the sign [symbol: rotated mirrored S], globules
+surrounded by concentric circles, stars of five, six, or eight points,
+radiated and flaming bodies, crescents, triangles, wheels with four
+spokes, the sign [symbol: infinity], the lunar crescent, the zigzag, &c.
+Lastly, we remark other accessory types represented by images of real
+objects or imaginary figures, such as the Lyre, the Diota, the Serpent,
+the Hatchet, the Human Eye, the Sword, the Bough, the Lamp, the Jewel,
+the Bird, the Arrow, the Ear of Corn, the Fishes, &c.
+
+On a great number of medals, on the stateres of Vercingetorix, on the
+reverses of the coins of several epochs, we recognize principally the
+sign of the Waterer, which appears to symbolize for one part of
+antiquity the knowledge of the heavenly sphere. On the Gaulish types
+this sign (an amphora with two handles) bears the name of Diota, and
+represents amongst the Druids as amongst the Magi the sciences of
+astronomy and astrology.
+
+Some of these coins are represented in the woodcut below.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
+
+The first of these represents the course of the Sun-Horse reaching the
+Tropic of Cancer (summer solstice), and brought back to the Tropic of
+Capricorn (winter solstice).
+
+On the second is seen the symbol of the year between the south
+(represented by the sun [symbol: sun]) and the north (represented by the
+Northern Bear). In the third the calendar (or course of the year)
+between the sun [symbol: sun] and the moon [symbol: moon]. Time the Sun,
+and the Bear are visible on the fourth. The diurnal motion of the
+heavens is represented on the fifth; and lastly, on the sixth, appears
+the Watering-pot, the Sun-Horse, and the sign of the course of the
+heavenly bodies.
+
+On other groups of money the presence of the zodiac may be made out.
+
+These medals would seem to show that some part of the astronomical
+knowledge of the Druids was not invented by themselves, but borrowed
+from the Chaldeans or others who in other lands invented them in
+previous ages, and from whom they may have possibly derived them from
+the Phenicians.
+
+We may certainly expect, however, from these pieces of money, if found
+in sufficient number and carefully studied, to discover a good many
+positive facts now wanting to us, of the religion, sciences, manners,
+language, commercial relation, &c. which belonged to the Celtic
+civilization. It was far from being so barbarous as is ordinarily
+supposed, and we shall do more justice to it when we know it better.
+
+M. Fillioux, the curator of the museum of Guéret, who has studied these
+coins with care, after having sought for a long time for a clear and
+concise method of determining exactly the symbolic and religious
+character of the Gaulish money, has been able to give the following
+general statements.
+
+The coins have for their ordinary field the heavens.
+
+On the right side they present almost universally the ideal heads of
+gods or goddesses, or in default of these, the symbols that are
+representative of them.
+
+On the reverse for the most part, they reproduce, either by direct types
+or by emblems artfully combined, the principal celestial bodies, the
+divers aspects of the constellations, and probably the laws, which,
+according to their ancient science, presided over their course; in a
+smaller proportion they denote the religious myths which form the base
+of the national belief of the Gauls. As we have seen above, for them the
+present life was but a transitory state of the soul, only a prodrome of
+the future life, which should develop itself in heaven and the
+astronomical worlds with which it is filled.
+
+Borrowed from an elevated spiritualism, incessantly tending towards the
+celestial worlds, these ideas were singularly appropriate to a nation at
+once warlike and commercial. These circumstances explain the existence
+of these strange types, founded at the same time on those of other
+nations, and on the symbolism which was the soul of the Druidical
+religion. To this religious caste, indeed, we must give the merit of
+this ingenious and original conception, of turning the reverses of the
+coins into regular charts of the heavens. Nothing indeed could be better
+calculated to inspire the people with respect and confidence than these
+mysterious and learned symbols, representing the phenomena of the
+heavens.
+
+Not making use of writing to teach their dogmas, which they wished to
+maintain as part of the mysteries of their caste, the Druids availed
+themselves of this method of placing on the money that celestial
+symbolism of which they alone possessed the key.
+
+The religious ideas founded on astronomical observations were not
+peculiar to, or originated by, the Druids, any more than their zodiac.
+There seems reason to believe that they had come down from a remote
+antiquity, and been widely spread over many nations, as we shall see in
+the chapter on the Pleiades; but we can certainly trace them to the
+East, where they first prevailed in Persia and Egypt, and were
+afterwards brought to Greece, where they disappeared before the new
+creations of anthropomorphism, though they were not forgotten in the
+days of the poet Anacreon, who says, "Do not represent for me, around
+this vase" (a vase he had ordered of the worker in silver), "either the
+heavenly bodies, or the chariot, or the melancholy Orion; I have nothing
+to do with the Pleiades or the Herdsman." He only wanted mythological
+subjects which were more to his taste.
+
+The characters which are made use of in these astronomical moneys of
+the Druids would appear to have a more ancient origin than we are able
+to trace directly, since they are most of them found on the arms and
+implements of the bronze age. Some of them, such as the concentric
+pointed circles, the crescent with a globule or a star, the line in
+zigzag, were used in Egypt; where they served to mark the sun, the
+month, the year, the fluid element; and they appear to have had among
+the Druids the same signification. The other signs, such as the
+[symbol: wave], and its multiple combinations, the centred circles,
+grouped in one or two, the little rings, the alphabetical characters
+recalling the form of a constellation, the wheel with rays, the
+radiating discs, &c. are all represented on the bronze arms found in the
+Celtic, Germanic, Breton, and Scandinavian lands. From this remote
+period, which was strongly impressed with the Oriental genius, we must
+date the origin of the Celtic symbolism. It has been supposed, and not
+without reason, that this epoch, besides being contemporaneous with the
+Phenician establishments on the borders of the ocean, was an age of
+civilization and progress in Gaul, and that the ideas of the Druids
+became modified at the same time that they acquired just notions in
+astronomy and in the art of casting metals. At a far later period, the
+Druidic theocracy having, with religious care, preserved the symbols of
+its ancient traditions, had them stamped on the coins which they caused
+to be struck.
+
+This remarkable fact is shown in an incontestable manner in the rougher
+attempts in Gaulish money, and this same state of things was perpetuated
+even into the epoch of the high arts, since we find on the imitation
+statues of Macedonia the old Celtic symbols associated with emblems of a
+Grecian origin.
+
+In Italy a different result was arrived at, because the warlike element
+of the nobles soon predominated over the religious. Nevertheless the
+most ancient Roman coins, those which are known to us under the name of
+Consular, have not escaped the common law which seems to have presided,
+among all nations, over the origin of money. The two commonest types,
+one in bronze of _Janus Bifrons_ with the _palus_; the other in silver,
+the _Dioscures_ with their stars, have an eminently astronomical aspect.
+
+The comparison between the Gaulish and Roman coins may be followed in a
+series of analogies which are very remarkable from an astronomical point
+of view. To cite only a few examples, we may observe on a large number
+of pennies of different families, the impression of Auriga "the
+Coachman" conducting a quadriga; or the sun under another form (with his
+head radiated and drawn in profile); or Diana with her lunar attributes;
+or the five planets well characterised; for example, Venus by a double
+star, as that of the morning or of the evening; or the constellations of
+the Dog, Hercules, the Kid, the Lyre, and almost all those of the
+zodiac and of the circumpolar region and the seven-kine (septemtriones).
+In later times, under the Cæsars, in the villa of Borghèse, is found a
+calendar whose arrangements very much recall the ancient Gaulish coin.
+The head of the twelve great gods and the twelve signs of the zodiac are
+represented, and the drawing of the constellations establishes a
+correspondence between their rising and the position of the sun in the
+zodiac. It may therefore be affirmed that in the coinage and works of
+art in Italy and Greece, the characteristic influence of astronomical
+worship is found as strongly as among the Druids. Nor have the Western
+nations alone had the curious habit of impressing their astronomical
+ideas upon their coinage, for in China and Japan coins of a similar
+description have been met with, containing on their reverse all the
+signs of the zodiac admitted by them.
+
+In conclusion, we may say, that it was cosmography, that constructed the
+dogmas of the Druidical religion, which was, in its essential elements,
+the same as that of the old Oriental theocracies. The outward ceremonies
+were addressed to the sun, the moon, the stars, and other visible
+phenomena; but, above nature, there was the great generating and moving
+principle, which the Celts placed, at a later period perhaps, among the
+attributes of their supreme deities.
+
+[Illustration: THE NORTHERN CONSTELLATIONS.
+
+The Lyre--Cassiopeia--The Little Bear--The Dragon--Andromeda--The Great
+Bear--Capella--Algol, or Medusa's Head.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+ORIGIN OF THE CONSTELLATIONS.
+
+
+When we look upon the multitude of heavenly bodies with which the
+celestial vault is strewed, our attention is naturally arrested by
+certain groupings of brilliant stars, apparently associated together on
+account of their great proximity; and also by certain remarkable single
+stars which have excessive brilliancy or are completely isolated from
+the rest. These natural groups seem to have some obscure connection with
+or dependence on each other. They have always been noticed, even by the
+most savage races. The languages of several such races contain different
+names for the same identical groups, and these names, mostly borrowed
+from terrestrial beings, give an imaginary life to the solitude and
+silence of the skies. A celestial globe, as we know, presents us with a
+singular menagerie, rich in curious monsters placed in inconceivable
+positions. How these constellations, as they are called, were first
+invented, and by whom, is an interesting question which by the aid of
+comparative philology we must endeavour now to answer.
+
+Among these constellations there are twelve which have a more than
+ordinary importance, and to which more attention has always been paid.
+They are those through which the sun appears to pass in his annual
+journey round the ecliptic, entering one region each month. At least,
+this is what they were when first invented. They were called the
+zodiacal constellations or signs of the zodiac--the name being derived
+from their being mostly named after living beasts. In our own days the
+zodiacal constellations are no longer the signs of the zodiac. When they
+were arranged the sun entered each one on a certain date. He now is no
+longer at the same point in the heavens at that date, nevertheless he is
+still said to enter the same sign of the zodiac--which therefore no
+longer coincides with the zodiacal constellation it was named from--but
+merely stands for a certain twelfth part of the ecliptic, which varies
+from time to time. It will be of course of great interest to discover
+the origin of these particular constellations, the date of their
+invention, &c.; and we shall hope to do so after having discussed the
+origin of those seen in the Northern hemisphere which may be more
+familiar even than those.
+
+We have represented in the frontispiece the two halves of the Grecian
+celestial sphere--the Northern and the Southern, with the various
+constellations they contain. This sphere was not invented by the Greeks,
+but was received by them from more ancient peoples, and corrected and
+augmented. It was used by Hipparchus two thousand years ago; and Ptolemy
+has given us a description of it. It contained 48 constellations, of
+which 21 belonged to the Northern, 15 to the Southern hemisphere, and
+the remaining twelve were those of the zodiac, situated along the
+ecliptic.
+
+The constellations reckoned by Ptolemy contained altogether 1,026 stars,
+whose relative positions were determined by Hipparchus; with reference
+to which accomplishment Pliny says, "Hipparchus, with a height of
+audacity too great even for a god, has ventured to transmit to posterity
+the number of the stars!"
+
+Ptolemy's catalogue contains:--
+
+      For the northern constellations          361 stars
+      For the zodiacal                         350   "
+      For the southern                         318   "
+          or                                 -----
+      For all the 48 constellations          1,029   "
+  or, since 3 of these are named twice       1,026   "
+
+Of course this number is not to be supposed to represent the whole of
+the stars visible even to the naked eye; there are twice as many in the
+Northern hemisphere alone, while there are about 5,000 in the whole sky.
+The number visible in a telescope completely dwarfs this, so that more
+than 300,000 are now catalogued; while the number visible in a large
+telescope may be reckoned at not less than 77 millions. The principal
+northern constellations named by Ptolemy are contained in the following
+list, with the stars of the first magnitude that occur in each:--
+
+The Great Bear, or David's Chariot, near the centre.
+
+The Little Bear, with the Pole Star at the end of the tail.
+
+The Dragon.
+
+Cepheus, situated to the right of the Pole.
+
+The Herdsman, or the Keeper of the Bear, with the star Arcturus.
+
+The Northern Crown to the right.
+
+Hercules, or the Man who Kneels.
+
+The Lyre, or Falling Vulture, with the beautiful star Vega.
+
+The Swan, or Bird, or Cross.
+
+Cassiopeia, or the Chair, or the Throne.
+
+Perseus.
+
+The Carter, or the Charioteer, with Capella Ophiuchus, or Serpentarius,
+or Esculapius.
+
+The Serpent.
+
+The Bow and Arrow, or the Dart.
+
+The Eagle, or the Flying Vulture, with Altaïr.
+
+The Dolphin.
+
+The Little Horse, or the Bust of the Horse.
+
+Pegasus, or the Winged Horse, or the Great Cross.
+
+Andromeda, or the Woman with the Girdle.
+
+The Northern Triangle, or the Delta.
+
+The fifteen constellations on the south of the ecliptic were:--
+
+The Whale.
+
+Orion, with the beautiful stars Rigel and Betelgeuse.
+
+The River Endanus, or the River Orion, with the brilliant Achernar.
+
+The Hare.
+
+The Great Dog, with the magnificent Sirius.
+
+The Little Dog, or the Dog which runs before, with Procyon.
+
+The ship Argo, with its fine Alpha (Canopus) and Eta.
+
+The Female Hydra, or the Water Snake.
+
+The Cup, or the Urn, or the Vase.
+
+The Raven.
+
+The Altar, or the Perfuming Pot.
+
+The Centaur, whose star Alpha is the nearest to the earth.
+
+The Wolf, or the Centaur's Lance, or the Panther, or the Beast.
+
+The Southern Crown, or the Wand of Mercury, or Uraniscus.
+
+The Southern Fish, with Fomalhaut.
+
+The twelve zodiacal constellations, which are of more importance than
+the rest, are generally named in the order in which the sun passes
+through them in its passage along the ecliptic, and both Latins and
+English have endeavoured to impress their names on the vulgar by
+embodying them in verses. The poet Ausonius thus catalogues them:--
+
+  "Sunt: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo,
+  Libraque, Scorpius, Arcitenens, Caper, Amphora, Pisces."
+
+and the English effusion is as follows:--
+
+  "The Ram, the Bull, the Heavenly Twins,
+  And next the Crab the Lion shines,
+      The Virgin and the Scales.
+  The Scorpion, Archer, and He Goat,
+  The Man that holds the watering-pot,
+      And Fish with glittering scales."
+
+These twelve have hieroglyphics assigned to them, by which they are
+referred to in calendars and astronomical works, some of the marks being
+easily traced to their origin. Thus [symbol: aries] refers to the horns
+of the Ram; [symbol: taurus] to the head of the Bull; [symbol: scorpion]
+to the joints and tail-sting of the Scorpion; [symbol: saggitarius] is
+very clearly connected with an archer; [symbol: capricorn] is formed by
+the junction of the first two letters [Greek: t] and [Greek: r] in
+[Greek: tragos], the Sea-goat, or Capricorn; [symbol: libra] for the
+Balance, is suggestive of its shape; [symbol: aquarius] refers to the
+water in the Watering-pot; and perhaps [symbol: pisces] to the Two
+Fishes; [symbol: gemini] for Twins may denote two sides alike; [symbol:
+cancer] for the Crab, has something of its side-walking appearance;
+while [symbol: leo] for the Lion, and [symbol: virgo] for the Virgin,
+seem to have no reference that is traceable.
+
+These constellations contain the following stars of the first
+magnitude--Aldebaran, Antares, and Spica.
+
+To these constellations admitted by the Greeks should be added the Locks
+of Berenice, although it is not named by Ptolemy. It was invented indeed
+by the astronomer Conon. The story is that Berenice was the spouse and
+the sister of Ptolemy Euergetes, and that she made a vow to cut off her
+locks and devote them to Venus if her husband returned victorious; to
+console the king the astronomer placed her locks among the stars. If
+this is a true account Arago must be mistaken in asserting that the
+constellation was created by Tycho Brahe in 1603. The one he did add to
+the former ones was that of Antinöus, by collecting into one figure some
+unappropriated stars near the Eagle. At about the same time J. Bayer,
+from the information of Vespuccius and the sailors, added twelve to the
+southern constellations of Ptolemy; among which may be mentioned the
+Peacock, the Toucan, the Phoenix, the Crane, the Fly, the Chameleon,
+the Bird of Paradise, the Southern Triangle, and the Indian.
+
+Augustus Royer, in 1679, formed five new groups, among which we may name
+the Great Cloud, the Fleur-de-Lis, and the Southern Cross.
+
+Hevelius, in 1690, added 16; the most important being the Giraffe, the
+Unicorn, the Little Lion, the Lynx, the Little Triangle.
+
+Among these newer-named constellations none is more interesting than the
+Southern Cross, which is by some considered as the most brilliant of all
+that are known. Some account of it, possibly from the Arabs, seems to
+have reached Dante, who evidently refers to it, before it had been named
+by Royer, in a celebrated passage in his "Purgatory." Some have thought
+that his reference to such stars was only accidental, and that he really
+referred only to the four cardinal virtues of theology, chiefly on
+account of the difficulty of knowing how he could have heard of them;
+but as the Arabs had establishments along the entire coast of Africa,
+there is no difficulty in understanding how the information might reach
+Italy.
+
+Americus Vespuccius, who in his third voyage refers to these verses of
+Dante, does not mention the name of the Southern Cross. He simply says
+that the four stars form a rhomboidal figure. As voyages round the Cape
+multiplied, however, the constellation became rapidly more celebrated,
+and it is mentioned as forming a brilliant cross by the Florentine
+Andrea Corsali, in 1517, and a little later by Pigafetta, in 1520.
+
+All these constellations have not been considered sufficient, and many
+subsequent additions have been made. Thus Lacaille, in 1752, created
+fourteen new ones, mostly characterized by modern names--as the
+Sculptor's Studio, the Chemical Furnace, the Clock, the Compass, the
+Telescope, the Microscope, and others.
+
+Lemonnier, in 1766, added the Reindeer, the Solitaire, and the Indian
+Bird, and Lalande the Harvestman. Poczobut, in 1777, added one more,
+and P. Hell another. Finally, in the charts drawn by Bode, eight more
+appear, among which the Aerostat, and the Electrical and Printing
+Machines.
+
+We thus arrive at a total of 108 constellations. To which we may add
+that the following groups are generally recognized. The Head of Medusa,
+near Perseus; the Pleiades, on the back, and the Hyades on the forehead
+of the Bull; the Club of Hercules; the Shield of Orion, sometimes called
+the Rake; the Three Kings; the Staff of S. James; the Sword of Orion;
+the Two Asses in the Crab, having between them the Star Cluster, called
+the Stall, or the Manger; and the Kids, near Capella, in the
+constellation of the Coachman.
+
+This brings the list of the constellations to 117, which is the total
+number now admitted.
+
+A curious episode with respect to these star arrangements may here be
+mentioned.
+
+About the eighth century Bede and certain other theologians and
+astronomers wished to depose the Olympian gods. They proposed,
+therefore, to change the names and arrangements of the constellations;
+they put S. Peter in the place of the Ram; S. Andrew instead of the
+Bull; and so on. In more recent calendars David, Solomon, the Magi, and
+other New and Old Testament characters were placed in the heavens
+instead of the former constellations; but these changes of name were not
+generally adopted.
+
+As an example of these celestial spheres we figure a portion of one
+named _Coeli stellati Christiani hemisphericum prius_. We here see the
+Great Bear replaced by the Barque of S. Peter, the Little Bear by S.
+Michael, the Dragon by the Innocents, the Coachman by S. Jerome, Perseus
+by S. Paul, Cassiopeia by the Magdalene, Andromache by S. Sepulchre, and
+the Triangle by S. Peter's mitre; while for the zodiac were substituted
+the Twelve Apostles.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
+
+In the seventeenth century a proposal was made by Weigel, a professor
+in the University of Jena, to form a series of heraldic constellations,
+and to use for the zodiac the arms of the twelve most illustrious
+families in Europe; but these attempts at change have been in vain, the
+old names are still kept.
+
+Having now explained the origin in modern times of 69 out of the 117
+constellations, there remain the 48 which were acknowledged by the
+Greeks, whose origin is involved in more obscurity.
+
+One of the first to be noticed and named, as it is now the most easily
+recognized and most widely known, is the _Great Bear_, which attracts
+all the more attention that it is one of those that never sets, being at
+a less distance from the pole than the latter is from the horizon.
+
+Every one knows the seven brilliant stars that form this constellation.
+The four in the rectangle and the three in a curved line at once call to
+mind the form of a chariot, especially one of antique build. It is this
+resemblance, no doubt, that has obtained for the constellation the name
+of "the Chariot" that it bears among many people. Among the ancient
+Gauls it was "Arthur's Chariot." In France it is "David's Chariot," and
+in England it goes by the name of "King Charles' Wain," and by that of
+the "Plough." The latter name was in vogue, too, among the Latins
+(_Plaustrum_), and the three stars were three oxen, from whence it would
+appear that they extended the idea to all the seven stars, and at last
+called them the _seven_ oxen, _septem-triones_, from whence the name
+sometimes used for the north--septentrional. The Greeks also called it
+the Chariot ([Greek: Hamaxa]), and the same word seems to have stood
+sometimes for a plough. It certainly has some resemblance to this
+instrument.
+
+If we take the seven stars as representing the characteristic points of
+a chariot, the four stars of the quadrilateral will represent the four
+wheels, and the three others will represent the three horses. Above the
+centre of the three horses any one with clear sight may perceive a small
+star of the fifth or sixth magnitude, called the Cavalier. Each of these
+several stars is indicated, as is usual with all the constellations, by
+a Greek letter, the largest being denoted by the first letter. Thus the
+4 stars in the quadrilateral are [Greek: a], [Greek: b], [Greek: g],
+[Greek: d], and the 3 tail stars [Greek: e], [Greek: x], [Greek: ê]. The
+Arabs give to each star its special name, which in this case are as
+follows:--Dubhé and Mérak are the stars at the back; Phegda and Megrez
+those of the front; Alioth, Mizat, and Ackïar the other three, while the
+little one over Mizat is Alcor. Another name for it is Saidak, or the
+Tester, the being able to see it being a mark of clear vision.
+
+There is some little interest in the Great Bear on account of the
+possibility of its being used as a kind of celestial time-keeper, and
+its easy recognition makes it all the more available. The line through
+[Greek: a] and [Greek: b] passes almost exactly through the pole. Now
+this line revolves of course with the constellation round the pole in 24
+hours; in every such interval being once, vertical above the pole, and
+once vertical below, taking the intermediate positions to right and left
+between these times. The instant at which this line is vertical over the
+pole is not the same on any two consecutive nights, since the stars
+advance each day 4 minutes on the sun. On the 21st of March the superior
+passage takes place at 5 minutes to 11 at night; on the following night
+four minutes earlier, or at 9 minutes to 11. In three months the
+culmination takes place 6 hours earlier, or at 5 minutes to 5. In six
+months, _i.e._ on Sept. 22, it culminates at 10.55 in the morning, being
+vertically below the pole at the same hour in the evening. The following
+woodcut exhibits the positions of the Great Bear at the various hours of
+September 4th. It is plain from this that, knowing the day of the month,
+the hour of the night may be told by observing what angle the line
+joining [Greek: a] and [Greek: b] of this constellation makes with the
+vertical.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 4.]
+
+We have used the name _Great Bear_, by which the constellation is best
+known. It is one of the oldest names also, being derived from the
+Greeks, who called it Arctos megale ([Greek: Arktos megalê]), whence the
+name Arctic; and singularly enough the Iroquois, when America was
+discovered, called it Okouari, their name for a bear. The explanation of
+this name is certainly not to be found in the resemblance of the
+constellation to the animal. The three stars are indeed in the tail, but
+the four are in the middle of the back; and even if we take in the
+smaller stars that stand in the feet and head, no ingenuity can make it
+in this or any other way resemble a bear. It would appear, as Aristotle
+observes, that the name is derived from the fact, that of all known
+animals the bear was thought to be the only one that dared to venture
+into the frozen regions of the north and tempt the solitude and cold.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 5.]
+
+Other origins of the name, and other names, have been suggested, of
+which we may mention a few. For example, "Ursa" is said to be derived
+from _versus_, because the constellation is seen to _turn_ about the
+pole. It has been called the Screw ([Greek: Elikê]), or Helix, which has
+plainly reference to its turning. Another name is Callisto, in reference
+to its beauty; and lastly, among the Arabs the Great and Little Bears
+were known as the Great and Little Coffins in reference to their slow
+and solemn motion. These names referred to the four stars of each
+constellation, the other three being the mourners following the bearers.
+The Christian Arabs made it into the grave of Lazarus and the three
+weepers, Mary, Martha, and their maid.
+
+Next as to the Little Bear. This constellation has evidently received
+its name from the similarity of its form to that of the Great Bear. In
+fact, it is composed of seven stars arranged in the same way, only in an
+inverse order. If we follow the line from [Greek: b] to [Greek: a] of
+the Great Bear to a distance of five times as great as that between
+these stars we reach the brightest star of the Little Bear, called the
+Pole Star. All the names of the one constellation have been applied to
+the other, only at a later date.
+
+The new constellations were added one by one to the celestial sphere by
+the Greeks before they arranged certain of them as parts of the zodiac.
+The successive introduction of the constellations is proved completely
+by a long passage of Strabo, which has been often misunderstood. "It is
+wrong," he says, "to accuse Homer of ignorance because he speaks only of
+one of the two Celestial Bears. The second was probably not formed at
+that time. The Phenicians were the first to form them and to use them
+for navigation. They came later to the Greeks."
+
+[Illustration: THE CONSTELLATIONS FROM THE SEA-SHORE.
+
+The Swan--The Lyre--Hercules--The Crown--The Herdsman--The Eagle--The
+Serpent--The Balance--The Scorpion--Sagittarius.]
+
+All the commentators on Homer, Hygin and Diogenes Laertes, attribute to
+Thales the introduction of this constellation. Pseudo-Eratosthenes
+called the Little Bear [Greek: Phoinikê], to indicate that it was a
+guide to the Phenicians. A century later, about the seventeenth
+Olympiad, Cleostrates of Tenedos enriched the sphere with the Archer
+([Greek: Toxotês], Sagittarius) and the Ram ([Greek: Krios], Aries), and
+about the same time the zodiac was introduced into the Grecian sphere.
+
+With regard to the Little Bear there is another passage of Strabo which
+it will be interesting to quote. He says--"The position of the people
+under the parallel of Cinnamomophore, _i.e._ 3,000 stadia south of Meroe
+and 8,800 stadia north of the equator, represents about the middle of
+the interval between the equator and the tropic, which passes by Syene,
+which is 5,000 stadia north of Meroe. These same people are the first
+for whom the Little Bear is comprised entirely in the Arctic circle and
+remains always visible; the most southern star of the constellation, the
+brilliant one that ends the tail being placed on the circumference of
+the Arctic circle, so as just to touch the horizon." The remarkable
+thing in this passage is that it refers to an epoch anterior to Strabo,
+when the star [Greek: a] of the Little Bear, which now appears almost
+immovable, owing to its extreme proximity to the pole, was then more to
+the south than the other stars of the constellation, and moved in the
+Arctic circle so as to touch the horizon of places of certain latitudes,
+and to set for latitudes nearer the equator.
+
+In those days it was not the _Pole_ Star--if that word has any relation
+to [Greek: poleô], I turn--for the heavens did not turn about it then as
+they do now.
+
+The Grecian geographer speaks in this passage of a period when the most
+brilliant star in the neighbourhood of the pole was [Greek: a] of the
+Dragon. This was more than three thousand years ago. At that time the
+Little Bear was nearer to the pole than what we now call the Polar Star,
+for this latter was "the most southern star in the constellation." If we
+could alight upon documents dating back fourteen thousand years, we
+should find the star Vega ([Greek: a] Lyra) referred to as occupying the
+pole of the world, although it now is at a distance of 51 degrees from
+it, the whole cycle of changes occupying a period of about twenty-six
+thousand years.
+
+Before leaving these two constellations we may notice the origin of the
+names according to Plutarch. He would have it that the names are derived
+from the use that they were put to in navigation. He says that the
+Phenicians called that constellation that guided them in their route the
+_Dobebe_, or _Doube_, that is, the speaking constellation, and that this
+same word happens to mean also in that language a bear; and so the name
+was confounded. Certainly there is still a word _dubbeh_ in Arabic
+having this signification.
+
+Next as to the Herdsman. The name of its characteristic star and of
+itself, Arcturus ([Greek: Arktos], bear; [Greek: Ouros], guardian), is
+explained without difficulty by its position near the Bears. There are
+six small stars of the third magnitude in the constellation round its
+chief one--three of its stars forming an equilateral triangle. Arcturus
+is in the continuation of the curved line through the three tail stars
+of the Great Bear. The constellation has also been called Atlas, from
+its nearness to the pole--as if it held up the heavens, as the fable
+goes.
+
+Beyond this triangle, in the direction of the line continued straight
+from the Great Bear, is the Northern Crown, whose form immediately
+suggests its name. Among the stars that compose it one, of the second
+magnitude, is called the Pearl of the Crown. It was in this point of the
+heavens that a temporary star appeared in May, 1866, and disappeared
+again in the course of a few weeks.
+
+Among the circumpolar constellations we must now speak of Cassiopeia, or
+the Chair--or Throne--which is situated on the opposite side of the Pole
+from the Great Bear; and which is easily found by joining its star
+[Greek: d] to the Pole and continuing it. The Chair is composed
+principally of five stars, of the third magnitude, arranged in the form
+of an M. A smaller star of the fourth magnitude completes the square
+formed by the three [Greek: b], [Greek: a], and [Greek: g]. The figure
+thus formed has a fair resemblance to a chair or throne, [Greek: d] and
+[Greek: e] forming the back; and hence the justification for its popular
+name. The other name Cassiopeia has its connection and meaning unknown.
+
+We may suitably remark in this place, with Arago, that no precise
+drawing of the ancient constellations has come down to us. We only know
+their forms by written descriptions, and these often very short and
+meagre. A verbal description can never take the place of a drawing,
+especially if it is a complex figure, so that there is a certain amount
+of doubt as to the true form, position, and arrangement of the figures
+of men, beasts, and inanimate objects which composed the star-groups of
+the Grecian astronomers--so that unexpected difficulties attend the
+attempt to reproduce them on our modern spheres. Add to this that
+alterations have been avowedly introduced by the ancient astronomers
+themselves, among others by Ptolemy, especially in those given by
+Hipparchus. Ptolemy says he determined to make these changes because it
+was necessary to give a better proportion to the figures, and to adapt
+them better to the real positions of the stars. Thus in the
+constellation of the Virgin, as drawn by Hipparchus, certain stars
+corresponded to the shoulders; but Ptolemy placed them in the sides, so
+as to make the figure a more beautiful one. The result is that modern
+designers give scope to their imagination rather than consult the
+descriptions of the Greeks. _Cassiopeia_, _Cepheus_, _Andromeda_, and
+_Perseus_ holding in his hand the _Head of Medusa_, appear to have been
+established at the same epoch, no doubt subsequently to the Great Bear.
+They form one family, placed together in one part of the heavens, and
+associated in one drama; the ardent Perseus delivering the unfortunate
+Andromeda, daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia. We can never be sure,
+however, whether the constellations suggested the fable, or the fable
+the constellations: the former may only mean that Perseus, rising before
+Andromeda, seems to deliver it from the Night and from the constellation
+of the Whale. The Head of Medusa, a celebrated woman, that Perseus cut
+off and holds in his hand, is said by Volney to be only the head of the
+constellation Virgo, which passes beneath the horizon precisely as the
+Perseus rises, and the serpents which surround it are Ophiucus and the
+polar Dragon, which then occupies the zenith.
+
+Either way, we have no account of the origin of the _names_, and it is
+possible that we may have to seek it, if ever we find it, from other
+sources--for it would appear that similar names were used for the same
+constellations by the Indians. This seems inevitably proved by what is
+related by Wilford (_Asiatic Researches_, III.) of his conversation with
+his pundit, an astronomer, on the names of the Indian constellations.
+"Asking him," he says, "to show me in the heavens the constellation of
+Antarmada, he immediately pointed to Andromeda, though I had not given
+him any information about it beforehand. He afterwards brought me a very
+rare and curious work in Sanscrit, which contained a chapter devoted to
+_Upanacchatras_, or extra-zodiacal constellations, with drawings of
+_Capuja_ (Cepheus), and of _Casyapi_ (Cassiopeia) seated and holding a
+lotus flower in her hand, of _Antarmada_ charmed with the fish beside
+her, and last of _Parasiea_ (Perseus) who, according to the explanation
+of the book, held the head of a monster which he had slain in combat;
+blood was dropping from it, and for hair it had snakes." As the stars
+composing a constellation have often very little connection with the
+figure they are supposed to form, when we find the same set of stars
+called by the same name by two different nations, as was the case, for
+instance, in some of the Indian names of constellations among the
+Americans, it is a proof that one of the nations copied it from the
+other, or that both have copied from a common source. So in the case
+before us, we cannot think these similar names have arisen
+independently, but must conclude that the Grecian was borrowed from the
+Indian.
+
+Another well-known constellation in this neighbourhood, forming an
+isosceles triangle with Arcturus and the Pole Star, is the Lyre. Lucian
+of Samosatus says that the Greeks gave this name to the constellation to
+do honour to the Lyre of Orpheus. Another possible explanation is this.
+The word for lyre in Greek [Greek: chelys] and in Latin (_testudo_)
+means also a tortoise. Now at the time when this name was imposed the
+chief star in the Lyre may have been very near to the pole of the
+heavens and therefore have had a very slow motion, and hence it might
+have been named the tortoise, and this in Greek would easily be
+interpreted into lyre instead. Indeed this double meaning of the word
+seems certainly to have given rise to the fable of Mercury having
+constructed a lyre out of the back of a tortoise. Circling round the
+pole of the ecliptic, and formed by a sinuous line of stars passing
+round from the Great Bear to the Lyre, is the Dragon, which owes its
+name to its form. Its importance is derived from its relation to the
+ecliptic, the pole of which is determined by reference to the stars of
+the first coil of the body. The centre of the zodiacal circle is a very
+important point, that circle being traced on the most ancient spheres,
+and probably being noticed even before the pole of the heavens.
+
+Closely associated with the Dragon both in mythology and in the
+celestial sphere is Hercules. He is always drawn kneeling; in fact, the
+constellation is rather a man in a kneeling posture than any particular
+man. The poets called it Engonasis with reference to this, which is too
+melancholy or lowly a position than would agree well with the valiant
+hero of mythology. There is a story related by Æschylus about the stones
+in the Champ des Cailloux, between Marseilles and the embouchure of the
+Rhône, to the effect that Hercules, being amongst the Ligurians, found
+it necessary to fight with them; but he had no more missiles to throw;
+when Jupiter, touched by the danger of his son, sent a rain of round
+stones, with which Hercules repulsed his enemies. The Engonasis is thus
+considered by some to represent him bending down to pick up the stones.
+Posidonius remarks that it was a pity Jupiter did not rain the stones on
+the Ligurians at once, without giving Hercules the trouble to pick them
+up.
+
+Ophiucus, which comes close by, simply means the man that holds the
+serpent [Greek: ophi-ouchos].
+
+It is obviously impossible to know the origins of all the names, as
+those we now use are only the surviving ones of several that from time
+to time have been applied to the various constellations according to
+their temporary association with the local legends. The prominent ones
+are favoured with quite a crowd of names. We need only cite a few.
+Hercules, for instance, has been called [Greek: Okalzôn Korynêtês],
+Engonasis, Ingeniculus, Nessus, Thamyris, Desanes, Maceris, Almannus,
+Al-chete, &c. The Swan has the names of [Greek: Kyknos], [Greek: Iktin],
+[Greek: Ornis], Olar, Helenæ genitor, Ales Jovis, Ledæus, Milvus,
+Gallina, The Cross, while the Coachman has been [Greek: Ippilatês],
+[Greek: Elastippos], [Greek: Airôêlatês], [Greek: Êniochos], Auriga,
+Acator, Hemochus, Erichthonus, Mamsek, Alánat, Athaiot, Alatod, &c. With
+respect to the Coachman, in some old maps he is drawn with a whip in his
+left hand turned towards the chariot, and is called the charioteer. No
+doubt its proximity to the former constellation has acquired for it its
+name. The last we need mention, as of any celebrity, is that of Orion,
+which is situated on the equator, which runs exactly through its midst.
+Regel forms its left foot, and the Hare serves for a footstool to the
+right foot of the hero. Three magnificent stars in the centre of the
+quadrilateral, which lie in one straight line are called the Rake, or
+the Three Kings, or the Staff of Jacob, or the Belt. These names have
+an obvious origin; but the meaning of Orion itself is more doubtful. In
+the Grecian sphere it is written [Greek: Ôriôn], which also means a kind
+of bird. The allied word [Greek: ôros] has very numerous meanings, the
+only one of which that could be conjectured to be connected with the
+constellations is a "guardian." The word [Greek: horion], on the
+contrary, the diminutive of [Greek: hôros], means a limit, and has been
+assigned to Jupiter; and in this case may have reference to the
+constellation being situated on the confines of the two hemispheres. In
+mythology Orion was an intrepid hunter of enormous size. He was the same
+personage as Orus, Arion, the Minotaur, and Nimrod, and afterwards
+became Saturn. Orion is called _Tsan_ in Chinese, which signifies three,
+and corresponds to the three kings.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 6.]
+
+The Asiatics used not to trace the images of their constellations, but
+simply joined the component stars by straight lines, and placed at the
+side the hieroglyphic characters that represented the object they wished
+to name. Thus joining by five lines the principal stars in Orion, they
+placed at the side the hieroglyphics representing a man and a sword,
+from whence the Greeks derived the figure they afterwards drew of a
+giant armed with a sword.
+
+We must include in this series that brightest of all stars, Sirius. It
+forms part of the constellation of the Great Dog, and lies to the south
+of Orion near the extreme limit of our vision into the Southern
+hemisphere in our latitudes. This star seems to have been intimately
+connected with Egypt, and to have derived its name--as well as the name
+of the otherwise unimportant constellation it forms part of--from that
+country, and in this way:--
+
+The overflowing of the Nile was always preceded by an Etesian wind,
+which, blowing from north to south about the time of the passage of the
+sun beneath the stars of the Crab, drove the mists to the south, and
+accumulated them over the country whence the Nile takes its source,
+causing abundant rains, and hence the flood. The greatest importance
+attached to the foretelling the time of this event, so that people might
+be ready with their provisions and their places of security. The moon
+was no use for this purpose, but the stars were, for the inundation
+commenced when the sun was in the stars of the Lion. At this time the
+stars of the Crab just appeared in the morning, but with them, at some
+distance from the ecliptic, the bright star Sirius also rose. The
+morning rising of this star was a sure precursor of the inundation. It
+seemed to them to be the warning star, by whose first appearance they
+were to be ready to move to safer spots, and thus acted for each family
+the part of a faithful dog. Whence they gave it the name of the Dog, or
+Monitor, in Egyptian _Anubis_, in Phenician _Hannobeach_, and it is
+still the Dog-Star--_Caniculus_, and its rising commences our
+_dog-days_. The intimate connection between the rising of this star and
+the rising of the Nile led people to call it also the Nile star, or
+simply the Nile; in Egyptian and Hebrew, _Sihor_; in Greek, [Greek:
+Sothis]; in Latin, _Sirius_.
+
+In the same way the Egyptians and others characterised the different
+days of the year by the stars which first appeared in the evening--as we
+shall see more particularly with reference to the Pleiades--and in this
+way certain stars came to be associated in their calendar with
+variations of temperature and operations of agriculture. They soon took
+for the cause what was originally but the sign, and thus they came to
+talk of moist stars, whose rising brought rain, and arid stars, which
+brought drought. Some made certain plants to grow, and others had
+influence over animals.
+
+In the case of Egypt, no other so great event could occur as that which
+the Dog-Star foretold, and its appearance was consequently made the
+commencement of the year. Instead, therefore, of painting it as a simple
+star, in which case it would be indistinguishable from others, they gave
+it shape according to its function and name. When they wished to signify
+that it opened the year, it was represented as a porter bearing keys, or
+else they gave it two heads, one of an old man, to represent the passing
+year, the other of a younger, to denote the succeeding year. When they
+would represent it as giving warning of the inundation they painted it
+as a dog. To illustrate what they were to do when it appeared, Anubis
+had in his arms a stew-pot, wings to his feet, a large feather under his
+arm, and two reptiles behind him, a tortoise and a duck.
+
+There is also in the celestial sphere a constellation called the Little
+Dog and Procyon; the latter name has an obvious meaning, as appearing
+_before_ the Dog-Star.
+
+We cannot follow any farther the various constellations of the northern
+sphere, nor of the southern. The zodiacal constellations we must
+reserve for the present, while we conclude by referring to some of the
+changes in form and position that some of the above-mentioned have
+undergone in the course of their various representations.
+
+These changes are sometimes very curious, as, for example, in a coloured
+chart, printed at Paris in 1650, we have the Charioteer drawn in the
+costume of Adam, with his knees on the Milky Way, and turning his back
+to the public; the she-goat appears to be climbing over his neck, and
+two little she-goats seem to be running towards their mother. Cassiopeia
+is more like King Solomon than a woman. Compare this with the _Phenomena
+of Aratus_, published 1559, where Cassiopeia is represented sitting on
+an oak chair with a ducal back, holding the holy palm in her left hand,
+while the Coachman, "Erichthon," is in the costume of a minion of Henry
+the Third of France. Now compare the Cassiopeia of the Greeks with that
+drawn in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or the Coachman of the
+same periods, and we can easily see the fancies of the painters have
+been one of the most fertile sources of change. They seem, too, to have
+had the fancy in the middle ages to draw them all hideous and turning
+their backs. Compare, for instance, the two pictures of Andromeda and
+Hercules, as given below, where those on one side are as heavy and gross
+as the others are artistic and pretty. Unfortunately for the truth of
+Andromeda's beauty, as depicted in these designs, she was supposed to
+be a negress, being the daughter of the Ethiopians, Cepheus and
+Cassiopeia. Not one of the drawings indicates this; indeed they all take
+after their local beauties.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 7.]
+
+In Flamsteed's chart, as drawn above, the Coachman is a female; and
+instead of the she-goat being on the back, she holds it in her arms. No
+one, indeed, from any of the figures of this constellation would ever
+dream it was intended to represent a coachman.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 8.]
+
+One more fundamental cause of changes has been the confusion of names
+derived by one nation from another, these having sometimes followed
+their signification, but at others being translated phonetically. Thus
+the Latins, in deriving names from the Greek [Greek: Arktos], have
+partly translated it by Ursa, and partly have copied it in the form
+Arcticus. So also with reference to the three stars in the head of the
+Bull, called by the Greeks Hyades. The Romans thought it was derived
+from [Greek: hyes], sows, so they called them _suculæ_, or little sows;
+whereas the original name was derived from [Greek: hyein], to rain, and
+signified stars whose appearance indicated the approach of the rainy
+season.
+
+More curious still is the transformation of the Pearl of the Northern
+Crown (Margarita Coronæ) in a saint--S. Marguerite.
+
+The names may have had many origins whose signification is lost, owing
+to their being misunderstood. Thus figurative language may have been
+interpreted as real, as when a conjunction is called a marriage; a
+disappearance, death; and a reappearance, a resurrection; and then
+stories must be invented to fit these words; or the stars that have in
+one country given notice of certain events lose the meaning of their
+names when these are used elsewhere; as when a boat painted near the
+stars that accompany an inundation, becomes the ship Argo; or when, to
+represent the wind, the bird's wing is drawn; or those stars that mark a
+season are associated with the bird of passage, the insect or the animal
+that appears at that time: such as these would soon lose their original
+signification.
+
+The celestial sphere, therefore, as we now possess it, is not simply a
+collection of unmeaning names, associated with a group of stars in no
+way connected with them, which have been imposed at various epochs by
+capricious imagination, but in most instances, if not in all, they
+embody a history, which, if we could trace it, would probably lead us to
+astronomical facts, indicating the where and the when of their first
+introduction; and the story of their changes, so far as we can trace it,
+gives us some clue to the mental characteristics or astronomical
+progress of the people who introduced the alterations.
+
+We shall find, indeed, in a subsequent chapter, that many of our
+conclusions as to the birth and growth of astronomy are derived from
+considerations connected with the various constellations, more
+especially those of the zodiac.
+
+With regard to the date when and the country where the constellations of
+the sphere were invented, we will here give what evidence we possess,
+independent of the origin of the zodiac.
+
+In the first place it seems capable of certain proof that they were not
+invented by the Greeks, from whom we have received them, but adopted
+from an older source, and it is possible to give limits to the date of
+introduction among them.
+
+Newton, who attributes its introduction to Musæus, a contemporary of
+Chiron, remarks, that it must have been settled _after_ the expedition
+of the Argonauts, and _before_ the destruction of Troy; because the
+Greeks gave to the constellation names that were derived from their
+history and fables, and devoted several to celebrate the memory of the
+famous adventurers known as the Argonauts, and they would certainly have
+dedicated some to the heroes of Troy, if the siege of that place had
+happened at the time. We remark that at this time astronomy was in too
+infant a state in Greece for them to have fixed with so much accuracy
+the position of the stars, and that we have in this a proof they must
+have borrowed their knowledge from older cultivators of the science.
+
+The various statements we meet with about the invention of the sphere
+may be equally well interpreted of its introduction only into Greece.
+Such, for instance, as that Eudoxus first constructed it in the
+thirteenth or fourteenth century B.C., or that by Clement of Alexandria,
+that Chiron was the originator.
+
+The oldest direct account of the names of the constellations and their
+component stars is that of Hesiod, who cites by name in his _Works and
+Days_ the Pleiades, Arcturus, Orion, and Sirius. He lived, according to
+Herodotus, about 884 years before Christ.
+
+The knowledge of all the constellations did not reach the Greeks at the
+same time, as we have seen from the omission by Homer of any mention of
+the Little Bear, when if he had known it, he could hardly have failed to
+speak of it. For in his description of the shield of Achilles, he
+mentions the Pleiades, the Hyades, Orion and the Bear, "which alone does
+not bathe in the Ocean." He could never have said this last if he had
+known of the Dragon and Little Bear.
+
+We may then safely conclude that the Greeks received the idea of the
+constellations from some older source, probably the Chaldeans. They
+received it doubtless as a sphere, with figured, but nameless
+constellations; and the Greeks by slight changes adapted them to
+represent the various real or imaginary heroes of their history. It
+would be a gracious task, for their countrymen would glory in having
+their great men established in the heavens. When they saw a ship
+represented, what more suitable than to name it the ship Argo? The Swan
+must be Jupiter transformed, the Lyre is that of Orpheus, the Eagle is
+that which carried away Ganymede, and so on.
+
+This would be no more than what other nations have done, as, for
+example, the Chinese, who made greater changes still, unless we consider
+theirs to have had an entirely independent origin.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 9.]
+
+That the celestial sphere was a conception known to others than the
+Greeks is easily proved. The Arabians, for instance, certainly did not
+borrow it from them; yet they have the same things represented. Above is
+a figure of a portion of an Arabian sphere drawn in the eleventh
+century, where we get represented plainly enough the Great and Little
+Bears, the Dragon, Cassiopeia, Andromeda, Perseus, with the Triple Head
+of Medusa; the Triangle, one of the Fishes, Auriga, the Ram, the Bull
+obscurely, and the Twins.
+
+There is also the famous so-called zodiac of Denderah, brought from
+Egypt to Paris. This in reality contains more constellations than those
+of the zodiac. Most of the northern ones can be traced, with certain
+modifications. Its construction is supposed to belong to the eighth
+century B.C. Most conspicuous on it is the Lion, in a kind of barque,
+recalling the shape of the Hydra. Below it is the calf Isis, with
+Sirius, or the Dog-Star, on the forehead; above it is the Crab, to the
+right the Twins, over these along instrument, the Plough, and above that
+a small animal, the Little Bear, and so we may go on:--all the zodiacal
+constellations, especially the Balance, the Scorpion, and the Fishes
+being very clear. This sphere is indeed of later date than that supposed
+for the Grecian, but it certainly appears to be independent. The remains
+we possess of older spheres are more particularly connected with the
+zodiac, and will be discussed hereafter.
+
+From what people the Greeks received the celestial sphere, is a question
+on which more than one opinion has been formed. One is that it was
+originated in the tropical latitudes of Egypt. The other, that it came
+from the Chaldeans, and a third that it came from more temperate
+latitudes further to the east. The arguments for the last of these are
+as follow:
+
+There is an empty space of about 90°, formed by the last constellations
+of the sphere, towards the south pole, that is by the Centaur, the
+Altar, the Archer, the Southern Fish, the Whale, and the Ship. Now in a
+systematic plan, if the author were situated near the equator there
+would be no vacant space left in this way, for in this case the southern
+stars, attracting as much attention as the northern, would be inevitably
+inserted in the system of constellations which would be extended to the
+horizon on all sides. But a country of sufficiently high latitude to be
+unable to see at any time the stars about the southern pole must be
+north both of Egypt and Chaldea.
+
+This empty space remained unfilled until the discovery of the Cape of
+Good Hope, except that the star Canopus was included in the
+constellation Argo, and the river Eridan had an arbitrary extension
+given to it, instead of terminating in latitude 40°.
+
+Another less cogent argument is derived from the interpretation of the
+fable of the Phoenix. This is supposed to represent the course of the
+sun, which commences its growth at the time of its death. A similar
+fable is found among the Swedes. Now a tropical nation would find the
+difference of days too little to lead it to invent such a fable to
+represent it. It must needs have arisen where the days of winter were
+very much shorter than those of summer.
+
+The Book of Zoroaster, in which some of the earliest notices of
+astronomy are recorded, states that the length of a summer day is twice
+as long as that of winter. This fixes the latitude in which that book
+must have been composed, and makes it 49°. Whence it follows, that to
+such a place must we look for the origin of these spheres, and not to
+Egypt or Chaldea.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE III.--CHALDEAN ASTRONOMERS.]
+
+Diodorus Siculus speaks of a nation in that part of the world, whom he
+calls Hyperboreans, who had a tradition that their country is the
+nearest to the moon, on which they discovered mountains like those on
+the earth, and that Apollo comes there once every nineteen years. This
+period being that of the metonic cycle of the moon, shows that if this
+could have really been discovered by them, they must have had a long
+acquaintance with astronomy.
+
+The Babylonian tablets lead us to the belief that astronomy, and with it
+the sphere, and the zodiac were introduced by a nation coming from the
+East, from the mountains of Elam, called the Accadians, before 3000
+B.C., and these may have been the nation to whom the whole is due.
+
+On the other hand, the arguments for the Egyptians, or Chaldeans being
+the originators depend solely on the tradition handed down by many, that
+one or other are the oldest people in the world, with the oldest
+civilization, and they have long cultivated astronomy. More precise
+information, however, seems to render these traditions, to say the
+least, doubtful, and certainly incapable of overthrowing the arguments
+adduced above.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE ZODIAC.
+
+
+The zodiac, as already stated, is the course in the heavens apparently
+pursued by the sun in his annual journey through the stars. Let us
+consider for a moment, however, the series of observations and
+reflections that must have been necessary to trace this zone as
+representing such a course.
+
+First, the diurnal motion of the whole heavens from east to west must
+have been noticed during the night, and the fact that certain stars
+never set, but turn in a circle round a fixed point. What becomes then,
+the next question would be, of those stars that do descend beneath the
+horizon, since they rise in the same relative positions as those in
+which they set. They could not be thought to be destroyed, but must
+complete the part of the circle that is invisible _beneath the earth_.
+The possibility of any stars finding a path beneath the earth must have
+led inevitably to the conception of the earth as a body suspended in the
+centre with nothing to support it. But leaving this alone, it would
+also be concluded that the sun went with the stars, and was in a certain
+position among them, even when both they and it were invisible. The next
+observations necessary would be that the zodiacal constellations visible
+during the nights of winter were not the same as those seen in summer,
+that such and such a group of stars passed the meridian at midnight at a
+certain time, and that six months afterwards the group exactly opposite
+in the heavens passed at the same hour. Now since at midnight the sun
+will be exactly opposite the meridian, if it continues uniformly on its
+course, it will be among that group of stars that is opposite the group
+that culminates at midnight, and so the sign of the zodiac the sun
+occupies would be determined.
+
+This method would be checked by comparisons made in the morning and
+evening with the constellations visible nearest to the sun at its rising
+and setting.
+
+The difficulty and indirectness of these observations would make it
+probable that originally the zodiac would be determined rather by the
+path of the moon, which follows nearly the same path as the sun, and
+which could be observed at the same time as, and actually associated
+with, the constellations. Now the moon is found each night so far to the
+east of its position on the previous night that it accomplishes the
+whole circumference in twenty-seven days eight hours. The two nearest
+whole number of days have generally been reckoned, some taking
+twenty-eight, and others twenty-seven. The zodiac, or, as the Chinese
+called it, the Yellow Way, was thus divided into twenty-eight parts,
+which were called _Nakshatras_ (mansions, or hotels), because the moon
+remains in each of them for a period of twenty-four hours. These
+mansions were named after the brightest stars in each, though sometimes
+they went a long way off to fix upon a characteristic star, as in the
+sixteenth Indian constellation, _Vichaca_, which was named after the
+Northern Crown, in latitude 40°. This arose from the brightness of the
+moon extinguishing the light of those that lie nearest to it.
+
+This method of dividing the zodiac was very widely spread, and was
+common to almost all ancient nations. The Chinese have twenty-eight
+constellations, but the word _siou_ does not mean a group of stars, but
+simply a mansion or hotel. In the Coptic and ancient Egyptian the word
+for constellation has the same meaning. They also had twenty-eight, and
+the same number is found among the Arabians, Persians, and Indians.
+Among the Chaldeans, or Accadians, we find no sign of the number
+twenty-eight. The ecliptic or "Yoke of the Sky," with them, as we see in
+the newly-discovered tablets, was divided into twelve divisions as now,
+and the only connection that can be imagined between this and the
+twenty-eight is the opinion of M. Biot, who thinks that the Chinese had
+originally only twenty-four mansions, four more being added by Chenkung
+(B.C. 1100), and that they corresponded with the twenty-four stars,
+twelve to the north and twelve to the south, that marked the twelve
+signs of the zodiac among the Chaldeans. But under this supposition the
+twenty-eight has no reference to the moon, whereas we have every reason
+to believe that it has.
+
+The Siamese only reckoned twenty-seven, and occasionally inserted an
+extra one, called _Abigitten_, or intercalary moon. They made use,
+moreover, of the constellations to tell the hour of the night by their
+position in the heavens, and their method of doing this appears to have
+involved their having twenty-eight constellations. The names of the
+twenty-eight divisions among the Arabs were derived from parts of the
+larger constellations that made the twelve signs, the first being the
+horns, and the second the belly, of the Ram.
+
+The twenty-eight divisions among the Persians, of which we may notice
+that the second was formed by the Pleiades, and called _Pervis_, soon
+gave way to the twelve, the names of which, recorded in the works of
+Zoroaster, and therefore not less ancient than he, were not quite the
+same as those now used. They were the Lamb, the Bull, the Twins, the
+Crab, the Lion, the Ear of Corn, the Balance, the Scorpion, the Bow, the
+Sea-Goat, the Watering-pot, and the Fishes.
+
+Nor were the Chinese continually bound to the number twenty-eight. They,
+too, had a zodiac for the sun as well as the moon, as may be seen on
+some very curious pieces of money, of which those figured below are
+specimens.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 10.]
+
+On some of these the various constellations of the Northern hemisphere
+are engraved, especially the Great Bear--under innumerable
+disguises--and on others the twelve signs of the zodiac. These are very
+different, however, from the Grecian set--they are the Mouse, the Bull,
+the Tiger, the Hare, the Dragon, the Serpent, the Horse, the Ram, the
+Monkey, the Cock, the Dog, and the Pig. The Japanese series were the
+same. The Mongolians had a series of zodiacal coins struck in the reign
+of Jehanjir Shah (1014). He had pieces of gold stamped, representing the
+sun in the constellation of the Lion; and some years afterwards other
+coins were made, with one side having the impress of the particular sign
+in which the sun happened to be when the coin was struck. In this way a
+series is preserved having all the twelve signs. Tavernier tells the
+story that one of the wives of the Sultan, wishing to immortalise
+herself, asked Jehanjir to be allowed to reign for four-and-twenty
+hours, and took the opportunity to have a large quantity of new gold and
+silver zodiacal coins struck and distributed among the people.
+
+The twenty-eight divisions are less known now, simply from the fact that
+the Greeks did not adopt them; but they were much used by the early
+Asian peoples, who distinguished them, like the twelve, by a series of
+animals, and they are still used by the Arabs.
+
+So far for the nature of the zodiac, as used in various countries, and
+as adopted from more ancient sources by the Greeks and handed on to us.
+It is very remarkable that the arrangement of it, and its relation to
+the pole of the equator, carries with it some indication of the age in
+which it must have been invented, as we now proceed to show.
+
+We may remark, in the first place, that from very early times the centre
+of the zodiacal circle has been marked in the celestial sphere, though
+there is no remarkable star near the spot; and the centre of the
+equatorial circle, or pole, has been even less noticed, though much more
+obvious. We cannot perhaps conclude that the instability of the pole was
+known, but that the necessity for drawing the zodiac led to attention
+being paid to its centre. Both the Persians and the Chinese noted in
+addition four bright stars, which they said watched over the rest,
+_Taschter_ over the east, _Sateris_ over the west, _Venaud_ over the
+south, and _Hastorang_ over the north. Now we must understand these
+points to refer to the sun, the east being the spring equinox, the west
+the autumnal, and the north and south the summer and winter solstices.
+There are no stars of any brilliancy that we could now suppose referred
+to in these positions; but if we turn the zodiac through 60° we shall
+find Aldebaran, the Antares, Regulus, and Fomalhaut, four stars of the
+first magnitude, pretty nearly in the right places. Does the zodiac then
+turn in this way? The answer is, It does.
+
+The effect of the attraction of the sun and moon upon the equatorial
+protuberance of the earth is to draw it round from west to east by a
+very slow motion, and make the ecliptic cross the equator each year
+about one minute of arc to the east of where it crossed it the year
+before. So, then, the sidereal year, or interval between the times at
+which the sun is in a certain position amongst the stars, is longer than
+the solar year, or interval between the times at which the sun crosses
+the equator at the vernal equinox. Now the sun's position in the zodiac
+refers to the former, his appearance at the equinox to the latter kind
+of year. Each solar year then--and these are the years we usually reckon
+by--the equinox is at a point fifty seconds of arc to the east on the
+zodiac, an effect which is known by the name of the precession of the
+equinoxes.
+
+Now it is plain that if it keeps moving continuously to the east it will
+at last come round to the same point again, and the whole period of its
+revolution can easily be calculated from the distance it moves each
+year. The result of such a calculation shows that the whole revolution
+is completed in 25,870 years, after which time all will be again as it
+is now in this respect.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 11.]
+
+If we draw a figure of the zodiac, as below, and know that at this time
+the vernal equinox takes place when the sun is in the Fishes, then, the
+constellation of the Ram being to the west of this, the date at which
+the equinox was there must be before our present date, while at some
+time in the future it will be in Aquarius.
+
+Now if in any old description we find that the equinox is referred to as
+being in the Ram or in the Bull, it tells us at once how long ago such a
+description was a true one, and, therefore, when it was written. This is
+the way in which the Zodiac carries with it an intimation of its date.
+Thus in the example lately referred to of the Persians and their four
+stars, it must have been about 5,000 years ago, according to the above
+calculation, that these were in the positions assigned, which is
+therefore the date of this part of Persian astronomy, if we have rightly
+conjectured the stars referred to.
+
+We have already said that the signs of the zodiac are not now the same
+as the zodiacal constellations, and this is now easily understood. It is
+not worth while to say that the sun enters such and such a part of the
+Fishes at the equinox, and changes every year. So the part of the
+heavens it _does_ then enter--be it Fishes, or Aquarius, or the Ram--is
+called by the same name--and is called a _sign_; the name chosen is the
+Ram or Aries, which coincided with the constellation of that name when
+the matter was arranged. There is another equally important and
+instructive result of this precession of the equinox. For the earth's
+axis is always perpendicular to the plane of the equator, and if the
+latter moves, the former must too, and change its position with respect
+to the axis of the ecliptic, which remains immovable. And the ends of
+these axes, or the points they occupy among the stars, called their
+poles, will change in the same way; the pole of the equator, round which
+the heavens appear to move, describing a curve about the pole of the
+ecliptic; and since the ecliptic and equator are always _nearly_ at the
+same angle, this curve will be very nearly a circle, as represented on
+preceding page.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 12.]
+
+Now the pole of the equator is a very marked point in the heavens,
+because the star nearest to it appears to have no motion. If then we
+draw such a figure as above, so as to see where this pole would be at
+any given date, and then read in any old record that such and such a
+star had no motion, we know at once at what date such a statement must
+have been made. This means of estimating dates is less certain than the
+other, because any star that is nearer to the pole than any other will
+appear to have no motion _relatively_ to the rest, unless accurate
+measurements were made. Nevertheless, when we have any reason to believe
+that observations were carefully made, and there is any evidence that
+some particular star was considered the Pole Star, we have some
+confidence in concluding the date, examples of which will appear in the
+sequel; and we may give one illustration now, though not a very
+satisfactory one. Hipparchus cites a passage from the sphere of Eudoxus,
+in which he says, _Est vero stella quædam in eodem consistens loco, quæ
+quidem polus est mundi._ (There is a certain immovable star, which is
+the pole of the world.)
+
+Now referring to our figure, we find that about 1300 B.C. the two stars,
+[Greek: b] Ursæ Minoris and [Greek: k] Draconis were fairly near the
+pole, and this fact leads us to date the invention of this sphere at
+about this epoch, rather than a little before or a little after,
+although, of course, there is nothing in _this_ argument (though there
+may be in others), to prevent us dating it when [Greek: a] Draconis was
+near the pole, 2850 B.C. This star was indeed said by the Chinese
+astronomers in the reign of Hoangti to mark the pole, which gives a date
+to their observations. The chief use of this latter method is to
+_confirm_ our conclusions from the former, rather than to originate any.
+Let us now apply our knowledge to the facts.
+
+In the first place we may notice that in the time of Hipparchus the
+vernal equinox was in the first degree of the Ram, from which our own
+arrangement has originated. Hipparchus lived 128 years B.C., or nearly
+2,000 years ago, at which time the equinox was exactly at [Greek: b]
+Aries. Secondly, there are many reasons for believing that at the time
+of the invention of the zodiac, indeed in the first dawning of
+astronomy, the Bull was the first sign into which the sun entered at the
+vernal equinox. Now it takes 2,156 years to retrograde through a sign,
+and therefore the Bull might occupy this position any time between 2400
+and 4456 B.C., and any nearer approximation must depend on our ability
+to fix on any particular _part_ of the constellation as the original
+equinoctial point. We may say that whoever invented the zodiac would no
+doubt make this point the _beginning_ of a sign, and therefore date its
+invention 2400 B.C.; or on the other hand, if it can be proved that the
+constellations were known and observed before this, we may have to put
+back the date to near the end of the sign, and make its last remarkable
+stars the equinoctial ones, say those in the horns of Taurus. Compare
+the line of Virgil,
+
+  "Candidus auratis aperit cum cornibus annum
+  Taurus."
+
+The date in this case would be about 4500 B.C.--or once more some
+remarkable part of the constellation may give proof that its appearance
+with the sun commenced the year--and our date would be intermediate
+between these two. In fact, the remarkable group of stars known as the
+_Pleiades_ actually does play this part. So much interest clusters,
+however, round this group, so much light is thrown by it on the past
+history of astronomical ideas--and so much new information has recently
+been obtained about it--that it requires a chapter to itself, and we
+shall therefore pass over its discussion here. Let us now review some of
+the indications that some part of the constellation of the Bull was
+originally the first sign of the zodiac.
+
+We need perhaps only mention the astrological books of the Jews--the
+Cabal--in which the Bull is dealt with as the first zodiacal sign. Among
+the Persians, who designate the successive signs by the letters of the
+alphabet, _A_ stands for Taurus, _B_ for the Twins, and so on. The
+Chinese attribute the commencement of the sun's apparent motion to the
+stars of Taurus. In Thebes is a sepulchral chamber with zodiacal signs,
+and Taurus at the head of them. The zodiac of the pagoda of Elephanta
+(Salsette) commences with the same constellation.
+
+However, reasons have been given for assigning to the zodiac a still
+earlier date than this would involve. Thus Laplace writes:--"The names
+of the constellations of the zodiac have not been given to them by
+chance--they embody the results of a large number of researches and of
+astronomical systems. Some of the names appear to have reference to the
+motion of the sun. The Crab, for instance, and the He-Goat, indicate its
+retrogression at the solstices. The Balance marks the equality of the
+days and nights at the equinoxes, and the other names seem to refer to
+agriculture and to the climate of the country in which the zodiac was
+invented. The He-Goat appears better placed at the highest point of the
+sun's course than the lowest. In this position, which it occupied
+fifteen thousand years ago, the Balance was at the vernal equinox, and
+the zodiacal constellations match well with the climate and agriculture
+of Egypt." If we examine this, however, we see that all that is probable
+in it is satisfied by the Ram being at the vernal, and the Balance at
+the autumnal equinox, which corresponds much better with other evidence.
+
+[Illustration: THE ZODIAC OF DENDERAH.]
+
+In the first instance, no doubt, the names of the zodiacal
+constellations would depend on the principal star or stars in each, and
+these stars and the portion of the ecliptic assigned to each may have
+been noticed before the stars round them were grouped into
+constellations with different names. In any case, the introduction of
+the zodiac into Greece seems to have been subsequent to that of the
+celestial sphere, and not to have taken place more than five or six
+centuries before our era. Eudemus, of Rhodes, one of the most
+distinguished of the pupils of Aristotle, and author of a History of
+Astronomy, attributes the introduction of the zodiac to Oenopides of
+Chio, a contemporary of Anaxagoras. They did not receive it complete, as
+at first it had only eleven constellations, one of them, the Scorpion,
+being afterwards divided, to complete the necessary number. Their
+zodiacal divisions too would have been more regular had they derived
+them directly from the East, and would not have stretched in some
+instances over 36° to 48°, like the Lion, the Bull, the Fishes, or the
+Virgin--while the Crab, the Ram, and the He-Goat, have only 19° to 23°.
+Nor would their constellations be disposed so irregularly, some to the
+north and some to the south of the ecliptic, nor some spreading out
+widely and others crammed close together, so that we see that they only
+borrowed the idea from the Easterns, and filled it out with their
+ancient constellations. Such is the opinion of Humboldt.
+
+With regard to the origin of the names of the signs of the zodiac, we
+must remember that a certain portion of the zodiacal circle, and not any
+definite group of stars, forms each sign, and that the constellations
+may have been formed separately, and have received independent names,
+though afterwards receiving those of the sign in which they were. The
+only rational suggestion for the origin of the names is that they were
+connected with some events which took place, or some character of the
+sun's motion observed, when it was in each sign. Thus we have seen that
+the Balance may refer to equal nights and days (though only introduced
+among the _Greeks_ in the time of Hipparchus), and the Crab to the
+retrogression or stopping of the sun at the solstice.
+
+The various pursuits of husbandry, having all their necessary times,
+which in the primeval days were determined by the positions of the
+stars, would give rise to more important names. Thus the Ethiopian, at
+Thebes, would call the stars that by their rising at a particular time
+indicated the inundation, Aquarius, or the Waterer; those beneath which
+it was necessary to put the plough to the earth, the Bull stars. The
+Lion stars would be those at whose appearance this formidable animal,
+driven from the deserts by thirst, showed himself on the borders of the
+river. Those of the Ear of Corn, or the Virgin of harvest, those beneath
+which the harvest was to be gathered in; and the sign of the Goat, that
+in which the sun was when these animals were born.
+
+There can be but little doubt but that such was the origin of the names
+imposed, and for a time they would be understood in that sense. But
+afterwards, when time was more accurately kept, and calendars
+regulated, without each man studying the stars for himself, when the
+precession of the equinoxes made the periods not exactly coincide, the
+original meaning would be lost, the stars would be associated with the
+animals, as though there was a real bull, a real lion, &c., in the
+heavens; and then the step would be easy to represent these by living
+animals, whom they would endow with the heavenly attributes of what they
+represented; and so the people came at last to pray to and worship the
+several creatures for the sake of their supposed influence. They asked
+of the Ram from their flocks the influences they thought depended on the
+constellation. They prayed the Scorpion not to spread his evil venom on
+the world; they revered the Crab, the Scarabæus, and the Fish, without
+perceiving the absurdity of it.
+
+It is certain at least that the gods of many nations are connected or
+are identical with the signs of the zodiac, and it seems at least more
+reasonable to suppose the former derived from the latter than _vice
+versâ_.
+
+Among the Greeks indeed, who had, so to speak, their gods ready made
+before they borrowed the idea of the zodiac, the process appears to have
+been the reverse, they made the signs to represent as far as they could
+their gods. In the more pastoral peoples, however, of the East, and in
+Egypt, this process can be very clearly traced. Among the Jews there
+seems to be some remarkable connection between their patriarchs and
+these signs, though the history of that connection may not well be made
+out. The twelve signs are mentioned as being worshipped, along with the
+sun and moon, in the Book of Kings. But what is more remarkable is the
+dream of Joseph, in which the sun and moon and the other eleven stars
+worshipped him, coupled with the various designations or descriptions
+given to each son in the blessing of Jacob. In Reuben we have the man
+who is said to be "unstable as water," in which we may recognise
+Aquarius. In Simeon and Levi "the brethren," we trace the Twins. Judah
+is the "Lion." Zebulun, "that dwells at the haven of the sea,"
+represents Fishes. Issachar is the Bull, or "strong ass couching down
+between two burdens." Dan, "the serpent by the way, the adder in the
+path," represents the Scorpion. Gad is the Ram, the leader to a flock or
+troop of sheep. Asher the Balance, as the weigher of bread. Naphtali,
+"the hind let loose," is the Capricorn, Joseph the Archer, whose bow
+abode in strength. Brujanin the Crab, changing from morning to evening,
+and Dinah, the only daughter, represents the Virgin.
+
+There is doubtless something far-fetched in some of these comparisons,
+but when we consider the care with which the number twelve was retained,
+and that the four chief tribes carried on their sacred standards these
+very signs--namely, Judah a lion, Reuben a man, Ephraim a bull, and Dan
+a scorpion--and notice the numerous traces of astronomical culture in
+the Jewish ceremonies, the seven lights of the candlestick, the twelve
+stones of the High Priest, the feasts at the two equinoxes, the
+ceremonies connected with a ram and a bull, we cannot doubt that there
+is something more than chance in the matter, but rather conclude that we
+have an example of the process by which, in the hands of the Egyptians
+themselves, astronomical representations became at last actually
+deified.
+
+It has been thought possible indeed to assign definitely each god of the
+Egyptians to one of the twelve zodiacal signs. The Ram was consecrated
+to Jupiter Ammon, who was represented with a ram's head and horns. The
+Bull became the god Apis, who was worshipped under that similitude. The
+Twins correspond to Horus and Harpocrates, two sons of Osiris. The Crab
+was consecrated to Anubis or Mercury. The Lion belonged to the summer
+sun, Osiris; the Virgin to Isis. The Balance and the Scorpion were
+included together under the name of Scorpion, which animal belongs to
+Typhon, as did all dangerous animals. The Archer was the image of
+Hercules, for whom the Egyptians had great veneration. The Capricorn was
+consecrated to Pan or Mendes. The Waterer--or man carrying a
+water-pot--is found on many Egyptian monuments.
+
+This process of deification was rendered easier by the custom they had
+of celebrating a festival each month, under the name _neomenia_. They
+characterised the neomenias of the various months by making the animal
+whose sign the sun was entering accompany the Isis which announced the
+_fête_. They were not content with a representation only, but had the
+animal itself. The dog, being the symbol of Cannulus, with which the
+year commenced, a living dog was made to head the ceremonial of the
+first neomenia. Diodorus testifies to this as an eye-witness.
+
+These neomenias thus came to be called the festival of the Bull, of the
+Ram, the Dog, or the Lion. That of the Ram would be the most solemn and
+important in places where they dealt much in sheep. That of the Bull in
+the fat pasture-lands of Memphis and Lower Egypt. That of Capella would
+be brilliant at Mendes, where they bred goats more than elsewhere.
+
+We may fortify these opinions by a quotation from Lucian, who gives
+expression to them very clearly. "It is from the divisions of the
+zodiac," he says, "that the crowd of animals worshipped in Egypt have
+had their origin. Some employed one constellation, and some another.
+Those who used to consult that of the Ram came to adore a ram. Those who
+took their presages from the Fishes would not eat fish. The goat was not
+killed in places were they observed Capricornus, and so on, according to
+the stars whose influence they cared most for. If they adored a bull it
+was certainly to do honour to the celestial Bull. The Apis, which was a
+sacred object with them, and wandered at liberty through the country,
+and for which they founded an oracle, was the astrological symbol of the
+Bull that shone in the heavens."
+
+[Illustration: PLATE IV.--THE ZODIAC AND THE DEAD IN EGYPT.]
+
+Their use of the zodiac is illustrated in an interesting manner by a
+mummy found some years ago in Egypt. At the bottom of the coffin was
+found painted a zodiac, something like that of Denderah; underneath the
+lid, along the body of a great goddess, were drawn eleven signs, but
+with that of _Capricornus_ left out. The inscription showed that the
+mummy was that of a young man, aged 21 years, 4 months, and 22 days, who
+died the 19th year of Trajan, on the 8th of the month Pazni, which
+corresponds to the 2nd of June, A.D. 116. The embalmed was therefore
+born on the 12th of January, A.D. 95, at which time the sun was in the
+constellation of Capricornus. This shows that the zodiac was the
+representation of the astrological theories about the person embalmed,
+who was doubtless a person of some importance. (See Plate IV.) Any such
+use as this, however, must have been long subsequent to the invention of
+the signs themselves, as it involves a much more complicated idea.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE PLEIADES.
+
+
+Among the most remarkable of the constellations is a group of seven
+stars arranged in a kind of triangular cluster, and known as the
+Pleiades. It is not, strictly speaking, one of the constellations, as it
+forms only part of one. We have seen that one of the ancient signs of
+the zodiac is the Bull, or Taurus; the group of stars we are now
+speaking of forms part of this, lying towards the eastern part in the
+shoulders of the Bull. The Pleiades scarcely escape anybody's
+observation now, and we shall not be, therefore, surprised that they
+have always attracted great attention. So great indeed has been the
+attention paid to them that festivals and seasons, calendars and years,
+have by many nations been regulated by their rising or culmination, and
+they have been thus more mixed up with the early history of astronomy,
+and have left more marks on the records of past nations, than any other
+celestial object, except the sun and moon.
+
+The interesting details of the history of the Pleiades have been very
+carefully worked out by R. G. Haliburton, F.S.A., to whom we owe the
+greater part of the information we possess on the subject.[1]
+
+Let us first explain what may be observed with respect to the Pleiades.
+It is a group possessing peculiar advantages for observation; it is a
+compact group, the whole will appear at once; and it is an unmistakable
+group and it is near the equator, and is therefore visible to observers
+in either hemisphere.
+
+Now suppose the sun to be in the same latitude as the Pleiades on some
+particular day; owing to the proximity of the group to the ecliptic, it
+will be then very near the sun, and it will set with it and be invisible
+during the night. If the sun were to the east of the Pleiades they would
+have already set, and the first view of the heavens at sunset would not
+contain this constellation; and so it would be so long as the sun was to
+the east, or for nearly half a year; though during some portion of this
+time it would rise later on in the night. During the other half year,
+while the sun was to the west, the Pleiades would be visible at sunset,
+and we immediately see how they are thus led to divide the whole year
+into two portions, one of which might be called _the Pleiades below_,
+and the other _the Pleiades above_. It is plain that the Pleiades first
+become visible at sunset, when they are then just rising, in which case
+they will culminate a little after midnight (not at midnight, on account
+of the twilight) and be visible all night. This will occur when the sun
+is about half a circle removed from them--that is, at this time, about
+the beginning of November; which would thus be the commencement of one
+half of the year, the other half commencing in May. The culmination of
+the Pleiades at midnight takes place a few days later, when they rise at
+the time that the sun is really on the horizon, in which case they are
+exactly opposite to it; and this will happen on the same day all over
+the earth. The opposite effect to this would be when the sun was close
+to the Pleiades--a few days before which the latter would be just
+setting after sunset, and a few days after would be just rising before
+sunrise.
+
+  [1] Mr. Haliburton's observations are contained in an interesting
+      pamphlet, entitled _New Materials for the History of Man_, which
+      is quoted by Prof. Piazzi Smyth, but which is not easy to obtain.
+      It may be seen, however, in the British Museum.
+
+We have thus the following observations, that might be made with respect
+to this, or any other well-marked constellation. First, the period
+during which it was visible at sunset; secondly, the date of its
+culmination at midnight; thirdly, its setting in the evening; and
+fourthly, its rising in the morning: the last two dates being nearly six
+months removed from the second. There are also the dates of its
+culmination at sunrise and sunset, which would divide these intervals
+into two equal halves. On account of the precession of the equinoxes,
+as explained in the last chapter, the time at which the sun has any
+particular position with respect to the stars, grows later year by year
+in relation to the equinoctial points. And as we regulate our year by
+the date of the sun's entrance on the northern hemisphere, the sidereal
+dates, as we may call them, keep advancing on the months. As, however,
+the change is slow, it has not prevented years being commenced and
+husbandry being regulated by the dates above mentioned. Any date that is
+regulated by the stars we might expect to be nearly the same all over
+the world, and the customs observed to be universal, though the date
+itself might alter, and in this way. So long as the date was directly
+obtained from the position of the star, all would agree; but as soon as
+a solar calendar was arranged, and it was found that at that time this
+position coincided with a certain day, say the Pleiades culminating at
+midnight on November 17, then some would keep on the date November 17 as
+the important day, even when the Pleiades no longer culminated at
+midnight then, and others would keep reckoning by the stars, and so have
+a different date.
+
+With these explanations we shall be able to recognise how much the
+configurations of the Pleiades have had to do with the festivals and
+calendars of nations, and have even left their traces on customs and
+names in use among ourselves to the present day.
+
+We have evidences from two very different quarters of the universality
+of the division of the year into two parts by means of the Pleiades. On
+the one hand we learn from Hesiod that the Greeks commenced their winter
+seasons in his days by the setting of the Pleiades in the morning, and
+the summer season by their rising at that time. And Mr. Ellis, in his
+_Polynesian Researches_, tells us that "the Society Islanders divided
+the year into two seasons of the Pleiades, or _Matarii_. The first they
+called _Matarii i nia_, or the _Pleiades above_. It commenced when, in
+the evening, these stars appeared at or near the horizon, and the half
+year during which, immediately after sunset, they were seen above the
+horizon was called _Matarii i nia_. The other season commenced when at
+sunset these stars are invisible, and continued until at that time they
+appeared again above the horizon. This season was called _Matarii i
+raro_, i.e. _the Pleiades below_." Besides these direct evidences we
+shall find that many semi-annual festivals connected with these stars
+indicate the commencement of the two seasons among other nations.
+
+One of these festivals was of course always taken for the commencement
+of the year, and much was made of it as new-year's day. A new-year's
+festival connected with and determined by the Pleiades appears to be one
+of the most universal of all customs; and though some little difficulty
+arises, as we have already pointed out, in fixing the date with
+reference to solar calendars, and differences and coincidences in this
+respect among different nations may be to a certain extent accidental,
+yet the fact of the wide-spread observance of such a festival is certain
+and most interesting.
+
+The actual observance at the present day of this festival is to be found
+among the Australian savages. At their midnight culmination in November,
+they still hold a new-year's _corroboree_, in honour of the
+_Mormodellick_, as they call the Pleiades, which they say are "very good
+to the black fellows." With them November is somewhat after the
+beginning of spring, but in former days it would mark the actual
+commencement, and the new year would be regulated by the seasons.
+
+In the northern hemisphere this culmination of the Pleiades has the same
+relation to the autumnal equinox, which would never be taken as the
+commencement of the year; and we must therefore look to the southern
+hemisphere for the origin of the custom; especially as we find the very
+Pleiades themselves called _Vergiliæ_, or stars of spring. Of course we
+might suppose that the rising of the constellation in the _morning_ had
+been observed in the northern hemisphere, which would certainly have
+taken place in the beginning of spring some 5,000 years ago; but this
+seems improbable, first, because it is unlikely that different phenomena
+of the Pleiades should have been most noticed, and secondly, because
+neither April nor May are among any nations connected with this
+constellation by name. Whereas in India the year commenced in the month
+they called _Cartiguey_, which means the Pleiades. Among the ancient
+Egyptians we find the same connection between _Athar-aye_, the name of
+the Pleiades, with the Chaldeans and Hebrews, and _Athor_ in the
+Egyptian name of November. The Arabs also call the constellation
+_Atauria_. We shall have more to say on this etymology presently, but in
+the meantime we learn that it was the phenomenon connected with the
+Pleiades at or about November that was noticed by all ancient nations,
+from which we must conclude that the origin of the new-year's spring
+festival came from the southern hemisphere.
+
+There is some corroboration of this in the ancient traditions as to the
+stars having changed their courses. In the southern hemisphere a man
+standing facing the position of the sun at noon would see the stars rise
+on his right hand and move towards his left. In the northern hemisphere,
+if he also looked in the direction of the sun at noon, he would see them
+rise on his left hand. Now one of a race migrating from one side to the
+other of the equator would take his position from the sun, and fancy he
+was facing the same way when he looked at it at noon, and so would think
+the motion of the stars to have altered, instead of his having turned
+round. Such a tradition, then, seems to have arisen from such a
+migration, the fact of which seems to be confirmed by the calling the
+Pleiades stars of spring, and commencing the year with their
+culmination at midnight. In order to trace this new-year's festival into
+other countries, and by this means to show its connection with the
+Pleiades, we must remark that every festival has its peculiar features
+and rites, and it is by these that we must recognise it, where the
+actual date of its occurrence has slightly changed; bearing, of course,
+in mind that the actual change of date must not be too great to be
+accounted for by the precession of the equinoxes, or about seventy-one
+years for each day of change, since the institution of the festival, and
+that the change is in the right direction.
+
+Now we find that everywhere this festival of the Pleiades' culmination
+at midnight (or it may be of the slightly earlier one of their first
+appearance at the horizon at apparent sunset) was always connected with
+the memory of the dead. It was a "feast of ancestors."
+
+Among the Australians themselves, the _corroborees_ of the natives are
+connected with a worship of the dead. They paint a white stripe over
+their arms, legs, and ribs, and, dancing by the light of their fires by
+night, appear like so many skeletons rejoicing. What is also to be
+remarked, the festival lasts three days, and commences in the evening;
+the latter a natural result of the date depending on the appearance of
+the Pleiades on the horizon at that time.
+
+The Society Islanders, who, as we have seen, divided their year by the
+appearance of the Pleiades at sunset, commenced their year on the first
+day of the appearance, about November, and also celebrated the closing
+of one and the opening of a new year by a "usage resembling much the
+popish custom of mass for souls in purgatory," each man returning to his
+home to offer special prayers for the spirits of departed relatives.
+
+In the Tonga Islands, which belong to the Fiji group, the festival of
+_Inachi_, a vernal first-fruits' celebration, and also a commemoration
+of the dead takes place towards the end of October, and commences at
+sunset.
+
+In Peru the new-year's festival occurs in the beginning of November, and
+is "called _Ayamarca_ from _aya_, a corpse, and _marca_, carrying in
+arms, because they celebrated the solemn festival of the dead, with
+tears, lugubrious songs, and plaintive music; and it was customary to
+visit the tombs of relations, and to leave in them food and drink." The
+fact that this took place at the time of the discovery of Peru on the
+very same day as a similar ceremony takes place in Europe, was only an
+accidental coincidence, which is all the more remarkable because the two
+appear, as will be seen in the sequel, to have had the same origin, and
+therefore at first the same date, and to have altered from it by exactly
+the same amount. These instances from races south of the equator prove
+clearly that there exists a very general connection with new-year's day,
+as determined by the rising of the Pleiades at sunset, and a festival of
+the dead; and in some instances with an offering of first-fruits. What
+the origin of this connection may be is a more difficult matter. At
+first sight one might conjecture that with the year that was passed it
+was natural to connect the men that had passed away; and this may indeed
+be the true interpretation: but there are traditions and observances
+which may be thought by some to point to some ancient wide-spread
+catastrophe which happened at this particular season, which they yearly
+commemorated, and reckoned a new year from each commemoration. Such
+traditions and observances we shall notice as we trace the spread of
+this new-year's festival of the dead among various nations, and its
+connection, with the Pleiades.
+
+We have seen that in India November is called the month of the Pleiades.
+Now on the 17th day of that month is celebrated the Hindoo Durga, a
+festival of the dead, and said by Greswell to have been a new-year's
+commemoration at the earliest time to which Indian calendars can be
+carried back.
+
+Among the ancient Egyptians the same day was very noticeable, and they
+took care to regulate their solar calendars that it might remain
+unchanged. Numerous altered calendars have been discovered, but they are
+all regulated by this one day. This was determined by the culmination of
+the Pleiades at midnight. On this day commenced the solemn festival of
+the Isia, which, like the _corroborees_ of the Australians, lasted three
+days, and was celebrated in honour of the dead, and of Osiris, the lord
+of tombs. Now the month Athyr was undoubtedly connected with the
+Pleiades, being that "in which the Pleiades are most distinct"--that
+is, in which they rise near and before sunset. Among the Egyptians,
+however, more attention was paid to astronomy than amongst the savage
+races with which the year of the Pleiades would appear to have
+originated, and they studied very carefully the connection between the
+positions of the stars and the entrance of the sun into the northern
+hemisphere, and regulated their calendar accordingly; as we shall see
+shortly in speaking of the pyramid builders.
+
+The Persians formerly called the month of November _Mordâd_, the angel
+of death, and the feast of the dead took place at the same time as in
+Peru, and was considered a new-year's festival. It commenced also in the
+evening.
+
+In Ceylon a combined festival of agriculture and of the dead takes place
+at the beginning of November.
+
+Among the better known of the ancient nations of the northern
+hemispheres, such as the Greeks and Romans, the anomaly of having the
+beginning of the year at the autumnal equinox seems to have induced them
+to make a change to that of spring, and with this change has followed
+the festival of the dead, although some traces of it were left in
+November.
+
+The commemoration of the dead was connected among the Egyptians with a
+deluge, which was typified by the priest placing the image of Osiris in
+a sacred coffer or ark, and launching it out into the sea till it was
+borne out of sight. Now when we connect this fact, and the celebration
+taking place on the 17th day of Athyr, with the date on which the Mosaic
+account of the deluge of Noah states it to have commenced, "in the
+second month (of the Jewish year, which corresponds to November), the
+17th day of the month," it must be acknowledged that this is no chance
+coincidence, and that the precise date here stated must have been
+regulated by the Pleiades, as was the Egyptian date. This coincidence is
+rendered even stronger by the similiarity of traditions among the two
+nations concerning the dove and the tree as connected with the deluge.
+We find, however, no festival of the dead among the Hebrews; their
+better form of faith having prevented it.
+
+We have not as yet learnt anything of the importance of the Pleiades
+among the ancient Babylonian astronomers, but as through their tablets
+we have lately become acquainted with their version of the story of the
+deluge, we may be led in this way to further information about their
+astronomical appreciation of this constellation.
+
+From whatever source derived, it is certain that the Celtic races were
+partakers in this general culture, we might almost call it, of the
+Pleiades, as shown by the time and character of their festival of the
+dead. This is especially interesting to ourselves, as it points to the
+origin of the superstitions of the Druids, and accounts for customs
+remaining even to this day amongst us.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE V.--THE LEGENDS OF THE DRUIDS.]
+
+The first of November was with the Druids a night full of mystery, in
+which they annually celebrated the reconstruction of the world. A
+terrible rite was connected with this; for the Druidess nuns were
+obliged at this time to pull down and rebuild each year the roof of
+their temple, as a symbol of the destruction and renovation of the
+world. If one of them, in bringing the materials for the new roof, let
+fall her sacred burden, she was lost. Her companions, seized with a
+fanatic transport, rushed upon her and tore her to pieces, and scarcely
+a year is said to have passed without there being one or more victims.
+On this same night the Druids extinguished the sacred fire, which was
+kept continually burning in the sacred precincts, and at that signal all
+the fires in the island were one by one put out, and a primitive night
+reigned throughout the land. Then passed along to the west the phantoms
+of those who had died during the preceding year, and were carried away
+by boats to the judgment-seat of the god of the dead. (Plate V.)
+Although Druidism is now extinct, the relics of it remain to this day,
+for in our calendar we still find November 1 marked as All Saints' Day,
+and in the pre-Reformation calendars the last day of October was marked
+All Hallow Eve, and the 2nd of November as All Souls'; indicating
+clearly a three days' festival of the dead, commencing in the evening,
+and originally regulated by the Pleiades--an emphatic testimony how much
+astronomy has been mixed up with the rites and customs even of the
+English of to-day. In former days the relics were more numerous, in the
+Hallowe'en torches of the Irish, the bonfires of the Scotch, the
+_coel-coeth_ fires of the Welsh, and the _tindle_ fires of Cornwall, all
+lighted on Hallowe'en. In France it still lingers more than here, for to
+this very day the Parisians at this festival repair to the cemeteries,
+and lunch at the graves of their ancestors.
+
+If the extreme antiquity of a rite can be gathered from the remoteness
+of the races that still perform it, the fact related to us by Prescott
+in his _History of the Conquest of Mexico_ cannot fail to have great
+interest. There we find that the great festival of the Mexican cycle was
+held in November, at the time of the midnight culmination of the
+Pleiades. It began at sunset, and at midnight as that constellation
+approached the zenith, a human victim, was offered up, to avert the
+dread calamity which they believed impended over the human race. They
+had a tradition that the world had been previously destroyed at this
+time, and they were filled with gloom and dismay, and were not at rest
+until the Pleiades were seen to culminate, and a new cycle had begun;
+this great cycle, however, was only accomplished in fifty-two years.
+
+It is possible that the festival of lanthorns among the Japanese, which
+is celebrated about November, may be also connected with this same day,
+as it is certain that that nation does reckon days by the Pleiades.
+
+These instances of a similar festival at approximately the same period
+of the year, and regulated (until fixed to a particular day in a solar
+calendar) by the midnight culmination of the Pleiades, show conclusively
+how great an influence that constellation has had on the manners and
+customs of the world, and throw some light on the history of man.
+
+Even where we find no festival connected with the particular position of
+the Pleiades which is the basis of the above, they still are used for
+the regulation of the seasons--as amongst the Dyaks of Borneo. This race
+of men are guided in their farming operations by this constellation.
+"When it is low in the east at early morning, before sunrise, the elders
+know it is time to cut down the jungle; when it approaches mid-heaven,
+then it is time to burn what they have cut down; when it is declining
+towards the west, then they plant; and when in the early evening it is
+seen thus declining, then they may reap in safety and in peace;" the
+latter period is also that of their feast of _Nycapian_, or
+first-fruits.
+
+We find the same regulations amongst the ancient Greeks in the days of
+Hesiod, who tells us that the corn is to be cut when the Pleiades rise,
+and ploughing is to be done when they set. Also that they are invisible
+for forty days, and reappear again at harvest. When the Pleiades rise,
+the care of the vine must cease; and when, fleeing from Orion, they are
+lost in the waves, sailing commences to be dangerous. The name, indeed,
+by which we now know these stars is supposed to be derived from the word
+[Greek: plein], to sail--because sailing was safe after they had risen;
+though others derive it from [Greek: peleiai], a flight of doves.
+
+Any year that is regulated by the Pleiades, or by any other group of
+stars, must, as we have seen before, be what is called a sidereal, and
+not a solar year. Now a year in uncivilised countries can only mean a
+succession of seasons, as is illustrated by the use of the expression "a
+person of so many summers." It is difficult of course to say when any
+particular season begins by noticing its characteristics as to weather;
+even the most regular phenomena are not certain enough for that; we
+cannot say that when the days and nights become exactly equal any marked
+change takes place in the temperature or humidity of the atmosphere, or
+in any other easily-noticed phenomena. The day therefore on which spring
+commences is arbitrary, except that, inasmuch as spring depends on the
+position of the sun, its commencement, ought to be regulated by that
+luminary, and not by some star-group which has no influence in the
+matter. Nevertheless the position of such a group is much more easily
+observed, and in early ages could almost alone be observed; and so long
+as the midnight culmination of the Pleiades--judged of, it must be
+noticed, by their appearance _on the horizon_ at sunset--fairly
+coincided with that state of weather which might be reckoned the
+commencement of spring conditions, no error would be detected, because
+the change in their position is so slow. The solar spring is probably a
+later discovery, which now, from its greater reasonableness and
+constancy, has superseded the old one. But since the time of the sun's
+crossing the equator is the natural commencement of spring, whether
+discovered or not, it is plain that no group of stars could be taken as
+a guide instead, if their indication did not approximately coincide with
+this.
+
+If then we can determine the exact date at which the Pleiades indicated
+by their midnight culmination the sun's passage across the equator, we
+can be sure that the spring could only have been regulated by this
+during, say, a thousand years at most, on either side of this date. It
+is very certain that if the method of reckoning spring by the stars had
+been invented at a more remote date, some other set of stars would have
+been chosen instead.
+
+Now when was this date? It is a matter admitting of certain calculation,
+depending only on numbers derived from observation in our own days and
+records of the past few centuries, and the answer is that this date is
+about 2170 B.C.
+
+We have seen that, though it was probably brought from the southern
+hemisphere, the Egyptians adopted the year of the Pleiades, and
+celebrated the new-year's festival of the dead; but they were also
+advanced astronomers, and would soon find out the change that took place
+in the seasons when regulated by the stars. And to such persons the date
+at which the two periods coincided, or at least were exactly half a year
+apart, would be one of great importance and interest, and there seems
+to be evidence that they did commemorate it in a very remarkable manner.
+The evidence, however, is all circumstantial, and the conclusion
+therefore can only claim probability. The evidence is as follows:--The
+most remarkable buildings of Egypt are the pyramids. These are of
+various sizes and importance, but are built very much after the same
+plan. They seem, however, to be all copies from one, the largest,
+namely, the Pyramid of Gizeh, and to be of subsequent date to this.
+Their object has long been a puzzle, and the best conclusion has been
+supposed to be that they were for sepulchral purposes, as in some of
+them coffins have been found. The large one, however, shows far more
+than the rest of the structure, and cannot have been meant for a funeral
+pile alone.
+
+Its peculiarities come out on a careful examination and measurement such
+as it has been subjected to at the devoted hands of Piazzi Smyth, the
+Astronomer Royal for Scotland. He has shown that it is not built at
+random, as a tomb might be, but it is adjusted with exquisite design,
+and with surprising accuracy. In the first place it lies due north,
+south, east, and west, and the careful ascertainment of the meridian of
+the place, by modern astronomical instruments, could not suggest any
+improvement in its position in this respect. The outside of it is now,
+so to speak, pealed, that is to say, there was originally, covering the
+whole, another layer of stones which have been taken away. These stones,
+which were of a different material, were beautifully polished, as some
+of the remaining ones, now covered and concealed, can testify. The angle
+at which they are cut, and which of course gives the angle and elevation
+of the whole pyramid, is such that the height of it is in the same
+proportion to its circumference or perimeter, as the radius of a circle
+is to its circumference approximately. The height, in fact, is proved by
+measurement and observation to be 486 ft., and the four sides together
+to be 3,056 ft., or about 6-2/7 times the height. It does not seem
+improbable that, considering their advancement, the Egyptians might have
+calculated approximately how much larger the circumference of the circle
+is than its diameter, and it is a curious coincidence that the pyramid
+expresses it. Professor Piazzi Smyth goes much further and believes that
+they knew, or were divinely taught, the shape and size of the earth, and
+by a little manipulation of the length of their unit, or as he expresses
+it the "pyramid inch," he makes the base of the pyramid express the
+number of miles in the diameter of the earth.
+
+Now in the interior of the apparently solid structure, besides the usual
+slanting passage down to a kind of cellar or vault beneath the middle of
+the base, which may have been used for a sepulchral resting-place, there
+are two slanting passages, one running north and the other running
+south, and slanting up at different angles. Part of that which leads
+south is much enlarged, and is known as the grand gallery. It is of a
+very remarkable shape, being perfectly smooth and polished along its
+ascending base, as indeed it is in every part, and having a number of
+steps or projections, pointing also upwards at certain angles, very
+carefully maintained. Whether we understand its use or not, it is very
+plain that it has been made with a very particular design, and one not
+easily comprehended. This leads into a chamber known as the king's
+chamber, whose walls are exquisitely polished and which contains a
+coffer known as _Cheops' Coffin_. This coffer has been villainously
+treated by travellers, who have chipped and damaged it, but originally
+it was very carefully made and polished. It is too large to have been
+brought in by the only entrance into the chamber after it was finished,
+and therefore is obviously no coffin at all, as is proved also by the
+elaborateness of the means of approach. Professor Piazzi Smyth has made
+the happy suggestion that it represents their standard of length and
+capacity, and points out the remarkable fact that it contains exactly as
+much as four quarters of our dry measure. As no one has ever suggested
+what our "quarters" are quarters of, Professor Smyth very naturally
+supplies the answer--"of the contents of the pyramid coffer." There are
+various other measurements that have been made by the same worker, and
+their meaning suggested in his interesting book, _Our Inheritance in the
+Great Pyramid_, which we may follow or agree to as we can; but from all
+that has been said above, it will appear probable that this pyramid was
+built with a definite design to mark various natural phenomena or
+artificial measures, which is all we require for our present purpose.
+Now we come to the question, what is the meaning of the particular
+angles at which the north-looking and south-looking passages rise, if,
+as we now believe, they must have _some_ meaning.
+
+The exits of these passages were closed, and they could not therefore
+have been for observation, but they may have been so arranged as to be a
+memorial of any remarkable phenomena to be seen in those directions. To
+ascertain if there be any such to which they point, we must throw back
+the heavens to their position in the days of the Egyptians, because, as
+we have seen, the precession of the equinoxes alters the meridian
+altitude of every star. As the passages point north and south, if they
+refer to any star at all, it must be to their passing the meridian.
+
+Now let us take the heavens as they were 2170 B.C., the date at which
+the Pleiades _really_ commenced the spring, by their midnight
+culmination, and ask how high they would be then. The answer of
+astronomy is remarkable--"_Exactly at that height that they could be
+seen in the direction of the southward-pointing passage of the
+pyramid._" And would any star then be in a position to be seen in the
+direction of the other or northward-looking passage? Yes, the largest
+star in the constellation of the Dragon, which would be so near the pole
+(3° 52´) as to be taken as the Pole Star in those days. These are such
+remarkable coincidences in a structure admittedly made with mathematical
+accuracy and design, and truly executed, that we cannot take them to be
+accidental, but must endeavour to account for them.
+
+The simplest explanation seems to be, that everything in the pyramid is
+intended to represent some standard or measure, and that these passages
+have to do with their year. They had received the year of the Pleiades
+from a remoter antiquity than their own, they had discovered the true
+commencement of solar spring, as determined from the solar autumnal
+equinox, and they commemorated by the building of the pyramid the
+coincidence of the two dates, making passages in it which would have no
+meaning except at that particular time.
+
+Whether the pyramid was built _at that time_, or whether their
+astronomical knowledge was sufficient to enable them to predict it and
+build accordingly, just as we calculate back to it, we have no means of
+knowing. It is very possible that the pyramid may have been built by
+some immigrating race more learned in astronomy, like the Accadians
+among the Babylonians.
+
+Either the whole of the conclusions respecting the pyramid is founded on
+pure imagination and the whole work upon it thrown away, or we have here
+another very remarkable proof of the influence of the Pleiades on the
+reckoning of the year, and a very interesting chapter in the history of
+the heavens.
+
+Following the guidance of Mr. Haliburton, we shall find still more
+customs, and names depending in all probability on the influence the
+Pleiades once exerted, and the observances connected with the feasts in
+their honour.
+
+The name by which the Pleiades are known among the Polynesians is the
+"Tau," which means a season, and they speak of the years of the Tau,
+that is of the Pleiades. Now we have seen that the Egyptians had similar
+feasts at similar times, in relation to this constellation, and argued
+that they did not arise independently. This seems still further proved
+by their name for these stars--the Atauria.
+
+Now the Egyptians do not appear to have derived their signs of the
+Zodiac from the same source; these had a Babylonian origin, and the
+constellation in which the Pleiades were placed by the latter people was
+the Bull, by whatever name he went. The Egyptians, we may make the fair
+surmise, adopted from both sources; they took the Pleiades to indicate
+the Bull, and they called this animal after the Atauria. From thence we
+got the Latin Taurus, and the German Thier.
+
+It is possible that this somehow got connected with the letter "tau" in
+Greek, which seems itself connected with the sacred scarabæus or
+Tau-beetle of Egypt; but the nature of the connection is by no means
+obvious. Mr. Haliburton even suggests that the "tors" and "Arthur's
+seat," which are names given to British hill-tops, may be connected with
+the "high places," of the worship of the Pleiades, but of this we have
+no proof.
+
+Among the customs possibly derived from the ancients, through the
+Phoenicians, though now adopted as conveying a different meaning in a
+Christian sense, is that of the "hot cross bun," or "bull cake." It is
+found on Egyptian monuments, signifying the four quarters of the year,
+and sometimes stamped with the head and horns of the bull. It is found
+among ourselves too, essentially connected with the dead, and something
+similar to it appears in the "soul cake" connected originally with All
+Souls' Day.
+
+Among the Scotch it was traditionally thought that on New Year's Eve the
+Candlemas Bull can be seen, rising at twilight and sailing over the
+heavens--a very near approach to a matter-of-fact statement.
+
+We have seen that among the ancient Indians there was some notice taken
+of the Pleiades, and that they in all probability guided their year by
+them or by some other stars: it would therefore behove them to know
+something of the precession of the equinoxes. It seems very well proved
+that their days of Brahma and other periods were meant to represent some
+astronomical cycles, and among these we find one that is applicable to
+the above. They said that in every thousand divine ages, or in every day
+of Brahma, fourteen Menus are successively invested with the sovereignty
+of the earth. Each Menu transmits his empire to his sons during
+seventy-one divine ages. We may find a meaning for this by putting it
+that the equinox goes forward fourteen days in each thousand years, and
+each day takes up seventy-one years.
+
+These may not be the only ones among the various customs, sayings, and
+names that are due in one way or other to this primitive method of
+arranging the seasons by the positions of the stars, especially of those
+most remarkable and conspicuous ones the Pleiades, but they are those
+that are best authenticated. If the connection between the Pleiades and
+the festival of the dead, the new year and a deluge, can be clearly made
+out; if the tradition of the latter be found as universal as that of the
+former, and be connected with it in the Mosaic narrative; if we can
+trace all these traditions to the south of the equator, and find
+numerous further traditions connected with islands, we may find some
+reason for believing in their theory who suggest that the early
+progenitors of the human race (? all of them) were inhabitants of some
+fortunate islands of even temperature in the southern hemisphere, where
+they made some progress in civilisation, but that their island was
+swallowed up by the sea, and that they only escaped by making huge
+vessels, and, being carried by the waves, they landed on continental
+shores, where they commemorated yearly the great catastrophe that had
+happened to them, notifying its time by the position of the Pleiades,
+making it a feast of the dead whom they had left behind, and opening
+the year with the day, whether it were spring or not, and handing down
+to their descendants and to those among whom they came, the traditions
+and customs which such events had impressed upon them.
+
+Whether such an account be probable, mythical, or unnatural, there are
+certainly some strange things to account for in connection with the
+Pleiades.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE NATURE AND STRUCTURE OF THE HEAVENS ACCORDING TO THE ANCIENTS.
+
+
+Many and various have been the ideas entertained by reflecting men in
+former times on the nature and construction of the heavenly vault,
+wherein appeared those stars and constellations whose history we have
+already traced. Is it solid? or liquid? or gaseous? Each of these and
+many other suppositions have been duly formulated by the ancient
+philosophers and sages, although, as we are told by modern astronomy, it
+does not exist at all.
+
+In our study of the ancient ideas about the structure of the universe,
+we will commence with that early and curious system which considered the
+heavenly vault to be material and solid.
+
+The theory of a solid sky received the assent of all the most ancient
+philosophers. In his commentary on Aristotle's work on the heavens,
+Simplicius reveals the repugnance the ancient philosophers felt in
+admitting that a star could stand alone in space, or have a free motion
+of its own. It must have a support, and they therefore conceived that
+the sky must be solid. However strange this idea may now appear, it
+formed for many centuries the basis of all astronomical theories. Thus
+Anaximenas (in the sixth century B.C.) is related by Plutarch to have
+said that "the outer sky is solid and crystalline," and that the stars
+are "fixed to its surface like studs," but he does not say on what this
+opinion was founded, though it is probable that, like his master
+Anaximander, he could not understand how the stars could move without
+being supported.
+
+Pythagoras, who lived about the same epoch, is also supposed by some to
+have held the same views, and it is possible that they all borrowed
+these ideas from the Persians, whose earliest astronomers are said in
+the _Zend avesta_ to have believed in concentric solid skies.
+
+Eudoxus of Cnidus, in the fifth century B.C., is said by his commentator
+Aratus to have also believed in the solidity of the heavens, but his
+reasons are not assigned.
+
+Notwithstanding these previously expressed opinions, Aristotle (fourth
+century, B.C.) has for a long time been generally supposed to be the
+inventor of solid skies, but in fact he only gave the idea his valuable
+and entire support. The sphere of the stars was his eighth heaven. The
+less elevated heavens, in which he also believed, were invented to
+explain as well as they might, the proper motions of the sun, moon, and
+planets.
+
+The philosopher of Stagira said that the motion of his eighth or
+outermost solid sky was uniform, nor ever troubled by any perturbation.
+"Within the universe there is," he says, "a fixed and immovable centre,
+the earth; and without there is a bounding surface enclosing it on all
+sides. The outermost part of the universe is the sky. It is filled with
+heavenly bodies which we know as stars, and it has a perpetual motion,
+carrying round with it these immortal bodies in its unaltering and
+unending revolution."
+
+Euclid, to whom we may assign a date of about 275 before our present
+era, also considered the stars to be set in a solid sphere, having the
+eye of the observer as centre; though for him this conception was simply
+a deduction from exact and fundamental observations, namely, that their
+revolution took place as a whole, the shape and size of the
+constellation being never altered.
+
+Cicero, in the last century before Christ, declared himself a believer
+in the solidity of the sky. According to him the ether was too rarefied
+to enable it to move the stars, which must therefore require to be fixed
+to a sphere of their own, independent of the ether.
+
+In the time of Seneca there seem to have been difficulties already
+raised about the solidity of the heavens, for he only mentions it in the
+form of a question--"Is the sky solid and of a firm and compact
+substance?" (_Questions_, Book ii.)
+
+In the fifth century the idea of the star sphere still lingered, and in
+the eyes of Simplicius, the commentator of Aristotle, it was not merely
+an artifice suitable for the representation of the apparent motions, but
+a firm and solid reality; while Mahomet and most of the Fathers of the
+Christian Church had the same conception of these concentric spheres.
+
+It appears then from this review that the phrases "starry vault," and
+especially "fixed stars," have been used in two very distinct senses.
+When we meet with them in Aristotle or Ptolemy, it is obvious that they
+have reference to the crystal sphere of Anaximenas, to which they were
+supposed to be affixed, and to move with it; but that later the word
+"fixed" carried with it the sense of immovable, and the stars were
+conceived as fixed in this sense, independently of the sphere to which
+they were originally thought to be attached. Thus Seneca speaks of them
+as the _fixum et immobilem populum_.
+
+If we would inquire a little further into the supposed nature of this
+solid sphere, we find that Empedocles considered it to be a solid mass,
+formed of a portion of the ether which the elementary fire has converted
+into crystal, and his ideas of the connection between cold and
+solidification being not very precise, he described it by names that
+give the best idea of transparence, and, like Lactantius, called it
+_vitreum cælum_, or said _cælum ærem glaciatum esse_, though we cannot
+suppose that he made any allusion to what we now call glass, but simply
+meant some body eminently transparent into which the fire had
+transformed the air; while so far from having any idea of cold, as we
+might imagine possible from observations of the snowy tops of mountains,
+they actually believed in a warm region above the lower atmosphere. Thus
+Aristotle considers that the spheres heat by their motion the air below
+them, without being heated themselves, and that there is thus a
+production of heat. "The motion of the sphere of fixed stars," he says,
+"is the most rapid, as it moves in a circle with all the bodies attached
+to it, and the spaces immediately below are strongly heated by the
+motion, and the heat, thus engendered, is propagated downwards to the
+earth." This however, strangely enough, does not appear to have
+prevented their supposing an eternal cold to reign in the regions next
+below, for Macrobius, in his commentary on Cicero, speaks of the
+decrease of temperature with the height, and concludes that the extreme
+zones of the heavens where Saturn moves must be eternally cold; but this
+they reckoned as part of the atmosphere, beyond whose limits alone was
+to be found the fiery ether.
+
+It is to the Fathers of the Church that we owe the transmission during
+the middle ages of the idea of a crystal vault. They conceived a heaven
+of glass composed of eight or ten superposed layers, something like so
+many skins in an onion. This idea seems to have lingered on in certain
+cloisters of southern Europe even into the nineteenth century, for a
+venerable Prince of the Church told Humboldt in 1815, that a large
+aërolite lately fallen, which was covered with a vitrified crust, must
+be a fragment of the crystalline sky. On these various spheres, one
+enveloping without touching another, they supposed the several planets
+to be fixed, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter.
+
+Whether the greater minds of antiquity, such as Plato, Plutarch,
+Eudoxus, Aristotle, Apollonius, believed in the reality of these
+concentric spheres to carry the planets, or whether this conception was
+not rather with them an imaginary one, serving only to simplify
+calculation and assist the mind in the solution of the difficult problem
+of their motion, is a point on which even Humboldt cannot decide. It is
+certain, however, that in the middle of the sixteenth century, when the
+theory involved no less than seventy-seven concentric spheres, and
+later, when the adversaries of Copernicus brought them all into
+prominence to defend the system of Ptolemy, the belief in the existence
+of these solid spheres, circles and epicycles, which was under the
+especial patronage of the Church, was very widespread.
+
+Tycho Brahe expressly boasts of having been the first, by considerations
+concerning the orbits of the comets, to have demonstrated the
+impossibility of solid spheres, and to have upset this ingenious
+scaffolding. He supposed the spaces of our system to be filled with air,
+and that this medium, disturbed by the motion of the heavenly bodies,
+opposed a resistance which gave rise to the harmonic sounds.
+
+It should be added also that the Grecian philosophers, though little
+fond of observation, but rejoicing rather in framing systems for the
+explanation of phenomena of which they possessed but the faintest
+glimpse, have left us some ideas about the nature of shooting stars and
+aërolites that come very close to those that are now accepted. "Some
+philosophers think," says Plutarch in his life of Lysander, "that
+shooting stars are not detached particles of ether which are
+extinguished by the atmosphere soon after being ignited, nor do they
+arise from the combustion of the rarefied air in the upper regions, but
+that they are rather heavenly bodies which fall, that is to say, which
+escaping in some way from the general force of rotation are precipitated
+in an irregular manner, sometimes on inhabited portions of the earth,
+but sometimes also in the ocean, where of course they cannot be found."
+Diogenes of Apollonius expresses himself still more clearly: "Amongst
+the stars that are visible move others that are invisible, to which in
+consequence we are unable to give any name. These latter often fall to
+the earth and take fire like that star-stone which fell all on fire near
+Ægos Potamos." These ideas were no doubt borrowed from some more ancient
+source, as he believed that all the stars were made of something like
+pumice-stone. Anaxagoras, in fact, thought that all the heavenly bodies
+were fragments of rocks which the ether, by the force of its circular
+motion, had detached from the earth, set fire to, and turned into
+stars. Thus the Ionic school, with Diogenes of Apollonius, placed the
+aërolites and the stars in one class, and assigned to all of them a
+terrestrial origin, though in this sense only, that the earth, being the
+central body, had furnished the matter for all those that surround it.
+
+Plutarch speaks thus of this curious combination:--"Anaxagoras teaches
+that the ambient ether is of an igneous nature, and by the force of its
+gyratory motion it tears off blocks of stone, renders them incandescent,
+and transforms them into stars." It appears that he explained also by an
+analogous effect of the circular motion the descent of the Nemæan Lion,
+which, according to an old tradition, fell out of the moon upon the
+Peloponnesus. According to Boeckh, this ancient myth of the Nemæan
+Lion had an astronomical origin, and was symbolically connected in
+chronology with the cycle of intercalation of the lunar year, with the
+worship of the moon in Nemaea, and the games by which it was
+accompanied.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VI.--THE NEMÆAN LION.]
+
+Anaxagoras explains the apparent motion of the celestial sphere from
+east to west by the hypothesis of a general revolution, the interruption
+of which, as we have just seen, caused the fall of meteoric stones. This
+hypothesis is the point of departure of the theory of vortices, which
+more than two thousand years later, by the labours of Descartes,
+Huyghens, and Hooke, took so prominent a place among the theories of
+the world.
+
+It may be worth adding with regard to the famous aërolite of Ægos
+Potamus, alluded to above, that when the heavens were no longer believed
+to be solid, the faith in the celestial origin of this, as of other
+aërolites, was for a long time destroyed. Thus Bailly the astronomer,
+alluding to it, says, "if the fact be true, this stone must have been
+thrown out by a volcano." Indeed it is only within the last century that
+it has been finally accepted for fact that stones do fall from the sky.
+Laplace thought it probable that they came from the moon; but it has now
+been demonstrated that aërolites, meteors, and shooting stars belong all
+to one class of heavenly bodies, that they are fragments scattered
+through space, and circulate like the planets round the sun. When the
+earth in its motion crosses this heavenly host, those which come near
+enough to touch its atmosphere leave a luminous train behind them by
+their heating by friction with the air: these are the _shooting stars_.
+Sometimes they come so close as to appear larger than the moon, then
+they are _meteors;_ and sometimes too the attraction of the earth makes
+them fall to it, and these become _aërolites_.
+
+But to return to our ancient astronomers:--
+
+They believed the heavens to be in motion, not only because they saw the
+motion with their eyes, but because they believed them to be animated,
+and regarded motion as the essence of life. They judged of the rapidity
+of the stars' motion by a very ingenious means. They perceived that it
+was greater than that of a horse, a bird, an arrow, or even of the
+voice, and Cleomenas endeavoured to estimate it in the following way. He
+remarks that when the king of Persia made war upon Greece he placed men
+at certain intervals, so as to lie in hearing of each other, and thus
+passed on the news from Athens to Susa. Now this news took two days and
+nights to pass over this distance. The voice therefore only accomplished
+a fraction of the distance that the stars had accomplished twice in the
+same time.
+
+The heavens, as we have seen, were not supposed to consist of a single
+sphere, but of several concentric ones, the arrangement and names of
+which we must now inquire into.
+
+The early Chaldeans established three. The first was the empyreal
+heaven, which was the most remote. This, which they called also the
+solid firmament, was made of fire, but of fire of so rare and
+penetrating a nature, that it easily passed through the other heavens,
+and became universally diffused, and in this way reached the earth. The
+second was the ethereal heaven, containing the stars, which were simply
+formed of the more compact and denser parts of this substance; and the
+third heaven was that of the planets. The Persians, however, gave a
+separate heaven to the sun, and another to the moon.
+
+The system which has enjoyed the longest and most widely-spread reign
+is that which places above, or rather round, the solid firmament a
+heaven of water--(the nature of which is not accurately defined), and
+round this a _primum mobile_, prime mover, or originator of all the
+motions, and round all this the empyreal heaven, or abode of the
+blessed. In the most anciently printed scientific encyclopædia known,
+the _Magarita philosophica_, edited in the fifteenth century, that is,
+two centuries before the adoption of the true system of the world, we
+have the curious figure represented on the next page, in which we find
+no less than eleven different heavens. We here see on the exterior the
+solid empyreal heaven, which is stated in the body of the work to be the
+abode of the blessed and to be immovable, while the next heaven gives
+motion to all within, and is followed by the aqueous heaven, then the
+crystal firmament, and lastly by the several heavens of the planets,
+sun, and moon. The revolution of these spheres was not supposed to take
+place, like the motion of the earth in modern astronomy, round an
+imaginary axis, but round one which had a material existence, which was
+provided with pivots moving in fixed sockets. Thus Vitruvius, architect
+to Augustus, teaches it expressly in these words:--
+
+"The heaven turns continually round the earth and sea upon an axis,
+where two extremities are like two pivots that sustain it: for there are
+two places in which the Governor of Nature has fashioned and set these
+pivots as two centres; one is above the earth among the northern stars;
+the other is at the opposite end beneath the earth to the south; and
+around these pivots, as round two centres, he has placed little naves,
+like those of a wheel upon which the heaven turns continually."
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 13.]
+
+Similarly curious ideas we shall find to have prevailed with respect to
+the meaning of everything that they observed in the heavens: thus what a
+number of opinions have been hazarded on the nature of the "Milky Way"
+alone! some of which we may learn from Plutarch. The Milky Way, he says,
+is a nebulous circle, which constantly appears in the sky, and which
+owes its name to its white appearance. Certain Pythagoreans assert that
+when Phaeton lit up the universe, one star, which escaped from its
+proper place, set light to the whole space it passed over in its
+circular course, and so formed the Milky Way. Others thought that this
+circle was where the sun had been moving at the beginning of the world.
+According to others it is but an optical phenomenon produced by the
+reflection of the sun's rays from the vault of the sky as from a mirror,
+and comparable with the effects seen in the rainbow and illuminated
+clouds. Metrodorus says it is the mark of the sun's passage which moves
+along this circle. Parmenidas pretends that the milky colour arises from
+a mixture of dense and rare air. Anaxagoras thinks it an effect of the
+earth's shadow projected on this part of the heavens, when the sun is
+below. Democritus says that it is the lustre of several little stars
+which are very near together, and which reciprocally illuminate each
+other. Aristotle believes it to be a vast mass of arid vapours, which
+takes fire from a glowing tress, above the region of the ether, and far
+below that of the planets. Posidonius says that the circle is a
+compound of fire less dense than that of the stars, but more luminous.
+All such opinions, except that of Democritus, are of little value,
+because founded on nothing; perhaps the worst is that of Theophrastus,
+who said it was the junction between the two hemispheres, which together
+formed the vault of heaven: and that it was so badly made that it let
+through some of the light that he supposed to exist everywhere behind
+the solid sky.
+
+We now know that the Milky Way, like many of the nebulæ, is an immense
+agglomeration of suns. The Milky Way is itself a nebula, a mass of
+sidereal systems, with our own among them, since our sun is a single
+star in this vast archipelago of eighteen million orbs. The Greeks
+called it the Galaxy. The Chinese and Arabians call it the River of
+Heaven. It is the Path of Souls among the North American Indians, and
+the Road of S. Jacques de Compostelle among French peasants.
+
+In tracing the history of ideas concerning the structure of the heavens
+among the Greek philosophers, we meet with other modifications which it
+will be interesting to recount. Thus Eudoxus, who paid greater attention
+than others to the variations of the motions of the planets, gave more
+than one sphere to each of them to represent these observed changes.
+Each planet, according to him, has a separate part of the heaven to
+itself, which is composed of several concentric spheres, whose
+movements, modifying each other, produce that of the planet. He gave
+three spheres to the sun: one which turned from east to west in
+twenty-four hours, to represent the diurnal rotation; a second, which
+turned about the pole of the ecliptic in 365-1/4 days, and produced its
+annual movement; and a third was added to account for a certain supposed
+motion, by which the sun was drawn out of the ecliptic, and turned about
+an axis, making such an angle with that of the ecliptic, as represented
+the supposed aberration. The moon also had three spheres to produce its
+motions in longitude and latitude, and its diurnal motion. Each of the
+other planets had four, the extra one being added to account for their
+stations and retrogressions. It should be added that these concentric
+spheres were supposed to fit each other, so that the different planets
+were only separated by the thicknesses of these crystal zones.
+
+Polemarch, the disciple of Eudoxus, who went to Athens with his pupil
+Calippus for the express purpose of consulting Aristotle on these
+subjects, was not satisfied with the exactness with which these spheres
+represented the planetary motions, and made changes in the direction of
+still greater complication. Instead of the twenty-six spheres which
+represented Eudoxus' system, Calippus established thirty-three, and by
+adding also intermediary spheres to prevent the motion of one planet
+interfering with that of the adjacent ones, the number was increased to
+fifty-six.
+
+There is extant a small work, ascribed to Aristotle, entitled "Letter of
+Aristotle to Alexander on the system of the world," which gives so clear
+an account of the ideas entertained in his epoch that we shall venture
+to give a somewhat long extract from it. The work, it should be said, is
+not by all considered genuine, but is ascribed by some to Nicolas of
+Damas, by others to Anaximenas of Lampsacus, a contemporary of
+Alexander's, and by others to the Stoic Posidonius. It is certain,
+however, that Aristotle paid some attention to astronomy, for he records
+the rare phenomena of an eclipse of Mars by the moon, and the
+occultation of one of the Gemini by the planet Jupiter, and the work may
+well be genuine. It contains the following:--
+
+"There is a fixed and immovable centre to the universe. This is occupied
+by the earth, the fruitful mother, the common focus of every kind of
+living thing. Immediately surrounding it on all sides is the air. Above
+this in the highest region is the dwelling-place of the gods, which is
+called the heavens. The heavens and the universe being spherical and in
+continual motion, there must be two points on opposite sides, as in a
+globe which turns about an axis, and these points must be immovable, and
+have the sphere between them, since the universe turns about them. They
+are called the poles. If a line be drawn from one of these points to the
+other it will be the diameter of the universe, having the earth in the
+centre and the two poles at the extremities; of these two poles the
+northern one is always visible above our horizon, and is called the
+Arctic pole; the other, to the south, is always invisible to us--it is
+called the Antarctic pole.
+
+"The substance of the heavens and of the stars is called ether; not that
+it is composed of flame, as pretended by some who have not considered
+its nature, which is very different from that of fire, but it is so
+called because it has an eternal circular motion, being a divine and
+incorruptible element, altogether different from the other four.
+
+"Of the stars contained in the heavens some are fixed, and turn with the
+heavens, constantly maintaining their relative positions. In their
+middle portion is the circle called the _zoophore_, which stretches
+obliquely from one tropic to the other, and is divided into twelve
+parts, which are the twelve signs (of the zodiac). The others are
+wandering stars, and move neither with the same velocity as the fixed
+stars, nor with a uniform velocity among themselves, but all in
+different circles, and with velocities depending on the distances of
+these circles from the earth.
+
+"Although all the fixed stars move on the same surface of the heavens,
+their number cannot be determined. Of the movable stars there are seven,
+which circulate in as many concentric circles, so arranged that the
+lower circle is smaller than the higher, and that the seven so placed
+one within the other are all within the spheres of the fixed stars.
+
+"On the nearer, that is inner, side of this ethereal, immovable,
+unalterable, impassible nature is placed our movable, corruptible, and
+mortal nature. Of this there are several kinds, the first of which is
+fire, a subtle inflammable essence, which is kindled by the great
+pressure and rapid motion of the ether. It is in this region of air,
+when any disturbance takes place in it, that we see kindled
+shooting-stars, streaks of light, and shining motes, and it is there
+that comets are lighted and extinguished.
+
+"Below the fire comes the air, by nature cold and dark, but which is
+warmed and enflamed, and becomes luminous by its motion. It is in the
+region of the air, which is passive and changeable in any manner, that
+the clouds condense, and rain, snow, frost, and hail are formed and fall
+to the earth. It is the abode of stormy winds, of whirlwinds, thunder,
+lightning, and many other phenomena.
+
+"The cause of the heaven's motion is God. He is not in the centre, where
+the earth is a region of agitation and trouble, but he is above the
+outermost circumference, which is the purest of all regions, a place
+which we call rightly _ouranos_, because it is the highest part of the
+universe, and _olympos_, that is, perfectly bright, because it is
+altogether separated from everything like the shadow and disordered
+movements which occur in the lower regions."
+
+We notice in this extract a curious etymology of the word ether, namely,
+as signifying perpetual motion ([Greek: aei teein]), though it is more
+probable that its true, as its more generally accepted derivation is
+from [Greek: aithein], to burn or shine, a meaning doubtless alluded to
+in a remarkable passage of Hippocrates, [Greek: Peri Sarkôn]. "It
+appears to me," he says, "that what we call the principle of heat is
+immortal, that it knows all, sees all, hears all, perceives all, both in
+the past and in the future. At the time when all was in confusion, the
+greater part of this principle rose to the circumference of the
+universe; it is this that the ancients have called _ether_."
+
+The first Greek that can be called an astronomer was Thales, born at
+Miletus 641 B.C., who introduced into Greece the elements of astronomy.
+His opinions were these: that the stars were of the same substance as
+the earth, but that they were on fire; that the moon borrowed its light
+from the sun, and caused the eclipses of the latter, while it was itself
+eclipsed when it entered the earth's shadow; that the earth was round,
+and divisible into five zones, by means of five circles, _i.e._ the
+Arctic and Antarctic, the two tropics, and the equator; that the latter
+circle is cut obliquely by the ecliptic, and perpendicularly by the
+meridian. Up to his time no division of the sphere had been made beyond
+the description of the constellations. These opinions do not appear to
+have been rapidly spread, since Herodotus, one of the finest intellects
+of Greece, who lived two centuries later, was still so ill-instructed as
+to say, in speaking of an eclipse, "The sun abandoned its place, and
+night took the place of day."
+
+Anaxagoras, of whom we have spoken before, asserted that the sun was a
+mass of fire larger than the Peloponnesus. Plutarch says he regarded it
+as a burning stone, and Diogenes Laertius looked upon it as hot iron.
+For this bold idea he was persecuted. They considered it a crime that he
+taught the causes of the eclipses of the moon, and pretended that the
+sun is larger than it looks. He first taught the existence of one God,
+and he was taxed with impiety and treason against his country. When he
+was condemned to death, "Nature," he said, "has long ago condemned me to
+the same; and as to my children, when I gave them birth I had no doubt
+but they would have to die some day." His disciple Pericles, however,
+defended him so eloquently that his life was spared, and he was sent
+into exile.
+
+Pythagoras, who belonged to the school of Thales, and who travelled in
+Phoenicia, Chaldea, Judæa, and Egypt, to learn their ideas, ventured,
+in spite of the warnings of the priests, to submit to the rites of
+initiation at Heliopolis, and thence returned to Samos, but meeting with
+poor reception there, he went to Italy to teach. From him arose the
+_Italian School_, and his disciples took the name of philosophers
+(lovers of wisdom) instead of that of sages. We shall learn more about
+him in the chapter on the Harmony of the Spheres.
+
+His first disciple, Empedocles, famous for the curiosity which led him
+to his death in the crater of Ætna, as the story goes, thought that the
+true sun, the fire that is in the centre of the universe, illuminated
+the other hemisphere, and that what we see is only the reflected image
+of that, which is invisible to us, and all of whose movements it
+follows.
+
+His disciple, Philolaus, also taught that the sun was a mass of glass,
+which sent us by reflection all the light that it scattered through the
+universe. We must not, however, forget that these opinions are recorded
+by historians who probably did not understand them, and who took in the
+letter what was only intended for a comparison or figure.
+
+If we are to believe Plutarch, Xenophanes, who flourished about 360
+B.C., was very wild in his opinions. He thought the stars were lighted
+every night and extinguished every morning; that the sun is a fiery
+cloud; that eclipses take place by the sun being extinguished and
+afterwards rekindled; that the moon is inhabited, but is eighteen times
+larger than the earth; that there are several suns and several moons for
+giving light to different countries. This can only be matched by those
+who said the sun went every night through a hole in the earth round
+again to the east; or that it went above ground, and if we did not see
+it going back it was because it accomplished the journey in the night.
+
+Parmenidas was the disciple of Xenophanes. He divided the earth, like
+Thales, into zones; and he added that it was suspended in the centre of
+the universe, and that it did not fall because there was no reason why
+it should move in one direction rather than another. This argument is
+perfectly philosophical, and illustrates a principle employed since the
+time of Archimedes, and of which Leibnitz made so much use.
+
+Such are some of the general ideas which were held by the Greeks and
+others on the nature of the heavens, omitting that of Ptolemy, of which
+we shall give a fuller account hereafter. We see that they were all
+affected by the dominant idea of the superiority of the earth over the
+rest of the universe, and were spoiled for want of the grand conception
+of the immensity of space. The universe was for them a closed space,
+outside of which there was _nothing_; and they busied themselves with
+metaphysical questions as to the possibility of space being infinite. In
+the meantime their conceptions of the distances separating us from other
+visible parts of the universe were excessively cramped. Hesiod, for
+instance, thinks to give a grand idea of the size of the universe by
+saying that Vulcan's anvil took seven days to fall from heaven to earth,
+when in reality, as now calculated, it would take no less than
+seventy-two years for the light, even travelling at a far greater rate,
+to reach us from one of the nearest of the fixed stars.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE CELESTIAL HARMONY.
+
+
+Nature presents herself to us under various aspects. At times, it may
+be, she presents to us the appearance of discord, and we fail to
+perceive the unity that pervades the whole of her actions. At others,
+however, and most often to an instructed mind, there is a concord
+between her various powers, a harmony even in her sounds, that will not
+escape us. Even the wild notes of the tempest and the bass roll of the
+thunder form themselves into part of the grand chorus which in the great
+opera are succeeded by the solos of the evening breeze, the songs of
+birds, or the ripple of the waves. These are ideas that would most
+naturally present themselves to contemplative minds, and such must have
+been the students of the silent, but to them harmonious and tuneful,
+star-lit sky, under the clear atmosphere of Greece. The various motions
+they observed became indissolubly connected in their minds with music,
+and they did not doubt that the heavenly spheres made harmony, if
+imperceptible to human ears. But their ideas were more precise than
+this. They discovered that harmony depended on number, and they
+attempted to prove that whether the music they might make were audible
+or not, the celestial spheres had motions which were connected together
+in the same way as the numbers belonging to a harmony. The study of
+their opinions on this point reveals some very curious as well as very
+interesting ideas. We may commence by referring to an ancient treatise
+by Timæus of Locris on the soul of the universe. To him we owe the first
+serious exposition of the complete harmonic cosmography of Pythagoras.
+We must premise that, according to this school, God employed all
+existing matter in the formation of the universe--so that it comprehends
+all things, and all is in it. "It is a unique, perfect, and spherical
+production, since the sphere is the most perfect of figures; animated
+and endowed with reason, since that which is animated and endowed with
+reason is better than that which is not."
+
+So begins Timæus, and then follows, as a quotation from Plato, a
+comparison of the earth to what would appear to us nowadays to be a very
+singular animal. Not only, says Plato, is the earth a sphere, but this
+sphere is perfect, and its maker took care that its surface should be
+perfectly uniform for many reasons. The universe in fact has no need of
+eyes, since there is nothing outside of it to see; nor yet of ears,
+since there is nothing but what is part of itself to make a sound; nor
+of breathing organs, as it is not surrounded by air: any organ that
+should serve to take in nourishment, or to reject the grosser parts,
+would be absolutely useless, for there being nothing outside it, it
+could not receive or reject anything. For the same reason it needs no
+hands with which to defend itself, nor yet of feet with which to walk.
+Of the seven kinds of motion, its author has given it that which is most
+suitable for its figure in making it turn about its axis, and since for
+the execution of this rotatory motion no arms or legs are wanted, its
+maker gave it none.
+
+With regard to the soul of the universe, Plato, according to Timæus,
+says that God composed it "of a mixture of the divisible and indivisible
+essences, so that the two together might be united into one, uniting two
+forces, the principles of two kinds of motion, one that which is _always
+the same_, and the other that which is _always changing_. The mixture of
+these two essences was difficult, and was not accomplished without
+considerable skill and pains. The proportions of the mixture were
+according to harmonic numbers, so chosen that it is possible to know of
+what, and by what rule, the soul of the universe is compounded."
+
+By harmonic numbers Timæus means those that are proportional to those
+representing the consonances of the musical scale. The consonances known
+to the ancients were three in number: the diapason, or octave, in the
+proportion of 2 to 1, the diapent, or fifth, in that of 3 to 2, and the
+diatessaron, or fourth, in that of 4 to 3; when to these are joined the
+tones which fill the intervals of the consonances, and are in the
+proportion of 9 to 8, and the semitones in that of 256 to 243, all the
+degrees of the musical scale is complete.
+
+The discovery of these harmonic numbers is due to Pythagoras. It is
+stated that when passing one day near a forge, he noticed that the
+hammers gave out very accurate musical concords. He had them weighed,
+and found that of those which sounded the octave, one weighed twice as
+much as the other; that of those which made a perfect fifth, one weighed
+one third more than the other, and in the case of a fourth, one quarter
+more. After having tried the hammers, he took a musical string stretched
+with weights, and found that when he had applied a given weight in the
+first instance to make any particular note, he had to double the weight
+to obtain the octave, to add one third extra only to obtain a fifth, a
+quarter for the fourth, and eight for one tone, and about an eighteenth
+for a half-tone; or more simply still, he stretched a cord once for all,
+and then when the whole length sounded any note, when stopped in the
+middle it gave the octave, at the third it gave the fifth, at the
+quarter the fourth, at the eighth the tone, and at the eighteenth the
+semi-tone.
+
+Since the ancients conceived of the soul by means of motion, the
+quantity of motion developed in anything was their measure of the
+quantity of its soul. Now the motion of the heavenly bodies seemed to
+them to depend on their distance from the centre of the universe, the
+fastest being those at the circumference of the whole. To determine the
+relative degrees of velocity, they imagined a straight line drawn
+outwards from the centre of the earth, as far as the empyreal heaven,
+and divided it according to the proportions of the musical scale, and
+these divisions they called the harmonic degrees of the soul of the
+universe. Taking the earth's radius for the first number, and calling it
+unity, or, in order to avoid fractions, denoting it by 384, the second
+degree, which is at the distance of an harmonic third, will be
+represented by 384 plus its eighth part, or 432. The third degree will
+be 432, plus its eighth part, or 486. The fourth, being a semitone, will
+be as 243 to 256, which will give 512; and so on. The eighth degree will
+in this way be the double of 384 or 768, and represents the first
+octave.
+
+They continued this series to 36 degrees, as in the following table:--
+
+The Earth.
+
+  Mi           384 + 1/8 = 432
+  Re           432 + 1/8 = 486
+  Ut           486 : 512 : : 243 : 256
+  Si           512 + 1/8 = 576
+  La           576 + 1/8 = 648
+  Sol          648 + 1/8 = 729
+  Fa           729 : 768 : : 243 : 256
+  Mi           768 + 1/8 = 864
+  Re           864 + 1/8 = 972
+  Ut           972 : 1024 : : 243 : 256
+  Si          1024 + 1/8 = 1152
+  La          1152 + 1/8 = 1296
+  Sol         1296 + 1/8 = 1458
+  Fa          1458 : 1536 : : 243 : 256
+  Mi          1536 + 1/8 = 1728
+  Re          1728 + 1/8 = 1944
+  Ut          1944 : 2048 : 243 : 256
+  Si          2048 + 139 = 2187
+  Si 2        2187 : 2304 : : 243 : 256
+  La          2304 + 1/8 = 2592
+  Sol         2592 + 1/8 = 2916
+  Fa          2916 : 3072 : : 243 : 256
+  Mi          3072 + 1/8 = 3456
+  Re          3457 + 1/8 = 3888
+  Ut          3888 + 1/8 = 4374
+  Si          4374 : 4608 : : 243 : 256
+  La          4608 + 1/8 = 5184
+  Sol         5184 + 1/8 = 5832
+  Fa          5832 : 6144 : : 243 : 256
+  Mi          6144 + 417 = 6561
+  Mi 2        6561 : 6912 : : 243 : 256
+  Re          6912 + 1/8 = 7776
+  Ut          7776 + 1/8 = 8748
+  Si          8748 : 9216 : : 243 : 256
+  La          9216 + 1/8 = 10368
+  Sol         10368 = 384 + 27
+
+  The empyreal heaven.
+  Sum of all the terms, 114,695.
+
+This series they considered a complete one, because by taking the terms
+in their proper intervals, the last becomes 27 times the original
+number, and in the school of Pythagoras this 27 had a mystic
+signification, and was considered as the perfect number.
+
+The reason for considering 27 a perfect number was curious. It is the
+sum of the first linear, square, and cubic numbers added to unity. First
+there is 1, which represents the point, then 2 and 3, the first linear
+numbers, even and uneven, then 4 and 9, the first square or surface
+numbers, even and uneven, and the last 8 and 27, the first solid or
+cubic numbers, even and uneven, and 27 is the sum of all the former.
+Whence, taking the number 27 as the symbol of the universe, and the
+numbers which compose it as the elements, it appeared right that the
+soul of the universe should be composed of the same elements.
+
+On this scale of distances, with corresponding velocities, they arranged
+the various planets, and the universe comprehended all these spheres,
+from that of the fixed stars (which was excluded) to the centre of the
+earth. The sphere of the fixed stars was the common envelope, or
+circumference of the universe, and Saturn, immediately below it,
+corresponded to the thirty-sixth tone, and the earth to the first, and
+the other planets with the sun and moon at the various harmonic
+distances.
+
+They reckoned one tone from the earth to the moon, half a tone from the
+moon to Mercury, another half-tone to Venus, one tone and a half from
+Venus to the sun, one from the sun to Mars, a semitone from Mars to
+Jupiter, half a tone from Jupiter to Saturn, and a tone and a half from
+Saturn to the fixed stars; but these distances were not, as we shall
+see, universally agreed upon.
+
+According to Timæus, the sphere of the fixed stars, which contains
+within it no principle of contrariety, being entirely divine and pure,
+always moves with an equal motion in the same direction from east to
+west. But the stars which are within it, being animated by the mixed
+principle, whose composition has been just explained, and thus
+containing two contrary forces, yield on account of one of these forces
+to the motion of the sphere of fixed stars from east to west, and by the
+other they resist it, and move in a contrary direction, in proportion to
+the degree with which they are endowed with each; that is to say, that
+the greater the proportion of the material to the divine force that they
+possess, the greater is their motion from west to east, and the sooner
+they accomplish their periodic course. Now the amount of this force
+depends on the matter they contain. Thus, according to this system, the
+planets turn each day by the common motion with all the heavens about
+the earth from east to west, but they also retrograde towards the east,
+and accomplish their periods according to their component parts.
+
+The additions which Plato made to this theory have always been a proverb
+of obscurity, and none of his commentators have been able to make
+anything of them, and very possibly they were never intended to.
+
+So far the harmony of the heavenly bodies has been explained with
+reference to numbers only, and we may add to this that they reckoned
+126,000 stadia, or 14,286 miles, to represent a tone, which was thus the
+distance of the earth to the moon, and the same measurement made it
+500,000 from the earth to the sun, and the same distance from the sun to
+the fixed stars.
+
+But Plato teaches in his _Republic_ that there is actual musical,
+harmony between the planets. Each of the spheres, he said, carried with
+it a Siren, and each of these sounding a different note, they formed by
+their union a perfect concert, and being themselves delighted with their
+own harmony, they sang divine songs, and accompanied them by a sacred
+dance. The ancients said there were nine Muses, eight of whom, according
+to Plato, presided over celestial, and the ninth over terrestrial
+things, to protect them from disorder and irregularity.
+
+Cicero and Macrobius also express opinions on this harmonious concert.
+Such great motions, says Cicero, cannot take place in silence, and it is
+natural that the two extremes should have related sounds as in the
+octave. The fixed stars must execute the upper note, and the moon the
+base. Kepler has improved on this, and says Jupiter and Saturn sing
+bass, Mars takes the tenor, the earth and Venus are contralto, and
+Mercury is soprano! True, no one has ever heard these sounds, but
+Pythagoras himself may answer this objection. We are always surrounded,
+he says, by this melody, and our ears are accustomed to it from our
+birth, so that, having nothing different to compare it with, we cannot
+perceive it.
+
+We may here recall the further development of the idea of the soul of
+the universe, which was the source of this harmony, and endeavour to
+find a rational interpretation of their meaning. They said that nature
+had made the animals mortal and ephemeral, and had infused their souls
+into them, as they had been extracts from the sun or moon, or even from
+one of the planets. A portion of the unchangeable essence was added to
+the reasoning part of man, to form a germ of wisdom in privileged
+individuals. For the human soul there is one part which possesses
+intelligence and reason, and another part which has neither the one nor
+the other.
+
+The various portions of the general soul of the universe resided,
+according to Timæus, in the different planets, and depended on their
+various characters. Some portions were in the moon, others in Mercury,
+Venus, or Mars, and so on, and thus they give rise to the various
+characters and dispositions that are seen among men. But to these parts
+of the human soul that are taken from the planets is joined a spark of
+the supreme Divinity, which is above them all, and this makes man a more
+holy animal than all the rest, and enables him to have immediate
+converse with the Deity himself. All the different substances in nature
+were supposed to be endowed with more or less of this soul, according to
+their material nature or subtilty, and were placed in the same order
+along the line, from the centre to the circumference, on which the
+planets were situated, as we have seen above. In the centre was the
+earth, the heaviest and grossest of all, which had but little if any
+soul at all. Between the earth and the moon, Timæus placed first water,
+then the air, and lastly elementary fire, which he considered to be
+principles, which were less material in proportion as they were more
+remote and partook of a larger quantity of the soul of the universe.
+Beyond the moon came all the planets, and thus were filled up the
+greater number of the harmonic degrees, the motions of the various
+bodies being guided by the principle enunciated above.
+
+When we carefully consider this theory we find that by a slight change
+of name we may bring it more into harmony with modern ideas. It would
+appear indeed that the ancients called that "soul" which we now call
+"force," and while we say that this force of attraction is in proportion
+to the masses and the inverse square of the distance, they put it that
+it was proportional to the matter, and to the divine substance on which
+the distance depended. So that we may interpret Timæus as stating this
+proposition: _The distances of the stars and their forces are
+proportional among themselves to their periodic times._ "Some people,"
+says Plutarch, "seek the proportions of the soul of the universe in the
+velocities (or periodic times), others in the distances from the centre;
+some in the masses of the heavenly bodies, and others more acute in the
+ratios of the diameters of their orbits. It is probable that the mass of
+each planet, the intervals between the spheres and the velocities of
+their motions, are like well-tuned musical instruments, all proportional
+harmonically with each other and with all other parts of the universe,
+and by necessary consequence that there are the same relative
+proportions in the soul of the universe by which they were formed by the
+Deity."
+
+It is marvellous how deeply occupied were all the best minds in Greece
+and Italy on this subject, both poets and philosophers; Ocellus,
+Democritus, Timæus, Aristotle, and Lucretius have all left treatises on
+the same subject, and almost with the same title, "The Nature of the
+Universe."
+
+Though somewhat similar to that of Timæus, it will be interesting to
+give an account of the ideas of one of these, Ocellus of Lucania.
+
+Ocellus represents the universe as having a spherical form. This sphere
+is divided into concentric layers; above that of the moon they were
+called celestial spheres, while below it and inwards as far as the
+centre of the earth they were called the elementary spheres, and the
+earth was the centre of them all.
+
+In the celestial spheres all the stars were situated, which were so many
+gods, and among them the sun, the largest and most powerful of all. In
+these spheres is never any disturbance, storm, or destruction, and
+consequently no reparation, no reproduction, no action of any kind was
+required on the part of the gods. Below the moon all is at war, all is
+destroyed and reconstructed, and here therefore it is that generations
+are possible. But these take place under the influence of the stars, and
+particularly that of the sun, which in its course acts in different ways
+on the elementary spheres, and produces continual variations in them,
+from whence arises the replenishing and diversifying of nature. It is
+the sun that lights up the region of fire, that dilates the air, melts
+the water, and renders fertile the earth, in its daily course from east
+to west, as well as in this annual journey into the two tropics. But to
+what does the earth owe its germs and its species? According to some
+philosophers these germs were celestial ideas which both gods and demons
+scattered from above over every part of nature, but according to Ocellus
+they arise continually under the influence of the heavenly bodies. The
+divisions of the heavens were supposed to separate the portion that is
+unalterable from that which is in ceaseless change. The line dividing
+the mortal from the immortal is that described by the moon: all that
+lies above that, inclusive, is the habitation of the gods; all that lies
+below is the abode of nature and discord; the latter tending constantly
+to destruction, the former to the reconstruction of all created things.
+
+Ideas such as these, of which we could give other examples more remotely
+connected with harmony, whatever amount of truth we may discover in
+them, prove themselves to have been made before the sciences of
+observation had enabled men to make anything better than empty theories,
+and to support them with false logic. No better example of the latter
+can perhaps be mentioned here than the way in which Ocellus pretends to
+prove that the world is eternal. "The universe," he says, "_having_
+always existed, it follows that everything in it and every arrangement
+of it must always have been as it is now. The several parts of the
+universe _having_ always existed with it, we may say the same of the
+parts of these parts; thus the sun, the moon, the fixed stars, and the
+planets have always existed with the heavens; animals, vegetables, gold,
+and silver with the earth; the currents of air, winds, and changes from
+hot to cold, from cold to hot, with the air. _Therefore_ the heaven,
+with all that it now contains; the earth, with all that it produces and
+supports; and lastly, the whole aërial region, with all its phenomena,
+have always existed." When this system of argument passed away, and
+exact observation took its place, it was soon found that so far from
+what the ancients had argued _must be_ really being the case, no such
+relation as they indicated between the distances or velocities of the
+planets could be traced, and therefore no harmony in the heavens in this
+sense. It is not indeed that we can say no sounds exist because we hear
+none; but considering harmony really to consist of the relations of
+numbers, no such relations exist between the planets' distances, as
+measured now of course from the sun, instead of being, as then, imagined
+from the earth.
+
+The gamut is nothing else than the series of numbers:--
+
+  do  re  mi   fa   sol  la   si   do
+  1  9/8  5/4  4/3  3/2  5/3  15/8  2
+
+and is independent of our perception of the corresponding notes. A
+concert played before a deaf assembly would be a concert still. If one
+note is made by 10,000 vibrations per second, and another by 20,000, we
+should hear them as an octave, but if one had only 10 and the other 20,
+they would still be an octave, though inaudible as notes to us; so too
+we may speak even of the harmony of luminous vibrations of ether, though
+they do not affect our ears.
+
+The velocities of the planets do not coincide with the terms of this
+series. The nearer they are to the sun the faster is their motion,
+Mercury travelling at the mean rate of 55,000 metres a second, Venus,
+36,800, the earth 30,550, Mars 24,448, Jupiter 13,000, Saturn 9,840,
+Uranus 6,800, and Neptune 5,500, numbers which are in the proportion
+roundly of 100, 67, 55, 44, 24, 16, 12, 10, which have no sufficient
+relation to the terms of an harmonic series, to make any harmony
+obvious.
+
+Returning, however, to the ancient philosophers, we are led by their
+ideas about the soul of the universe to discover the origin of their
+gods and natural religion. They were persuaded that only living things
+could move, and consequently that the moving stars must be endowed with
+superior intelligence. It may very well be that from the number seven
+of the planets, including the sun and moon, which were their earliest
+gods, arose the respect and superstition with which all nations, and
+especially the Orientals, regarded that number. From these arose the
+seven superior angels that are found in the theologies of the Chaldeans,
+Persians, and Arabians; the seven gates of Mithra, through which all
+souls must pass to reach the abode of bliss; the seven worlds of
+purification of the Indians, and all the other applications of the
+number seven which so largely figure in Judaism, and have descended from
+it to our own time. On the other hand, as we have seen, this number
+seven may have been derived from the number of the stars in the
+Pleiades.
+
+We have noticed in our chapter on the History of the Zodiac how the
+various signs as they came round and were thought to influence the
+weather and other natural phenomena, came at last to be worshipped. Not
+less, of course, were the sun and moon deified, and that by nations who
+had no zodiac. Among the Egyptians the sun was painted in different
+forms according to the time of year, very much as he is represented in
+our own days in pictures of the old and new years. At the winter
+solstice with them he was an infant, at the spring equinox he was a
+young man, in summer a man in full age with flowing beard, and in the
+autumn an old man. Their fable of Osiris was founded on the same idea.
+They represented the sun by the hawk, and the moon by the Ibis, and to
+these two, worshipped under the names of Osiris and Isis they attributed
+the government of the world, and built a city, Heliopolis, to the
+former, in the temple of which they placed his statue.
+
+The Phenicians in the same way, who were much influenced by ideas of
+religion, attributed divinity to the sun, moon, and stars, and regarded
+them as the sole causes of the production and destruction of all things.
+The sun, under the name of Hercules, was their great divinity.
+
+The Ethiopians worshipped the same, and erected the famous table of the
+sun. Those who lived above Meroë, admitted the existence of eternal and
+incorruptible gods, among which they included the sun, moon, and the
+universe. Like the Incas of Peru, they called themselves the children of
+the sun, whom they regarded as their common father.
+
+The moon was the great divinity of the Arabs. The Saracens called it
+Cabar, or the great, and its crescent still adorns the religious
+monuments of the Turks. Each of their tribes was under the protection of
+some particular star. Sabeism was the principal religion of the east.
+The heavens and the stars were its first object.
+
+In reading the sacred books of the ancient Persians contained in the
+_Zendavesta_, we find on every page invocations addressed to Mithra, to
+the moon, the stars, the elements, the mountains, the trees, and every
+part of nature. The ethereal fire circulating through all the universe,
+and of which the sun is the principal focus, was represented among the
+fire-worshippers by the sacred and perpetual fire of their priests. Each
+planet had its own particular temple, where incense was burnt in its
+honour. These ancient peoples embodied in their religious systems the
+ideas which, as we have seen, led among the Greeks to the representation
+of the harmony of heaven. All the world seemed to them animated by a
+principle of life which circulated through all parts, and which
+preserved it in an eternal activity. They thought that the universe
+lived like man and the other animals, or rather that these latter only
+lived because the universe was essentially alive, and communicated to
+them for an instant an infinitely small portion of its own immortality.
+They were not wise, it may be, in this, but they appear to have caught
+some of the ideas that lie at the basis of religious thought, and to
+have traced harmony where we have almost lost the perception of it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+ASTRONOMICAL SYSTEMS.
+
+
+In our former chapters we have gained some idea of the general structure
+of the heavens as represented by ancient philosophers, and we no longer
+require to know what was thought in the infancy of astronomy, when any
+ideas promulgated were more or less random ones; but in this chapter we
+hope to discuss those arrangements of the heavenly bodies which have
+been promulgated by men as complete systems, and were supposed to
+represent the totality of the facts.
+
+The earliest thoroughly-established system is that of Ptolemy. It was
+not indeed invented by him. The main ideas had been entertained long
+before his time, but he gave it consistence and a name.
+
+We obtain an excellent view of the general nature of this system from
+Cicero. He writes:--
+
+"The universe is composed of nine circles, or rather of nine moving
+globes. The outermost sphere is that of the heavens which surrounds all
+the others, and on which are fixed the stars. Beneath this revolve
+seven other globes, carried round by a motion in a direction contrary to
+that of the heavens. On the first circle revolves the star which men
+call Saturn; on the second Jupiter shines, that beneficent and
+propitious star to human eyes; then follows Mars, ruddy and awful.
+Below, and occupying the middle region, revolves the Sun, the chief,
+prince, and moderator of the other stars, the soul of the world, whose
+immense globe spreads its light through space. After him come, like two
+companions, Venus and Mercury. Lastly, the lowest globe is occupied by
+the moon, which borrows its light from the star of day. Below this last
+celestial circle, there is nothing but what is mortal and corruptible,
+except the souls given by a beneficent Divinity to the race of men.
+Above the moon all is eternal. The earth, situated in the centre of the
+world, and separated from heaven on all sides, forms the ninth sphere;
+it remains immovable, and all heavy bodies are drawn to it by their own
+weight."
+
+The earth, we should add, is surrounded by the sphere of air, and then
+by that of fire, and by that of ether and the meteors.
+
+With respect to the motions of these spheres. The first circle described
+about the terrestrial system, namely, that of the moon, was accomplished
+in 27 days, 7 hours, and 43 minutes. Next to the moon, Mercury in the
+second, and Venus in the third, and the sun in the fourth circle, all
+turned about the earth in the same time, 365 days, 5 hours, and 49
+minutes. But these planets, in addition to the general movement, which
+carried them in 24 hours round from east to west and west to east, and
+the annual revolution, which made them run through the zodiacal circle,
+had a third motion by which they described a circle about each point of
+their orbit taken as a centre.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 14.--PTOLEMY'S ASTRONOMICAL SYSTEM.]
+
+The fifth sphere, carrying Mars, accomplished its revolution in two
+years. Jupiter took 11 years, 313 days, and 19 hours to complete his
+orbit, and Saturn in the seventh sphere took 29 years and 169 days.
+Above all the planets came the sphere of the fixed stars, or Firmament,
+turning from east to west in 24 hours with inconceivable rapidity, and
+endued also with a proper motion from west to east, which was measured
+by Hipparchus, and which we now call the precession of the equinoxes,
+and know that it has a period of 25,870 years. Above all these spheres,
+a _primum mobile_ gave motion to the whole machine, making it turn from
+east to west, but each planet and each fixed star made an effort against
+this motion, by means of which each of them accomplished their
+revolution about the earth in greater or less time, according to its
+distance, or the magnitude of the orbit it had to accomplish.
+
+One immense difficulty attended this system. The apparent motions of the
+planets is not uniform, for sometimes they are seen to advance from west
+to east, when their motion is called _direct_, sometimes they are seen
+for several nights in succession at the same point in the heavens, when
+they are called _stationary_, and sometimes they return from east to
+west, and then their motion is called _retrograde_.
+
+We know now that this apparent variation in the motion of the planets is
+simply due to the annual motion of the earth in its orbit round the sun.
+For example, Saturn describes its vast orbit in about thirty years, and
+the earth describes in one year a much smaller one inside. Now if the
+earth goes faster in the same direction as Saturn, it is plain that
+Saturn will be left behind and appear to go backwards, while if the
+earth is going in the same direction the velocity of Saturn will appear
+to be decreased, but his direction of motion will appear unaltered.
+
+To explain these variations, however, according to his system, Ptolemy
+supposed that the planets did not move exactly in the circumference of
+their respective orbits, but about an _ideal centre_, which itself moved
+along this circumference. Instead therefore of describing a circle, they
+described parts of a series of small circles, which would combine, as is
+easy to see, into a series of uninterrupted waves, and these he called
+_Epicycles_.
+
+Another objection, which even this arrangement did not overcome, was the
+variation of the size of the planets. To overcome this Hipparchus gave
+to the sphere of each planet a considerable thickness, and saw that the
+planet did not turn centrally round the earth, but round a centre of
+motion placed outside the earth. Its revolution took place in such a
+manner, that at one time it reached the inner boundary, at another time
+the outer boundary of its spherical heaven.
+
+But this reply was not satisfactory, for the differences in the apparent
+sizes proved by the laws of optics such a prodigious difference between
+their distances from the earth at the times of conjunction and
+opposition, that it would be extremely difficult to imagine spheres
+thick enough to allow of it.
+
+It was a gigantic and formidable piece of machinery to which it was
+necessary to be continually adding fresh pieces to make observation
+accord with theory. In the thirteenth century, in the times of the
+King-Astronomer, Alphonso X. of Castile, there were already seventy-five
+circles, one within the other. It is said that one day he exclaimed, in
+a full assemblage of bishops, that if the Deity had done him the honour
+to ask his advice before creating the world, he could have told Him how
+to make it a little better, or at all events more simply. He meant to
+express how unworthy this complication was of the dignity of nature.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 15.--THE EPICYCLES OF PTOLEMY.]
+
+Fracastor, in his _Homocentrics_, says that nothing is more monstrous or
+absurd than all the excentrics and epicycles of Ptolemy, and proposes
+to explain the difference of velocity in the planets at different parts
+of their orbits by the medium offering greater or less resistance, and
+their alteration in apparent size by the effect of refraction.
+
+The essential element of this system was that it took appearances for
+realities, and was founded on the assumption that the earth is fixed in
+the centre of the universe, and of course therefore neglected all the
+appearances produced by its motion, or had to explain them by some
+peculiarity in the other planets.
+
+Although it was corrected from time to time to make it accord better
+with observation, it was the same essentially that was taught officially
+everywhere. It reigned supreme in Egypt, Greece, Italy, and Arabia, and
+in the great school of Alexandria, which consolidated it and enriched it
+by its own observations.
+
+But though the same in essence, the details, and especially the means of
+overcoming the difficulties raised by increased observations, have much
+varied, and it will be interesting and instructive to record some of the
+chief of them.
+
+One of the most important influences in modifying the astronomical
+systems taught to the world has been that of the Fathers of the
+Christian Church. When, after five centuries of patient toil, of hopes,
+ambitions, and discussions, the Christian Church took possession of the
+thrones and consciences of men, they founded their physical edifice on
+the ancient system, which they adapted to their special wants. With them
+Aristotle and Ptolemy reigned supreme. They decreed that the earth
+constituted the universe, that the heavens were made for it, that God,
+the angels, and the saints inhabited an eternal abode of joy situated
+above the azure sphere of the fixed stars, and they embodied this
+gratifying illusion in all their illuminated manuscripts, their
+calendars, and their church windows.
+
+The doctors of the Church all acknowledged a plurality of heavens, but
+they differed as to the number. St. Hilary of Poitiers would not fix it,
+and the same doubt held St. Basil back; but the rest, for the most part
+borrowing their ideas from paganism, said there were six or seven, or up
+to ten. They considered these heavens to be so many hemispheres
+supported on the earth, and gave to each a different name. In the system
+of Bede, which had many adherents, they were the Air, Ether, Fiery
+Space, Firmament, Heaven of the Angels, and Heaven of the Trinity.
+
+The two chief varieties in the systems of the middle ages may be
+represented as follows:--
+
+Those who wished to have everything as complete as possible combined the
+system of Ptolemy with that of the Fathers of the Church, and placed in
+the centre of the earth the infernal regions which they surrounded by a
+circle. Another circle marked the earth itself, and after that the
+surrounding ocean, marked as water, then the circle of air, and lastly
+that of fire. Enveloping these, and following one after the other, were
+the seven circles of the seven planets; the eighth represented the
+sphere of the fixed stars on the firmament, then came the ninth heaven,
+then a tenth, the _coelum cristallinum_, and lastly an eleventh and
+outermost, which was the empyreal heaven, where dwelt the cherubim and
+seraphim, and above all the spheres was a throne on which sat the
+Father, as Jupiter Olympus.
+
+The others who wished for more simplicity, represented the earth in the
+centre of the universe, with a circle to indicate the ocean, the second
+sphere was that of the moon; the third was that of the sun; on the
+fourth were placed the four planets, Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury;
+there was a fifth for the space outside the planets, and the last
+outside one was the firmament; altogether seven spheres instead of
+eleven. As a specimen of the style of representation of the astronomical
+systems of the middle ages, we may take the figure on the following
+page:--
+
+Here we see the earth placed immovable in the centre of the universe,
+and represented by a disc traversed by the Mediterranean, and surrounded
+by the ocean. Round this are circumscribed the celestial spheres. That
+of the moon first, then that of Mercury, in which several
+constellations, as the Lyre, Cassiopeia, the Crown, and others, are
+roughly indicated, then comes the sphere of Venus with Sagittarius and
+the Swan. After this comes the _celestis_ _paradisus_, and the legend
+that, "the paradise to which Paul was raised is in this third locality;
+some of these must reach to us, since in them repose the souls of the
+prophets." In the other circles are yet other constellations: for
+example Pegasus, Andromeda, the Dog, Argo, the He-goat, Aquarius, the
+Fishes, and Canopus, figured by a star of the first magnitude. To the
+north is seen near the constellation of the Swan a large star with seven
+rays, meant to represent the brightest of those which compose the Great
+Bear. The stars of Cassiopeia are not only misplaced, but roughly
+represented. The Lyre is curiously drawn. The positions of the
+constellations just named are all wrong in this figure, just as we find
+those of towns in maps of the earth. The cartographers of the middle
+ages, with incredible ignorance, misplaced in general every locality.
+They did the same for the constellations in the celestial hemispheres.
+In the heaven of Jupiter, and in that of Saturn we read the
+words--Seraphim, Dominationes, Potestates, Archangeli, Virtutes
+coelorum, Principatus, Throni, Cherubim, all derived from their
+theology. A veritable muddle! The angels placed with the heroes of
+mythology, the immortal virgins with Venus and Andromeda, and the Saints
+with the Great Bear, the Hydra, and the Scorpion!
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 16.--HEAVENS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.]
+
+Another such richly illuminated manuscript in the library at Ghent,
+entitled Liber Floridus, contains a drawing similar to this under the
+title _Astrologia secundum Bedum_. Only, instead of the earth, there is
+a serpent in the centre with the name Great Bear, and the twins are
+represented by a man and woman, Andromeda in a chasuble, and Venus as a
+nun!
+
+Several similar ones might be quoted, varying more or less from this;
+one, executed in a geographical manuscript of the fifteenth century, has
+the tenth sphere, being that of the fixed stars, then the crystalline
+heaven, and then the immovable heaven, "which," it says, "according to
+sacred and certain theology, is the dwelling-place of the blessed, where
+may we live for ever and ever, Amen;" "this is also called the empyreal
+heaven." Near each planet the author marks the time of its revolution,
+but not at all correctly.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VII.--HEAVENS OF THE FATHERS.]
+
+The constructors of these systems were not in the least doubt as to
+their reality, for they actually measured the distance between one
+sphere and another, though in every case their numbers were far from the
+truth as we now know it. We may cite as an example an Italian system
+whose spheres were as follows:--Terra, Aqua, Aria, Fuoco, Luna,
+Mercurio, Venus, Sol, Marte, Giove, Saturno, Stelle fixe, Sfera nona,
+Cielo empyreo. Attached to the design is the following table of
+dimensions which we may copy:--
+
+                                                            Miles.
+  From the centre of the Earth to the surface                3,245
+    "        "             "      "   inner side of the
+    heaven of the Moon                                     107,936
+  Diameter of Moon                                           1,896
+  From the centre of the Earth to Mercury                  209,198
+  Diameter of Mercury                                          230
+  From the centre of the Earth to Venus                    579,320
+  Diameter of Venus                                          2,884
+  From the centre of the Earth to the Sun                3,892,866
+  Diameter of the Sun                                       35,700
+  From the centre of the Earth to Mars                   4,268,629
+  Diameter of Mars                                           7,572
+  From the centre of the Earth to Jupiter                8,323,520
+  Diameter of Jupiter                                       29,641
+  From the centre of the Earth to outside of Saturn's
+     heaven                                             52,544,702
+  Diameter of Saturn                                        29,202
+  From the centre of the Earth to the fixed stars       73,387,747
+
+The author states that he cannot pursue his calculations further, and
+condescends to acknowledge that it is very difficult to know accurately
+what is the thickness of the ninth and of the crystalline heavens!
+
+Perhaps, however, these reckonings are better than those of the
+Egyptians, who came to the conclusion that Saturn was only distant 492
+miles, the sun only 369, and the moon 246.
+
+These numerous variations and adaptations of the Ptolemaic system, prove
+what a firm hold it had taken, and how it reigned supreme over all
+minds. Nor are we merely left to gather this. They consciously looked to
+Ptolemy as their great light, if we may judge from an emblematic drawing
+taken from an authoritative astronomical work, the _Margarita
+Philosophica_, which we give on the opposite page.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 17.]
+
+In all the systems derived from Ptolemy, the order of the planets
+remained the same, and Mercury and Venus were placed nearer to the earth
+than the sun is. According to many authors, however, Plato made a
+variation in this respect, by putting them outside the sun, on the
+ground that they never were seen to pass across its surface. He had
+obviously never heard of the "Transit of Venus." This arrangement was
+adopted by Theon, in his commentary on the _Almagesta_ of Ptolemy, and
+afterwards by Geber, who alone among the Arabians departed from the
+strict Ptolemaic system.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 18.--EGYPTIAN SYSTEM.]
+
+The Egyptians improved upon this idea, and made the first step towards
+the true system, by representing these two planets, Mercury and Venus,
+as revolving round the sun instead of the earth. All the rest of their
+system was the same as that of Ptolemy, for the sun itself, and the
+other planets and the fixed stars all revolved round the earth in the
+centre. This system of course accounted accurately for the motions of
+the two inferior planets, whose nearness to the sun may have suggested
+their connection with it. This system was in vogue at the same time as
+Ptolemy's, and numbers Vitruvius amongst its supporters.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 19.--CAPELLA'S SYSTEM.]
+
+In the fifth century of our era Martian Capella taught a variation on
+the Egyptian system, in which he made Mercury and Venus revolve in the
+same orbit round the sun. In the treatise entitled _Quod Tellus non sit
+Centrum Omnibus Planetis_, he explains that when Mercury is on this side
+of the orbit it is nearer to us than Venus, and farther off from us
+than that planet when it is on the other side. This hypothesis was also
+adopted in the middle ages.
+
+We have here indicated the time of the revolution of the various
+planets, and notice that the firmament is said to move round from west
+to east in 7,000 years; the second heaven in 49,000, while the _primum
+mobile_ outside moved in the contrary direction in twenty-four hours.
+
+These Egyptian systems survived in some places the true one, as they
+were thought to overcome the chief difficulties of the Ptolemaic without
+interfering with the stability of the earth, and they were known as the
+_common system_, _i.e._ containing the elements of both.
+
+Such were the astronomical systems in vogue before the time of
+Copernicus--all of them based upon the principle of the earth being the
+immovable centre of the universe. We must now turn to trace the history
+of the introduction of that system which has completely thrown over all
+these former ones, and which every one knows now to be the true one--the
+Copernican.
+
+No revolution is accomplished, whether in science or politics, without
+having been long in preparation. The theory of the motion of the earth
+had been conceived, discussed, and even taught many ages before the
+birth of Copernicus. And the best proof of this is the acknowledgment of
+Copernicus himself in his great work _De Revolutionibus Orbium
+Cælestium_, in which he laid down the principles of his system. We will
+quote the passage in which it is contained.
+
+"I have been at the trouble," he writes, "to read over all the works of
+philosophers that I could procure, to see if I could find in them any
+different opinion to that which is now taught in the schools respecting
+the motions of the celestial spheres. And I saw first in Cicero that
+Mætas had put forth the opinion that the earth moves. (Mætam sensisse
+terram moveri.) Afterwards I found in Plutarch that others had
+entertained the same idea."
+
+Here Copernicus quotes the original as far as it relates to the system
+of Philolaus, to the effect "that the earth turns round the region of
+fire (ethereal region), and runs through the zodiac like the sun and the
+moon." The principal Pythagoreans, such as Archytas of Tarentum,
+Heraclides of Pontium, taught also the same doctrine, saying that "the
+earth is not immovable in the centre of the universe, but revolves in a
+circle, and is far from occupying the chief place among the celestial
+bodies."
+
+Pythagoras learnt this doctrine, it is said, from the Egyptians, who in
+their hieroglyphics represented the symbol of the sun by the stercoral
+beetle, because this insect forms a ball with the excrement of the oxen,
+and lying down on its back, turns it round and round with its legs.
+
+Timæus of Locris was more precise than the other Pythagoreans in calling
+"the five planets the organs of time, on account of their revolutions,"
+adding that we must conclude that the earth is not immovable in one
+place, but that it turns, on the contrary, about itself, and travels
+also through space.
+
+Plutarch records that Plato, who had always taught that the sun turned
+round the earth, had changed his opinion towards the end of his life,
+regretting that he had not placed the sun in the centre of the universe,
+which was the only place, he then thought, that was suitable for that
+star.
+
+Three centuries before Jesus Christ, Aristarchus of Samos is said by
+Aristotle to have composed a special work to defend the motion of the
+earth against the contrary opinions of philosophers. In this work, which
+is now lost, he laid down in the most positive manner that "the sun
+remains immovable, and that the Earth moves round it in a circular
+curve, of which that star is the centre." It would be impossible to
+state this in clearer terms; and what makes his meaning more clear, if
+possible, is that he was persecuted for it, being accused of irreligion
+and of troubling the repose of Vesta--"because," says Plutarch, "in
+order to explain the phenomena, he taught that the heavens were
+immovable, and that the earth accomplished a motion of translation in an
+oblique line, at the same time that it turned round its own axis." This
+is exactly the opinion that Copernicus took up, after an interval of
+eighteen centuries--and he too was accused of irreligion.
+
+In passing from the Greeks to the Romans, and from them to the middle
+ages, the doctrine of Aristarchus underwent a curious modification,
+assimilating it to the system of Tycho Brahe, which we shall hereafter
+consider, rather than to that of Copernicus. This consisted in making
+the planets move round the sun, while the sun itself revolved round the
+earth, and carried them with him, and the heavens revolved round all.
+Vitruvius and Macrobius both taught this doctrine. Although Cicero and
+Seneca, with Aristotle and the Stoics, taught the immobility of the
+earth in the centre of the universe, the question seemed undecided, to
+Seneca at least, who writes:--"It would be well to examine whether it is
+the universe that turns about the immovable earth, or the earth that
+moves, while the universe remains at rest. Indeed some men have taught
+that the earth is carried along, unknown to ourselves, that it is not
+the motion of the heavens that produces the rising and setting of the
+stars, but that it is we who rise and set relatively to them. It is a
+matter worthy of contemplation, to know in what state we are--whether we
+are assigned an immovable or rapidly-moving home--whether God makes all
+things revolve round us, or we round them."
+
+The double motion of the earth, then, is an idea revived from the
+Grecian philosophers. The theory was known indeed to Ptolemy, who
+devotes a whole chapter in his celebrated _Almagesta_ to combat it. From
+his point of view it seemed very absurd, and he did not hesitate to call
+it so; and it was in reality only when fresh discoveries had altered the
+method of examining the question that the absurdities disappeared, and
+were transferred to the other side. Not until it was discovered that the
+earth was no larger and no heavier than the other planets could the idea
+of its revolution and translation have appeared anything else than
+absurd. We are apt to laugh at the errors of former great men, while we
+forget the scantiness of the knowledge they then possessed. So it will
+be instructive to draw attention to Ptolemy's arguments, that we may see
+where it is that new knowledge and ideas have led us, as they would
+doubtless have led him, had he possessed them, to a different
+conclusion.
+
+His argument depends essentially on the observed effects of weight.
+"Light bodies," he says, "are carried towards the circumference, they
+appear to us to go _up_; because we so speak of the space that is over
+our heads, as far as the surface which appears to surround us. Heavy
+bodies tend, on the contrary, towards the middle, as towards a centre,
+and they appear to us to fall _down_, because we so speak of whatever is
+under our feet, in the direction of the centre of the earth. These
+bodies are piled up round the centre by the opposed forces of their
+impetus and friction. We can easily see that the whole mass of the
+earth, being so large compared with the bodies that fall upon it, can
+receive them without their weight or their velocity communicating to it
+any perceptible oscillation. Now if the earth had a motion in common
+with all the other heavy bodies, it would not be long, on account of its
+weight, in leaving the animals and other bodies behind it, and without
+support, and it would soon itself fall out of heaven. Such would be the
+consequences of its motion, which are most ridiculous even to imagine."
+
+Against the idea of the earth's diurnal rotation he argued as
+follows:--"There are some who pretend that nothing prevents us from
+supposing that the heaven remains immovable, and the earth turns round
+upon its axis from west to east, accomplishing the rotation each day. It
+is true that, as far as the stars are concerned, there is nothing
+against our supposing this, if guided only by appearances, and for
+greater simplicity; but those who do so forget how thoroughly ridiculous
+it is when we consider what happens near us and in the air. For even if
+we admit, which is not the case, that the lighter bodies have no motion,
+or only move as bodies of a contrary nature, although we see that aërial
+bodies move with greater velocity than terrestrial--if we admit that
+very dense and heavy bodies have a rapid and constant motion of their
+own, whereas in reality they obey but with difficulty the impulses
+communicated to them--we should then be obliged to assert that the
+earth, by its rotation, has a more rapid motion than any of the bodies
+that are round it, as it makes so large a circuit in so short a time. In
+this case the bodies which are not supported by it would appear to have
+a motion contrary to it, and no cloud or any flying bird could ever
+appear to go to the east, since the earth would always move faster than
+it in that direction."
+
+The _Almagesta_ was for a long time the gospel of astronomers; to
+believe in the motion of the earth was to them more than an innovation,
+it was simply folly. Copernicus himself well expresses the state of
+opinion in which he found the question, and the process of his own
+change, in the following words:--"And I too, taking occasion by these
+testimonies, commenced to cogitate on the motion of the earth, and
+although that opinion appeared absurd, I thought that as others before
+me had invented an assemblage of circles to explain the motion of the
+stars, I might also try if, by supposing the earth to move, I could not
+find a better account of the motions of the heavenly bodies than that
+with which we are at present contented. After long researches, I am at
+last convinced that if we assign to the circulation of the earth the
+motions of the other planets, calculation and observation will agree
+better together. And I have no doubt that mathematicians will be of my
+opinion, if they will take the trouble to consider carefully and not
+superficially the demonstrations I shall give in this work." Although
+the opinions of Copernicus had been held before, it is very just that
+his should be the name by which they are known; for during the time that
+elapsed before he wrote, the adherents of such views became fewer and
+fewer, until at last the very remembrance of them was almost forgotten,
+and it required research to know who had held them and taught them. It
+took him thirty years' work to establish them on a firm basis. We shall
+make no excuse for quoting further from his book, that we may know
+exactly the circumstances, as far as he tells us, of his giving this
+system to the world.
+
+"I hesitated for a long time whether I should publish my commentaries on
+the motions of the heavenly bodies, or whether it would not be better to
+follow the example of certain Pythagoreans, who left no writings, but
+communicated the mysteries of their philosophy orally from man to man
+among their adepts and friends, as is proved by the letter of Lysidas to
+Hipparchus. They did not do this, as some suppose, from a spirit of
+jealousy, but in order that weighty questions, studied with great care
+by illustrious men, might not be disparaged by the idle, who do not care
+to undertake serious study, unless it be lucrative, or by shallow-minded
+men, who, though devoting themselves to science, are of so indolent a
+spirit that they only intrude among philosophers, like drones among
+bees.
+
+"When I hesitated and held back, my friends pressed me on. The first was
+Nicolas Schonberg, Cardinal of Capua, a man of great learning. The other
+was my best friend, Tideman Gysius, Bishop of Culm, who was as well
+versed in the Holy Scriptures as in the sciences. The latter pressed me
+so much that he decided me at last to give to the public the work I had
+kept for more than twenty-seven years. Many illustrious men urged me, in
+the interest of mathematics, to overcome my repugnance and to let the
+fruit of my labours see the light. They assured me that the more my
+theory of the motion of the earth appeared absurd, the more it would be
+admired when the publication of my work had dissipated doubts by the
+clearest demonstrations. Yielding to these entreaties, and buoying
+myself with the same hope, I consented to the printing of my work."
+
+He tried to guard himself against the attacks of dogmatists by saying,
+"If any evil-advised person should quote against me any texts of
+Scripture, I deprecate such a rash attempt. Mathematical truths can only
+be judged by mathematicians."
+
+Notwithstanding this, however, his work, after his death, was condemned
+by the Index in 1616, under Paul V.
+
+On examining the ancient systems, Copernicus was struck by the want of
+harmony in the arrangements proposed, and by the arbitrary manner in
+which new principles were introduced and old ones neglected, comparing
+the system to a collection of legs and arms not united to any trunk, and
+it was the simplicity and harmony which the one idea of the motion of
+the earth introduced into the whole system that convinced him most
+thoroughly of its truth.
+
+He knew well that new views and truths would appear as paradoxes, and be
+rejected by men who were wedded to old doctrines, and on this account he
+took such pains to show that these views had been held before, and thus
+to disarm them of their apparent novelty.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 20.--THE COPERNICAN SYSTEM.]
+
+Copernicus dealt only with the six planets then known and the sun and
+moon. As to the stars, he had no idea that they were suns like our own,
+at immense and various distances from us. The knowledge of the magnitude
+of the sidereal universe was reserved for our own century, when it was
+discovered by the method of parallaxes. We will give Copernicus's own
+sketch of the planetary system:--
+
+"In the highest place is the sphere of the fixed stars, an immovable
+sphere, which surrounds the whole of the universe. Among the movable
+planets the first is Saturn, which requires thirty years to make its
+revolution. After it Jupiter accomplishes its journey in twelve years;
+Mars follows, requiring two years. In the fourth line come the earth and
+the moon which in the course of one year return to their original
+position. The fifth place is occupied by Venus, which requires nine
+months for its journey. Mercury occupies the sixth place, whose orbit is
+accomplished in eighty days. In the midst of all is the sun. What man is
+there, who in this majestic temple could choose another and better place
+for that brilliant lamp which illuminates all the planets with their
+satellites? It is not without reason that the sun is called the lantern
+of the world, the soul and thought of the universe. In placing it in the
+centre of the planets, as on a regal throne, we give it the government
+of the great family of celestial bodies."
+
+The hypothesis of the motion of the earth in its orbit appeared simply
+to Copernicus as a good basis for the exact determination of the ratios
+of the distances of the several planets about the sun. But he did not
+give up the excentrics and epicycles for the explanation of the
+irregular motions of the planets, and certain imaginary variations in
+the precession of the equinoxes and the obliquity of the ecliptic.
+According to him the earth was endowed with three different motions, the
+first about its axis, the second along the ecliptic, and a third, which
+he called the declination, moving it backwards along the signs of the
+zodiac from east to west. This last motion was invented to explain the
+phenomena of the seasons. He thought, like many other ancient
+philosophers, that a body could not turn about another without being
+fixed in some way to it--by a crystal sphere, or something--and in this
+case that the same surface would each day be presented to the sun, and
+so it requires a third rotation, by which its axis may remain constantly
+parallel to itself. Galileo, however, afterwards demonstrated the
+independence of the two motions in question, and proved that the third
+was unnecessary.
+
+Copernicus was born in the Polish village of Thorn, in 1473, and died in
+1543, at Warmia, of which he was canon, and where he built an
+observatory. The voyages of his youth, his labours, adversities, and old
+age at last broke him down, and in the winter of 1542 he took to his
+bed, and was incapable of further work. His work, which was just
+finished printing at Nuremberg, was brought to him by his friends before
+he died. He soon after completely failed in strength, and passed away
+tranquilly on the 23rd of May, 1543.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VIII.--DEATH OF COPERNICUS.]
+
+The Copernican system required, however, establishing in the minds of
+astronomers generally before it took the place it now holds, and this
+work was done by Galileo--a name as celebrated as that of Copernicus
+himself, if not more so. This perhaps is due not only to his
+demonstration of the motion of the earth, but to his introduction of
+experimental philosophy, and his observational method in astronomy.
+
+The next advance was made by Kepler, who overthrew at one blow all the
+excentrics and epicycles of the ancients, when by his laborious
+calculations he proved the ellipticity of the orbit of Mars.
+
+The Grecian hypotheses were the logical consequences of two propositions
+which were universally admitted as axioms in the early and middle ages.
+First, that the motions of the heavenly bodies were uniform; second,
+that their orbits were perfect circles. Nothing appeared more natural
+than this belief, though false. So then when Kepler, in 1609, recognised
+the fact, by incontestable geometrical measurements, that Mars described
+an oval orbit round the sun, in which its velocity varied periodically,
+he could not believe either his observation or his calculation, and he
+puzzled his brain to discover what secret principle it was that forced
+the planet to approach and depart from the sun by turns. Fortunately for
+him, in this inquietude he came across a treatise by Gilbert, _De
+Magnate_, which had been published in London nine years before. In this
+remarkable work Gilbert proved by experiment that the earth acts on
+magnetized needles and on bars of iron placed near its surface just as a
+magnet does--and by a conjectural extension of this fact, which was a
+vague presentiment of the truth, he supposed that the earth itself might
+be retained in its constant orbit round the sun by a magnetic
+attraction. This idea was a ray of light to Kepler. It led him to see
+the secret cause of the alternating motions that had troubled him so
+much, and in the joy of that discovery he said, "If we find it
+impossible to attribute the vibration to a magnetic power residing in
+the sun, acting on the planet without any material medium between, we
+must conclude that the planet is itself endowed with a kind of
+intelligent perception which gives it power to know at each instant the
+proper angles and distances for its motion." In the result Kepler was
+led to enunciate to the world his three celebrated laws:--
+
+1st. That the planets move in ellipses, of which the sun is in one of
+the foci.
+
+2nd. The spaces described by the ideal radius which joins each planet to
+the sun are proportional to the times of their description. In other
+words, the nearer a planet is to the sun, the faster it moves.
+
+3rd. The squares of the times of revolution are as the cubes of the
+major axes of the orbits.
+
+Such were the laws of Kepler, the basis of modern astronomy, which led
+in the hands of Newton to the simple explanation by universal
+gravitation, which itself is now asking to be explained.
+
+We are not to suppose that the system of Copernicus was universally
+accepted even by astronomers of note. By some an attempt was made to
+invent a system which should have all the advantages of this, and yet if
+possible save the immobility of the earth. Such was that of Tycho Brahe,
+who was born three years after the death of Copernicus, and died in
+1601. He was one of the most laborious and painstaking observers of his
+time, although by the peculiarity of fate he is known generally only by
+his false system.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 21.--TYCHO BRAHE'S SYSTEM.]
+
+In 1577, Tycho Brahe wrote a little treatise, _Tychonis Brahe, Dani, De
+Mundi Ætherei Recentioribus phenomenis, à propos_ of a comet that had
+lately appeared. He speaks at length of his system as follows:--"I have
+remarked that the ancient system of Ptolemy is not at all natural, and
+too complicated. But neither can I approve of the new one introduced by
+the great Copernicus after the example of Aristarchus of Samos. This
+heavy mass of earth, so little fit for motion, could not be displaced in
+this manner, and moved in three ways, like the celestial bodies, without
+a shock to the principles of physics. Besides, it is opposed to
+Scripture! I think then," he adds, "that we must decidedly and without
+doubt place the earth immovable in the centre of world, according to the
+belief of the ancients and the testimony of Scripture. In my opinion the
+celestial motions are arranged in such a way that the sun, the moon,
+and the sphere of the fixed stars, which incloses all, have the earth
+for their centre. The five planets turn about the sun as about their
+chief and king, the sun being constantly in the centre of their orbits,
+and accompany it in its annual motion round the earth." This system
+perfectly accounts for the apparent motions of the planets as seen from
+the earth, and is essentially a variation on the Copernican, rather than
+on the Ptolemaic system, but it lent itself less readily to future
+discoveries. It simply amounts, as far as the solar system is concerned,
+to impressing upon all the rest of it the motions of the earth, so as to
+leave the latter at rest; and were the sun only as large with respect
+to the earth as it seems, were the planets really smaller than the moon,
+and the stars only at a short distance, and smaller than the planets, it
+might seem more natural that they should move than the earth; but when
+all these suppositions were disproved, the very argument of Tycho Brahe
+for the stability of the earth turned the other way, and proved as
+incontestably that it moved. In the Copernican system, however, these
+questions are of no consequence; if the sun be at rest, this mass makes
+no difference; if the earth moves like the planets, their relative size
+does not alter anything; and if stars are immovable they may be at any
+distance and of any magnitude.
+
+The objections of Tycho Brahe to the earth's motion were: First, that it
+was too heavy--we know now, however, that some other planets are
+heavier--and that the sun, which he would make move instead, is 340,000
+times as heavy. Secondly, that if the earth moved, all loose things
+would be carried from east to west; but we have experience of many loose
+things being kept by friction on moving bodies, and can conceive how,
+all things may be kept by the attraction of the earth under the
+influence of its own motion. Thirdly, that he could not imagine that the
+earth was turned upside down every day, and that for twelve hours our
+heads are downwards.
+
+But the existence of the antipodes overcomes this objection, and shows
+that there is no up and down in the universe, but each man calls that
+_down_ which is nearer to the centre of the earth than himself.
+
+A variation on Tycho Brahe's system was attempted by one Longomontanus,
+who had lived with him for ten years. It consisted in admitting the
+diurnal rotation, but not the annual revolution, of the earth; but it
+made no progress, and was soon forgotten.
+
+More remarkable than this was the attempt by Descartes in the same
+direction, namely, to hold the principles of Copernicus, and yet to
+teach the immobility of the earth. His idea of immobility was however
+very different from that of Tycho Brahe, or of any one else, and would
+only be called so by those who were bound to believe it at all costs.
+
+His Theory of Vortices, as it is called, will be best given in his own
+words as contained in his _Les Principes de la Philosophie_, third part,
+chap. xxvi., entitled, "That the earth is at rest in its heaven, which
+does not prevent its being carried along with it, and that it is the
+same with all the planets."
+
+"I adhere," he says, "to the hypothesis of Copernicus, because it seems
+to me the simplest and clearest. There is no vacuum anywhere in
+space.... The heavens are full of a universal liquid substance. This is
+an opinion now commonly received among astronomers, because they cannot
+see how the phenomena can be explained without it. The substance of the
+heavens has the common property of all liquids, that its minutest
+particles are easily moved in any direction, and when it happens that
+they all move in one way, they necessarily carry with them all the
+bodies they surround, and which are not prevented from moving by any
+external cause. The matter of the heaven in which the planets are turns
+round continually like a vortex, which has the Sun for its centre. The
+parts that are nearest the Sun move faster than those that are at a
+greater distance; and all the planets, including the earth, remain
+always suspended in the same place in the matter of the heaven. And just
+as in the turns of rivers, when the water turns back on itself and
+twists round in circles, if any twig or light body floats on it, we see
+it carry them round, and make them move with it, and even among these
+twigs we may see some turning on their own centre, and those that are
+nearest to the middle of the vortex moving quicker than those on the
+outside; so we may easily imagine it to be with the planets, and this is
+all that is necessary to explain the phenomena. The matter that is round
+Saturn takes about thirty years to run its circle; that which surrounds
+Jupiter carries it and its satellites round in twelve years, and so
+on.... The satellites are carried round their primaries by smaller
+vortices.... The earth is not sustained by columns, nor suspended in the
+air by ropes, but it is environed on all sides by a very liquid heaven.
+It is at rest, and has no propulsion or motion, since we do not perceive
+any in it. This does not prevent it being carried round by its heaven,
+and following its motion without moving itself, just as a vessel which
+is not moved by winds or oars, and is not retained by anchors, remains
+in repose in the middle of the sea, although the flood of the great
+mass of water carries it insensibly with it. Like the earth, the planets
+remain at rest in the region of heaven where each one is found.
+Copernicus made no difficulty in allowing that the earth moves. Tycho,
+to whom this opinion seemed absurd and unworthy of common sense, wished
+to correct him, but the earth has far more motion in his hypothesis than
+in that of Copernicus."
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 22.--DESCARTES' THEORY OF VORTICES.]
+
+Such is the celebrated theory of vortices. The comparison of the
+rotation of the earth and planets and their revolution round the sun to
+the turning of small portions of a rapid stream, may contain an idea yet
+destined to be developed to account for these motions; but as used by
+Descartes it is a mere playing upon words admirably adapted to secure
+the concurrence of all parties; those who believed in the motion of the
+earth seeing that it did not interfere with their ideas in the least,
+and those who believed in its stability being gratified to find some way
+by which they might still cling to that belief and yet adopt the new
+ideas. This was its purpose, and that purpose it well served; but as a
+philosophical speculation it was worthless. When former astronomers
+declared that any planet moved, whether it were the earth or any other,
+they had no idea of attraction, but supposed the planet fixed to a
+sphere; this sphere moving and carrying the planet with it was what they
+meant by the planet moving: the theory of vortices merely substituted a
+liquid for a solid sphere, with this disadvantage, that if the planet
+were fixed to a solid moving sphere, it _must_ move; if only placed in a
+liquid one, that liquid might pass it if it did not have motion of its
+own.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 23.--VORTICES OF THE STARS.]
+
+A variation on Descartes' system of vortices was proposed in the
+eighteenth century, which supposed that the sun, instead of being fixed
+in the centre of the system, itself circulated round another centre,
+carrying Mercury with it. This motion of the sun was intented to explain
+the changes of magnitude of its disc as seen from the earth, and the
+diurnal and annual variations in its motion, without discarding its
+circular path.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 24.--VARIATION OF DESCARTES' THEORY.]
+
+We have thus noticed all the chief astronomical systems that have at any
+time been entertained by astronomers. They one and all have given way
+before the universally acknowledged truth about which there is no longer
+any dispute. Systems are not now matters of opinion or theory. We speak
+of facts as certain as any that can be ascertained in any branch of
+knowledge. We have much to learn, but what we have settled as the basis
+of our knowledge will never more be altered as far as we can see.
+
+Of course there have been always fantastic fancies put forth about the
+solar system, but they are more amusing than instructive. Some have said
+that there is no sun, moon, or stars, but that they are reflections from
+an immense light under the earth. Some savage races say that the moon
+when decreasing breaks up into stars, and is renewed each month by a
+creative act. The Indians used to say that it was full of nectar which
+the gods ate up when it waned, and which grew again when it waxed. The
+Brahmins placed the earth in the centre, and said that the stars moved
+like fishes in a sea of liquid. They counted nine planets, of which two
+are invisible dragons which cause eclipses; which, since they happen in
+various parts of the zodiac, show that these dragons revolve like the
+rest. They said the sun was nearer than the moon, perhaps because it is
+hotter and brighter. Berosus the Chaldean gave a very original
+explanation of the phases and eclipses of the moon. He said it had one
+side bright, and the other side just the colour of the sky, and in
+turning it represented the different colours to us.
+
+Before concluding this chapter we may notice what information we possess
+as to the origin of the names by which the planets are known. These
+names have not always been given to them, and date only from the time
+when the poets began to associate the Grecian mythology with astronomy.
+The earlier names had reference rather to their several characters,
+although there appear to have been among every people two sets of names
+applied to them.
+
+The earliest Greek names referred to their various degrees of
+brilliancy: thus Saturn, which is not easily distinguished, was called
+Phenon, or _that which appears_; Jupiter was named Phaëton, _the
+brilliant_; Mars was Pysoïs, or _flame-coloured_; Mercury, Stilbon, _the
+sparkling_; Venus, Phosphorus; and Lucifer, _the light-bearer_. They
+called the latter also Calliste, _the most beautiful_. It was also known
+then as now under the appellations of the morning star and evening star,
+indicating its special position.
+
+With the ancient Accadians, the planets had similar names, among others.
+Thus, "Mars was sometimes called _the vanishing star_, in allusion to
+its recession from the earth, and Jupiter the _planet of the ecliptic_,
+from its neighbourhood to the latter" (Sayce). The name of Mars raises
+the interesting question as to whether they had noticed its phases as
+well as its movements--especially when, with reference to Venus, it is
+recorded in the "Observations of Bel," that "it rises, and in its orbit
+duly grows in size." They had also a rather confusing system of
+nomenclature by naming each planet after the star that it happened to be
+the nearest to at any point of its course round the ecliptic.
+
+Among less cultivated nations also the same practice held, as with the
+natives of South America, whose name for the sun is a word meaning _it
+brings the day_; for the moon, _it brings the night_; and for Venus, _it
+announces the day_.
+
+But even among the Eastern nations, from whom the Greeks and Romans
+borrowed their astronomical systems, it soon became a practice to
+associate these planets with the names of the several divinities they
+worshipped. This was perhaps natural from the adoration they paid to the
+celestial luminaries themselves on account of their real or supposed
+influence on terrestrial affairs; and, moreover, as time went on, and
+heroes had appeared, and they had to find them dwelling-places in the
+heavens, they would naturally associate them with one or other of the
+most brilliant and remarkable luminaries, to which they might suppose
+them translated. Beyond these general remarks, only conjectures can be
+made why any particular divinity should among the Greeks be connected
+with the several planets as we now know them. Such conjectures as the
+following we may make. Thus Jupiter, the largest, would take first rank,
+and be called after the name of the chief divinity. The soft and
+sympathising Venus--appearing at the twilight--would well denote the
+evening star. Mars would receive its name from its red appearance,
+naturally suggesting carnage and the god of war. Saturn, or Kronos, the
+god of time, is personified by the slow and almost imperceptible motion
+of that remote planet. While Mercury, the fiery and quick god of thieves
+and commerce, is well matched with the hide-and-seek planet which so
+seldom can be seen, and moves so rapidly.
+
+These were the only planets known to the ancients, and were indeed all
+that could be discovered without a telescope. If the ancient Babylonians
+possessed telescopes, as has been conjectured from their speaking, as we
+have noticed above, of the increase of the size of Venus, and from the
+finding a crystal lens among the ruins of Nineveh, they did not use them
+for this purpose.
+
+The other planets now known have a far shorter history. Uranus was
+discovered by Sir William Herschel on the 13th of March, 1781, and was
+at first taken for a comet. Herschel proposed to call it Georgium Sidus,
+after King George III. Lalande suggested it should be named Herschel,
+after its discoverer, and it bore this name for some time. Afterwards
+the names, Neptune, Astroea, Cybele, and Uranus were successively
+proposed, and the latter, the suggestion of Bode, was ultimately
+adopted. It is the name of the most ancient of the gods, connected with
+the then most modern of planets in point of discovery, though also most
+ancient in formation, if recent theories be correct. Neptune, as
+everybody knows, was calculated into existence, if one may so speak, by
+Adams and Leverrier independently, and was first seen, in the quarter
+indicated, by Dr. Galle at Berlin, in September, 1846, and by universal
+consent it received the name it now bears.
+
+There are now also known a long series of what are called minor planets,
+all circulating between Mars and Jupiter, with their irregular orbits
+inextricably mingled together. Their discovery was led to in a
+remarkable manner. It was observed that the distances of the several
+planets might approximately be expressed by the terms of a certain
+mathematical series, if one term was supplied between Mars and
+Jupiter--a fact known by the name of Bode's law. When the new planet,
+Uranus, was found to obey this law, the feeling was so strong that there
+must be something to represent this missing term, that strong efforts
+were made to discover it, which led to success, and several, whose names
+are derived from the minor gods and goddesses, are now well known.
+
+All these planets, like the signs of the zodiac, are indicated by
+astronomers by certain symbols, which, as they derive their form from
+the names or nature of the planets, may properly here be explained. The
+sign of Neptune is [symbol: neptune], representing the trident of the
+sea; for Uranus [symbol: uranus], which is the first letter of Herschel
+with a little globe below; [symbol: saturn] is the sickle of time, or
+Saturn; [symbol: jupiter] is the representation of the first letter of
+Zeus or Jupiter; [symbol: mars] is the lance and buckler of Mars;
+[symbol: venus] the mirror of Venus; [symbol: mercury] the wand of
+Mercury; [symbol: sun] the sun's disc; and [symbol: moon] the crescent
+of the moon.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE IX.--THE SOLAR SYSTEM.]
+
+The more modern discoveries have, of course, been all made by means of
+the telescope, and a few words on the history of its discovery may fitly
+close this chapter.
+
+According to Olbers, a concave and convex lens were first used in
+combination, to render objects less distant in appearance, in the year
+1606. In that year the children of one Jean Lippershey, an optician of
+Middelburg, in Zealand, were playing with his lenses, and happened to
+hold one before the other to look at a distant clock. Their great
+surprise in seeing how near it seemed attracted their father's
+attention, and he made several experiments with them, at last fixing
+them as in the modern telescope--in draw tubes. On the 2nd of October,
+1606, he made a petition to the States-General of Holland for a patent.
+The aldermen, however, saw no advantage in it, as you could only look
+with one eye instead of two. They refused the patent, and though the
+discovery was soon found of value, Lippershey reaped no benefit.
+
+Galileo was the first to apply the telescope to astronomical
+observations. He did not have it made in Holland, but constructed it
+himself on Lippershey's principle. This was in 1609. Its magnifying
+power was at first 4, and he afterwards increased it to 7, and then to
+30. With this he discovered the phases of Venus, the spots on the sun,
+the four satellites of Jupiter, and the mountains of the moon.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE X.--THE DISCOVERY OF THE TELESCOPE.]
+
+Kepler, in 1611, made the first astronomical telescope with two concave
+glasses.
+
+Huyghens increased the magnifying power successively to 48, 50, and 92,
+and discovered Saturn's ring and his satellite No. 4.
+
+Cassini, the first director of the Paris Observatory, brought it to 150,
+aided by Auzout Campani of Rome, and Rives of London. He observed the
+rotation of Jupiter (1665), that of Venus and Mars (1666), the fifth and
+third satellites of Saturn (1671), and afterwards the two nearer ones
+(1684); the other satellites of this planet were discovered, the sixth
+and seventh, by Sir William Herschel (1789), and the eighth by Bond and
+Lasel (1848).
+
+We may add here that the satellites of Uranus were discovered, six by
+Herschel from 1790 to 1794, and two by Lassel in 1851, the latter also
+discovering Neptune's satellite in 1847.
+
+The rotation of Saturn was discovered by Herschel in 1789, and that of
+Mercury by Schroeter in 1800.
+
+The earliest telescopes which were reflectors were made by Gregory in
+1663 and Newton in 1672. The greatest instruments of our century are
+that of Herschel, which magnifies 3,000 times, and Lord Rosse's,
+magnifying 6,000 times, the Foucault telescope at Marseilles, of 4,000,
+the reflector at Melbourne, of 7,000, and the Newall refractor.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XI.--THE FOUNDATION OF PARIS OBSERVATORY.]
+
+The exact knowledge of the heavens, which makes so grand a feature in
+modern science, is due, however, not only to the existence of
+instruments, but also to the establishment of observatories especially
+devoted to their use. The first astronomical observatory that was
+constructed was that at Paris. In 1667 Colbert submitted the designs of
+it to Louis XIV., and four years afterwards it was completed. The
+Greenwich Observatory was established in 1676, that of Berlin in 1710,
+and that of St. Petersburg in 1725. Since then numerous others have been
+erected, private as well as public, in all parts of the world, and no
+night passes without numerous observations being taken as part of the
+ordinary duty of the astronomers attached to them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE TERRESTRIAL WORLD OF THE ANCIENTS.--COSMOGRAPHY AND GEOGRAPHY.
+
+
+With respect to the shape and position of the earth itself in the
+material universe, and the question of its motion or immobility, we
+cannot go so far back as in the case of the heavens, since it obviously
+requires more observation, and is not so pressing for an answer.
+
+Amongst the Greeks several authors appear to have undertaken the
+subject, but only one complete work has come down to us which undertakes
+it directly. This is a work attributed to Aristotle, _De Mundo_. It is
+addressed to Alexander, and by some is considered to be spurious,
+because it lacks the majestic obscurity that in his acknowledged works
+repels the reader. Although, however, it is not as obscure as it might
+be, for the writer, it is quite bad enough, and its dryness and
+vagueness, its mixture of metaphysical and physical reasoning, logic and
+observation, and the change that has naturally passed over the meanings
+of many common words since they were written, render it very tedious
+and unpleasant reading.
+
+Nevertheless, as presenting us with the first recorded ideas on these
+questions of the nature and properties of the earth, it deserves
+attentive study. It is not a system of observations like those of
+Ptolemy and the Alexandrian School, but an entirely theoretical work. It
+is founded entirely on logic; but unfortunately, if the premisses are
+bad, the better the syllogism the more erroneous will be the conclusion;
+and it is just this which we find here. Thus if he be asked whether the
+earth turns or the heavens, he will reply that the earth is _evidently_
+in repose, and that this is the case not only because we observe it to
+be so, but because it is a necessity that it should be; because repose
+is _natural_ to the earth, and it is _naturally_ in equilibrium. This
+idea of "natural" leads very often astray. He is guided to his idea of
+what is natural by seeing what is, and then argues that what is, or
+appears to be, must be, because it is natural--thus arguing in a circle.
+Another example may be given in his answer to the question, Why must the
+stars move round the earth? He says it is natural, because a circle is a
+more perfect line, and must therefore be described by the perfect stars,
+and a circle is perfect because it has no ends! Unfortunately there are
+other curves that have no ends; but the circle was considered, without
+more reason, the most perfect curve, and therefore the planets must move
+in circles--an idea which had to wait till Kepler's time to be
+exploded. One more specimen of this style may be quoted, namely, his
+proof that every part of heaven must be eternally moving, while the
+earth must be in the centre and at rest. The proof is this. Everything
+which performs any act has been made for the purpose of that act. Now
+the work of God is immortality, from which it follows that all that is
+divine must have an eternal motion. But the heavens have a divine
+quality, and for this reason they have a spherical shape and move
+eternally in a circle. Now when a body has a circular motion, one part
+of it must remain at rest in its place, namely, that which is in the
+centre; the earth is in the centre--therefore it is at rest.
+
+Aristotle says in this work that there are two kinds of simple motion,
+that in a circle and that in a straight line. The latter belongs to the
+elements, which either go up or down, and the former to the celestial
+bodies, whose nature is more divine, and which have never been known to
+change; and the earth and world must be the only bodies in existence,
+for if there were another, it must be the contrary to this, and there is
+no contrary to a circle; and again, if there were any other body, the
+earth would be attracted towards it, and move, which it does not. Such
+is the style of argument which was in those days thought conclusive, and
+which with a little development and inflation of language appeared
+intensely profound.
+
+But what brings these speculations to the subject we have now in hand
+is this: that when Aristotle thus proves the earth to be immovable in
+the centre of the universe, he is led on to inquire how it is possible
+for it to remain in one fixed place. He observed that even a small
+fragment of earth, when it is raised into the air and then let go,
+immediately falls without ever stopping in one place--falling, as he
+supposed, all the quicker according to its weight; and he was therefore
+puzzled to know why the whole mass of the earth, notwithstanding its
+weight, could be kept from falling.
+
+Aristotle examines one by one the answers that have been given to this
+question. Thus Xenophanes gave to the earth infinitely extended roots,
+against which Empedocles uses such arguments as we should use now.
+Thales of Miletus makes the earth rest upon water, without finding
+anything on which the water itself can rest, or answering the question
+how it is that the heavier earth can be supported on the lighter water.
+Anaxemenes, Anaxagoras, and Democritus, who make the earth flat,
+consider it to be sustained by the air, which is accumulated below it,
+and also presses down upon it like a great coverlet. Aristotle himself
+says that he agrees with those philosophers who think that the earth is
+brought to the centre by the primitive rotation of things, and that we
+may compare it, as Empedocles does, to the water in glasses which are
+made to turn rapidly, and which does not fall out or move, even though
+upside down. He also quotes with approval another opinion somewhat
+similar to this, namely, that of Anaximander, which states that the
+earth is in repose, on account of its own equilibrium. Placed in the
+centre and at an equal distance from its extremities, there is no reason
+why it should move in one direction rather than the other, and rests
+immovable in the centre without being able to leave it.
+
+The result of all is that Aristotle concludes that the earth is
+immovable, in the centre of the universe, and that it is not a star
+circulating in space like other stars, and that it does not rotate upon
+its axis; and he completes the system by stating that the earth is
+spherical, which is proved by the different aspects of the heavens to a
+voyager to the north or to the south.
+
+Such was the Aristotelian system, containing far more error than truth,
+which was the first of any completeness. Scattered ideas, however, on
+the shape and method of support of the earth and the cause of various
+phenomena, such as the circulation of the stars, are met with besides in
+abundance.
+
+The original ideas of the earth were naturally tinged by the
+prepossessions of each race, every one thinking his own country to be
+situated in the centre. Thus among the Hindoos, who lived near the
+equator, and among the Scandinavians, inhabiting regions nearer the
+pole, the same meaning attaches to the words by which they express their
+own country, _medpiama_ and _medgard_, both meaning the central
+habitation. Olympus among the Greeks was made the centre of the earth,
+and afterwards the temple of Delphi. For the Egyptians the central point
+was Thebes; for the Assyrians it was Babylon; for the Indians it was the
+mountain Mero; for the Hebrews Jerusalem. The Chinese always called
+their country the central empire. It was then the custom to denote the
+world by a large disc, surrounded on all sides by a marvellous and
+inaccessible ocean. At the extremities of the earth were placed
+imaginary regions and fortunate isles, inhabited by giants or pigmies.
+The vault of the sky was supposed to be supported by enormous mountains
+and mysterious columns.
+
+Numerous variations have been suggested on the earliest supposed form of
+the earth, which was, as we have seen in a former chapter, originally
+supposed to be an immense flat of infinite depth, and giving support to
+the heavens.
+
+As travels extended and geography began to be a science, it was remarked
+that an immense area of water circumscribed the solid earth by irregular
+boundaries--whence the idea of a universal ocean.
+
+When, however, it was perceived that the horizon at sea was always
+circular, it was supposed that the ocean was bounded, and the whole
+earth came to be represented as contained in a circle, beneath which
+were roots reaching downwards without end, but with no imagined
+support.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 25.--THE EARTH FLOATING.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 26.--THE EARTH WITH ROOTS.]
+
+The Vedic priests asserted that the earth was supported on twelve
+columns, which they very ingeniously turned to their own account by
+asserting that these columns were supported by virtue of the sacrifices
+that were made to the gods, so that if these were not made the earth
+would collapse.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 27.--THE EARTH OF THE VEDIC PRIESTS.]
+
+These pillars were invented in order to account for the passing of the
+sun beneath the earth after his setting, for which at first they were
+obliged to imagine a system of tunnels, which gradually became enlarged
+to the intervals between the pillars.
+
+The Hindoos made the hemispherical earth to be supported upon four
+elephants, and the four elephants to stand on the back of an immense
+tortoise, which itself floated on the surface of a universal ocean. We
+are not however to laugh at this as intended to be literal; the
+elephants symbolised, it may be, the four elements, or the four
+directions of the compass, and the tortoise was the symbol for strength
+and for eternity, which was also sometimes represented by a serpent.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 28.--HINDOO EARTH.]
+
+The floating of the earth on water or some other liquid long held
+ground. It was adopted by Thales, and six centuries later Seneca adopts
+the same opinion, saying that the humid element that supports the
+earth's disc like a vessel may be either the ocean or some liquid more
+simple than water.
+
+Diodorus tells us that the Chaldeans considered the earth hollow and
+boat-shaped--perhaps turned upside down--and this doctrine was
+introduced into Greece by Heraclitus of Ephesus.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 29.--THE EARTH OF ANAXIMANDER.]
+
+Anaximander represents the earth as a cylinder, the upper face of which
+alone is inhabited. This cylinder, he states, is one-third as high as
+its diameter, and it floats freely in the centre of the celestial vault,
+because there is no reason why it should move to one side rather than
+the other. Leucippus, Democritus, Heraclitus, and Anaxagoras all adopted
+this purely imaginary form. Europe made the northern half, and Lybia
+(Africa) and Asia the southern, while Delphi was in the centre.
+
+Anaximenes, without giving a precise opinion as to the form of the
+earth, made it out to be supported on compressed air, though he gave no
+idea as to how the air was to be compressed.
+
+Plato thought to improve upon these ideas by making the earth cubical.
+The cube, which is bound by six equal faces, appeared to him the most
+perfect of solids, and therefore most suitable for the earth, which was
+to stand in the centre of the universe.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 30.--PLATO'S CUBICAL EARTH.]
+
+Eudoxus, who in his long voyages throughout Greece and Egypt had seen
+new constellations appear as he went south, while others to the north
+disappeared, deduced the sphericity of the earth, in which opinion he
+was followed by Archimedes, and, as we have seen, by Aristotle.
+
+According to Achilles Tatius, Xenophanes gave to the earth the shape of
+an immense inclined plane, which stretched out to infinity. He drew it
+in the form of a vast mountain. The summit only was inhabited by men,
+and round it circulated the stars, and the base was at an infinite
+depth. Hesiod had before this obscurely said: "The abyss is surrounded
+by a brazen barrier; above it rest the roots of the earth." Epicurus and
+his school were well pleased with this representation. If such were the
+foundations of the earth, then it was impossible that the sun, and moon,
+and stars should complete their revolutions beneath it. A solid and
+indefinite support being once admitted, the Epicurean ideas about the
+stars were a necessary consequence; the stars must inevitably be put out
+each day in the west, since they are not seen to return to the place
+whence they started, and they must be rekindled some hours afterwards in
+the east. In the days of Augustus, Cleomedes still finds himself obliged
+to combat these Epicurean ideas about the setting and rising of the sun
+and stars. "These stupid ideas," he says, "have no other foundation than
+an old woman's story--that the Iberians hear each night the hissing
+noise made by the burning sun as it is extinguished, like a hot iron in
+the waters of the ocean." Modern travellers have shown us that similar
+ideas about the support of the earth have been entertained by more
+remote people. Thus, in the opinion of the Greenlanders, handed down
+from antiquity to our own days, the earth is supported on pillars, which
+are so consumed by time that they often crack, and were it not that they
+are supported by the incantations of the magicians, they would long
+since have broken down. This idea of the breaking of the pillars may
+possibly have originated in the known sinking of the land beneath the
+sea, which is still going on even at the present day.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 31.--EGYPTIAN REPRESENTATION OF THE EARTH.]
+
+An ancient Egyptian papyrus in the library of Paris gives a very curious
+hieroglyphical representation of the universe. The earth is here figured
+under the form of a reclining figure, and is covered with leaves. The
+heavens are personified by a goddess, which forms the vault by her
+star-bespangled body, which is elongated in a very peculiar manner. Two
+boats, carrying, one the rising sun, and the other the setting sun, are
+represented as moving along the heavens over the body of the goddess. In
+the centre of the picture is the god, Maon, a divine intelligence, which
+presides over the equilibrium of the universe.
+
+We will now pass on from the early ideas of the general shape and
+situation of the world to inquire into the first outlines of
+geographical knowledge of details.
+
+Of all the ancient writings which deal with such questions, the Hebrew
+Scriptures have the greatest antiquity, and in them are laid down many
+details of known countries, from which a fair map of the world as known
+to them might be made out. The prophet Esdras believed that six-sevenths
+of the earth was dry land--an idea which could not well be exploded till
+the great oceans had been traversed and America discovered.
+
+More interesting, as being more complete, and written to a certain
+extent for the very purpose of relating what was known of the geography
+of the earth, are the writings of the oldest Grecian poets. The first
+elements of Grecian geography are contained in the two national and
+almost sacred poems, the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. So important have these
+writings been considered in regard to ancient geography, that for many
+centuries discussions have been carried on with regard to the details,
+though evidently fictitious, of the voyage of Ulysses, and twenty lines
+of the _Iliad_ have furnished matter for a book of thirty volumes.
+
+The shield of Achilles, forged by Vulcan and described in the eighteenth
+book of the _Iliad_, gives us an authentic representation of the
+primitive cosmographical ideas of the age. The earth is there figured as
+a disc, surrounded on all sides by the _River Ocean_. However strange it
+may appear to us, to apply the term _river_ to the ocean, it occurs too
+often in Homer and the other ancient poets to admit of a doubt of its
+being literally understood by them. Hesiod even describes the sources of
+the ocean at the western extremity of the world, and the representation
+of these sources was preserved from age to age amongst authors posterior
+to Homer by nearly a thousand years. Herodotus says plainly that the
+geographers of his time drew their maps of the world according to the
+same ideas; the earth was figured with them as a round disc, and the
+ocean as a river, which washed it on all sides.
+
+The earth's disc, the _orbis terrarum_, was covered according to Homer
+by a solid vault or firmament, beneath which the stars of the day and
+night were carried by chariots supported by the clouds. In the morning
+the sun rose from the eastern ocean, and in the evening it declined into
+the western; and a vessel of gold, the mysterious work of Vulcan,
+carried it quickly back by the north, to the east again. Beneath the
+earth Homer places, not the habitation of the dead, the caverns of
+Hades, but a vault called Tartarus, corresponding to the firmament. Here
+lived the Titans, the enemies of the gods, and no breath of wind, no
+ray of light, ever penetrated to this subterranean world. Writers
+subsequent to Homer by a century determined even the height of the
+firmament and the depth of Tartarus. An anvil, they said, would take
+nine days to fall from heaven to earth, and as many more to fall from
+earth to the bottom of Tartarus. This estimate of the height of heaven
+was of course far too small. If a body were to fall for nine days and
+nights, or 777,600 seconds under the attraction of the earth, it would
+only pass over 430,500 miles, that is not much more than half as far
+again as the moon. A ray of light would only take two seconds to pass
+over that distance, whereas it takes eight minutes to reach us from the
+sun, and four hours to come from Neptune--to say nothing of the distance
+of the stars.
+
+The limits of the world in the Homeric cosmography were surrounded by
+obscurity. The columns of which Atlas was the guardian were supported on
+unknown foundations, and disappeared in the systems subsequent to Homer.
+Beyond the mysterious boundary where the earth ended and the heavens
+began an indefinite chaos spread out--a confused medley of life and
+inanity, a gulf where all the elements of heaven, Tartarus, and earth
+and sea are mixed together, a gulf of which the gods themselves are
+afraid.
+
+Ideas such as these prevailed long after geometers and astronomers had
+proved the spherical form of the globe, and they were revived by the
+early Christian geographers and have left their trace even on the
+common language of to-day.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 32.--HOMERIC COSMOGRAPHY.]
+
+The centre of the terrestrial disc was occupied by the continent and
+isles of Greece, which in the time of Homer possessed no general name.
+The centre of Greece passed therefore for the centre of the whole world;
+and in Homer's system it was reckoned to be Olympus in Thessaly, but the
+priests of the celebrated Temple of Apollo at Delphi (known then under
+the name of Python) gave out a tradition that that sacred place was the
+real centre of the habitable world.
+
+The straits which separate Italy from Sicily were so to speak the
+vestibule of the fabulous world of Homer. The threefold ebb and flow,
+the howling of the monster Scylla, the whirlpools of Charybdis, the
+floating rocks--all tell us that we are quitting here the region of
+truth. Sicily itself, although already known under the name of
+_Trinacria_, was filled with marvels; here the flocks of the Sun
+wandered in a charming solitude under the guardianship of nymphs; here
+the Cyclops, with one eye only, and the anthropophagous Lestrigons
+scared away the traveller from a land that was otherwise fertile in corn
+and wine. Two historical races were placed by Homer in Sicily, namely
+the _Sicani_, and the _Siceli_, or _Siculi_.
+
+To the west of Sicily we find ourselves in the midst of a region of
+fables. The enchanted islands of Circe and Calypso, and the floating
+island of Eolus can no longer be found, unless we imagine them to have
+originated, like Graham's Island in this century, from volcanic
+eruptions or elevations, and to have disappeared again by the action of
+the sea.
+
+The Homeric map of the world terminated towards the west by two fabulous
+countries which have given rise to many traditions among the ancients,
+and to many discussions among moderns. Near to the entrance of the
+ocean, and not far from the sombre caverns where the dead are
+congregated, Ulysses found the _Cimmerians_, "an unhappy people, who,
+constantly surrounded by thick shadows, never enjoyed the rays of the
+sun, neither when it mounted the skies, nor when it descended below the
+earth." Still farther away, and in the ocean itself, and therefore
+beyond the limits of the earth, beyond the region of winds and seasons,
+the poet paints for us a Fortunate Land, which he calls _Elysium_, a
+country where tempests and winter are unknown, where a soft zephyr
+always blows, and where the elect of Jupiter, snatched from the common
+lot of mortals, enjoy a perpetual felicity.
+
+Whether these fictions had an allegory for their basis, or were founded
+on the mistaken notions of voyagers--whether they arose in Greece, or,
+as the Hebrew etymology of the name Cimmerian might seem to indicate, in
+the east, or in Phenicia, it is certain that the images they present,
+transferred to the world of reality, and applied successively to various
+lands, and confused by contradictory explanations, have singularly
+embarrassed the progress of geography through many centuries. The Roman
+travellers thought they recognised the Fortunate Isles in a group to the
+west of Africa, now known as the Canaries. The philosophical fictions of
+Plato and Theopompus about Atlantes and Meropis have been long
+perpetuated in historical theories; though of course it is possible that
+in the numerous changes that have taken place in the surface of the
+earth, some ancient vast and populous island may have descended beneath
+the level of the sea. On the other side, the poetic imagination created
+the _Hyperboreans_, beyond the regions where the northern winds were
+generated, and according to a singular kind of meteorology, they
+believed them for that reason to be protected from the cold winds.
+Herodotus regrets that he has not been able to discover the least trace
+of them; he took the trouble to ask for information about them from
+their neighbours, the _Arimaspes_, a very clear-sighted race, though
+having but a single eye; but they could not inform him where the
+Hyperboreans dwelt. The Enchanted Isles, where the Hesperides used to
+guard the golden fruit, and which the whole of antiquity placed in the
+west, not far from the Fortunate Isles, are sometimes called Hyperborean
+by authors well versed in the ancient traditions. It is also in this
+sense that Sophocles speaks of the Garden of Phoebus, near the vault
+of heaven, and not far from the _sources of the night_, _i.e._ of the
+setting of the sun.
+
+Avienus explains the mild temperature of the Hyperborean country by the
+temporary proximity of the sun, since, according to the Homeric ideas,
+it passes during the night by the northern ocean to return to its palace
+in the east. This ancient tradition was not entirely exploded in the
+time of Tacitus, who states that on the confines of Germany might be
+seen the veritable setting of Apollo beyond the water, and he believes
+that as in the east the sun gives rise to incense and balm by its great
+proximity to the earth, so in the regions where it sets it makes the
+most precious of juices to transude from the earth and form amber. It is
+this idea that is embedded in the fables of amber being the tears of
+gold that Apollo shed when he went to the Hyperborean land to mourn the
+loss of his son Æsculapius, or by the sisters of Phaëton, changed into
+poplars; and it is denoted by the Greek name for amber, _electron_--a
+sun-stone. The Grecian sages, long before the time of Tacitus, said that
+this very precious material was an exhalation from the earth that was
+produced and hardened by the rays of the sun, which they thought came
+nearer to the earth in the west and in the north.
+
+Florus, in relating the expedition of Decimus Brutus along the coast of
+Spain, gives great effect to the Epicurean views about the sun, by
+declaring that Brutus only stopped his conquests after having witnessed
+the actual descent of the sun into the ocean, and having heard with
+horror the terrible noise occasioned by its extinction. The ancients
+also believed that the sun and the other heavenly bodies were nourished
+by the waters--partly the fresh water of the rivers, and partly the salt
+water of the sea. Cleanthes gave the reason for the sun returning
+towards the equator on reaching the solstices, that it could not go too
+far away from the source of its nourishment. Pytheas relates that in the
+Island of Thule, six days' journey north of Great Britain, and in all
+that neighbourhood, there was no land nor sea nor air, but a compound of
+all three, on which the earth and the sea were suspended, and which
+served to unite together all the parts of the universe, though it was
+not possible to go into these places, neither on foot nor in ships.
+Perhaps the ice floating in the frozen seas and the hazy northern
+atmosphere had been seen by some navigator, and thus gave rise to this
+idea. As it stands, the history may be perhaps matched by that of the
+amusing monk who said he had been to the end of the world and had to
+stoop down, as there was not room to stand between heaven and earth at
+their junction.
+
+Homer lived in the tenth century before our era. Herodotus, who lived in
+the fifth, developed the Homeric chart to three times its size. He
+remarks at the commencement of his book that for several centuries the
+world has been divided into three parts--Europe, Asia, and Libya; the
+names given to them being female. The exterior limits of these countries
+remained in obscurity notwithstanding that those boundaries of them that
+lay nearest to Greece were clearly defined.
+
+One of the greatest writers on ancient geography was Strabo, whose ideas
+we will now give an account of. He seems to have been a disciple of
+Hipparchus in astronomy, though he criticises and contradicts him
+several times in his geography. He had a just idea of the sphericity of
+the earth; but considered it as the centre of the universe, and
+immovable. He takes pains to prove that there is only one inhabited
+earth--not in this refuting the notion that the moon and stars might
+have inhabitants, for these he considered to be insignificant meteors
+nourished by the exhalations of the ocean; but he fought against the
+fact of there being on this globe any other inhabited part than that
+known to the ancients.
+
+It is remarkable to notice that the proofs then used by geographers of
+the sphericity of the earth are just those which we should use now. Thus
+Strabo says, "The indirect proof is drawn from the centripetal force in
+general, and the tendency that all bodies have in particular towards a
+centre of gravity. The direct proof results from the phenomena observed
+on the sea and in the sky. It is evident, for example, that it is the
+curvature of the earth that alone prevents the sailor from seeing at a
+distance the lights that are placed at the ordinary height of the eye,
+and which must be placed a little higher to become visible even at a
+greater distance; in the same way, if the eye is a little raised it will
+see things which previously were hidden." Homer had already made the
+same remark.
+
+On this globe, representing the world, Strabo and the cosmographers of
+his time placed the habitable world in a surface which he describes in
+the following way: "Suppose a great circle, perpendicular to the
+equator, and passing through the poles to be described about the sphere.
+It is plain that the surface will be divided by this circle, and by the
+equator into four equal parts. The northern and southern hemispheres
+contain, each of them, two of these parts. Now on any one of these
+quarters of the sphere let us trace a quadrilateral which shall have for
+its southern boundary the half of the equator, for northern boundary a
+circle marking the commencement of polar cold, and for the other sides
+two equal and opposite segments of the circle that passes through the
+poles. It is on one such quadrilateral that the habitable world is
+placed." He figures it as an island, because it is surrounded on all
+sides by the sea. It is plain that Strabo had a good idea of the nature
+of gravity, because he does not distinguish in any way an upper or a
+lower hemisphere, and declares that the quadrilateral on which the
+habitable world is situated may be any one of the four formed in this
+way.
+
+The form of the habitable world is that of a "chlamys," or cloak. This
+follows, he says, both from geometry and the great spread of the sea,
+which, enveloping the land, covers it both to the east and to the west
+and reduces it to a shortened and truncated form of such a figure that
+its greatest breadth preserved has only a third of its length. As to the
+actual length and breadth, he says, "it measures seventy thousand stadia
+in length, and is bounded by a sea whose immensity and solitude renders
+it impassable; while the breadth is less than thirty thousand stadia,
+and has for boundaries the double region where the excess of heat on
+one side and the excess of cold on the other render it uninhabitable."
+
+The habitable world was thus much longer from east to west than it was
+broad from north to south; from whence come our terms _longitude_, whose
+degrees are counted in the former direction, and _latitude_, reckoned in
+the latter direction.
+
+Eratosthenes, and after him Hipparchus, while he gives larger numbers
+than the preceding for the dimensions of the inhabited part of the
+earth, namely, thirty-eight thousand stadia of breadth and eighty
+thousand of length, declares that physical laws accord with calculations
+to prove that the length of the habitable earth must be taken from the
+rising to the setting of the sun. This length extends from the extremity
+of India to that of Iberia, and the breadth from the parallel of
+Ethiopia to that of Ierne.
+
+That the earth is an island, Strabo considers to be proved by the
+testimony of our senses. For wherever men have reached to the
+extremities of the earth they have found the sea, and for regions where
+this has not been verified it is established by reasoning. Those who
+have retraced their steps have not done so because their passage was
+barred by any continent, but because their supplies have run short, and
+they were afraid of the solitude; the water always ran freely in front
+of them.
+
+It is extraordinary that Strabo and the astronomers of that age, who
+recognised so clearly the sphericity of the earth and the real
+insignificance of mountains, should yet have supposed the stars to have
+played so humble a part, but so it was; and we find Strabo arguing in
+what we may call quite the contrary direction. He says, "the larger the
+mass of water that is spread round the earth, so much more easy is it to
+conceive how the vapours arising from it are sufficient to nourish the
+heavenly bodies."
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 33.--THE EARTH OF THE LATER GREEKS.]
+
+Among the Latin cosmographers we may here cite one who flourished in the
+first century after Christ, Pomponius Mela, who wrote a treatise, called
+_De Situ Orbis_. From whatever source, whether traditional or otherwise,
+he arrived at the conclusion, he divided the earth into two continents,
+our own and that of the Antichthones, which reached to our antipodes.
+This map was in use till the time of Christopher Columbus, who modified
+it in the matter of the position of this second continent, which till
+then remained a matter of mystery.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 34.--POMPONIUS MELA'S COSMOGRAPHY.]
+
+Of those who in ancient times added to the knowledge then possessed of
+cosmography, we should not omit to mention the name of Pytheas, of
+Marseilles, who flourished in the fourth century before our era. His
+chief observations, however, were not so closely related to geography as
+to the relation of the earth with the heavenly bodies. By the
+observation of the gnomon at mid-day on the day of the solstice he
+determined the obliquity of the ecliptic in his epoch. By the
+observation of the height of the pole, he discovered that in his time it
+was not marked by any star, but formed a quadrilateral with three
+neighbouring stars, [Greek: b] of the little Bear and [Greek: k] and
+[Greek: a] of the Dragon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+COSMOGRAPHY AND GEOGRAPHY OF THE CHURCH.
+
+
+After the writers mentioned in the last chapter a long interval elapsed
+without any progress being made in the knowledge of the shape or
+configuration of the earth. From the fall of the Roman Empire, whose
+colonies themselves gave a certain knowledge of geography, down to the
+fifteenth century, when the great impetus was given to discovery by the
+adventurous voyagers of Spain and Portugal, there was nothing but
+servile copying from ancient authors, who were even misrepresented when
+they were not understood. Even the peninsula of India was only known by
+the accounts of Orientals and the writings of the Ancients until the
+beginning of the fifteenth century. Vague notions, too, were held as to
+the limits of Africa, and even of Europe and Asia--while of course they
+knew nothing of America, in spite of their marking on their maps an
+antichthonal continent to the south.
+
+Denys, the traveller, a Greek writer of the first century, and Priscian,
+his Latin commentator of the fourth, still maintained the old errors
+with regard to the earth. According to them the earth is not round, but
+leaf-shaped; its boundaries are not so arranged as to form everywhere a
+regular circle. Macrobius, in his system of the world, proves clearly
+that he had no notion that Africa was continued to the south of
+Ethiopia, that is of the tenth degree of N. latitude. He thought, like
+Cleanthus and Crates and other ancient authors, that the regions that
+lay nearest the tropics, and were burnt by the sun, could not be
+inhabited; and that the equatorial regions were occupied by the ocean.
+He divided the hemisphere into five zones, of which only two were
+habitable. "One of them," he said, "is occupied by us, and the other by
+men of whose nature we are ignorant."
+
+Orosus, writing in the same century (fourth), and whose work exercised
+so great an influence on the cosmographers of the middle ages and on
+those who made the maps of the world during that long period, was
+ignorant of the form or boundaries of Africa, and of the contours of the
+peninsulas of Southern Asia. He made the heavens rest upon the earth.
+
+S. Basil, also of the fourth century, placed the firmament on the earth,
+and on this heaven a second, whose upper surface was flat,
+notwithstanding that the inner surface which is turned towards us is in
+the form of a vault; and he explains in this way how the waters can be
+held there. S. Cyril shows how useful this reservoir of water is to the
+life of men and of plants.
+
+Diodorus, Bishop of Tarsus, in the same century, also divided the world
+into two stages, and compared it to a tent. Severianus, Bishop of
+Gabala, about the same time, compared the world to a house of which the
+earth is the ground floor, the lower heavens the ceiling, and the upper,
+or heaven of heavens, the roof. This double heaven was also admitted by
+Eusebius of Cæsaræa.
+
+In the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries science made no progress
+whatever. It was still taught that there were limits to the ocean. Thus
+Lactantius asserted that there could not be inhabitants beyond the line
+of the tropics. This Father of the Church considered it a monstrous
+opinion that the earth is round, that the heavens turn about it, and
+that all parts of the earth are inhabited. "There are some people," he
+says, "so extravagant as to persuade themselves that there are men who
+have their heads downwards and their feet upwards; that all that lies
+down here is hung up there; that the trees and herbs grow downwards; and
+that the snow and hail fall upwards.... Those people who maintain such
+opinions do so for no other purpose than to amuse themselves by
+disputation, and to show their spirit; otherwise it would be easy to
+prove by invincible argument that it is impossible for the heavens to
+be underneath the earth." (Divine Institution). Saint Augustin also, in
+his _City of God_, says: "There is no reason to believe in that fabulous
+hypothesis of the antipodes, that is to say, of men who inhabit the
+other side of the earth--where the sun rises when it sets with us, and
+who have their feet opposed to ours." ... "But even if it were
+demonstrated by any argument that the earth and world have a spherical
+form, it would be too absurd to pretend that any hardy voyagers, after
+having traversed the immensity of the ocean, had been able to reach that
+part of the world and there implant a detached branch of the primæval
+human family."
+
+In the same strain wrote S. Basil, S. Ambrose, S. Justin Martyr, S.
+Chrysostom, Procopius of Gaza, Severianus, Diodorus Bishop of Tarsus,
+and the greater number of the thinkers of that epoch.
+
+Eusebius of Cæsaræa was bold enough on one occasion to write in his
+Commentaries on the Psalms, that, "according to the opinion of some the
+earth is round;" but he draws back in another work from so rash an
+assertion. Even in the fifteenth century the monks of Salamanca and
+Alcala opposed the old arguments against the antipodes to all the
+theories of Columbus.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 35.--THE EARTH'S SHADOW.]
+
+In the middle of the sixteenth century Gregory of Tours adopted also the
+opinion that the intertropical zone was uninhabitable, and, like other
+historians, he taught that the Nile came from the unknown land in the
+east, descended to the south, crossed the ocean which separated the
+antichthone from Africa, and then alone became: visible. The
+geographical and cosmographical ideas that were then prevalent may also
+be judged of by what S. Avitus, a Latin poet of the sixth century and
+nephew of the Emperor Flavius Avitus, says in his poem on the Creation,
+where he describes the terrestrial Paradise. "Beyond India," he writes,
+"_where the world commences_, where the confines of heaven and earth are
+joined, is an exalted asylum, inaccessible to mortals, and closed by
+eternal barriers, since the first sin was committed."
+
+In a treatise on astronomy, published a little after this in 1581, by
+Apian and Gemma Frison, they very distinctly state their belief in a
+round earth, though they do not go into details of its surface. The
+argument is the old one from eclipses, but the figures they give in
+illustration are very amusing, with three or four men of the size of the
+moon disporting themselves on the earth's surface. As, however, they all
+have their feet to the globe representing the earth, and consequently
+have their feet in opposite directions at the antipodes, the idea is
+very clearly shown.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 36.]
+
+"If," they say, "the earth were square, its shadow on the
+moon would be square also.
+
+"If the earth were triangular, its shadow, during an eclipse of the
+moon, would also be triangular.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 37.]
+
+"If the earth had six sides, its shadow would have the same figure.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 38.]
+
+"Since, then, the shadow of the earth is round, it is a proof that the
+earth is round also."
+
+This of course is one of the proofs that would be employed in the
+present day for the same purpose.
+
+The most remarkable of all the fantastical systems, however, the _chef
+d'oeuvre_ of the cosmography of that age, was the famous system of the
+square earth, with solid walls for supporting the heavens. Its author
+was _Cosmas_, surnamed _Indicopleustes_ after his voyage to India and
+Ethiopia. He was at first a merchant, and afterwards a monk. He died in
+550. His manuscript was entitled "Christian Topography," and was written
+in 535. It was with the object of refuting the opinions of those who
+gave a spherical form to the earth that Cosmas composed his work after
+the systems of the Church Fathers, and in opposition to the cosmography
+of the Gentiles. He reduced to a systematic form the opinions of the
+Fathers, and undertook to explain all the phenomena of the heavens in
+accordance with the Scriptures. In his first book he refutes the opinion
+of the sphericity of the earth, which he regarded as a heresy. In the
+second he expounds his own system, and the fifth to the ninth he devotes
+to the courses of the stars. This mongrel composition is a singular
+mixture of the doctrines of the Indians, Chaldeans, Greeks, and
+Christian Fathers.
+
+With respect to his opponents he says, "There are on all sides vigorous
+attacks against the Church," and accuses them of misunderstanding
+Scripture, being misled by the eclipses of the sun and moon. He makes
+great fun of the idea of rain falling upwards, and yet accuses his
+opponents of making the earth at the same time the centre and the base
+of the universe. The zeal with which these pretended refutations are
+used proves, no doubt, that in the sixth century there were some men,
+more sensible and better instructed than others, who preserved the
+deposit of progress accomplished by the Grecian genius in the
+Alexandrian school, and defended the labours of Hipparchus and Ptolemy;
+while it is manifest that the greater number of their contemporaries
+kept the old Indian and Homeric traditions, which were easier to
+understand, and more accessible to the false witness of the senses, and
+not improved by combination with texts of Scripture misinterpreted. In
+fact, cosmographical science in the general opinion retrograded instead
+of advancing.
+
+According to Cosmas and his map of the world, the habitable earth is a
+plane surface. But instead of being supposed, as in the time of Thales,
+to be a disc, he represented it in the form of a parallelogram, whose
+long sides are twice the shorter ones, so that man is on the earth like
+a bird in a cage. This parallelogram is surrounded by the ocean, which
+breaks in in four great gulfs, namely, the Mediterranean and Caspian
+seas, and the Persian and Arabian gulfs.
+
+Beyond the ocean in every direction there exists another continent which
+cannot be reached by man, but of which one part was once inhabited by
+him before the Deluge. To the east, just as in other maps of the world,
+and in later systems, he placed the _Terrestrial Paradise_, and the
+four rivers that watered Eden, which come by subterranean channels to
+water the post-diluvian earth.
+
+After the Fall, Adam was driven from Paradise; but he and his
+descendants remained on its coasts until the Deluge carried the ark of
+Noah to our present earth.
+
+On the four outsides of the earth rise four perpendicular walls, which
+surround it, and join together at the top in a vault, the heavens
+forming the cupola of this singular edifice.
+
+The world, according to Cosmas, was therefore a large oblong box, and it
+was divided into two parts; the first, the abode of men, reaches from
+the earth to the firmament, above which the stars accomplish their
+revolutions; there dwell the angels, who cannot go any higher. The
+second reaches upwards from the firmament to the upper vault, which
+crowns and terminates the world. On this firmament rest the waters of
+the heavens.
+
+Cosmas justifies this system by declaring that, according to the
+doctrine of the Fathers and the Commentators on the Bible, the earth has
+the form of the Tabernacle that Moses erected in the desert; which was
+like an oblong box, twice as long as broad. But we may find other
+similarities,--for this land beyond the ocean recalls the Atlantic of
+the ancients, and the Mahomedans, and Orientals in general, say that the
+earth is surrounded by a high mountain, which is a similar idea to the
+walls of Cosmas.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 39.--THE COSMOGRAPHY OF COSMAS.]
+
+"God," he says, "in creating the earth, rested it on nothing. The earth
+is therefore sustained by the power of God, the Creator of all things,
+supporting all things by the word of His power. If below the earth, or
+outside of it, anything existed, it would fall of its own accord. So God
+made the earth the base of the universe, and ordained that it should
+sustain itself by its own proper gravity."
+
+After having made a great square box of the universe, it remained for
+him to explain the celestial phenomena, such as the succession of days
+and nights and the vicissitudes of the seasons.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 40.--THE SQUARE EARTH.]
+
+This is the remarkable explanation he gives. He says that the earth,
+that is, the oblong table circumscribed on all sides by high walls, is
+divided into three parts; first the habitable earth, which occupies the
+middle; secondly, the ocean which surrounds this on all sides; and
+thirdly, another dry land which surrounds the ocean, terminated itself
+by these high walls on which the firmament rests. According to him the
+habitable earth is always higher as we go north, so that southern
+countries are always much lower than northern. For this reason, he says,
+the Tigris and Euphrates, which run towards the south, are much more
+rapid than the Nile, which runs northwards. At the extreme north there
+is a large conical mountain, behind which the sun, moon, planets, and
+comets all set. These stars never pass below the earth, they only pass
+behind this great mountain, which hides them for a longer or shorter
+time from our observation. According as the sun departs from or
+approaches the north, and consequently is lower or higher in the
+heavens, he disappears at a point nearer to or further from the base of
+the mountain, and so is behind it a longer or shorter time, whence the
+inequality of the days and nights, the vicissitudes of the seasons,
+eclipses, and other phenomena. This idea is not peculiar to Cosmas, for
+according to the Indians, the mountain of Someirat is in the centre of
+the earth, and when the sun appears to set, he is really only hiding
+behind this mountain.
+
+His idea, too, of the manner in which the motions are performed is
+strange, but may be matched elsewhere. "All the stars are created," he
+says, "to regulate the days and nights, the months and the years, and
+they move, not at all by the motion of the heaven itself, but by the
+action of certain divine Beings, or _lampadophores_. God made the angels
+for His service, and He has charged some of them with the motion of the
+air, others with that of the sun, or the moon, or the other stars, and
+others again with the collecting of clouds and preparing the rain."
+
+Similar to this were the ideas of other doctors of the
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 41.--EXPLANATION OF SUNRISE.]
+
+Church, such as S. Hilary and Theodorus, some of whom supposed that the
+angels carried the stars on their shoulders like the _omophores_ of the
+Manichees; others that they rolled them in front of them or drew them
+behind; while the Jesuit Riccioli, who made astronomical observations,
+remarks that each angel that pushes a star takes great care to observe
+what the others are doing, so that the relative distances between the
+stars may always remain what they ought to be. The Abbot Trithemus gives
+the exact succession of the seven angels or spirits of the planets, who
+take it in turns during a cycle of three hundred and fifty-four years to
+govern the celestial motions from the creation to the year 1522. The
+system thus introduced seems to have been spread abroad, and to have
+lingered even into the nineteenth century among the Arabs. A guide of
+that nationality hired at Cairo in 1830, remarked to two travellers how
+the earth had been made square and covered with stones, but the stones
+had been thrown into the four corners, now called France, Italy,
+England, and Russia, while the centre, forming a circle round Mount
+Sinai, had been given to the Arabians.
+
+Alongside of this system of the square was another equally curious--that
+of the egg. Its author was the famous Venerable Bede, one of the most
+enlightened men of his time, who was educated at the University of
+Armagh, which produced Alfred and Alcuin. He says: "The earth is an
+element placed in the middle of the world, as the yolk is in the middle
+of an egg; around it is the water, like the white surrounding the yolk;
+outside that is the air, like the membrane of the egg; and round all is
+the fire which closes it in as the shell does. The earth being thus in
+the centre receives every weight upon itself, and though by its nature
+it is cold and dry in its different parts, it acquires accidentally
+different qualities; for the portion which is exposed to the torrid
+action of the air is burnt by the sun, and is uninhabitable; its two
+extremities are too cold to be inhabited, but the portion that lies in
+the temperate region of the atmosphere is habitable. The ocean, which
+surrounds it by its waves as far as the horizon, divides it into two
+parts, the upper of which is inhabited by us, while the lower is
+inhabited by our antipodes; although not one of them can come to us, nor
+one of us to them."
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 42.--THE EARTH AS AN EGG.]
+
+This last sentence shows that however far he may have been from the
+truth, he did not, like so many of his contemporaries, stumble over the
+idea of up and down in the universe, and so consider the notion of
+antipodes absurd.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 43.--THE EARTH AS A FLOATING EGG.]
+
+A great number of the maps of the world of the period followed this
+idea, and drew the world in the shape of an egg at rest. It was
+broached, however, in another form by Edrisi, an Arabian geographer of
+the eleventh century, who, with many others, considered the earth to be
+like an egg with one half plunged into the water. The regularity of the
+surface is only interrupted by valleys and mountains. He adopted the
+system of the ancients, who supposed that the torrid zone was
+uninhabited. According to him the known world only forms a single half
+of the egg, the greater part of the water belonging to the surrounding
+ocean, in the midst of which earth floats like an egg in a basin.
+Several artists and map-makers adopted this theory in the geographical
+representations, and so, whether in this way or the last, the egg has
+had the privilege of representing the form of the earth for nearly a
+thousand years.
+
+The celebrated Raban Maur, of Mayence, composed in the ninth century a
+treatise, entitled _De Universo_, divided into twenty-two books. It is a
+kind of encyclopædia, in which he gives an abridged view of all the
+sciences. According to his cosmographic system the earth is in the form
+of a wheel, and is placed in the middle of the universe, being
+surrounded by the ocean; on the north it is bounded by the Caucasus,
+which he supposes to be mountains of gold, which no one can reach
+because of dragons, and griffins, and men of monstrous shape that dwell
+there. He also places Jerusalem in the centre of the earth.
+
+The treatise of Honorus, entitled _Imago Mundi_, and many other authors
+of the same kind, represent, 1st, the terrestrial paradise in the most
+easterly portion of the world, in a locality inaccessible to man; 2nd,
+the four rivers which had their sources in Paradise; 3rd, the torrid
+zone, uninhabited; 4th, fantastic islands, transformed from the Atlantis
+into _Antillia_.
+
+[Illustration: FIG 44.--EIGHTH CENTURY MAP OF THE WORLD.]
+
+In a manuscript commentary on the Apocalypse, which is in the library of
+Turin, is a very curious chart, referred to the tenth, but belonging
+possibly to the eighth century. It represents the earth as a circular
+planisphere. The four sides of the earth are each accompanied by a
+figure of a wind, as a horse on a bellows, from which air is poured out,
+as well as from a shell in his mouth. Above, or to the east, are Adam,
+and Eve with the serpent. To their right is Asia with two very elevated
+mountains--Cappadocia and Caucasus. From thence comes the river
+_Eusis_, and the sea into which it falls forms an arm of the ocean which
+surrounds the earth. This arm joins the Mediterranean, and separates
+Europe from Asia. Towards the middle is Jerusalem, with two curious arms
+of the sea running past it; while to the south there is a long and
+straight sea in an east and west direction. The various islands of the
+Mediterranean are put in a square patch, and Rome, France, and Germany
+are indicated, while Thula, Britannia, and Scotia are marked as islands
+in the north-west of the ocean that surrounds the whole world.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 45.--TENTH CENTURY MAPS.]
+
+We figure below two very curious maps of the world of the tenth
+century--one of which is round, the other square. The first is divided
+into three triangles; that of the east, or Asia, is marked with the name
+of _Shem_; that of the north, or Europe, with that of _Japhet_; that of
+the south, or Africa, with that of _Cham_. The second is also divided
+between the three sons of Noah; the ocean surrounds it, the
+Mediterranean forms the upright portion of a cross of water which
+divides the Adamic world.
+
+Omons, the author of a geographical poem entitled _The Image of the
+World_, composed in 1265, who was called the Lucretius of the thirteenth
+century, was not more advanced than the cosmographers of the former
+centuries of which we have hitherto spoken. The cosmographical part of
+his poem is borrowed from the system of Pythagoras and the Venerable
+Bede. He maintains that the earth is enveloped in the heavens, as the
+yoke in the white of an egg, and that it is in the middle as the centre
+is within the circle, and he speaks like Pythagoras of the harmony of
+the celestial spheres.
+
+Omons supposed also that in his time the terrestrial paradise was still
+existing in the east, with its tree of life, its four rivers, and its
+angel with a flaming sword. He appears to have confounded Hecla with the
+purgatory of St. Patrick, and he places the latter in Iceland, saying
+that it never ceases to burn. The volcanoes were only, according to him,
+the breathing places or mouths of the infernal regions. The latter he
+placed with other cosmographers in the centre of the earth.
+
+Another author, Nicephorus Blemmyde, a monk who lived during the same
+century, composed three cosmographical works, among them the following:
+_On the Heavens and the Earth, On the Sun and Moon, the Stars, and Times
+and Days_. According to his system the earth is flat, and he adopts the
+Homeric theory of the ocean surrounding the world, and that of the seven
+climates.
+
+Nicolas of Oresmus, a celebrated cosmographer of the fourteenth century,
+although his celebrity as a mathematician attracted the attention of
+King John of France, who made him tutor to his son Charles V., was not
+wiser than those we have enumerated above. He composed among other works
+a _Treatise on the Sphere_. He rejected the theory of an antichthonal
+continent as contrary to the faith. A map of the world, prepared by him
+about the year 1377, represents the earth as round, with one hemisphere
+only inhabited, the other, or lower one, being plunged in the water. He
+seems to have been led by various borrowed ideas, as, for instance,
+theological ones, such as the statement in the Psalms that God had
+founded the earth upon the waters, and Grecian ones borrowed from the
+school of Thales, and the theories of the Arabian geographers. In fact
+we have seen that Edrisi thought that half of the earth was in the
+water, and Aboulfeda thought the same. The earth was placed by Nicolas
+in the centre of the universe, which he represented by painting the sky
+blue, and dotting it over with stars in gold.
+
+Leonardo Dati, who composed a geographical poem entitled _Della Spera_,
+during this century, advanced no further. A coloured planisphere showed
+the earth in the centre of the universe surrounded by the ocean, then
+the air, then the circles of the planets after the Ptolemaic system, and
+in another representation of the same kind he figures the infernal
+regions in the centre of the earth, and gives its diameter as seven
+thousand miles. He proves himself not to have known one half of the
+globe by his statement of the shape of the earth--that it is like a T
+inside an O. This is a comparison given in many maps of the world in the
+middle ages, the mean parallel being about the 36th degree of north
+latitude, that is to say at the Straits of Gibraltar; the Mediterranean
+is thus placed so as to divide the earth into two equal parts.
+
+John Beauvau, Bishop of Angiers under Louis XL, expresses his ideas as
+follows:--
+
+"The earth is situated and rests in the middle of the firmament, as the
+centre or point is in the middle of a circle. Of the whole earth
+mentioned above only one quarter is inhabited. The earth is divided into
+four parts, as an apple is divided through the centre by cutting it
+lengthways and across. If one part of such an apple is taken and peeled,
+and the peel is spread out over anything flat, such as the palm of the
+hand, then it resembles the habitable earth, one side of which is
+called the east, and the other the west."
+
+The Arabians adopted not only the ideas of the ancients, but also the
+fundamental notions of the cosmographical system of the Greeks. Some of
+them, as _Bakouy_, regarded the earth as a flat surface, like a table,
+others as a ball, of which one half is cut off, others as a complete
+revolving ball, and others that it was hollow within. Others again went
+as far as to say that there were several suns and moons for the several
+parts of the earth.
+
+In a map, preserved in the library at Cambridge, by Henry, Canon of St.
+Marie of Mayence, the form of the world is given after Herodotus. The
+four cardinal points are indicated, and the orientation is that of
+nearly all the cartographic monuments of the middle ages, namely, the
+east at the top of the map. The four cardinal points are four angels,
+one foot placed on the disc of the earth; the colours of their vestments
+are symbolical. The angel placed at the Boreal extremity of the earth,
+or to the north of the Scythians, points with his finger to people
+enclosed in the ramparts of Gog and Magog, _gens immunda_ as the legend
+says. In his left hand he holds a die to indicate, no doubt, that there
+are shut up the Jews who cast lots for the clothes of Christ. His
+vestments are green, his mantle and his wings are red. The angel placed
+to the left of Paradise has a green mantle and wings, and red vestments.
+In his left hand he holds a kind of palm, and by the right he seems to
+mark the way to Paradise. The position of the other angels placed at the
+west of the world is different. They seem occupied in stopping the
+passage beyond the _Columns_ (that is, the entrance to the Atlantic
+Ocean). All of them have golden aureolas. The surrounding ocean is
+painted of a clear green.
+
+Another remarkable map of the world is that of Andrea Bianco. In it we
+see Eden at the top, which represents the east, and the four rivers are
+running out of it. Much of Europe is indicated, including Spain, Paris,
+Sweden, Norway, Ireland, which are named, England, Iceland, Spitzbergen,
+&c., which are not named. The portion round the North Pole to the left
+is indicated as "cold beneath the Pole star." In these maps the
+systematic theories of the ancient geographers seem mixed with the
+doctrines of the Fathers of the Church. They place generally in the Red
+Sea some mark denoting the passage of the Hebrews, the terrestrial
+paradise at the extreme east, and Jerusalem in the centre. The towns are
+figured often by edifices, as in the list of Theodosius, but without any
+regard to their respective positions. Each town is ordinarily
+represented by two towers, but the principal ones are distinguished by a
+little wall that appears between these two towers, on which are painted
+several windows, or else they may be known by the size of the edifices.
+St. James of Compostella in Gallicia and Rome are represented by
+edifices of considerable size, as are Nazareth, Troy, Antioch, Damascus,
+Babylon, and Nineveh.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 46.--THE MAP OF ANDREA BIANCO.]
+
+One of the most remarkable monuments of the geography of the last
+centuries of the middle ages is the map in Hereford Cathedral, by
+Richard of Haldingham, not only on account of its numerous legends, but
+because of its large dimensions, being several square yards in area.
+
+On the upper part of this map is represented the Last Judgment; Jesus
+Christ, with raised arms, holding in His hands a scroll with these
+words, _Ecce testimonium meum_. At His side two angels carry in their
+hands the instruments of His passion. On the right hand stands an angel
+with a trumpet to his mouth, out of which come these words, _Levez si
+vendres vous par_. An angel brings forward a bishop by the hand, behind
+whom is a king, followed by other personages; the angel introduces them
+by a door formed of two columns, which seems to serve as an entrance to
+an edifice.
+
+The Virgin is kneeling at the feet, of her Son. Behind her is another
+woman kneeling, who holds a crown, which she seems ready to place on the
+head of the Mother of Christ, and by the side of the woman is a kneeling
+angel, who appears to be supporting the maternal intercessor. The Virgin
+uncovers her breast and pronounces the words of a scroll which is held
+by an angel kneeling in front of her, _Vei i b' fiz mon piz de deuiz
+lauele chare preistes--Eles mame lettes dont leit de Virgin qui
+estes--Syes merci de tous si com nos mesmes deistes.--R ... em ... ont
+servi kaut sauveresse me feistes_.
+
+To the left another angel, also with a trumpet to his mouth, gives out
+the following words, which are written on a scroll, _Leves si alles all
+fu de enfer estable_. A gate, drawn like that of the entrance,
+represents probably the passage by which those must go out who are
+condemned to eternal pains. In fact the devil is seen dragging after him
+a crowd of men, who are tied by a cord which he holds in his hand.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 47.--FROM THE MAP IN HEREFORD CATHEDRAL.]
+
+The map itself commences at its upper part, that is, the east, by the
+terrestrial paradise. It is a circle, in the centre of which is
+represented the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve are
+there in company with the serpent that beguiled them. The four legendary
+rivers come out of the base of the tree, and they are seen below
+crossing the map. Outside Eden the flight of the first couple, and the
+angel that drove them away, are represented. At this extreme eastern
+portion is the region of giants with the heads of beasts. There, too,
+is seen the first human habitation, or town, built by Enoch. Below
+appears the Tower of Babel. Near this are two men seated on a hill close
+to the river Jaxartes; one of them is eating a human leg and the other
+an arm, which the legend explains thus:--"Here live the Essedons, whose
+custom it is to sing at the funerals of their parents; they tear the
+corpses with their teeth, and prepare their food with these fragments of
+flesh, mixed with that of animals. In their opinion it is more
+honourable to the dead to be enclosed in the bodies of their relations
+than in those of worms."
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 48.--FROM THE MAP IN HEREFORD CATHEDRAL.
+
+  Tower of Babel.
+  Essedons.
+  Dragons.
+  Pigmies.
+  The Monoceros.
+  The Mantichore.
+  A Sphinx.
+  The King of the Cyclops.
+  Blemmye.
+  Parasol lip.
+  Monocle.]
+
+Below are seen dragons and pigmies, always to the east of Asia, and a
+little further away in the midst of a strange country, _the King of the
+Cyclops_.
+
+This extraordinary geography shows us in India the "Mantichore, who has
+a triple range of teeth, the face of a man, blue eyes, the red colour of
+blood, the body of a lion, and the tail of a scorpion; its voice is a
+whistle."
+
+On the north of the Ganges is represented a man with one leg, shading
+his head with his foot, which is explained by the following legend:--"In
+India dwell the Monocles, who have only one leg, but who nevertheless
+move with surprising velocity; when they wish to protect themselves from
+the heat of the sun they make a shadow with the sole of their foot,
+which is very large."
+
+The Blemmys have their mouth and eyes in their chest; others have their
+mouths and eyes on their shoulders. The Parvini are Ethiopians that have
+four eyes.
+
+To the east of Syene is a man seated who is covering his head with his
+lip, "people who with their prominent lip shade their faces from the
+sun."
+
+Above is drawn a little sun, with the word _sol_. Then comes an animal
+of human form, having the feet of a horse and the head and beak of a
+bird; he rests on a stick, and the legend tells us it is a satyr; the
+fauns, half men and half horses; the cynocephales--men with the head of
+a dog; and the cyanthropes--dogs with the heads of men. The sphinx has
+the wings of a bird, the tail of a serpent, the head of a woman. It is
+placed in the midst of the Cordilleras, which are joined to a great
+chain of mountains. Here lastly is seen the _monoceros_, a terrible
+animal; but here is the marvel: "When one shows to this _monoceros_ a
+young girl, who, when the animal approaches, uncovers her breast, the
+monster, forgetting his ferocity, lays his head there, and when he is
+asleep may be taken defenceless."
+
+Near to the lake Meotides is a man clothed in Oriental style, with a hat
+that terminates in a point, and holding by the bridle a horse whose
+harness is a human skin, and which is explained thus by the Latin
+legend: "Here live the griffins, very wicked men, for among other crimes
+they proceed so far as to make clothes for themselves and their horses
+out of the skins of their enemies."
+
+More to the south is a large bird, the ostrich; according to the legend,
+"the ostrich has the head of a goose, the body of a crane, the feet of a
+calf; it eats iron."
+
+Not far from the Riphean Mountains two men with long tunics and round
+bonnets are represented in the attitude of fighting; one brandishes a
+sword, the other a kind of club, and the legend tells us, "The customs
+of the people of the interior of Scythia are somewhat wild; they inhabit
+caves; they drink the blood of the slain by sucking their wounds; they
+pride themselves on the number of people they have slain--not to have
+slain any one in combat is reckoned disgraceful."
+
+Near the river that empties itself into the Caspian Sea it is written:
+"This river comes from the infernal regions; it enters the sea after
+having descended from mountains covered with wood, and it is there, they
+say, that the mouth of hell opens."
+
+To the south of this river, and to the north of Hyrcania, is represented
+a monster having the body of a man, the head, tail, and feet of a bull:
+this is the Minotaur. Further on are the mountains of Armenia, and the
+ark of Noah on one of its plateaux. Here, too, is seen a large tiger,
+and we read: "The tiger, when he sees that he has been deprived of his
+young, pursues the ravisher precipitately; but the latter, hastening
+away on his swift horse, throws a mirror to him and is safe."
+
+Elsewhere appears Lot's wife changed into a pillar of salt; the lynx who
+can see through a stone wall; the river Lethe; so called because all who
+drink of it forget everything.
+
+Numerous other details might be mentioned, but enough has been said to
+show the curious nature and exceeding interest of this map, in which
+matters of observation and imagination are strangely mixed. Another very
+curious geographical document of that epoch is the map of the world of
+the _Grandes Chroniques de Saint-Denis_. This belongs to the fourteenth
+century. The capitals here too are represented by edifices. The
+Mediterranean is a vertical canal, which goes from the Columns of
+Hercules to Jerusalem. The Caspian Sea communicates with it to the
+north, and the Red Sea to the south-east, by the Nile. It preserves the
+same position for Paradise and for the land of Gog and Magog that we
+have seen before. The geography of Europe is very defective. Britannia
+and Anglia figure as two separate islands, being represented off the
+west coast of Spain, with Allemania and Germania, also two distinct
+countries, to the north. The ocean is represented as round the whole,
+and the various points of the compass are represented by different kinds
+of winds on the outside.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 49.--COSMOGRAPHY OF ST. DENIS.]
+
+This was the general style of the maps of the world at that period, as
+we may perceive from the various illustrations we have been able to
+give, and it curiously initiates us into the mediæval ideas. Sometimes
+they are surrounded by laughable figures of the winds with inflated
+cheeks, sometimes there are drawn light children of Eolus seated on
+leathern bottles, rotating the liquid within; at other times, saints,
+angels, Adam and Eve, or other people, adorn the circumference of the
+map. Within are shown a profusion of animals, trees, populations,
+monuments, tents, draperies, and monarchs seated on their thrones--an
+idea which was useful, no doubt, and which gave the reader some
+knowledge of the local riches, the ethnography, the local forms of
+government and of architecture in the various countries represented; but
+the drawings were for the most part childish, and more fantastic than
+real. The language, too, in which they were written was as mixed as the
+drawings; no regularity was preserved in the orthography of a name,
+which on the same map may be written in ten different ways, being
+expressed in barbarous Latin, Roman, or Old French, Catalan, Italian,
+Castilian, or Portuguese!
+
+During the same epoch other forms of maps in less detail and of smaller
+size show the characters that we have seen in the maps of earlier
+centuries.
+
+Marco Polo, the traveller, at the end of the fourteenth century, has
+preserved in his writings all the ancient traditions, and united them in
+a singular manner with the results of his own observations. He had not
+seen Paradise, but he had seen the ark of Noah resting on the top of
+Ararat. His map of the world, preserved in the library at Stockholm, is
+oval, and represents two continents.
+
+In that which we inhabit, the only seas indicated are the Mediterranean
+and the Black Sea. Asia appears at the east, Europe to the north, and
+Africa to the south. The other continent to the south of the equator,
+which is not marked, is Antichthonia.
+
+In a map of the world engraved on a medal of the fifteenth century
+during the reign of Charles V. there is still a reminiscence of the
+ideas of the concealed earth and Meropides, as described by Theopompus.
+We see the winds as cherubim; Europe more accurately represented than
+usual; but Africa still unknown, and a second continent, called Brumæ,
+instead of Antichthonia, with imaginary details upon it.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 50--THE MAP OF MARCO POLO.]
+
+If such were the ideas entertained amongst the most enlightened nations,
+what may we expect among those who were less advanced? It would take us
+too long to describe all that more Eastern nations have done upon this
+point since the commencement of our present era, but we may give an
+example or two from the Arabians.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 51.--MAP ON A MEDAL OF CHARLES V.]
+
+In the ancient Arabian chronicle of Tabari is a system founded on the
+earth being the solid foundation of all things; we read: "The prophet
+says, the all-powerful and inimitable Deity has created the mountain of
+Kaf round about the earth; it has been called the foundation pile of the
+earth, as it is said in the Koran, 'The mountains are the piles.' This
+world is in the midst of the mountain of Kaf, just as the finger is in
+the midst of the ring. This mountain is emerald, and blue in colour; no
+man can go to it, because he would have to pass four months in darkness
+to do so. There is in that mountain neither sun, nor moon, nor stars;
+it is so blue that the azure colour you see in the heavens comes from
+the brilliancy of the mountain of Kaf, which is reflected in the sky. If
+this were not so the sky would not be blue. All the mountains that you
+see are supported by Kaf; if it did not exist, all the earth would be in
+a continual tremble, and not a creature could live upon its surface. The
+heavens rest upon it like a tent."
+
+Another Arabian author, Benakaty, writing in 1317, says: "Know that the
+earth has the form of a globe suspended in the centre of the heavens. It
+is divided by the two great circles of the meridian and equator, which
+cut each other at light angles, into four equal parts, namely, those of
+the north-west, north-east, south-west, and south-east. The inhabited
+portion of the earth is situated in the southern hemisphere, of which
+one half is inhabited."
+
+Ibn-Wardy, who lived in the same century, adopted the idea of the ocean
+surrounding all the earth, and said we knew neither its depth nor its
+extent.
+
+This ocean was also acknowledged by the author of the Kaf mountain; he
+says it lies between the earth and that mountain, and calls it
+Bahr-al-Mohith.
+
+The end of the fifteenth century saw the dawn of a new era in knowledge
+and science. The discoveries of Columbus changed entirely the aspect of
+matters, the imagination was excited to fresh enterprises, and the
+hardihood of the adventurers through good or bad success was such as
+want of liberty could not destroy.
+
+Nevertheless, as we have seen, Columbus imagined the earth to have the
+shape of a pear. Not that he obtained this idea from his own
+observations, but rather retained it as a relic of past traditions. It
+is probable that it really dates from the seventh century. We may read
+in several cosmographical manuscripts of that epoch, that the earth has
+the form of a cone or a top, its surface rising from south to north.
+These ideas were considerably spread by the compilations of John of
+Beauvais in 1479, from whom probably Columbus derived his notion.
+
+Although Columbus is generally and rightly known as the discoverer of
+the New World, a very curious suit was brought by Pinzon against his
+heirs in 1514. Pinzon pretended that the discovery was due to him alone,
+as Columbus had only followed his advice in making it. Pinzon told the
+admiral himself that the required route was intimated by an inspiration,
+or revelation. The truth was that this "revelation" was due to a flock
+of parrots, flying in the evening towards the south-west, which Pinzon
+concluded must be going in the direction of an invisible coast to pass
+the night in the bushes. Certainly the consequences of Columbus
+resisting the advice of Pinzon would have been most remarkable; for had
+he continued to sail due west he would have been caught by the Gulf
+Stream and carried to Florida, or possibly to Virginia, and in this
+case the United States would have received a Spanish and Catholic
+population, instead of an English and Protestant one.
+
+The discoveries of those days were often commemorated by the formation
+of heraldic devices for the authors of them, and we have in this way
+some curious coats of arms on record. That, for instance, of Sebastian
+Cano was a globe, with the legend, _Primus circumdedisti me_. The arms
+given to Columbus in 1493 consisted of the first map of America, with a
+range of islands in a gulf. Charles V. gave to Diego of Ordaz the figure
+of the Peak of Orizaba as his arms, to commemorate his having ascended
+it; and to the historian Oviedo, who passed thirty-four years without
+interruption (1513-47) in tropical America, the four beautiful stars of
+the Southern Cross.
+
+We have arrived at the close of our history of the attempts that
+preceded the actual discovery of the form and constitution of the globe;
+since these were established our further progress has been in matters of
+detail. There now remains briefly to notice the attempts at discovering
+the size of the earth on the supposition, and afterwards certainty, of
+its being a globe.
+
+The earliest attempt at this was made by Eratosthenes, 246 years before
+our era, and it was founded on the following reasoning. The sun
+illuminates the bottom of pits at Syene at the summer solstice; on the
+same day, instead of being vertical over the heads of the inhabitants
+of Alexandria, it is 7-1/4 degrees from the zenith. Seven-and-a-quarter
+degrees is the fiftieth part of an entire circumference; and the
+distance between the two towns is five thousand stadia; hence the
+circumference of the earth is fifty times this distance, or 250 thousand
+stadia.
+
+A century before our era Posidonius arrived at an analogous result by
+remarking that the star Canopus touched the horizon at Rhodes when it
+was 7 degrees 12 minutes above that of Alexandria.
+
+These measurements, which, though rough, were ingenious, were, followed
+in the eighth century by similar ones by the Arabian Caliph, Almamoun,
+who did not greatly modify them.
+
+The first men who actually went round the world were the crew of the
+ship under Magellan, who started to the west in 1520; he was slain by
+the Philippine islanders in 1521, but his ship, under his lieutenant,
+Sebastian Cano, returned by the east in 1522. The first attempt at the
+actual measurement of a part of the earth's surface along the meridian
+was made by Fernel in 1528. His process was a singular, but simple one,
+namely, by counting the number of the turns made by the wheels of his
+carriage between Paris and Amiens. He made the number 57,020, and
+accurate measurements of the distance many years after showed he had not
+made an error of more than four turns.
+
+The astronomer Picard attempted it again under Louis XIV. by
+triangulation.
+
+The French astronomers have always been forward in this inquiry, and to
+them we owe the systematic attempts to arrive at a truer knowledge of
+the length of an arc of the meridian which were made in 1735-45 in
+Lapland and in Peru; and later under Mechain and Delambre, by order of
+the National Assembly, for the basis of the metrical system.
+
+Observations of this kind have also been made by the English, as at
+Lough Foyle in Ireland, and in India.
+
+The review which has here been made of the various ideas on what now
+seems so simple a matter cannot but impress us with the vast contrast
+there is between the wild attempts of the earlier philosophers and our
+modern affirmations. What progress has been made in the last two
+thousand years! And all of this is due to hard work. The true revelation
+of nature is that which we form ourselves, by our persevering efforts.
+We now know that the earth is approximately spherical, but flattened by
+about 1/300 at the poles, is three-quarters covered with water, and
+enveloped everywhere by a light atmospheric mantle. The distance from
+the centre of the earth to its surface is 3,956 miles, its area is 197
+million square miles, its volume is 256,000 millions of cubic miles, its
+weight is six thousand trillion tons. So, thanks to the bold
+measurements of its inhabitants, we know as much about it as we are
+likely to know for a long time to come.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+LEGENDARY WORLDS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
+
+
+The legends that were for so many ages prevalent in Europe had their
+foundation in the attempt to make the accounts of Scripture and the
+ideas and dogmas of the Fathers of the Church fit into the few and
+insignificant facts that were known with respect to the earth, and the
+system of which it forms a part, and the far more numerous imaginations
+that were entertained about it.
+
+We are therefore led on to examine some of these legends, that we may
+appreciate how far a knowledge of astronomy will effect the eradication
+of errors and fantasies which, under the aspect of truth, have so long
+enslaved the people. No doubt the authors of the legendary stories knew
+well enough their allegorical nature; but those who received them
+supposed that they gave true indications of the nature of the earth and
+world, and therefore accepted them as facts.
+
+Some indeed considered that the whole physical constitution of the world
+was a scaffold or a model, and that there was a real theological
+universe hidden beneath this semblance. No one omitted from his system
+the spiritual heaven in which the angels and just men might spend their
+existence; but in addition to this there were places whose reality was
+believed in, but whose locality is more difficult to settle, and which
+therefore were moved from one place to another by various writers, viz.,
+the infernal regions, purgatory, and the terrestrial paradise.
+
+We will here recount some of those legends, which wielded sufficient
+sway over men's minds as to gain their belief in the veritable existence
+of the places described, and in this way to influence their astronomical
+and cosmographical ideas.
+
+And for the first we will descend to the infernal regions with Plutarch
+and Thespesius.
+
+This Thespesius relates his adventures in the other world. Having fallen
+head-first from an elevated place, he found himself unwounded, but was
+contused in such a way as to be insensible. He was supposed to be dead,
+but, after three days, as they were about to bury him, he came to life
+again. In a few days he recovered his former powers of mind and body;
+but made a marvellous change for the better in his life.
+
+He said that at the moment that he lost consciousness he found himself
+like a sailor at the bottom of the sea; but afterwards, having recovered
+himself a little, he was able to breathe perfectly, and seeing only with
+the eyes of his soul, he looked round on all that was about him. He saw
+no longer the accustomed sights, but stars of prodigious magnitude,
+separated from each other by immense distances. They were of dazzling
+brightness and splendid colour. His soul, carried like a vessel on the
+luminous ocean, sailed along freely and smoothly, and moved everywhere
+with rapidity. Passing over in silence a large number of the sights that
+met his eye, he stated that the souls of the dead, taking the form of
+bubbles of fire, rise through the air, which opens a passage above them;
+at last the bubbles, breaking without noise, let out the souls in a
+human form and of a smaller size, and moving in different ways. Some,
+rising with astonishing lightness, mounted in a straight line; others,
+running round like a whipping-top, went up and down by turns with a
+confused and irregular motion, making small advance by long and painful
+efforts. Among this number he saw one of his parents, whom he recognised
+with difficulty, as she had died in his infancy; but she approached him,
+and said, "Good day, Thespesius." Surprised to hear himself called by
+this name, he told her that he was called Arideus, and not Thespesius.
+"That was once your name," she replied, "but in future you will bear
+that of Thespesius, for you are not dead, only the intelligent part of
+your soul has come here by the particular will of the gods; your other
+faculties are still united to your body, which keeps them like an
+anchor. The proof I will give you is that the souls of the dead do not
+cast any shadow, and they cannot move their eyes."
+
+Further on, in traversing a luminous region, he heard, as he was
+passing, the shrill voice of a female speaking in verse, who presided
+over the time Thespesius should die. His genius told him that it was the
+voice of the Sibyl, who, turning on the orbit of the moon, foretold the
+future. Thespesius would willingly have heard more, but, driven off by a
+rapid whirlwind, he could make out but little of her predictions. In
+another place he remarked several parallel lakes, one filled with melted
+and boiling gold, another with lead colder than ice, and a third with
+very rough iron. They were kept by genii, who, armed with tongs like
+those used in forges, plunged into these lakes, and then withdrew by
+turns, the souls of those whom avarice or an insatiable cupidity had led
+into crime; after they had been plunged into the lake of gold, where the
+fire made them red and transparent, they were thrown into the lake of
+lead. Then, frozen by the cold, and made as hard as hail, they were put
+into the lake of iron, where they became horribly black. Broken and
+bruised on account of their hardness, they changed their form, and
+passed once more into the lake of gold, and suffered in these changes
+inexpressible pain.
+
+In another place he saw the souls of those who had to return to life and
+be violently forced to take the form of all sorts of animals. Among the
+number he saw the soul of Nero, which had already suffered many
+torments, and was bound with red-hot chains of iron. The workmen were
+seizing him to give him the form of a viper, under which he was destined
+to live, after having devoured the womb that bore him.
+
+The locality of these infernal regions was never exactly determined. The
+ancients were divided upon the point. In the poems of Homer the infernal
+regions appear under two different forms: thus, in the _Iliad_, it is a
+vast subterranean cavity; while in the _Odyssey_, it is a distant and
+mysterious country at the extremity of the earth, beyond the ocean, in
+the neighbourhood of the Cimmerians.
+
+The description which Homer gives of the infernal region proves that in
+his time the Greeks imagined it to be a copy of the terrestrial world,
+but one which had a special character. According to the philosophers it
+was equally remote from all parts of the earth. Thus Cicero, in order to
+show that it was of no consequence where one died, said, wherever we die
+there is just as long a journey to be made to reach the "infernal
+regions."
+
+The poets fixed upon certain localities as the entrance to this dismal
+empire: such was the river Lethe, on the borders of the Scythians; the
+cavern Acherusia in Epirus, the mouth of Pluto, in Laodicoea, the cave
+of Zenarus near Lacedæmon.
+
+In the map of the world in the _Polychronicon_ of Ranulphus Uygden, now
+in the British Museum, it is stated: "The Island of Sicily was once a
+part of Italy. There is Mount Etna, containing the infernal regions and
+purgatory, and it has Scylla and Charybdis, two whirlpools."
+
+Ulysses was said to reach the place of the dead by crossing the ocean to
+the Cimmerian land, Æneas to have entered it by the Lake of Avernus.
+Xenophon says that Hercules went there by the peninsula of Arechusiade.
+
+Much of this, no doubt, depends on the exaggeration and
+misinterpretation of the accounts of voyagers; as when the Phoenicians
+related that, after passing the Columns of Hercules, to seek tin in
+Thule and amber in the Baltic, they came, at the extremity of the world,
+to the Fortunate Isles, the abode of eternal spring, and further on to
+the Hyperborean regions, where a perpetual night enveloped the
+country--the imagination of the people developed from this the Elysian
+fields, as the places of delight in the lower regions, having their own
+sun, moon, and stars, and Tartarus, a place of shades and desolation.
+
+In every case, however, both among pagans and Christians, the locality
+was somewhere in the centre of the earth. The poets and philosophers of
+Greece and Rome made very detailed and circumstantial maps of the
+subterranean regions. They enumerated its rivers, its lakes, and woods,
+and mountains, and the places where the Furies perpetually tormented the
+wicked souls who were condemned to eternal punishment. These ideas
+passed naturally into the creeds of Christians through the sect of the
+Essenes, of whom Josephus writes as follows:--"They thought that the
+souls of the just go beyond the ocean to a place of repose and delight,
+where they were troubled by no inconvenience, no change of seasons.
+Those of the wicked, on the contrary, were relegated to places exposed
+to all the inclemencies of the weather, and suffered eternal torments.
+The Essenes," adds the same author, "have similar ideas about these
+torments to those of the Greeks about Tartarus and the kingdom of Pluto.
+The greater part of the Gnostic sects, on the contrary, considered the
+lower regions as simply a place of purgatory, where the soul is purified
+by fire."
+
+Amongst all the writings of Christian ages in which matters such as we
+are now passing in review are described, there is one that stands out
+beyond all others as a masterpiece, and that is the magnificent poem of
+Dante, his _Divine Comedy_, wherein he described the infernal regions as
+they presented themselves to his lively and fertile imagination. We have
+in it a picture of mediæval ideas, painted for us in indelible lines,
+before the remembrance of them was lost in the past. The poem is at once
+a tomb and a cradle--the tomb of a world that was passing, the cradle of
+the world that was to come: a portico between two temples, that of the
+past and that of the future. In it are deposited the traditions, the
+ideas, the sciences of the past, as the Egyptians deposited their kings
+and symbolic gods in the sepulchres of Thebes and Memphis. The future
+brings into it its aspirations and its germs enveloped in the swaddling
+clothes of a rising language and a splendid poetry--a mysterious infant
+that is nourished by the two teats of sacred tradition and profane
+fiction, Moses and St. Paul, Homer and Virgil.
+
+The theology of Dante, strictly orthodox, was that of St. Thomas and the
+other doctors of the Church. Natural philosophy, properly so called, was
+not yet in existence. In astronomy, Ptolemy reigned supreme, and in the
+explanation of celestial phenomena no one dreamt or dared to dream of
+departing in any way from the traditionally sacred system.
+
+In those days astronomy was indissolubly linked with a complete series
+of philosophical and theological ideas, and included the physics of the
+world, the science of life in every being, of their organisation, and
+the causes on which depended the aptitudes, inclinations, and even in
+part the actions, of men, the destinies of individuals, and the events
+of history. In this theological, astronomical, and terrestrial universe
+everything emanated from God; He had created everything, and the
+creation embraced two orders of beings, the immaterial and the
+corporeal.
+
+The pure spirits composed the nine choirs of the celestial hierarchy.
+Like so many circles, they were ranged round a fixed point, the Eternal
+Being, in an order determined by their relative perfection. First the
+seraphim, then the cherubim, and afterwards the simple angels. Those of
+the first circle received immediately from the central point the light
+and the virtue which they communicated to those of the second; and so
+on from circle to circle, like mirrors which reflect, with an
+ever-lessening light, the brilliancy of a single luminous point. The
+nine choirs, supported by Love, turned without ceasing round their
+centre in larger and larger circles according to their distance; and it
+was by their means that the motion and the divine inflatus was
+communicated to the material creation.
+
+This latter had in the upper part of it the empyreal, or heaven of pure
+light. Below that, was the _Primum mobile_, the greatest body in the
+heavens, as Dante calls it, because it surrounds all the rest of the
+circle, and bounds the material world. Then came the heaven of the fixed
+stars; then, continuing to descend, the heavens of Saturn, Jupiter,
+Mars, the sun, Venus, Mercury, the moon, and lastly, the earth, whose
+solid and compact nucleus is surrounded by the spheres of water, air,
+and fire.
+
+As the choirs of angels turn about a fixed point, so the nine material
+circles turn also about another fixed point, and are moved by the pure
+spirits.
+
+Let us now descend to the geography of the interior of the earth. Within
+the earth is a large cone, whose layers are the frightful abodes of the
+condemned, and which ends in the centre, where the divine Justice keeps
+bound up to his chest in ice the prince of the rebellious angels, the
+emperor of the kingdom of woe. Such are the infernal regions which
+Dante describes according to ideas generally admitted in the middle
+ages.
+
+The form of the infernal regions was that of a funnel or reversed cone.
+All its circles were concentric, and continually diminished; the
+principal ones were nine in number. Virgil also admitted nine
+divisions--three times three, a number sacred _par excellence_. The
+seventh, eighth, and ninth circles were divided into several regions;
+and the space between the entrance to the infernal regions and the river
+Acheron, where the resting-place of the damned really commenced, was
+divided into two parts. Dante, guided by Virgil, traversed all these
+circles.
+
+It was in 1300 that the poet, "in the midst of the course of life," at
+the age of thirty-five, passed in spirit through the three regions of
+the dead. Lost in a lonely, wild, and dismal forest, he reached the base
+of a hill, which he attempted to climb. But three animals, a panther, a
+lion, and a thin and famished wolf, prevented his passage; so, returning
+again where the sun was powerless, into the shades of the depths of the
+valley, there met him a shadow of the dead. This human form, whom a long
+silence had deprived of speech, was Virgil, who was sent to guide and
+succour him by a celestial dame, Beatrice, the object of his love, who
+was at the same time a real and a mystically ideal being.
+
+Virgil and Dante arrived at the gate of the infernal regions; they read
+the terrible inscription placed over the gate; they entered and found
+first those unhappy souls who had lived without virtue and without vice.
+They reached the banks of Acheron and saw Charon, who carried over the
+souls in his bark to the other side; and Dante was surprised by a
+profound sleep. He woke beyond the river, and he descended into the
+Limbo which is the first circle of the infernal regions. He found there
+the souls of those who had died without baptism, or who had been
+indifferent to religion.
+
+They descended next to the second circle, where Minos, the judge of
+those below, is enthroned. Here the luxurious are punished. The poet
+here met with Francesca of Rimini and Paul, her friend. He completely
+recovered the use of his senses, and passed through the third circle,
+where the gourmands are punished. In the fourth he found Plutus, who
+guards it. Here are tormented the prodigal and the avaricious. In the
+fifth are punished those who yield to anger. Dante and Virgil there saw
+a bark approaching, conducted by Phlegias; they entered it, crossed a
+river, and arrived thus at the base of the red-hot iron walls of the
+infernal town of Dite. The demons that guarded the gates refused them
+admittance, but an angel opened them, and the two travellers there saw
+the heretics that were enclosed in tombs surrounded by flames.
+
+The travellers then visited the circles of violence, fraud, and usury,
+when they came to a river of blood guarded by a troop of centaurs;
+suddenly they saw coming to them Geryon, who represents fraud, and
+this beast took them behind him to carry them across the rest of the
+infernal space.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 52.--DANTE'S INFERNAL REGIONS.]
+
+The eighth circle was divided into ten valleys, comprising: the
+flatterers; the simoniacal; the astrologers; the sorcerers; the false
+judges; the hypocrites who walked about clothed with heavy leaden
+garments; the thieves, eternally stung by venomous serpents; the
+heresiarchs; the charlatans, and the forgers.
+
+At last the poets descended into the ninth circle, divided into four
+regions, where are punished four kinds of traitors. Here is recounted
+the admirable episode of Count Ugolin. In the last region, called the
+region of Judas, LUCIFER is enchained. There is the centre of the earth,
+and Dante, hearing the noise of a little brook, reascended to the other
+hemisphere, on the surface of which he found, surrounded by the Southern
+Ocean, the mountain of Purgatory.
+
+Such was the famous _Inferno_ of Dante.
+
+Not only was the geography of the infernal regions attempted in the
+middle ages, but even their size. Dexelius calculated that the number of
+the damned was a hundred millions, and that their abode need not measure
+more than one German mile in every direction. Cyrano of Bergerac
+amusingly said that it was the damned that kept turning the earth, by
+hanging on the ceiling like bats, and trying to get away.
+
+In 1757 an English clergyman, Dr. Swinden, published a book entitled,
+_Researches on the Nature of the Fire of Hell and the Place where it is
+situated_. He places it in the sun. According to him the Christians of
+the first century had placed it beneath the earth on account of a false
+interpretation of the descent of Jesus into hell after his crucifixion,
+and by false ideas of cosmography. He attempted to show, 1st, that the
+terrestrial globe is too small to contain even the angels that fell from
+heaven after their battle; 2nd, that the fire of hell is real, and that
+the closed globe of earth could not support it a sufficiently long
+period; 3rd, that the sun alone presents itself as the necessary place,
+being a well-sustained fire, and directly opposite in situation to
+heaven, since the empyreal is round the outside of the universe, and the
+sun in the centre. What a change to the present ideas, even of doctors
+of divinity, in a hundred years!
+
+So far, then, for mediæval ideas on the position and character of hell.
+Next as to purgatory.
+
+The voyage to purgatory that has met with most success is certainly the
+celebrated Irish legend of St. Patrick, which for several centuries was
+admitted as authentic, and the account of which was composed certainly a
+century before the poem of Dante.
+
+This purgatory, the entrance to which is drawn in more than one
+illuminated manuscript, is situated in Ireland, on one of the islands
+of Lough Derg, County Donegal, where there are still two chapels and a
+shrine, at which annual ceremonies are performed. A knight, called Owen,
+resolved to visit it for penance; and the chronicle gives us an account
+of his adventures.
+
+First he had his obsequial rites performed, as if he had been dead, and
+then he advanced boldly into the deep ravine; he marched on
+courageously, and entered into the semi-shadows; he marched on, and even
+this funereal twilight abandoned him, and "when he had gone for a long
+time in this obscurity, there appeared to him a little light as it were
+from a glimmer of day." He arrived at a house, built with much care, an
+imposing mansion of grief and hope, a marvellous edifice, but similar
+nevertheless to a monkish cloister, where there was no more light than
+there is in this world in winter at vesper-time.
+
+The knight was in dreadful suspense. Suddenly he heard a terrible noise,
+as if the universe was in a riot; for it seemed certainly to him as if
+every kind of beast and every man in the world were together, and each
+gave utterance to their own cry, at one time and with one voice, so that
+they could not make a more frightful noise.
+
+Then commenced his trials, and discourse with the infernal beings; the
+demons yelled with delight or with fury round him. "Miserable wretch,"
+said some, "you are come here to suffer." "Fly," said others, "for you
+have not behaved well in the time that is passed: if you will take our
+advice, and will go back again to the world, we will take it as a great
+favour and courtesy."
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XII.--THE LEGEND OF OWEN.]
+
+Owen was thrown on the dark shadowy earth, where the demons creep like
+hideous serpents. A mysterious wind, which he scarcely heard, passed
+over the mud, and it seemed to the knight as if he had been pierced by a
+spear-head. After a while the demons lifted him up; they took him
+straight off to the east, where the sun rises, as if they were going to
+the place where the universe ends. "Now, after they had journeyed for a
+long time here and there over divers countries, they brought him to an
+open field, very long and very full of griefs and chastisements; he
+could not see the end of the field, it was so long; there were men and
+women of various ages, who lay down all naked on the ground with their
+bellies downwards, who had hot nails driven into their hands and feet;
+and there was a fiery dragon, who sat upon them and drove his teeth into
+their flesh, and seemed as if he would eat them; hence they suffered
+great agony, and bit the earth in spite of its hardness, and from time
+to time they cried most piteously 'Mercy, mercy;' but there was no one
+there who had pity or mercy, for the devils ran among them and over
+them, and beat them most cruelly."
+
+The devils brought the knight towards a house of punishment, so broad
+and long that one could not see the end. This house is the house of
+baths, like those of the infernal regions, and the souls that are bathed
+in ignominy are there heaped in large vats. "Now so it was, that each of
+these vats was filled with some kind of metal, hot and boiling, and
+there they plunged and bathed many people of various ages, some of whom
+were plunged in over their heads, others up to the eyebrows, others up
+to the eyes, and others up to the mouth. Now all in truth of these
+people cried out with a loud voice and wept most piteously."
+
+Scarcely had the knight passed this terrible place, and left behind in
+his mysterious voyage that column of fire which rose like a lighthouse
+in the shades, and which shone so sadly betwixt hope and eternal
+despair, than a vast and magnificent spectacle displayed itself in the
+subterranean space.
+
+This luminous and odorescent region, where one might see so many
+archbishops, bishops, and monks of every order, was the terrestrial
+paradise; man does not stay there always; they told the knight that he
+could not taste too long its rapid delights; it is a place of transition
+between purgatory and the abodes of heaven, just as the dark places
+which he had traversed were made by the Creator between the world and
+the infernal regions.
+
+"In spite of our joys," said the souls, "we shall pass away from here."
+Then they took him to a mountain, and told him to look, and asked of him
+what colour the heavens seemed to be there where he was standing, and
+he replied it was the colour of burning gold, such as is in the furnace;
+and then they said to him, "That which you see is the entrance to heaven
+and the gate of paradise."
+
+The attempts at identification of hell and purgatory have not been so
+numerous, perhaps because the subjects were not very attractive, except
+as the spite of men might think of them in reference to other people;
+but when we come to the terrestrial paradise, quite a crowd of attempts
+by every kind of writer to fix its position in any and every part of the
+globe is met with on every side.
+
+In the seventeenth century, under Louis XIV., Daniel Huet, Bishop of
+Avranches, gave great attention to the question, and collected every
+opinion that had been expressed upon it, with a view to arriving at some
+definite conclusion for himself. He was astonished at the number of
+writings and the diversity of the opinions they expressed.
+
+"Nothing," he says, "could show me better how little is really known
+about the situation of the terrestrial paradise than the differences in
+the opinions of those who have occupied themselves about the question.
+Some have placed it in the third heaven, some in the fourth, in the
+heaven of the moon, in the moon itself, on a mountain near the lunar
+heaven, in the middle region of the air, out of the earth, upon the
+earth, beneath the earth, in a place that is hidden and separated from
+man. It has been placed under the North Pole, in Tartary, or in the
+place now occupied by the Caspian Sea. Others placed it in the extreme
+south, in the land of fire. Others in the Levant, or on the borders of
+the Ganges, or in the Island of Ceylon, making the name India to be
+derived from Eden, the land where the paradise was situated. It has been
+placed in China, or in an inaccessible place beyond the Black Sea; by
+others in America, in Africa, beneath the equator, in the East, &c. &c."
+
+Notwithstanding this formidable array, the good bishop was bold enough
+to make his choice between them all. His opinion was that the
+dwelling-place of the first man was situated between the Tigris and
+Euphrates, above the place where they separate before falling into the
+Persian Gulf; and, founding this opinion on very extensive reading, he
+declared that of all his predecessors, Calvin had come nearest to the
+truth.
+
+Among the other authors of greater or less celebrity that have occupied
+themselves in this question, we may instance the following:--
+
+Raban Maur (ninth century) believed that the terrestrial paradise was at
+the eastern extremity of the earth. He described the tree of life, and
+added that there was neither heat nor cold in that garden; that immense
+rivers of water nourished all the forest; and that the paradise was
+surrounded by a wall of fire, and its four rivers watered the earth.
+
+James of Vitry supposed Pison to come out of the terrestrial paradise.
+He describes also the garden of Eden; and, like all the cosmographers of
+the middle ages, he placed it in the most easterly portion of the world
+in an inaccessible place, and surrounded by a wall of fire, which rose
+up to heaven.
+
+Dati placed also the terrestrial paradise in Asia, like the
+cosmographers that preceded him, and made the Nile come from the east.
+Stenchus, the librarian of St. Siége, who lived in the sixteenth
+century, devoted several years to the problem, but discovered nothing.
+The celebrated orientalist and missionary Bochart wrote a treatise on
+this subject in 1650. Thévenot published also in the seventeenth century
+a map representing the country of the Lybians, and adds that "several
+great doctors place the terrestrial paradise there."
+
+An Armenian writer who translated and borrowed from St. Epiphanius
+(eighth century) produced a _Memorial on the Four Rivers of the
+Terrestrial Paradise_. He supposes they rise in the unknown land of the
+Amazons, whence also arise the Danube and the Hellespont, and they
+deliver their waters into that great sea that is the source of all seas,
+and which surrounds the four quarters of the globe. He afterwards says,
+following up the same theory, that the rivers of paradise surround the
+world and enter again into the sea, which is the universal ocean."
+
+Gervais and Robert of St. Marien d'Auxerre taught that the terrestrial
+paradise was on the eastern border of the _square_ which formed the
+world. Alain de Lille, who lived in the thirteenth century, maintained
+in his _Anticlaudianus_ that the earth is circular, and the garden of
+Eden is in the east of Asia. Joinville, the friend of St. Louis, gives
+us a curious notion of his geographical ideas, since, with regard to
+paradise, he assures us that the four great rivers of the south come out
+of it, as do the spices. "Here," he says, referring to the Nile, "it is
+advisable to speak of the river which passes by the countries of Egypt,
+and comes from the terrestrial paradise. Where this river enters Egypt
+there are people very expert and experienced, as thieves are here, at
+stealing from the river, who in the evening throw their nets on the
+streams and rivers, and in the morning they often find and carry off the
+spices which are sold here in Europe as coming from Egypt at a good
+rate, and by weight, such as cinnamon, ginger, rhubarb, cloves, lignum,
+aloes, and several other good things, and they say that these good
+things come _from the terrestrial paradise_, and that the wind blows
+them off the trees that are growing there." And he says that near the
+end of the world are the peoples of Gog and Magog, who will come at the
+end of the world with Antichrist.
+
+We find, however, more than descriptions--we have representations of
+the terrestrial paradise by cartographers of the middle ages, some of
+which we have seen in speaking of their general ideas of geography, and
+we will now introduce others.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 53.--PARADISE OF FRA MAURO.]
+
+Fra Mauro, a religious cosmographer of the fifteenth century, gives on
+the east side of a map of the world a representation which shows us that
+at that epoch the "garden of delights" had become very barren. It is a
+vast plain, on which we see Jehovah and the first human couple, with a
+circular rampart surrounding it. The four rivers flow out of it by
+bifurcating. An angel protects the principal gate, which cannot be
+reached but by crossing barren mountains.
+
+The cosmographical map of Gervais, dedicated to the Emperor Otho IV.,
+shows the terrestrial paradise in the centre of the earth, which is
+square, and is situated in the midst of the seas. Adam and Eve appear in
+consultation.
+
+The map of the world prepared by Andreas Bianco, in the fifteenth
+century, represents Eden, Adam and Eve, and the tree of life. On the
+left, on a peninsula, are seen the reprobated people of Gog and Magog,
+who are to accompany Antichrist. Alexander is also represented there,
+but without apparent reason. The paradisaical peninsula has a building
+on it with this inscription, "Ospitius Macarii."
+
+Formalconi says, on this subject, that a certain Macarius lives near
+paradise, who is a witness to all that the author states, and as Bianco
+has indicated, his cell was close to the gates of paradise.
+
+This legend has reference to the pilgrims of St. Macarius, a tradition
+that was spread on the return of the Crusaders, of three monks who
+undertook a voyage to discover the point where the earth and heaven
+meet, that is to say, the place of the terrestrial paradise. The map of
+Rudimentum, a vast compilation published at Lübeck in 1475 by the
+Dominican Brocard, represents the terrestrial paradise surrounded by
+walls, but it is less sterile that in the last picture, as may be seen
+on the next page.
+
+In the year 1503, when Varthema, the adventurous Bolognian, went to the
+Indies by the route of Palestine and Syria, he was shown the
+evil-reputed house which Cain dwelt in, which was not far from the
+terrestrial paradise. Master Gilius, the learned naturalist who
+travelled at the expense of Francis I., had the same satisfaction. The
+simple faith of our ancestors had no hesitation in accepting such
+archæology.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 54.--THE PARADISE OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.]
+
+The most curious and interesting of all attempts to discover the
+situation of paradise was that made half unconsciously by Columbus when
+he first found the American shore.
+
+In his third voyage, when for the first time he reached the main land,
+he was persuaded not only that he had arrived at the extremity of Asia,
+but that he could not be far from the position of paradise. The Orinoco
+seemed to be one of those four great rivers which, according to
+tradition, came out of the garden inhabited by our first parents, and
+his hopes were supported by the fragrant breezes that blew from the
+beautiful forests on its banks. This, he thought, was but the entrance
+to the celestial dwelling-place, and if he had dared--if a religious
+fear had not held back him who had risked everything amidst the elements
+and amongst men, he would have liked to push forward to where he might
+hope to find the celestial boundaries of the world, and, a little
+further, to have bathed his eyes, with profound humility, in the light
+of the flaming swords which were wielded by two seraphim before the gate
+of Eden.
+
+He thus expresses himself on this subject in his letter to one of the
+monarchs of Spain, dated Hayti, October, 1498. "The Holy Scriptures
+attest that the Lord created paradise, and placed in it the tree of
+life, and made the four great rivers of the earth to pass out of it, the
+Ganges of India, the Tigris, the Euphrates (passing from the mountains
+to form Mesopotamia, and ending in Persia), and the Nile, which rises in
+Ethiopia and goes to the Sea of Alexander. I cannot, nor have been ever
+able to find in the books of the Latins or Greeks anything authentic on
+the site of this terrestrial paradise, nor do I see anything more
+certain in the maps of the world. Some place it at the source of the
+Nile, in Ethiopia; but the travellers who have passed through those
+countries have not found either in the mildness of the climate or in the
+elevation of the site towards heaven anything that could lead to the
+presumption that paradise was there, and that the waters of the Deluge
+were unable to reach it or cover it. Several pagans have written for the
+purpose of proving it was in the Fortunate Isles, which are the
+Canaries. St. Isidore, Bede, and Strabo, St. Ambrosius, Scotus, and all
+judicious theologians affirm with one accord that paradise was in the
+East. It is from thence only that the enormous quantity of water can
+come, seeing that the course of the rivers is extremely long; and these
+waters (of paradise) arrive here, where I am, and form a lake. There are
+great signs here of the neighbourhood of the terrestrial paradise, for
+the site is entirely conformable to the opinion of the saints and
+judicious theologians. The climate is of admirable mildness. I believe
+that if I passed beneath the equinoctial line, and arrived at the
+highest point of which I have spoken, I should find a milder
+temperature, and a change in the stars and the waters; not that I
+believe that the point where the greatest height is situated is
+navigable, or even that there is water there, or that one could reach
+it, but I am convinced that _there_ is the terrestrial paradise, where
+no one can come except by the will of God."
+
+In the opinion of this illustrious navigator the earth had the form of
+a pear, and its surface kept rising towards the east, indicated by the
+point of the fruit. It was there that he supposed might be found the
+garden where ancient tradition imagined the creation of the first human
+couple was accomplished.
+
+We can scarcely think without astonishment of the great amount of
+darkness that obscured scientific knowledge, when this great man
+appeared on the scene of the world, nor of the rapidity with which the
+obscurity and vagueness of ideas were dissipated almost immediately
+after his marvellous discoveries. Scarcely had a half century elapsed
+after his death, than all the geographical fables of the middle ages did
+no more than excite smiles of incredulity, although during his life the
+universal opinion was not much advanced upon the times of the famous
+knight John of Mandeville, who wrote gravely as follows:--
+
+"No mortal man can go to or approach this paradise. By land no one can
+go there on account of savage beasts which are in the deserts, and
+because of mountains and rocks that cannot be passed over, and dark
+places without number; nor can one go there any better by sea; the water
+rushes so wildly, it comes in so great waves, that no vessel dare sail
+against them. The water is so rapid, and makes so great a noise and
+tempest, that no one can hear however loud he is spoken to, and so when
+some great men with good courage have attempted several times to go by
+this river to paradise, in large companies, they have never been able
+to accomplish their journey. On the contrary, many have died with
+fatigue in swimming against the watery waves. Many others have become
+blind, others have become deaf by the noise of the water, and others
+have been suffocated and lost in the waves, so that no mortal man can
+approach it except by the special grace of God."
+
+With one notable exception, no attempts have been made of late years to
+solve such a question. That exception is by the noble and indefatigable
+Livingstone, who declared his conviction to Sir Roderick Murchison, in a
+letter published in the _Athenæum_, that paradise was situated somewhere
+near the sources of the Nile.
+
+Those generally who now seek an answer to the question of the birthplace
+of the human race do not call it paradise.
+
+Since man is here, and there was a time quite recent, geologically
+speaking, when he was not, there must have been some actual locality on
+the earth's surface where he was first a man. Whether we have, or even
+can hope to have, enough information to indicate where that locality was
+situated, is a matter of doubt. We have not at present. Those who have
+attended most to the subject appear to think some island the most
+probable locality, but it is quite conjectural.
+
+The name "Paradise" appears to have been derived from the Persian, in
+which it means a garden; similarly derived words express the same idea
+in other languages; as in the Hebrew _pardês_, in the Arabian
+_firdaus_, in the Syriac _pardiso_, and in the Armenian _partes_. It has
+been thought that the Persian word itself is derived from the Sanscrit
+_pradesa_, or _paradesa_, which means a circle, a country, or strange
+region; which, though near enough as to sound, does not quite agree as
+to meaning. "Eden" is from a Hebrew root meaning delights.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+ECLIPSES AND COMETS.
+
+
+We have seen in the earlier chapters on the systems of the ancients and
+their ideas of the world how everything was once supposed to have
+exclusive reference to man, and how he considered himself not only chief
+of animate objects, but that his own city was the centre of the material
+world, and his own world the centre of the material universe; that the
+sun was made to shine, as well as the moon and stars, for his benefit;
+and that, were it not for him they would have no reason for existence.
+And we have seen how, step by step, these illusions have been dispelled,
+and he has learnt to appreciate his own littleness in proportion as he
+has realised the immensity of the universe of which he forms part.
+
+If such has been his history, and such his former ideas on the regular
+parts, as we may call them, of nature, much more have similar ideas been
+developed in relation to those other phenomena which, coming at such
+long intervals, have not been recognised by him as periodic, but have
+seemed to have some relation to mundane affairs, often of the smallest
+consequence. Such are eclipses of the sun and moon, comets,
+shooting-stars, and meteors. Among the less instructed of men, even when
+astronomers of the same age and nation knew their real nature, eclipses
+have always been looked upon as something ominous of evil.
+
+Among the ancient nations people used to come to the assistance of the
+moon, by making a confused noise with all kinds of instruments, when it
+was eclipsed. It is even done now in Persia and some parts of China,
+where they fancy that the moon is fighting with a great dragon, and they
+think the noise will make him loose his hold and take to flight. Among
+the East Indians they have the same belief that when the sun and the
+moon are eclipsed, a dragon is seizing them, and astronomers who go
+there to observe eclipses are troubled by the fears of their native
+attendants, and by their endeavours to get into the water as the best
+place under the circumstances. In America the idea is that the sun and
+moon are tired when they are eclipsed. But the more refined Greeks
+believed for a long time that the moon was bewitched, and that the
+magicians made it descend from heaven, to put into the herbs a certain
+maleficent froth. Perhaps the idea of the Dragon arose from the ancient
+custom of calling the places in the heavens at which the eclipses of the
+moon took place the head and tail of the Dragon.
+
+In ancient history we have many curious instances of the very critical
+influence that eclipses have had, especially in the case of events in a
+campaign, where it was thought unfavourable to some projected attempt.
+
+Thus an eclipse of the moon was the original cause of the death of the
+Athenian general Nicias. Just at a critical juncture, when he was about
+to depart from the harbour of Syracuse, the eclipse filled him and his
+whole army with dismay. The result of his terror was that he delayed the
+departure of his fleet, and the Athenian army was cut in pieces and
+destroyed, and Nicias lost his liberty and life.
+
+Plutarch says they could understand well enough the cause of the eclipse
+of the sun by the interposition of the moon, but they could not imagine
+by the opposition of what body the moon itself could be eclipsed.
+
+One of the most famous eclipses of antiquity was that of Thales,
+recorded by Herodotus, who says:--"The Lydians and the Medes were at war
+for five consecutive years. Now while the war was sustained on both
+sides with equal chance, in the sixth year, one day when the armies were
+in battle array, it happened that in the midst of the combat the day
+suddenly changed into night. Thales of Miletus had predicted this
+phenomenon to the Ionians, and had pointed out precisely that very year
+as the one in which it would take place. The Lydians and Medes, seeing
+the night succeeding suddenly to the day, put an end to the combat, and
+only cared to establish peace."
+
+Another notable eclipse is that related by Diodorus Siculus. It was a
+total eclipse of the sun, which took place while Agathocles, fleeing
+from the port of Syracuse, where he was blockaded by the Carthaginians,
+was hastening to gain the coast of Africa. "When Agathocles was already
+surrounded by the enemy, night came on, and he escaped contrary to all
+hope. On the day following so complete an eclipse of the sun took place
+that it seemed altogether night, for the stars shone out in all places.
+The soldiers therefore of Agathocles, persuaded that the gods were
+intending them some misfortune, were in the greatest perturbation about
+the future. Agathocles was equal to the occasion. When disembarked in
+Africa, where, in spite of all his fine words, he was unable to reassure
+his soldiers, whom the eclipse of the sun had frightened, he changed his
+tactics, and pretending to understand the prodigy, "I grant, comrades,"
+he said, "that had we perceived this, eclipse before our embarkation we
+should indeed have been in a critical situation, but now that we have
+seen it after our departure, and as it always signifies a change in the
+present state of affairs, it follows that our circumstances, which were
+very bad in Sicily, are about to amend, while we shall indubitably ruin
+those of the Carthaginians, which have been hitherto so flourishing."
+
+We are reminded by this of the story of Pericles, who, when ready to set
+sail with his fleet on a great expedition, saw himself stopped by a
+similar phenomenon. He spread his mantle over the eyes of the pilot,
+whom fear had prevented acting, and asked him if that was any sign of
+misfortune, when the pilot answered in the negative. "What misfortune
+then do you suppose," said he, "is presaged by the body that hides the
+sun, which differs from this in nothing but being larger?"
+
+With reference to these eclipses, when their locality and approximate
+date is known, astronomy comes to the assistance of history, and can
+supply the exact day, and even hour, of the occurrence. For the eclipses
+depend on the motions of the moon, and just as astronomers can calculate
+both the time and the path of a solar eclipse in the future, so they can
+for the past. If then the eclipses are calculated back to the epoch when
+the particular one is recorded, it can be easily ascertained which one
+it was that about that time passed over the spot at which it was
+observed, and as soon as the particular eclipse is fixed upon, it may be
+told at what hour it would be seen.
+
+Thus the eclipse of Thales has been assigned by different authors to
+various dates, between the 1st of October, 583 B.C., and the 3rd of
+February, 626 B.C. The only eclipse of the sun that is suitable between
+those dates has been found by the Astronomer-Royal to be that which
+would happen in Lydia on the 28th of May, 585 B.C., which must therefore
+be the date of the event.
+
+So of the eclipse of Agathocles, M. Delaunay has fixed its date to the
+15th August, 310 B.C.
+
+In later days, when Christopher Columbus had to deal with the ignorant
+people of America, the same kind of story was repeated. He found himself
+reduced to famine by the inhabitants of the country, who kept him and
+his companions prisoners; and being aware of the approach of the
+eclipse, he menaced them with bringing upon them great misfortunes, and
+depriving them of the light of the moon, if they did not instantly bring
+him provisions. They cared little for his menaces at first; but as soon
+as they saw the moon disappear, they ran to him with abundance of
+victuals, and implored pardon of the conqueror. This was on the 1st of
+March, 1504, a date which may be tested by the modern tables of the
+moon, and Columbus's account proved to be correct. The eclipse was
+indeed recorded in other places by various observers.
+
+Eclipses in their natural aspect have thus had considerable influence on
+the vulgar, who knew nothing of their cause. This of course was the
+state with all in the early ages, and it is interesting to trace the
+gradual progress from their being quite unexpected to their being
+predicted.
+
+It is very probable, if not certain, that their recurrence in the case
+of the moon at least was recognised long before their nature was
+understood.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XIII.--CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS AND THE ECLIPSE OF THE
+MOON.]
+
+Among the Chinese they were long calculated, and, in fact, it is thought
+by some that they have pretended to a greater antiquity by calculating
+backwards, and recording as observed eclipses those which happened
+before they understood or noticed them. It seems, however, authenticated
+that they did in the year 2169 B.C. observe an eclipse of the sun, and
+that at that date they were in the habit of predicting them. For this
+particular eclipse is said to have cost several of the astronomers their
+lives, as they had not calculated it rightly. As the lives of princes
+were supposed to be dependent on these eclipses, it became high treason
+to expose them to such a danger without forewarning them. They paid more
+attention to the eclipses of the sun than of the moon.
+
+Among the Babylonians the eclipses of the moon were observed from a very
+early date, and numerous records of them are contained in the
+Observations of Bel in Sargon's library, the tablets of which have
+lately been discovered. In the older portion they only record that on
+the 14th day of such and such a (lunar) month an eclipse takes place,
+and state in what watch it begins, and when it ends. In a later portion
+the observations were more precise, and the descriptions of the eclipse
+more accurate. Long before 1700 B.C. the discovery of the lunar cycle of
+223 lunar months had been made, and by means of it they were able to
+state of each lunar eclipse, that it was either "according to
+calculation" or "contrary to calculation."
+
+They dealt also with solar eclipses, and tried to trace on a sphere the
+path they would take on the earth. Accordingly, like the eclipses of the
+moon, these too were spoken of as happening either "according to
+calculation" or "contrary to calculation." "In a report sent in to one
+of the later kings of Assyria by the state astronomer, Abil Islar states
+that a watch had been kept on the 28th, 29th, and 30th of Sivan, or May,
+for an eclipse of the sun, which did not, however, take place after all.
+The shadow, it is clear, must have fallen outside the field of
+observation." Besides the more ordinary kind of solar eclipses, mention
+is made in the Observations of Bel of annular eclipses which, strangely
+enough, are seldom alluded to by classical writers.
+
+A record of a later eclipse has been found by Sir Henry Rawlinson on one
+of the Nineveh Tablets. This occurred near that city in B.C. 763, and
+from the character of the inscription it may be inferred that it was a
+rare occurrence with them, indeed that it was nearly, if not quite, a
+total eclipse. This has an especial interest as being the earliest that
+we have any approximate date for.
+
+It is possible that the remarkable phenomenon, alluded to by the prophet
+Isaiah, of the shadow going backwards ten degrees on the dial of Ahaz,
+may be really a record of an eclipse of the sun, such as astronomy
+proves to have occurred at Jerusalem in the year 689 B.C.
+
+We have very little notice of the calculation of eclipses by the
+Egyptians; all that is told us is more or less fabulous. Thus Diogenes
+Laertius says that they reckoned that during a period of 48,863 years,
+373 eclipses of the sun and 832 eclipses of the moon had occurred, which
+is far fewer than the right number for so long a time, and which, of
+course, has no basis in fact.
+
+Among the Greeks, Anaxagoras was the first who entertained clear ideas
+about the nature of eclipses; and it was from him that Pericles learnt
+their harmlessness.
+
+Plutarch relates that Helicon of Cyzicus predicted an eclipse of the sun
+to Dionysius of Syracuse, and received as a reward a talent of silver.
+
+Livy records an eclipse of the sun as having taken place on the 11th of
+Quintilis, which corresponds to the 11th of July. It happened during the
+Appollinarian games, 190 B.C.
+
+The same author tells us of an eclipse of the moon that was predicted by
+one Gallus, a tribune of the second legion, on the eve of the battle of
+Pydna--a prediction which was duly fulfilled on the following night. The
+fact of its having been foretold quieted the superstitious fears of the
+soldiers, and gave them a very high opinion of Gallus. Other authors,
+among them Cicero, do not give so flattering a story, but state that
+Gallus's part consisted only in explaining the cause of the eclipse
+after it had happened. The date of this eclipse was the 3rd of
+September, 168 B.C.
+
+Ennius, writing towards the end of the second century B.C., describes an
+eclipse which was said to have happened nearly two hundred years before
+(404, B.C.), in the following remarkable words:--"On the nones of July
+the moon passed over the sun, and there was night." Aristarchus, three
+centuries before Christ, understood and explained the nature of
+eclipses; but the chief of the ancient authors upon this subject was
+Hipparchus. He and his disciples were able to predict eclipses with
+considerable accuracy, both as to their time and duration. Geminus and
+Cleomedes were two other writers, somewhat later, who explained and
+predicted eclipses. In later times regular tables were drawn up, showing
+when the eclipses would happen. One that Ptolemy was the author of was
+founded on data derived from ancient observers--Callipus, Democritus,
+Eudoxus, Hipparchus--aided by his own calculations. After the days of
+Ptolemy the knowledge of the eclipses advanced _pari passu_ with the
+advance of astronomy generally. So long as astronomy itself was
+empirical, the time of the return of an eclipse was only reckoned by the
+intervals that had elapsed during the same portion of previous cycles;
+but after the discovery of elliptic orbits and the force of gravitation
+the whole motion of the moon could be calculated with as great accuracy
+as any other astronomical phenomenon.
+
+In point of fact, if the new moon is in the plane of the ecliptic there
+must be an eclipse of the sun; if the full moon is there, there must be
+an eclipse of the moon; and if it should in these cases be only
+partially in that plane, the eclipses also will be partial. The cycle of
+changes that the position of the moon can undergo when new and full
+occupies a period of eighteen years and eleven days, in which period
+there are forty-one eclipses of the sun and twenty-nine of the moon.
+Each year there are at most seven and at least two eclipses; if only
+two, they are eclipses of the sun. Although more numerous in reality for
+the whole earth, eclipses of the sun are more rarely observed in any
+particular place, because they are not seen everywhere, but only where
+the shadow of the moon passes; while all that part of the earth that
+sees the moon at all at the time sees it eclipsed.
+
+We now come to comets.
+
+The ancients divided comets into different classes, the chief points
+of distinction being derived from the shape, length, and brilliancy
+of the tails. Pliny distinguished twelve kinds, which he thus
+characterised:--"Some frighten us by their blood-coloured mane; their
+bristling hair rises towards the heaven. The bearded ones let their long
+hair fall down like a majestic beard. The javelin-shaped ones seem to
+be projected forwards like a dart, as they rapidly attain their shape
+after their first appearance; if the tail is shorter, and terminates in
+a point, it is called a sword; this is the palest of all the comets; it
+has the appearance of a bright sword without any diverging rays. The
+plate or disc derives its name from its shape, its colour is that of
+amber, it gives out some diverging rays from its sides, but not in large
+quantity. The cask has really the form of a cask, which one might
+suppose to be staved in smoke enveloped in light. The retort imitates
+the figure of a horn, and the lamp that of a burning flame. The
+horse-comet represents the mane of a horse which is violently agitated,
+as by a circular, or rather cylindrical, motion. Such a comet appears
+also of singular whiteness, with hair of a silver hue; it is so bright
+that one can scarcely look at it. There are bristling comets, they are
+like the skins of beasts with their hair on, and are surrounded by a
+nebulosity. Lastly, the hair of the comet sometimes takes the form of a
+lance."
+
+Pingré, a celebrated historian of comets, tells us that one of the first
+comets noticed in history is that which appeared over Rome forty years
+before Christ, and in which the Roman people imagined they saw the soul
+of Cæsar endowed with divine honours. Next comes that which threw its
+light on Jerusalem when it was being besieged and remained for a whole
+year above the city, according to the account of Josephus. It was of
+this kind that Pliny said it "is of so great a whiteness that one can
+scarcely look at it, and _one may see in it the image of God in human
+form_."
+
+Diodorus tells us that, a little after the subversion of the towns of
+Helix and Bura, there were seen, for several nights in succession, a
+brilliant light, which was called a beam of fire, but which Aristotle
+says was a true comet.
+
+Plutarch, in his life of Timoleon, says a burning flame preceded the
+fleet of this general until his arrival at Sicily, and that during the
+consulate of Caius Servilius a bright shield was seen suspended in the
+heavens.
+
+The historians Sazoncenas and Socrates relate that in the year 400 A.D.
+a comet in the form of a sword shone over Constantinople, and appeared
+to touch the town just at the time when great misfortunes were impending
+through the treachery of Gainas.
+
+The same phenomenon appeared over Rome previous to the arrival of
+Alaric.
+
+In fact the ancient chroniclers always associated the appearance of a
+comet with some terrestrial event, which it was not difficult to do,
+seeing that critical situations were at all times existing in some one
+country or other where the comet would be visible, and probably those
+which could not be connected with any were not thought worthy of being
+recorded.
+
+It is well known that the year 1000 A.D. was for a long time predicted
+to be the end of the world. In this year the astronomers and
+chroniclers registered the fall of an enormous burning meteor and the
+appearance of a comet. Pingré says: "On the 19th of the calends of
+January"--that is the 14th of December--"the heavens being dark, a kind
+of burning sword fell to the earth, leaving behind it a long train of
+light. Its brilliancy was such that it frightened not only those who
+were in the fields, but even those who were shut up in their houses.
+This great opening in the heavens was gradually closed, and then was
+seen the figure of a dragon, whose feet were blue, and whose head kept
+continually increasing. A comet having appeared at the same time as this
+chasm, or meteor, they were confounded." This relation is given in the
+chronicles of Seigbert in Hermann Corner, in the Chronique de Tours, in
+Albert Casin, and other historians of the time.
+
+Bodin, resuscitating an idea of Democritus, wrote that the comets were
+the souls of illustrious personages, who, after having lived on the
+earth a long series of centuries, and being ready at last to pass away,
+were carried in a kind of triumph to heaven. For this reason, famine,
+epidemics, and civil wars followed on the apparition of comets, the
+towns and their inhabitants finding themselves then deprived of the help
+of the illustrious souls who had laboured to appease their intestinal
+feuds.
+
+One of the comets of the middle ages which made the greatest impression
+on the minds of the people was that which appeared during Holy Week of
+the year 837, and frightened Louis the Debonnaire. The first morning of
+its appearance he sent for his astrologer. "Go," he said, "on to the
+terrace of the palace, and come back again immediately and tell me what
+you have seen, for I have not seen that star before, and you have not
+shown it to me; but I know that this sign is a comet: it announces a
+change of reign and the death of a prince." The son of Charlemagne
+having taken counsel with his bench of bishops, was convinced that the
+comet was a notice sent from heaven expressly for him. He passed the
+nights in prayer, and gave large donations to the monasteries, and
+finally had a number of masses performed out of fear for himself and
+forethought for the Church committed to his care. The comet, however,
+was a very inoffensive one, being none other than that known as Halley's
+comet, which returned in 1835. While they were being thus frightened in
+France, the Chinese were observing it astronomically.
+
+The historian of Merlin the enchanter relates that a few days after the
+_fêtes_ which were held on the occasion of the erection of the funeral
+monument of Salisbury, a sign appeared in heaven. It was a comet of
+large size and excessive splendour. It resembled a dragon, out of whose
+mouth came a long two-forked tongue, one part of which turned towards
+the north and the other to the east. The people were in a state of fear,
+each one asking what this sign presaged. Uter, in the absence of the
+king, Ambrosius, his brother, who was engaged in pursuing one of the
+sons of Vortigern, consulted all the wise men of Britain, but no one
+could give him any answer. Then he thought of Merlin the enchanter, and
+sent for him to the court. "What does this apparition presage?" demanded
+the king's brother. Merlin began to weep. "O son of Britain, you have
+just had a great loss--the king is dead." After a moment of silence he
+added, "But the Britons have still a king. Haste thee, Uter, attack the
+enemy. All the island will submit to you, for the figure of the fiery
+dragon is thyself. The ray that goes towards Gaul represents a son who
+shall be born to thee, who will be great by his achievements, and not
+less so by his power. The ray that goes towards Ireland represents a
+daughter of whom thou shalt be the father, and her sons and grandsons
+shall reign over all the Britons." These predictions were realised; but
+it is more than probable that they were made up after the event.
+
+The comet of 1066 was regarded as a presage of the Conquest under
+William of Normandy. In the Bayeaux tapestry, on which Matilda of
+Flanders had drawn all the most memorable episodes in the transmarine
+expedition of her husband, the comet appears in one of the corners with
+the inscription, _Isti mirantur stellam_, which proves that the comet
+was considered a veritable marvel. It is said even to be traditionally
+reported that one of the jewels of the British crown was taken from the
+tail of this comet. Nevertheless it was no more than Halley's comet
+again in its periodical visit every seventy-six years.
+
+In July, 1214, a brilliant comet appeared which was lost to view on the
+same day as the Pope, Urban IV., died, _i.e._ the third of October.
+
+In June, 1456, a similar body of enormous size, with a very long and
+extraordinarily bright tail, put all Christendom in a fright. The Pope,
+Calixtus III., was engaged in a war at that time with the Saracens. He
+showed the Christians that the comet "had the form of a cross," and
+announced some great event. At the same time Mahomet announced to his
+followers that the comet, "having the form of a yataghan," was a
+blessing of the Prophet's. It is said that the Pope afterwards
+recognised that it had this form, and excommunicated it. Nevertheless,
+the Christians obtained the victory under the walls of Belgrade. This
+was another appearance of Halley's comet.
+
+In the early months of 1472 appeared a large comet, which historians
+agree in saying was very horrible and alarming. Belleforest said it was
+a hideous and frightening comet, which threw its rays from east to west,
+giving great cause for fear to great people, who were not ignorant that
+comets are the menacing rods of God, which admonish those who are in
+authority, that they may be converted.
+
+Pingré, who has told us of so many of the comets that were seen before
+his time, wrote of this epoch: "Comets became the most efficacious signs
+of the most important and doubtful events. They were charged to announce
+wars, seditions, and the internal movements of republics; they presaged
+famines, pestilence, and epidemics; princes, or even persons of dignity,
+could not pay the tribute of nature without the previous appearance of
+that universal oracle, a comet; men could no longer be surprised by any
+unexpected event; the future might be as easily read in the heavens as
+the past in history. Their effect depended on the place in the heavens
+where they shone, the countries over which they directly lay, the signs
+of the zodiac that they measured by their longitude, the constellations
+they traversed, the form and length of their tails, the place where they
+went out, and a thousand other circumstances more easily indicated than
+distinguished; they also announced in general wars, and the death of
+princes, or some grand personage, but there were few years that passed
+without something of this kind occurring. The devout astrologers--for
+there were many of that sort--risked less than the others. According to
+them, the comet threatened some misfortune; if it did not happen, it was
+because the prayers of penitence had turned aside the wrath of God; he
+had returned his sword to the scabbard. But a rule was invented which
+gave the astrologers free scope, for they said that events announced by
+a comet might be postponed for one or more periods of forty years, or
+even as many years as the comet had appeared days; so that one which had
+appeared for six months need not produce its effect for 180 years."
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 55.--REPRESENTATION OF A COMET, 16TH CENTURY.]
+
+The most frightful of the comets of this period, according to Simon
+Goulart, was that of 1527. "It put some into so great a fright that they
+died; others fell sick. It was seen by several thousand people, and
+appeared very long, and of the colour of blood. At the summit was seen
+the representation of a curved arm, holding a large sword in its hand,
+as if it would strike; at the top of the point of the sword were three
+stars, but that which touched the point was more brilliant than the
+others. On the two sides of the rays of this comet were seen large
+hatchets, poignards, bloody swords, among which were seen a great
+number of men decapitated, having their heads and beards horribly
+bristling."
+
+A view of this comet is given in the _History of Prodigies_.
+
+There was another comet remarked in 1556, and another in 1577, like the
+head of an owl, followed by a mantle of scattered light, with pointed
+ends. Of this comet we read in the same book that recorded the last
+described: "The comet is an infallible sign of a very evil event.
+Whenever eclipses of the sun or moon, or comets, or earthquakes,
+conversions of water into blood, and such like prodigies happen, it has
+always been known that very soon after these miserable portents
+afflictions, effusion of human blood, massacres, deaths of great
+monarchs, kings, princes, and rulers, seditions, treacheries, raids,
+overthrowings of empires, kingdoms, or villages; hunger and scarcity of
+provisions, burning and overthrowing of towns; pestilences, widespread
+mortality, both of beasts and men; in fact all sorts of evils and
+misfortunes take place. Nor can it be doubted that all these signs and
+prodigies give warning that the end of the world is come, and with it
+the terrible last judgment of God."
+
+But even now comets were being observed astronomically, and began to
+lose their sepulchral aspect.
+
+A remarkable comet, however, which appeared in 1680, was not without its
+fears for the vulgar. We are told that it was recognised as the same
+which appeared the year of Cæsar's death, then in 531, and afterwards
+in 1106, having a period of about 575 years. The terror it produced in
+the towns was great; timid spirits saw in it the sign of a new deluge,
+as they said water was always announced by fire. While the fearful were
+making their wills, and, in anticipation of the end of the world, were
+leaving their money to the monks, who in accepting them showed
+themselves better physicists than the testators, people in high station
+were asking what great person it heralded the death of, and it is
+reported of the brother of Louis XIV., who apparently was afraid of
+becoming too suddenly like Cæsar, that he said sharply to the courtiers
+who were discussing it, "Ah, gentlemen, you may talk at your ease, if
+you please; you are not princes."
+
+This same comet gave rise to a curious story of an "extraordinary
+prodigy, how at Rome a hen laid an egg on which was drawn a picture of
+the comet.
+
+"The fact was attested by his Holiness, by the Queen of Sweden, and all
+the persons of first quality in Rome. On the 4th December, 1680, a hen
+laid an egg on which was seen the figure of the comet, accompanied by
+other marks such as are here represented. The cleverest naturalists in
+Rome have seen and examined it, and have never seen such a prodigy
+before."
+
+Of this same comet Bernouilli wrote, "_That if the body of the comet is
+not a visible sign of the anger of God, the tail may be_." It was this
+too that suggested to Whiston the idea that he put forward, not as a
+superstitious, but as a physical speculation, that a comet approaching
+the earth was the cause of the deluge.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 56.--AN EGG MARKED WITH A COMET.]
+
+The last blow to the superstitious fear of the comets was given by
+Halley, when he proved that they circulated like planets round the sun,
+and that the comets noticed in 837, 1066, 1378, 1456, 1531, 1607, 1682
+were all one, whose period was about 76 years, and which would return in
+1759, which prediction was verified, and the comet went afterwards by
+the name of this astronomer. It returned again in 1835, and will revisit
+us in 1911.
+
+Even after the fear arising from the relics of astrology had died away,
+another totally different alarm was connected with comets--an alarm
+which has not entirely subsided even in our own times. This is that a
+comet may come in contact with the earth and destroy it by the
+collision. The most remarkable panic in this respect was that which
+arose in Paris in 1773. At the previous meeting of the Academy of
+Sciences, M. Lalande was to have read an interesting paper, but the time
+failed. It was on the subject of comets that could, by approaching the
+earth, cause its destruction, with special reference to the one that was
+soon to come. From the title only of the paper the most dreadful fears
+were spread abroad, and, increasing day by day, were with great
+difficulty allayed. The house of M. Lalande was filled with those who
+came to question him on the memoir in question. The fermentation was so
+great that some devout people, as ignorant as weak, asked the archbishop
+to make a forty hours' prayer to turn away the enormous deluge that they
+feared, and the prelate was nearly going to order these prayers, if the
+members of the Academy had not persuaded him how ridiculous it would be.
+Finally, M. Lalande, finding it impossible to answer all the questions
+put to him about his fatal memoir, and wishing to prevent the real evils
+that might arise from the frightened imaginations of the weak, caused
+it to be printed, and made it as clear as was possible. When it
+appeared, it was found that he stated that of the sixty comets known
+there were eight which could, by coming too near the earth, say within
+40,000 miles, occasion such a pressure that the sea would leave its bed
+and cover part of the globe, but that in any case this could not happen
+till after twenty years. This was too long to make it worth while to
+make provision for it, and the effervescence subsided.
+
+A similar case to this occurred with respect to Biela's comet, which was
+to return in 1832. In calculating its reappearance in this year,
+Damoiseau found that it would pass through the plane of the earth's
+orbit on the 29th of October. Rushing away with this, the papers made
+out that a collision was inevitable, and the end of the world was come.
+But no one thought to inquire where the earth would be when the comet
+passed through the plane in which it revolved. Arago, however, set
+people's minds at rest by pointing out that at that time the earth would
+be a month's journey from the spot, which with the rate at which the
+earth is moving would correspond to a distance of sixty millions of
+miles.
+
+This, like other frights, passed away, but was repeated again in 1840
+and 1857 with like results, and even in 1872 a similar end to the world
+was announced to the public for the 12th of August, on the supposed
+authority of a Professor at Geneva, but who had never said what was
+supposed.
+
+But in reality all cause of fear has now passed away, since it has been
+proved that the comet is made of gaseous matter in a state of extreme
+tenuity, so that, though it may make great show in the heavens, the
+whole mass may not weigh more than a few pounds; and we have in addition
+the testimony of experience, which might have been relied on on the
+occasions above referred to, for in 1770 Lexele's comet was seen to pass
+through the satellites of Jupiter without deranging them in the least,
+but was itself thrown entirely out of its path, while there is reason to
+believe that on the 29th of June, 1861, the earth remained several hours
+in the tail of a comet without having experienced the slightest
+inconvenience.
+
+As to the nature of comets, the opinions that have been held have been
+mostly very vague. Metrodorus thought they were reflections from the
+sun; Democritus, a concourse of several stars; Aristotle, a collection
+of exhalations which had become dry and inflamed; Strabo, that they are
+the splendour of a star enveloped in a cloud; Heracletes of Pontus, an
+elevated cloud which gave out much light; Epigenes, some terrestrial
+matter that had caught fire, and was agitated by the wind; Boecius,
+part of the air, coloured; Anaxagoras, sparks fallen from the elementary
+fire; Xenophanes, a motion and spreading out of clouds which caught
+fire; and Descartes, the débris of vortices that had been destroyed, the
+fragments of which were coming towards us.
+
+It is said that the Chaldæans held the opinion that they were analogous
+to planets by their regular course, and that when we ceased to see them,
+it was because they had gone too far from us; and Seneca followed this
+explanation, since he regarded them as globes turning in the heavens,
+and which appear and disappear in certain times, and whose periodical
+motions might be known by regular observation.
+
+We have thus traced the particular ideas that have attached themselves
+to eclipses and comets, as the two most remarkable of the extraordinary
+phenomena of the heavens, and have seen how the fears and superstitions
+of mankind have been inevitably linked with them in the earlier days of
+ignorance and darkness, but they are only part of a system of phenomena,
+and have been no more connected with superstition than others less
+remarkable, except in proportion to their remarkableness. Other minor
+appearances that are at all unusual have, on the same belief in the
+inextricable union of celestial and terrestrial matters, been made the
+signs of calamities or extra-prosperity; the doleful side of human
+nature being usually the strongest, the former have been chosen more
+often than the latter.
+
+According to Seneca, the tradition of the Chaldees announced that a
+universal deluge would be caused by the conjunction of all the planets
+in the sign of Capricorn, and that a general breaking up of the earth
+would take place at the moment of their conjunction in Cancer. "The
+general break-up of the world," they said, "will happen when the stars
+which govern the heaven, penetrated with a quality of heat and dryness,
+meet one another in a fiery triplicity."
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XIV.--PRODIGIES IN THE MIDDLE AGES.]
+
+Everywhere, and in all ages of the past, men have thought that a
+protecting providence, always watching over them, has taken care to warn
+them of the destinies which await them; thence the good and evil
+_presages_ taken from the appearance of certain heavenly bodies, of
+divers meteors, or even the accidental meeting of certain animate or
+inanimate objects. The Indian of North America dying of famine in his
+miserable cabin, will not go out to the chase if he sees certain
+presages in the atmosphere. Nor need we be astonished at such ideas in
+an uncultivated man, when even among Europeans, a salt-cellar upset, a
+glass broken, a knife and fork crossed, the number thirteen at dinner,
+and such things are regarded as unlucky accidents. The employment of
+sorcery and divination is closely connected with these superstitions.
+Besides eclipses and comets, meteors were taken as the signs of divine
+wrath. We learn from S. Maximus of Turin, that the Christians of his
+time admitted the necessity of making a noise during eclipses, so as
+to prevent the magicians from hurting the sun or moon, a superstition
+entirely pagan. They used to fancy they could see celestial armies in
+the air, coming to bring miraculous assistance to man. They thought the
+hurricanes and tempests the work of evil spirits, whose rage kept them
+set against the earth. S. Thomas Aquinas, the great theologian of the
+thirteenth century, accepted this opinion, just as he admitted the
+reality of sorceries. But the full development, as well as the
+nourishment of these superstitious ideas, was derived from the
+storehouse of astrology, which dealt with matters of ordinary
+occurrence, both in the heavens and on the earth--and to the history of
+which our next chapter is devoted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE GREATNESS AND THE FALL OF ASTROLOGY.
+
+
+Our study of the opinions of the ancients on the various phenomena of
+astronomy, leads us inevitably to the discussion of their astrology,
+which has in every age and among every people accompanied it--and though
+astrology be now no more as a science, or lingers only with those who
+are ignorant and desirous of taking advantage of the still greater
+ignorance of others--yet it is not lacking in interest as showing the
+effect of the phenomena of the heavens on the human mind, when that
+effect is brought to its most technical and complete development.
+
+We must distinguish in the first place two kinds of astrology, viz.,
+natural and judicial. The first proposed to foresee and announce the
+changes of the seasons, the rains, wind, heat, cold, abundance, or
+sterility of the ground, diseases, &c., by means of a knowledge of the
+causes which act on the air and on the atmosphere. The other is occupied
+with objects which would be still more interesting to men. It traced at
+the moment of his birth, or at any other period of his life, the line
+that each must travel according to his destiny. It pretended to
+determine our characters, our passions, fortune, misfortunes, and perils
+in reserve for each mortal.
+
+We have not here to consider the natural astrology, which is a veritable
+science of observation and does not deserve the name of astrology. It is
+rather worthy to be called the meteorological calendar of its
+cultivators. More rural than their descendants of the nineteenth
+century, the ancients had recognised the connection between the
+celestial phenomena and the vicissitudes of the seasons; they observed
+these phenomena carefully to discover the return of the same
+inclemencies; and they were able (or thought they were) to state the
+date of the return of particular kinds of weather with the same
+positions of the stars. But the very connection with the stars soon led
+the way to a degeneracy. The autumnal constellations, for example, Orion
+and Hercules, were regarded as rainy, because the rains came at the time
+when these stars rose. The Egyptians who observed in the morning, called
+Sirius "the burning," because his appearance in the morning was followed
+by the great heat of the summer: and it was the same with the other
+stars. Soon they regarded them as the cause of the rain and the
+heat--although they were but remote witnesses. The star Sirius is still
+connected with heat--since we call it the dog-star--and the hottest days
+of the year, July 22nd to August 23rd, we call dog-days. At the
+commencement of our era, the morning rising of Sirius took place on the
+earlier of those days--though it does not now rise in the morning till
+the middle of August--and 4,000 years ago it rose about the 20th of
+June, and preceded the annual rise of the Nile.
+
+The belief in the meteorological influence of the stars is one of the
+causes of judicial astrology. This latter has simply subjected man, like
+the atmosphere, to the influence of the stars; it has made dependent on
+them the risings of his passions, the good and ill fortune of his life,
+as well as the variations of the seasons. Indeed, it was very easy to
+explain. It is the stars, or heavenly bodies in general, that bring the
+winds, the rains, and the storms; their influences mixed with the action
+of the rays of the sun modify the cold or heat; the fertility of the
+fields, health or sickness, depend on these beneficial or injurious
+influences; not a blade of grass can grow without all the stars having
+contributed to its increase; man breathes the emanations which escaping
+from the heavenly bodies fill the air; man is therefore in his entire
+nature subjected to them; these stars must therefore influence his will
+and his passions; the good and evil passages in his career, in a word,
+must direct his life.
+
+As soon as it was established that the rising of a certain star or
+planet, and its aspect with regard to other planets, announced a certain
+destiny to man, it was natural to believe that the rarer configurations
+signified extraordinary events, which concerned great empires, nations,
+and towns. And lastly, since errors grow faster than truth, it was
+natural to think that the configurations which were still more rare,
+such as the reunion of all the planets in conjunction with the same
+star, which can occur only after thousands of centuries, while nations
+have been renewed an infinity of times, and empires have been ruined,
+had reference to the earth itself, which had served as the theatre for
+all these events. Joined to these superstitious ideas was the tradition
+of a deluge, and the belief that the world must one day perish by fire,
+and so it was announced that the former event took place when all the
+planets were in conjunction in the sign of the Fishes, and the latter
+would occur when they all met in the sign of the Lion.
+
+The origin of astrology, like that of the celestial sphere, was in all
+probability in upper Asia.
+
+There, the starry heavens, always pure and splendid, invited observation
+and struck the imagination. We have already seen this with respect to
+the more matter-of-fact portions of astronomy. The Assyrians looked upon
+the stars as divinities endued with beneficent or maleficent power. The
+adoration of the heavenly bodies was the earliest form of religion among
+the pastoral population that came down from the mountains of Kurdestan
+to the plains of Babylon. The Chaldæans at last set apart a sacerdotal
+and learned caste devoted to the observation of the heavens; and the
+temples became regular observatories. Such doubtless was the tower of
+Babel--a monument consecrated to the seven planets, and of which the
+account has come down to us in the ancient book of Genesis.
+
+A long series of observations put the Chaldæans in possession of a
+theological astronomy, resting on a more or less chimerical theory of
+the influence of the celestial bodies on the events of nations and
+private individuals. Diodorus Siculus, writing towards the commencement
+of our era, has put us in possession of the most circumstantial details
+that have reached us with regard to the Chaldæan priests.
+
+At the head of the gods, the Assyrians placed the sun and moon, whose
+courses and daily positions they had noted in the constellation of the
+zodiac, in which the sun remained, one month in each. The twelve signs
+were governed by as many gods, who had the corresponding months under
+their influence. Each of these months were divided into three parts,
+which made altogether thirty-six subdivisions, over which as many stars
+presided, called gods of consultation. Half of these gods had under
+their control the things which happen above the earth, and the other
+half those below. The sun and moon and the five planets occupied the
+most elevated rank in the divine hierarchy and bore the name of gods of
+interpretation. Among these planets Saturn or old Bel, which was
+regarded as the highest star and the most distant from us, was
+surrounded by the greatest veneration; he was the interpreter _par
+excellence_--the revealer. Each of the other planets had his own
+particular name. Some of them, such as _Bel_ (Jupiter), _Merodaez_
+(Mars), _Nebo_ (Mercury), were regarded as male, and the others, as
+_Sin_ (the Moon), and _Mylitta_ or _Baulthis_ (Venus), as females; and
+from their position relative to the zodiacal constellations, which were
+also called _Lords_ or masters of the _Gods_, the Chaldæans derived the
+knowledge of the destiny of the men who were born under such and such a
+conjunction--predictions which the Greeks afterwards called horoscopes.
+The Chaldæans invented also relations between each of the planets and
+meteorological phenomena, an opinion partly founded on fortuitous
+coincidences which they had more or less frequently observed. In the
+time of Alexander their credit was considerable, and the king of
+Macedonia, either from superstition or policy, was in the habit of
+consulting them.
+
+It is probable that the Babylonian priests, who referred every natural
+property to sidereal influences, imagined there were some mysterious
+relations between the planets and the metals whose colours were
+respectively somewhat analogous to theirs. Gold corresponded to the sun,
+silver to the moon, lead to Saturn, iron to Mars, tin to Jupiter, and
+mercury still retains the name of the planet with which it was
+associated. It is less than two centuries ago, since the metals have
+ceased to be designated by the signs of their respective planets.
+Alchemy, the mother of chemistry, was an intimately connected sister of
+Astrology, the mother of Astronomy.
+
+Egyptian civilisation dates back to a no less remote period than that of
+Babylon. Not less careful observers than the Babylonish astrologers of
+the meteors and the atmospheric revolutions, they could predict certain
+phenomena, and they gave it out that they had themselves been the cause
+of them.
+
+Diodorus Siculus tells us that the Egyptian priests pretty generally
+predicted the years of barrenness or abundance, the contagions, the
+earthquakes, inundations, and comets. The knowledge of celestial
+phenomena made an essential part of the theology of the Egyptians as it
+did of the Chaldæans. They had colleges of priests specially attached to
+the study of the stars, at which Pythagoras, Plato, and Eudoxus were
+instructed.
+
+Religion was besides completely filled with the symbols relating to the
+sun or moon. Each month, each decade, each day was consecrated to a
+particular god. These gods, to the number of thirty, were called in the
+Alexandrine astronomy _decans_ ([Greek: dekavoi]). The festivals were
+marked by the periodical return of certain astronomical phenomena, and
+those heliacal risings to which any mythological ideas were attached,
+were noted with great care. We find even now proof of this old
+sacerdotal science in the zodiac sculptured on the ceilings of certain
+temples, and in the hieroglyphic inscriptions relating to celestial
+phenomena.
+
+According to the Egyptians, who were no less aware than the Greeks, of
+the influence of atmospheric changes on our organs, the different stars
+had a special action on each part of the body. In the funeral rituals
+which were placed at the bottom of the coffins, constant allusion is
+made to this theory. Each limb of the dead body was placed under the
+protection of a particular god. The divinities divided between them, so
+to speak, the spoils of the dead. The head belonged to Ra, or the Sun,
+the nose and lips to Anubis, and so on. To establish the horoscope of
+anyone, this theory of specific influences was combined with the state
+of the heavens at the time of his birth. It seems even to have been the
+doctrine of the Egyptians, that a particular star indicated the coming
+of each man into the world, and this opinion was held also by the Medes,
+and is alluded to in the Gospels. In Egypt, as in Persia and Chaldæa,
+the science of nature was a sacred doctrine, of which magic and
+astrology constituted the two branches, and in which the phenomena of
+the universe were attached very firmly to the divinities or genii with
+which they believed it filled. It was the same in the primitive
+religions of Greece.
+
+The Thessalian women had an especially great reputation in the art of
+enchantments. All the poets rival one another in declaring how they are
+able, by their magical hymns, to bring down the moon. Menander, in his
+comedy entitled _The Thessalian_, represents the mysterious ceremonies
+by the aid of which these sorcerers force the moon to leave the heavens,
+a prodigy which so completely became the type of enchantments that
+Nonnus tells us it is done by the Brahmins. There was, in addition,
+another _cultus_ in Greece, namely, that of Hecate with mysterious rays,
+the patron of sorcerers. Lucian of Samosate--if the work on astrology
+which is ascribed to him be really his--justifies his belief in the
+influence of the stars in the following terms:--"The stars follow their
+orbit in the heaven; but independently of their motion, they act upon
+what passes here below. If you admit that a horse in a gallop, that
+birds in flying, and men in walking, make the stones jump or drive the
+little floating particles of dust by the wind of their course, why
+should you deny that the stars have any effect? The smallest fire sends
+us its emanations, and although it is not for us that the stars burn,
+and they care very little about warming us, why should we not receive
+any emanations from them? Astrology, it is true, cannot make that good
+which is evil. It can effect no change in the course of events; but it
+renders a service to those who cultivate it by announcing to them good
+things to come; it procures joy by anticipation at the same time that it
+fortifies them against the evil. Misfortune, in fact, does not take them
+by surprise, the foreknowledge of it renders it easier and lighter. That
+is my way of looking at astrology."
+
+Very different is the opinion of the satirist Juvenal, who says that
+women are the chief cultivators of it. "All that an astrologer predicts
+to them," he says, "they think to come from the temple of Jupiter. Avoid
+meeting with a lady who is always casting up her _ephemerides_, who is
+so good an astrologer that she has ceased to consult, and is already
+beginning to be consulted; such a one on the inspection of the stars
+will refuse to accompany her husband to the army or to his native land.
+If she only wishes to drive a mile, the hour of departure is taken from
+her book of astrology. If her eye itches and wants rubbing, she will do
+nothing till she has run through her conjuring book. If she is ill in
+bed, she will take her food only at the times fixed in her _Petosiris_.
+Women of second-rate condition," he adds, "go round the circus before
+consulting their destiny, after which they show their hands and face to
+the diviner."
+
+When Octavius came into the world a senator versed in astrology,
+Nigidius Figulus, predicted the glorious destiny of the future emperor.
+Livia, the wife of Tiberius, asked another astrologer, Scribius, what
+would be the destiny of her infant; his reply was, they say, like the
+other's.
+
+The house of Poppea, the wife of Nero, was always full of astrologers.
+It was one of the soothsayers attached to her house, Ptolemy, who
+predicted to Otho his elevation to the empire, at the time of the
+expedition into Spain, where he accompanied him.
+
+The history of astrology under the Roman empire supplies some very
+curious stories, of which we may select an illustrative few.
+
+Octavius, in company with Agrippa, consulted one day the astrologer
+Theagenes. The future husband of Julia, more credulous or more curious
+than the nephew of Cæsar, was the first to take the horoscope. Theagenes
+foretold astonishing prosperity for him. Octavius, jealous of so happy a
+destiny, and fearing that the reply would be less favourable to him,
+instead of following the example of his companion, refused at first to
+state the day of his birth. But, curiosity getting the better of him, he
+decided to reply. No sooner had he told the day of his birth than the
+astrologer threw himself at his feet, and worshipped him as the future
+master of the empire. Octavius was transported with joy, and from that
+moment was a firm believer in astrology. To commemorate the happy
+influence of the zodiacal sign under which he was born, he had the
+picture of it struck on some of the medals that were issued in his
+reign.
+
+The masters of the empire believed in astrological divination, but
+wished to keep the advantages to themselves. They wanted to know the
+future without allowing their subjects to do the same. Nero would not
+permit anyone to study philosophy, saying it was a vain and frivolous
+thing, from which one might take a pretext to divine future events. He
+feared lest some one should push his curiosity so far as to wish to
+find out when and how the emperor should die--a sort of indiscreet
+question, replies to which lead to conspiracies and attempts. This was
+what the heads of the state were most afraid of.
+
+Tiberius had been to Rhodes, to a soothsayer of renown, to instruct
+himself in the rules of astrology. He had attached to his person the
+celebrated astrologer Thrasyllus, whose fate-revealing science he proved
+by one of those pleasantries which are only possible with tyrants.
+
+Whenever Tiberius consulted an astrologer he placed him in the highest
+part of his palace, and employed for his purpose an ignorant and
+powerful freedman, who brought by difficult paths, bounded by
+precipices, the astrologer whose science his Majesty wished to prove. On
+the return journey, if the astrologer was suspected of indiscretion or
+treachery, the freedman threw him into the sea, to bury the secret.
+Thrasyllus having been brought by the same route across these
+precipices, struck Tiberius with awe while he questioned him, by showing
+him his sovereign power, and easily disclosing the things of the future.
+Cæsar asked him if he had taken his own horoscope, and with what signs
+were marked that day and hour for himself. Thrasyllus then examined the
+position and the distance of the stars; he hesitated at first, then he
+grew pale; then he looked again, and finally, trembling with
+astonishment and fear, he cried out that the moment was perilous, and
+he was very near his last hour. Tiberius then embraced him and
+congratulated him on having escaped a danger by foreseeing it; and
+accepting henceforth all his predictions as oracles, he admitted him to
+the number of his intimate friends.
+
+Tiberius had a great number of people put to death who were accused of
+having taken their horoscope to know what honours were in store for
+them, although in secret he took the horoscopes of great people, that he
+might ascertain that he had no rivalry to fear from them. Septimus
+Severus was very nearly paying with his head for one of those
+superstitious curiosities that brought the ambitious of the time to the
+astrologer. In prosperous times he had gained faith in their
+predictions, and consulted them about important acts. Having lost his
+wife, and wishing to contract a second marriage, he took the horoscopes
+of the well-connected ladies who were at the time open to marriage. None
+of their fortunes, taken by the rules of astrology, were encouraging. He
+learnt at last that there was living in Syria a young woman to whom the
+Chaldæans had predicted that she should be the wife of a king. Severus
+was as yet but a legate. He hastened to demand her in marriage, and he
+obtained her; Julia was the name of the woman who was born under so
+happy a star; but was he the crowned husband which the stars had
+promised to the young Syrian? This reflection soon began to perplex
+Severus, and to get out of his perplexity he went to Sicily to consult
+an astrologer of renown. The matter came to the ears of the Emperor
+Commodus; and judge of his anger! The anger of Commodus was rage and
+frenzy; but the event soon gave the response that Severus was seeking in
+Sicily,--Commodus was strangled.
+
+Divination which had the emperor for its object at last came to be a
+crime of high treason. The rigorous measures resorted to against the
+indiscreet curiosity of ambition took more terrible proportions under
+the Christian emperors.
+
+Under Constantine, a number of persons who had applied to the oracles
+were punished with cruel tortures.
+
+Under Valens, a certain Palladius was the agent of a terrible
+persecution. Everyone found himself exposed to being denounced for
+having relations with soothsayers. Traitors slipped secretly into houses
+magic formulæ and charms, which then became so many proofs against the
+inhabitant. The fear was so great in the East, says Ammienus
+Marcellinus, that a great number burned their books, lest matter should
+be found in them for an accusation of magic or sorcery.
+
+One day in anger, Vitellius commanded all the astrologers to leave Italy
+by a certain day. They responded by a poster, which impudently commanded
+the prince to leave the earth before that date, and at the end of the
+year Vitellius was put to death; on the other hand, the confidence
+accorded to astrologers led sometimes to the greatest extremes. For
+instance, after having consulted Babylus, Nero put to death all those
+whose prophecies promised the elevation of Heliogabalus. Another
+instance was that of Marcus Aurelius and his wife Faustina. The latter
+was struck with the beauty of a gladiator. For a long time she vainly
+strove in secret with the passion that consumed her, but the passion did
+nothing but increase. At last Faustina revealed the matter to her
+husband, and asked him for some remedy that should restore peace to her
+troubled soul. The philosophy of Marcus Aurelius could not suggest
+anything. So he decided to consult the Chaldæans, who were adepts at the
+art of mixing philters and composing draughts. The means prescribed were
+more simple than might have been expected from their complicated
+science; it was that the gladiator should be cut in pieces. They added
+that Faustina should afterwards be anointed with the blood of the
+victim. The remedy was applied, the innocent athlete was immolated, and
+the empress afterwards only dreamed of him with great pleasure.
+
+The first Christians were as much addicted to astrology as the other
+sects. The Councils of Laodicea (366, A.D.), of Arles (314), of Agdus
+(505), Orleans (511), Auxerre (570), and Narbonne (589), condemned the
+practice. According to a tradition of the commencement of our era, which
+appears to have been borrowed from Mazdeism, it was the rebel angels who
+taught men astrology and the use of charms.
+
+Under Constantius the crime of high treason served as a pretext for
+persecution. A number of people were accused of it, who simply continued
+to practise the ancient religion. It was pretended that they had
+recourse to sorceries against the life of the emperor, in order to bring
+about his fall. Those who consulted the oracles were menaced with severe
+penalties and put to death by torture, under the pretence that by
+dealing with questions of fate they had criminal intentions. Plots
+without number multiplied the accusations; and the cruelty of the judges
+aggravated the punishments. The pagans, in their turn had to suffer the
+martyrdom which they had previously inflicted on the early disciples of
+Christ--or rather, to be truer, it was authority, always intolerable,
+whether pagan or Christian, that showed itself inexorable against those
+who dared to differ from the accepted faith. Libanius and Jamblicus were
+accused of having attempted to discover the name of the successor to the
+empire. Jamblicus, being frightened at the prosecution brought against
+him, poisoned himself. The name only of philosopher was sufficient to
+found an accusation upon. The philosopher Maximus Diogenes Alypius, and
+his son Hierocles, were condemned to lose their lives on the most
+frivolous pretence. An old man was put to death because he was in the
+habit of driving off the approach of fever by incantations, and a young
+man who was surprised in the act of putting his hands alternately to a
+marble and his breast, because he thought that by counting in this way
+seven times seven, he might cure the stomach-ache, met with the same
+fate.
+
+Theodosius prohibited every kind of manifestation or usage connected
+with pagan belief. Whoever should dare to immolate a victim, said his
+law, or consult the entrails of the animals he had killed, should be
+regarded as guilty of the crime of high treason.
+
+The fact of having recourse to a process of divination was sufficient
+for an accusation against a man.
+
+Theodosius II. thought that the continuation of idolatrous practices had
+drawn down the wrath of heaven, and brought upon them the recent
+calamities that had afflicted his empire--the derangement of the seasons
+and the sterility of the soil--and he thundered out terrible threats
+when his faith and his anger united themselves into fanaticism.
+
+He wrote as follows to Florentius, prefect of the prætorium in 439, the
+year that preceded his death:--
+
+"Are we to suffer any longer from the seasons being upset by the effect
+of the divine wrath, on account of the atrocious perfidy of the pagans,
+which disturbs the equilibrium of nature? For what is the cause that now
+the spring has no longer its ordinary beauty, that the autumn no longer
+furnishes a harvest to the laborious workman and that the winter, by its
+rigour, freezes the soil and renders it sterile?"
+
+Perhaps we are unduly amused with these ideas of Theodosius so long as
+we retain the custom of asking the special intervention of Providence
+for the presence or absence of rain!
+
+In the middle ages, when astrology took such a hold on the world,
+several philosophers went so far as to consider the celestial vault as a
+book, in which each star, having the value of one of the letters of the
+alphabet, told in ineffaceable characters the destiny of every empire.
+The book of _Unheard-of Curiosities_, by Gaffarel, gives us the
+configuration of these celestial characters, and we find them also in
+the writings of Cornelius Agrippa. The middle ages took their
+astrological ideas from the Arabians and Jews. The Jews themselves at
+this epoch borrowed their principles from such contaminated sources that
+we are not able to trace in them the transmission of the ancient ideas.
+To give an example, Simeon Ben-Jochai, to whom is attributed the famous
+book called _Zohar_, had attained in their opinion such a prodigious
+acquaintance with celestial mysteries as indicated by the stars, that he
+could have read the divine law in the heavens before it had been
+promulgated on the earth. During the whole of the middle ages, whenever
+they wanted to clear up doubts about geography or astronomy, they always
+had recourse to this Oriental science, as cultivated by the Jews and
+Arabians. In the thirteenth century Alphonse X. was very importunate
+with the Jews to make them assist him with their advice in his vast
+astronomical and historical works.
+
+Nicholas Oresmus, when the most enlightened monarch in Europe was
+supplying Du Guesclin with an astrologer to guide him in his strategical
+operations, was physician to Charles V. of France, who was himself
+devoted to astrology, and gave him the bishopric of Lisieux. He composed
+the _Treatise of the Sphere_, of which we have already spoken. A few
+years later, a learned man, the bishop Peter d'Ailly, actually dared to
+take the horoscope of Jesus Christ, and proved by most certain rules
+that the great event which inaugurated the new era was marked with very
+notable signs in astrology.
+
+Mathias Corvin, King of Hungary, never undertook anything without first
+consulting the astrologers. The Duke of Milan and Pope Paul also
+governed themselves by their advice. King Louis XI., who so heartily
+despised the rest of mankind, and had as much malice in him as he had
+weakness, had a curious adventure with an astrologer.
+
+It was told him that an astrologer had had the hardihood to predict the
+death of a woman of whom the king was very fond. He sent for the
+wretched prophet, gave him a severe reprimand, and then asked him the
+question, "You, who know everything, when will _you_ die?" The
+astrologer, suspecting a trick, replied immediately, "Sire, three days
+before your Majesty." Fear and superstition overcame the monarch's
+resentment, and the king took particular care of the adroit impostor.
+
+It is well known how much Catherine de Medicis was under the influence
+of the astrologers. She had one in her Hôtel de Soissons in Paris, who
+watched constantly at the top of a tower. This tower is still in
+existence, by the Wool-Market, which was built in 1763 on the site of
+the hotel. It is surmounted by a sphere and a solar dial, placed there
+by the astronomer Pingré.
+
+One of the most celebrated of the astrologers who was under her
+patronage was Nostradamus. He was a physician of Provence, and was born
+at St. Reny in 1503. To medicine he joined astrology, and undertook to
+predict future events. He was called to Paris by Catherine in 1556, and
+attempted to write his oracles in poetry. His little book was much
+sought after during the whole of the remainder of the sixteenth century,
+and even in the beginning of the next. According to contemporary writers
+many imitations were made of it. It was written in verses of four lines,
+and was called _Quatrains Astronomiques_. As usual, the prophecies were
+obscure enough to suit anything, and many believers have thought they
+could trace in the various verses prophecies of known events, by duly
+twisting and manipulating the sense.
+
+A very amusing prophecy, which happened to be too clear to leave room
+for mistakes as to its meaning, and which turned out to be most
+ludicrously wrong, was one contained in a little book published in 1572
+with this title:--_Prognostication touching the marriage of the very
+honourable and beloved Henry, by the Grace of God King of Navarre, and
+the very illustrious Princess Marguerite of France, calculated by Master
+Bernard Abbatio, Doctor in Medicine, and Astrologer to the very
+Christian King of France._
+
+First he asked if the marriage would be happy, and says:--"Having in my
+library made the figure of the heavens, I found that the lord of the
+ascendant is joined to the lord of the seventh house, which is for the
+woman of a trine aspect, from whence I have immediately concluded,
+according to the opinion of Ptolemy, Haly, Zael, Messahala, and many
+other sovereign astrologers, that they will love one another intensely
+all their lives." In point of fact they always detested each other.
+Again, "as to length of life, I have prepared another figure, and have
+found that Jupiter and Venus are joined to the sun with fortification,
+and that they will approach a hundred years;" after all Henri IV. died
+before he was sixty. "Our good King of Navarre will have by his most
+noble and virtuous Queen many children; since, after I had prepared
+another figure of heaven, I found the ascendant and its lord, together
+with the moon, all joined to the lord of the fifth house, called that of
+children, which will be pretty numerous, on account of Jupiter and also
+of Venus;" and yet they had no children! "Jupiter and Venus are found
+domiciled on the aquatic signs, and since these two planets are found
+concordant with the lord of the ascendant, all this proves that the
+children will be upright and good, and that they will love their father
+and mother, without doing them any injury, nor being the cause of their
+destruction, as is seen in the fruit of the nut, which breaks, opens,
+and destroys the stock from which it took its birth. The children will
+live long, they will be good Christians, and with their father will make
+themselves so benign and favourable towards those of our religion, that
+at last they will be as beloved as any man of our period, and there will
+be no more wars among the French, as there would have been but for the
+present marriage. God grant us grace that so long as we are in this
+transitory life we may see no other king but Charles IX., the present
+King of France." And yet these words were written in the year of the
+massacre of St. Bartholomew's day! and the marriage was broken off, and
+Henri IV. married to Marie de Medici. So much for the astrological
+predictions!
+
+The aspect in which astrology was looked upon by the better minds even
+when it was flourishing may be illustrated by two quotations we may
+make, from Shakespeare and Voltaire.
+
+Our immortal poet puts into the mouth of Edmund in _King Lear_:--"This
+is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune
+(often the surfeit of our own behaviour) we make guilty of our disasters
+the sun, the moon, and the stars, as if we were villains by necessity;
+fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treacherous, by
+spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced
+obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a
+divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of a libertine to lay his
+goatish disposition to the charge of a star! My father married my mother
+under the Dragon's tail; and my nativity was under _Ursa major_; so that
+it follows I am rough lecherous. Tut, I should have been that I am, had
+the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my birth."
+
+Voltaire writes thus:--"This error is ancient, and that is enough. The
+Egyptians, the Chaldæans, the Jews could predict, and therefore we can
+predict now. If no more predictions are made it is not the fault of the
+art. So said the alchemists of the philosopher's stone. If you do not
+find to-day it is because you are not clever enough; but it is certain
+that it is in the clavicle of Solomon, and on that certainty more than
+two hundred families in Germany and France have been ruined. Do you
+wonder either that so many men, otherwise much exalted above the vulgar,
+such as princes or popes, who knew their interests so well, should be so
+ridiculously seduced by this impertinence of astrology. They were very
+proud and very ignorant. There were no stars but for them; the rest of
+the universe was _canaille_, for whom the stars did not trouble
+themselves. I have not the honour of being a prince. Nevertheless, the
+celebrated Count of Boulainvilliers and an Italian, called Colonne, who
+had great reputation in Paris, both predicted to me that I should
+infallibly die at the age of thirty-two. I have had the malice already
+to deceive them by thirty years, for which I humbly beg their pardon."
+
+The method by which these predictions were arrived at consisted in
+making the different stars and planets responsible for different parts
+of the body, different properties, and different events, and making up
+stories from the association of ideas thus obtained, which of course
+admitted of the greatest degree of latitude. The principles are
+explained by Manilius in his great poem entitled _The Astronomicals_,
+written two thousand years ago.
+
+According to him the sun presided over the head, the moon over the right
+arm, Venus over the left, Jupiter over the stomach, Mars the parts
+below, Mercury over the right leg, and Saturn over the left.
+
+Among the constellations, the Ram governed the head; the Bull the neck;
+the Twins the arms and shoulders; the Crab the chest and the heart; the
+Lion the stomach; the abdomen corresponded to the sign of the Virgin;
+the reins to the Balance; then came the Scorpion; the Archer, governing
+the thighs; the He-goat the knees; the Waterer the legs; and the Fishes
+the feet.
+
+Albert the Great assigned to the stars the following influences:--Saturn
+was thought to rule over life, changes, sciences, and buildings;
+Jupiter over honour, wishes, riches, and cleanness; Mars over war,
+prisons, marriages, and hatred; the sun over hope, happiness, gain, and
+heritages; Venus over friendships and amours; Mercury over illness,
+debts, commerce, and fear; the moon over wounds, dreams, and larcenies.
+
+Each of these stars also presides over particular days of the week,
+particular colours, and particular metals.
+
+The sun governed the Sunday; the moon, Monday; Mars, Tuesday; Mercury,
+Wednesday; Jupiter, Thursday; Venus, Friday; and Saturn, Saturday; which
+is partially indicated by our own names of the week, but more
+particularly in the French names, which are each and all derived from
+these stars.
+
+The sun represented yellow; the moon, white; Venus, green; Mars, red;
+Jupiter, blue; Saturn, black; Mercury, shaded colours.
+
+We have already indicated the metals that corresponded to each.
+
+The sun was reckoned to be beneficent and favourable; Saturn to be sad,
+morose, and cold; Jupiter, temperate and benign; Mars, vehement; Venus,
+benevolent and fertile; Mercury, inconstant; and the moon, melancholy.
+
+Among the constellations, the Ram, the Lion, and the Archer were hot,
+dry and vehement. The Bull, the Virgin, and the He-goat were heavy,
+cold, and dry; the Twins, the Balance, and the Waterer were light,
+hot, and moist; the Crab, Scorpion, and the Fishes were moist, soft, and
+cold.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XV.--AN ASTROLOGER AT WORK.]
+
+In this way the heavens were made to be intimately connected with the
+affairs of earth; and astrology was in equally intimate connection with
+astronomy, of which it may in some sense be considered the mother. The
+drawers of horoscopes were at one time as much in request as lawyers or
+doctors. One Thurneisen, a famous astrologer and an extraordinary man,
+who lived last century at the electoral court of Berlin, was at the same
+time physician, chemist, drawer of horoscopes, almanack maker, printer,
+and librarian. His astrological reputation was so widespread that
+scarcely a birth took place in families of any rank in Germany, Poland,
+Hungary, or even England without there being sent an immediate envoy to
+him to announce the precise moment of birth. He received often three and
+sometimes as many as ten messages a day, and he was at last so pressed
+with business that he was obliged to take associates and agents.
+
+In the days of Kepler we know that astrology was more thought of than
+astronomy, for though on behalf of the world he worked at the latter,
+for his own daily bread he was in the employ of the former, making
+almanacks and drawing horoscopes that he might live.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+TIME AND THE CALENDAR.
+
+
+The opinions of thinkers on the nature of time have been very varied.
+Some have considered time as an absolute reality, which is exactly
+measured by hours, days, and years, and is as known and real as any
+other object whose existence is known to us. Others maintain that time
+is only a matter of sensation, or that it is an illusion, or a
+hallucination of a lively brain.
+
+The definitions given of it by different great writers is as various.
+Thus Kant calls it "one of the forms of sensibility." Schelling declares
+it is "pure activity with the negation of all being." Leibnitz defines
+it "the order of successions" as he defined space to be the order of
+co-existences. Newton and Clarke make space and time two attributes of
+the Deity.
+
+A study of the astronomical phenomena of the universe, and a
+consideration of their teaching, give us authority for saying, that
+neither space nor time are realities, but that the only things absolute
+are eternity and infinity.
+
+In fact, we give the name of time to the succession of the terrestrial
+events measured by the motion of the earth. If the earth were not to
+move, we should have no means of measuring, and consequently no idea of
+time as we have it now. So long as it was believed that the earth was at
+rest, and that the sun and all the stars turned round us, this apparent
+motion was then, as the real motion of the earth is now, the method of
+generating time. In fact, the Fathers said that at the end of the world
+the diurnal motion would cease, and there would be no more time. But let
+us examine the fact a little further.
+
+Suppose for an instant that the earth was, as it was formerly believed
+to be, an immense flat surface, which was illuminated by a sun which
+remained always immovable at the zenith, or by an invariable diffused
+light--such an earth being supposed to be alone by itself in the
+universe and immovable. Now if there were a man created on that earth,
+would there be such a thing as "time" for him? The light which illumines
+him is immovable. No moving shadow, no gnomon, no sun-dial would be
+possible. No day nor night, no morning nor evening, no year. Nothing
+that could be divided into days, hours, minutes, and seconds.
+
+In such a case one would have to fall back upon some other terminating
+events, which would indicate a lapse of time; such for instance as the
+life of a man. This, however, would be no universal measure, for on one
+planet the life might be a thousand years, and on another only a
+hundred.
+
+Or we may look at it in another way. Suppose the earth were to turn
+twice as fast about itself and about the sun, the persons who lived
+sixty of such years would only have lived thirty of our present years,
+but they would have seen sixty revolutions of the earth, and, rigorously
+speaking, would have lived sixty years. If the earth turned ten times as
+fast, sixty years would be reduced to ten, but they would still be sixty
+of those years. We should live just as long; there would be four
+seasons, 365 days, &c., only everything would be more rapid: but it
+would be exactly the same thing for us, and the other apparently
+celestial motions having a similar diminution, there would be no change
+perceived by us.
+
+Again, consider the minute animals that are observable under the
+microscope, which live but for five minutes. During that period, they
+have time to be born and to grow. From embryos they become adult, marry,
+so to speak, and have a numerous progeny, which they develop and send
+into the world. Afterwards they die, and all this in a few minutes. The
+impressions which, in spite of their minuteness, we are justified in
+presuming them to possess, though rapid and fleeting, may be as profound
+for them in proportion as ours are to us, and their measure of time
+would be very different from ours. All is relative. In absolute value,
+a life completed in a hundred years is not longer than one that is
+finished in five minutes.
+
+It is the same for space. The earth has a diameter of 8,000 miles, and
+we are five or six feet high. Now if, by any process, the earth should
+diminish till it became as small as a marble, and if the different
+elements of the world underwent a corresponding diminution, our
+mountains might become as small as grains of sand, the ocean might be
+but a drop, and we ourselves might be smaller than the microscopic
+animals adverted to above. But for all that nothing would have changed
+for us. We should still be our five or six feet high, and the earth
+would remain exactly the same number of our miles.
+
+A value then that can be decreased and diminished at pleasure without
+change is not a mathematical absolute value. In this sense then it may
+be said that neither time nor space have any real existence.
+
+Or once again. Suppose that instead of our being on the globe, we were
+placed in pure space. What time should we find there? No time. We might
+remain ten years, twenty, a hundred, or a thousand years, but we should
+never arrive at the next year! In fact each planet makes its own time
+for its inhabitants, and where there is no planet or anything answering
+to it there is no time. Jupiter makes for its inhabitants a year which
+is equal to twelve years of ours, and a day of ten of our hours. Saturn
+has a year equal to thirty of ours, and days of ten hours and a quarter.
+In other solar systems there are two or three suns, so that it is
+difficult to imagine what sort of time they can have. All this infinite
+diversity of time takes place in eternity, the only thing that is real.
+The whole history of the earth and its inhabitants takes place, not in
+time, but in eternity. Before the existence of the earth and our solar
+system, there was another time, measured by other motions, and having
+relation to other beings. When the earth shall exist no longer, there
+may be in the place we now occupy, another time again, for other beings.
+But they are not realities. A hundred millions of centuries, and a
+second, have the same real length in eternity. In the middle of space,
+we could not tell the difference. Our finite minds are not capable of
+grasping the infinite, and it is well to know that our only idea of time
+is relative, having relation to the regular events that befall this
+planet in its course, and not a thing which we can in any way compare
+with that, which is so alarming to the ideas of some--eternity.
+
+We have then to deal with the particular form of time that our planet
+makes for us, for our personal use.
+
+It turns about the sun. An entire circuit forms a period, which we can
+use for a measure in our terrestrial affairs. We call it a year, or in
+Latin _annus_, signifying a circle, whence our word _annual_.
+
+A second, shorter revolution, turns the earth upon itself, and brings
+each meridian directly facing the sun, and then round again to the
+opposite side. This period we call a _day_, from the Latin _dies_, which
+in Italian becomes _giorne_, whence the French _jour_. In Sanscrit we
+have the same word in _dyaus_.
+
+The length of time that it takes for the earth to arrive at the same
+position with respect to the stars, which is called a sidereal year,
+amounts to 365·2563744 days. But during this time, as we have seen, the
+equinox is displaced among the stars. This secular retrogression brings
+it each year a little to the east of its former position, so that the
+sun arrives there about eleven minutes too soon. By taking this amount
+from the sidereal we obtain the tropical year, which has reference to
+the seasons and the calendar. Its length is 365·2422166 days, or 365
+days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 47·8 seconds.
+
+In what way was the primitive year regulated? was it a solar or a
+sidereal year?
+
+There can be no doubt that when there was an absence of all civilisation
+and a calendar of any sort was unknown, the year meant simply the
+succession of seasons, and that no attempt would be made to reckon any
+day as its commencement. And as soon as this was attempted a difficulty
+would arise from there not being an exact number of days in the year. So
+that when reckoned as the interval between certain positions of the sun
+they would be of different lengths, which would introduce some
+difficulty as to the commencement of the year. Be this the case,
+however, or not, Mr. Haliburton's researches seem to show that the
+earliest form of year was the sidereal one, and that it was regulated by
+the Pleiades.
+
+In speaking of that constellation we have noticed that among the
+islanders of the southern hemisphere and others there are two years in
+one of ours, the first being called the Pleiades above and the second
+the Pleiades below; and we have seen how the same new year's day has
+been recognised in very many parts of the world and among the ancient
+Egyptians and Hindoos. This year would begin in November, and from the
+intimate relation of all the primitive calendars that have been
+discovered to a particular day, taken as November 17 by the Egyptians,
+it would appear probable that for a long time corrections were made both
+by the Egyptians and others in order to keep the phenomenon of the
+Pleiades just rising at sunset to one particular named day of their
+year--showing that the year they used was a sidereal one. This can be
+traced back as far as 1355 B.C. among the Egyptians, and to 1306 B.C.
+among the Hindoos. There seem to have been in use also shorter periods
+of three months, which, like the two-season year, appear to have been,
+as they are now among the Japanese, regulated by the different positions
+of the Pleiades.
+
+Among the Siamese of the present day, there are both forms of the year
+existing, one sidereal, beginning in November, and regulated by the
+fore-named constellation; and the other tropical, beginning in April.
+Whether, however, the year be reckoned by the stars or by the sun, there
+will always be a difficulty in arranging the length of the year, because
+in each case there will be about a quarter of a day over.
+
+It seems, too, to have been found more convenient in early times to take
+360 days as the length of the year, and to add an intercalary month now
+and then, rather than 365 and add a day.
+
+Thus among the earliest Egyptians the year was of 360 days, which were
+reckoned in the months, and five days were added each year, between the
+commencement of one and the end of the other, and called unlucky days.
+It was the belief of the Egyptians that these five days were the
+birthdays of their principal gods; Osiris being born on the first,
+Anieris (or Apollo) on the second, Typhon on the third, Isis on the
+fourth, Nephys (or Aphrodite) on the fifth. These appear to have some
+relation with similar unlucky days among the Greeks and Romans, and
+other nations.
+
+The 360 days of the Egyptian year were represented at Acantho, near
+Memphis, in a symbolical way, there being placed a perforated vessel,
+which each day was filled with water by one of a company of 360 priests,
+each priest having charge over one day in the year. A similar symbolism
+was used at the tomb of Osiris, around which were placed 360 pitchers,
+one of which each day was filled with milk.
+
+On the other hand, the 365 days were represented by the tomb of
+Osymandyas, at Thebes, being surrounded by a circle of gold which was
+one cubit broad and 365 cubits in circumference. On the side were
+written the risings and settings of the stars, with the prognostications
+derived from them by the Egyptian astrologers. It was destroyed,
+however, by Cambyses when the Persians conquered Egypt.
+
+They divided their year according to Herodotus into twelve months, the
+names of which have come down to us.
+
+Even with the 365 days, which their method of reckoning would
+practically come to, they would still be a quarter of a day each year
+short; so that in four years it would amount to a whole day, an error
+which would amount to something perceptible even during the life of a
+single man, by its bringing the commencement of the civil year out of
+harmony with the seasons. In fact the first day of the year would
+gradually go through all the seasons, and at the end of 1460 solar years
+there would have been completed 1461 civil years, which would bring back
+the day to its original position. This period represents a cycle of
+years in which approximately the sun and the earth come to the same
+relative position again, as regards the earth's rotation on its axis and
+revolution round the sun. This cycle was noticed by Firmicius. Another
+more accurate cycle of the same kind, noticed by Syncellus, is obtained
+by multiplying 1461 by 25, making 36,525 years, which takes into account
+the defect which the extra hours over 365 have from six. The Egyptians,
+however, did not allow their year to get into so large an error, though
+it was in error by their using sidereal time, regulating their year, and
+intercalating days, first according to the risings of the Pleiades, and
+after according to that of Sirius, the dog-star, which announced to them
+the approaching overflowing of the Nile, a phenomenon of such great
+value to Egypt that they celebrated it with annual fêtes of the greatest
+magnificence.
+
+Among the Babylonians, as we are informed by Mr. Sayce, the year was
+divided into twelve lunar months and 360 days, an intercalary month
+being added whenever a certain star, called the "star of stars," or Icu,
+also called Dilgan, by the ancient Accadians, meaning the "messenger of
+light," and what is now called Aldebaran, which was just in advance of
+the sun when it crossed the vernal equinox, was not parallel with the
+moon until the third of Nisan, that is, two days after the equinox. They
+also added shorter months of a few days each when this system became
+insufficient to keep their calendar correct.
+
+They divided their year into four quarters of three months each; the
+spring quarter not commencing with the beginning of the year when the
+sun entered the spring equinox, proving that the arrangement of seasons
+was subsequent to the settling of the calendar. The names of their
+months were given them from the corresponding signs of the zodiac; which
+was the same as our own, though the zodiac began with Aries and the year
+with Nisan.
+
+They too had cycles, but they arose from a very different cause; not
+from errors of reckoning in the civil year or the revolution of the
+earth, but from the variations of the weather. Every twelve solar years
+they expected to have the same weather repeated. When we connect this
+with their observations on the varying brightness of the sun, especially
+at the commencement of the year on the first of Nisan, which they record
+at one time as "bright yellow" and at another as "spotted," and remember
+that modern researches have shown that weather is certainly in some way
+dependent on the solar spots, which have a period _now_ of about eleven
+years, we cannot help fancying that they were very near to making these
+discoveries.
+
+The year of the ancient Persians consisted of 365 days. The extra
+quarter of a day was not noticed for 120 years, at the end of which they
+intercalated a month--in the first instance, at the end of the first
+month, which was thus doubled. At the end of another 120 years they
+inserted an intercalary month after the second month, and so on through
+all their twelve months. So that after 1440 years the series began
+again. This period they called the intercalary cycle.
+
+The calendar among the Greeks was more involved, but more useful. It
+was _luni-solar_, that is to say, they regulated it at the same time by
+the revolutions of the moon and the motion about the sun, in the
+following manner:--
+
+The year commenced with the new moon nearest to the 20th or 21st of
+June, the time of the summer solstice; it was composed in general of
+twelve months, each of which commenced on the day of the new moon, and
+which had alternately twenty-nine and thirty days.
+
+This arrangement, conformable to the lunar year, only gave 354 days to
+the civil year, and as this was too short by ten days, twenty-one hours,
+this difference, by accumulation, produced nearly eighty-seven days at
+the end of eight years, or three months of twenty-nine days each. To
+bring the lunar years into accordance with the solstices, it was
+necessary to add three intercalary months every eight years.
+
+The phases of the moon being thus brought into comparison with the
+rotation of the earth, a cycle was discovered by Meton, now known as the
+Metonic cycle, useful also in predicting eclipses, which comprised
+nineteen years, during which time 235 lunations will have very nearly
+occurred, and the full moons will return to the same dates. In fact, the
+year and the lunation are to one another very nearly in the proportion
+of 235 to 19. By observing for nineteen years the positions and phases
+of the moon, they will be found to return again in the same order at the
+same times, and they can therefore be predicted. This lunar cycle was
+adopted in the year 433 B.C. to regulate the luni-solar calendar, and it
+was engraved in letters of gold on the walls of the temple of Minerva,
+from whence comes the name _golden number_, which is given to the number
+that marks the place of the given year in this period of nineteen.
+
+Caliphus made a larger and more exact cycle by multiplying by four and
+taking away one day. Thus he made of 27,759 days 76 Julian years, during
+which there were 940 lunations.
+
+The Roman calendar was even more complicated than the Greek, and not so
+good. Romulus is said to have given to his subjects a strange
+arrangement that we can no longer understand. More of a warrior than a
+philosopher, this founder of Rome made the year to consist of ten
+months, some being of twenty days and others of fifty-five. These
+unequal lengths were probably regulated by the agricultural works to be
+done, and by the prevailing religious ideas. After the conclusion of
+these days they began counting again in the same order; so that the year
+had only 304 days.
+
+The first of these ten months was called _Mars_ after the name of the
+god from whom Romulus pretended to have descended. The name of the
+second, Aprilis, was derived from the word _aperire_, to open, because
+it was at the time that the earth opened; or it may be, from Aphrodite,
+one of the names of Venus, the supposed grandmother of Æneas. The third
+month was consecrated to _Maïa_, the mother of Mercury. The names of
+the six others expressed simply their order--Quintilis, the fifth;
+Sextilis, the sixth; September, the seventh; and so on.
+
+Numa added two months to the ten of Romulus; one took the name of
+_Januarius_, from _Janus_: the name of the other was derived either from
+the sacrifices (_februalia_), by which the faults committed during the
+course of the past year were expiated, or from _Februo___, the god of
+the dead, to which the last month was consecrated. The year then had 355
+days.
+
+These Roman months have become our own, and hence a special interest
+attaches to the consideration of their origin, and the explanation of
+the manner in which they have been modified and supplemented. Each of
+them was divided into unequal parts, by the days which were known as the
+calends, nones, and ides. The calends were invariably fixed to the first
+day of each month; the nones came on the 5th or 7th, and the ides the
+13th or 15th.
+
+The Romans, looking forward, as children do to festive days, to the fête
+which came on these particular days, named each day by its distance from
+the next that was following. Immediately after the calends of a month,
+the dates were referred to the nones, each day being called seven, six,
+five, and so on days before the nones; on the morrow of the nones they
+counted to the ides; and so the days at the end of the month always bore
+the name of the calends of the month following.
+
+To complete the confusion the 2nd day before the fête was called the
+3rd, by counting the fête itself as the 1st, and so they added one
+throughout to the number that _we_ should now say expressed our distance
+from a certain date.
+
+Since there were thus ten days short in each year, it was soon found
+necessary to add them on, so a supplementary month was created, which
+was called Mercedonius. This month, by another anomaly, was placed
+between the 23rd and 24th of February. Thus, after February 23rd, came
+1st, 2nd, 3rd of Mercedonius; and then after the dates of this
+supplementary month were gone through, the original month was taken up
+again, and they went on with the 24th of February.
+
+And finally, to complete the medley, the priests who had the charge of
+regulating this complex calendar, acquitted themselves as badly as they
+could; by negligence or an arbitrary use of their power they lengthened
+or shortened the year without any uniform rule. Often, indeed, they
+consulted in this nothing but their own convenience, or the interests of
+their friends.
+
+The disorder which this license had introduced into the calendar
+proceeded so far that the months had changed from the seasons, those of
+winter being advanced to the autumn, those of the autumn to the summer.
+The fêtes were celebrated in seasons different from those in which they
+were instituted, so that of Ceres happened when the wheat was in the
+blade, and that of Bacchus when the raisins were green. Julius Cæsar,
+therefore, determined to establish a solar year according to the known
+period of revolution of the sun, that is 365 days and a quarter. He
+ordained that each fourth year a day should be intercalated in the place
+where the month Mercedonius used to be inserted, _i.e._ between the 23rd
+and 24th of February.
+
+The 6th of the calends of March in ordinary years was the 24th of
+February; it was called _sexto-kalendas_. When an extra day was put in
+every fourth year before the 24th, this was a second 6th day, and was
+therefore called _bissexto-kalendas_, whence we get the name bissextile,
+applied to leap year.
+
+But it was necessary also to bring back the public fêtes to the seasons
+they ought to be held in: for this purpose Cæsar was obliged to insert
+in the current year, 46 B.C. (or 708 A.U.C.), two intercalary months
+beside the month Mercedonius. There was, therefore, a year of fifteen
+months divided into 445 days, and this was called the year of confusion.
+
+Cæsar gave the strictest injunctions to Sosigenes, a celebrated
+Alexandrian astronomer whom he brought to Rome for this purpose; and on
+the same principles Flavius was ordered to compose a new calendar, in
+which all the Roman fêtes were entered--following, however, the old
+method of reckoning the days from the calends, nones, and ides.
+Antonius, after the death of Cæsar, changed the name of Quintilis, in
+which Julius Cæsar was born, into the name _Julius_, whence we derive
+our name July. The name of _Augustus_ was given to the month _Sextilis_,
+because the Emperor Augustus obtained his greatest victories during that
+month.
+
+Tiberius, Nero, and other imperial monsters attempted to give their
+names to the other months. But the people had too much independence and
+sense of justice to accord them such a flattery.
+
+The remaining months we have as they were named in the days of Numa
+Pompilius.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 57.--THE ROMAN CALENDAR.]
+
+A cubical block of white marble has been found at Pompeii which
+illustrates this very well.
+
+Each of the four sides is divided into three columns, and on each column
+is the information about the month. Each month is surmounted by the sign
+of the zodiac through which the sun is passing. Beneath the name of the
+month is inscribed the number of days it contains; the date of the
+nones, the number of the hours of the day, and of the night; the place
+of the sun, the divinity under whose protection the month is placed, the
+agricultural works that are to be done in it, the civil and
+ecclesiastical ceremonies that are to be performed. These inscriptions
+are to be seen under the month January to the left of the woodcut.
+
+The reform thus introduced by Julius Cæsar is commonly known as the
+_Julian reform_. The first year in which this calendar was followed was
+44 B.C.
+
+The Julian calendar was in use, without any modification, for a great
+number of years; nevertheless, the mean value which had been assigned to
+the civil year being a little different to that of the tropical, a
+noticeable change at length resulted in the dates in which, each year,
+the seasons commenced; so that if no remedy had been introduced, the
+same season would be displaced little by little each year, so as to
+commence successively in different months.
+
+The Council of Nice, which was held in the year 325 of the Christian
+era, adopted a fixed rule to determine the time at which Easter falls.
+This rule was based on the supposed fact that the spring equinox
+happened every year on the 21st of March, as it did at the time of the
+meeting of the Council. This would indeed be the case if the mean value
+of the civil year of the Julian calendar was exactly equal to the
+tropical year. But while the first is 365·25 days, the second is
+365·242264 days; so that the tropical year is too small by 11 minutes
+and 8 seconds. It follows hence that after the lapse of four Julian
+years the vernal equinox, instead of happening exactly at the same time
+as it did four years before, will happen 44 minutes 32 seconds too soon;
+and will gain as much in each succeeding four years. So that at the end
+of a certain number of years, after the year 325, the equinox will
+happen on the 20th of March, afterwards on the 19th, and so on. This
+continual advance notified by the astronomers, determined Pope Gregory
+XIII. to introduce a new reform into the calendar.
+
+It was in the year 1582 that the _Gregorian reform_ was put into
+operation. At that epoch the vernal equinox happened on the 11th instead
+of the 21st of March. To get rid of this advance of ten days that the
+equinox had made and to bring it back to the original date, Pope Gregory
+decided that the day after the 4th of October, 1582, should be called
+the 15th instead of the 5th. This change only did away with the
+inconvenience at the time attaching to the Julian calendar; it was
+necessary to make also some modification in the rule which served to
+determine the lengths of the civil years, in order to avoid the same
+error for the future.
+
+So the Pope determined that in each 400 years there should be only 97
+bissextile years, instead of 100, as there used to be in the Julian
+calendar. This made three days taken off the 400 years, and in
+consequence the mean value of the civil year is reduced to 365·2425
+days, which is not far from the true tropical year. The Gregorian year
+thus obtained is still too great by ·000226 of a day; the date of the
+vernal equinox will still then advance in virtue of this excess, but it
+is easy to see that the Gregorian reform will suffice for a great number
+of centuries.
+
+The method in which it is carried out is as follows:--In the Julian
+calendar each year that divided by four when expressed in its usual way,
+by A.D., was a leap year, and therefore each year that completed a
+century was such, as 1300, 1400 and so on--but in the Gregorian reform,
+all these century numbers are to be reckoned common years, unless the
+number without the two cyphers divides by four; thus 1,900 will be a
+common year and 2,000 a leap year. It is easy to see that this will
+leave out three leap years in every 400 years.
+
+The Gregorian calendar was immediately adopted in France and Germany,
+and a little later in England. Now it is in operation in all the
+Christian countries of Europe, except Russia, where the Julian calendar
+is still followed. It follows that Russian dates do not agree with ours.
+In 1582, the difference was ten days, and this difference remained the
+same till the end of the seventeenth century, when the year 1700 was
+bissextile in the Julian, but not in the Gregorian calendar, so the
+difference increased to eleven days, and now in the same way is twelve
+days.
+
+Next to the year, comes the day as the most natural division of time in
+connection with the earth, though it admits of less difference in its
+arrangements, as we cannot be mistaken as to its length. It is the
+natural standard too of our division of time into shorter intervals such
+as hours, minutes, and seconds. By the word _day_ we mean of course the
+interval during which the earth makes a complete revolution round
+itself, while _daytime_ may be used to express the portion of it during
+which our portion of the earth is towards the sun. The Greeks to avoid
+ambiguity used the word _nyctemere_, meaning night and day.
+
+No ancient nation is known that did not divide the day into twenty-four
+hours, when they divided it at all into such small parts, which seems to
+show that such a division was comparatively a late institution, and was
+derived from the invention of a single nation. It would necessarily
+depend on the possibility of reckoning shorter periods of time than the
+natural one of the day. In the earliest ages, and even afterwards, the
+position of the sun in the heavens by day, and the position of the
+constellations by night, gave approximately the time. Instead of asking
+What "o'clock" is it? the Greeks would say, "What star is passing?" The
+next method of determining time depended on the uniform motion of water
+from a cistern. It was invented by the Egyptians, and was called a
+clepsydra, and was in use among the Babylonians, the Greeks, and the
+Romans. The more accurate measurement of time by means of clocks was not
+introduced till about 140 B.C., when Trimalcion had one in his dining
+chamber. The use of them, however, had been so lost that in 760 A.D.
+they were considered quite novelties. The clocks, of course, have to be
+regulated by the sun, an operation which has been the employment of
+astronomers, among other things, for centuries. Each locality had its
+own time according to the moment when the sun passed the meridian of the
+place, a moment which was determined by observation.
+
+Before the introduction of the hour, the day and night appear to have
+been divided into watches. Among the Babylonians the night was reckoned
+from what we call 6 A.M. to 6 P.M., and divided into three watches of
+four hours each--called the "evening," "middle," and "morning" watch.
+These were later superseded by the more accurate hour, or rather "double
+hour" or _casbri_, each of which was divided into sixty minutes and
+sixty seconds, and the change taking place not earlier than 2,000 B.C.
+Whether the Babylonians (or Accadians) were the inventors of the hour it
+is difficult to say, though they almost certainly were of other
+divisions of time. It is remarkable that in the ancient Jewish
+Scriptures we find no mention of any such division until the date at
+which the prophecy of Daniel was written, that is, until the Jews had
+come in contact with the Babylonians.
+
+Some nations have counted the twenty-four hours consecutively from one
+to twenty-four as astronomers do now, but others and the majority have
+divided the whole period into two of twelve hours each.
+
+The time of the commencement of the day has varied much with the
+different nations.
+
+The Jews, the ancient Athenians, the Chinese, and several other peoples,
+more or less of the past, have commenced the day with the setting of the
+sun, a custom which perhaps originated with the determination of the
+commencement of the year, and therefore of the day, by the observation
+of some stars that were seen at sunset, a custom continued in our memory
+by the well-known words, "the evening and the morning were the first
+day."
+
+The Italians, till recently, counted the hours in a single series,
+between two settings of the sun. The only gain in such a method would be
+to sailors, that they might know how many hours they had before night
+overtook them; the sun always setting at twenty-four o'clock; if the
+watch marked nineteen or twenty, it would mean they had five or four
+hours to see by--but such a gain would be very small against the
+necessity of setting their watches differently every morning, and the
+inconvenience of never having fixed hours for meals.
+
+Among the Babylonians, Syrians, Persians, the modern Greeks, and
+inhabitants of the Balearic Isles, &c., the day commenced with the
+rising of the sun. Nevertheless, among all the astronomical phenomena
+that may be submitted to observation, none is so liable to uncertainty
+as the rising and setting of the heavenly bodies, owing among other
+things to the effects of refraction.
+
+Among the ancient Arabians, followed in this by the author of the
+_Almagesta_, and by Ptolemy, the day commenced at noon. Modern
+astronomers adopt this usage. The moment of changing the date is then
+always marked by a phenomenon easy to observe.
+
+Lastly, that we may see how every variety possible is sure to be chosen
+when anything is left to the free choice of men, we know that with the
+Egyptians, Hipparchus, the ancient Romans, and all the European nations
+at present, the day begins at midnight. Copernicus among the astronomers
+of our era followed this usage. We may remark that the commencement of
+the astronomical day commences twelve hours _after_ the civil day.
+
+Of the various periods composed of several days, the week of seven days
+is the most widely spread--and of considerable antiquity. Yet it is not
+the universal method of dividing months. Among the Egyptians the month
+was divided into periods of ten days each; and we find no sign of the
+seven days--the several days of the whole month having a god assigned to
+each. Among the Hindoos no trace has been found by Max Müller in their
+ancient Vedic literature of any such division, but the month is divided
+into two according to the moon; the _clear_ half from the new to the
+full moon, the _obscure_ half from the full to the new, and a similar
+division has been found among the Aztecs. The Chinese divide the month
+like the Egyptians. Among the Babylonians two methods of dividing the
+month existed, and both of them from the earliest times. The first
+method was to separate it into two halves of fifteen days each, and each
+of these periods into three shorter ones of five days, making six per
+month. The other method is the week of seven days. The days of the week
+with them, as they are with many nations now, were named after the sun
+and moon and the five planets, and the 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st, and 28th
+days of each month--days separated by seven days each omitting the
+19th--were termed "days of rest," on which certain works were forbidden
+to be done. From this it is plain that we have here all the elements of
+our modern week. We find it, as is well known, in the earliest of Hebrew
+writings, but without the mark which gives reason for the number seven,
+that is the names of the seven heavenly bodies. It would seem most
+probable, then, that we must look to the Accadians as the originators of
+our modern week, from whom the Hebrews may have--and, if so, at a very
+early period--borrowed the idea.
+
+It is known that the week was not employed in the ancient calendars of
+the Romans, into which it was afterwards introduced through the medium
+of the biblical traditions, and became a legal usage under the first
+Christian Emperors. From thence it has been propagated together with
+the Julian calendar amongst all the populations that have been subjected
+to the Roman power. We find the period of seven days employed in the
+astronomical treatises of Hindoo writers, but not before the fifth
+century.
+
+Dion Cassius, in the third century, represents the week as universally
+spread in his times, and considers it a recent invention which he
+attributes to the Egyptians; meaning thereby, doubtless, the astrologers
+of the Alexandrian school, at that time very eager to spread the
+abstract speculations of Plato and Pythagoras.
+
+If the names of the days of the week were derived from the planets, the
+sun and moon, as is easy to see, it is not so clear how they came to
+have their present order. The original order in which they were supposed
+to be placed in the various heavens that supported them according to
+their distance from the earth was thus:--Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun,
+Venus, Mercury, the Moon. One supposition is that each hour of the day
+was sacred to one of these, and that each day was named from the god
+that presided over the first hours. Now, as seven goes three times into
+twenty-four, and leaves three over, it is plain that if Saturn began the
+first hour of Saturday, the next day would begin with the planet three
+further on in the series, which would bring us to the Sun for Sunday,
+three more would bring us next day to the Moon for Monday, and so to
+Mars for Tuesday, to Mercury for Wednesday, to Jupiter for Thursday, to
+Venus for Friday, and so round again to Saturn for Saturday.
+
+The same method is illustrated by putting the symbols in order round the
+circumference of a circle, and joining them by lines to the one most
+opposite, following always in the same order as in the following figure.
+We arrive in this way at the order of the days of the week.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 58.]
+
+All the nations who have adopted the week have not kept to the same
+names for them, but have varied them according to taste. Thus Sunday was
+changed by the Christian Church to the "Lord's Day," a name it still
+partially retains among ourselves, but which is the regular name among
+several continental nations, including the corrupted _Dimanche_ of the
+French. The four middle days have also been very largely changed, as
+they have been among ourselves and most northern nations to commemorate
+the names of the great Scandinavian gods Tuesco, Woden, Thor, and Friga.
+This change was no doubt due to the old mythology of the Druids being
+amalgamated with the new method of collecting the days into weeks.
+
+We give below a general table of the names of the days of the week in
+several different languages.
+
+ +------------+-----------+------------+------------+------------------+
+ | ENGLISH.   | FRENCH.   | ITALIAN.   | SPANISH.   | PORTUGUESE.      |
+ +------------+-----------+------------+------------+------------------+
+ | Sunday.    | Dimanche. | Domenica.  | Domingo.   | Domingo.         |
+ | Monday.    | Lundi.    | Lunedi.    | Luneo.     | Secunda feira.   |
+ | Tuesday.   | Mardi.    | Marteti.   | Martes.    | Terça feira.     |
+ | Wednesday. | Mercredi  | Mercoledi. | Miercoles. | Quarta feira.    |
+ | Thursday.  | Jeudi.    | Giovedi.   | Jueves.    | Quinta feira.    |
+ | Friday.    | Vendredi. | Venerdi.   | Viernes.   | Sexta feira.     |
+ | Saturday.  | Samedi.   | Sabbato.   | Sabado.    | Sabbado.         |
+ +------------+-----------+------------+------------+------------------+
+ +------------+--------------+-------------+---------------+-----------+
+ | GERMAN.    | ANGLO-SAXON. | ANCIENT     | ANCIENT       | DUTCH.    |
+ |            |              | FRISIAN.    | NORTHMEN.     |           |
+ +------------+--------------+-------------+---------------+-----------+
+ | Sonntag.   | Sonnan däg.  | Sonna dei.  | Sunnu dagr.   | Zondag.   |
+ | Montag.    | Monan däg.   | Mona dei.   | Mâna dagr.    | Maandag.  |
+ | Dienstag.  | Tives däg.   | Tys dei.    | Tyrs dagr.    | Dingsdag. |
+ | Mitwoch.   | Vôdenes däg. | Werns dei.  | Odins dagr.   | Woensdag. |
+ | Donnerstag.| Thunores däg.| Thunres dei.| Thors dagr.   | Donderdag.|
+ | Freitag.   | Frige däg.   | Frigen dei. | Fria dagr.    | Vrijdag.  |
+ | Samstag.   | Soeternes    | Sater dei.  | Laugar dagr   | Zaturdag. |
+ |            |    däg.      |             |  (washing day)|           |
+ +------------+--------------+-------------+---------------+-----------+
+
+The cycle which must be completed with the present calendar to bring the
+same day of the year to the same day of the week, is twenty-eight years,
+since there is one day over every ordinary year, and two every leap
+year; which will make an overlapping of days which, except at the
+centuries, will go through all the changes in twenty-eight times, which
+forms what is called the solar cycle.
+
+There is but one more point that will be interesting about the calendar,
+namely, the date from which we reckon our years.
+
+Among the Jews it was from the creation of the world, as recorded in
+their sacred books--but no one can determine when that was with
+sufficient accuracy to make it represent anything but an agreement of
+the present day. Different interpreters do not come within a thousand
+years of one another for its supposed date; although some of them have
+determined it very accurately to their own satisfaction--one going so
+far as to say that creation finished at nine o'clock one Sunday morning!
+In other cases the date has been reckoned from national events--as in
+the Olympiads, the foundation of Rome, &c. The word we now use, ÆRA,
+points to a particular date from which to reckon, since it is composed
+of the initials of the words AB EXORDIO REGNI AUGUSTI "from the
+commencement of the reign of Augustus." At the present day the point of
+departure, both forwards and backwards, is the year of the birth of
+Jesus Christ--a date which is itself controverted, and the use of which
+did not exist among the first Christians. They exhibited great
+indifference, for many centuries, as to the year in which Jesus Christ
+entered the world. It was a monk who lived in obscurity at Rome, about
+the year 580, who was a native of so unknown a country that he has been
+called a Scythian, and whose name was Denys, surnamed _Exiguus_, or the
+Little, who first attempted to discover by chronological calculations
+the year of the birth of Jesus Christ.
+
+The era of Denys the Little was not adopted by his contemporaries. Two
+centuries afterwards, the Venerable Bede exhorted Christians to make use
+of it--and it only came into general use about the year 800.
+
+Among those who adopted the Christian era, some made the year commence
+with March, which was the first month of the year of Romulus; others in
+January, which commences the year of Numa; others commenced on Christmas
+Day; and others on Lady Day, March 25. Another form of nominal year was
+that which commenced with Easter Day, in which case, the festival being
+a movable one, some years were shorter than others, and in some years
+there might be two 2nd, 3rd, &c., of April, if Easter fell in one year
+on the 2nd, and next year a few days later.
+
+The 1st of January was made to begin the year in Germany in 1500. An
+edict of Charles IX. prescribes the same in France in 1563. But it was
+not till 1752 that the change was made in England by Lord Chesterfield's
+Act. The year 1751, as the year that had preceded it, began on March
+25th, and it should have lasted till the next Lady Day; but according to
+the Act, the months of January, February, and part of March were to be
+reckoned as part of the year 1752. By this means the unthinking seemed
+to have grown old suddenly by three months, and popular clamour was
+raised against the promoter of the Bill, and cries raised of "Give us
+our three months." Such have been the various changes that our calendar
+has undergone to bring it to its present state.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE END OF THE WORLD.
+
+
+Perhaps the most anxious question that has been asked of the astronomer
+is when the world is to come to an end. It is a question which, of
+course, he has no power to answer with truth; but it is also one that
+has often been answered in good faith. It has perhaps been somewhat
+natural to ask such a question of an astronomer, partly because his
+science naturally deals with the structure of the universe, which might
+give some light as to its future, and partly because of his connection
+with astrology, whose province it was supposed to be to open the destiny
+of all things. Yet the question has been answered by others than by
+astronomers, on grounds connected with their faith. In the early ages of
+the Church, the belief in the rapid approach of the end of the world was
+universally spread amongst Christians. The Apocalypse of St. John and
+the Acts of the Apostles seemed to announce its coming before that
+generation passed away. Afterwards, it was expected at the year 1000;
+and though these beliefs did not rest in any way on astronomical
+grounds, yet to that science was recourse had for encouragement or
+discouragement of the idea. The middle ages, fall of simple faith and
+superstitious credulity, were filled with fear of this terrible
+catastrophe.
+
+As the year 1000 approached, the warnings became frequent and very
+pressing. Thus, for example, Bernard of Thuringia, about 960, began to
+announce publicly that the world was about to end, declaring that he had
+had a particular revelation of the fact. He took for his text the
+enigmatical words of the Apocalypse: "At the end of one thousand years,
+Satan shall be loosed from his prison, and shall seduce the people that
+are in the four quarters of the earth. The book of life shall be open,
+and the sea shall give up her dead." He fixed the day when the
+Annunciation of the Virgin should coincide with Good Friday as the end
+of all things. This happened in 992, but nothing extraordinary happened.
+
+During the tenth century the royal proclamations opened by this
+characteristic phrase: _Whereas the end of the world is approaching_....
+
+In 1186 the astrologers frightened Europe by announcing a conjunction of
+all the planets. Rigord, a writer of that period, says in his _Life of
+Philip Augustus_: "The astrologers of the East, Jews, Saracens, and even
+Christians, sent letters all over the world, in which they predicted,
+with perfect assurance, that in the month of September there would be
+great tempests, earthquakes, mortality among men, seditions and
+discords, revolutions in kingdoms, and the destruction of all things.
+But," he adds, "the event very soon belied their predictions."
+
+Some years after, in 1198, another alarm of the end of the world was
+raised, but this time it was not dependent on celestial phenomena. It
+was said that Antichrist was born in Babylon, and therefore all the
+human race would be destroyed.
+
+It would be a curious list to make of all the years in which it was said
+that Antichrist was born; they might be counted by hundreds, to say
+nothing of the future.
+
+At the commencement of the fourteenth century, the alchemist Arnault of
+Villeneuve announced the end of the world for 1335. In his treatise _De
+Sigillis_ he applies the influence of the stars to alchemy, and expounds
+the mystical formula by which demons are to be conjured.
+
+St. Vincent Ferrier, a famous Spanish preacher, gave to the world as
+many years' duration as there were verses in the Psalms--about 2537.
+
+The sixteenth century produced a very plentiful crop of predictions of
+the final catastrophe. Simon Goulart, for example, gave the world an
+appalling account of terrible sights seen in Assyria--where a mountain
+opened and showed a scroll with letters of Greek--"The end of the world
+is coming." This was in 1532; but after that year had passed in safety,
+Leovitius, a famous astrologer, predicted it again for 1584. Louis
+Gayon reports that the fright at this time was great. The churches could
+not hold those who sought a refuge in them, and a great number made
+their wills, without reflecting that there was no use in it if the whole
+world was to finish.
+
+One of the most famous mathematicians of Europe, named Stoffler, who
+flourished in the 16th century, and who worked for a long time at the
+reform of the calendar proposed by the Council of Constance, predicted a
+universal deluge for 1524. This deluge was to happen in the month of
+February, because Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars were then together in the
+sign of the Fishes. Everyone in Europe, Asia, and Africa, to whom these
+tidings came, was in a state of consternation. They expected a deluge,
+in spite of the rainbow. Many contemporary authors report that the
+inhabitants of the maritime provinces of Germany sold their lands for a
+mere trifle to those who had more money and less credulity. Each built
+himself a boat like an ark. A doctor of Toulouse, named Auriol, made a
+very large ark for himself, his family, and his friends, and the same
+precautions were taken by a great many people in Italy. At last the
+month of February came, and not a drop of rain fell. Never was a drier
+month or a more puzzled set of astrologers. Nevertheless they were not
+discouraged nor neglected for all that, and Stoffler himself, associated
+with the celebrated Regiomontanus, predicted once more that the end of
+the world would come in 1588, or at least that there would be frightful
+events which would overturn the earth.
+
+This new prediction was a new deception; nothing extraordinary occurred
+in 1588. The year 1572, however, witnessed a strange phenomenon, capable
+of justifying all their fears. An unknown star came suddenly into view
+in the constellation of Cassiopeia, so brilliant that it was visible
+even in full daylight, and the astrologers calculated that it was the
+star of the Magi which had returned, and that it announced the second
+coming of Jesus Christ.
+
+The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were filled with new
+predictions of great variety.
+
+Even our own century has not been without such. A religious work,
+published in 1826, by the Count Sallmard Montfort, demonstrated
+perfectly that the world had no more than ten years to exist. "The
+world," he said, "is old, and its time of ending is near, and I believe
+that the epoch of that terrible event is not far off. Jacob, the chief
+of the twelve tribes of Israel, and consequently of the ancient Church,
+was born in 2168 of the world, _i.e._, 1836 B.C. The ancient Church,
+which was the figure of the new, lasted 1836 years. Hence the new one
+will only last till 1836 A.D."
+
+Similar prophecies by persons of various nations have in like manner
+been made, without being fulfilled. Indeed, we have had our own
+prophets; but they have proved themselves incredulous of their own
+predictions, by taking leases that should _commence_ in the year of the
+world's destruction.
+
+But we have one in store for us yet. In 1840, Pierre Louis of Paris
+calculated that the end would be in 1900, and he calculated in this
+way:--The Apocalypse says the Gentiles shall occupy the holy city for
+forty-two months. The holy city was taken by Omar in 636. Forty-two
+months of years is 1260, which brings the return of the Jews to 1896,
+which will precede by a few years the final catastrophe. Daniel also
+announces the arrival of Antichrist 2,300 days after the establishment
+of Artaxerxes on the throne of Persia, 400 B.C., which again brings us
+to 1900.
+
+Some again have put it at 2000 A.D., which will make 6,000 years, as
+they think, from the creation; these are the days of work; then comes
+the 1,000 years of millennial sabbath.
+
+We are led far away by these vain speculations from the wholesome study
+of astronomy; they are useful only in showing how by a little latitude
+that science may wind itself into all the questions that in any way
+affect the earth.
+
+Indeed, since the world began, the world will doubtless end, and
+astronomers are still asked how could it be brought about?
+
+Certainly it is not an impossible event, and there are only too many
+ways in which it has been imagined it might occur.
+
+The question is one that stands on a very different footing from that it
+occupied before the days of Galileo and Copernicus. _Then_ the earth was
+believed to be the centre of the universe, and all the heavens and stars
+created for it. _Then_ the commencement of the world was the
+commencement of the universe, its destruction would be the destruction
+of all. _Now_, thanks to the revolution in feeling that has been
+accomplished by the progress of astronomy, we have learned our own
+insignificance, and that amongst the infinite number of stars, each
+supporting their own system of inhabited planets, our earth occupies an
+infinitesimally small portion, and the destruction of it would make no
+difference whatever--still less its becoming uninhabitable. It is an
+event which must have happened and be happening to other worlds, without
+affecting the infinite life of the universe in any marked degree.
+
+Nevertheless, for ourselves, the question remains as interesting as if
+we were the all in all, but must be approached in a different manner.
+
+Numerous hypotheses have been put forth on the question but they may
+mostly be dismissed as vain.
+
+Buffon calculated that it had taken 74,832 years for the earth to cool
+down to its present temperature, and that it will take 93,291 years
+more before it would be too cold for men to live upon it. But Sir
+William Thomson has shown that the internal heat of the earth, supposed
+to be due to its cooling from fusion, cannot have seriously modified
+climate for a long series of years, and that life depends essentially on
+the heat of the sun.
+
+Another hypothesis, the most ancient of all, is that which supposes the
+earth will be destroyed by fire. It comes down from Zoroaster and the
+Jews; and on the improbable supposition of the thin crust of the earth
+over a molten mass, this is thought possible. However, as the tendency
+in the past has been all the other way, namely, to make the effect of
+the inner heat of the earth less marked on the surface, we have no
+reason to expect a reversal.
+
+A third theory would make the earth die more gradually and more surely.
+It is known that by the wearing down of the surface by the rains and
+rivers, there is a tendency to reduce mountains and all high parts of
+the earth to a uniform level, a tendency which is only counteracted by
+some elevating force within the earth. If these elevating forces be
+supposed to be due to the internal heat--a hypothesis which cannot be
+proved--then with the cooling of the earth the elevating forces would
+cease, and, finally, the whole of the continent would be brought beneath
+the sea and terrestrial life perish.
+
+Another interesting but groundless hypothesis is that of Adhémar on the
+periodicity of deluges. This theory depends on the fact of the unequal
+length of the seasons in the two hemispheres. Our autumn and our winter
+last 179 days. In the southern hemisphere they last 186 days. These
+seven days, or 168 hours, of difference, increase each year the coldness
+of the pole. During 10,500 years the ice accumulates at one pole and
+melts at the other, thereby displacing the earth's centre of gravity.
+Now a time will arrive when, after the maximum of elevation of
+temperature on one side, a catastrophe will happen, which will bring
+back the centre of gravity to the centre of figure, and cause an immense
+deluge. The deluge of the north pole was 4,200 years ago, therefore the
+next will be 6,300 hence. It is very obvious to ask on this--_Why_
+should there be a _catastrophe_? and why should not the centre of
+gravity return _gradually_ as it was gradually displaced?
+
+Another theory has been that it would perish by a comet. That it will
+not be by the shock we have already seen from the light weight of the
+comet and from experience; but it has been suggested that the gas may
+combine with the air, and an explosion take place that would destroy us
+all; but is not that also contradicted by experience?
+
+Another idea is that we shall finally fall into the sun by the
+resistance of the ether to our motion. Encke's comet loses in
+thirty-three years a thousandth part of its velocity. It appears then
+that we should have to wait millions of centuries before we came too
+near the sun.
+
+In reality, however, we are simply dependent on our sun, and our destiny
+depends upon that.
+
+In the first place, in its voyage through space it might encounter or
+come within the range of some dark body we at present know nothing of,
+and the attraction might put out of harmony all our solar system with
+calamitous results. Or since we are aware that the sun is a radiating
+body giving out its heat on all sides, and therefore growing colder, it
+may one day happen that it will be too cold to sustain life on the
+earth. It is, we know, a variable star, and stars have been seen to
+disappear, or even to have a catastrophe happen to them, as the kindling
+of enormous quantities of gas. A catastrophe in the sun will be our own
+end.
+
+Fontenelle has amusingly described in verse the result of the sun
+growing cold, which may be thus Englished:--
+
+  "Of this, though, I haven't a doubt,
+    One day when there isn't much light,
+  The poor little sun will go out
+    And bid us politely--good-night.
+  Look out from the stars up on high,
+    Some other to help you to see;
+  I can't shine any longer, not I,
+    Since shining don't benefit me.
+
+  "Then down on our poor habitation
+    What numberless evils will fall,
+  When the heavens demand liquidation,
+    Why all will go smash, and then all
+  Society come to an end.
+    Soon out of the sleepy affair
+  His way will each traveller wend,
+    No testament leaving, nor heir."
+
+The cooling of the sun must, however, take place very gradually, as no
+cooling has been perceived during the existence of man; and the growth
+of plants in the earliest geological ages, and the life of animals,
+prove that for so long a time it has been within the limits within which
+life has been possible--and we may look forward to as long in the
+future.
+
+It is not of course the time when the sun will become a dark ball,
+surrounded by illuminated planets, that we must reckon as the end of the
+earth. Life would have ceased long before that stage--no man will
+witness the death of the sun.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XVI.--THE END OF THE WORLD.]
+
+The diminution of the sun's heat would have for its natural effect the
+enlargement of the glacial zones! the sea and the land in those parts of
+the earth would cease to support life, which would gradually be drawn
+closer to the equatorial belt. Man, who by his nature and his
+intelligence is best fitted to withstand cold climates, would remain
+among the last of the inhabitants, reduced to the most miserable
+nourishment. Drawn together round the equator, the last of the sons of
+earth would wage a last combat with death, and exactly as the shades
+approached, would the human genius, fortified by all the acquirements of
+ages past--give out its brightest light, and attempt in vain to throw
+off the fatal cover that was destined to engulf him. At last, the earth,
+fading, dry, and sterile, would become an immense cemetery. And it would
+be the same with the other planets. The sun, already become red, would
+at last become black, and the planetary system would be an assemblage of
+black balls revolving round a larger black ball.
+
+Of course this is all imaginary, and cannot affect ourselves, but the
+very idea of it is melancholy, and enough to justify the words of
+Campbell:--
+
+  "For this hath science searched on weary wing
+  By shore and sea--each mute and living thing,
+  Or round the cope her living chariot driven
+  And wheeled in triumph through the signs of heaven.
+  Oh, star-eyed science, hast thou wandered there
+  To waft us home the message of despair?"
+
+In reality, as we know nothing of the origin, so we know nothing of the
+end of the world; and where so much has been accomplished, there are
+obviously infinite possibilities enough to satisfy the hopes of every
+one.
+
+While some stars may be fading, others may be rising into their place,
+and man need not be identified with one earth alone, but may rest
+content in the idea that the life universal is eternal.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+LONDON: P. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
+
+
+1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_.
+
+2. Images have been moved from the middle of a paragraph to the closest
+paragraph break.
+
+3. The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version
+these letters have been replaced with transliterations, for example,
+[Greek: a] represents first Greek letter alpha.
+
+3. The original text includes certain symbols for planets and zodiac
+signs. For this text version these symbols are replaced by text name
+of the corresponding symbol. For example, [symbol: sun] replaces the
+symbolic representation of sun.
+
+4. In this text version, fractions are represented using hyphen and
+forward slash. For example, 3-1/2 stands for three and a half.
+
+5. Certain words use oe ligature in the original.
+
+6. Obvious errors in punctuation and a few misprints have been silently
+corrected.
+
+7. Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in
+hyphenation and ligature usage have been retained.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Astronomical Myths, by John F. Blake
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Astronomical Myths, by John F. Blake.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Astronomical Myths, by John F. Blake
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Astronomical Myths
+       Based on Flammarions's History of the Heavens
+
+Author: John F. Blake
+
+Release Date: June 22, 2011 [EBook #36495]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ASTRONOMICAL MYTHS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eric Hutton and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>ASTRONOMICAL MYTHS.</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 80px;">
+<img src="images/002.jpg" width="80" height="80" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 545px;">
+<a name="Frontispiece" id="Frontispiece"></a>
+<img src="images/003.jpg" width="545" height="800" alt="The Cliffs of Flamanville." title="" />
+<span class="caption">The Cliffs of Flamanville.</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<h1>ASTRONOMICAL MYTHS,</h1>
+
+<h5>BASED ON</h5>
+
+<h3>FLAMMARION'S<br />
+<big>"HISTORY OF THE HEAVENS."</big></h3>
+
+<h5>BY</h5>
+
+<h2>JOHN F. BLAKE.</h2>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 160px;">
+<img src="images/005.jpg" width="160" height="160" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h4>London:<br />
+MACMILLAN AND CO.<br />
+1877.</h4>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+
+<h5>
+LONDON:<br />
+R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS,<br />
+BREAD STREET HILL,<br />
+QUEEN VICTORIA STREET.<br />
+</h5>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/007.jpg" width="640" height="470" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h2>PREFACE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The Book which is here presented to the public is
+founded upon a French work by M. Flammarion which
+has enjoyed considerable popularity. It contained a
+number of interesting accounts of the various ideas, sometimes
+mythical, sometimes intended to be serious, that
+had been entertained concerning the heavenly bodies and
+our own earth; with a popular history of the earliest commencement
+of astronomy among several ancient peoples.
+It was originally written in the form of conversations
+between the members of an imaginary party at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span>
+seaside. It was thought that this style would hardly be
+so much appreciated by English as by French readers, and
+therefore in presenting the materials of the French author
+in an English dress the conversational form has been
+abandoned. Several facts of extreme interest in relation
+to the early astronomical myths and the development of
+the science among the ancients having been brought to
+light, especially by the researches of Mr. Haliburton, a
+considerable amount of new matter, including the whole
+chapter on the Pleiades, has been introduced, which makes
+the present issue not exactly a translation, but rather a
+book founded on the French author's work. It is hoped
+that it may be found of interest to those who care to
+know about the early days of the oldest of our sciences,
+which is now attracting general attention again by the
+magnitude of its recent advances. Astronomy also, in early
+days, as will be seen by a perusal of this book, was so
+mixed up with all the affairs of life, and contributed so
+much even to religion, that a history of its beginnings is
+found to reveal the origin of several of our ideas and
+habits, now apparently quite unconnected with the science.
+There is matter of interest here, therefore, for those who
+wish to know only the history of the general ideas of
+mankind.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 336px;">
+<img src="images/009.jpg" width="336" height="336" alt="The Annual Revolution of the Earth round the Sun, with the
+Signs of the Zodiac and the Constellations." title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="center"><span class="caption">The Annual Revolution of the Earth round the Sun, with the<br />
+Signs of the Zodiac and the Constellations.</span></p>
+
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Cliffs of Flamanville</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Frontispiece"><i>Frontispiece.</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Annual Revolution of the Earth round the Sun, with the Signs of the Zodiac and the Constellations</span></td><td align='right'><i>Page</i> <a href="#Page_ix">ix</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Earth's Year, and the Months</span></td><td align='right'>" &nbsp; <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">An Astronomer at Work</span></td><td align='right'><i>To face page</i> <a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Northern Constellations</span></td><td align='right'>" &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a href="#Page_49">49</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Constellations from the Sea-Shore</span></td><td align='right'>" &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a href="#Page_65">65</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Zodiac of Denderah</span></td><td align='right'>" &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a href="#Page_102">102</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'>&nbsp;<span class='pagenum'>[Pg x]</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>I.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Babylonian Astronomers</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>II.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Druidical Worship</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>III.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Chaldean Astronomers</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_87">87</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>IV.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Zodiac and the Dead in Egypt</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_108">108</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>V.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Legends of the Druids</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_123">123</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VI.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Nem&aelig;an Lion</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_146">146</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Heavens of the Fathers</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_191">191</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VIII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Death of Copernicus</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_208">208</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>IX.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Solar System</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_225">225</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>X.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Discovery of the Telescope</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_227">227</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XI.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Foundation of the Paris Observatory</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_229">229</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Legend of Owen</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_315">315</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XIII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Christopher Columbus and the Eclipse of the Moon</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_336">336</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XIV.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Prodigies in the Middle Ages</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_358">358</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XV.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">An Astrologer at Work</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_385">385</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XVI.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The End of the World</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_429">429</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>1.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Earliest (Aryan) Representation of the Earth</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_12">12</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>2.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Ancient Gaulish Medals, Bearing Astronomical Signs</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>3.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Ancient Celestial Sphere</span><span class='pagenum'>[Pg xi]</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>4.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Positions of the Great Bear on September 4</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_62">62</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>5.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Constellation of the Bear</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_63">63</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>6.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Constellation of Orion</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_73">73</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>7.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Chart of Constellations in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>8.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Flamsteed's Chart</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_79">79</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>9.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Arabian Sphere of the Eleventh Century</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_84">84</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>10.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Ancient Chinese Pieces of Money, Bearing Representations of the Zodiac</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_93">93</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>11.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Zodiac</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_96">96</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>12.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Diagram Illustrating the Position of Certain Stars, b.c. 1200</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_98">98</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>13.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Curious Fifteenth Century Figure, Representing Eleven different Heavens</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_150">150</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>14.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Ptolemy's Astronomical System</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_181">181</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>15.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Epicycles of Ptolemy</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_184">184</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>16.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Heavens of the Middle Ages</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_188">188</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>17.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Emblematic Drawing from Ancient Astronomical Work</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_193">193</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>18.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Egyptian System</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_194">194</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>19.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Capella's System</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_195">195</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>20.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Copernican System</span><span class='pagenum'>[Pg xii]</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_205">205</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>21.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Tycho Brahe's System</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_212">212</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>22.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Descartes' Theory of Vortices</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_216">216</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>23.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Vortices of the Stars</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_218">218</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>24.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Variation of Descartes' Theory</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_219">219</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>25.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Earth Floating</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_237">237</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>26.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Earth with Roots</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_237">237</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>27.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Earth of the Vedic Priests</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_238">238</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>28.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Hindoo Earth</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_239">239</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>29.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Earth of Anaximander</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_240">240</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>30.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Plato's Cubical Earth</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_241">241</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>31.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Egyptian Representation of the Earth</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_243">243</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>32.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Homeric Cosmography</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_247">247</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>33.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Earth of the Later Greeks</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_256">256</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>34.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Pomponius Mela's Cosmography</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_257">257</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>35.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Earth's Shadow</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_262">262</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>36.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Ditto</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_263">263</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>37.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Ditto</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_264">264</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>38.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Ditto</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_264">264</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>39.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Cosmography of Cosmas</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_268">268</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>40.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Square Earth</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_269">269</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>41.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Explanation of Sunrise</span><span class='pagenum'>[Pg xiii]</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_271">271</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>42.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Earth as an Egg</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_273">273</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>43.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Earth as a Floating Egg</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_274">274</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>44.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Eighth-Century Map of the World</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_276">276</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>45.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Tenth-Century Maps</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_277">277</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>46.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Map of Andrea Bianco</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_283">283</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>47.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">From the Map in Hereford Cathedral</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_285">285</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>48.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Ditto</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_286">286</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>49.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Cosmography of St. Denis</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_291">291</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>50.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Map of Marco Polo</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_293">293</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>51.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Map on a Medal of Charles V</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_294">294</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>52.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Dante's Infernal Regions</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_311">311</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>53.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Paradise of Fra Mauro</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_322">322</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>54.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Paradise of the Fifteenth Century</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_324">324</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>55.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Representation of a Comet, Sixteenth Century</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_349">349</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>56.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">An Egg marked with a Comet</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_352">352</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>57.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Roman Calendar</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_403">403</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>58.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Diagram Illustrating the Order of the Days of the Week</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_413">413</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 616px;">
+<img src="images/014.jpg" width="616" height="480" alt="The Earth's Year, and the Months." title="" />
+<span class="caption">The Earth's Year, and the Months.</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='right'><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE FIRST BEGINNINGS OF ASTRONOMY</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>ASTRONOMY OF THE CELTS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>ORIGIN OF THE CONSTELLATIONS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_49">49</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE ZODIAC</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_89">89</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE PLEIADES</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_111">111</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE NATURE AND STRUCTURE OF THE HEAVENS ACCORDING TO THE ANCIENTS<span class='pagenum'>[Pg xvi]</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_138">138</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE CELESTIAL HARMONY</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>ASTRONOMICAL SYSTEMS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_179">179</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE TERRESTRIAL WORLD OF THE ANCIENTS.&mdash;COSMOGRAPHY AND GEOGRAPHY</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_231">231</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'><a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>COSMOGRAPHY AND GEOGRAPHY OF THE CHURCH</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_258">258</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>LEGENDARY WORLDS OF THE MIDDLE AGES</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_300">300</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>ECLIPSES AND COMETS</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_330">330</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE GREATNESS AND THE FALL OF ASTROLOGY</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_360">360</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>TIME AND THE CALENDAR</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_387">387</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='chaphead' colspan='2'><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>THE END OF THE WORLD</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_418">418</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 530px;">
+<img src="images/017.jpg" width="530" height="800" alt="An Astronomer at Work." title="" />
+<span class="caption">An Astronomer at Work.</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/019.jpg" width="640" height="455" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+<h1>HISTORY OF THE HEAVENS.</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE FIRST BEGINNINGS OF ASTRONOMY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Astronomy is an ancient science; and though of late it has
+made a fresh start in new regions, and we are opening on
+the era of fresh and unlooked-for discoveries which will soon
+reveal our present ignorance, our advance upon primitive
+ideas has been so great that it is difficult for us to realize
+what they were without an attentive and not uninstructive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>
+study of them. No other science, not even geology, can
+compare with astronomy for the complete revolution which
+it has effected in popular notions, or for the change it has
+brought about in men's estimate of their place in creation.
+It is probable that there will always be men who believe that
+the whole universe was made for their benefit; but, however
+this may be, we have already learned from astronomy that our
+habitation is not that central spot men once deemed it, but
+only an ordinary planet circulating round an ordinary star,
+just as we are likely also to learn from biology, that we
+occupy the position, as animals, of an ordinary family in an
+ordinary class.</p>
+
+<p>That we may more perfectly realize this strange revolution
+of ideas, we must throw ourselves as far as possible into
+the feeling and spirit of our ancestors, when, without the
+knowledge we now possess, they contemplated, as they could
+not fail to do, the marvellous and awe-inspiring phenomena
+of the heavens by night. To them, for many an age, the
+sun and moon and stars, with all the planets, seemed absolutely
+to rise, to shine, and to set; the constellations to
+burst out by night in the east, and travel slowly and in
+silence to the west; the ocean waves to rise and fall and
+beat against the rock-bound shore as if endowed with life;
+and even in the infancy of the intellect they must have
+longed to pierce the secrets of this mysterious heavenly
+vault, and to know the nature of the starry firmament as it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>
+seemed to them, and the condition of the earth which
+appeared in the centre of these universal movements. The
+simplest hypothesis was for them the truth, and they believed
+that the sky was in reality a lofty and extended
+canopy bestudded with stars, and the earth a vast plain, the
+solid basis of the universe, on which dwelt man, sole creature
+that lifted his eyes and thoughts above. Two distinct
+regions thus appeared to compose the whole system&mdash;the
+upper one, or the air, in which were the moving stars, the
+lights of heaven, and the firmament over all; and the lower
+one, or earth and sea, adorned on the surface with the products
+of life, and below with the minerals, metals, and
+stones. For a long time the various theories of the universe,
+grotesque and changing as they might be, were but modifications
+of this one central idea, the earth below, the
+heavens above, and on this was based every religious system
+that was promulgated&mdash;the very phrases founded upon it remaining
+to this day for a testimony to the intimate relation
+thus manifested between the infant ideas in astronomy and
+theology. No wonder that early revolutions in the conceptions
+in one science were thought to militate against the
+other. It is only when the thoughts on both are enlarged
+that it is seen that their connection is not necessary, but
+accidental, or, at least, inevitable only in the infancy of
+both.</p>
+
+<p>It is scarcely possible to estimate fully the enormous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+change from these ideas representing the appearances to
+those which now represent the reality; or to picture to
+ourselves the total revolution in men's minds before they
+could transform the picture of a vast terrestrial surface, to
+which the sun and all the heavenly bodies were but accessories
+for various purposes, to one in which the earth is but
+a planet like Mars, moving in appearance among the stars,
+as it does, and rotating with a rapidity that brings a whole
+hemisphere of the heavens into view through the course of
+a single day and night. At first sight, what a loss of dignity!
+but, on closer thought, what a gain of grandeur! No longer
+some little neighbouring lights shine down upon us from a
+solid vault; but we find ourselves launched into the sea of
+infinity; with power to gaze into its almost immeasurable
+depths.</p>
+
+<p>To appreciate rightly our position, we have to plant ourselves,
+in imagination, in some spot removed from the surface
+of the earth, where we may be uninfluenced by her motion,
+and picture to ourselves what we should see. Were we
+placed in some spot far enough removed from the earth,
+we should find ourselves in eternal day; the sun would ever
+shine, for no great globe would interpose itself between it
+and our eyes; there would be no night there. Were we in
+the neighbourhood of the earth's orbit, and within it, most
+wonderful phenomena would present themselves. At one
+time the earth would appear but an ordinary planet, smaller<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>
+than Venus, but, as time wore on, unmeasured by recurring
+days or changing seasons, it would gradually be seen to increase
+in size&mdash;now appearing like the moon at the full, and
+shining like her with a silver light. As it came nearer, and
+its magnitude increased, the features of the surface would be
+distinguished; the brighter sea and the darker shining continents,
+with the brilliant ice-caps at the poles; but, unlike
+what we see in the moon, these features would appear to
+move, and, one after another, every part of the earth would
+be visible. The actual time required for all to pass before us
+would be what we here call a day and night. And still,
+as it rotates, the earth passes nearer to us, assumes its
+largest apparent size, and so gradually decreasing again,
+becomes once more, after the interval we here call a year,
+an ordinary-looking star-like planet. To us, in these days,
+this description is easy of imagination; we find no difficulty in
+picturing it to ourselves; but, if we will think for a moment
+what such an idea would have been to the earliest observers
+of astronomy, we shall better appreciate the vast change
+that has taken place&mdash;how we are removed from them, as
+we may say, <i>toto c&#339;lo</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But not only as to the importance of the earth in the
+universe, but on other matters connected with astronomy, we
+perceive the immensity of the change in our ideas&mdash;in that
+of distance, for instance. This celestial vault of the ancients
+was near enough for things to pass from it to us; it was in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
+close connection with the earth, supported by it, and therefore
+of less diameter; but now, when our distance from the
+sun is expressed by numbers that we may write, indeed,
+but must totally fail to adequately appreciate, and the distance
+from the <i>next</i> nearest star is such, that with the velocity
+of light&mdash;a velocity we are accustomed to regard as instantaneous&mdash;we
+should only reach it after a three years' journey,
+we are reminded of the pathetic lines of Thomas Hood:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="noin">
+"I remember, I remember, the fir trees straight and high,<br />
+And how I thought their slender tops were close against the sky;<br />
+It was a childish fantasy, but now 'tis little joy,<br />
+To know I'm further off from heaven than when I was a boy."<br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>The astronomer's answer to the last line would be that as
+far as the material heaven goes, we are just as much in
+it as the stars or as any other member of the universe;
+we cannot, therefore, be far off or near to it.</p>
+
+<p>It is probable that we are even yet but little awake to
+true cosmical ideas in other respects;&mdash;as to velocity, for
+instance. We know indeed, of light and electricity and the
+motions of the earth, but revelations are now being made to
+us of motions of material substances in the sun with such
+velocities that in comparison with them any motions on
+the earth appear infinitesimally small. Our progress to
+our present notions, and appreciations of the truth of nature
+in the heavens, will thus occupy much of our thoughts;
+but we must also recount the history of the acquirement<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
+of those facts which have ultimately become the basis for
+our changes of idea.</p>
+
+<p>Our rustic forefathers, whatever their nation, were not
+so enamoured of the "wonders of science"&mdash;that their astronomy
+was greatly a collection of theories, though theories,
+and wild ones, they had; it was a more practical matter,
+and was believed too by them to be more practical than
+we now find reason to believe to be the case. They noticed
+the various seasons, and they marked the changes in the
+appearances of the heavens that accompanied them; they
+connected the two together, and conceived the latter to be
+the cause of the former, and so, with other apparently uncertain
+events. The celestial phenomena thus acquired a
+fictitious importance which rendered their study of primary
+necessity, but gave no occasion for a theory.</p>
+
+<p>That we may better appreciate the earliest observations on
+astronomy, it may be well to mention briefly what are the
+varying phenomena which may most easily be noticed. If
+we except the phases of the moon, which almost without
+observation would force their recognition on people who
+had no other than lunar light by night, and which must
+therefore, from the earliest periods of human history have
+divided time into lunar months; there are three different
+sets of phenomena which depend on the arrangement of our
+planetary system, and which were early observed.</p>
+
+<p>The first of these depends upon the earth's rotation on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
+its axis, the result of which is that the stars appear to revolve
+with a uniform motion from east to west; the velocity increasing
+with the distance from the pole star, which remains
+nearly fixed. This circumstance is almost as easy of observation
+as the phases of the moon, and was used from
+the earliest ages to mark the passage of time during the
+night. The next arises from the motion of the earth in her
+orbit about the sun, by which it happens that the earth is
+in a different position with respect to the sun every night,
+and, therefore, a different set of stars are seen in his neighbourhood;
+these are setting with him, and therefore also
+a different set are just rising at sunset every evening. These
+changes, which would go through the cycle in a year, are, of
+course, less obvious, but of great importance as marking the
+approach of the various seasons during ages in which the
+hour of the sun's rising could not be noted by a clock. The
+last depends on the proper motions of the moon and planets
+about the earth and sun respectively, by reason of which
+those heavenly bodies occupy varying positions among the
+stars. Only a careful and continuous scrutiny of the heavens
+would detect these changes, except, perhaps, in the case of
+the moon, and but little of importance really depends on
+them; nevertheless, they were very early the subject of
+observation, as imagination lent them a false value, and in
+some cases because their connection with eclipses was perceived.
+The practical cultivation of astronomy amongst the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
+earliest people had always reference to one or other of these
+three sets of appearances, and the various terms and signs
+that were invented were intended for the clearer exposition
+of the results of their observations on these points.</p>
+
+<p>In looking therefore into extreme antiquity we shall find
+in many instances our only guide to what their knowledge
+was is the way in which they expressed these results.</p>
+
+<p>We do not find, and perhaps we should scarcely expect to
+find, any one man or even one nation who laid the foundation
+of astronomy&mdash;for it was an equal necessity for all, and was
+probably antecedent to the practice of remembering men by
+their names. We cannot, either, conjecture the antiquity of
+ideas and observations met with among races who are themselves
+the only record of their past; and if we are to find
+any origins of the science, it is only amongst those nations
+which have been cultivators of arts by which their ancient
+doings are recorded.</p>
+
+<p>Amongst the earliest cultivators of astronomy we may refer
+to the Primitive Greeks, the Chinese, the Egyptians, the
+Babylonians, and the Aryans, and also to certain traditions
+met with amongst many savage as well as less barbarous
+races, the very universality of which proclaims as loudly as
+possible their extreme antiquity.</p>
+
+<p>Each of the four above-mentioned races have names with
+which are associated the beginnings of astronomy&mdash;Uranus
+and Atlas amongst the Greeks; Folic amongst the Chinese;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>
+Thaut or Mercury in Egypt; Zoroaster and Bel in Persia and
+Babylonia. Names such as these, if those of individuals, are
+not necessarily those of the earliest astronomers&mdash;but only
+the earliest that have come down to us. Indeed it is very
+far from certain whether these ancient celebrities have any
+real historical existence. The acts and labours of the earliest
+investigators are so wrapped in obscurity, there is such a mixture
+of fable with tradition, that we can have no reliance that
+any of them, or that others mentioned in ancient mythology,
+are not far more emblematical than personal. Some, such as
+Uranus, are certainly symbolical; but the very existence of
+the name handed down to us, if it prove nothing else, proves
+that the science was early cultivated amongst those who have
+preserved or invented them.</p>
+
+<p>If we attempt to name in years the date of the commencement&mdash;not
+of astronomy itself&mdash;for that probably in some form
+was coeval with the race of man itself, but of recorded observations,
+we are met with a new difficulty arising from the
+various ways in which they reckoned time. This was in
+every case by the occurrence of the phases of one or other
+of the above-mentioned phenomena; sometimes however they
+selected the apparent rotation of the sun in twenty-four hours,
+sometimes that of the moon in a month, sometimes the
+interval from one solstice to the next, and yet they apparently
+gave to each and all of these the same title&mdash;such as
+<i>annus</i>&mdash;obviously representing a cycle only, but without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+reference to its length. By these different methods of
+counting, hopeless confusion has often been introduced
+into chronology; and the moderns have in many instances
+unjustly accused the ancients of vanity and falsehood.
+Bailly attempted to reconcile all these various methods and
+consequent dates with each other, and to prove that practical
+astronomy commenced "about 1,500 years before the Deluge, or
+that it is about 7,000 years old;" but we shall see reason in the
+sequel for suspecting any such attempt, and shall endeavour
+to arrive at more reliable dates from independent evidence.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the remotest antiquity to which we can possibly
+mount is that of the Aryans, amongst whom the hymns of
+the <i>Rig Veda</i> were composed. The short history of Hebrew
+and Greco-Roman civilization seems to be lost in comparison
+with this the earliest work of human imagination. When
+seeking for words to express their thoughts, these primitive
+men by the banks of the Oxus personified the phenomena
+of the heavens and earth, the storm, the wind, the rain, the
+stars and meteors. Here, of course, it is not practical but
+theoretical astronomy we find. We trace the first figuring
+of that primitive idea alluded to before&mdash;the heaven above,
+the earth below. Here, as we see, is the earth represented
+as an indefinite plane surface and passive being forming the
+foundation of the world; and above it the sky, a luminous
+and variable vault beneath which shines out the fertile and
+life-giving light. Thus to the earth they gave the name
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
+P'RTHOVI, "the wide expanse;" the blue and star-bespangled
+heavens they called VARUNA, "the vault;"
+and beneath it in the region of the clouds they enthroned
+the light DYAUS, <i>i.e.</i> "the luminous air."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 453px;">
+<img src="images/030.jpg" width="453" height="640" alt="Fig. 1." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 1.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>From hence, it would appear, or on this model, the early
+ideas of all peoples have been formed. Among the Greeks
+the name for heaven expresses the same idea of a hollow
+vault (&#954;&#959;&#8150;&#955;&#959;&#962;, hollow, concave) and the earth is called &#947;&#942;,
+or mother. Among the Latins the name <i>c&#339;lum</i> has the same
+signification, while the earth <i>terra</i> comes from the participle
+<i>tersa</i> (the dry element) in contradistinction to <i>mare</i> the wet.</p>
+
+<p>In this original Aryan notion, however, as represented by
+the figure, we have more than this, the origin of the names
+<i>Jupiter</i> and <i>Deus</i> comes out. For it is easy to trace the
+connection between <i>Dyaus</i> (the luminiferous air) and the
+Greek word <i>Zeus</i> from whence <i>Dios</i>, &#952;&#949;&#972;&#962;, <i>Deus</i>, and the
+French word <i>Dieu</i>, and then by adding <i>pater</i> or father we
+get <i>Deuspater</i>, <i>Zeuspater</i>, Jupiter.</p>
+
+<p>These etymologies are not however matters beyond dispute,
+and there are at least two other modes of deriving the same
+words. Thus we are told the earliest name for the Deity was
+Jehovah, the word <i>Jehov</i> meaning father of life; and that
+the Greeks translated this into <i>Dis</i> or <i>Zeus</i>, a word having,
+according to this theory, the same sense, being derived from
+&#950;&#945;&#969; to live. Of course there can be no question of the later
+word <i>Deus</i> being the direct translation of <i>Dios</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A third theory is that there exists in one of the dialects
+which formed the basis of the old languages of Asia, a word
+<i>Yahouh</i>, a participle of the verb <i>n&icirc;h</i>, to exist, to be; which
+therefore signifies the self-existent, the principle of life, the
+origin of all motion, and this is supposed to be the allusion
+of Diodorus, who explaining the theology of the Greeks, says
+that the Egyptians according to Manetho, priest of Memphis,
+in giving names to the five elements have called the spirit or
+ether Youpiter in the <i>proper sense</i> of the word, for the spirit is
+the source of life, the author of the vital principle in animals,
+and is hence regarded as the father or generator of all beings.
+The people of the Homeric ages thought the lightning-bearing
+Jupiter was the commencement, origin, end, and middle of all
+things, a single and universal power, governing the heavens,
+the earth, fire, water, day and night, and all things. Porphyry
+says that when the philosophers discoursed on the nature and
+parts of the Deity, they could not imagine any single figure
+that should represent all his attributes, though they presented
+him under the appearance of a man, who was <i>seated</i>
+to represent his immovable essence; uncovered in his upper
+part, because the upper parts of the universe or region of the
+stars manifest most of his nature; but clothed below the
+loins, because he is more hidden in terrestrial things; and
+holding a sceptre in his left hand, because his heart is the
+ruler of all things. There are, besides, the etymologies which
+assert that Jupiter is derived from <i>juvare</i> to help, meaning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+the assisting father; or again that he is <i>Dies pater</i>&mdash;the god
+of the day&mdash;in which case no doubt the sun would be alluded
+to.</p>
+
+<p>It appears then that the ancient Aryan scheme, though
+<i>possibly</i> supplying us with the origin of one of the widest
+spread of our words, is not universally allowed to do so. This
+origin, however, appears to derive support from the apparent
+occurrence of the original of another well-known ancient classical
+word in the same scheme, that is Varuna, obviously the
+same word as &#927;&#8016;&#961;&#945;&#957;&#959;&#962;, and Uranus, signifying the heavens.
+Less clearly too perhaps we may trace other such words to the
+same source. Thus the Sun, which according to these primitive
+conceptions is the husband of the Earth, which it nourishes
+and makes fruitful, was called <i>Savitr</i> and <i>Surya</i>, from which
+the passage to the Gothic <i>Sauil</i> is within the limits of known
+etymological changes, and so comes the Lithuanian <i>Saull</i>,
+the Cymric <i>Haul</i>, the Greek <i>Heilos</i>, the Latin <i>Sol</i>, and the
+English <i>Solar</i>. So from their <i>Nakt</i>, the destructive, we get
+<i>Nux</i>, <i>Nacht</i>, <i>Night</i>. From <i>Glu</i>, the Shining, whence the participle
+<i>Glucina</i>, and so to <i>Lucina</i>, <i>Luena</i>, <i>Luna</i>, <i>Lune</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Turning from the ancient Aryans, whose astronomy we
+know only from poems and fables, and so learn but little of
+their actual advance in the science of observation, we come to
+the Babylonians, concerning whose astronomical acquirements
+we have lately been put in possession of valuable evidence by
+the tablets obtained by Mr. Smith from Kouyunjik, an account<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>
+the contents of which has been given by Mr. Sayce (<i>Nature</i>,
+vol. xii. p. 489). As the knowledge thus obtained is more
+certain, being derived from their actual records, than any that
+we previously possessed, it will be well to give as full an account
+of it as we are able.</p>
+
+<p>The originators of Babylonian astronomy were not the Chald&aelig;ans,
+but another race from the mountains of Elam, who are
+generally called Acadians. Of the astronomy of this race we
+have no complete records, but can only judge of their progress
+by the words and names left by them to the science, as afterwards
+cultivated by the Semitic Babylonians. These last were
+a subsequent race, who entering the country from the East,
+conquered the original inhabitants about 2000 <small>B.C.</small>, and borrowed
+their civilization, and with it their language in the arts
+and sciences. But even this latter race is one of considerable
+antiquity, and when we see, as we shortly shall, the great
+advances they had made in observations of the sun and moon,
+and consider the probable slowness of development in those
+early ages, we have some idea of the remoteness of the date
+at which astronomical science was there commenced. Our
+chief source of information is an extremely ancient work
+called The <i>Observations of Bell</i>, supposed to have been
+written before 1700 <small>B.C.</small>, which was compiled for a certain King
+Saigou, of Agave in Babylonia. This work is in seventy books
+or parts, and is composed of numerous small earthen tablets
+having impressed upon them the cuneiform character in which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+they printed, and which we are now able to read. We
+generally date the art of printing from Caxton, in 1474,
+because it took the place of manuscript that had been previously
+in use in the West; but that method of writing, if in
+some respects an improvement on previous methods of recording
+ideas as more easily executed, was in others a retrogression
+as being less durable: while the manuscripts have perished
+the impressions on stone have remained to this day, and will
+no doubt last longer than even our printed books. These
+little tablets represented so many leaves, and in large libraries,
+such as that from which those known have been derived,
+they were numbered as our own are now, so that any particular
+one could be asked for by those who might wish to
+consult it. The great difficulty of interpreting these records,
+which are written in two different dialects, and deal often with
+very technical matters, may well be imagined. These difficulties
+however have been overcome, and a good approach to the
+knowledge of their contents has been made. The Chald&aelig;ans,
+as is well known, were much given to astronomy and
+many of their writings deal with this subject; but they did
+practical work as well, and did not indulge so much in theory
+as the Aryans. We shall have future occasion in this book
+to refer to their observations on various points, as they did
+not by any means confine themselves to the simplest matters;
+much, in fact, of that with which modern astronomy deals,
+the dates and duration of eclipses of the sun and moon, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
+accurate measurement of time, the existence of cycles in
+lunar and solar phenomena, was studied and recorded by them.
+We can make some approach to the probable dates of the
+invention of some part of their system, by means of the
+signs of the Zodiac, which were invented by them and which
+we will discuss more at length hereafter. We need only
+say at present that what is now the sign of spring, was
+not reckoned so with them, and that we can calculate how
+long ago it is that the sign they reckoned the spring sign
+was so.</p>
+
+<p>Semiramis also raised in the centre of Babylon a temple
+consecrated to Jupiter, whom the Babylonians called Bel.
+It was of an extraordinary height and served for an observatory.
+The whole edifice was constructed with great art in
+asphalte and brick. On its summit were placed the statues
+of Jupiter, Juno, and Rhea, covered with gold.</p>
+
+<p>The Egyptians have always been named as the earliest
+cultivators of astronomy by the Grecian writers, by whom the
+science has been handed down to us, and the Chald&aelig;ans have
+even been said to have borrowed from them. The testimony
+of such writers however is not to be received implicitly, but
+to be weighed with the knowledge we may now obtain, as
+we have noticed above with respect to the Babylonians, from
+the actual records they have left us, whether by actual
+records, or by words and customs remaining to the present
+day.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+<img src="images/037.jpg" width="550" height="800" alt="Plate I." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Plate I.&mdash;Babylonian Astronomers.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Herodotus declares that the Egyptians had made observations
+for 11,340 years and had seen the course of the sun
+change four times, and the ecliptic placed perpendicular to the
+equator. This is the style of statement on which opinions
+of the antiquity of Egyptian astronomy have been founded,
+and it is obviously unworthy of credit.</p>
+
+<p>Diodorus says that there is no country in which the
+positions and motions of the stars have been so accurately
+observed as in Egypt (<i>i.e.</i> to his knowledge). They have
+preserved, he says, for a great number of years registers in
+which their observations are recorded. Expositions are found
+in these registers of the motions of the planets, their revolutions
+and their stations, and, moreover, the relation which
+each bears to the birthdays of animals, and its good or evil
+influence. They often predicted the future with success.
+The earthquakes, inundations, the appearance of comets, and
+many other phenomena which it is impossible for the vulgar
+to know beforehand, were foreseen by them by means of the
+observations they had made over a long series of years.</p>
+
+<p>On the occasion of the French expedition to Egypt, a long
+passage was discovered leading from Karnak to Lucksor.
+This passage was adorned on each side of the way with a range
+of 1600 sphinxes with the body of a lion and the head of a
+ram. Now in Egyptian architecture, the ornaments are never
+the result of caprice or chance; on the contrary, all is done
+with intention, and what often appears at first sight strange,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+appears, after having been carefully examined and studied, to
+present allegories full of sense and reason, founded on a profound
+knowledge of natural phenomena, that the ornaments
+are intended to record. These sphinxes and rams of the
+passage were probably the emblems of the different signs of
+the Zodiac along the route of the sun. The date of the avenue
+is not known; but it would doubtless lead us to a high antiquity
+for the Egyptian observations.</p>
+
+<p>The like may be said of the great pyramid, which according
+to Piazzi Smyth was built about 2170 <small>B.C.</small> Certainly there
+are no carvings about it exhibiting any astronomical designs;
+but the exact way in which it is executed would seem to indicate
+that the builders had a very clear conception of the
+importance of the meridian line. It should, however, be
+stated that Piazzi Smyth does not consider it to have been
+built by the Egyptians for themselves; but under the command
+of some older race.</p>
+
+<p>There seem, however, to be indications in various festivals
+and observances, which are met with widely over the earth's
+surface, as will be indicated more in detail in the chapter
+on the Pleiades, that some astronomical observations, though of
+the rudest, were made by races anterior even to those whose
+history we partially possess; and that not merely because
+of its naturalness, but because of positive evidence, we must
+trace back astronomy to a source from whence Egyptians,
+Indians, and perhaps Babylonians themselves derived it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Chinese astronomy is totally removed from these and
+stands on its own basis. With them it was a matter concerning
+the government, and stringent laws were enforced on
+the state astronomers. The advance, however, that they made
+would appear to be small; but if we are to believe their
+writers, they made observations nearly three thousand years
+before our era.</p>
+
+<p>Under the reign of Hoangti, Yuchi recorded that there was
+a large star near the poles of the heavens. By a method
+which we shall enlarge upon further on, it can be astronomically
+ascertained that about the epoch this observation was
+said to be made there was a star (&#945; Draconis) so near the pole
+as to appear immovable, which is so far a confirmation of his
+statement. In 2169 the first of a series of eclipses was recorded
+by them; but the value of their astronomy seems to
+be doubtful when we learn that calculation proves that not
+one of them previous to the age of Ptolemy can be identified
+with the dates given.</p>
+
+<p>Amongst all nations except the Chinese, where it was
+political, and the Greeks, where it was purely speculative,
+astronomy has been intimately mixed with religious ideas,
+and we consequently find it to have taken considerable hold
+on the mind.</p>
+
+<p>Just as we have seen among the Indians that the basis
+of their astronomical ideas was the two-fold division into
+heaven and earth, so among other nations this duality has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>
+formed the basis of their religion. Two aspects of things
+have been noticed by men in the constitution of things&mdash;that
+which remains always, and that which is merely transitory,
+causes and effects. The heaven and the earth have presented
+the image of this to their minds&mdash;one being the eternal existence,
+the other the passing form. In heaven nothing seems
+to be born, increase, decrease, or die above the sphere of the
+moon. That alone showed the traces of alteration in its
+phases; while on the other hand there was an image of
+perpetuity in its proper substance, in its motion, and the
+invariable succession of the same phases.</p>
+
+<p>From another point of view, the heavens were regarded as
+the father, and the earth as the mother of all things. For the
+principle of fertility in the rains, the dew and the warmth,
+came from above; while the earth brought forth abundantly
+of the products of nature. Such is the idea of Plutarch, of
+Hesiod, and of Virgil. From hence have arisen the fictions
+which have formed the basis of theogony. Uranus is said to
+have espoused Ghe, or the heavens took the earth to wife, and
+from their marriage was born the god of time or Saturn.</p>
+
+<p>Another partly religious, and partly astronomical antagonism
+has been drawn between light and darkness, associated
+respectively with good and evil. In the days when artificial
+lights, beyond those of the flickering fire, were unknown, and
+with the setting of the sun all the world was enveloped in
+darkness and seemed for a time to be without life, or at least<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+cut off entirely from man, it would seem that the sun and
+its light was the entire origin of life. Hence it naturally
+became the earliest divinity whose brilliant light leaping out
+of the bosom of chaos, had brought with it man and all the
+universe, as we see it represented in the theologies of Orpheus
+and of Moses; whence the god Bel of the Chaldeans, the
+Oromaza of the Persians, whom they invoke as the source of
+all that is good in nature, while they place the origin of all
+evil in darkness and its god Ahrinam. We find the glories
+of the sun celebrated by all the poets, and painted and represented
+by numerous emblems and different names by the
+artists and sculptors who have adorned the temples raised to
+nature or the great first cause.</p>
+
+<p>Among the Jews there are traditions of a very high antiquity
+for their astronomy. Josephus assures us that it was
+cultivated before the Mosaic Deluge. According to him it is
+to the public spirit and the labour of the antediluvians that we
+owe the science of astrology: "and since they had learnt from
+Adam that the world should perish by water and by fire,
+the fear that their science should be lost, made them erect two
+columns, one of brick the other of stone, on which they engraved
+the knowledge they had acquired, so that if a deluge
+should wash away the column of brick, the stone one might
+remain to preserve for posterity the memory of what they
+had written. The prescience was rewarded, and the column
+of stone is still to be seen in Syria." Whatever we may think<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
+of this statement it would certainly be interesting if we could
+find in Syria or anywhere else a monument that recorded
+the ancient astronomical observations of the Jews. Ricard
+and others believe that they were very far advanced in the
+science, and that we owe a great part of our present astronomy
+to them; but such a conjecture must remain without proof
+unless we could prove them anterior to the other nations,
+whom, we have seen, cultivated astronomy in very remote
+times.</p>
+
+<p>One observation seems peculiar to them, if indeed it be
+a veritable observation. Josephus says, "God prolonged
+the life of the patriarchs that preceded the deluge, both on
+account of their virtues, and to give them the opportunity
+of perfecting the sciences of geometry and astronomy which
+they had discovered; which they could not have done if
+they had not lived for 600 years, because it is only after
+the lapse of 600 years that the <i>great year</i> is accomplished."</p>
+
+<p>Now what is this great year or cycle of 600 years?
+M. Cassini, the director of the Observatory of Paris, has discussed
+it astronomically. He considers it as a testimony
+of the high antiquity of their astronomy. "This period,"
+he says, "is one of the most remarkable that have been
+discovered; for, if we take the lunar month to be 29 days
+12h. 44m. 3s. we find that 219,146&frac12; days make 7,421
+lunar months, and that this number of days gives 600 solar
+years of 365 days 5h. 51m. 36s. If this year was in use<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
+before the deluge, it appears very probable it must be
+acknowledged that the patriarchs were already acquainted
+to a considerable degree of accuracy with the motions of
+the stars, for this lunar month agrees to a second almost
+with that which has been determined by modern astronomers."</p>
+
+<p>A very similar argument has been used by Prof. Piazzi
+Smyth to prove that the Great Pyramids were built by
+the descendants of Abraham near the time of Noah; namely,
+that measures of two different elements in the measurement
+of time or space when multiplied or divided produce a
+number which may be found to represent some proportion
+of the edifice, and hence to assume that the two numbers
+were known to the builders.</p>
+
+<p>We need scarcely point out that numbers have always
+been capable of great manipulation, and the mere fact of
+one number being so much greater than another, is no proof
+that <i>both</i> were known, unless we knew that <i>one</i> of them
+was known independently, or that they are intimately connected.</p>
+
+<p>In the case of Josephus' number the cycle during which
+the lunar months and solar years are commensurable has
+been long discussed and if the number had been 19
+instead of 600, we should have had little doubt of its
+reference; yet 600 is a very simple number and might refer
+to many other cycles than the complicated one pointed out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>
+by M. Cassini. A similar case may be quoted with regard
+to the Indians, which, according to our temperament, may
+be either considered a proof that these reasonings are correct,
+or that they are easy to make. They say that there are two
+stars diametrically opposite which pass through the zodiac
+in 144 years; nothing can be made of this period, nor yet
+of another equally problematical one of 180 years; but if
+we multiply the two together we obtain 25,920, which is
+very nearly the length of the cycle for the precession of
+the equinoxes.</p>
+
+<p>In this review of the ancient ideas of different peoples,
+we have followed the most probable order in considering
+that the observation of nature came first, and the different
+parts of it were afterwards individualized and named. It
+is proper to add that according to some ancient authors&mdash;such
+as Diodorus Siculus&mdash;the process was considered
+to have been the other way. That Uranus was an
+actual individual, that Atlas and Saturn were his sons or
+descendants or followers, and that because Atlas was a great
+astronomer he was said to support the heavens, and that his
+seven daughters were real, and being very spiritual they
+were regarded as goddesses after death and placed in heaven
+under the name of the Pleiades.</p>
+
+<p>However, the universality of the ideas seems to forbid
+this interpretation, which is also in itself much less natural.</p>
+
+<p>These various opinions lead us to remark, in conclusion,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
+that the fables of ancient mythological astronomy must be
+interpreted by means of various keys. Allegory is the
+first&mdash;the allegory employed by philosophers and poets
+who have spoken in figurative language. Their words taken
+in the letter are quite unnatural, but many of the fables
+are simply the description or explanation of physical facts.
+Hieroglyphics are another key. Having become obscure by
+the lapse of time they sometimes, however, present ideas
+different from those which they originally expressed. It is
+pretty certain that hieroglyphics have been the source of
+the men with dogs' heads, or feet of goats, &amp;c. Fables also
+arise from the adoption of strange words whose sound is
+something like another word in the borrowing language connected
+with other ideas, and the connection between the
+two has to be made by fable.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<h3>ASTRONOMY OF THE CELTS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The numerous stone monuments that are to be found
+scattered over this country, and over the neighbouring parts
+of Normandy, have given rise to many controversies as to
+their origin and use. By some they have been supposed
+to be mere sepulchral monuments erected in late times
+since the Roman occupation of Great Britain. Such an
+idea has little to rest upon, and we prefer to regard them,
+as they have always been regarded, as relics of the Druidical
+worship of the Celtic or Gaulish races that preceded us in
+this part of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>If we were to believe the accounts of ordinary historians,
+we might believe that the Druids were nothing more than
+a kind of savage race, hidden, like the fallow-deer in the
+recesses of their woods. Thought to be sanguinary, brutal,
+superstitious, we have learned nothing of them beyond their
+human sacrifices, their worship of the oak, their raised<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
+stones; without inquiring whether these characteristics
+which scandalize our tastes, are not simply the legacy of
+a primitive era, to which, by the side of the tattered
+religions of the old Paganism, Druidism remained faithful.
+Nevertheless the Druids were not without merit in the
+order of thought.</p>
+
+<p>For the Celts, as for all primitive people, astronomy
+and religion were intimately associated. They considered
+that the soul was eternal, and the stars were worlds successively
+inhabited by the spiritual emigrants. They considered
+that the stars were as much the abodes of human
+life as our own earth, and this image of the future life
+constituted their power and their grandeur. They repelled
+entirely the idea of the destruction of life, and preferred
+to see in the phenomena of death, a voyage to a region
+already peopled by friends.</p>
+
+<p>Under what form did Druidical science represent the
+universe? Their scientific contemplation of the heavens
+was at the same time a religious contemplation. It is
+therefore impossible to separate in our history their astronomical
+and theological heavens.</p>
+
+<p>In their theological astronomy, or astronomical theology,
+the Druids considered the totality of all living beings as
+divided into three circles. The first of these circles, the
+circle of immensity, <i>Ceugant</i>, corresponding to incommunicable,
+infinite attributes, belonged to God alone; it was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
+properly the absolute, and none, save the ineffable being,
+had a right there. The second circle, that of blessedness,
+<i>Gwyn-fyd</i>, united in it the beings that have arrived at the
+superior degrees of existence; this was heaven. The third,
+the circle of voyages, <i>Abred</i>, comprised all the noviciate;
+it was there, at the bottom of the abysses, in the great oceans,
+as Taliesin says, that the first breath of man commenced.
+The object proposed to men's perseverance and courage was to
+attain to what the bards called the point of liberty, very
+probably the point at which, being suitably fortified against
+the assaults of the lower passions, they were not exposed
+to be troubled, against their wills, in their celestial aspirations;
+and when they arrived at such a point&mdash;so worthy
+of the ambition of every soul that would be its own
+master&mdash;they quitted the circle of Abred and entered that
+of Gwyn-fyd; the hour of their recompense had come.</p>
+
+<p>Demetrius, cited by Plutarch, relates that the Druids
+believed that these souls of the elect were so intimately
+connected with our circle that they could not emerge from
+it without disturbing its equilibrium. This writer states,
+that being in the suite of the Emperor Claudius, in some
+part of the British isles, he heard suddenly a terrible
+hurricane, and the priests, who alone inhabited these sacred
+islands, immediately explained the phenomenon, by telling
+him that a vacuum had been produced on the earth, by the
+departure of an important soul. "The great men," he said,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
+"while they live are like torches whose light is always
+beneficent and never harms any one, but when they are
+extinguished their death generally occasions, as you have
+just seen, winds, storm, and derangements of the atmosphere."</p>
+
+<p>The palingenetic system of the Druids is complete in
+itself, and takes the being at his origin, and conducts him
+to the ultimate heaven. At the moment of his creation,
+as Henry Martyn says in his Commentary, the being has
+no conscience of the gifts that are latent in him. He is
+created in the lowest stage of life, in <i>Annwfn</i>, the shadowy
+abyss at the base of <i>Abred</i>. There, surrounded by nature,
+submitted to necessity, he rises obscurely through the successive
+degrees of inorganic matter, and then through the
+organic. His conscience at last awakes. He is man.
+"Three things are primarily contemporaneous&mdash;man, liberty,
+and light." Before man there was nothing in creation but
+fatal obedience to physical laws; with man commences the
+great battle between liberty and necessity, good and evil.
+The good and the evil present themselves to man in equilibrium,
+"and he can at his pleasure attach himself to one
+or the other of them."</p>
+
+<p>It might appear at first sight that it was carrying things
+too far to attribute to the Druids the knowledge, not indeed
+of the true system of the world, but the general idea on
+which it was constructed. But, on closer examination, this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
+opinion seems to have some consistency. If it was from
+the Druids that Pythagoras derived the basis of his theology,
+why should it not be from them that he derived also that
+of his astronomy? Why, if there is no difficulty in seeing
+that the principle of the subordination of the earth might
+arise from the meditations of an isolated spirit, should
+there be any more difficulty in thinking that the principles
+of astronomy should take birth in the midst of a corporation
+of theologians embued with the same ideas as the philosophers
+on the circulation of life, and applied with continued
+diligence to the study of celestial phenomena. The Druid,
+not having to receive mythological errors, might be led by
+that circumstance to imagine in space other worlds similar
+to our own.</p>
+
+<p>Independently of its intrinsic value, this supposition rests
+also upon the testimony of historians. A singular statement
+made by Hecat&aelig;us with regard to the religious rites of Great
+Britain exhibits this in a striking manner. This historian
+relates that the moon, seen in this island, appears much
+larger than it does anywhere else, and that it is possible to
+distinguish mountains on its surface, such as there are on
+the earth. Now, how had the Druids made an observation
+of this kind? It is of not much consequence whether they
+had actually seen the lunar mountains or had only imagined
+them, the curious thing is that they were persuaded that
+that body was like the earth, and had mountains and other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
+features similar to our own. Plutarch, in his treatise <i>De
+facie in orbe Lun&aelig;</i>, tells us that, according to the Druids, and
+conformably to an idea which had long been held in science,
+the surface of the moon is furrowed with several Mediterraneans,
+which the Grecian philosophers compare to the Red
+and Caspian seas. It was also thought that immense abysses
+were seen, which were supposed to be in communication with
+the hemisphere that is turned away from the earth. Lastly,
+the dimensions of this sky-borne country were estimated;
+(ideas very different to those that were current in Greece):
+its size and its breadth, says the traveller depicted by the
+writer, are not at all such as the geometers say, but much
+larger.</p>
+
+<p>It is through the same author, who is in accordance in this
+respect with all the bards, that we know that this celestial
+earth was considered by the theologians of the West as the
+residence of happy souls. They rose and approached it in
+proportion as their preparation had been complete, but, in
+the agitation of the whirlwind, many reached the moon that
+it would not receive. "The moon repelled a great number,
+and rejected them by its fluctuations, at the moment they
+reached it; but those that had better success fixed themselves
+there for good; their soul is like the flame, which, raising
+itself in the ether of the moon, as fire raises itself on that
+of the earth receives force and solidity in the same way
+that red-hot iron does when plunged into the water."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They thus traced an analogy between the moon and the
+earth, which they doubtless carried out to its full development,
+and made the moon an image of what they knew here,
+picturing there the lunar fields and brooks and breezes and
+perfumes. What a charm such a belief must have given to
+the heavens at night. The moon was the place and visible
+pledge of immortality. On this account it was placed in
+high position in their religion; the order of all the festivals
+was arranged after that which was dedicated to it; its presence
+was sought in all their ceremonies, and its rays were
+invoked. The Druids are always therefore represented as
+having the crescent in their hands.</p>
+
+<p>Astronomy and theology being so intimately connected
+in the spirit of the Druids, we can easily understand that
+the two studies were brought to the front together in their
+colleges. From certain points of view we may say that the
+Druids were nothing more than astronomers. This quality was
+not less striking to the ancients in them than in the Chald&aelig;ans.
+The observation of the stars was one of their official
+functions. C&aelig;sar tells us, without entering more into particulars,
+that they taught many things about <i>the form and
+dimensions of the earth, the size and arrangements of the
+different parts of heaven, and the motions of the stars</i>, which
+includes the greater part of the essential problems of celestial
+geometry, which we see they had already proposed to
+themselves. We can see the same fact in the magnificent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+passage of Taliesin. "I will ask the bards," he says in
+his <i>Hymn of the World</i>, "and why will not the bards answer
+me? I will ask of them what sustains the earth, since
+having no support it does not fall? or if it falls which way
+does it go? But what can serve for its support? Is the
+world a great traveller? Although it moves without ceasing,
+it remains tranquil in its route; and how admirable is that
+route, seeing that the world moves not in any direction."
+This suffices to show that the ideas of the Druids on material
+phenomena were not at all inferior to their conceptions of
+the destiny of the soul, and that they had scientific views
+of quite another origin from the Alexandrian Greeks, the
+Latins, their disciples, or the middle ages. An anecdote
+of the eighth century furnishes another proof in favour of
+Druidical science. Every one knows that Virgilius, bishop
+of Salzburg, was accused of heresy by Boniface before the
+Pope Zacharias, because he had asserted that there were
+antipodes. Now Virgilius was educated in one of the
+learned monasteries of Ireland, which were fed by the
+Christian bards, who had preserved the scientific traditions
+of Druidism.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 545px;">
+<img src="images/055.jpg" width="545" height="800" alt="Plate II." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Plate II.&mdash;Druidical Worship.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The fundamental alliance between the doctrine of the
+plurality of worlds and of the eternity of the soul is perhaps
+the most memorable character in the thoughts of this ancient
+race. The death upon earth was for them only a psychological
+and astronomical fact, not more grave than that which
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
+happened to the moon when it was eclipsed, nor the fall
+of the verdant clothing of the oak under the breath of the
+autumnal breeze. We see these conceptions and manners,
+at first sight so extraordinary, clothe themselves with a
+simple and natural aspect. The Druids were so convinced
+of the future life in the stars, that they used <i>to lend money to
+be repaid in the other world</i>. Such a custom must have
+made a profound impression on the minds of those who daily
+practised it. Pomponius Mela and Valerius Maximus both
+tell us of this custom. The latter says, "After having left
+Marseilles I found that ancient custom of the Gauls still
+in force, namely, of lending one another money to be paid
+back in the infernal regions, for they are persuaded that the
+souls of men are immortal."</p>
+
+<p>In passing to the other world they lost neither their personality,
+their memory, nor their friends; they there re-encountered
+the business, the laws, the magistrates of this
+world. They had capitals and everything the same as here.
+They gave one another rendezvous as emigrants might who
+were going to America. This superstition, so laudable as
+far as it had the effect of pressing on the minds of men the
+firm sentiment of immortality, led them to burn, along with
+the dead, all the objects which had been dear to them, or of
+which they thought they might still wish to make use.
+"The Gauls," says Pomponius Mela, "burn and bury with
+the dead that which had belonged to the living."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They had another custom prompted by the same spirit,
+but far more touching. When any one bade farewell to the
+earth, each one charged him to take letters to his absent
+friends, who should receive him on his arrival and doubtless
+load him with questions as to things below. It is to Diodorus
+that we owe the preservation of the remembrance
+of this custom. "At their funerals," he says, "they place
+letters with the dead which are written to those already dead
+by their parents, so that they may be read by them." They
+followed the soul in thought in its passage to the other
+planets, and the survivors often regretted that they could
+not accomplish the voyage in their company; sometimes,
+indeed, they could not resist the temptation. "There are
+some," says Mela, "who burn themselves with their friends
+in order that they may continue to live together." They
+entertained another idea also, which led even to worse practices
+than this, namely, that death was a sort of recruiting
+that was commanded by the laws of the universe for the
+sustenance of the army of existences. In certain cases they
+would replace one death by another. Posidonius, who visited
+Gaul at an epoch when it had not been broken up, and who
+knew it far better than C&aelig;sar, has left us some very curious
+information on this subject. If a man felt himself seriously
+warned by his disease that he must hold himself in readiness
+for departure, but who, nevertheless, had, for the moment,
+some important business on hand, or the needs of his family<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>
+chained him to this life, or even that death was disagreeable
+to him; if no member of his family or his clients were
+willing to offer himself instead, he looked out for a substitute;
+such a one would soon arrive accompanied by a
+troop of friends, and stipulating for his price a certain sum
+of money, he distributed it himself as remembrances among
+his companions,&mdash;often even he would only ask for a barrel
+of wine. Then they would erect a stage, improvise a sort of
+festival, and finally, after the banquet was over, our hero
+would lie down on the shield, and driving a sword into his
+bosom, would take his departure for the other world.</p>
+
+<p>Such a custom, indeed, shows anything but what we
+should rightly call civilization, however admirable may have
+been their opinions; but it receives its only palliation from
+the fact that their indifference to death did not arise from
+their undervaluing life here, but that they had so firm a
+belief in the existence and the happiness of a life hereafter.</p>
+
+<p>That these beliefs were not separated from their astronomical
+ideas is seen from the fact that they peopled the firmament
+with the departed. The Milky Way was called the town of
+Gwyon (Co&euml;r or Ker Gwydion, Ker in Breton, Caer in Gaulish,
+Kohair in Gaelic); certain bardic legends gave to Gwyon as
+father a genius called Don, who resides in the constellation
+of Cassiopeia, and who figures as "the king of the fairies"
+in the popular myths of Ireland. The empyrean is thus
+divided between various heavenly spirits. Arthur had for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
+residence the Great Bear, called by the Druids "Arthur's
+Chariot."</p>
+
+<p>We are not, however, entirely limited to tradition and the
+reports of former travellers for our information as to the
+astronomy of the Druids, but we have also at our service
+numerous coins belonging to the old Gauls, who were of
+one family with those who cultivated Druidism in our island,
+which have been discovered buried in the soil of France.
+The importance which was given to astronomy in that
+race becomes immediately evident upon the discovery of
+the fact that these coins are marked with figures having
+reference to the heavenly bodies, in other words are astronomical
+coins. If we examine, from a general point of view,
+a large collection of Gaulish medals such as that preserved
+in the National Museum of Paris, we observe that among
+the essential symbols that occupy the fields are types of
+the Horse, the Bull, the Boar, the Eagle, the Lion, the
+Horseman, and the Bear. We remark next a great number
+of signs, most often astronomical, ordinarily accessory, but
+occasionally the chief, such as the sign <span class="symsign">&#8766;</span>, globules surrounded
+by concentric circles, stars of five, six, or eight
+points, radiated and flaming bodies, crescents, triangles,
+wheels with four spokes, the sign <span class="symsign">&#8734;</span>, the lunar crescent,
+the zigzag, &amp;c. Lastly, we remark other accessory types
+represented by images of real objects or imaginary figures,
+such as the Lyre, the Diota, the Serpent, the Hatchet, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>
+Human Eye, the Sword, the Bough, the Lamp, the Jewel,
+the Bird, the Arrow, the Ear of Corn, the Fishes, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>On a great number of medals, on the stateres of Vercingetorix,
+on the reverses of the coins of several epochs, we
+recognize principally the sign of the Waterer, which appears
+to symbolize for one part of antiquity the knowledge of the
+heavenly sphere. On the Gaulish types this sign (an amphora
+with two handles) bears the name of Diota, and represents
+amongst the Druids as amongst the Magi the sciences of
+astronomy and astrology.</p>
+
+<p>Some of these coins are represented in the woodcut below.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/060.jpg" width="600" height="380" alt="Fig. 2." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 2.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The first of these represents the course of the Sun-Horse
+reaching the Tropic of Cancer (summer solstice), and brought
+back to the Tropic of Capricorn (winter solstice).</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p>
+<p>On the second is seen the symbol of the year between the
+south (represented by the sun <span class="symsign">&#9737;</span>) and the north (represented
+by the Northern Bear). In the third the calendar (or course
+of the year) between the sun <span class="symsign">&#9737;</span> and the moon <span class="symsign">&#9790;</span>. Time
+the Sun, and the Bear are visible on the fourth. The diurnal
+motion of the heavens is represented on the fifth; and lastly,
+on the sixth, appears the Watering-pot, the Sun-Horse, and
+the sign of the course of the heavenly bodies.</p>
+
+<p>On other groups of money the presence of the zodiac may
+be made out.</p>
+
+<p>These medals would seem to show that some part of the
+astronomical knowledge of the Druids was not invented by
+themselves, but borrowed from the Chaldeans or others who
+in other lands invented them in previous ages, and from
+whom they may have possibly derived them from the Phenicians.</p>
+
+<p>We may certainly expect, however, from these pieces of
+money, if found in sufficient number and carefully studied,
+to discover a good many positive facts now wanting to us,
+of the religion, sciences, manners, language, commercial relation,
+&amp;c. which belonged to the Celtic civilization. It was
+far from being so barbarous as is ordinarily supposed, and
+we shall do more justice to it when we know it better.</p>
+
+<p>M. Fillioux, the curator of the museum of Gu&eacute;ret, who
+has studied these coins with care, after having sought for
+a long time for a clear and concise method of determining<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
+exactly the symbolic and religious character of the Gaulish
+money, has been able to give the following general statements.</p>
+
+<p>The coins have for their ordinary field the heavens.</p>
+
+<p>On the right side they present almost universally the
+ideal heads of gods or goddesses, or in default of these, the
+symbols that are representative of them.</p>
+
+<p>On the reverse for the most part, they reproduce, either
+by direct types or by emblems artfully combined, the principal
+celestial bodies, the divers aspects of the constellations,
+and probably the laws, which, according to their ancient
+science, presided over their course; in a smaller proportion
+they denote the religious myths which form the base of the
+national belief of the Gauls. As we have seen above, for
+them the present life was but a transitory state of the soul,
+only a prodrome of the future life, which should develop
+itself in heaven and the astronomical worlds with which
+it is filled.</p>
+
+<p>Borrowed from an elevated spiritualism, incessantly tending
+towards the celestial worlds, these ideas were singularly
+appropriate to a nation at once warlike and commercial.
+These circumstances explain the existence of these strange
+types, founded at the same time on those of other nations,
+and on the symbolism which was the soul of the Druidical
+religion. To this religious caste, indeed, we must give the
+merit of this ingenious and original conception, of turning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
+the reverses of the coins into regular charts of the heavens.
+Nothing indeed could be better calculated to inspire the
+people with respect and confidence than these mysterious
+and learned symbols, representing the phenomena of the
+heavens.</p>
+
+<p>Not making use of writing to teach their dogmas, which
+they wished to maintain as part of the mysteries of their
+caste, the Druids availed themselves of this method of
+placing on the money that celestial symbolism of which
+they alone possessed the key.</p>
+
+<p>The religious ideas founded on astronomical observations
+were not peculiar to, or originated by, the Druids, any more
+than their zodiac. There seems reason to believe that they
+had come down from a remote antiquity, and been widely
+spread over many nations, as we shall see in the chapter
+on the Pleiades; but we can certainly trace them to the East,
+where they first prevailed in Persia and Egypt, and were
+afterwards brought to Greece, where they disappeared before
+the new creations of anthropomorphism, though they were
+not forgotten in the days of the poet Anacreon, who says, "Do
+not represent for me, around this vase" (a vase he had ordered
+of the worker in silver), "either the heavenly bodies, or
+the chariot, or the melancholy Orion; I have nothing to
+do with the Pleiades or the Herdsman." He only wanted
+mythological subjects which were more to his taste.</p>
+
+<p>The characters which are made use of in these astro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>nomical
+moneys of the Druids would appear to have a more
+ancient origin than we are able to trace directly, since they
+are most of them found on the arms and implements of the
+bronze age. Some of them, such as the concentric pointed
+circles, the crescent with a globule or a star, the line in
+zigzag, were used in Egypt; where they served to mark the
+sun, the month, the year, the fluid element; and they
+appear to have had among the Druids the same signification.
+The other signs, such as the <span class="symsign">&#8767;</span>, and its multiple combinations,
+the centred circles, grouped in one or two, the
+little rings, the alphabetical characters recalling the form
+of a constellation, the wheel with rays, the radiating discs,
+&amp;c. are all represented on the bronze arms found in the
+Celtic, Germanic, Breton, and Scandinavian lands. From
+this remote period, which was strongly impressed with the
+Oriental genius, we must date the origin of the Celtic symbolism.
+It has been supposed, and not without reason, that
+this epoch, besides being contemporaneous with the Phenician
+establishments on the borders of the ocean, was an age
+of civilization and progress in Gaul, and that the ideas of
+the Druids became modified at the same time that they
+acquired just notions in astronomy and in the art of casting
+metals. At a far later period, the Druidic theocracy having,
+with religious care, preserved the symbols of its ancient
+traditions, had them stamped on the coins which they
+caused to be struck.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This remarkable fact is shown in an incontestable manner
+in the rougher attempts in Gaulish money, and this same
+state of things was perpetuated even into the epoch of the
+high arts, since we find on the imitation statues of Macedonia
+the old Celtic symbols associated with emblems of a Grecian
+origin.</p>
+
+<p>In Italy a different result was arrived at, because the
+warlike element of the nobles soon predominated over the
+religious. Nevertheless the most ancient Roman coins, those
+which are known to us under the name of Consular, have
+not escaped the common law which seems to have presided,
+among all nations, over the origin of money. The two
+commonest types, one in bronze of <i>Janus Bifrons</i> with the
+<i>palus</i>; the other in silver, the <i>Dioscures</i> with their stars,
+have an eminently astronomical aspect.</p>
+
+<p>The comparison between the Gaulish and Roman coins
+may be followed in a series of analogies which are very
+remarkable from an astronomical point of view. To cite
+only a few examples, we may observe on a large number
+of pennies of different families, the impression of Auriga
+"the Coachman" conducting a quadriga; or the sun under
+another form (with his head radiated and drawn in profile);
+or Diana with her lunar attributes; or the five planets
+well characterised; for example, Venus by a double star, as
+that of the morning or of the evening; or the constellations
+of the Dog, Hercules, the Kid, the Lyre, and almost all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>
+those of the zodiac and of the circumpolar region and
+the seven-kine (septemtriones). In later times, under the
+C&aelig;sars, in the villa of Borgh&egrave;se, is found a calendar whose
+arrangements very much recall the ancient Gaulish coin.
+The head of the twelve great gods and the twelve signs of
+the zodiac are represented, and the drawing of the constellations
+establishes a correspondence between their rising
+and the position of the sun in the zodiac. It may therefore
+be affirmed that in the coinage and works of art in Italy
+and Greece, the characteristic influence of astronomical
+worship is found as strongly as among the Druids. Nor
+have the Western nations alone had the curious habit of
+impressing their astronomical ideas upon their coinage, for
+in China and Japan coins of a similar description have been
+met with, containing on their reverse all the signs of the
+zodiac admitted by them.</p>
+
+<p>In conclusion, we may say, that it was cosmography, that
+constructed the dogmas of the Druidical religion, which was,
+in its essential elements, the same as that of the old Oriental
+theocracies. The outward ceremonies were addressed to the
+sun, the moon, the stars, and other visible phenomena; but,
+above nature, there was the great generating and moving
+principle, which the Celts placed, at a later period perhaps,
+among the attributes of their supreme deities.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+<img src="images/067.jpg" width="550" height="800" alt="The Northern Constellations." title="" />
+<span class="caption">The Northern Constellations.</span>
+<p class="center">The Lyre&mdash;Cassiopeia&mdash;The Little Bear&mdash;The Dragon&mdash;Andromeda&mdash;The
+Great Bear&mdash;Capella&mdash;Algol, or Medusa's Head.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<h3>ORIGIN OF THE CONSTELLATIONS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>When we look upon the multitude of heavenly bodies
+with which the celestial vault is strewed, our attention is
+naturally arrested by certain groupings of brilliant stars,
+apparently associated together on account of their great
+proximity; and also by certain remarkable single stars
+which have excessive brilliancy or are completely isolated
+from the rest. These natural groups seem to have some
+obscure connection with or dependence on each other. They
+have always been noticed, even by the most savage races.
+The languages of several such races contain different names
+for the same identical groups, and these names, mostly
+borrowed from terrestrial beings, give an imaginary life to
+the solitude and silence of the skies. A celestial globe, as
+we know, presents us with a singular menagerie, rich in
+curious monsters placed in inconceivable positions. How
+these constellations, as they are called, were first invented,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+and by whom, is an interesting question which by the
+aid of comparative philology we must endeavour now to
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>Among these constellations there are twelve which have
+a more than ordinary importance, and to which more
+attention has always been paid. They are those through
+which the sun appears to pass in his annual journey round
+the ecliptic, entering one region each month. At least, this
+is what they were when first invented. They were called
+the zodiacal constellations or signs of the zodiac&mdash;the name
+being derived from their being mostly named after living
+beasts. In our own days the zodiacal constellations are no
+longer the signs of the zodiac.  When they were arranged
+the sun entered each one on a certain date. He now is no
+longer at the same point in the heavens at that date, nevertheless
+he is still said to enter the same sign of the zodiac&mdash;which
+therefore no longer coincides with the zodiacal constellation
+it was named from&mdash;but merely stands for a
+certain twelfth part of the ecliptic, which varies from time
+to time. It will be of course of great interest to discover
+the origin of these particular constellations, the date of
+their invention, &amp;c.; and we shall hope to do so after
+having discussed the origin of those seen in the Northern
+hemisphere which may be more familiar even than those.</p>
+
+<p>We have represented in the frontispiece the two halves
+of the Grecian celestial sphere&mdash;the Northern and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+Southern, with the various constellations they contain.
+This sphere was not invented by the Greeks, but was
+received by them from more ancient peoples, and corrected
+and augmented. It was used by Hipparchus two thousand
+years ago; and Ptolemy has given us a description of it.
+It contained 48 constellations, of which 21 belonged to the
+Northern, 15 to the Southern hemisphere, and the remaining
+twelve were those of the zodiac, situated along the ecliptic.</p>
+
+<p>The constellations reckoned by Ptolemy contained altogether
+1,026 stars, whose relative positions were determined
+by Hipparchus; with reference to which accomplishment
+Pliny says, "Hipparchus, with a height of audacity too great
+even for a god, has ventured to transmit to posterity the
+number of the stars!"</p>
+
+<p>Ptolemy's catalogue contains:&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>For the northern constellations</td><td align='left'>&nbsp; 361 stars</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>For the zodiacal</td><td align='left'>&nbsp; 350 &nbsp; &nbsp; "</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>For the southern</td><td align='left'>&nbsp; 318 &nbsp; &nbsp; "</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>or</td><td align='left'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>For all the 48 constellations</td><td align='left'>1,029 &nbsp; &nbsp; "</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>or, since 3 of these are named twice</td><td align='left'>1,026 &nbsp; &nbsp; "</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>Of course this number is not to be supposed to represent
+the whole of the stars visible even to the naked eye; there are
+twice as many in the Northern hemisphere alone, while there
+are about 5,000 in the whole sky. The number visible in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+a telescope completely dwarfs this, so that more than 300,000
+are now catalogued; while the number visible in a large
+telescope may be reckoned at not less than 77 millions.
+The principal northern constellations named by Ptolemy
+are contained in the following list, with the stars of the
+first magnitude that occur in each:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The Great Bear, or David's Chariot, near the centre.</p>
+
+<p>The Little Bear, with the Pole Star at the end of the tail.</p>
+
+<p>The Dragon.</p>
+
+<p>Cepheus, situated to the right of the Pole.</p>
+
+<p>The Herdsman, or the Keeper of the Bear, with the star
+Arcturus.</p>
+
+<p>The Northern Crown to the right.</p>
+
+<p>Hercules, or the Man who Kneels.</p>
+
+<p>The Lyre, or Falling Vulture, with the beautiful star Vega.</p>
+
+<p>The Swan, or Bird, or Cross.</p>
+
+<p>Cassiopeia, or the Chair, or the Throne.</p>
+
+<p>Perseus.</p>
+
+<p>The Carter, or the Charioteer, with Capella Ophiuchus, or
+Serpentarius, or Esculapius.</p>
+
+<p>The Serpent.</p>
+
+<p>The Bow and Arrow, or the Dart.</p>
+
+<p>The Eagle, or the Flying Vulture, with Alta&iuml;r.</p>
+
+<p>The Dolphin.</p>
+
+<p>The Little Horse, or the Bust of the Horse.</p>
+
+<p>Pegasus, or the Winged Horse, or the Great Cross.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Andromeda, or the Woman with the Girdle.</p>
+
+<p>The Northern Triangle, or the Delta.</p>
+
+<p>The fifteen constellations on the south of the ecliptic
+were:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The Whale.</p>
+
+<p>Orion, with the beautiful stars Rigel and Betelgeuse.</p>
+
+<p>The River Endanus, or the River Orion, with the brilliant
+Achernar.</p>
+
+<p>The Hare.</p>
+
+<p>The Great Dog, with the magnificent Sirius.</p>
+
+<p>The Little Dog, or the Dog which runs before, with Procyon.</p>
+
+<p>The ship Argo, with its fine Alpha (Canopus) and Eta.</p>
+
+<p>The Female Hydra, or the Water Snake.</p>
+
+<p>The Cup, or the Urn, or the Vase.</p>
+
+<p>The Raven.</p>
+
+<p>The Altar, or the Perfuming Pot.</p>
+
+<p>The Centaur, whose star Alpha is the nearest to the earth.</p>
+
+<p>The Wolf, or the Centaur's Lance, or the Panther, or the
+Beast.</p>
+
+<p>The Southern Crown, or the Wand of Mercury, or
+Uraniscus.</p>
+
+<p>The Southern Fish, with Fomalhaut.</p>
+
+<p>The twelve zodiacal constellations, which are of more
+importance than the rest, are generally named in the order
+in which the sun passes through them in its passage along
+the ecliptic, and both Latins and English have endeavoured<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+to impress their names on the vulgar by embodying them
+in verses. The poet Ausonius thus catalogues them:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="noin">
+"Sunt: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo,<br />
+Libraque, Scorpius, Arcitenens, Caper, Amphora, Pisces."<br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p class="noin">and the English effusion is as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="noin">
+"The Ram, the Bull, the Heavenly Twins,<br />
+And next the Crab the Lion shines,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The Virgin and the Scales.</span><br />
+The Scorpion, Archer, and He Goat,<br />
+The Man that holds the watering-pot,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And Fish with glittering scales."</span><br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>These twelve have hieroglyphics assigned to them, by
+which they are referred to in calendars and astronomical
+works, some of the marks being easily traced to their origin.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/074.jpg" width="640" height="350" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>Thus <span class="symsign">&#9800;</span> refers to the horns of the Ram; <span class="symsign">&#9801;</span> to the head of
+the Bull; <span class="symsign">&#9807;</span> to the joints and tail-sting of the Scorpion;
+<span class="symsign">&#9808;</span> is very clearly connected with an archer; <span class="symsign">&#9809;</span> is formed
+by the junction of the first two letters &#964; and &#961; in
+&#964;&#961;&#940;&#947;&#959;&#962;, the
+Sea-goat, or Capricorn; <span class="symsign">&#9806;</span> for the Balance, is suggestive of its
+shape; <span class="symsign">&#9810;</span> refers to the water in the Watering-pot; and
+perhaps <span class="symsign">&#9811;</span> to the Two Fishes; <span class="symsign">&#9802;</span> for Twins may denote two
+sides alike; <span class="symsign">&#9803;</span> for the Crab, has something of its side-walking
+appearance; while <span class="symsign">&#9804;</span> for the Lion, and <span class="symsign">&#9805;</span> for the
+Virgin, seem to have no reference that is traceable.</p>
+
+<p>These constellations contain the following stars of the
+first magnitude&mdash;Aldebaran, Antares, and Spica.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>To these constellations admitted by the Greeks should
+be added the Locks of Berenice, although it is not named
+by Ptolemy. It was invented indeed by the astronomer
+Conon. The story is that Berenice was the spouse and the
+sister of Ptolemy Euergetes, and that she made a vow to
+cut off her locks and devote them to Venus if her husband
+returned victorious; to console the king the astronomer
+placed her locks among the stars. If this is a true account
+Arago must be mistaken in asserting that the constellation
+was created by Tycho Brahe in 1603. The one he did add
+to the former ones was that of Antin&ouml;us, by collecting into
+one figure some unappropriated stars near the Eagle. At about
+the same time J. Bayer, from the information of Vespuccius
+and the sailors, added twelve to the southern constellations
+of Ptolemy; among which may be mentioned the Peacock, the
+Toucan, the Ph&#339;nix, the Crane, the Fly, the Chameleon, the
+Bird of Paradise, the Southern Triangle, and the Indian.</p>
+
+<p>Augustus Royer, in 1679, formed five new groups, among
+which we may name the Great Cloud, the Fleur-de-Lis, and
+the Southern Cross.</p>
+
+<p>Hevelius, in 1690, added 16; the most important being
+the Giraffe, the Unicorn, the Little Lion, the Lynx, the Little
+Triangle.</p>
+
+<p>Among these newer-named constellations none is more
+interesting than the Southern Cross, which is by some
+considered as the most brilliant of all that are known. Some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
+account of it, possibly from the Arabs, seems to have
+reached Dante, who evidently refers to it, before it had
+been named by Royer, in a celebrated passage in his
+"Purgatory." Some have thought that his reference to
+such stars was only accidental, and that he really referred
+only to the four cardinal virtues of theology, chiefly on
+account of the difficulty of knowing how he could have
+heard of them; but as the Arabs had establishments along
+the entire coast of Africa, there is no difficulty in understanding
+how the information might reach Italy.</p>
+
+<p>Americus Vespuccius, who in his third voyage refers to
+these verses of Dante, does not mention the name of the
+Southern Cross. He simply says that the four stars form
+a rhomboidal figure. As voyages round the Cape multiplied,
+however, the constellation became rapidly more
+celebrated, and it is mentioned as forming a brilliant
+cross by the Florentine Andrea Corsali, in 1517, and a
+little later by Pigafetta, in 1520.</p>
+
+<p>All these constellations have not been considered sufficient,
+and many subsequent additions have been made.
+Thus Lacaille, in 1752, created fourteen new ones, mostly
+characterized by modern names&mdash;as the Sculptor's Studio,
+the Chemical Furnace, the Clock, the Compass, the Telescope,
+the Microscope, and others.</p>
+
+<p>Lemonnier, in 1766, added the Reindeer, the Solitaire, and
+the Indian Bird, and Lalande the Harvestman. Poczobut, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
+1777, added one more, and P. Hell another. Finally, in the
+charts drawn by Bode, eight more appear, among which the
+Aerostat, and the Electrical and Printing Machines.</p>
+
+<p>We thus arrive at a total of 108 constellations. To
+which we may add that the following groups are generally
+recognized. The Head of Medusa, near Perseus; the
+Pleiades, on the back, and the Hyades on the forehead
+of the Bull; the Club of Hercules; the Shield of Orion,
+sometimes called the Rake; the Three Kings; the Staff of
+S. James; the Sword of Orion; the Two Asses in the Crab,
+having between them the Star Cluster, called the Stall, or
+the Manger; and the Kids, near Capella, in the constellation
+of the Coachman.</p>
+
+<p>This brings the list of the constellations to 117, which
+is the total number now admitted.</p>
+
+<p>A curious episode with respect to these star arrangements
+may here be mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>About the eighth century Bede and certain other theologians
+and astronomers wished to depose the Olympian
+gods. They proposed, therefore, to change the names and
+arrangements of the constellations; they put S. Peter
+in the place of the Ram; S. Andrew instead of the Bull;
+and so on. In more recent calendars David, Solomon, the
+Magi, and other New and Old Testament characters were
+placed in the heavens instead of the former constellations;
+but these changes of name were not generally adopted.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As an example of these celestial spheres we figure a
+portion of one named <i>C&#339;li stellati Christiani hemisphericum
+prius</i>. We here see the Great Bear replaced by the
+Barque of S. Peter, the Little Bear by S. Michael, the
+Dragon by the Innocents, the Coachman by S. Jerome,
+Perseus by S. Paul, Cassiopeia by the Magdalene, Andromache
+by S. Sepulchre, and the Triangle by S. Peter's mitre; while
+for the zodiac were substituted the Twelve Apostles.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 590px;">
+<img src="images/078.jpg" width="590" height="550" alt="Fig. 3." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 3.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the seventeenth century a proposal was made by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
+Weigel, a professor in the University of Jena, to form a
+series of heraldic constellations, and to use for the zodiac
+the arms of the twelve most illustrious families in Europe;
+but these attempts at change have been in vain, the old
+names are still kept.</p>
+
+<p>Having now explained the origin in modern times of 69
+out of the 117 constellations, there remain the 48 which
+were acknowledged by the Greeks, whose origin is involved
+in more obscurity.</p>
+
+<p>One of the first to be noticed and named, as it is now
+the most easily recognized and most widely known, is the
+<i>Great Bear</i>, which attracts all the more attention that it is
+one of those that never sets, being at a less distance from
+the pole than the latter is from the horizon.</p>
+
+<p>Every one knows the seven brilliant stars that form this
+constellation. The four in the rectangle and the three in
+a curved line at once call to mind the form of a chariot,
+especially one of antique build. It is this resemblance, no
+doubt, that has obtained for the constellation the name of
+"the Chariot" that it bears among many people. Among
+the ancient Gauls it was "Arthur's Chariot." In France it
+is "David's Chariot," and in England it goes by the name
+of "King Charles' Wain," and by that of the "Plough."
+The latter name was in vogue, too, among the Latins (<i>Plaustrum</i>),
+and the three stars were three oxen, from whence
+it would appear that they extended the idea to all the seven<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>
+stars, and at last called them the <i>seven</i> oxen, <i>septem-triones</i>,
+from whence the name sometimes used for the north&mdash;septentrional.
+The Greeks also called it the Chariot (&#7949;&#956;&#945;&#958;&#945;),
+and the same word seems to have stood sometimes for a
+plough. It certainly has some resemblance to this instrument.</p>
+
+<p>If we take the seven stars as representing the characteristic
+points of a chariot, the four stars of the quadrilateral
+will represent the four wheels, and the three others will
+represent the three horses. Above the centre of the three
+horses any one with clear sight may perceive a small star
+of the fifth or sixth magnitude, called the Cavalier. Each
+of these several stars is indicated, as is usual with all the
+constellations, by a Greek letter, the largest being denoted
+by the first letter. Thus the 4 stars in the quadrilateral
+are &#945;, &#946;, &#947;, &#948;, and the 3 tail stars &#949;, &#958;, &#951;. The Arabs give to
+each star its special name, which in this case are as follows:&mdash;Dubh&eacute;
+and M&eacute;rak are the stars at the back; Phegda
+and Megrez those of the front; Alioth, Mizat, and Ack&iuml;ar
+the other three, while the little one over Mizat is Alcor.
+Another name for it is Saidak, or the Tester, the being
+able to see it being a mark of clear vision.</p>
+
+<p>There is some little interest in the Great Bear on account
+of the possibility of its being used as a kind of celestial
+time-keeper, and its easy recognition makes it all the more
+available. The line through &#945; and &#946; passes almost exactly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
+through the pole. Now this line revolves of course with
+the constellation round the pole in 24 hours; in every such
+interval being once, vertical above the pole, and once vertical
+below, taking the intermediate positions to right and
+left between these times. The instant at which this line
+is vertical over the pole is not the same on any two consecutive
+nights, since the stars advance each day 4 minutes
+on the sun. On the 21st of March the superior passage
+takes place at 5 minutes to 11 at night; on the following
+night four minutes earlier, or at 9 minutes to 11. In three
+months the culmination takes place 6 hours earlier, or at
+5 minutes to 5. In six months, <i>i.e.</i> on Sept. 22, it culminates
+at 10.55 in the morning, being vertically below the
+pole at the same hour in the evening. The following woodcut
+exhibits the positions of the Great Bear at the various
+hours of September 4th. It is plain from this that, knowing
+the day of the month, the hour of the night may be told
+by observing what angle the line joining &#945; and &#946; of this
+constellation makes with the vertical.</p>
+
+<p>We have used the name <i>Great Bear</i>, by which the constellation
+is best known. It is one of the oldest names
+also, being derived from the Greeks, who called it Arctos
+megale (&#7948;&#961;&#954;&#964;&#959;&#962; &#956;&#949;&#947;&#940;&#955;&#951;), whence the name Arctic; and
+singularly enough the Iroquois, when America was discovered,
+called it Okouari, their name for a bear. The
+explanation of this name is certainly not to be found in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 580px;">
+<img src="images/082.jpg" width="580" height="580" alt="Fig. 4." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 4.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>the resemblance of the constellation to the animal. The
+three stars are indeed in the tail, but the four are in the
+middle of the back; and even if we take in the smaller
+stars that stand in the feet and head, no ingenuity can
+make it in this or any other way resemble a bear. It
+would appear, as Aristotle observes, that the name is derived
+from the fact, that of all known animals the bear was
+thought to be the only one that dared to venture into the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
+frozen regions of the north and tempt the solitude and
+cold.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/083.jpg" width="600" height="540" alt="Fig. 5." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 5.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Other origins of the name, and other names, have been
+suggested, of which we may mention a few. For example,
+"Ursa" is said to be derived from <i>versus</i>, because the constellation
+is seen to <i>turn</i> about the pole. It has been called
+the Screw (&#7964;&#955;&#953;&#954;&#951;), or Helix, which has plainly reference
+to its turning. Another name is Callisto, in reference to
+its beauty; and lastly, among the Arabs the Great and
+Little Bears were known as the Great and Little Coffins<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
+in reference to their slow and solemn motion. These
+names referred to the four stars of each constellation, the
+other three being the mourners following the bearers. The
+Christian Arabs made it into the grave of Lazarus and
+the three weepers, Mary, Martha, and their maid.</p>
+
+<p>Next as to the Little Bear. This constellation has evidently
+received its name from the similarity of its form to
+that of the Great Bear. In fact, it is composed of seven
+stars arranged in the same way, only in an inverse order.
+If we follow the line from  &#946; to &#945; of the Great Bear
+to a distance of five times as great as that between these
+stars we reach the brightest star of the Little Bear, called
+the Pole Star. All the names of the one constellation have
+been applied to the other, only at a later date.</p>
+
+<p>The new constellations were added one by one to the
+celestial sphere by the Greeks before they arranged
+certain of them as parts of the zodiac. The successive
+introduction of the constellations is proved completely by
+a long passage of Strabo, which has been often misunderstood.
+"It is wrong," he says, "to accuse Homer of
+ignorance because he speaks only of one of the two Celestial
+Bears. The second was probably not formed at that time.
+The Phenicians were the first to form them and to use
+them for navigation. They came later to the Greeks."</p>
+
+<p>All the commentators on Homer, Hygin and Diogenes
+Laertes, attribute to Thales the introduction of this
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+constellation. Pseudo-Eratosthenes called the Little Bear
+&#934;&#959;&#953;&#957;&#943;&#954;&#951;,
+to indicate that it was a guide to the Phenicians. A
+century later, about the seventeenth Olympiad, Cleostrates
+of Tenedos enriched the sphere with the Archer
+(&#932;&#959;&#958;&#972;&#964;&#951;&#962;,
+Sagittarius) and the Ram (&#922;&#961;&#953;&#972;&#962;, Aries), and about the
+same time the zodiac was introduced into the Grecian sphere.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+<img src="images/086.jpg" width="550" height="800" alt="The Constellations from the Sea-Shore." title="" />
+<span class="caption">The Constellations from the Sea-Shore.</span>
+<p class="center">The Swan&mdash;The Lyre&mdash;Hercules&mdash;The Crown&mdash;The Herdsman&mdash;The
+Eagle&mdash;The Serpent&mdash;The Balance&mdash;The Scorpion&mdash;Sagittarius.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>With regard to the Little Bear there is another passage
+of Strabo which it will be interesting to quote. He says&mdash;"The
+position of the people under the parallel of Cinnamomophore,
+<i>i.e.</i> 3,000 stadia south of Meroe and 8,800
+stadia north of the equator, represents about the middle
+of the interval between the equator and the tropic, which
+passes by Syene, which is 5,000 stadia north of Meroe.
+These same people are the first for whom the Little Bear
+is comprised entirely in the Arctic circle and remains
+always visible; the most southern star of the constellation,
+the brilliant one that ends the tail being placed on
+the circumference of the Arctic circle, so as just to touch
+the horizon." The remarkable thing in this passage is that
+it refers to an epoch anterior to Strabo, when the star &#945; of
+the Little Bear, which now appears almost immovable,
+owing to its extreme proximity to the pole, was then more
+to the south than the other stars of the constellation, and
+moved in the Arctic circle so as to touch the horizon of
+places of certain latitudes, and to set for latitudes nearer
+the equator.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In those days it was not the <i>Pole</i> Star&mdash;if that word has
+any relation to &#960;&#959;&#955;&#941;&#969;, I turn&mdash;for the heavens did not turn
+about it then as they do now.</p>
+
+<p>The Grecian geographer speaks in this passage of a period
+when the most brilliant star in the neighbourhood of the
+pole was &#945; of the Dragon. This was more than three thousand
+years ago. At that time the Little Bear was nearer to
+the pole than what we now call the Polar Star, for this latter
+was "the most southern star in the constellation." If we
+could alight upon documents dating back fourteen thousand
+years, we should find the star Vega (&#945; Lyra) referred to as
+occupying the pole of the world, although it now is at a
+distance of 51 degrees from it, the whole cycle of changes
+occupying a period of about twenty-six thousand years.</p>
+
+<p>Before leaving these two constellations we may notice
+the origin of the names according to Plutarch. He would
+have it that the names are derived from the use that they
+were put to in navigation. He says that the Phenicians
+called that constellation that guided them in their route
+the <i>Dobebe</i>, or <i>Doube</i>, that is, the speaking constellation, and
+that this same word happens to mean also in that language
+a bear; and so the name was confounded. Certainly there
+is still a word <i>dubbeh</i> in Arabic having this signification.</p>
+
+<p>Next as to the Herdsman. The name of its characteristic
+star and of itself, Arcturus (&#7948;&#961;&#954;&#964;&#959;&#962;, bear; &#927;&#8022;&#961;&#959;&#962;,
+guardian), is explained without difficulty by its position<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
+near the Bears. There are six small stars of the third magnitude
+in the constellation round its chief one&mdash;three of its
+stars forming an equilateral triangle. Arcturus is in the
+continuation of the curved line through the three tail stars
+of the Great Bear. The constellation has also been called
+Atlas, from its nearness to the pole&mdash;as if it held up the
+heavens, as the fable goes.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond this triangle, in the direction of the line continued
+straight from the Great Bear, is the Northern Crown,
+whose form immediately suggests its name. Among the
+stars that compose it one, of the second magnitude, is called
+the Pearl of the Crown. It was in this point of the heavens
+that a temporary star appeared in May, 1866, and disappeared
+again in the course of a few weeks.</p>
+
+<p>Among the circumpolar constellations we must now speak
+of Cassiopeia, or the Chair&mdash;or Throne&mdash;which is situated on
+the opposite side of the Pole from the Great Bear; and
+which is easily found by joining its star &#948; to the Pole
+and continuing it. The Chair is composed principally of
+five stars, of the third magnitude, arranged in the form of
+an M. A smaller star of the fourth magnitude completes
+the square formed by the three &#946;, &#945;, and &#947;. The figure thus
+formed has a fair resemblance to a chair or throne, &#948; and &#949;
+forming the back; and hence the justification for its popular
+name. The other name Cassiopeia has its connection and
+meaning unknown.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We may suitably remark in this place, with Arago, that
+no precise drawing of the ancient constellations has come
+down to us. We only know their forms by written descriptions,
+and these often very short and meagre. A verbal
+description can never take the place of a drawing, especially
+if it is a complex figure, so that there is a certain amount of
+doubt as to the true form, position, and arrangement of the
+figures of men, beasts, and inanimate objects which composed
+the star-groups of the Grecian astronomers&mdash;so that unexpected
+difficulties attend the attempt to reproduce them on
+our modern spheres. Add to this that alterations have been
+avowedly introduced by the ancient astronomers themselves,
+among others by Ptolemy, especially in those given by
+Hipparchus. Ptolemy says he determined to make these
+changes because it was necessary to give a better proportion
+to the figures, and to adapt them better to the real positions of
+the stars. Thus in the constellation of the Virgin, as drawn
+by Hipparchus, certain stars corresponded to the shoulders;
+but Ptolemy placed them in the sides, so as to make the
+figure a more beautiful one. The result is that modern designers
+give scope to their imagination rather than consult
+the descriptions of the Greeks. <i>Cassiopeia</i>, <i>Cepheus</i>, <i>Andromeda</i>,
+and <i>Perseus</i> holding in his hand the <i>Head of Medusa</i>,
+appear to have been established at the same epoch, no doubt
+subsequently to the Great Bear. They form one family, placed
+together in one part of the heavens, and associated in one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>
+drama; the ardent Perseus delivering the unfortunate Andromeda,
+daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia. We can never be
+sure, however, whether the constellations suggested the fable,
+or the fable the constellations: the former may only mean that
+Perseus, rising before Andromeda, seems to deliver it from the
+Night and from the constellation of the Whale. The Head of
+Medusa, a celebrated woman, that Perseus cut off and holds
+in his hand, is said by Volney to be only the head of the
+constellation Virgo, which passes beneath the horizon precisely
+as the Perseus rises, and the serpents which surround it are
+Ophiucus and the polar Dragon, which then occupies the zenith.</p>
+
+<p>Either way, we have no account of the origin of the <i>names</i>,
+and it is possible that we may have to seek it, if ever we
+find it, from other sources&mdash;for it would appear that similar
+names were used for the same constellations by the Indians.
+This seems inevitably proved by what is related by Wilford
+(<i>Asiatic Researches</i>, III.) of his conversation with his pundit,
+an astronomer, on the names of the Indian constellations.
+"Asking him," he says, "to show me in the heavens the constellation
+of Antarmada, he immediately pointed to Andromeda,
+though I had not given him any information about it
+beforehand. He afterwards brought me a very rare and
+curious work in Sanscrit, which contained a chapter devoted
+to <i>Upanacchatras</i>, or extra-zodiacal constellations, with
+drawings of <i>Capuja</i> (Cepheus), and of <i>Casyapi</i> (Cassiopeia)
+seated and holding a lotus flower in her hand, of <i>Antarmada</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>
+charmed with the fish beside her, and last of <i>Parasiea</i> (Perseus)
+who, according to the explanation of the book, held the
+head of a monster which he had slain in combat; blood was
+dropping from it, and for hair it had snakes." As the stars
+composing a constellation have often very little connection with
+the figure they are supposed to form, when we find the same
+set of stars called by the same name by two different nations,
+as was the case, for instance, in some of the Indian names of
+constellations among the Americans, it is a proof that one of
+the nations copied it from the other, or that both have copied
+from a common source. So in the case before us, we cannot
+think these similar names have arisen independently, but
+must conclude that the Grecian was borrowed from the Indian.</p>
+
+<p>Another well-known constellation in this neighbourhood,
+forming an isosceles triangle with Arcturus and the Pole
+Star, is the Lyre. Lucian of Samosatus says that the
+Greeks gave this name to the constellation to do honour
+to the Lyre of Orpheus. Another possible explanation
+is this. The word for lyre in Greek (&#967;&#941;&#955;&#965;&#962;) and in Latin
+(<i>testudo</i>) means also a tortoise. Now at the time when this
+name was imposed the chief star in the Lyre may have been
+very near to the pole of the heavens and therefore have had
+a very slow motion, and hence it might have been named the
+tortoise, and this in Greek would easily be interpreted into
+lyre instead. Indeed this double meaning of the word seems
+certainly to have given rise to the fable of Mercury having<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+constructed a lyre out of the back of a tortoise. Circling round
+the pole of the ecliptic, and formed by a sinuous line of
+stars passing round from the Great Bear to the Lyre, is the
+Dragon, which owes its name to its form. Its importance is
+derived from its relation to the ecliptic, the pole of which is
+determined by reference to the stars of the first coil of the
+body. The centre of the zodiacal circle is a very important
+point, that circle being traced on the most ancient spheres, and
+probably being noticed even before the pole of the heavens.</p>
+
+<p>Closely associated with the Dragon both in mythology and
+in the celestial sphere is Hercules. He is always drawn
+kneeling; in fact, the constellation is rather a man in a
+kneeling posture than any particular man. The poets
+called it Engonasis with reference to this, which is too
+melancholy or lowly a position than would agree well with
+the valiant hero of mythology. There is a story related by
+&AElig;schylus about the stones in the Champ des Cailloux, between
+Marseilles and the embouchure of the Rh&ocirc;ne, to the effect that
+Hercules, being amongst the Ligurians, found it necessary to
+fight with them; but he had no more missiles to throw; when
+Jupiter, touched by the danger of his son, sent a rain of round
+stones, with which Hercules repulsed his enemies. The Engonasis
+is thus considered by some to represent him bending
+down to pick up the stones. Posidonius remarks that it was
+a pity Jupiter did not rain the stones on the Ligurians at
+once, without giving Hercules the trouble to pick them up.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p>
+<p>Ophiucus, which comes close by, simply means the man
+that holds the serpent &#8000;&#981;&#953;-&#959;&#8166;&#967;&#959;&#962;.</p>
+
+<p>It is obviously impossible to know the origins of all the
+names, as those we now use are only the surviving ones of
+several that from time to time have been applied to the
+various constellations according to their temporary association
+with the local legends. The prominent ones are favoured
+with quite a crowd of names. We need only cite a few.
+Hercules, for instance, has been called
+&#8008;&#954;&#940;&#955;&#950;&#969;&#957; &#922;&#959;&#961;&#965;&#957;&#942;&#964;&#951;&#962;,
+Engonasis, Ingeniculus, Nessus, Thamyris, Desanes, Maceris,
+Almannus, Al-chete, &amp;c. The Swan has the names of &#922;&#973;&#954;&#957;&#959;&#962;,
+&#7996;&#954;&#964;&#953;&#957;, &#8012;&#961;&#957;&#953;&#962;, Olar, Helen&aelig; genitor, Ales Jovis, Led&aelig;us,
+Milvus, Gallina, The Cross, while the Coachman has been
+&#7993;&#960;&#960;&#953;&#955;&#945;&#964;&#951;&#962;,
+&#7960;&#955;&#945;&#963;&#964;&#943;&#960;&#960;&#959;&#962;,
+&#913;&#7984;&#961;&#969;&#951;&#955;&#945;&#964;&#951;&#962;,
+&#7980;&#957;&#953;&#959;&#967;&#959;&#962;, Auriga,
+Acator, Hemochus, Erichthonus, Mamsek, Al&aacute;nat, Athaiot,
+Alatod, &amp;c. With respect to the Coachman, in some old
+maps he is drawn with a whip in his left hand turned
+towards the chariot, and is called the charioteer. No doubt
+its proximity to the former constellation has acquired for it
+its name. The last we need mention, as of any celebrity,
+is that of Orion, which is situated on the equator, which
+runs exactly through its midst. Regel forms its left foot,
+and the Hare serves for a footstool to the right foot of the
+hero. Three magnificent stars in the centre of the
+quadrilateral, which lie in one straight line are called the
+Rake, or the Three Kings, or the Staff of Jacob, or the Belt.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
+These names have an obvious origin; but the meaning of
+Orion itself is more doubtful. In the Grecian sphere it is
+written &#8040;&#961;&#943;&#969;&#957;, which also means a kind of bird. The allied
+word &#8038;&#961;&#959;&#962; has very numerous meanings, the only one of
+which that could be conjectured to be connected with the
+constellations is a "guardian." The word &#7989;&#961;&#953;&#959;&#957;, on the
+contrary, the diminutive of &#8037;&#961;&#959;&#962;, means a limit, and has
+been assigned to Jupiter; and in this case may have
+reference to the constellation being situated on the confines
+of the two hemispheres. In mythology Orion was an
+intrepid hunter of enormous size. He was the same
+personage as Orus, Arion, the Minotaur, and Nimrod, and
+afterwards became Saturn. Orion is called <i>Tsan</i> in Chinese,
+which signifies three, and corresponds to the three kings.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 630px;">
+<img src="images/095.jpg" width="630" height="670" alt="Fig. 6." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 6.</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>The Asiatics used not to trace the images of their
+constellations, but simply joined the component stars by
+straight lines, and placed at the side the hieroglyphic
+characters that represented the object they wished to name.
+Thus joining by five lines the principal stars in Orion, they
+placed at the side the hieroglyphics representing a man
+and a sword, from whence the Greeks derived the figure they
+afterwards drew of a giant armed with a sword.</p>
+
+<p>We must include in this series that brightest of all stars,
+Sirius. It forms part of the constellation of the Great Dog,
+and lies to the south of Orion near the extreme limit of
+our vision into the Southern hemisphere in our latitudes.
+This star seems to have been intimately connected with
+Egypt, and to have derived its name&mdash;as well as the name
+of the otherwise unimportant constellation it forms part of&mdash;from
+that country, and in this way:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The overflowing of the Nile was always preceded by an
+Etesian wind, which, blowing from north to south about the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
+time of the passage of the sun beneath the stars of the Crab,
+drove the mists to the south, and accumulated them over the
+country whence the Nile takes its source, causing abundant
+rains, and hence the flood. The greatest importance attached
+to the foretelling the time of this event, so that people might
+be ready with their provisions and their places of security.
+The moon was no use for this purpose, but the stars were,
+for the inundation commenced when the sun was in the stars
+of the Lion. At this time the stars of the Crab just appeared
+in the morning, but with them, at some distance from the
+ecliptic, the bright star Sirius also rose. The morning
+rising of this star was a sure precursor of the inundation. It
+seemed to them to be the warning star, by whose first
+appearance they were to be ready to move to safer spots, and
+thus acted for each family the part of a faithful dog. Whence
+they gave it the name of the Dog, or Monitor, in Egyptian
+<i>Anubis</i>, in Phenician <i>Hannobeach</i>, and it is still the Dog-Star&mdash;<i>Caniculus</i>,
+and its rising commences our <i>dog-days</i>.
+The intimate connection between the rising of this star and
+the rising of the Nile led people to call it also the Nile star,
+or simply the Nile; in Egyptian and Hebrew, <i>Sihor</i>; in
+Greek, &#931;&#959;&#952;&#943;&#962;; in Latin, <i>Sirius</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In the same way the Egyptians and others characterised
+the different days of the year by the stars which first
+appeared in the evening&mdash;as we shall see more particularly
+with reference to the Pleiades&mdash;and in this way certain stars<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
+came to be associated in their calendar with variations of
+temperature and operations of agriculture. They soon took
+for the cause what was originally but the sign, and thus they
+came to talk of moist stars, whose rising brought rain, and
+arid stars, which brought drought. Some made certain
+plants to grow, and others had influence over animals.</p>
+
+<p>In the case of Egypt, no other so great event could occur
+as that which the Dog-Star foretold, and its appearance was
+consequently made the commencement of the year. Instead,
+therefore, of painting it as a simple star, in which case it
+would be indistinguishable from others, they gave it shape
+according to its function and name. When they wished to
+signify that it opened the year, it was represented as a
+porter bearing keys, or else they gave it two heads, one of
+an old man, to represent the passing year, the other of a
+younger, to denote the succeeding year. When they would
+represent it as giving warning of the inundation they painted
+it as a dog. To illustrate what they were to do when it
+appeared, Anubis had in his arms a stew-pot, wings to his
+feet, a large feather under his arm, and two reptiles behind
+him, a tortoise and a duck.</p>
+
+<p>There is also in the celestial sphere a constellation called
+the Little Dog and Procyon; the latter name has an obvious
+meaning, as appearing <i>before</i> the Dog-Star.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot follow any farther the various constellations of
+the northern sphere, nor of the southern. The zodiacal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+constellations we must reserve for the present, while we
+conclude by referring to some of the changes in form and
+position that some of the above-mentioned have undergone
+in the course of their various representations.</p>
+
+<p>These changes are sometimes very curious, as, for example,
+in a coloured chart, printed at Paris in 1650, we have the
+Charioteer drawn in the costume of Adam, with his knees on
+the Milky Way, and turning his back to the public; the she-goat
+appears to be climbing over his neck, and two little
+she-goats seem to be running towards their mother.
+Cassiopeia is more like King Solomon than a woman.
+Compare this with the <i>Phenomena of Aratus</i>, published
+1559, where Cassiopeia is represented sitting on an oak
+chair with a ducal back, holding the holy palm in her left
+hand, while the Coachman, "Erichthon," is in the costume of
+a minion of Henry the Third of France. Now compare the
+Cassiopeia of the Greeks with that drawn in the sixteenth
+and seventeenth centuries, or the Coachman of the same
+periods, and we can easily see the fancies of the painters
+have been one of the most fertile sources of change. They
+seem, too, to have had the fancy in the middle ages to draw
+them all hideous and turning their backs. Compare, for
+instance, the two pictures of Andromeda and Hercules, as
+given below, where those on one side are as heavy and gross
+as the others are artistic and pretty. Unfortunately for the
+truth of Andromeda's beauty, as depicted in these designs,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
+she was supposed to be a negress, being the daughter of
+the Ethiopians, Cepheus and Cassiopeia. Not one of the
+drawings indicates this; indeed they all take after their
+local beauties.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/100.jpg" width="640" height="710" alt="Fig. 7." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 7.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In Flamsteed's chart, as drawn above, the Coachman is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+a female; and instead of the she-goat being on the back, she
+holds it in her arms. No one, indeed, from any of the
+figures of this constellation would ever dream it was
+intended to represent a coachman.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 620px;">
+<img src="images/101.jpg" width="620" height="860" alt="Fig. 8." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 8.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>One more fundamental cause of changes has been the
+confusion of names derived by one nation from another,
+these having sometimes followed their signification, but
+at others being translated phonetically. Thus the Latins, in
+deriving names from the Greek &#7948;&#961;&#954;&#964;&#959;&#962;, have partly translated
+it by Ursa, and partly have copied it in the form
+Arcticus. So also with reference to the three stars in the
+head of the Bull, called by the Greeks Hyades. The Romans
+thought it was derived from &#8023;&#949;&#962;, sows, so they called them
+<i>sucul&aelig;</i>, or little sows; whereas the original name was derived
+from &#8021;&#949;&#953;&#957;, to rain, and signified stars whose appearance
+indicated the approach of the rainy season.</p>
+
+<p>More curious still is the transformation of the Pearl of
+the Northern Crown (Margarita Coron&aelig;) in a saint&mdash;S.
+Marguerite.</p>
+
+<p>The names may have had many origins whose signification
+is lost, owing to their being misunderstood. Thus figurative
+language may have been interpreted as real, as when a
+conjunction is called a marriage; a disappearance, death;
+and a reappearance, a resurrection; and then stories must
+be invented to fit these words; or the stars that have in one
+country given notice of certain events lose the meaning of
+their names when these are used elsewhere; as when a
+boat painted near the stars that accompany an inundation,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
+becomes the ship Argo; or when, to represent the wind, the
+bird's wing is drawn; or those stars that mark a season are
+associated with the bird of passage, the insect or the animal
+that appears at that time: such as these would soon lose
+their original signification.</p>
+
+<p>The celestial sphere, therefore, as we now possess it, is
+not simply a collection of unmeaning names, associated with
+a group of stars in no way connected with them, which have
+been imposed at various epochs by capricious imagination,
+but in most instances, if not in all, they embody a history,
+which, if we could trace it, would probably lead us to
+astronomical facts, indicating the where and the when of
+their first introduction; and the story of their changes, so
+far as we can trace it, gives us some clue to the mental
+characteristics or astronomical progress of the people who
+introduced the alterations.</p>
+
+<p>We shall find, indeed, in a subsequent chapter, that many
+of our conclusions as to the birth and growth of astronomy
+are derived from considerations connected with the various
+constellations, more especially those of the zodiac.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to the date when and the country where the
+constellations of the sphere were invented, we will here give
+what evidence we possess, independent of the origin of the
+zodiac.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place it seems capable of certain proof that
+they were not invented by the Greeks, from whom we have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
+received them, but adopted from an older source, and it is
+possible to give limits to the date of introduction among
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Newton, who attributes its introduction to Mus&aelig;us, a contemporary
+of Chiron, remarks, that it must have been settled
+<i>after</i> the expedition of the Argonauts, and <i>before</i> the destruction
+of Troy; because the Greeks gave to the constellation
+names that were derived from their history and fables, and
+devoted several to celebrate the memory of the famous
+adventurers known as the Argonauts, and they would
+certainly have dedicated some to the heroes of Troy, if the
+siege of that place had happened at the time. We remark
+that at this time astronomy was in too infant a state in
+Greece for them to have fixed with so much accuracy the
+position of the stars, and that we have in this a proof
+they must have borrowed their knowledge from older
+cultivators of the science.</p>
+
+<p>The various statements we meet with about the invention
+of the sphere may be equally well interpreted of its introduction
+only into Greece. Such, for instance, as that Eudoxus
+first constructed it in the thirteenth or fourteenth century
+<small>B.C.</small>, or that by Clement of Alexandria, that Chiron was
+the originator.</p>
+
+<p>The oldest direct account of the names of the constellations
+and their component stars is that of Hesiod, who cites by
+name in his <i>Works and Days</i> the Pleiades, Arcturus, Orion,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>
+and Sirius. He lived, according to Herodotus, about 884
+years before Christ.</p>
+
+<p>The knowledge of all the constellations did not reach the
+Greeks at the same time, as we have seen from the omission
+by Homer of any mention of the Little Bear, when if he
+had known it, he could hardly have failed to speak of it.
+For in his description of the shield of Achilles, he mentions
+the Pleiades, the Hyades, Orion and the Bear, "which alone
+does not bathe in the Ocean." He could never have said
+this last if he had known of the Dragon and Little Bear.</p>
+
+<p>We may then safely conclude that the Greeks received the
+idea of the constellations from some older source, probably
+the Chaldeans. They received it doubtless as a sphere, with
+figured, but nameless constellations; and the Greeks by slight
+changes adapted them to represent the various real or
+imaginary heroes of their history. It would be a gracious
+task, for their countrymen would glory in having their great
+men established in the heavens. When they saw a ship
+represented, what more suitable than to name it the ship
+Argo? The Swan must be Jupiter transformed, the Lyre
+is that of Orpheus, the Eagle is that which carried away
+Ganymede, and so on.</p>
+
+<p>This would be no more than what other nations have
+done, as, for example, the Chinese, who made greater changes
+still, unless we consider theirs to have had an entirely
+independent origin.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 660px;">
+<img src="images/106.jpg" width="660" height="690" alt="Fig. 9." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 9.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>That the celestial sphere was a conception known to others
+than the Greeks is easily proved. The Arabians, for instance,
+certainly did not borrow it from them; yet they have the
+same things represented. Above is a figure of a portion of
+an Arabian sphere drawn in the eleventh century, where we get<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>
+represented plainly enough the Great and Little Bears, the
+Dragon, Cassiopeia, Andromeda, Perseus, with the Triple Head
+of Medusa; the Triangle, one of the Fishes, Auriga, the Ram,
+the Bull obscurely, and the Twins.</p>
+
+<p>There is also the famous so-called zodiac of Denderah,
+brought from Egypt to Paris. This in reality contains more
+constellations than those of the zodiac. Most of the northern
+ones can be traced, with certain modifications. Its construction
+is supposed to belong to the eighth century <small>B.C.</small> Most
+conspicuous on it is the Lion, in a kind of barque, recalling
+the shape of the Hydra. Below it is the calf Isis, with
+Sirius, or the Dog-Star, on the forehead; above it is the
+Crab, to the right the Twins, over these along instrument, the
+Plough, and above that a small animal, the Little Bear, and
+so we may go on:&mdash;all the zodiacal constellations, especially
+the Balance, the Scorpion, and the Fishes being very clear.
+This sphere is indeed of later date than that supposed for
+the Grecian, but it certainly appears to be independent.
+The remains we possess of older spheres are more particularly
+connected with the zodiac, and will be discussed hereafter.</p>
+
+<p>From what people the Greeks received the celestial sphere,
+is a question on which more than one opinion has been formed.
+One is that it was originated in the tropical latitudes of Egypt.
+The other, that it came from the Chaldeans, and a third that
+it came from more temperate latitudes further to the east.
+The arguments for the last of these are as follow:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There is an empty space of about 90&deg;, formed by the last
+constellations of the sphere, towards the south pole, that
+is by the Centaur, the Altar, the Archer, the Southern Fish,
+the Whale, and the Ship. Now in a systematic plan, if the
+author were situated near the equator there would be no
+vacant space left in this way, for in this case the southern
+stars, attracting as much attention as the northern, would be
+inevitably inserted in the system of constellations which
+would be extended to the horizon on all sides. But a
+country of sufficiently high latitude to be unable to see at
+any time the stars about the southern pole must be north
+both of Egypt and Chaldea.</p>
+
+<p>This empty space remained unfilled until the discovery of
+the Cape of Good Hope, except that the star Canopus was
+included in the constellation Argo, and the river Eridan had
+an arbitrary extension given to it, instead of terminating
+in latitude 40&deg;.</p>
+
+<p>Another less cogent argument is derived from the interpretation
+of the fable of the Ph&#339;nix. This is supposed to
+represent the course of the sun, which commences its growth
+at the time of its death. A similar fable is found among the
+Swedes. Now a tropical nation would find the difference of
+days too little to lead it to invent such a fable to represent it.
+It must needs have arisen where the days of winter were
+very much shorter than those of summer.</p>
+
+<p>The Book of Zoroaster, in which some of the earliest notices<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>
+of astronomy are recorded, states that the length of a summer
+day is twice as long as that of winter. This fixes the latitude
+in which that book must have been composed, and makes
+it 49&deg;. Whence it follows, that to such a place must we look
+for the origin of these spheres, and not to Egypt or Chaldea.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 560px;">
+<img src="images/109.jpg" width="560" height="800" alt="Plate III." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Plate III.&mdash;Chaldean Astronomers.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Diodorus Siculus speaks of a nation in that part of the
+world, whom he calls Hyperboreans, who had a tradition that
+their country is the nearest to the moon, on which they
+discovered mountains like those on the earth, and that Apollo
+comes there once every nineteen years. This period being that
+of the metonic cycle of the moon, shows that if this could have
+really been discovered by them, they must have had a long
+acquaintance with astronomy.</p>
+
+<p>The Babylonian tablets lead us to the belief that astronomy,
+and with it the sphere, and the zodiac were introduced by a
+nation coming from the East, from the mountains of Elam,
+called the Accadians, before 3000 <small>B.C.</small>, and these may have
+been the nation to whom the whole is due.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the arguments for the Egyptians, or
+Chaldeans being the originators depend solely on the tradition
+handed down by many, that one or other are the oldest
+people in the world, with the oldest civilization, and they
+have long cultivated astronomy. More precise information,
+however, seems to render these traditions, to say the least,
+doubtful, and certainly incapable of overthrowing the arguments
+adduced above.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE ZODIAC.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The zodiac, as already stated, is the course in the heavens
+apparently pursued by the sun in his annual journey through
+the stars. Let us consider for a moment, however, the series
+of observations and reflections that must have been necessary
+to trace this zone as representing such a course.</p>
+
+<p>First, the diurnal motion of the whole heavens from east
+to west must have been noticed during the night, and the
+fact that certain stars never set, but turn in a circle round a
+fixed point. What becomes then, the next question would be,
+of those stars that do descend beneath the horizon, since they
+rise in the same relative positions as those in which they set.
+They could not be thought to be destroyed, but must complete
+the part of the circle that is invisible <i>beneath the earth</i>. The
+possibility of any stars finding a path beneath the earth must
+have led inevitably to the conception of the earth as a body
+suspended in the centre with nothing to support it. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
+leaving this alone, it would also be concluded that the sun
+went with the stars, and was in a certain position among
+them, even when both they and it were invisible. The next
+observations necessary would be that the zodiacal constellations
+visible during the nights of winter were not the same
+as those seen in summer, that such and such a group of stars
+passed the meridian at midnight at a certain time, and that
+six months afterwards the group exactly opposite in the
+heavens passed at the same hour. Now since at midnight
+the sun will be exactly opposite the meridian, if it continues
+uniformly on its course, it will be among that group of stars
+that is opposite the group that culminates at midnight,
+and so the sign of the zodiac the sun occupies would be
+determined.</p>
+
+<p>This method would be checked by comparisons made in
+the morning and evening with the constellations visible
+nearest to the sun at its rising and setting.</p>
+
+<p>The difficulty and indirectness of these observations would
+make it probable that originally the zodiac would be determined
+rather by the path of the moon, which follows nearly
+the same path as the sun, and which could be observed at the
+same time as, and actually associated with, the constellations.
+Now the moon is found each night so far to the east of its
+position on the previous night that it accomplishes the whole
+circumference in twenty-seven days eight hours. The two
+nearest whole number of days have generally been reckoned,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>
+some taking twenty-eight, and others twenty-seven. The zodiac,
+or, as the Chinese called it, the Yellow Way, was thus divided
+into twenty-eight parts, which were called <i>Nakshatras</i> (mansions,
+or hotels), because the moon remains in each of them
+for a period of twenty-four hours. These mansions were named
+after the brightest stars in each, though sometimes they went
+a long way off to fix upon a characteristic star, as in the
+sixteenth Indian constellation, <i>Vichaca</i>, which was named
+after the Northern Crown, in latitude 40&deg;. This arose from
+the brightness of the moon extinguishing the light of those
+that lie nearest to it.</p>
+
+<p>This method of dividing the zodiac was very widely spread,
+and was common to almost all ancient nations. The Chinese
+have twenty-eight constellations, but the word <i>siou</i> does not
+mean a group of stars, but simply a mansion or hotel. In
+the Coptic and ancient Egyptian the word for constellation
+has the same meaning. They also had twenty-eight, and
+the same number is found among the Arabians, Persians, and
+Indians. Among the Chaldeans, or Accadians, we find no
+sign of the number twenty-eight. The ecliptic or "Yoke of
+the Sky," with them, as we see in the newly-discovered
+tablets, was divided into twelve divisions as now, and the
+only connection that can be imagined between this and the
+twenty-eight is the opinion of M. Biot, who thinks that the
+Chinese had originally only twenty-four mansions, four more
+being added by Chenkung (<small>B.C.</small> 1100), and that they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>
+corresponded with the twenty-four stars, twelve to the north
+and twelve to the south, that marked the twelve signs of
+the zodiac among the Chaldeans. But under this supposition
+the twenty-eight has no reference to the moon, whereas we
+have every reason to believe that it has.</p>
+
+<p>The Siamese only reckoned twenty-seven, and occasionally
+inserted an extra one, called <i>Abigitten</i>, or intercalary moon.
+They made use, moreover, of the constellations to tell the
+hour of the night by their position in the heavens, and their
+method of doing this appears to have involved their having
+twenty-eight constellations. The names of the twenty-eight
+divisions among the Arabs were derived from parts of the
+larger constellations that made the twelve signs, the first
+being the horns, and the second the belly, of the Ram.</p>
+
+<p>The twenty-eight divisions among the Persians, of which
+we may notice that the second was formed by the Pleiades,
+and called <i>Pervis</i>, soon gave way to the twelve, the names of
+which, recorded in the works of Zoroaster, and therefore not
+less ancient than he, were not quite the same as those now
+used. They were the Lamb, the Bull, the Twins, the Crab,
+the Lion, the Ear of Corn, the Balance, the Scorpion, the Bow,
+the Sea-Goat, the Watering-pot, and the Fishes.</p>
+
+<p>Nor were the Chinese continually bound to the number
+twenty-eight. They, too, had a zodiac for the sun as well as
+the moon, as may be seen on some very curious pieces of
+money, of which those figured below are specimens.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 670px;">
+<img src="images/115.jpg" width="670" height="310" alt="Fig. 10." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 10.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>On some of these the various constellations of the Northern
+hemisphere are engraved, especially the Great Bear&mdash;under
+innumerable disguises&mdash;and on others the twelve signs of the
+zodiac. These are very different, however, from the Grecian
+set&mdash;they are the Mouse, the Bull, the Tiger, the Hare, the
+Dragon, the Serpent, the Horse, the Ram, the Monkey, the
+Cock, the Dog, and the Pig. The Japanese series were the
+same. The Mongolians had a series of zodiacal coins struck
+in the reign of Jehanjir Shah (1014). He had pieces of
+gold stamped, representing the sun in the constellation of the
+Lion; and some years afterwards other coins were made, with
+one side having the impress of the particular sign in which
+the sun happened to be when the coin was struck. In
+this way a series is preserved having all the twelve signs.
+Tavernier tells the story that one of the wives of the Sultan,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>
+wishing to immortalise herself, asked Jehanjir to be allowed
+to reign for four-and-twenty hours, and took the opportunity
+to have a large quantity of new gold and silver zodiacal coins
+struck and distributed among the people.</p>
+
+<p>The twenty-eight divisions are less known now, simply
+from the fact that the Greeks did not adopt them; but they
+were much used by the early Asian peoples, who distinguished
+them, like the twelve, by a series of animals, and they are
+still used by the Arabs.</p>
+
+<p>So far for the nature of the zodiac, as used in various
+countries, and as adopted from more ancient sources by the
+Greeks and handed on to us. It is very remarkable that
+the arrangement of it, and its relation to the pole of the
+equator, carries with it some indication of the age in which
+it must have been invented, as we now proceed to show.</p>
+
+<p>We may remark, in the first place, that from very early
+times the centre of the zodiacal circle has been marked in
+the celestial sphere, though there is no remarkable star near
+the spot; and the centre of the equatorial circle, or pole, has
+been even less noticed, though much more obvious. We
+cannot perhaps conclude that the instability of the pole was
+known, but that the necessity for drawing the zodiac led to
+attention being paid to its centre. Both the Persians and
+the Chinese noted in addition four bright stars, which they
+said watched over the rest, <i>Taschter</i> over the east, <i>Sateris</i>
+over the west, <i>Venaud</i> over the south, and <i>Hastorang</i> over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>
+the north. Now we must understand these points to refer to
+the sun, the east being the spring equinox, the west the
+autumnal, and the north and south the summer and winter
+solstices. There are no stars of any brilliancy that we could
+now suppose referred to in these positions; but if we turn
+the zodiac through 60&deg; we shall find Aldebaran, the Antares,
+Regulus, and Fomalhaut, four stars of the first magnitude,
+pretty nearly in the right places. Does the zodiac then turn
+in this way? The answer is, It does.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of the attraction of the sun and moon upon the
+equatorial protuberance of the earth is to draw it round from
+west to east by a very slow motion, and make the ecliptic
+cross the equator each year about one minute of arc to the
+east of where it crossed it the year before. So, then, the
+sidereal year, or interval between the times at which the sun
+is in a certain position amongst the stars, is longer than the
+solar year, or interval between the times at which the sun
+crosses the equator at the vernal equinox. Now the sun's
+position in the zodiac refers to the former, his appearance at
+the equinox to the latter kind of year. Each solar year then&mdash;and
+these are the years we usually reckon by&mdash;the equinox is
+at a point fifty seconds of arc to the east on the zodiac, an
+effect which is known by the name of the precession of the
+equinoxes.</p>
+
+<p>Now it is plain that if it keeps moving continuously to
+the east it will at last come round to the same point again,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>
+and the whole period of its revolution can easily be calculated
+from the distance it moves each year. The result of such a
+calculation shows that the whole revolution is completed in
+25,870 years, after which time all will be again as it is now
+in this respect.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 610px;">
+<img src="images/118.jpg" width="610" height="590" alt="Fig. 11." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 11.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>If we draw a figure of the zodiac, as below, and know
+that at this time the vernal equinox takes place when the
+sun is in the Fishes, then, the constellation of the Ram being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
+to the west of this, the date at which the equinox was there
+must be before our present date, while at some time in the
+future it will be in Aquarius.</p>
+
+<p>Now if in any old description we find that the equinox is
+referred to as being in the Ram or in the Bull, it tells us at
+once how long ago such a description was a true one, and,
+therefore, when it was written. This is the way in which
+the Zodiac carries with it an intimation of its date. Thus
+in the example lately referred to of the Persians and their
+four stars, it must have been about 5,000 years ago, according
+to the above calculation, that these were in the positions
+assigned, which is therefore the date of this part of Persian
+astronomy, if we have rightly conjectured the stars
+referred to.</p>
+
+<p>We have already said that the signs of the zodiac are not
+now the same as the zodiacal constellations, and this is now
+easily understood. It is not worth while to say that the
+sun enters such and such a part of the Fishes at the equinox,
+and changes every year. So the part of the heavens it <i>does</i>
+then enter&mdash;be it Fishes, or Aquarius, or the Ram&mdash;is called
+by the same name&mdash;and is called a <i>sign</i>; the name chosen is
+the Ram or Aries, which coincided with the constellation of
+that name when the matter was arranged. There is another
+equally important and instructive result of this precession of
+the equinox. For the earth's axis is always perpendicular to
+the plane of the equator, and if the latter moves, the former<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+must too, and change its position with respect to the axis of
+the ecliptic, which remains immovable. And the ends of
+these axes, or the points they occupy among the stars, called
+their poles, will change in the same way; the pole of the
+equator, round which the heavens appear to move, describing
+a curve about the pole of the ecliptic; and since the ecliptic
+and equator are always <i>nearly</i> at the same angle, this curve
+will be very nearly a circle, as represented on preceding page.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/120.jpg" width="640" height="640" alt="Fig. 12." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 12.</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>Now the pole of the equator is a very marked point in
+the heavens, because the star nearest to it appears to have
+no motion. If then we draw such a figure as above, so as
+to see where this pole would be at any given date, and then
+read in any old record that such and such a star had no
+motion, we know at once at what date such a statement
+must have been made. This means of estimating dates is
+less certain than the other, because any star that is nearer to
+the pole than any other will appear to have no motion
+<i>relatively</i> to the rest, unless accurate measurements were
+made. Nevertheless, when we have any reason to believe
+that observations were carefully made, and there is any
+evidence that some particular star was considered the Pole
+Star, we have some confidence in concluding the date,
+examples of which will appear in the sequel; and we may
+give one illustration now, though not a very satisfactory one.
+Hipparchus cites a passage from the sphere of Eudoxus, in
+which he says, <i>Est vero stella qu&aelig;dam in eodem consistens
+loco, qu&aelig; quidem polus est mundi.</i> (There is a certain immovable
+star, which is the pole of the world.)</p>
+
+<p>Now referring to our figure, we find that about 1300 <small>B.C.</small>
+the two stars, &#946; Urs&aelig; Minoris and &#954; Draconis were fairly
+near the pole, and this fact leads us to date the invention of
+this sphere at about this epoch, rather than a little before or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
+a little after, although, of course, there is nothing in <i>this</i>
+argument (though there may be in others), to prevent us
+dating it when &#945; Draconis was near the pole, 2850 <small>B.C.</small> This
+star was indeed said by the Chinese astronomers in the reign
+of Hoangti to mark the pole, which gives a date to their
+observations. The chief use of this latter method is to
+<i>confirm</i> our conclusions from the former, rather than to
+originate any. Let us now apply our knowledge to the facts.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place we may notice that in the time of
+Hipparchus the vernal equinox was in the first degree of the
+Ram, from which our own arrangement has originated.
+Hipparchus lived 128 years <small>B.C.</small>, or nearly 2,000 years ago, at
+which time the equinox was exactly at &#946; Aries. Secondly, there
+are many reasons for believing that at the time of the invention
+of the zodiac, indeed in the first dawning of
+astronomy, the Bull was the first sign into which the sun
+entered at the vernal equinox. Now it takes 2,156 years to
+retrograde through a sign, and therefore the Bull might occupy
+this position any time between 2400 and 4456 <small>B.C.</small>, and any
+nearer approximation must depend on our ability to fix
+on any particular <i>part</i> of the constellation as the original
+equinoctial point. We may say that whoever invented the
+zodiac would no doubt make this point the <i>beginning</i> of a
+sign, and therefore date its invention 2400 <small>B.C.</small>; or on the
+other hand, if it can be proved that the constellations were
+known and observed before this, we may have to put back<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>
+the date to near the end of the sign, and make its last
+remarkable stars the equinoctial ones, say those in the
+horns of Taurus. Compare the line of Virgil,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="noin">
+"Candidus auratis aperit cum cornibus annum<br />
+Taurus."<br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>The date in this case would be about 4500 <small>B.C.</small>&mdash;or once
+more some remarkable part of the constellation may give
+proof that its appearance with the sun commenced the year&mdash;and
+our date would be intermediate between these two.
+In fact, the remarkable group of stars known as the <i>Pleiades</i>
+actually does play this part. So much interest clusters, however,
+round this group, so much light is thrown by it on the
+past history of astronomical ideas&mdash;and so much new information
+has recently been obtained about it&mdash;that it requires
+a chapter to itself, and we shall therefore pass over its
+discussion here. Let us now review some of the indications
+that some part of the constellation of the Bull was originally
+the first sign of the zodiac.</p>
+
+<p>We need perhaps only mention the astrological books of
+the Jews&mdash;the Cabal&mdash;in which the Bull is dealt with as the
+first zodiacal sign. Among the Persians, who designate the
+successive signs by the letters of the alphabet, <i>A</i> stands
+for Taurus, <i>B</i> for the Twins, and so on. The Chinese attribute
+the commencement of the sun's apparent motion to the
+stars of Taurus. In Thebes is a sepulchral chamber with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
+zodiacal signs, and Taurus at the head of them. The zodiac
+of the pagoda of Elephanta (Salsette) commences with the
+same constellation.</p>
+
+<p>However, reasons have been given for assigning to the
+zodiac a still earlier date than this would involve. Thus
+Laplace writes:&mdash;"The names of the constellations of the
+zodiac have not been given to them by chance&mdash;they embody
+the results of a large number of researches and of astronomical
+systems. Some of the names appear to have
+reference to the motion of the sun. The Crab, for instance,
+and the He-Goat, indicate its retrogression at the solstices.
+The Balance marks the equality of the days and nights at
+the equinoxes, and the other names seem to refer to agriculture
+and to the climate of the country in which the zodiac
+was invented. The He-Goat appears better placed at the
+highest point of the sun's course than the lowest. In this
+position, which it occupied fifteen thousand years ago, the
+Balance was at the vernal equinox, and the zodiacal constellations
+match well with the climate and agriculture of
+Egypt." If we examine this, however, we see that all that
+is probable in it is satisfied by the Ram being at the vernal,
+and the Balance at the autumnal equinox, which corresponds
+much better with other evidence.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 700px;">
+<img src="images/125.jpg" width="700" height="680" alt="The Zodiac of Denderah." title="" />
+<span class="caption">The Zodiac of Denderah.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the first instance, no doubt, the names of the zodiacal
+constellations would depend on the principal star or stars in
+each, and these stars and the portion of the ecliptic assigned
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
+to each may have been noticed before the stars round them
+were grouped into constellations with different names. In
+any case, the introduction of the zodiac into Greece seems
+to have been subsequent to that of the celestial sphere,
+and not to have taken place more than five or six centuries
+before our era. Eudemus, of Rhodes, one of the most distinguished
+of the pupils of Aristotle, and author of a History
+of Astronomy, attributes the introduction of the zodiac to
+&#338;nopides of Chio, a contemporary of Anaxagoras. They
+did not receive it complete, as at first it had only eleven
+constellations, one of them, the Scorpion, being afterwards
+divided, to complete the necessary number. Their zodiacal
+divisions too would have been more regular had they derived
+them directly from the East, and would not have stretched in
+some instances over 36&deg; to 48&deg;, like the Lion, the Bull, the
+Fishes, or the Virgin&mdash;while the Crab, the Ram, and the He-Goat,
+have only 19&deg; to 23&deg;. Nor would their constellations be
+disposed so irregularly, some to the north and some to the
+south of the ecliptic, nor some spreading out widely and
+others crammed close together, so that we see that they only
+borrowed the idea from the Easterns, and filled it out with their
+ancient constellations. Such is the opinion of Humboldt.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to the origin of the names of the signs of the
+zodiac, we must remember that a certain portion of the
+zodiacal circle, and not any definite group of stars, forms
+each sign, and that the constellations may have been formed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+separately, and have received independent names, though
+afterwards receiving those of the sign in which they were.
+The only rational suggestion for the origin of the names is
+that they were connected with some events which took place,
+or some character of the sun's motion observed, when it was
+in each sign. Thus we have seen that the Balance may refer
+to equal nights and days (though only introduced among
+the <i>Greeks</i> in the time of Hipparchus), and the Crab to the
+retrogression or stopping of the sun at the solstice.</p>
+
+<p>The various pursuits of husbandry, having all their
+necessary times, which in the primeval days were determined
+by the positions of the stars, would give rise to more
+important names. Thus the Ethiopian, at Thebes, would call
+the stars that by their rising at a particular time indicated
+the inundation, Aquarius, or the Waterer; those beneath
+which it was necessary to put the plough to the earth, the
+Bull stars. The Lion stars would be those at whose appearance
+this formidable animal, driven from the deserts by
+thirst, showed himself on the borders of the river. Those
+of the Ear of Corn, or the Virgin of harvest, those beneath
+which the harvest was to be gathered in; and the sign of
+the Goat, that in which the sun was when these animals
+were born.</p>
+
+<p>There can be but little doubt but that such was the origin
+of the names imposed, and for a time they would be understood
+in that sense. But afterwards, when time was more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+accurately kept, and calendars regulated, without each man
+studying the stars for himself, when the precession of the
+equinoxes made the periods not exactly coincide, the
+original meaning would be lost, the stars would be associated
+with the animals, as though there was a real bull, a real lion,
+&amp;c., in the heavens; and then the step would be easy to
+represent these by living animals, whom they would endow
+with the heavenly attributes of what they represented; and
+so the people came at last to pray to and worship the several
+creatures for the sake of their supposed influence. They
+asked of the Ram from their flocks the influences they
+thought depended on the constellation. They prayed the
+Scorpion not to spread his evil venom on the world; they
+revered the Crab, the Scarab&aelig;us, and the Fish, without
+perceiving the absurdity of it.</p>
+
+<p>It is certain at least that the gods of many nations are
+connected or are identical with the signs of the zodiac, and
+it seems at least more reasonable to suppose the former
+derived from the latter than <i>vice vers&acirc;</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Among the Greeks indeed, who had, so to speak, their
+gods ready made before they borrowed the idea of the zodiac,
+the process appears to have been the reverse, they made the
+signs to represent as far as they could their gods. In the
+more pastoral peoples, however, of the East, and in Egypt, this
+process can be very clearly traced. Among the Jews there
+seems to be some remarkable connection between their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+patriarchs and these signs, though the history of that connection
+may not well be made out. The twelve signs are
+mentioned as being worshipped, along with the sun and
+moon, in the Book of Kings. But what is more remarkable
+is the dream of Joseph, in which the sun and moon and the
+other eleven stars worshipped him, coupled with the various
+designations or descriptions given to each son in the blessing
+of Jacob. In Reuben we have the man who is said to be
+"unstable as water," in which we may recognise Aquarius.
+In Simeon and Levi "the brethren," we trace the Twins.
+Judah is the "Lion." Zebulun, "that dwells at the haven
+of the sea," represents Fishes. Issachar is the Bull, or
+"strong ass couching down between two burdens." Dan,
+"the serpent by the way, the adder in the path," represents
+the Scorpion. Gad is the Ram, the leader to a flock or
+troop of sheep. Asher the Balance, as the weigher of
+bread. Naphtali, "the hind let loose," is the Capricorn,
+Joseph the Archer, whose bow abode in strength. Brujanin
+the Crab, changing from morning to evening, and
+Dinah, the only daughter, represents the Virgin.</p>
+
+<p>There is doubtless something far-fetched in some of these
+comparisons, but when we consider the care with which the
+number twelve was retained, and that the four chief tribes
+carried on their sacred standards these very signs&mdash;namely,
+Judah a lion, Reuben a man, Ephraim a bull, and Dan a scorpion&mdash;and
+notice the numerous traces of astronomical culture<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>
+in the Jewish ceremonies, the seven lights of the candlestick,
+the twelve stones of the High Priest, the feasts at the two
+equinoxes, the ceremonies connected with a ram and a bull,
+we cannot doubt that there is something more than chance in
+the matter, but rather conclude that we have an example of
+the process by which, in the hands of the Egyptians themselves,
+astronomical representations became at last actually
+deified.</p>
+
+<p>It has been thought possible indeed to assign definitely
+each god of the Egyptians to one of the twelve zodiacal
+signs. The Ram was consecrated to Jupiter Ammon, who
+was represented with a ram's head and horns. The Bull
+became the god Apis, who was worshipped under that
+similitude. The Twins correspond to Horus and Harpocrates,
+two sons of Osiris. The Crab was consecrated to Anubis
+or Mercury. The Lion belonged to the summer sun, Osiris;
+the Virgin to Isis. The Balance and the Scorpion were
+included together under the name of Scorpion, which animal
+belongs to Typhon, as did all dangerous animals. The Archer
+was the image of Hercules, for whom the Egyptians had
+great veneration. The Capricorn was consecrated to Pan
+or Mendes. The Waterer&mdash;or man carrying a water-pot&mdash;is
+found on many Egyptian monuments.</p>
+
+<p>This process of deification was rendered easier by the
+custom they had of celebrating a festival each month, under
+the name <i>neomenia</i>. They characterised the neomenias of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
+the various months by making the animal whose sign the
+sun was entering accompany the Isis which announced
+the <i>f&ecirc;te</i>. They were not content with a representation only,
+but had the animal itself. The dog, being the symbol of
+Cannulus, with which the year commenced, a living dog
+was made to head the ceremonial of the first neomenia.
+Diodorus testifies to this as an eye-witness.</p>
+
+<p>These neomenias thus came to be called the festival of
+the Bull, of the Ram, the Dog, or the Lion. That of the
+Ram would be the most solemn and important in places
+where they dealt much in sheep. That of the Bull in the
+fat pasture-lands of Memphis and Lower Egypt. That of
+Capella would be brilliant at Mendes, where they bred goats
+more than elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>We may fortify these opinions by a quotation from Lucian,
+who gives expression to them very clearly. "It is from the
+divisions of the zodiac," he says, "that the crowd of animals
+worshipped in Egypt have had their origin. Some employed
+one constellation, and some another. Those who used to
+consult that of the Ram came to adore a ram. Those who
+took their presages from the Fishes would not eat fish. The
+goat was not killed in places were they observed Capricornus,
+and so on, according to the stars whose influence they cared
+most for. If they adored a bull it was certainly to do
+honour to the celestial Bull. The Apis, which was a sacred
+object with them, and wandered at liberty through the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>
+country, and for which they founded an oracle, was the
+astrological symbol of the Bull that shone in the heavens."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+<img src="images/133.jpg" width="550" height="800" alt="Plate IV." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Plate IV.&mdash;The Zodiac and the Dead in Egypt.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>Their use of the zodiac is illustrated in an interesting
+manner by a mummy found some years ago in Egypt. At
+the bottom of the coffin was found painted a zodiac, something
+like that of Denderah; underneath the lid, along the
+body of a great goddess, were drawn eleven signs, but with
+that of <i>Capricornus</i> left out. The inscription showed that
+the mummy was that of a young man, aged 21 years,
+4 months, and 22 days, who died the 19th year of Trajan,
+on the 8th of the month Pazni, which corresponds to the
+2nd of June, <small>A.D.</small> 116. The embalmed was therefore born
+on the 12th of January, <small>A.D.</small> 95, at which time the sun was
+in the constellation of Capricornus. This shows that the
+zodiac was the representation of the astrological theories
+about the person embalmed, who was doubtless a person
+of some importance. (See Plate IV.) Any such use as this,
+however, must have been long subsequent to the invention
+of the signs themselves, as it involves a much more complicated
+idea.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE PLEIADES.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Among the most remarkable of the constellations is a group
+of seven stars arranged in a kind of triangular cluster, and
+known as the Pleiades. It is not, strictly speaking, one of
+the constellations, as it forms only part of one. We have
+seen that one of the ancient signs of the zodiac is the Bull,
+or Taurus; the group of stars we are now speaking of forms
+part of this, lying towards the eastern part in the shoulders
+of the Bull. The Pleiades scarcely escape anybody's observation
+now, and we shall not be, therefore, surprised that
+they have always attracted great attention. So great indeed
+has been the attention paid to them that festivals and seasons,
+calendars and years, have by many nations been regulated by
+their rising or culmination, and they have been thus more
+mixed up with the early history of astronomy, and have left
+more marks on the records of past nations, than any other
+celestial object, except the sun and moon.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The interesting details of the history of the Pleiades have
+been very carefully worked out by R. G. Haliburton, F.S.A.,
+to whom we owe the greater part of the information we
+possess on the subject.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a>
+Mr. Haliburton's observations are contained in an interesting pamphlet,
+entitled <i>New Materials for the History of Man</i>, which is quoted by Prof.
+Piazzi Smyth, but which is not easy to obtain. It may be seen, however, in
+the British Museum.</p></div>
+
+<p>Let us first explain what may be observed with respect to
+the Pleiades. It is a group possessing peculiar advantages
+for observation; it is a compact group, the whole will appear
+at once; and it is an unmistakable group and it is near the
+equator, and is therefore visible to observers in either
+hemisphere.</p>
+
+<p>Now suppose the sun to be in the same latitude as the
+Pleiades on some particular day; owing to the proximity of the
+group to the ecliptic, it will be then very near the sun, and it
+will set with it and be invisible during the night. If the sun
+were to the east of the Pleiades they would have already set,
+and the first view of the heavens at sunset would not contain
+this constellation; and so it would be so long as the sun
+was to the east, or for nearly half a year; though during some
+portion of this time it would rise later on in the night.
+During the other half year, while the sun was to the west,
+the Pleiades would be visible at sunset, and we immediately
+see how they are thus led to divide the whole year into two
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
+portions, one of which might be called <i>the Pleiades below</i>, and
+the other <i>the Pleiades above</i>. It is plain that the Pleiades
+first become visible at sunset, when they are then just rising,
+in which case they will culminate a little after midnight (not
+at midnight, on account of the twilight) and be visible all
+night. This will occur when the sun is about half a circle
+removed from them&mdash;that is, at this time, about the beginning
+of November; which would thus be the commencement of
+one half of the year, the other half commencing in May. The
+culmination of the Pleiades at midnight takes place a few
+days later, when they rise at the time that the sun is really
+on the horizon, in which case they are exactly opposite to it;
+and this will happen on the same day all over the earth. The
+opposite effect to this would be when the sun was close to
+the Pleiades&mdash;a few days before which the latter would be
+just setting after sunset, and a few days after would be
+just rising before sunrise.</p>
+
+<p>We have thus the following observations, that might be
+made with respect to this, or any other well-marked constellation.
+First, the period during which it was visible at
+sunset; secondly, the date of its culmination at midnight;
+thirdly, its setting in the evening; and fourthly, its rising
+in the morning: the last two dates being nearly six months
+removed from the second. There are also the dates of its
+culmination at sunrise and sunset, which would divide these
+intervals into two equal halves. On account of the preces<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>sion
+of the equinoxes, as explained in the last chapter, the
+time at which the sun has any particular position with
+respect to the stars, grows later year by year in relation to
+the equinoctial points. And as we regulate our year by the
+date of the sun's entrance on the northern hemisphere, the
+sidereal dates, as we may call them, keep advancing on the
+months. As, however, the change is slow, it has not prevented
+years being commenced and husbandry being regulated
+by the dates above mentioned. Any date that is
+regulated by the stars we might expect to be nearly the
+same all over the world, and the customs observed to be
+universal, though the date itself might alter, and in this
+way. So long as the date was directly obtained from the
+position of the star, all would agree; but as soon as a solar
+calendar was arranged, and it was found that at that time
+this position coincided with a certain day, say the Pleiades
+culminating at midnight on November 17, then some would
+keep on the date November 17 as the important day, even
+when the Pleiades no longer culminated at midnight then,
+and others would keep reckoning by the stars, and so have
+a different date.</p>
+
+<p>With these explanations we shall be able to recognise
+how much the configurations of the Pleiades have had to do
+with the festivals and calendars of nations, and have even
+left their traces on customs and names in use among ourselves
+to the present day.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We have evidences from two very different quarters of the
+universality of the division of the year into two parts by
+means of the Pleiades. On the one hand we learn from
+Hesiod that the Greeks commenced their winter seasons in
+his days by the setting of the Pleiades in the morning, and
+the summer season by their rising at that time. And Mr.
+Ellis, in his <i>Polynesian Researches</i>, tells us that "the Society
+Islanders divided the year into two seasons of the Pleiades,
+or <i>Matarii</i>. The first they called <i>Matarii i nia</i>, or the
+<i>Pleiades above</i>. It commenced when, in the evening, these
+stars appeared at or near the horizon, and the half year
+during which, immediately after sunset, they were seen above
+the horizon was called <i>Matarii i nia</i>. The other season
+commenced when at sunset these stars are invisible, and
+continued until at that time they appeared again above the
+horizon. This season was called <i>Matarii i raro</i>, i.e. <i>the
+Pleiades below</i>." Besides these direct evidences we shall
+find that many semi-annual festivals connected with these
+stars indicate the commencement of the two seasons among
+other nations.</p>
+
+<p>One of these festivals was of course always taken for the
+commencement of the year, and much was made of it as
+new-year's day. A new-year's festival connected with and
+determined by the Pleiades appears to be one of the most
+universal of all customs; and though some little difficulty
+arises, as we have already pointed out, in fixing the date with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+reference to solar calendars, and differences and coincidences
+in this respect among different nations may be to a certain
+extent accidental, yet the fact of the wide-spread observance
+of such a festival is certain and most interesting.</p>
+
+<p>The actual observance at the present day of this festival
+is to be found among the Australian savages. At their
+midnight culmination in November, they still hold a new-year's
+<i>corroboree</i>, in honour of the <i>Mormodellick</i>, as they
+call the Pleiades, which they say are "very good to the
+black fellows." With them November is somewhat after the
+beginning of spring, but in former days it would mark the
+actual commencement, and the new year would be regulated
+by the seasons.</p>
+
+<p>In the northern hemisphere this culmination of the Pleiades
+has the same relation to the autumnal equinox, which would
+never be taken as the commencement of the year; and we
+must therefore look to the southern hemisphere for the origin
+of the custom; especially as we find the very Pleiades themselves
+called <i>Vergili&aelig;</i>, or stars of spring. Of course we might
+suppose that the rising of the constellation in the <i>morning</i>
+had been observed in the northern hemisphere, which would
+certainly have taken place in the beginning of spring some
+5,000 years ago; but this seems improbable, first, because it
+is unlikely that different phenomena of the Pleiades should
+have been most noticed, and secondly, because neither April
+nor May are among any nations connected with this constel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>lation
+by name. Whereas in India the year commenced in
+the month they called <i>Cartiguey</i>, which means the Pleiades.
+Among the ancient Egyptians we find the same connection
+between <i>Athar-aye</i>, the name of the Pleiades, with the
+Chaldeans and Hebrews, and <i>Athor</i> in the Egyptian
+name of November. The Arabs also call the constellation
+<i>Atauria</i>. We shall have more to say on this etymology
+presently, but in the meantime we learn that it was the
+phenomenon connected with the Pleiades at or about
+November that was noticed by all ancient nations, from
+which we must conclude that the origin of the new-year's
+spring festival came from the southern hemisphere.</p>
+
+<p>There is some corroboration of this in the ancient traditions
+as to the stars having changed their courses. In the
+southern hemisphere a man standing facing the position of
+the sun at noon would see the stars rise on his right hand
+and move towards his left. In the northern hemisphere, if
+he also looked in the direction of the sun at noon, he would
+see them rise on his left hand. Now one of a race migrating
+from one side to the other of the equator would take his
+position from the sun, and fancy he was facing the same way
+when he looked at it at noon, and so would think the
+motion of the stars to have altered, instead of his having
+turned round. Such a tradition, then, seems to have arisen
+from such a migration, the fact of which seems to be confirmed
+by the calling the Pleiades stars of spring, and commencing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
+the year with their culmination at midnight. In order to
+trace this new-year's festival into other countries, and by this
+means to show its connection with the Pleiades, we must
+remark that every festival has its peculiar features and rites,
+and it is by these that we must recognise it, where the actual
+date of its occurrence has slightly changed; bearing, of course,
+in mind that the actual change of date must not be too great
+to be accounted for by the precession of the equinoxes, or about
+seventy-one years for each day of change, since the institution
+of the festival, and that the change is in the right direction.</p>
+
+<p>Now we find that everywhere this festival of the Pleiades'
+culmination at midnight (or it may be of the slightly earlier
+one of their first appearance at the horizon at apparent sunset)
+was always connected with the memory of the dead. It was
+a "feast of ancestors."</p>
+
+<p>Among the Australians themselves, the <i>corroborees</i> of the
+natives are connected with a worship of the dead. They paint
+a white stripe over their arms, legs, and ribs, and, dancing by
+the light of their fires by night, appear like so many skeletons
+rejoicing. What is also to be remarked, the festival lasts
+three days, and commences in the evening; the latter a
+natural result of the date depending on the appearance of
+the Pleiades on the horizon at that time.</p>
+
+<p>The Society Islanders, who, as we have seen, divided
+their year by the appearance of the Pleiades at sunset, commenced
+their year on the first day of the appearance, about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>
+November, and also celebrated the closing of one and the
+opening of a new year by a "usage resembling much the
+popish custom of mass for souls in purgatory," each man
+returning to his home to offer special prayers for the
+spirits of departed relatives.</p>
+
+<p>In the Tonga Islands, which belong to the Fiji group, the
+festival of <i>Inachi</i>, a vernal first-fruits' celebration, and also
+a commemoration of the dead takes place towards the end
+of October, and commences at sunset.</p>
+
+<p>In Peru the new-year's festival occurs in the beginning of
+November, and is "called <i>Ayamarca</i> from <i>aya</i>, a corpse,
+and <i>marca</i>, carrying in arms, because they celebrated the solemn
+festival of the dead, with tears, lugubrious songs, and plaintive
+music; and it was customary to visit the tombs of
+relations, and to leave in them food and drink." The fact that
+this took place at the time of the discovery of Peru on the
+very same day as a similar ceremony takes place in Europe,
+was only an accidental coincidence, which is all the more
+remarkable because the two appear, as will be seen in the
+sequel, to have had the same origin, and therefore at first the
+same date, and to have altered from it by exactly the same
+amount. These instances from races south of the equator
+prove clearly that there exists a very general connection with
+new-year's day, as determined by the rising of the Pleiades
+at sunset, and a festival of the dead; and in some instances
+with an offering of first-fruits.  What the origin of this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+connection may be is a more difficult matter. At first sight
+one might conjecture that with the year that was passed it
+was natural to connect the men that had passed away; and
+this may indeed be the true interpretation: but there are
+traditions and observances which may be thought by some to
+point to some ancient wide-spread catastrophe which happened
+at this particular season, which they yearly commemorated,
+and reckoned a new year from each commemoration. Such
+traditions and observances we shall notice as we trace the
+spread of this new-year's festival of the dead among various
+nations, and its connection, with the Pleiades.</p>
+
+<p>We have seen that in India November is called the month
+of the Pleiades. Now on the 17th day of that month is
+celebrated the Hindoo Durga, a festival of the dead, and said
+by Greswell to have been a new-year's commemoration at the
+earliest time to which Indian calendars can be carried back.</p>
+
+<p>Among the ancient Egyptians the same day was very
+noticeable, and they took care to regulate their solar calendars
+that it might remain unchanged. Numerous altered calendars
+have been discovered, but they are all regulated by this one
+day. This was determined by the culmination of the Pleiades
+at midnight. On this day commenced the solemn festival of
+the Isia, which, like the <i>corroborees</i> of the Australians, lasted
+three days, and was celebrated in honour of the dead, and
+of Osiris, the lord of tombs. Now the month Athyr was undoubtedly
+connected with the Pleiades, being that "in which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>
+the Pleiades are most distinct"&mdash;that is, in which they rise
+near and before sunset. Among the Egyptians, however,
+more attention was paid to astronomy than amongst the
+savage races with which the year of the Pleiades would
+appear to have originated, and they studied very carefully
+the connection between the positions of the stars and the
+entrance of the sun into the northern hemisphere, and
+regulated their calendar accordingly; as we shall see shortly
+in speaking of the pyramid builders.</p>
+
+<p>The Persians formerly called the month of November
+<i>Mord&acirc;d</i>, the angel of death, and the feast of the dead
+took place at the same time as in Peru, and was considered
+a new-year's festival. It commenced also in the evening.</p>
+
+<p>In Ceylon a combined festival of agriculture and of the
+dead takes place at the beginning of November.</p>
+
+<p>Among the better known of the ancient nations of the
+northern hemispheres, such as the Greeks and Romans,
+the anomaly of having the beginning of the year at the
+autumnal equinox seems to have induced them to make a
+change to that of spring, and with this change has followed
+the festival of the dead, although some traces of it were left
+in November.</p>
+
+<p>The commemoration of the dead was connected among the
+Egyptians with a deluge, which was typified by the priest
+placing the image of Osiris in a sacred coffer or ark, and
+launching it out into the sea till it was borne out of sight.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
+Now when we connect this fact, and the celebration taking
+place on the 17th day of Athyr, with the date on which the
+Mosaic account of the deluge of Noah states it to have commenced,
+"in the second month (of the Jewish year, which
+corresponds to November), the 17th day of the month," it must
+be acknowledged that this is no chance coincidence, and that
+the precise date here stated must have been regulated by the
+Pleiades, as was the Egyptian date. This coincidence is
+rendered even stronger by the similiarity of traditions among
+the two nations concerning the dove and the tree as connected
+with the deluge. We find, however, no festival of the dead
+among the Hebrews; their better form of faith having
+prevented it.</p>
+
+<p>We have not as yet learnt anything of the importance of
+the Pleiades among the ancient Babylonian astronomers, but
+as through their tablets we have lately become acquainted
+with their version of the story of the deluge, we may be led
+in this way to further information about their astronomical
+appreciation of this constellation.</p>
+
+<p>From whatever source derived, it is certain that the Celtic
+races were partakers in this general culture, we might almost
+call it, of the Pleiades, as shown by the time and character
+of their festival of the dead. This is especially interesting to
+ourselves, as it points to the origin of the superstitions of
+the Druids, and accounts for customs remaining even to
+this day amongst us.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 560px;">
+<img src="images/147.jpg" width="560" height="800" alt="Plate V." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Plate V.&mdash;The Legends of the Druids.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The first of November was with the Druids a night full of
+mystery, in which they annually celebrated the reconstruction
+of the world. A terrible rite was connected with this;
+for the Druidess nuns were obliged at this time to pull down
+and rebuild each year the roof of their temple, as a symbol
+of the destruction and renovation of the world. If one of
+them, in bringing the materials for the new roof, let fall her
+sacred burden, she was lost. Her companions, seized with a
+fanatic transport, rushed upon her and tore her to pieces, and
+scarcely a year is said to have passed without there being one
+or more victims. On this same night the Druids extinguished
+the sacred fire, which was kept continually burning in the
+sacred precincts, and at that signal all the fires in the island
+were one by one put out, and a primitive night reigned
+throughout the land. Then passed along to the west the
+phantoms of those who had died during the preceding year,
+and were carried away by boats to the judgment-seat of the god
+of the dead. (Plate V.) Although Druidism is now extinct,
+the relics of it remain to this day, for in our calendar we still
+find November 1 marked as All Saints' Day, and in the pre-Reformation
+calendars the last day of October was marked
+All Hallow Eve, and the 2nd of November as All Souls';
+indicating clearly a three days' festival of the dead, commencing
+in the evening, and originally regulated by the Pleiades&mdash;an
+emphatic testimony how much astronomy has been
+mixed up with the rites and customs even of the English of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
+to-day. In former days the relics were more numerous, in
+the Hallowe'en torches of the Irish, the bonfires of the
+Scotch, the <i>coel-coeth</i> fires of the Welsh, and the <i>tindle</i> fires
+of Cornwall, all lighted on Hallowe'en. In France it still
+lingers more than here, for to this very day the Parisians at
+this festival repair to the cemeteries, and lunch at the graves
+of their ancestors.</p>
+
+<p>If the extreme antiquity of a rite can be gathered from the
+remoteness of the races that still perform it, the fact related
+to us by Prescott in his <i>History of the Conquest of Mexico</i>
+cannot fail to have great interest. There we find that the
+great festival of the Mexican cycle was held in November, at
+the time of the midnight culmination of the Pleiades. It
+began at sunset, and at midnight as that constellation
+approached the zenith, a human victim, was offered up, to
+avert the dread calamity which they believed impended over
+the human race. They had a tradition that the world had
+been previously destroyed at this time, and they were filled
+with gloom and dismay, and were not at rest until the Pleiades
+were seen to culminate, and a new cycle had begun; this great
+cycle, however, was only accomplished in fifty-two years.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible that the festival of lanthorns among the
+Japanese, which is celebrated about November, may be also
+connected with this same day, as it is certain that that
+nation does reckon days by the Pleiades.</p>
+
+<p>These instances of a similar festival at approximately the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
+same period of the year, and regulated (until fixed to a
+particular day in a solar calendar) by the midnight culmination
+of the Pleiades, show conclusively how great an influence
+that constellation has had on the manners and customs of the
+world, and throw some light on the history of man.</p>
+
+<p>Even where we find no festival connected with the particular
+position of the Pleiades which is the basis of the above, they
+still are used for the regulation of the seasons&mdash;as amongst
+the Dyaks of Borneo. This race of men are guided in their
+farming operations by this constellation. "When it is low in
+the east at early morning, before sunrise, the elders know it
+is time to cut down the jungle; when it approaches mid-heaven,
+then it is time to burn what they have cut down;
+when it is declining towards the west, then they plant; and
+when in the early evening it is seen thus declining, then they
+may reap in safety and in peace;" the latter period is also
+that of their feast of <i>Nycapian</i>, or first-fruits.</p>
+
+<p>We find the same regulations amongst the ancient Greeks
+in the days of Hesiod, who tells us that the corn is to be cut
+when the Pleiades rise, and ploughing is to be done when they
+set. Also that they are invisible for forty days, and reappear
+again at harvest. When the Pleiades rise, the care of the vine
+must cease; and when, fleeing from Orion, they are lost in the
+waves, sailing commences to be dangerous. The name, indeed,
+by which we now know these stars is supposed to be derived
+from the word &#960;&#955;&#949;&#8150;&#957;, to sail&mdash;because sailing was safe after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>
+they had risen; though others derive it from &#960;&#941;&#955;&#949;&#953;&#945;&#953;, a
+flight of doves.</p>
+
+<p>Any year that is regulated by the Pleiades, or by any other
+group of stars, must, as we have seen before, be what is
+called a sidereal, and not a solar year. Now a year in uncivilised
+countries can only mean a succession of seasons, as
+is illustrated by the use of the expression "a person of so
+many summers." It is difficult of course to say when any
+particular season begins by noticing its characteristics as to
+weather; even the most regular phenomena are not certain
+enough for that; we cannot say that when the days and nights
+become exactly equal any marked change takes place in the
+temperature or humidity of the atmosphere, or in any other
+easily-noticed phenomena. The day therefore on which
+spring commences is arbitrary, except that, inasmuch as
+spring depends on the position of the sun, its commencement,
+ought to be regulated by that luminary, and not by some star-group
+which has no influence in the matter. Nevertheless
+the position of such a group is much more easily observed,
+and in early ages could almost alone be observed; and so
+long as the midnight culmination of the Pleiades&mdash;judged of,
+it must be noticed, by their appearance <i>on the horizon</i> at sunset&mdash;fairly
+coincided with that state of weather which might
+be reckoned the commencement of spring conditions, no
+error would be detected, because the change in their position
+is so slow. The solar spring is probably a later discovery,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
+which now, from its greater reasonableness and constancy,
+has superseded the old one. But since the time of the sun's
+crossing the equator is the natural commencement of spring,
+whether discovered or not, it is plain that no group of stars
+could be taken as a guide instead, if their indication did not
+approximately coincide with this.</p>
+
+<p>If then we can determine the exact date at which the
+Pleiades indicated by their midnight culmination the sun's
+passage across the equator, we can be sure that the spring
+could only have been regulated by this during, say, a thousand
+years at most, on either side of this date. It is very certain
+that if the method of reckoning spring by the stars had
+been invented at a more remote date, some other set of stars
+would have been chosen instead.</p>
+
+<p>Now when was this date? It is a matter admitting of
+certain calculation, depending only on numbers derived from
+observation in our own days and records of the past few
+centuries, and the answer is that this date is about 2170 <small>B.C.</small></p>
+
+<p>We have seen that, though it was probably brought from
+the southern hemisphere, the Egyptians adopted the year of
+the Pleiades, and celebrated the new-year's festival of the
+dead; but they were also advanced astronomers, and would
+soon find out the change that took place in the seasons when
+regulated by the stars. And to such persons the date at which
+the two periods coincided, or at least were exactly half a year
+apart, would be one of great importance and interest, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
+there seems to be evidence that they did commemorate it in
+a very remarkable manner. The evidence, however, is all
+circumstantial, and the conclusion therefore can only claim
+probability. The evidence is as follows:&mdash;The most remarkable
+buildings of Egypt are the pyramids. These are of
+various sizes and importance, but are built very much after
+the same plan. They seem, however, to be all copies from
+one, the largest, namely, the Pyramid of Gizeh, and to be of
+subsequent date to this. Their object has long been a puzzle,
+and the best conclusion has been supposed to be that they
+were for sepulchral purposes, as in some of them coffins
+have been found. The large one, however, shows far more
+than the rest of the structure, and cannot have been meant
+for a funeral pile alone.</p>
+
+<p>Its peculiarities come out on a careful examination and
+measurement such as it has been subjected to at the devoted
+hands of Piazzi Smyth, the Astronomer Royal for Scotland.
+He has shown that it is not built at random, as a tomb might
+be, but it is adjusted with exquisite design, and with surprising
+accuracy. In the first place it lies due north, south, east,
+and west, and the careful ascertainment of the meridian of the
+place, by modern astronomical instruments, could not suggest
+any improvement in its position in this respect. The outside
+of it is now, so to speak, pealed, that is to say, there was
+originally, covering the whole, another layer of stones which
+have been taken away. These stones, which were of a dif<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>ferent
+material, were beautifully polished, as some of the
+remaining ones, now covered and concealed, can testify. The
+angle at which they are cut, and which of course gives the
+angle and elevation of the whole pyramid, is such that the
+height of it is in the same proportion to its circumference or
+perimeter, as the radius of a circle is to its circumference
+approximately. The height, in fact, is proved by measurement
+and observation to be 486 ft., and the four sides together to be
+3,056 ft., or about 6<small><sup>2</sup>/<sub>7</sub></small> times the height. It does not seem improbable
+that, considering their advancement, the Egyptians
+might have calculated approximately how much larger the
+circumference of the circle is than its diameter, and it is a
+curious coincidence that the pyramid expresses it. Professor
+Piazzi Smyth goes much further and believes that they knew,
+or were divinely taught, the shape and size of the earth, and
+by a little manipulation of the length of their unit, or as he
+expresses it the "pyramid inch," he makes the base of the
+pyramid express the number of miles in the diameter of the
+earth.</p>
+
+<p>Now in the interior of the apparently solid structure,
+besides the usual slanting passage down to a kind of cellar or
+vault beneath the middle of the base, which may have been
+used for a sepulchral resting-place, there are two slanting
+passages, one running north and the other running south, and
+slanting up at different angles. Part of that which leads
+south is much enlarged, and is known as the grand gallery.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
+It is of a very remarkable shape, being perfectly smooth and
+polished along its ascending base, as indeed it is in every
+part, and having a number of steps or projections, pointing
+also upwards at certain angles, very carefully maintained.
+Whether we understand its use or not, it is very plain that
+it has been made with a very particular design, and one
+not easily comprehended. This leads into a chamber
+known as the king's chamber, whose walls are exquisitely
+polished and which contains a coffer known as <i>Cheops' Coffin</i>.
+This coffer has been villainously treated by travellers, who
+have chipped and damaged it, but originally it was very
+carefully made and polished. It is too large to have been
+brought in by the only entrance into the chamber after it was
+finished, and therefore is obviously no coffin at all, as is proved
+also by the elaborateness of the means of approach. Professor
+Piazzi Smyth has made the happy suggestion that it represents
+their standard of length and capacity, and points out the
+remarkable fact that it contains exactly as much as four
+quarters of our dry measure. As no one has ever suggested
+what our "quarters" are quarters of, Professor Smyth very
+naturally supplies the answer&mdash;"of the contents of the
+pyramid coffer." There are various other measurements that
+have been made by the same worker, and their meaning suggested
+in his interesting book, <i>Our Inheritance in the Great
+Pyramid</i>, which we may follow or agree to as we can; but
+from all that has been said above, it will appear probable that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
+this pyramid was built with a definite design to mark various
+natural phenomena or artificial measures, which is all we
+require for our present purpose. Now we come to the question,
+what is the meaning of the particular angles at which the
+north-looking and south-looking passages rise, if, as we now
+believe, they must have <i>some</i> meaning.</p>
+
+<p>The exits of these passages were closed, and they could not
+therefore have been for observation, but they may have been
+so arranged as to be a memorial of any remarkable phenomena
+to be seen in those directions. To ascertain if there be any
+such to which they point, we must throw back the heavens
+to their position in the days of the Egyptians, because, as we
+have seen, the precession of the equinoxes alters the meridian
+altitude of every star. As the passages point north and
+south, if they refer to any star at all, it must be to their
+passing the meridian.</p>
+
+<p>Now let us take the heavens as they were 2170 <small>B.C.</small>, the
+date at which the Pleiades <i>really</i> commenced the spring, by
+their midnight culmination, and ask how high they would be
+then. The answer of astronomy is remarkable&mdash;"<i>Exactly at
+that height that they could be seen in the direction of the southward-pointing
+passage of the pyramid.</i>" And would any star
+then be in a position to be seen in the direction of the
+other or northward-looking passage? Yes, the largest star
+in the constellation of the Dragon, which would be so near
+the pole (3&deg; 52&acute;) as to be taken as the Pole Star in those days.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
+These are such remarkable coincidences in a structure
+admittedly made with mathematical accuracy and design,
+and truly executed, that we cannot take them to be accidental,
+but must endeavour to account for them.</p>
+
+<p>The simplest explanation seems to be, that everything in
+the pyramid is intended to represent some standard or
+measure, and that these passages have to do with their year.
+They had received the year of the Pleiades from a remoter
+antiquity than their own, they had discovered the true commencement
+of solar spring, as determined from the solar
+autumnal equinox, and they commemorated by the building
+of the pyramid the coincidence of the two dates, making
+passages in it which would have no meaning except at that
+particular time.</p>
+
+<p>Whether the pyramid was built <i>at that time</i>, or whether
+their astronomical knowledge was sufficient to enable them
+to predict it and build accordingly, just as we calculate back
+to it, we have no means of knowing. It is very possible that
+the pyramid may have been built by some immigrating race
+more learned in astronomy, like the Accadians among the
+Babylonians.</p>
+
+<p>Either the whole of the conclusions respecting the pyramid
+is founded on pure imagination and the whole work upon it
+thrown away, or we have here another very remarkable proof
+of the influence of the Pleiades on the reckoning of the year,
+and a very interesting chapter in the history of the heavens.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Following the guidance of Mr. Haliburton, we shall find
+still more customs, and names depending in all probability
+on the influence the Pleiades once exerted, and the
+observances connected with the feasts in their honour.</p>
+
+<p>The name by which the Pleiades are known among the
+Polynesians is the "Tau," which means a season, and they
+speak of the years of the Tau, that is of the Pleiades. Now
+we have seen that the Egyptians had similar feasts at similar
+times, in relation to this constellation, and argued that they
+did not arise independently. This seems still further proved
+by their name for these stars&mdash;the Atauria.</p>
+
+<p>Now the Egyptians do not appear to have derived their
+signs of the Zodiac from the same source; these had a Babylonian
+origin, and the constellation in which the Pleiades
+were placed by the latter people was the Bull, by whatever
+name he went. The Egyptians, we may make the fair
+surmise, adopted from both sources; they took the Pleiades
+to indicate the Bull, and they called this animal after the
+Atauria. From thence we got the Latin Taurus, and the
+German Thier.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible that this somehow got connected with the
+letter "tau" in Greek, which seems itself connected with the
+sacred scarab&aelig;us or Tau-beetle of Egypt; but the nature of
+the connection is by no means obvious. Mr. Haliburton even
+suggests that the "tors" and "Arthur's seat," which are
+names given to British hill-tops, may be connected with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>
+"high places," of the worship of the Pleiades, but of this we
+have no proof.</p>
+
+<p>Among the customs possibly derived from the ancients,
+through the Ph&#339;nicians, though now adopted as conveying a
+different meaning in a Christian sense, is that of the "hot cross
+bun," or "bull cake." It is found on Egyptian monuments,
+signifying the four quarters of the year, and sometimes
+stamped with the head and horns of the bull. It is found
+among ourselves too, essentially connected with the dead, and
+something similar to it appears in the "soul cake" connected
+originally with All Souls' Day.</p>
+
+<p>Among the Scotch it was traditionally thought that on New
+Year's Eve the Candlemas Bull can be seen, rising at twilight
+and sailing over the heavens&mdash;a very near approach to a matter-of-fact
+statement.</p>
+
+<p>We have seen that among the ancient Indians there was
+some notice taken of the Pleiades, and that they in all probability
+guided their year by them or by some other stars: it
+would therefore behove them to know something of the precession
+of the equinoxes. It seems very well proved that their
+days of Brahma and other periods were meant to represent
+some astronomical cycles, and among these we find one that is
+applicable to the above. They said that in every thousand
+divine ages, or in every day of Brahma, fourteen Menus are
+successively invested with the sovereignty of the earth.
+Each Menu transmits his empire to his sons during<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
+seventy-one divine ages. We may find a meaning for this
+by putting it that the equinox goes forward fourteen days
+in each thousand years, and each day takes up seventy-one
+years.</p>
+
+<p>These may not be the only ones among the various customs,
+sayings, and names that are due in one way or other to this
+primitive method of arranging the seasons by the positions
+of the stars, especially of those most remarkable and conspicuous
+ones the Pleiades, but they are those that are best
+authenticated. If the connection between the Pleiades and
+the festival of the dead, the new year and a deluge, can be
+clearly made out; if the tradition of the latter be found
+as universal as that of the former, and be connected with it
+in the Mosaic narrative; if we can trace all these traditions
+to the south of the equator, and find numerous further traditions
+connected with islands, we may find some reason for
+believing in their theory who suggest that the early progenitors
+of the human race (? all of them) were inhabitants of
+some fortunate islands of even temperature in the southern
+hemisphere, where they made some progress in civilisation,
+but that their island was swallowed up by the sea, and that
+they only escaped by making huge vessels, and, being carried
+by the waves, they landed on continental shores, where they
+commemorated yearly the great catastrophe that had happened
+to them, notifying its time by the position of the
+Pleiades, making it a feast of the dead whom they had left<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
+behind, and opening the year with the day, whether it were
+spring or not, and handing down to their descendants and to
+those among whom they came, the traditions and customs
+which such events had impressed upon them.</p>
+
+<p>Whether such an account be probable, mythical, or unnatural,
+there are certainly some strange things to account for
+in connection with the Pleiades.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE NATURE AND STRUCTURE OF THE HEAVENS ACCORDING
+TO THE ANCIENTS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Many and various have been the ideas entertained by
+reflecting men in former times on the nature and construction
+of the heavenly vault, wherein appeared those stars and
+constellations whose history we have already traced. Is it
+solid? or liquid? or gaseous? Each of these and many
+other suppositions have been duly formulated by the ancient
+philosophers and sages, although, as we are told by modern
+astronomy, it does not exist at all.</p>
+
+<p>In our study of the ancient ideas about the structure of
+the universe, we will commence with that early and curious
+system which considered the heavenly vault to be material
+and solid.</p>
+
+<p>The theory of a solid sky received the assent of all the
+most ancient philosophers. In his commentary on Aristotle's
+work on the heavens, Simplicius reveals the repugnance
+the ancient philosophers felt in admitting that a star could
+stand alone in space, or have a free motion of its own. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
+must have a support, and they therefore conceived that the
+sky must be solid. However strange this idea may now
+appear, it formed for many centuries the basis of all astronomical
+theories. Thus Anaximenas (in the sixth century <small>B.C.</small>)
+is related by Plutarch to have said that "the outer sky is
+solid and crystalline," and that the stars are "fixed to its
+surface like studs," but he does not say on what this opinion
+was founded, though it is probable that, like his master
+Anaximander, he could not understand how the stars could
+move without being supported.</p>
+
+<p>Pythagoras, who lived about the same epoch, is also supposed
+by some to have held the same views, and it is possible
+that they all borrowed these ideas from the Persians, whose
+earliest astronomers are said in the <i>Zend avesta</i> to have
+believed in concentric solid skies.</p>
+
+<p>Eudoxus of Cnidus, in the fifth century <small>B.C.</small>, is said by his
+commentator Aratus to have also believed in the solidity of
+the heavens, but his reasons are not assigned.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding these previously expressed opinions,
+Aristotle (fourth century, <small>B.C.</small>) has for a long time been
+generally supposed to be the inventor of solid skies, but in
+fact he only gave the idea his valuable and entire support.
+The sphere of the stars was his eighth heaven. The less
+elevated heavens, in which he also believed, were invented to
+explain as well as they might, the proper motions of the sun,
+moon, and planets.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The philosopher of Stagira said that the motion of his
+eighth or outermost solid sky was uniform, nor ever troubled
+by any perturbation. "Within the universe there is," he
+says, "a fixed and immovable centre, the earth; and without
+there is a bounding surface enclosing it on all sides. The
+outermost part of the universe is the sky. It is filled with
+heavenly bodies which we know as stars, and it has a perpetual
+motion, carrying round with it these immortal bodies
+in its unaltering and unending revolution."</p>
+
+<p>Euclid, to whom we may assign a date of about 275
+before our present era, also considered the stars to be set in a
+solid sphere, having the eye of the observer as centre; though
+for him this conception was simply a deduction from exact
+and fundamental observations, namely, that their revolution
+took place as a whole, the shape and size of the constellation
+being never altered.</p>
+
+<p>Cicero, in the last century before Christ, declared himself a
+believer in the solidity of the sky. According to him the ether
+was too rarefied to enable it to move the stars, which must
+therefore require to be fixed to a sphere of their own,
+independent of the ether.</p>
+
+<p>In the time of Seneca there seem to have been difficulties
+already raised about the solidity of the heavens, for
+he only mentions it in the form of a question&mdash;"Is the sky
+solid and of a firm and compact substance?" (<i>Questions</i>,
+Book ii.)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the fifth century the idea of the star sphere still lingered,
+and in the eyes of Simplicius, the commentator of Aristotle,
+it was not merely an artifice suitable for the representation
+of the apparent motions, but a firm and solid reality; while
+Mahomet and most of the Fathers of the Christian Church
+had the same conception of these concentric spheres.</p>
+
+<p>It appears then from this review that the phrases "starry
+vault," and especially "fixed stars," have been used in two
+very distinct senses. When we meet with them in Aristotle or
+Ptolemy, it is obvious that they have reference to the crystal
+sphere of Anaximenas, to which they were supposed to be
+affixed, and to move with it; but that later the word
+"fixed" carried with it the sense of immovable, and the
+stars were conceived as fixed in this sense, independently
+of the sphere to which they were originally thought to be
+attached. Thus Seneca speaks of them as the <i>fixum et
+immobilem populum</i>.</p>
+
+<p>If we would inquire a little further into the supposed
+nature of this solid sphere, we find that Empedocles considered
+it to be a solid mass, formed of a portion of the ether
+which the elementary fire has converted into crystal, and his
+ideas of the connection between cold and solidification being
+not very precise, he described it by names that give the best
+idea of transparence, and, like Lactantius, called it <i>vitreum
+c&aelig;lum</i>, or said <i>c&aelig;lum &aelig;rem glaciatum esse</i>, though we cannot
+suppose that he made any allusion to what we now call glass,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>
+but simply meant some body eminently transparent into
+which the fire had transformed the air; while so far from
+having any idea of cold, as we might imagine possible from
+observations of the snowy tops of mountains, they actually
+believed in a warm region above the lower atmosphere. Thus
+Aristotle considers that the spheres heat by their motion the
+air below them, without being heated themselves, and that
+there is thus a production of heat. "The motion of the
+sphere of fixed stars," he says, "is the most rapid, as it
+moves in a circle with all the bodies attached to it, and the
+spaces immediately below are strongly heated by the motion,
+and the heat, thus engendered, is propagated downwards to the
+earth." This however, strangely enough, does not appear to
+have prevented their supposing an eternal cold to reign in
+the regions next below, for Macrobius, in his commentary on
+Cicero, speaks of the decrease of temperature with the height,
+and concludes that the extreme zones of the heavens where
+Saturn moves must be eternally cold; but this they reckoned
+as part of the atmosphere, beyond whose limits alone was to
+be found the fiery ether.</p>
+
+<p>It is to the Fathers of the Church that we owe the transmission
+during the middle ages of the idea of a crystal vault.
+They conceived a heaven of glass composed of eight or ten
+superposed layers, something like so many skins in an onion.
+This idea seems to have lingered on in certain cloisters
+of southern Europe even into the nineteenth century, for a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>
+venerable Prince of the Church told Humboldt in 1815, that
+a large a&euml;rolite lately fallen, which was covered with a
+vitrified crust, must be a fragment of the crystalline sky. On
+these various spheres, one enveloping without touching
+another, they supposed the several planets to be fixed, as we
+shall see in a subsequent chapter.</p>
+
+<p>Whether the greater minds of antiquity, such as Plato,
+Plutarch, Eudoxus, Aristotle, Apollonius, believed in the
+reality of these concentric spheres to carry the planets, or
+whether this conception was not rather with them an
+imaginary one, serving only to simplify calculation and
+assist the mind in the solution of the difficult problem of
+their motion, is a point on which even Humboldt cannot
+decide. It is certain, however, that in the middle of the
+sixteenth century, when the theory involved no less than
+seventy-seven concentric spheres, and later, when the adversaries
+of Copernicus brought them all into prominence to
+defend the system of Ptolemy, the belief in the existence
+of these solid spheres, circles and epicycles, which was
+under the especial patronage of the Church, was very
+widespread.</p>
+
+<p>Tycho Brahe expressly boasts of having been the first, by
+considerations concerning the orbits of the comets, to have
+demonstrated the impossibility of solid spheres, and to have
+upset this ingenious scaffolding. He supposed the spaces
+of our system to be filled with air, and that this medium,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+disturbed by the motion of the heavenly bodies, opposed a
+resistance which gave rise to the harmonic sounds.</p>
+
+<p>It should be added also that the Grecian philosophers,
+though little fond of observation, but rejoicing rather in
+framing systems for the explanation of phenomena of which
+they possessed but the faintest glimpse, have left us some
+ideas about the nature of shooting stars and a&euml;rolites that
+come very close to those that are now accepted. "Some
+philosophers think," says Plutarch in his life of Lysander,
+"that shooting stars are not detached particles of ether
+which are extinguished by the atmosphere soon after being
+ignited, nor do they arise from the combustion of the rarefied
+air in the upper regions, but that they are rather heavenly
+bodies which fall, that is to say, which escaping in some way
+from the general force of rotation are precipitated in an
+irregular manner, sometimes on inhabited portions of the
+earth, but sometimes also in the ocean, where of course they
+cannot be found." Diogenes of Apollonius expresses himself
+still more clearly: "Amongst the stars that are visible
+move others that are invisible, to which in consequence we
+are unable to give any name. These latter often fall to the
+earth and take fire like that star-stone which fell all on fire near
+&AElig;gos Potamos." These ideas were no doubt borrowed from
+some more ancient source, as he believed that all the stars
+were made of something like pumice-stone. Anaxagoras, in
+fact, thought that all the heavenly bodies were fragments of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>
+rocks which the ether, by the force of its circular motion, had
+detached from the earth, set fire to, and turned into stars.
+Thus the Ionic school, with Diogenes of Apollonius, placed
+the a&euml;rolites and the stars in one class, and assigned to all
+of them a terrestrial origin, though in this sense only, that
+the earth, being the central body, had furnished the matter
+for all those that surround it.</p>
+
+<p>Plutarch speaks thus of this curious combination:&mdash;"Anaxagoras
+teaches that the ambient ether is of an igneous
+nature, and by the force of its gyratory motion it tears off
+blocks of stone, renders them incandescent, and transforms
+them into stars." It appears that he explained also by
+an analogous effect of the circular motion the descent of the
+Nem&aelig;an Lion, which, according to an old tradition, fell out
+of the moon upon the Peloponnesus. According to B&#339;ckh,
+this ancient myth of the Nem&aelig;an Lion had an astronomical
+origin, and was symbolically connected in chronology with
+the cycle of intercalation of the lunar year, with the worship
+of the moon in Nemaea, and the games by which it was
+accompanied.</p>
+
+<p>Anaxagoras explains the apparent motion of the celestial
+sphere from east to west by the hypothesis of a general
+revolution, the interruption of which, as we have just seen,
+caused the fall of meteoric stones. This hypothesis is the
+point of departure of the theory of vortices, which more
+than two thousand years later, by the labours of Descartes,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>
+Huyghens, and Hooke, took so prominent a place among the
+theories of the world.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+<img src="images/170.jpg" width="550" height="800" alt="Plate VI." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Plate VI.&mdash;The Nem&aelig;an Lion.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>It may be worth adding with regard to the famous a&euml;rolite
+of &AElig;gos Potamus, alluded to above, that when the heavens
+were no longer believed to be solid, the faith in the celestial
+origin of this, as of other a&euml;rolites, was for a long time
+destroyed. Thus Bailly the astronomer, alluding to it, says,
+"if the fact be true, this stone must have been thrown out
+by a volcano." Indeed it is only within the last century
+that it has been finally accepted for fact that stones do fall
+from the sky. Laplace thought it probable that they came
+from the moon; but it has now been demonstrated that a&euml;rolites,
+meteors, and shooting stars belong all to one class of
+heavenly bodies, that they are fragments scattered through
+space, and circulate like the planets round the sun. When
+the earth in its motion crosses this heavenly host, those
+which come near enough to touch its atmosphere leave a
+luminous train behind them by their heating by friction
+with the air: these are the <i>shooting stars</i>. Sometimes they
+come so close as to appear larger than the moon, then they
+are <i>meteors;</i> and sometimes too the attraction of the earth
+makes them fall to it, and these become <i>a&euml;rolites</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But to return to our ancient astronomers:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>They believed the heavens to be in motion, not only
+because they saw the motion with their eyes, but because
+they believed them to be animated, and regarded motion as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
+the essence of life. They judged of the rapidity of the
+stars' motion by a very ingenious means. They perceived
+that it was greater than that of a horse, a bird, an arrow,
+or even of the voice, and Cleomenas endeavoured to estimate
+it in the following way. He remarks that when the king
+of Persia made war upon Greece he placed men at certain
+intervals, so as to lie in hearing of each other, and thus
+passed on the news from Athens to Susa. Now this news
+took two days and nights to pass over this distance. The
+voice therefore only accomplished a fraction of the distance
+that the stars had accomplished twice in the same time.</p>
+
+<p>The heavens, as we have seen, were not supposed to consist
+of a single sphere, but of several concentric ones, the
+arrangement and names of which we must now inquire into.</p>
+
+<p>The early Chaldeans established three. The first was the
+empyreal heaven, which was the most remote. This, which
+they called also the solid firmament, was made of fire, but of
+fire of so rare and penetrating a nature, that it easily passed
+through the other heavens, and became universally diffused,
+and in this way reached the earth. The second was the
+ethereal heaven, containing the stars, which were simply
+formed of the more compact and denser parts of this
+substance; and the third heaven was that of the planets. The
+Persians, however, gave a separate heaven to the sun, and
+another to the moon.</p>
+
+<p>The system which has enjoyed the longest and most widely-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>spread
+reign is that which places above, or rather round, the
+solid firmament a heaven of water&mdash;(the nature of which
+is not accurately defined), and round this a <i>primum mobile</i>,
+prime mover, or originator of all the motions, and round all
+this the empyreal heaven, or abode of the blessed. In the most
+anciently printed scientific encyclop&aelig;dia known, the <i>Magarita
+philosophica</i>, edited in the fifteenth century, that is, two centuries
+before the adoption of the true system of the world, we
+have the curious figure represented on the next page, in which
+we find no less than eleven different heavens. We here see
+on the exterior the solid empyreal heaven, which is stated in
+the body of the work to be the abode of the blessed and to
+be immovable, while the next heaven gives motion to all
+within, and is followed by the aqueous heaven, then the crystal
+firmament, and lastly by the several heavens of the planets,
+sun, and moon. The revolution of these spheres was not
+supposed to take place, like the motion of the earth in modern
+astronomy, round an imaginary axis, but round one which had
+a material existence, which was provided with pivots moving
+in fixed sockets. Thus Vitruvius, architect to Augustus,
+teaches it expressly in these words:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The heaven turns continually round the earth and sea
+upon an axis, where two extremities are like two pivots that
+sustain it: for there are two places in which the Governor of
+Nature has fashioned and set these pivots as two centres; one
+is above the earth among the northern stars; the other is at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
+the opposite end beneath the earth to the south; and around
+these pivots, as round two centres, he has placed little naves,
+like those of a wheel upon which the heaven turns continually."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 610px;">
+<img src="images/174.jpg" width="610" height="750" alt="Fig. 13." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 13.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Similarly curious ideas we shall find to have prevailed
+with respect to the meaning of everything that they observed
+in the heavens: thus what a number of opinions have been
+hazarded on the nature of the "Milky Way" alone! some of
+which we may learn from Plutarch. The Milky Way, he says,
+is a nebulous circle, which constantly appears in the sky, and
+which owes its name to its white appearance. Certain
+Pythagoreans assert that when Phaeton lit up the universe,
+one star, which escaped from its proper place, set light to the
+whole space it passed over in its circular course, and so formed
+the Milky Way. Others thought that this circle was where
+the sun had been moving at the beginning of the world.
+According to others it is but an optical phenomenon produced
+by the reflection of the sun's rays from the vault of the sky
+as from a mirror, and comparable with the effects seen in the
+rainbow and illuminated clouds. Metrodorus says it is the
+mark of the sun's passage which moves along this circle.
+Parmenidas pretends that the milky colour arises from a
+mixture of dense and rare air. Anaxagoras thinks it an
+effect of the earth's shadow projected on this part of the
+heavens, when the sun is below. Democritus says that it is
+the lustre of several little stars which are very near together,
+and which reciprocally illuminate each other. Aristotle
+believes it to be a vast mass of arid vapours, which takes
+fire from a glowing tress, above the region of the ether, and
+far below that of the planets. Posidonius says that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>
+circle is a compound of fire less dense than that of the stars,
+but more luminous. All such opinions, except that of
+Democritus, are of little value, because founded on nothing;
+perhaps the worst is that of Theophrastus, who said it was
+the junction between the two hemispheres, which together
+formed the vault of heaven: and that it was so badly made
+that it let through some of the light that he supposed to
+exist everywhere behind the solid sky.</p>
+
+<p>We now know that the Milky Way, like many of the
+nebul&aelig;, is an immense agglomeration of suns. The Milky
+Way is itself a nebula, a mass of sidereal systems, with our
+own among them, since our sun is a single star in this vast
+archipelago of eighteen million orbs. The Greeks called it
+the Galaxy. The Chinese and Arabians call it the River of
+Heaven. It is the Path of Souls among the North American
+Indians, and the Road of S. Jacques de Compostelle among
+French peasants.</p>
+
+<p>In tracing the history of ideas concerning the structure
+of the heavens among the Greek philosophers, we meet with
+other modifications which it will be interesting to recount.
+Thus Eudoxus, who paid greater attention than others to
+the variations of the motions of the planets, gave more than
+one sphere to each of them to represent these observed
+changes. Each planet, according to him, has a separate part
+of the heaven to itself, which is composed of several
+concentric spheres, whose movements, modifying each other,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>
+produce that of the planet. He gave three spheres to the
+sun: one which turned from east to west in twenty-four
+hours, to represent the diurnal rotation; a second, which
+turned about the pole of the ecliptic in 365&frac14; days, and
+produced its annual movement; and a third was added to
+account for a certain supposed motion, by which the sun
+was drawn out of the ecliptic, and turned about an axis,
+making such an angle with that of the ecliptic, as
+represented the supposed aberration. The moon also had
+three spheres to produce its motions in longitude and latitude,
+and its diurnal motion. Each of the other planets had four,
+the extra one being added to account for their stations and
+retrogressions. It should be added that these concentric
+spheres were supposed to fit each other, so that the different
+planets were only separated by the thicknesses of these
+crystal zones.</p>
+
+<p>Polemarch, the disciple of Eudoxus, who went to Athens
+with his pupil Calippus for the express purpose of consulting
+Aristotle on these subjects, was not satisfied with the exactness
+with which these spheres represented the planetary
+motions, and made changes in the direction of still greater
+complication. Instead of the twenty-six spheres which
+represented Eudoxus' system, Calippus established thirty-three,
+and by adding also intermediary spheres to prevent
+the motion of one planet interfering with that of the adjacent
+ones, the number was increased to fifty-six.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There is extant a small work, ascribed to Aristotle, entitled
+"Letter of Aristotle to Alexander on the system of the
+world," which gives so clear an account of the ideas entertained
+in his epoch that we shall venture to give a somewhat
+long extract from it. The work, it should be said, is not by
+all considered genuine, but is ascribed by some to Nicolas
+of Damas, by others to Anaximenas of Lampsacus, a
+contemporary of Alexander's, and by others to the Stoic
+Posidonius. It is certain, however, that Aristotle paid some
+attention to astronomy, for he records the rare phenomena
+of an eclipse of Mars by the moon, and the occultation of
+one of the Gemini by the planet Jupiter, and the work may
+well be genuine. It contains the following:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"There is a fixed and immovable centre to the universe.
+This is occupied by the earth, the fruitful mother, the
+common focus of every kind of living thing. Immediately
+surrounding it on all sides is the air. Above this in the
+highest region is the dwelling-place of the gods, which
+is called the heavens. The heavens and the universe being
+spherical and in continual motion, there must be two points
+on opposite sides, as in a globe which turns about an axis,
+and these points must be immovable, and have the sphere
+between them, since the universe turns about them. They
+are called the poles. If a line be drawn from one of these
+points to the other it will be the diameter of the universe,
+having the earth in the centre and the two poles at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+extremities; of these two poles the northern one is always
+visible above our horizon, and is called the Arctic pole;
+the other, to the south, is always invisible to us&mdash;it is called
+the Antarctic pole.</p>
+
+<p>"The substance of the heavens and of the stars is called
+ether; not that it is composed of flame, as pretended by
+some who have not considered its nature, which is very
+different from that of fire, but it is so called because it
+has an eternal circular motion, being a divine and incorruptible
+element, altogether different from the other four.</p>
+
+<p>"Of the stars contained in the heavens some are fixed, and
+turn with the heavens, constantly maintaining their relative
+positions. In their middle portion is the circle called the
+<i>zoophore</i>, which stretches obliquely from one tropic to the
+other, and is divided into twelve parts, which are the twelve
+signs (of the zodiac). The others are wandering stars, and
+move neither with the same velocity as the fixed stars,
+nor with a uniform velocity among themselves, but all
+in different circles, and with velocities depending on the
+distances of these circles from the earth.</p>
+
+<p>"Although all the fixed stars move on the same surface
+of the heavens, their number cannot be determined. Of
+the movable stars there are seven, which circulate in as
+many concentric circles, so arranged that the lower circle is
+smaller than the higher, and that the seven so placed one
+within the other are all within the spheres of the fixed stars.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"On the nearer, that is inner, side of this ethereal, immovable,
+unalterable, impassible nature is placed our movable,
+corruptible, and mortal nature. Of this there are several
+kinds, the first of which is fire, a subtle inflammable essence,
+which is kindled by the great pressure and rapid motion of
+the ether. It is in this region of air, when any disturbance
+takes place in it, that we see kindled shooting-stars, streaks
+of light, and shining motes, and it is there that comets
+are lighted and extinguished.</p>
+
+<p>"Below the fire comes the air, by nature cold and dark, but
+which is warmed and enflamed, and becomes luminous by its
+motion. It is in the region of the air, which is passive and
+changeable in any manner, that the clouds condense, and
+rain, snow, frost, and hail are formed and fall to the earth.
+It is the abode of stormy winds, of whirlwinds, thunder,
+lightning, and many other phenomena.</p>
+
+<p>"The cause of the heaven's motion is God. He is not in
+the centre, where the earth is a region of agitation and
+trouble, but he is above the outermost circumference, which is
+the purest of all regions, a place which we call rightly <i>ouranos</i>,
+because it is the highest part of the universe, and <i>olympos</i>,
+that is, perfectly bright, because it is altogether separated
+from everything like the shadow and disordered movements
+which occur in the lower regions."</p>
+
+<p>We notice in this extract a curious etymology of the word
+ether, namely, as signifying perpetual motion (&#7936;&#949;&#8054; &#964;&#949;&#949;&#8150;&#957;),
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>
+though it is more probable that its true, as its more generally
+accepted derivation is from &#945;&#7988;&#952;&#949;&#953;&#957;, to burn or shine, a meaning
+doubtless alluded to in a remarkable passage of Hippocrates,
+&#928;&#949;&#961;&#8054; &#931;&#940;&#961;&#954;&#969;&#957;. "It appears to me," he says, "that what we
+call the principle of heat is immortal, that it knows all, sees
+all, hears all, perceives all, both in the past and in the future.
+At the time when all was in confusion, the greater part of
+this principle rose to the circumference of the universe; it is
+this that the ancients have called <i>ether</i>."</p>
+
+<p>The first Greek that can be called an astronomer was
+Thales, born at Miletus 641 <small>B.C.</small>, who introduced into Greece
+the elements of astronomy. His opinions were these: that
+the stars were of the same substance as the earth, but that
+they were on fire; that the moon borrowed its light from the
+sun, and caused the eclipses of the latter, while it was itself
+eclipsed when it entered the earth's shadow; that the earth
+was round, and divisible into five zones, by means of five
+circles, <i>i.e.</i> the Arctic and Antarctic, the two tropics, and the
+equator; that the latter circle is cut obliquely by the ecliptic,
+and perpendicularly by the meridian. Up to his time no
+division of the sphere had been made beyond the description
+of the constellations. These opinions do not appear to have
+been rapidly spread, since Herodotus, one of the finest
+intellects of Greece, who lived two centuries later, was still
+so ill-instructed as to say, in speaking of an eclipse, "The sun
+abandoned its place, and night took the place of day."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Anaxagoras, of whom we have spoken before, asserted that
+the sun was a mass of fire larger than the Peloponnesus.
+Plutarch says he regarded it as a burning stone, and Diogenes
+Laertius looked upon it as hot iron. For this bold idea he
+was persecuted. They considered it a crime that he taught
+the causes of the eclipses of the moon, and pretended that
+the sun is larger than it looks. He first taught the existence
+of one God, and he was taxed with impiety and treason
+against his country. When he was condemned to death,
+"Nature," he said, "has long ago condemned me to the
+same; and as to my children, when I gave them birth I
+had no doubt but they would have to die some day." His
+disciple Pericles, however, defended him so eloquently that
+his life was spared, and he was sent into exile.</p>
+
+<p>Pythagoras, who belonged to the school of Thales, and
+who travelled in Ph&#339;nicia, Chaldea, Jud&aelig;a, and Egypt, to
+learn their ideas, ventured, in spite of the warnings of the
+priests, to submit to the rites of initiation at Heliopolis, and
+thence returned to Samos, but meeting with poor reception
+there, he went to Italy to teach. From him arose the <i>Italian
+School</i>, and his disciples took the name of philosophers (lovers
+of wisdom) instead of that of sages. We shall learn more
+about him in the chapter on the Harmony of the Spheres.</p>
+
+<p>His first disciple, Empedocles, famous for the curiosity
+which led him to his death in the crater of &AElig;tna, as the
+story goes, thought that the true sun, the fire that is in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>
+centre of the universe, illuminated the other hemisphere, and
+that what we see is only the reflected image of that, which
+is invisible to us, and all of whose movements it follows.</p>
+
+<p>His disciple, Philolaus, also taught that the sun was a mass
+of glass, which sent us by reflection all the light that it
+scattered through the universe. We must not, however, forget
+that these opinions are recorded by historians who probably
+did not understand them, and who took in the letter what
+was only intended for a comparison or figure.</p>
+
+<p>If we are to believe Plutarch, Xenophanes, who flourished
+about 360 <small>B.C.</small>, was very wild in his opinions. He thought
+the stars were lighted every night and extinguished every
+morning; that the sun is a fiery cloud; that eclipses take
+place by the sun being extinguished and afterwards rekindled;
+that the moon is inhabited, but is eighteen times
+larger than the earth; that there are several suns and several
+moons for giving light to different countries. This can only
+be matched by those who said the sun went every night
+through a hole in the earth round again to the east; or that
+it went above ground, and if we did not see it going back it
+was because it accomplished the journey in the night.</p>
+
+<p>Parmenidas was the disciple of Xenophanes. He divided
+the earth, like Thales, into zones; and he added that it was
+suspended in the centre of the universe, and that it did not
+fall because there was no reason why it should move in one
+direction rather than another. This argument is perfectly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>
+philosophical, and illustrates a principle employed since the
+time of Archimedes, and of which Leibnitz made so much
+use.</p>
+
+<p>Such are some of the general ideas which were held by
+the Greeks and others on the nature of the heavens, omitting
+that of Ptolemy, of which we shall give a fuller account
+hereafter. We see that they were all affected by the dominant
+idea of the superiority of the earth over the rest of the
+universe, and were spoiled for want of the grand conception
+of the immensity of space. The universe was for them a
+closed space, outside of which there was <i>nothing</i>; and they
+busied themselves with metaphysical questions as to the
+possibility of space being infinite. In the meantime their
+conceptions of the distances separating us from other visible
+parts of the universe were excessively cramped. Hesiod, for
+instance, thinks to give a grand idea of the size of the
+universe by saying that Vulcan's anvil took seven days to
+fall from heaven to earth, when in reality, as now calculated,
+it would take no less than seventy-two years for the light,
+even travelling at a far greater rate, to reach us from one
+of the nearest of the fixed stars.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE CELESTIAL HARMONY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Nature presents herself to us under various aspects. At
+times, it may be, she presents to us the appearance of discord,
+and we fail to perceive the unity that pervades the whole of
+her actions. At others, however, and most often to an instructed
+mind, there is a concord between her various powers,
+a harmony even in her sounds, that will not escape us.
+Even the wild notes of the tempest and the bass roll of the
+thunder form themselves into part of the grand chorus which
+in the great opera are succeeded by the solos of the evening
+breeze, the songs of birds, or the ripple of the waves. These
+are ideas that would most naturally present themselves to
+contemplative minds, and such must have been the students
+of the silent, but to them harmonious and tuneful, star-lit
+sky, under the clear atmosphere of Greece. The various
+motions they observed became indissolubly connected in
+their minds with music, and they did not doubt that the
+heavenly spheres made harmony, if imperceptible to human<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
+ears. But their ideas were more precise than this. They
+discovered that harmony depended on number, and they
+attempted to prove that whether the music they might make
+were audible or not, the celestial spheres had motions which
+were connected together in the same way as the numbers
+belonging to a harmony. The study of their opinions on this
+point reveals some very curious as well as very interesting
+ideas. We may commence by referring to an ancient
+treatise by Tim&aelig;us of Locris on the soul of the universe.
+To him we owe the first serious exposition of the complete
+harmonic cosmography of Pythagoras. We must premise
+that, according to this school, God employed all existing
+matter in the formation of the universe&mdash;so that it comprehends
+all things, and all is in it. "It is a unique, perfect,
+and spherical production, since the sphere is the most perfect
+of figures; animated and endowed with reason, since that
+which is animated and endowed with reason is better than
+that which is not."</p>
+
+<p>So begins Tim&aelig;us, and then follows, as a quotation from
+Plato, a comparison of the earth to what would appear to
+us nowadays to be a very singular animal. Not only, says
+Plato, is the earth a sphere, but this sphere is perfect, and
+its maker took care that its surface should be perfectly
+uniform for many reasons. The universe in fact has no need
+of eyes, since there is nothing outside of it to see; nor yet
+of ears, since there is nothing but what is part of itself to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+make a sound; nor of breathing organs, as it is not surrounded
+by air: any organ that should serve to take in
+nourishment, or to reject the grosser parts, would be
+absolutely useless, for there being nothing outside it, it
+could not receive or reject anything. For the same reason
+it needs no hands with which to defend itself, nor yet of feet
+with which to walk. Of the seven kinds of motion, its
+author has given it that which is most suitable for its figure
+in making it turn about its axis, and since for the execution
+of this rotatory motion no arms or legs are wanted, its maker
+gave it none.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to the soul of the universe, Plato, according to
+Tim&aelig;us, says that God composed it "of a mixture of the divisible
+and indivisible essences, so that the two together might be
+united into one, uniting two forces, the principles of two kinds
+of motion, one that which is <i>always the same</i>, and the other
+that which is <i>always changing</i>. The mixture of these two
+essences was difficult, and was not accomplished without
+considerable skill and pains. The proportions of the
+mixture were according to harmonic numbers, so chosen
+that it is possible to know of what, and by what rule,
+the soul of the universe is compounded."</p>
+
+<p>By harmonic numbers Tim&aelig;us means those that are
+proportional to those representing the consonances of the
+musical scale. The consonances known to the ancients were
+three in number: the diapason, or octave, in the proportion of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
+2 to 1, the diapent, or fifth, in that of 3 to 2, and the diatessaron,
+or fourth, in that of 4 to 3; when to these are joined the
+tones which fill the intervals of the consonances, and are in
+the proportion of 9 to 8, and the semitones in that of 256
+to 243, all the degrees of the musical scale is complete.</p>
+
+<p>The discovery of these harmonic numbers is due to
+Pythagoras. It is stated that when passing one day near a forge,
+he noticed that the hammers gave out very accurate musical
+concords. He had them weighed, and found that of those
+which sounded the octave, one weighed twice as much as the
+other; that of those which made a perfect fifth, one weighed
+one third more than the other, and in the case of a fourth,
+one quarter more. After having tried the hammers, he took
+a musical string stretched with weights, and found that when
+he had applied a given weight in the first instance to make
+any particular note, he had to double the weight to obtain
+the octave, to add one third extra only to obtain a fifth, a
+quarter for the fourth, and eight for one tone, and about an
+eighteenth for a half-tone; or more simply still, he stretched
+a cord once for all, and then when the whole length sounded
+any note, when stopped in the middle it gave the octave, at
+the third it gave the fifth, at the quarter the fourth, at the
+eighth the tone, and at the eighteenth the semi-tone.</p>
+
+<p>Since the ancients conceived of the soul by means of
+motion, the quantity of motion developed in anything was
+their measure of the quantity of its soul. Now the motion of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
+the heavenly bodies seemed to them to depend on their
+distance from the centre of the universe, the fastest being
+those at the circumference of the whole. To determine the
+relative degrees of velocity, they imagined a straight line
+drawn outwards from the centre of the earth, as far as the
+empyreal heaven, and divided it according to the proportions
+of the musical scale, and these divisions they called the
+harmonic degrees of the soul of the universe. Taking the
+earth's radius for the first number, and calling it unity, or, in
+order to avoid fractions, denoting it by 384, the second
+degree, which is at the distance of an harmonic third, will be
+represented by 384 plus its eighth part, or 432. The third
+degree will be 432, plus its eighth part, or 486. The fourth,
+being a semitone, will be as 243 to 256, which will give 512;
+and so on. The eighth degree will in this way be the double
+of 384 or 768, and represents the first octave.</p>
+
+<p>They continued this series to 36 degrees, as in the following
+table:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><small>The Earth.</small></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="" width="60%">
+<tr><td align='left'>Mi</td><td align='left'>384 + &#8539; = 432</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Re</td><td align='left'>432 + &#8539; = 486</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Ut</td><td align='left'>486 : 512 : : 243 : 256</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Si</td><td align='left'>512 + &#8539; = 576</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>La</td><td align='left'>576 + &#8539; = 648</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Sol</td><td align='left'>648 + &#8539; = 729</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Fa</td><td align='left'>729 : 768 : : 243 : 256</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Mi</td><td align='left'>768 + &#8539; = 864</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Re</td><td align='left'>864 + &#8539; = 972</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Ut</td><td align='left'>972 : 1024 : : 243 : 256</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>Si</td><td align='left'>1024 + &#8539; = 1152</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>La</td><td align='left'>1152 + &#8539; = 1296</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Sol</td><td align='left'>1296 + &#8539; = 1458</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Fa</td><td align='left'>1458 : 1536 : : 243 : 256</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Mi</td><td align='left'>1536 + &#8539; = 1728</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Re</td><td align='left'>1728 + &#8539; = 1944</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Ut</td><td align='left'>1944 : 2048 : 243 : 256</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Si</td><td align='left'>2048 + 139 = 2187</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Si 2</td><td align='left'>2187 : 2304 : : 243 : 256</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>La</td><td align='left'>2304 + &#8539; = 2592</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Sol</td><td align='left'>2592 + &#8539; = 2916</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Fa</td><td align='left'>2916 : 3072 : : 243 : 256</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Mi</td><td align='left'>3072 + &#8539; = 3456</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Re</td><td align='left'>3457 + &#8539; = 3888</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Ut</td><td align='left'>3888 + &#8539; = 4374</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Si</td><td align='left'>4374 : 4608 : : 243 : 256</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>La</td><td align='left'>4608 + &#8539; = 5184</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Sol</td><td align='left'>5184 + &#8539; = 5832</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Fa</td><td align='left'>5832 : 6144 : : 243 : 256</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Mi</td><td align='left'>6144 + 417 = 6561</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Mi 2</td><td align='left'>6561 : 6912 : : 243 : 256</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Re</td><td align='left'>6912 + &#8539; = 7776</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Ut</td><td align='left'>7776 + &#8539; = 8748</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Si</td><td align='left'>8748 : 9216 : : 243 : 256</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>La</td><td align='left'>9216 + &#8539; = 10368</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Sol</td><td align='left'>10368 = 384 + 27</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p class="noin"><small>The empyreal heaven.<br />
+Sum of all the terms, 114,695.</small></p>
+
+<p>This series they considered a complete one, because by
+taking the terms in their proper intervals, the last becomes
+27 times the original number, and in the school of Pythagoras
+this 27 had a mystic signification, and was considered as the
+perfect number.</p>
+
+<p>The reason for considering 27 a perfect number was curious.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>
+It is the sum of the first linear, square, and cubic numbers
+added to unity. First there is 1, which represents the point,
+then 2 and 3, the first linear numbers, even and uneven, then
+4 and 9, the first square or surface numbers, even and uneven,
+and the last 8 and 27, the first solid or cubic numbers, even
+and uneven, and 27 is the sum of all the former. Whence,
+taking the number 27 as the symbol of the universe, and the
+numbers which compose it as the elements, it appeared right
+that the soul of the universe should be composed of the
+same elements.</p>
+
+<p>On this scale of distances, with corresponding velocities,
+they arranged the various planets, and the universe comprehended
+all these spheres, from that of the fixed stars (which
+was excluded) to the centre of the earth. The sphere of the
+fixed stars was the common envelope, or circumference of the
+universe, and Saturn, immediately below it, corresponded to the
+thirty-sixth tone, and the earth to the first, and the other planets
+with the sun and moon at the various harmonic distances.</p>
+
+<p>They reckoned one tone from the earth to the moon, half
+a tone from the moon to Mercury, another half-tone to
+Venus, one tone and a half from Venus to the sun, one from
+the sun to Mars, a semitone from Mars to Jupiter, half a
+tone from Jupiter to Saturn, and a tone and a half from
+Saturn to the fixed stars; but these distances were not, as
+we shall see, universally agreed upon.</p>
+
+<p>According to Tim&aelig;us, the sphere of the fixed stars, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>
+contains within it no principle of contrariety, being entirely
+divine and pure, always moves with an equal motion in the
+same direction from east to west. But the stars which are
+within it, being animated by the mixed principle, whose
+composition has been just explained, and thus containing two
+contrary forces, yield on account of one of these forces to the
+motion of the sphere of fixed stars from east to west, and by
+the other they resist it, and move in a contrary direction, in
+proportion to the degree with which they are endowed with
+each; that is to say, that the greater the proportion of the material
+to the divine force that they possess, the greater is their
+motion from west to east, and the sooner they accomplish their
+periodic course. Now the amount of this force depends on
+the matter they contain. Thus, according to this system, the
+planets turn each day by the common motion with all the
+heavens about the earth from east to west, but they also
+retrograde towards the east, and accomplish their periods
+according to their component parts.</p>
+
+<p>The additions which Plato made to this theory have
+always been a proverb of obscurity, and none of his commentators
+have been able to make anything of them, and
+very possibly they were never intended to.</p>
+
+<p>So far the harmony of the heavenly bodies has been
+explained with reference to numbers only, and we may add
+to this that they reckoned 126,000 stadia, or 14,286 miles, to
+represent a tone, which was thus the distance of the earth to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>
+the moon, and the same measurement made it 500,000 from
+the earth to the sun, and the same distance from the sun
+to the fixed stars.</p>
+
+<p>But Plato teaches in his <i>Republic</i> that there is actual
+musical, harmony between the planets. Each of the spheres,
+he said, carried with it a Siren, and each of these sounding a
+different note, they formed by their union a perfect concert,
+and being themselves delighted with their own harmony,
+they sang divine songs, and accompanied them by a sacred
+dance. The ancients said there were nine Muses, eight
+of whom, according to Plato, presided over celestial, and
+the ninth over terrestrial things, to protect them from disorder
+and irregularity.</p>
+
+<p>Cicero and Macrobius also express opinions on this
+harmonious concert. Such great motions, says Cicero,
+cannot take place in silence, and it is natural that the
+two extremes should have related sounds as in the octave.
+The fixed stars must execute the upper note, and the moon
+the base. Kepler has improved on this, and says Jupiter
+and Saturn sing bass, Mars takes the tenor, the earth and
+Venus are contralto, and Mercury is soprano! True, no one
+has ever heard these sounds, but Pythagoras himself may
+answer this objection. We are always surrounded, he says,
+by this melody, and our ears are accustomed to it from our
+birth, so that, having nothing different to compare it with, we
+cannot perceive it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We may here recall the further development of the idea
+of the soul of the universe, which was the source of this
+harmony, and endeavour to find a rational interpretation of
+their meaning. They said that nature had made the animals
+mortal and ephemeral, and had infused their souls into them,
+as they had been extracts from the sun or moon, or even from
+one of the planets. A portion of the unchangeable essence
+was added to the reasoning part of man, to form a germ of
+wisdom in privileged individuals. For the human soul there
+is one part which possesses intelligence and reason, and
+another part which has neither the one nor the other.</p>
+
+<p>The various portions of the general soul of the universe
+resided, according to Tim&aelig;us, in the different planets, and
+depended on their various characters. Some portions were
+in the moon, others in Mercury, Venus, or Mars, and so on,
+and thus they give rise to the various characters and
+dispositions that are seen among men. But to these parts
+of the human soul that are taken from the planets is joined
+a spark of the supreme Divinity, which is above them all,
+and this makes man a more holy animal than all the rest,
+and enables him to have immediate converse with the
+Deity himself. All the different substances in nature were
+supposed to be endowed with more or less of this soul, according
+to their material nature or subtilty, and were placed in
+the same order along the line, from the centre to the circumference,
+on which the planets were situated, as we have seen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
+above. In the centre was the earth, the heaviest and
+grossest of all, which had but little if any soul at all.
+Between the earth and the moon, Tim&aelig;us placed first water,
+then the air, and lastly elementary fire, which he considered
+to be principles, which were less material in proportion
+as they were more remote and partook of a larger quantity
+of the soul of the universe. Beyond the moon came all the
+planets, and thus were filled up the greater number of the
+harmonic degrees, the motions of the various bodies being
+guided by the principle enunciated above.</p>
+
+<p>When we carefully consider this theory we find that by a
+slight change of name we may bring it more into harmony
+with modern ideas. It would appear indeed that the
+ancients called that "soul" which we now call "force," and
+while we say that this force of attraction is in proportion to
+the masses and the inverse square of the distance, they
+put it that it was proportional to the matter, and to the
+divine substance on which the distance depended. So that
+we may interpret Tim&aelig;us as stating this proposition: <i>The
+distances of the stars and their forces are proportional among
+themselves to their periodic times.</i> "Some people," says
+Plutarch, "seek the proportions of the soul of the universe
+in the velocities (or periodic times), others in the distances
+from the centre; some in the masses of the heavenly bodies,
+and others more acute in the ratios of the diameters of their
+orbits.  It is probable that the mass of each planet, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>
+intervals between the spheres and the velocities of their
+motions, are like well-tuned musical instruments, all proportional
+harmonically with each other and with all other parts
+of the universe, and by necessary consequence that there are
+the same relative proportions in the soul of the universe by
+which they were formed by the Deity."</p>
+
+<p>It is marvellous how deeply occupied were all the best
+minds in Greece and Italy on this subject, both poets and
+philosophers; Ocellus, Democritus, Tim&aelig;us, Aristotle, and
+Lucretius have all left treatises on the same subject, and
+almost with the same title, "The Nature of the Universe."</p>
+
+<p>Though somewhat similar to that of Tim&aelig;us, it will be
+interesting to give an account of the ideas of one of these,
+Ocellus of Lucania.</p>
+
+<p>Ocellus represents the universe as having a spherical form.
+This sphere is divided into concentric layers; above that of
+the moon they were called celestial spheres, while below it and
+inwards as far as the centre of the earth they were called the
+elementary spheres, and the earth was the centre of them all.</p>
+
+<p>In the celestial spheres all the stars were situated, which
+were so many gods, and among them the sun, the largest
+and most powerful of all. In these spheres is never any
+disturbance, storm, or destruction, and consequently no reparation,
+no reproduction, no action of any kind was required
+on the part of the gods. Below the moon all is at war, all
+is destroyed and reconstructed, and here therefore it is that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
+generations are possible. But these take place under the
+influence of the stars, and particularly that of the sun, which
+in its course acts in different ways on the elementary spheres,
+and produces continual variations in them, from whence
+arises the replenishing and diversifying of nature. It is the
+sun that lights up the region of fire, that dilates the air,
+melts the water, and renders fertile the earth, in its daily
+course from east to west, as well as in this annual journey
+into the two tropics. But to what does the earth owe its
+germs and its species? According to some philosophers
+these germs were celestial ideas which both gods and
+demons scattered from above over every part of nature, but
+according to Ocellus they arise continually under the
+influence of the heavenly bodies. The divisions of the
+heavens were supposed to separate the portion that is unalterable
+from that which is in ceaseless change. The line
+dividing the mortal from the immortal is that described by
+the moon: all that lies above that, inclusive, is the habitation
+of the gods; all that lies below is the abode of nature and
+discord; the latter tending constantly to destruction, the
+former to the reconstruction of all created things.</p>
+
+<p>Ideas such as these, of which we could give other examples
+more remotely connected with harmony, whatever amount
+of truth we may discover in them, prove themselves to have
+been made before the sciences of observation had enabled
+men to make anything better than empty theories, and to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>
+support them with false logic. No better example of the
+latter can perhaps be mentioned here than the way in which
+Ocellus pretends to prove that the world is eternal. "The
+universe," he says, "<i>having</i> always existed, it follows that
+everything in it and every arrangement of it must always
+have been as it is now. The several parts of the universe
+<i>having</i> always existed with it, we may say the same of the
+parts of these parts; thus the sun, the moon, the fixed
+stars, and the planets have always existed with the heavens;
+animals, vegetables, gold, and silver with the earth; the
+currents of air, winds, and changes from hot to cold, from
+cold to hot, with the air. <i>Therefore</i> the heaven, with all
+that it now contains; the earth, with all that it produces
+and supports; and lastly, the whole a&euml;rial region, with all its
+phenomena, have always existed." When this system of argument
+passed away, and exact observation took its place, it was
+soon found that so far from what the ancients had argued
+<i>must be</i> really being the case, no such relation as they indicated
+between the distances or velocities of the planets could
+be traced, and therefore no harmony in the heavens in this
+sense. It is not indeed that we can say no sounds exist
+because we hear none; but considering harmony really to
+consist of the relations of numbers, no such relations exist
+between the planets' distances, as measured now of course
+from the sun, instead of being, as then, imagined from
+the earth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The gamut is nothing else than the series of numbers:&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="" width="80%">
+<tr><td align='center'>do</td><td align='center'>re</td><td align='center'>mi</td><td align='center'>fa</td><td align='center'>sol</td><td align='center'>la</td><td align='center'>si</td><td align='center'>do</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>1</td><td align='center'>9/8</td><td align='center'>5/4</td><td align='center'>4/3</td><td align='center'>3/2</td><td align='center'>5/3</td><td align='center'>15/8</td><td align='center'>2</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p class="noin">and is independent of our perception of the corresponding notes.
+A concert played before a deaf assembly would be a concert
+still. If one note is made by 10,000 vibrations per second,
+and another by 20,000, we should hear them as an octave,
+but if one had only 10 and the other 20, they would still be
+an octave, though inaudible as notes to us; so too we may
+speak even of the harmony of luminous vibrations of ether,
+though they do not affect our ears.</p>
+
+<p>The velocities of the planets do not coincide with the terms
+of this series. The nearer they are to the sun the faster is
+their motion, Mercury travelling at the mean rate of 55,000
+metres a second, Venus, 36,800, the earth 30,550, Mars
+24,448, Jupiter 13,000, Saturn 9,840, Uranus 6,800, and
+Neptune 5,500, numbers which are in the proportion roundly
+of 100, 67, 55, 44, 24, 16, 12, 10, which have no sufficient
+relation to the terms of an harmonic series, to make any
+harmony obvious.</p>
+
+<p>Returning, however, to the ancient philosophers, we are
+led by their ideas about the soul of the universe to discover
+the origin of their gods and natural religion. They were
+persuaded that only living things could move, and consequently
+that the moving stars must be endowed with superior<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
+intelligence. It may very well be that from the number
+seven of the planets, including the sun and moon, which
+were their earliest gods, arose the respect and superstition
+with which all nations, and especially the Orientals, regarded
+that number. From these arose the seven superior angels
+that are found in the theologies of the Chaldeans, Persians,
+and Arabians; the seven gates of Mithra, through which all
+souls must pass to reach the abode of bliss; the seven worlds
+of purification of the Indians, and all the other applications
+of the number seven which so largely figure in Judaism,
+and have descended from it to our own time. On the other
+hand, as we have seen, this number seven may have been
+derived from the number of the stars in the Pleiades.</p>
+
+<p>We have noticed in our chapter on the History of the
+Zodiac how the various signs as they came round and were
+thought to influence the weather and other natural phenomena,
+came at last to be worshipped. Not less, of course,
+were the sun and moon deified, and that by nations who
+had no zodiac. Among the Egyptians the sun was painted
+in different forms according to the time of year, very much
+as he is represented in our own days in pictures of the
+old and new years. At the winter solstice with them he
+was an infant, at the spring equinox he was a young man,
+in summer a man in full age with flowing beard, and
+in the autumn an old man. Their fable of Osiris was
+founded on the same idea. They represented the sun by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
+hawk, and the moon by the Ibis, and to these two,
+worshipped under the names of Osiris and Isis they
+attributed the government of the world, and built a city,
+Heliopolis, to the former, in the temple of which they
+placed his statue.</p>
+
+<p>The Phenicians in the same way, who were much influenced
+by ideas of religion, attributed divinity to the
+sun, moon, and stars, and regarded them as the sole causes
+of the production and destruction of all things. The sun,
+under the name of Hercules, was their great divinity.</p>
+
+<p>The Ethiopians worshipped the same, and erected the
+famous table of the sun. Those who lived above Mero&euml;,
+admitted the existence of eternal and incorruptible gods,
+among which they included the sun, moon, and the universe.
+Like the Incas of Peru, they called themselves the children
+of the sun, whom they regarded as their common father.</p>
+
+<p>The moon was the great divinity of the Arabs. The
+Saracens called it Cabar, or the great, and its crescent still
+adorns the religious monuments of the Turks. Each of
+their tribes was under the protection of some particular
+star. Sabeism was the principal religion of the east. The
+heavens and the stars were its first object.</p>
+
+<p>In reading the sacred books of the ancient Persians
+contained in the <i>Zendavesta</i>, we find on every page invocations
+addressed to Mithra, to the moon, the stars, the
+elements, the mountains, the trees, and every part of nature.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
+The ethereal fire circulating through all the universe, and of
+which the sun is the principal focus, was represented among
+the fire-worshippers by the sacred and perpetual fire of their
+priests. Each planet had its own particular temple, where
+incense was burnt in its honour. These ancient peoples
+embodied in their religious systems the ideas which, as we
+have seen, led among the Greeks to the representation of the
+harmony of heaven. All the world seemed to them animated
+by a principle of life which circulated through all parts,
+and which preserved it in an eternal activity. They thought
+that the universe lived like man and the other animals, or
+rather that these latter only lived because the universe was
+essentially alive, and communicated to them for an instant
+an infinitely small portion of its own immortality. They
+were not wise, it may be, in this, but they appear to have
+caught some of the ideas that lie at the basis of religious
+thought, and to have traced harmony where we have almost
+lost the perception of it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>ASTRONOMICAL SYSTEMS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>In our former chapters we have gained some idea of the
+general structure of the heavens as represented by ancient
+philosophers, and we no longer require to know what was
+thought in the infancy of astronomy, when any ideas promulgated
+were more or less random ones; but in this chapter
+we hope to discuss those arrangements of the heavenly bodies
+which have been promulgated by men as complete systems,
+and were supposed to represent the totality of the facts.</p>
+
+<p>The earliest thoroughly-established system is that of
+Ptolemy. It was not indeed invented by him. The main
+ideas had been entertained long before his time, but he gave
+it consistence and a name.</p>
+
+<p>We obtain an excellent view of the general nature of this
+system from Cicero. He writes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The universe is composed of nine circles, or rather of
+nine moving globes. The outermost sphere is that of the
+heavens which surrounds all the others, and on which are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>
+fixed the stars.  Beneath this revolve seven other globes,
+carried round by a motion in a direction contrary to that of
+the heavens. On the first circle revolves the star which men
+call Saturn; on the second Jupiter shines, that beneficent
+and propitious star to human eyes; then follows Mars, ruddy
+and awful. Below, and occupying the middle region, revolves
+the Sun, the chief, prince, and moderator of the other stars,
+the soul of the world, whose immense globe spreads its light
+through space. After him come, like two companions, Venus
+and Mercury. Lastly, the lowest globe is occupied by the
+moon, which borrows its light from the star of day. Below
+this last celestial circle, there is nothing but what is mortal
+and corruptible, except the souls given by a beneficent
+Divinity to the race of men. Above the moon all is eternal.
+The earth, situated in the centre of the world, and separated
+from heaven on all sides, forms the ninth sphere; it remains
+immovable, and all heavy bodies are drawn to it by their
+own weight."</p>
+
+<p>The earth, we should add, is surrounded by the sphere of air,
+and then by that of fire, and by that of ether and the meteors.</p>
+
+<p>With respect to the motions of these spheres. The first
+circle described about the terrestrial system, namely, that of
+the moon, was accomplished in 27 days, 7 hours, and 43
+minutes. Next to the moon, Mercury in the second, and
+Venus in the third, and the sun in the fourth circle, all turned
+about the earth in the same time, 365 days, 5 hours, and 49<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
+minutes. But these planets, in addition to the general movement,
+which carried them in 24 hours round from east to
+west and west to east, and the annual revolution, which made
+them run through the zodiacal circle, had a third motion by
+which they described a circle about each point of their orbit
+taken as a centre.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 680px;">
+<img src="images/205.jpg" width="680" height="630" alt="Fig. 14." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 14.&mdash;Ptolemy&#39;s Astronomical System.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The fifth sphere, carrying Mars, accomplished its revolution<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>
+in two years. Jupiter took 11 years, 313 days, and 19 hours
+to complete his orbit, and Saturn in the seventh sphere took
+29 years and 169 days. Above all the planets came the
+sphere of the fixed stars, or Firmament, turning from east to
+west in 24 hours with inconceivable rapidity, and endued
+also with a proper motion from west to east, which was
+measured by Hipparchus, and which we now call the precession
+of the equinoxes, and know that it has a period of
+25,870 years. Above all these spheres, a <i>primum mobile</i>
+gave motion to the whole machine, making it turn from east
+to west, but each planet and each fixed star made an effort
+against this motion, by means of which each of them accomplished
+their revolution about the earth in greater or less
+time, according to its distance, or the magnitude of the orbit
+it had to accomplish.</p>
+
+<p>One immense difficulty attended this system. The apparent
+motions of the planets is not uniform, for sometimes they are
+seen to advance from west to east, when their motion is called
+<i>direct</i>, sometimes they are seen for several nights in succession
+at the same point in the heavens, when they are called
+<i>stationary</i>, and sometimes they return from east to west, and
+then their motion is called <i>retrograde</i>.</p>
+
+<p>We know now that this apparent variation in the motion
+of the planets is simply due to the annual motion of the
+earth in its orbit round the sun. For example, Saturn describes
+its vast orbit in about thirty years, and the earth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>
+describes in one year a much smaller one inside. Now if
+the earth goes faster in the same direction as Saturn, it is
+plain that Saturn will be left behind and appear to go backwards,
+while if the earth is going in the same direction
+the velocity of Saturn will appear to be decreased, but his
+direction of motion will appear unaltered.</p>
+
+<p>To explain these variations, however, according to his
+system, Ptolemy supposed that the planets did not move
+exactly in the circumference of their respective orbits, but
+about an <i>ideal centre</i>, which itself moved along this circumference.
+Instead therefore of describing a circle, they
+described parts of a series of small circles, which would
+combine, as is easy to see, into a series of uninterrupted
+waves, and these he called <i>Epicycles</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Another objection, which even this arrangement did not
+overcome, was the variation of the size of the planets. To
+overcome this Hipparchus gave to the sphere of each planet
+a considerable thickness, and saw that the planet did not
+turn centrally round the earth, but round a centre of motion
+placed outside the earth. Its revolution took place in such
+a manner, that at one time it reached the inner boundary, at
+another time the outer boundary of its spherical heaven.</p>
+
+<p>But this reply was not satisfactory, for the differences in
+the apparent sizes proved by the laws of optics such a prodigious
+difference between their distances from the earth
+at the times of conjunction and opposition, that it would be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
+extremely difficult to imagine spheres thick enough to allow
+of it.</p>
+
+<p>It was a gigantic and formidable piece of machinery to
+which it was necessary to be continually adding fresh pieces
+to make observation accord with theory. In the thirteenth
+century, in the times of the King-Astronomer, Alphonso X.
+of Castile, there were already seventy-five circles, one within
+the other. It is said that one day he exclaimed, in a full
+assemblage of bishops, that if the Deity had done him the
+honour to ask his advice before creating the world, he could
+have told Him how to make it a little better, or at all events
+more simply. He meant to express how unworthy this
+complication was of the dignity of nature.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/208.jpg" width="350" height="330" alt="Fig. 15." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 15.&mdash;The Epicycles of Ptolemy.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Fracastor, in his <i>Homocentrics</i>, says that nothing is more
+monstrous or absurd than all the excentrics and epicycles of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>
+Ptolemy, and proposes to explain the difference of velocity
+in the planets at different parts of their orbits by the medium
+offering greater or less resistance, and their alteration in
+apparent size by the effect of refraction.</p>
+
+<p>The essential element of this system was that it took
+appearances for realities, and was founded on the assumption
+that the earth is fixed in the centre of the universe, and of
+course therefore neglected all the appearances produced
+by its motion, or had to explain them by some peculiarity
+in the other planets.</p>
+
+<p>Although it was corrected from time to time to make
+it accord better with observation, it was the same essentially
+that was taught officially everywhere. It reigned supreme
+in Egypt, Greece, Italy, and Arabia, and in the great school
+of Alexandria, which consolidated it and enriched it by its
+own observations.</p>
+
+<p>But though the same in essence, the details, and especially
+the means of overcoming the difficulties raised by increased
+observations, have much varied, and it will be interesting
+and instructive to record some of the chief of them.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most important influences in modifying the
+astronomical systems taught to the world has been that
+of the Fathers of the Christian Church. When, after five
+centuries of patient toil, of hopes, ambitions, and discussions,
+the Christian Church took possession of the thrones and
+consciences of men, they founded their physical edifice on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
+the ancient system, which they adapted to their special
+wants. With them Aristotle and Ptolemy reigned supreme.
+They decreed that the earth constituted the universe, that
+the heavens were made for it, that God, the angels, and the
+saints inhabited an eternal abode of joy situated above the
+azure sphere of the fixed stars, and they embodied this
+gratifying illusion in all their illuminated manuscripts, their
+calendars, and their church windows.</p>
+
+<p>The doctors of the Church all acknowledged a plurality
+of heavens, but they differed as to the number. St. Hilary
+of Poitiers would not fix it, and the same doubt held St.
+Basil back; but the rest, for the most part borrowing their
+ideas from paganism, said there were six or seven, or up to ten.
+They considered these heavens to be so many hemispheres
+supported on the earth, and gave to each a different name.
+In the system of Bede, which had many adherents, they
+were the Air, Ether, Fiery Space, Firmament, Heaven of
+the Angels, and Heaven of the Trinity.</p>
+
+<p>The two chief varieties in the systems of the middle ages
+may be represented as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Those who wished to have everything as complete as
+possible combined the system of Ptolemy with that of the
+Fathers of the Church, and placed in the centre of the earth
+the infernal regions which they surrounded by a circle.
+Another circle marked the earth itself, and after that the
+surrounding ocean, marked as water, then the circle of air,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>
+and lastly that of fire. Enveloping these, and following one
+after the other, were the seven circles of the seven planets;
+the eighth represented the sphere of the fixed stars on the
+firmament, then came the ninth heaven, then a tenth, the
+<i>c&#339;lum cristallinum</i>, and lastly an eleventh and outermost,
+which was the empyreal heaven, where dwelt the cherubim
+and seraphim, and above all the spheres was a throne on
+which sat the Father, as Jupiter Olympus.</p>
+
+<p>The others who wished for more simplicity, represented
+the earth in the centre of the universe, with a circle to
+indicate the ocean, the second sphere was that of the moon;
+the third was that of the sun; on the fourth were placed the
+four planets, Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury; there was a
+fifth for the space outside the planets, and the last outside one
+was the firmament; altogether seven spheres instead of eleven.
+As a specimen of the style of representation of the astronomical
+systems of the middle ages, we may take the figure on the
+following page:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 670px;">
+<img src="images/212.jpg" width="670" height="780" alt="Fig. 16." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 16.&mdash;Heavens of the Middle Ages.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Here we see the earth placed immovable in the centre of
+the universe, and represented by a disc traversed by the
+Mediterranean, and surrounded by the ocean. Round this
+are circumscribed the celestial spheres. That of the moon
+first, then that of Mercury, in which several constellations,
+as the Lyre, Cassiopeia, the Crown, and others, are
+roughly indicated, then comes the sphere of Venus with
+Sagittarius and the Swan.  After this comes the <i>celestis
+paradisus</i>, and the legend that, "the paradise to which Paul
+was raised is in this third locality; some of these must reach
+to us, since in them repose the souls of the prophets." In<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>
+the other circles are yet other constellations: for example
+Pegasus, Andromeda, the Dog, Argo, the He-goat, Aquarius,
+the Fishes, and Canopus, figured by a star of the first
+magnitude. To the north is seen near the constellation of
+the Swan a large star with seven rays, meant to represent
+the brightest of those which compose the Great Bear. The
+stars of Cassiopeia are not only misplaced, but roughly
+represented. The Lyre is curiously drawn. The positions
+of the constellations just named are all wrong in this figure,
+just as we find those of towns in maps of the earth. The
+cartographers of the middle ages, with incredible ignorance,
+misplaced in general every locality. They did the same for
+the constellations in the celestial hemispheres. In the
+heaven of Jupiter, and in that of Saturn we read the words&mdash;Seraphim,
+Dominationes, Potestates, Archangeli, Virtutes
+c&#339;lorum, Principatus, Throni, Cherubim, all derived from
+their theology. A veritable muddle! The angels placed
+with the heroes of mythology, the immortal virgins with
+Venus and Andromeda, and the Saints with the Great Bear,
+the Hydra, and the Scorpion!</p>
+
+<p>Another such richly illuminated manuscript in the library
+at Ghent, entitled Liber Floridus, contains a drawing similar
+to this under the title <i>Astrologia secundum Bedum</i>. Only,
+instead of the earth, there is a serpent in the centre with the
+name Great Bear, and the twins are represented by a man
+and woman, Andromeda in a chasuble, and Venus as a nun!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Several similar ones might be quoted, varying more or less
+from this; one, executed in a geographical manuscript of the
+fifteenth century, has the tenth sphere, being that of the
+fixed stars, then the crystalline heaven, and then the immovable
+heaven, "which," it says, "according to sacred and
+certain theology, is the dwelling-place of the blessed, where
+may we live for ever and ever, Amen;" "this is also called
+the empyreal heaven." Near each planet the author marks
+the time of its revolution, but not at all correctly.</p>
+
+<p>The constructors of these systems were not in the least
+doubt as to their reality, for they actually measured the
+distance between one sphere and another, though in every
+case their numbers were far from the truth as we now know
+it. We may cite as an example an Italian system whose
+spheres were as follows:&mdash;Terra, Aqua, Aria, Fuoco, Luna,
+Mercurio, Venus, Sol, Marte, Giove, Saturno, Stelle fixe,
+Sfera nona, Cielo empyreo. Attached to the design is the
+following table of dimensions which we may copy:&mdash;</p>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'></td><th align='center'>Miles.</th></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>From the centre of the Earth to the surface</td><td align='right'>3,245</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'> &nbsp; &nbsp; "  &nbsp;  &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  &nbsp;  &nbsp; "  &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  &nbsp;  &nbsp;  &nbsp; &nbsp; " &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; "  &nbsp;&nbsp; inner side of the heaven of the Moon</td><td align='right'>107,936</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Diameter of Moon</td><td align='right'>1,896</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>From the centre of the Earth to Mercury</td><td align='right'>209,198</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Diameter of Mercury</td><td align='right'>230</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>From the centre of the Earth to Venus</td><td align='right'>579,320</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Diameter of Venus</td><td align='right'>2,884</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>From the centre of the Earth to the Sun</td><td align='right'>3,892,866</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Diameter of the Sun</td><td align='right'>35,700</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>From the centre of the Earth to Mars</td><td align='right'>4,268,629</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Diameter of Mars</td><td align='right'>7,572</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>From the centre of the Earth to Jupiter</td><td align='right'>8,323,520</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Diameter of Jupiter</td><td align='right'>29,641</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>From the centre of the Earth to outside of Saturn's heaven</td><td align='right'>52,544,702</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Diameter of Saturn</td><td align='right'>29,202</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>From the centre of the Earth to the fixed stars</td><td align='right'>73,387,747</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+<img src="images/215.jpg" width="550" height="800" alt="Plate VII." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Plate VII.&mdash;Heavens of the Fathers.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The author states that he cannot pursue his calculations
+further, and condescends to acknowledge that it is very
+difficult to know accurately what is the thickness of the
+ninth and of the crystalline heavens!</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps, however, these reckonings are better than those
+of the Egyptians, who came to the conclusion that Saturn
+was only distant 492 miles, the sun only 369, and the
+moon 246.</p>
+
+<p>These numerous variations and adaptations of the Ptolemaic
+system, prove what a firm hold it had taken, and how
+it reigned supreme over all minds. Nor are we merely left
+to gather this. They consciously looked to Ptolemy as their
+great light, if we may judge from an emblematic drawing
+taken from an authoritative astronomical work, the <i>Margarita
+Philosophica</i>, which we give on the opposite page.</p>
+
+<p>In all the systems derived from Ptolemy, the order of the
+planets remained the same, and Mercury and Venus were
+placed nearer to the earth than the sun is. According to
+many authors, however, Plato made a variation in this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>
+respect, by putting them outside the sun, on the ground
+that they never were seen to pass across its surface. He
+had obviously never heard of the "Transit of Venus."
+This arrangement was adopted by Theon, in his commentary
+on the <i>Almagesta</i> of Ptolemy, and afterwards by Geber,
+who alone among the Arabians departed from the strict
+Ptolemaic system.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 480px;">
+<img src="images/217.jpg" width="480" height="606" alt="Fig. 17." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 17.</span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 460px;">
+<img src="images/218.jpg" width="460" height="440" alt="Fig. 18." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 18.&mdash;Egyptian System.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Egyptians improved upon this idea, and made the first
+step towards the true system, by representing these two planets,
+Mercury and Venus, as revolving round the sun instead of
+the earth. All the rest of their system was the same as that
+of Ptolemy, for the sun itself, and the other planets and the
+fixed stars all revolved round the earth in the centre. This
+system of course accounted accurately for the motions of the
+two inferior planets, whose nearness to the sun may have
+suggested their connection with it. This system was in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
+vogue at the same time as Ptolemy's, and numbers Vitruvius
+amongst its supporters.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/219.jpg" width="600" height="580" alt="Fig. 19." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 19.&mdash;Capella&#39;s System.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the fifth century of our era Martian Capella taught a
+variation on the Egyptian system, in which he made Mercury
+and Venus revolve in the same orbit round the sun. In the
+treatise entitled <i>Quod Tellus non sit Centrum Omnibus
+Planetis</i>, he explains that when Mercury is on this side
+of the orbit it is nearer to us than Venus, and farther off<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>
+from us than that planet when it is on the other side. This
+hypothesis was also adopted in the middle ages.</p>
+
+<p>We have here indicated the time of the revolution of
+the various planets, and notice that the firmament is
+said to move round from west to east in 7,000 years;
+the second heaven in 49,000, while the <i>primum mobile</i>
+outside moved in the contrary direction in twenty-four
+hours.</p>
+
+<p>These Egyptian systems survived in some places the
+true one, as they were thought to overcome the chief
+difficulties of the Ptolemaic without interfering with the
+stability of the earth, and they were known as the <i>common
+system</i>, <i>i.e.</i> containing the elements of both.</p>
+
+<p>Such were the astronomical systems in vogue before the
+time of Copernicus&mdash;all of them based upon the principle of
+the earth being the immovable centre of the universe. We
+must now turn to trace the history of the introduction of
+that system which has completely thrown over all these
+former ones, and which every one knows now to be the true
+one&mdash;the Copernican.</p>
+
+<p>No revolution is accomplished, whether in science or
+politics, without having been long in preparation. The
+theory of the motion of the earth had been conceived,
+discussed, and even taught many ages before the birth of
+Copernicus. And the best proof of this is the acknowledgment
+of Copernicus himself in his great work <i>De<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+Revolutionibus Orbium C&aelig;lestium</i>, in which he laid down
+the principles of his system. We will quote the passage
+in which it is contained.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been at the trouble," he writes, "to read over
+all the works of philosophers that I could procure, to see
+if I could find in them any different opinion to that which
+is now taught in the schools respecting the motions of
+the celestial spheres. And I saw first in Cicero that
+M&aelig;tas had put forth the opinion that the earth moves.
+(M&aelig;tam sensisse terram moveri.) Afterwards I found in
+Plutarch that others had entertained the same idea."</p>
+
+<p>Here Copernicus quotes the original as far as it relates
+to the system of Philolaus, to the effect "that the earth
+turns round the region of fire (ethereal region), and runs
+through the zodiac like the sun and the moon." The
+principal Pythagoreans, such as Archytas of Tarentum,
+Heraclides of Pontium, taught also the same doctrine,
+saying that "the earth is not immovable in the centre of the
+universe, but revolves in a circle, and is far from occupying
+the chief place among the celestial bodies."</p>
+
+<p>Pythagoras learnt this doctrine, it is said, from the
+Egyptians, who in their hieroglyphics represented the
+symbol of the sun by the stercoral beetle, because this
+insect forms a ball with the excrement of the oxen, and
+lying down on its back, turns it round and round with
+its legs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Tim&aelig;us of Locris was more precise than the other
+Pythagoreans in calling "the five planets the organs of
+time, on account of their revolutions," adding that we must
+conclude that the earth is not immovable in one place,
+but that it turns, on the contrary, about itself, and travels
+also through space.</p>
+
+<p>Plutarch records that Plato, who had always taught that
+the sun turned round the earth, had changed his opinion
+towards the end of his life, regretting that he had not
+placed the sun in the centre of the universe, which was
+the only place, he then thought, that was suitable for
+that star.</p>
+
+<p>Three centuries before Jesus Christ, Aristarchus of
+Samos is said by Aristotle to have composed a special
+work to defend the motion of the earth against the contrary
+opinions of philosophers. In this work, which is now lost,
+he laid down in the most positive manner that "the sun
+remains immovable, and that the Earth moves round it in
+a circular curve, of which that star is the centre." It
+would be impossible to state this in clearer terms; and
+what makes his meaning more clear, if possible, is that he
+was persecuted for it, being accused of irreligion and of
+troubling the repose of Vesta&mdash;"because," says Plutarch,
+"in order to explain the phenomena, he taught that the
+heavens were immovable, and that the earth accomplished
+a motion of translation in an oblique line, at the same<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>
+time that it turned round its own axis." This is exactly
+the opinion that Copernicus took up, after an interval of
+eighteen centuries&mdash;and he too was accused of irreligion.</p>
+
+<p>In passing from the Greeks to the Romans, and from
+them to the middle ages, the doctrine of Aristarchus
+underwent a curious modification, assimilating it to the
+system of Tycho Brahe, which we shall hereafter consider,
+rather than to that of Copernicus. This consisted in
+making the planets move round the sun, while the sun
+itself revolved round the earth, and carried them with
+him, and the heavens revolved round all. Vitruvius and
+Macrobius both taught this doctrine. Although Cicero and
+Seneca, with Aristotle and the Stoics, taught the immobility
+of the earth in the centre of the universe, the question
+seemed undecided, to Seneca at least, who writes:&mdash;"It
+would be well to examine whether it is the universe that
+turns about the immovable earth, or the earth that moves,
+while the universe remains at rest. Indeed some men have
+taught that the earth is carried along, unknown to ourselves,
+that it is not the motion of the heavens that produces the
+rising and setting of the stars, but that it is we who rise
+and set relatively to them. It is a matter worthy of contemplation,
+to know in what state we are&mdash;whether we are
+assigned an immovable or rapidly-moving home&mdash;whether
+God makes all things revolve round us, or we round them."</p>
+
+<p>The double motion of the earth, then, is an idea revived<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>
+from the Grecian philosophers. The theory was known
+indeed to Ptolemy, who devotes a whole chapter in his
+celebrated <i>Almagesta</i> to combat it. From his point of view
+it seemed very absurd, and he did not hesitate to call it so;
+and it was in reality only when fresh discoveries had altered
+the method of examining the question that the absurdities
+disappeared, and were transferred to the other side. Not
+until it was discovered that the earth was no larger and no
+heavier than the other planets could the idea of its revolution
+and translation have appeared anything else than
+absurd. We are apt to laugh at the errors of former great
+men, while we forget the scantiness of the knowledge they
+then possessed. So it will be instructive to draw attention
+to Ptolemy's arguments, that we may see where it is that
+new knowledge and ideas have led us, as they would doubtless
+have led him, had he possessed them, to a different
+conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>His argument depends essentially on the observed effects
+of weight. "Light bodies," he says, "are carried
+towards the circumference, they appear to us to go <i>up</i>;
+because we so speak of the space that is over our heads,
+as far as the surface which appears to surround us. Heavy
+bodies tend, on the contrary, towards the middle, as towards
+a centre, and they appear to us to fall <i>down</i>, because we
+so speak of whatever is under our feet, in the direction
+of the centre of the earth. These bodies are piled up round<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>
+the centre by the opposed forces of their impetus and
+friction. We can easily see that the whole mass of the
+earth, being so large compared with the bodies that fall upon
+it, can receive them without their weight or their velocity
+communicating to it any perceptible oscillation. Now if
+the earth had a motion in common with all the other heavy
+bodies, it would not be long, on account of its weight, in
+leaving the animals and other bodies behind it, and without
+support, and it would soon itself fall out of heaven. Such
+would be the consequences of its motion, which are most
+ridiculous even to imagine."</p>
+
+<p>Against the idea of the earth's diurnal rotation he
+argued as follows:&mdash;"There are some who pretend that
+nothing prevents us from supposing that the heaven remains
+immovable, and the earth turns round upon its axis from
+west to east, accomplishing the rotation each day. It is
+true that, as far as the stars are concerned, there is nothing
+against our supposing this, if guided only by appearances,
+and for greater simplicity; but those who do so forget how
+thoroughly ridiculous it is when we consider what happens
+near us and in the air. For even if we admit, which is
+not the case, that the lighter bodies have no motion, or
+only move as bodies of a contrary nature, although we see
+that a&euml;rial bodies move with greater velocity than terrestrial&mdash;if
+we admit that very dense and heavy bodies have
+a rapid and constant motion of their own, whereas<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>
+in reality they obey but with difficulty the impulses
+communicated to them&mdash;we should then be obliged to
+assert that the earth, by its rotation, has a more rapid
+motion than any of the bodies that are round it, as it
+makes so large a circuit in so short a time. In this case
+the bodies which are not supported by it would appear to
+have a motion contrary to it, and no cloud or any flying bird
+could ever appear to go to the east, since the earth would
+always move faster than it in that direction."</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Almagesta</i> was for a long time the gospel of astronomers;
+to believe in the motion of the earth was to them
+more than an innovation, it was simply folly. Copernicus
+himself well expresses the state of opinion in which he found
+the question, and the process of his own change, in the
+following words:&mdash;"And I too, taking occasion by these
+testimonies, commenced to cogitate on the motion of the earth,
+and although that opinion appeared absurd, I thought that
+as others before me had invented an assemblage of circles
+to explain the motion of the stars, I might also try if, by
+supposing the earth to move, I could not find a better
+account of the motions of the heavenly bodies than that with
+which we are at present contented. After long researches,
+I am at last convinced that if we assign to the circulation of
+the earth the motions of the other planets, calculation and
+observation will agree better together. And I have no doubt
+that mathematicians will be of my opinion, if they will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>
+take the trouble to consider carefully and not superficially
+the demonstrations I shall give in this work." Although the
+opinions of Copernicus had been held before, it is very just
+that his should be the name by which they are known; for
+during the time that elapsed before he wrote, the adherents
+of such views became fewer and fewer, until at last the very
+remembrance of them was almost forgotten, and it required
+research to know who had held them and taught them. It
+took him thirty years' work to establish them on a firm
+basis. We shall make no excuse for quoting further from
+his book, that we may know exactly the circumstances, as
+far as he tells us, of his giving this system to the world.</p>
+
+<p>"I hesitated for a long time whether I should publish my
+commentaries on the motions of the heavenly bodies, or
+whether it would not be better to follow the example of
+certain Pythagoreans, who left no writings, but communicated
+the mysteries of their philosophy orally from man to man
+among their adepts and friends, as is proved by the letter
+of Lysidas to Hipparchus. They did not do this, as some
+suppose, from a spirit of jealousy, but in order that weighty
+questions, studied with great care by illustrious men, might
+not be disparaged by the idle, who do not care to undertake
+serious study, unless it be lucrative, or by shallow-minded
+men, who, though devoting themselves to science, are of so
+indolent a spirit that they only intrude among philosophers,
+like drones among bees.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"When I hesitated and held back, my friends pressed me
+on. The first was Nicolas Schonberg, Cardinal of Capua, a
+man of great learning. The other was my best friend,
+Tideman Gysius, Bishop of Culm, who was as well versed in
+the Holy Scriptures as in the sciences. The latter pressed
+me so much that he decided me at last to give to the public
+the work I had kept for more than twenty-seven years.
+Many illustrious men urged me, in the interest of mathematics,
+to overcome my repugnance and to let the fruit of
+my labours see the light. They assured me that the more
+my theory of the motion of the earth appeared absurd, the
+more it would be admired when the publication of my work
+had dissipated doubts by the clearest demonstrations.
+Yielding to these entreaties, and buoying myself with the
+same hope, I consented to the printing of my work."</p>
+
+<p>He tried to guard himself against the attacks of dogmatists
+by saying, "If any evil-advised person should quote against
+me any texts of Scripture, I deprecate such a rash attempt.
+Mathematical truths can only be judged by mathematicians."</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding this, however, his work, after his death,
+was condemned by the Index in 1616, under Paul V.</p>
+
+<p>On examining the ancient systems, Copernicus was struck
+by the want of harmony in the arrangements proposed, and by
+the arbitrary manner in which new principles were introduced
+and old ones neglected, comparing the system to a collection
+of legs and arms not united to any trunk, and it was the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
+simplicity and harmony which the one idea of the motion of
+the earth introduced into the whole system that convinced him
+most thoroughly of its truth.</p>
+
+<p>He knew well that new views and truths would appear as
+paradoxes, and be rejected by men who were wedded to old
+doctrines, and on this account he took such pains to show
+that these views had been held before, and thus to disarm
+them of their apparent novelty.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;">
+<img src="images/229.jpg" width="450" height="450" alt="Fig. 20." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 20.&mdash;The Copernican System.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Copernicus dealt only with the six planets then known and
+the sun and moon. As to the stars, he had no idea that they
+were suns like our own, at immense and various distances
+from us. The knowledge of the magnitude of the sidereal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>
+universe was reserved for our own century, when it was
+discovered by the method of parallaxes. We will give
+Copernicus's own sketch of the planetary system:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"In the highest place is the sphere of the fixed stars, an
+immovable sphere, which surrounds the whole of the universe.
+Among the movable planets the first is Saturn, which requires
+thirty years to make its revolution. After it Jupiter accomplishes
+its journey in twelve years; Mars follows, requiring two
+years. In the fourth line come the earth and the moon which in
+the course of one year return to their original position. The
+fifth place is occupied by Venus, which requires nine months
+for its journey. Mercury occupies the sixth place, whose
+orbit is accomplished in eighty days. In the midst of all
+is the sun. What man is there, who in this majestic
+temple could choose another and better place for that brilliant
+lamp which illuminates all the planets with their satellites?
+It is not without reason that the sun is called the lantern
+of the world, the soul and thought of the universe. In
+placing it in the centre of the planets, as on a regal throne,
+we give it the government of the great family of celestial
+bodies."</p>
+
+<p>The hypothesis of the motion of the earth in its orbit
+appeared simply to Copernicus as a good basis for the exact
+determination of the ratios of the distances of the several
+planets about the sun. But he did not give up the excentrics
+and epicycles for the explanation of the irregular motions of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>
+the planets, and certain imaginary variations in the precession
+of the equinoxes and the obliquity of the ecliptic.
+According to him the earth was endowed with three
+different motions, the first about its axis, the second along
+the ecliptic, and a third, which he called the declination,
+moving it backwards along the signs of the zodiac from east
+to west. This last motion was invented to explain the
+phenomena of the seasons. He thought, like many other
+ancient philosophers, that a body could not turn about
+another without being fixed in some way to it&mdash;by a crystal
+sphere, or something&mdash;and in this case that the same surface
+would each day be presented to the sun, and so it requires a
+third rotation, by which its axis may remain constantly
+parallel to itself. Galileo, however, afterwards demonstrated
+the independence of the two motions in question, and proved
+that the third was unnecessary.</p>
+
+<p>Copernicus was born in the Polish village of Thorn, in 1473,
+and died in 1543, at Warmia, of which he was canon, and
+where he built an observatory. The voyages of his youth, his
+labours, adversities, and old age at last broke him down, and
+in the winter of 1542 he took to his bed, and was incapable
+of further work. His work, which was just finished printing
+at Nuremberg, was brought to him by his friends before he
+died. He soon after completely failed in strength, and passed
+away tranquilly on the 23rd of May, 1543.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+<img src="images/232.jpg" width="550" height="800" alt="Plate VIII." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Plate VIII.&mdash;Death of Copernicus.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Copernican system required, however, establishing in
+the minds of astronomers generally before it took the
+place it now holds, and this work was done by Galileo&mdash;a
+name as celebrated as that of Copernicus himself, if not
+more so. This perhaps is due not only to his demonstration
+of the motion of the earth, but to his introduction of
+experimental philosophy, and his observational method in
+astronomy.</p>
+
+<p>The next advance was made by Kepler, who overthrew at
+one blow all the excentrics and epicycles of the ancients,
+when by his laborious calculations he proved the ellipticity
+of the orbit of Mars.</p>
+
+<p>The Grecian hypotheses were the logical consequences of
+two propositions which were universally admitted as axioms
+in the early and middle ages. First, that the motions of the
+heavenly bodies were uniform; second, that their orbits
+were perfect circles. Nothing appeared more natural than
+this belief, though false. So then when Kepler, in 1609,
+recognised the fact, by incontestable geometrical measurements,
+that Mars described an oval orbit round the sun, in
+which its velocity varied periodically, he could not believe
+either his observation or his calculation, and he puzzled his
+brain to discover what secret principle it was that forced the
+planet to approach and depart from the sun by turns.
+Fortunately for him, in this inquietude he came across a
+treatise by Gilbert, <i>De Magnate</i>, which had been published in
+London nine years before. In this remarkable work Gilbert<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>
+proved by experiment that the earth acts on magnetized
+needles and on bars of iron placed near its surface just as a
+magnet does&mdash;and by a conjectural extension of this fact,
+which was a vague presentiment of the truth, he supposed
+that the earth itself might be retained in its constant orbit
+round the sun by a magnetic attraction. This idea was a
+ray of light to Kepler. It led him to see the secret cause of
+the alternating motions that had troubled him so much, and
+in the joy of that discovery he said, "If we find it impossible
+to attribute the vibration to a magnetic power residing in
+the sun, acting on the planet without any material medium
+between, we must conclude that the planet is itself endowed
+with a kind of intelligent perception which gives it power to
+know at each instant the proper angles and distances for its
+motion." In the result Kepler was led to enunciate to the
+world his three celebrated laws:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>1st. That the planets move in ellipses, of which the sun is
+in one of the foci.</p>
+
+<p>2nd. The spaces described by the ideal radius which joins
+each planet to the sun are proportional to the times of their
+description. In other words, the nearer a planet is to the
+sun, the faster it moves.</p>
+
+<p>3rd. The squares of the times of revolution are as the
+cubes of the major axes of the orbits.</p>
+
+<p>Such were the laws of Kepler, the basis of modern
+astronomy, which led in the hands of Newton to the simple<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>
+explanation by universal gravitation, which itself is now
+asking to be explained.</p>
+
+<p>We are not to suppose that the system of Copernicus
+was universally accepted even by astronomers of note. By
+some an attempt was made to invent a system which should
+have all the advantages of this, and yet if possible save
+the immobility of the earth. Such was that of Tycho Brahe,
+who was born three years after the death of Copernicus,
+and died in 1601. He was one of the most laborious
+and painstaking observers of his time, although by the
+peculiarity of fate he is known generally only by his false
+system.</p>
+
+<p>In 1577, Tycho Brahe wrote a little treatise, <i>Tychonis Brahe,
+Dani, De Mundi &AElig;therei Recentioribus phenomenis, &agrave; propos</i>
+of a comet that had lately appeared. He speaks at length of
+his system as follows:&mdash;"I have remarked that the ancient
+system of Ptolemy is not at all natural, and too complicated.
+But neither can I approve of the new one introduced by
+the great Copernicus after the example of Aristarchus of
+Samos. This heavy mass of earth, so little fit for motion,
+could not be displaced in this manner, and moved in three
+ways, like the celestial bodies, without a shock to the principles
+of physics. Besides, it is opposed to Scripture! I think then,"
+he adds, "that we must decidedly and without doubt place
+the earth immovable in the centre of world, according to
+the belief of the ancients and the testimony of Scripture.
+In my opinion the celestial motions are arranged in such a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 440px;">
+<img src="images/236.jpg" width="440" height="410" alt="Fig. 21." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 21.&mdash;Tycho Brahe&#39;s System.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>way that the sun, the moon, and the sphere of the fixed
+stars, which incloses all, have the earth for their centre.
+The five planets turn about the sun as about their chief
+and king, the sun being constantly in the centre of their
+orbits, and accompany it in its annual motion round the
+earth." This system perfectly accounts for the apparent
+motions of the planets as seen from the earth, and is essentially
+a variation on the Copernican, rather than on the
+Ptolemaic system, but it lent itself less readily to future
+discoveries. It simply amounts, as far as the solar system is
+concerned, to impressing upon all the rest of it the motions
+of the earth, so as to leave the latter at rest; and were the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
+sun only as large with respect to the earth as it seems, were
+the planets really smaller than the moon, and the stars only
+at a short distance, and smaller than the planets, it might seem
+more natural that they should move than the earth; but when
+all these suppositions were disproved, the very argument of
+Tycho Brahe for the stability of the earth turned the other way,
+and proved as incontestably that it moved. In the Copernican
+system, however, these questions are of no consequence; if
+the sun be at rest, this mass makes no difference; if the earth
+moves like the planets, their relative size does not alter
+anything; and if stars are immovable they may be at any
+distance and of any magnitude.</p>
+
+<p>The objections of Tycho Brahe to the earth's motion were:
+First, that it was too heavy&mdash;we know now, however, that
+some other planets are heavier&mdash;and that the sun, which he
+would make move instead, is 340,000 times as heavy.
+Secondly, that if the earth moved, all loose things would be
+carried from east to west; but we have experience of many
+loose things being kept by friction on moving bodies, and
+can conceive how, all things may be kept by the attraction of
+the earth under the influence of its own motion. Thirdly,
+that he could not imagine that the earth was turned upside
+down every day, and that for twelve hours our heads are
+downwards.</p>
+
+<p>But the existence of the antipodes overcomes this objection,
+and shows that there is no up and down in the universe, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
+each man calls that <i>down</i> which is nearer to the centre of the
+earth than himself.</p>
+
+<p>A variation on Tycho Brahe's system was attempted by
+one Longomontanus, who had lived with him for ten years.
+It consisted in admitting the diurnal rotation, but not the
+annual revolution, of the earth; but it made no progress, and
+was soon forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>More remarkable than this was the attempt by Descartes
+in the same direction, namely, to hold the principles of
+Copernicus, and yet to teach the immobility of the earth.
+His idea of immobility was however very different from that
+of Tycho Brahe, or of any one else, and would only be called
+so by those who were bound to believe it at all costs.</p>
+
+<p>His Theory of Vortices, as it is called, will be best given
+in his own words as contained in his <i>Les Principes de la
+Philosophie</i>, third part, chap. xxvi., entitled, "That the earth
+is at rest in its heaven, which does not prevent its being
+carried along with it, and that it is the same with all the
+planets."</p>
+
+<p>"I adhere," he says, "to the hypothesis of Copernicus,
+because it seems to me the simplest and clearest. There is no
+vacuum anywhere in space.... The heavens are full of a
+universal liquid substance. This is an opinion now commonly
+received among astronomers, because they cannot see how the
+phenomena can be explained without it. The substance of
+the heavens has the common property of all liquids, that its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>
+minutest particles are easily moved in any direction, and
+when it happens that they all move in one way, they
+necessarily carry with them all the bodies they surround,
+and which are not prevented from moving by any external
+cause. The matter of the heaven in which the planets are
+turns round continually like a vortex, which has the Sun for
+its centre. The parts that are nearest the Sun move faster
+than those that are at a greater distance; and all the planets,
+including the earth, remain always suspended in the same
+place in the matter of the heaven. And just as in the turns
+of rivers, when the water turns back on itself and twists
+round in circles, if any twig or light body floats on it, we see
+it carry them round, and make them move with it, and even
+among these twigs we may see some turning on their own
+centre, and those that are nearest to the middle of the
+vortex moving quicker than those on the outside; so we may
+easily imagine it to be with the planets, and this is all that is
+necessary to explain the phenomena. The matter that is round
+Saturn takes about thirty years to run its circle; that which
+surrounds Jupiter carries it and its satellites round in twelve
+years, and so on.... The satellites are carried round their
+primaries by smaller vortices.... The earth is not sustained
+by columns, nor suspended in the air by ropes, but it is environed
+on all sides by a very liquid heaven. It is at rest, and
+has no propulsion or motion, since we do not perceive any in it.
+This does not prevent it being carried round by its heaven, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>
+following its motion without moving itself, just as a vessel
+which is not moved by winds or oars, and is not retained by
+anchors, remains in repose in the middle of the sea, although
+the flood of the great mass of water carries it insensibly
+with it. Like the earth, the planets remain at rest in the
+region of heaven where each one is found. Copernicus made
+no difficulty in allowing that the earth moves. Tycho, to
+whom this opinion seemed absurd and unworthy of common
+sense, wished to correct him, but the earth has far more
+motion in his hypothesis than in that of Copernicus."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 620px;">
+<img src="images/240.jpg" width="620" height="780" alt="Fig. 22." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 22.&mdash;Descartes&#39; Theory of Vortices.</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>Such is the celebrated theory of vortices. The comparison
+of the rotation of the earth and planets and their revolution
+round the sun to the turning of small portions of a rapid
+stream, may contain an idea yet destined to be developed
+to account for these motions; but as used by Descartes it
+is a mere playing upon words admirably adapted to
+secure the concurrence of all parties; those who believed in
+the motion of the earth seeing that it did not interfere with
+their ideas in the least, and those who believed in its stability
+being gratified to find some way by which they might still
+cling to that belief and yet adopt the new ideas. This was
+its purpose, and that purpose it well served; but as a
+philosophical speculation it was worthless. When former
+astronomers declared that any planet moved, whether it were
+the earth or any other, they had no idea of attraction, but
+supposed the planet fixed to a sphere; this sphere moving
+and carrying the planet with it was what they meant by the
+planet moving: the theory of vortices merely substituted a
+liquid for a solid sphere, with this disadvantage, that if the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>
+planet were fixed to a solid moving sphere, it <i>must</i> move;
+if only placed in a liquid one, that liquid might pass it if it
+did not have motion of its own.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;">
+<img src="images/242.jpg" width="650" height="630" alt="Fig. 23." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 23.&mdash;Vortices of the Stars.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>A variation on Descartes' system of vortices was proposed
+in the eighteenth century, which supposed that the sun,
+instead of being fixed in the centre of the system, itself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
+circulated round another centre, carrying Mercury with it.
+This motion of the sun was intented to explain the changes
+of magnitude of its disc as seen from the earth, and the
+diurnal and annual variations in its motion, without discarding
+its circular path.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;">
+<img src="images/243.jpg" width="650" height="610" alt="Fig. 24." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 24.&mdash;Variation of Descartes&#39; Theory.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>We have thus noticed all the chief astronomical systems
+that have at any time been entertained by astronomers. They<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>
+one and all have given way before the universally acknowledged
+truth about which there is no longer any dispute.
+Systems are not now matters of opinion or theory. We
+speak of facts as certain as any that can be ascertained in
+any branch of knowledge. We have much to learn, but
+what we have settled as the basis of our knowledge will
+never more be altered as far as we can see.</p>
+
+<p>Of course there have been always fantastic fancies put
+forth about the solar system, but they are more amusing
+than instructive. Some have said that there is no sun, moon,
+or stars, but that they are reflections from an immense light
+under the earth. Some savage races say that the moon when
+decreasing breaks up into stars, and is renewed each month
+by a creative act. The Indians used to say that it was full
+of nectar which the gods ate up when it waned, and which
+grew again when it waxed. The Brahmins placed the earth
+in the centre, and said that the stars moved like fishes in a
+sea of liquid. They counted nine planets, of which two are
+invisible dragons which cause eclipses; which, since they
+happen in various parts of the zodiac, show that these
+dragons revolve like the rest. They said the sun was nearer
+than the moon, perhaps because it is hotter and brighter.
+Berosus the Chaldean gave a very original explanation of the
+phases and eclipses of the moon. He said it had one side
+bright, and the other side just the colour of the sky, and in
+turning it represented the different colours to us.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Before concluding this chapter we may notice what information
+we possess as to the origin of the names by which the
+planets are known. These names have not always been given
+to them, and date only from the time when the poets began
+to associate the Grecian mythology with astronomy. The
+earlier names had reference rather to their several characters,
+although there appear to have been among every people two
+sets of names applied to them.</p>
+
+<p>The earliest Greek names referred to their various degrees of
+brilliancy: thus Saturn, which is not easily distinguished, was
+called Phenon, or <i>that which appears</i>; Jupiter was named
+Pha&euml;ton, <i>the brilliant</i>; Mars was Pyso&iuml;s, or <i>flame-coloured</i>;
+Mercury, Stilbon, <i>the sparkling</i>; Venus, Phosphorus; and
+Lucifer, <i>the light-bearer</i>. They called the latter also Calliste,
+<i>the most beautiful</i>. It was also known then as now under the
+appellations of the morning star and evening star, indicating
+its special position.</p>
+
+<p>With the ancient Accadians, the planets had similar names,
+among others. Thus, "Mars was sometimes called <i>the vanishing
+star</i>, in allusion to its recession from the earth, and Jupiter
+the <i>planet of the ecliptic</i>, from its neighbourhood to the latter"
+(Sayce). The name of Mars raises the interesting question
+as to whether they had noticed its phases as well as its
+movements&mdash;especially when, with reference to Venus, it is
+recorded in the "Observations of Bel," that "it rises, and in its
+orbit duly grows in size." They had also a rather confusing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>
+system of nomenclature by naming each planet after the star
+that it happened to be the nearest to at any point of its
+course round the ecliptic.</p>
+
+<p>Among less cultivated nations also the same practice held,
+as with the natives of South America, whose name for the
+sun is a word meaning <i>it brings the day</i>; for the moon, <i>it
+brings the night</i>; and for Venus, <i>it announces the day</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But even among the Eastern nations, from whom the
+Greeks and Romans borrowed their astronomical systems, it
+soon became a practice to associate these planets with the
+names of the several divinities they worshipped. This was
+perhaps natural from the adoration they paid to the celestial
+luminaries themselves on account of their real or supposed
+influence on terrestrial affairs; and, moreover, as time went on,
+and heroes had appeared, and they had to find them dwelling-places
+in the heavens, they would naturally associate them
+with one or other of the most brilliant and remarkable
+luminaries, to which they might suppose them translated.
+Beyond these general remarks, only conjectures can be made
+why any particular divinity should among the Greeks be
+connected with the several planets as we now know them.
+Such conjectures as the following we may make. Thus
+Jupiter, the largest, would take first rank, and be called after
+the name of the chief divinity. The soft and sympathising
+Venus&mdash;appearing at the twilight&mdash;would well denote the
+evening star. Mars would receive its name from its red<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
+appearance, naturally suggesting carnage and the god of
+war. Saturn, or Kronos, the god of time, is personified by
+the slow and almost imperceptible motion of that remote
+planet. While Mercury, the fiery and quick god of thieves
+and commerce, is well matched with the hide-and-seek planet
+which so seldom can be seen, and moves so rapidly.</p>
+
+<p>These were the only planets known to the ancients, and
+were indeed all that could be discovered without a telescope.
+If the ancient Babylonians possessed telescopes, as has been
+conjectured from their speaking, as we have noticed above,
+of the increase of the size of Venus, and from the finding a
+crystal lens among the ruins of Nineveh, they did not use
+them for this purpose.</p>
+
+<p>The other planets now known have a far shorter history.
+Uranus was discovered by Sir William Herschel on the
+13th of March, 1781, and was at first taken for a comet.
+Herschel proposed to call it Georgium Sidus, after King
+George III. Lalande suggested it should be named Herschel,
+after its discoverer, and it bore this name for some time.
+Afterwards the names, Neptune, Astr&#339;a, Cybele, and Uranus
+were successively proposed, and the latter, the suggestion of
+Bode, was ultimately adopted. It is the name of the most
+ancient of the gods, connected with the then most modern of
+planets in point of discovery, though also most ancient in
+formation, if recent theories be correct. Neptune, as everybody
+knows, was calculated into existence, if one may so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>
+speak, by Adams and Leverrier independently, and was first
+seen, in the quarter indicated, by Dr. Galle at Berlin, in
+September, 1846, and by universal consent it received the
+name it now bears.</p>
+
+<p>There are now also known a long series of what are
+called minor planets, all circulating between Mars and
+Jupiter, with their irregular orbits inextricably mingled
+together. Their discovery was led to in a remarkable
+manner. It was observed that the distances of the several
+planets might approximately be expressed by the terms of
+a certain mathematical series, if one term was supplied
+between Mars and Jupiter&mdash;a fact known by the name of
+Bode's law. When the new planet, Uranus, was found to
+obey this law, the feeling was so strong that there must be
+something to represent this missing term, that strong efforts
+were made to discover it, which led to success, and several,
+whose names are derived from the minor gods and goddesses,
+are now well known.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/248para.jpg" width="640" height="276" alt="" title="" />
+<img src="images/250para.jpg" width="640" height="77" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>All these planets, like the signs of the zodiac, are indicated
+by astronomers by certain symbols, which, as they derive
+their form from the names or nature of the planets, may
+properly here be explained. The sign of Neptune is <span class="symsign">&#9798;</span>, representing
+the trident of the sea; for Uranus <span class="symsign">&#9797;</span>, which is the
+first letter of Herschel with a little globe below; <span class="symsign">&#9796;</span> is the
+sickle of time, or Saturn;
+<span class="symsign">&#9795;</span> is the representation of the first letter of Zeus or Jupiter;
+<span class="symsign">&#9794;</span> is the lance and buckler of Mars;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
+<span class="symsign">&#9792;</span> the mirror of Venus;
+<span class="symsign">&#9791;</span> the wand of Mercury;
+<span class="symsign">&#9737;</span> the sun's disc; and
+<span class="symsign">&#9789;</span> the crescent of the moon.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 540px;">
+<img src="images/249.jpg" width="540" height="800" alt="Plate IX." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Plate IX.&mdash;The Solar System.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The more modern discoveries have, of course, been all
+made by means of the telescope, and a few words on the
+history of its discovery may fitly close this chapter.</p>
+
+<p>According to Olbers, a concave and convex lens were first
+used in combination, to render objects less distant in appearance,
+in the year 1606. In that year the children of one
+Jean Lippershey, an optician of Middelburg, in Zealand, were
+playing with his lenses, and happened to hold one before the
+other to look at a distant clock. Their great surprise in
+seeing how near it seemed attracted their father's attention,
+and he made several experiments with them, at last fixing
+them as in the modern telescope&mdash;in draw tubes. On the
+2nd of October, 1606, he made a petition to the States-General
+of Holland for a patent. The aldermen, however, saw no
+advantage in it, as you could only look with one eye instead
+of two. They refused the patent, and though the discovery
+was soon found of value, Lippershey reaped no benefit.</p>
+
+<p>Galileo was the first to apply the telescope to astronomical
+observations. He did not have it made in Holland, but
+constructed it himself on Lippershey's principle. This was
+in 1609. Its magnifying power was at first 4, and he
+afterwards increased it to 7, and then to 30. With this he
+discovered the phases of Venus, the spots on the sun, the
+four satellites of Jupiter, and the mountains of the moon.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 680px;">
+<img src="images/251.jpg" width="680" height="1024" alt="Plate X." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Plate X.&mdash;The Discovery of the Telescope.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Kepler, in 1611, made the first astronomical telescope with
+two concave glasses.</p>
+
+<p>Huyghens increased the magnifying power successively to
+48, 50, and 92, and discovered Saturn's ring and his satellite
+No. 4.</p>
+
+<p>Cassini, the first director of the Paris Observatory, brought
+it to 150, aided by Auzout Campani of Rome, and Rives of
+London. He observed the rotation of Jupiter (1665), that
+of Venus and Mars (1666), the fifth and third satellites of
+Saturn (1671), and afterwards the two nearer ones (1684);
+the other satellites of this planet were discovered, the sixth
+and seventh, by Sir William Herschel (1789), and the eighth
+by Bond and Lasel (1848).</p>
+
+<p>We may add here that the satellites of Uranus were
+discovered, six by Herschel from 1790 to 1794, and two by
+Lassel in 1851, the latter also discovering Neptune's satellite
+in 1847.</p>
+
+<p>The rotation of Saturn was discovered by Herschel in
+1789, and that of Mercury by Schr&#339;ter in 1800.</p>
+
+<p>The earliest telescopes which were reflectors were made
+by Gregory in 1663 and Newton in 1672. The greatest
+instruments of our century are that of Herschel, which
+magnifies 3,000 times, and Lord Rosse's, magnifying 6,000
+times, the Foucault telescope at Marseilles, of 4,000, the reflector
+at Melbourne, of 7,000, and the Newall refractor.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 700px;">
+<img src="images/253.jpg" width="700" height="1024" alt="Plate XI." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Plate XI.&mdash;The Foundation of Paris Observatory.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The exact knowledge of the heavens, which makes so grand
+a feature in modern science, is due, however, not only to the
+existence of instruments, but also to the establishment of
+observatories especially devoted to their use. The first astronomical
+observatory that was constructed was that at Paris.
+In 1667 Colbert submitted the designs of it to Louis XIV.,
+and four years afterwards it was completed. The Greenwich
+Observatory was established in 1676, that of Berlin in 1710,
+and that of St. Petersburg in 1725. Since then numerous
+others have been erected, private as well as public, in all
+parts of the world, and no night passes without numerous
+observations being taken as part of the ordinary duty of
+the astronomers attached to them.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE TERRESTRIAL WORLD OF THE ANCIENTS.&mdash;COSMOGRAPHY
+AND GEOGRAPHY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>With respect to the shape and position of the earth itself in
+the material universe, and the question of its motion or
+immobility, we cannot go so far back as in the case of the
+heavens, since it obviously requires more observation, and
+is not so pressing for an answer.</p>
+
+<p>Amongst the Greeks several authors appear to have undertaken
+the subject, but only one complete work has come
+down to us which undertakes it directly. This is a work
+attributed to Aristotle, <i>De Mundo</i>. It is addressed to
+Alexander, and by some is considered to be spurious, because
+it lacks the majestic obscurity that in his acknowledged
+works repels the reader. Although, however, it is not as
+obscure as it might be, for the writer, it is quite bad enough,
+and its dryness and vagueness, its mixture of metaphysical
+and physical reasoning, logic and observation, and the change
+that has naturally passed over the meanings of many common<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
+words since they were written, render it very tedious and
+unpleasant reading.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, as presenting us with the first recorded ideas
+on these questions of the nature and properties of the earth,
+it deserves attentive study. It is not a system of observations
+like those of Ptolemy and the Alexandrian School,
+but an entirely theoretical work. It is founded entirely on
+logic; but unfortunately, if the premisses are bad, the better
+the syllogism the more erroneous will be the conclusion; and
+it is just this which we find here. Thus if he be asked
+whether the earth turns or the heavens, he will reply that the
+earth is <i>evidently</i> in repose, and that this is the case not only
+because we observe it to be so, but because it is a necessity
+that it should be; because repose is <i>natural</i> to the earth, and
+it is <i>naturally</i> in equilibrium. This idea of "natural" leads
+very often astray. He is guided to his idea of what is
+natural by seeing what is, and then argues that what is, or
+appears to be, must be, because it is natural&mdash;thus arguing in
+a circle. Another example may be given in his answer to
+the question, Why must the stars move round the earth? He
+says it is natural, because a circle is a more perfect line, and
+must therefore be described by the perfect stars, and a circle
+is perfect because it has no ends! Unfortunately there are
+other curves that have no ends; but the circle was considered,
+without more reason, the most perfect curve, and therefore
+the planets must move in circles&mdash;an idea which had to wait<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>
+till Kepler's time to be exploded. One more specimen of
+this style may be quoted, namely, his proof that every part
+of heaven must be eternally moving, while the earth must be
+in the centre and at rest. The proof is this. Everything
+which performs any act has been made for the purpose of that
+act. Now the work of God is immortality, from which it
+follows that all that is divine must have an eternal motion.
+But the heavens have a divine quality, and for this reason
+they have a spherical shape and move eternally in a circle.
+Now when a body has a circular motion, one part of it must
+remain at rest in its place, namely, that which is in the
+centre; the earth is in the centre&mdash;therefore it is at rest.</p>
+
+<p>Aristotle says in this work that there are two kinds of
+simple motion, that in a circle and that in a straight line.
+The latter belongs to the elements, which either go up or
+down, and the former to the celestial bodies, whose nature is
+more divine, and which have never been known to change;
+and the earth and world must be the only bodies in existence,
+for if there were another, it must be the contrary to this, and
+there is no contrary to a circle; and again, if there were any
+other body, the earth would be attracted towards it, and
+move, which it does not. Such is the style of argument
+which was in those days thought conclusive, and which with
+a little development and inflation of language appeared
+intensely profound.</p>
+
+<p>But what brings these speculations to the subject we have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
+now in hand is this: that when Aristotle thus proves the
+earth to be immovable in the centre of the universe, he
+is led on to inquire how it is possible for it to remain
+in one fixed place. He observed that even a small fragment
+of earth, when it is raised into the air and then let go, immediately
+falls without ever stopping in one place&mdash;falling,
+as he supposed, all the quicker according to its weight; and
+he was therefore puzzled to know why the whole mass of
+the earth, notwithstanding its weight, could be kept from
+falling.</p>
+
+<p>Aristotle examines one by one the answers that have been
+given to this question. Thus Xenophanes gave to the earth
+infinitely extended roots, against which Empedocles uses such
+arguments as we should use now. Thales of Miletus makes
+the earth rest upon water, without finding anything on which
+the water itself can rest, or answering the question how it is
+that the heavier earth can be supported on the lighter water.
+Anaxemenes, Anaxagoras, and Democritus, who make the
+earth flat, consider it to be sustained by the air, which is
+accumulated below it, and also presses down upon it like a
+great coverlet. Aristotle himself says that he agrees with
+those philosophers who think that the earth is brought to the
+centre by the primitive rotation of things, and that we may
+compare it, as Empedocles does, to the water in glasses which
+are made to turn rapidly, and which does not fall out or move,
+even though upside down. He also quotes with approval<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>
+another opinion somewhat similar to this, namely, that of
+Anaximander, which states that the earth is in repose, on
+account of its own equilibrium. Placed in the centre and
+at an equal distance from its extremities, there is no reason
+why it should move in one direction rather than the other,
+and rests immovable in the centre without being able to
+leave it.</p>
+
+<p>The result of all is that Aristotle concludes that the
+earth is immovable, in the centre of the universe, and that
+it is not a star circulating in space like other stars, and that
+it does not rotate upon its axis; and he completes the system
+by stating that the earth is spherical, which is proved by the
+different aspects of the heavens to a voyager to the north or
+to the south.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the Aristotelian system, containing far more
+error than truth, which was the first of any completeness.
+Scattered ideas, however, on the shape and method of support
+of the earth and the cause of various phenomena, such
+as the circulation of the stars, are met with besides in
+abundance.</p>
+
+<p>The original ideas of the earth were naturally tinged by
+the prepossessions of each race, every one thinking his own
+country to be situated in the centre. Thus among the Hindoos,
+who lived near the equator, and among the Scandinavians,
+inhabiting regions nearer the pole, the same meaning attaches
+to the words by which they express their own country,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>
+<i>medpiama</i> and <i>medgard</i>, both meaning the central habitation.
+Olympus among the Greeks was made the centre of the
+earth, and afterwards the temple of Delphi. For the Egyptians
+the central point was Thebes; for the Assyrians it was
+Babylon; for the Indians it was the mountain Mero; for
+the Hebrews Jerusalem. The Chinese always called their
+country the central empire. It was then the custom to
+denote the world by a large disc, surrounded on all sides by
+a marvellous and inaccessible ocean. At the extremities of
+the earth were placed imaginary regions and fortunate isles,
+inhabited by giants or pigmies. The vault of the sky was
+supposed to be supported by enormous mountains and
+mysterious columns.</p>
+
+<p>Numerous variations have been suggested on the earliest
+supposed form of the earth, which was, as we have seen in a
+former chapter, originally supposed to be an immense flat of
+infinite depth, and giving support to the heavens.</p>
+
+<p>As travels extended and geography began to be a science,
+it was remarked that an immense area of water circumscribed
+the solid earth by irregular boundaries&mdash;whence the idea of
+a universal ocean.</p>
+
+<p>When, however, it was perceived that the horizon at sea
+was always circular, it was supposed that the ocean was
+bounded, and the whole earth came to be represented as
+contained in a circle, beneath which were roots reaching
+downwards without end, but with no imagined support.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/261a.jpg" width="640" height="293" alt="Fig. 25." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 25.&mdash;The Earth Floating.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/261b.jpg" width="400" height="330" alt="Fig. 26." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 26.&mdash;The Earth with Roots.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Vedic priests asserted that the earth was supported
+on twelve columns, which they very ingeniously turned to
+their own account by asserting that these columns were
+supported by virtue of the sacrifices that were made to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
+gods, so that if these were not made the earth would
+collapse.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 520px;">
+<img src="images/262.jpg" width="520" height="370" alt="Fig. 27." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 27.&mdash;The Earth of the Vedic Priests.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>These pillars were invented in order to account for the
+passing of the sun beneath the earth after his setting, for
+which at first they were obliged to imagine a system of
+tunnels, which gradually became enlarged to the intervals
+between the pillars.</p>
+
+<p>The Hindoos made the hemispherical earth to be supported
+upon four elephants, and the four elephants to stand on the
+back of an immense tortoise, which itself floated on the surface
+of a universal ocean. We are not however to laugh at
+this as intended to be literal; the elephants symbolised, it
+may be, the four elements, or the four directions of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>
+compass, and the tortoise was the symbol for strength and
+for eternity, which was also sometimes represented by a
+serpent.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/263.jpg" width="600" height="430" alt="Fig. 28." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 28.&mdash;Hindoo Earth.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The floating of the earth on water or some other liquid long
+held ground. It was adopted by Thales, and six centuries
+later Seneca adopts the same opinion, saying that the humid
+element that supports the earth's disc like a vessel may be
+either the ocean or some liquid more simple than water.</p>
+
+<p>Diodorus tells us that the Chaldeans considered the earth
+hollow and boat-shaped&mdash;perhaps turned upside down&mdash;and
+this doctrine was introduced into Greece by Heraclitus of
+Ephesus.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 460px;">
+<img src="images/264.jpg" width="460" height="240" alt="Fig. 29." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 29.&mdash;The Earth of Anaximander.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Anaximander represents the earth as a cylinder, the upper
+face of which alone is inhabited. This cylinder, he states, is
+one-third as high as its diameter, and it floats freely in the
+centre of the celestial vault, because there is no reason why
+it should move to one side rather than the other. Leucippus,
+Democritus, Heraclitus, and Anaxagoras all adopted this
+purely imaginary form. Europe made the northern half, and
+Lybia (Africa) and Asia the southern, while Delphi was in
+the centre.</p>
+
+<p>Anaximenes, without giving a precise opinion as to the
+form of the earth, made it out to be supported on compressed
+air, though he gave no idea as to how the air was to be
+compressed.</p>
+
+<p>Plato thought to improve upon these ideas by making the
+earth cubical. The cube, which is bound by six equal faces,
+appeared to him the most perfect of solids, and therefore<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>
+most suitable for the earth, which was to stand in the centre
+of the universe.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 353px;">
+<img src="images/265.jpg" width="353" height="336" alt="Fig. 30." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 30.&mdash;Plato&#39;s Cubical Earth.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Eudoxus, who in his long voyages throughout Greece and
+Egypt had seen new constellations appear as he went south,
+while others to the north disappeared, deduced the sphericity
+of the earth, in which opinion he was followed by Archimedes,
+and, as we have seen, by Aristotle.</p>
+
+<p>According to Achilles Tatius, Xenophanes gave to the
+earth the shape of an immense inclined plane, which stretched
+out to infinity. He drew it in the form of a vast mountain.
+The summit only was inhabited by men, and round it circulated
+the stars, and the base was at an infinite depth. Hesiod<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
+had before this obscurely said: "The abyss is surrounded by
+a brazen barrier; above it rest the roots of the earth."
+Epicurus and his school were well pleased with this representation.
+If such were the foundations of the earth, then it
+was impossible that the sun, and moon, and stars should
+complete their revolutions beneath it. A solid and indefinite
+support being once admitted, the Epicurean ideas about the
+stars were a necessary consequence; the stars must inevitably
+be put out each day in the west, since they are not seen to
+return to the place whence they started, and they must be
+rekindled some hours afterwards in the east. In the days of
+Augustus, Cleomedes still finds himself obliged to combat
+these Epicurean ideas about the setting and rising of the sun
+and stars. "These stupid ideas," he says, "have no other
+foundation than an old woman's story&mdash;that the Iberians
+hear each night the hissing noise made by the burning sun as
+it is extinguished, like a hot iron in the waters of the ocean."
+Modern travellers have shown us that similar ideas about
+the support of the earth have been entertained by more
+remote people. Thus, in the opinion of the Greenlanders,
+handed down from antiquity to our own days, the earth is
+supported on pillars, which are so consumed by time that
+they often crack, and were it not that they are supported by
+the incantations of the magicians, they would long since have
+broken down. This idea of the breaking of the pillars may
+possibly have originated in the known sinking of the land<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>
+beneath the sea, which is still going on even at the present
+day.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/267.jpg" width="640" height="405" alt="Fig. 31." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 31.&mdash;Egyptian Representation of the Earth.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>An ancient Egyptian papyrus in the library of Paris gives
+a very curious hieroglyphical representation of the universe.
+The earth is here figured under the form of a reclining figure,
+and is covered with leaves. The heavens are personified by
+a goddess, which forms the vault by her star-bespangled
+body, which is elongated in a very peculiar manner. Two
+boats, carrying, one the rising sun, and the other the setting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>
+sun, are represented as moving along the heavens over the
+body of the goddess. In the centre of the picture is the
+god, Maon, a divine intelligence, which presides over the
+equilibrium of the universe.</p>
+
+<p>We will now pass on from the early ideas of the general
+shape and situation of the world to inquire into the first
+outlines of geographical knowledge of details.</p>
+
+<p>Of all the ancient writings which deal with such questions,
+the Hebrew Scriptures have the greatest antiquity, and in
+them are laid down many details of known countries, from
+which a fair map of the world as known to them might be
+made out. The prophet Esdras believed that six-sevenths
+of the earth was dry land&mdash;an idea which could not well
+be exploded till the great oceans had been traversed and
+America discovered.</p>
+
+<p>More interesting, as being more complete, and written to a
+certain extent for the very purpose of relating what was
+known of the geography of the earth, are the writings of the
+oldest Grecian poets. The first elements of Grecian geography
+are contained in the two national and almost sacred
+poems, the <i>Iliad</i> and <i>Odyssey</i>. So important have these
+writings been considered in regard to ancient geography, that
+for many centuries discussions have been carried on with
+regard to the details, though evidently fictitious, of the
+voyage of Ulysses, and twenty lines of the <i>Iliad</i> have
+furnished matter for a book of thirty volumes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The shield of Achilles, forged by Vulcan and described in
+the eighteenth book of the <i>Iliad</i>, gives us an authentic representation
+of the primitive cosmographical ideas of the age.
+The earth is there figured as a disc, surrounded on all sides
+by the <i>River Ocean</i>. However strange it may appear to us,
+to apply the term <i>river</i> to the ocean, it occurs too often in
+Homer and the other ancient poets to admit of a doubt of
+its being literally understood by them. Hesiod even describes
+the sources of the ocean at the western extremity of the
+world, and the representation of these sources was preserved
+from age to age amongst authors posterior to Homer by
+nearly a thousand years. Herodotus says plainly that the
+geographers of his time drew their maps of the world
+according to the same ideas; the earth was figured with
+them as a round disc, and the ocean as a river, which washed
+it on all sides.</p>
+
+<p>The earth's disc, the <i>orbis terrarum</i>, was covered according
+to Homer by a solid vault or firmament, beneath which the
+stars of the day and night were carried by chariots supported
+by the clouds. In the morning the sun rose from the eastern
+ocean, and in the evening it declined into the western; and a
+vessel of gold, the mysterious work of Vulcan, carried it
+quickly back by the north, to the east again. Beneath the
+earth Homer places, not the habitation of the dead, the
+caverns of Hades, but a vault called Tartarus, corresponding
+to the firmament. Here lived the Titans, the enemies of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
+gods, and no breath of wind, no ray of light, ever penetrated
+to this subterranean world. Writers subsequent to Homer
+by a century determined even the height of the firmament
+and the depth of Tartarus. An anvil, they said, would take
+nine days to fall from heaven to earth, and as many more
+to fall from earth to the bottom of Tartarus. This estimate
+of the height of heaven was of course far too small. If a
+body were to fall for nine days and nights, or 777,600 seconds
+under the attraction of the earth, it would only pass over
+430,500 miles, that is not much more than half as far again
+as the moon. A ray of light would only take two seconds to
+pass over that distance, whereas it takes eight minutes
+to reach us from the sun, and four hours to come from
+Neptune&mdash;to say nothing of the distance of the stars.</p>
+
+<p>The limits of the world in the Homeric cosmography were
+surrounded by obscurity. The columns of which Atlas was
+the guardian were supported on unknown foundations, and
+disappeared in the systems subsequent to Homer. Beyond
+the mysterious boundary where the earth ended and the
+heavens began an indefinite chaos spread out&mdash;a confused
+medley of life and inanity, a gulf where all the elements of
+heaven, Tartarus, and earth and sea are mixed together, a
+gulf of which the gods themselves are afraid.</p>
+
+<p>Ideas such as these prevailed long after geometers and
+astronomers had proved the spherical form of the globe,
+and they were revived by the early Christian geographers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
+and have left their trace even on the common language of
+to-day.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 570px;">
+<img src="images/271.jpg" width="570" height="560" alt="Fig. 32." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 32.&mdash;Homeric Cosmography.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The centre of the terrestrial disc was occupied by the
+continent and isles of Greece, which in the time of Homer
+possessed no general name. The centre of Greece passed
+therefore for the centre of the whole world; and in Homer's
+system it was reckoned to be Olympus in Thessaly, but the
+priests of the celebrated Temple of Apollo at Delphi (known<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>
+then under the name of Python) gave out a tradition that
+that sacred place was the real centre of the habitable world.</p>
+
+<p>The straits which separate Italy from Sicily were so to
+speak the vestibule of the fabulous world of Homer. The
+threefold ebb and flow, the howling of the monster Scylla,
+the whirlpools of Charybdis, the floating rocks&mdash;all tell us
+that we are quitting here the region of truth. Sicily itself,
+although already known under the name of <i>Trinacria</i>, was
+filled with marvels; here the flocks of the Sun wandered in
+a charming solitude under the guardianship of nymphs; here
+the Cyclops, with one eye only, and the anthropophagous
+Lestrigons scared away the traveller from a land that was
+otherwise fertile in corn and wine. Two historical races were
+placed by Homer in Sicily, namely the <i>Sicani</i>, and the <i>Siceli</i>,
+or <i>Siculi</i>.</p>
+
+<p>To the west of Sicily we find ourselves in the midst of a
+region of fables. The enchanted islands of Circe and Calypso,
+and the floating island of Eolus can no longer be found,
+unless we imagine them to have originated, like Graham's
+Island in this century, from volcanic eruptions or elevations,
+and to have disappeared again by the action of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>The Homeric map of the world terminated towards the
+west by two fabulous countries which have given rise to
+many traditions among the ancients, and to many discussions
+among moderns. Near to the entrance of the ocean, and not
+far from the sombre caverns where the dead are congregated,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>
+Ulysses found the <i>Cimmerians</i>, "an unhappy people, who,
+constantly surrounded by thick shadows, never enjoyed the
+rays of the sun, neither when it mounted the skies, nor when
+it descended below the earth." Still farther away, and in
+the ocean itself, and therefore beyond the limits of the earth,
+beyond the region of winds and seasons, the poet paints for
+us a Fortunate Land, which he calls <i>Elysium</i>, a country where
+tempests and winter are unknown, where a soft zephyr always
+blows, and where the elect of Jupiter, snatched from the
+common lot of mortals, enjoy a perpetual felicity.</p>
+
+<p>Whether these fictions had an allegory for their basis, or
+were founded on the mistaken notions of voyagers&mdash;whether
+they arose in Greece, or, as the Hebrew etymology of the
+name Cimmerian might seem to indicate, in the east, or in
+Phenicia, it is certain that the images they present, transferred
+to the world of reality, and applied successively to
+various lands, and confused by contradictory explanations,
+have singularly embarrassed the progress of geography through
+many centuries. The Roman travellers thought they recognised
+the Fortunate Isles in a group to the west of Africa,
+now known as the Canaries. The philosophical fictions of
+Plato and Theopompus about Atlantes and Meropis have
+been long perpetuated in historical theories; though of course
+it is possible that in the numerous changes that have taken
+place in the surface of the earth, some ancient vast and
+populous island may have descended beneath the level of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>
+the sea. On the other side, the poetic imagination created the
+<i>Hyperboreans</i>, beyond the regions where the northern winds
+were generated, and according to a singular kind of meteorology,
+they believed them for that reason to be protected from
+the cold winds. Herodotus regrets that he has not been able
+to discover the least trace of them; he took the trouble to
+ask for information about them from their neighbours, the
+<i>Arimaspes</i>, a very clear-sighted race, though having but a
+single eye; but they could not inform him where the
+Hyperboreans dwelt. The Enchanted Isles, where the Hesperides
+used to guard the golden fruit, and which the whole
+of antiquity placed in the west, not far from the Fortunate
+Isles, are sometimes called Hyperborean by authors well
+versed in the ancient traditions. It is also in this sense that
+Sophocles speaks of the Garden of Ph&#339;bus, near the vault of
+heaven, and not far from the <i>sources of the night</i>, <i>i.e.</i> of the
+setting of the sun.</p>
+
+<p>Avienus explains the mild temperature of the Hyperborean
+country by the temporary proximity of the sun, since,
+according to the Homeric ideas, it passes during the night
+by the northern ocean to return to its palace in the east.
+This ancient tradition was not entirely exploded in the time
+of Tacitus, who states that on the confines of Germany might
+be seen the veritable setting of Apollo beyond the water,
+and he believes that as in the east the sun gives rise to
+incense and balm by its great proximity to the earth, so in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>
+the regions where it sets it makes the most precious of juices
+to transude from the earth and form amber. It is this idea
+that is embedded in the fables of amber being the tears of
+gold that Apollo shed when he went to the Hyperborean land
+to mourn the loss of his son &AElig;sculapius, or by the sisters of
+Pha&euml;ton, changed into poplars; and it is denoted by the
+Greek name for amber, <i>electron</i>&mdash;a sun-stone. The Grecian
+sages, long before the time of Tacitus, said that this very
+precious material was an exhalation from the earth that was
+produced and hardened by the rays of the sun, which
+they thought came nearer to the earth in the west and in
+the north.</p>
+
+<p>Florus, in relating the expedition of Decimus Brutus along
+the coast of Spain, gives great effect to the Epicurean views
+about the sun, by declaring that Brutus only stopped his conquests
+after having witnessed the actual descent of the sun
+into the ocean, and having heard with horror the terrible noise
+occasioned by its extinction. The ancients also believed that
+the sun and the other heavenly bodies were nourished by the
+waters&mdash;partly the fresh water of the rivers, and partly the
+salt water of the sea. Cleanthes gave the reason for the sun
+returning towards the equator on reaching the solstices, that
+it could not go too far away from the source of its nourishment.
+Pytheas relates that in the Island of Thule, six days'
+journey north of Great Britain, and in all that neighbourhood,
+there was no land nor sea nor air, but a compound of all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>
+three, on which the earth and the sea were suspended, and
+which served to unite together all the parts of the universe,
+though it was not possible to go into these places, neither on
+foot nor in ships. Perhaps the ice floating in the frozen seas
+and the hazy northern atmosphere had been seen by some
+navigator, and thus gave rise to this idea. As it stands, the
+history may be perhaps matched by that of the amusing
+monk who said he had been to the end of the world and had
+to stoop down, as there was not room to stand between
+heaven and earth at their junction.</p>
+
+<p>Homer lived in the tenth century before our era. Herodotus,
+who lived in the fifth, developed the Homeric chart
+to three times its size. He remarks at the commencement
+of his book that for several centuries the world has been
+divided into three parts&mdash;Europe, Asia, and Libya; the
+names given to them being female. The exterior limits of
+these countries remained in obscurity notwithstanding that
+those boundaries of them that lay nearest to Greece were
+clearly defined.</p>
+
+<p>One of the greatest writers on ancient geography was
+Strabo, whose ideas we will now give an account of. He
+seems to have been a disciple of Hipparchus in astronomy,
+though he criticises and contradicts him several times in
+his geography. He had a just idea of the sphericity of the
+earth; but considered it as the centre of the universe, and
+immovable. He takes pains to prove that there is only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>
+one inhabited earth&mdash;not in this refuting the notion that
+the moon and stars might have inhabitants, for these he
+considered to be insignificant meteors nourished by the
+exhalations of the ocean; but he fought against the fact
+of there being on this globe any other inhabited part than
+that known to the ancients.</p>
+
+<p>It is remarkable to notice that the proofs then used by
+geographers of the sphericity of the earth are just those
+which we should use now. Thus Strabo says, "The indirect
+proof is drawn from the centripetal force in general,
+and the tendency that all bodies have in particular towards
+a centre of gravity. The direct proof results from the
+phenomena observed on the sea and in the sky. It is
+evident, for example, that it is the curvature of the earth
+that alone prevents the sailor from seeing at a distance the
+lights that are placed at the ordinary height of the eye,
+and which must be placed a little higher to become visible
+even at a greater distance; in the same way, if the eye is
+a little raised it will see things which previously were
+hidden." Homer had already made the same remark.</p>
+
+<p>On this globe, representing the world, Strabo and the
+cosmographers of his time placed the habitable world in a
+surface which he describes in the following way: "Suppose
+a great circle, perpendicular to the equator, and passing
+through the poles to be described about the sphere. It is
+plain that the surface will be divided by this circle, and by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>
+equator into four equal parts. The northern and southern
+hemispheres contain, each of them, two of these parts.
+Now on any one of these quarters of the sphere let us trace
+a quadrilateral which shall have for its southern boundary
+the half of the equator, for northern boundary a circle marking
+the commencement of polar cold, and for the other
+sides two equal and opposite segments of the circle that
+passes through the poles. It is on one such quadrilateral
+that the habitable world is placed." He figures it as an
+island, because it is surrounded on all sides by the sea.
+It is plain that Strabo had a good idea of the nature of
+gravity, because he does not distinguish in any way an
+upper or a lower hemisphere, and declares that the quadrilateral
+on which the habitable world is situated may be any
+one of the four formed in this way.</p>
+
+<p>The form of the habitable world is that of a "chlamys," or
+cloak. This follows, he says, both from geometry and the great
+spread of the sea, which, enveloping the land, covers it both
+to the east and to the west and reduces it to a shortened
+and truncated form of such a figure that its greatest breadth
+preserved has only a third of its length. As to the
+actual length and breadth, he says, "it measures seventy
+thousand stadia in length, and is bounded by a sea whose
+immensity and solitude renders it impassable; while the
+breadth is less than thirty thousand stadia, and has for
+boundaries the double region where the excess of heat on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
+one side and the excess of cold on the other render it
+uninhabitable."</p>
+
+<p>The habitable world was thus much longer from east to
+west than it was broad from north to south; from whence
+come our terms <i>longitude</i>, whose degrees are counted in
+the former direction, and <i>latitude</i>, reckoned in the latter
+direction.</p>
+
+<p>Eratosthenes, and after him Hipparchus, while he gives
+larger numbers than the preceding for the dimensions of the
+inhabited part of the earth, namely, thirty-eight thousand
+stadia of breadth and eighty thousand of length, declares
+that physical laws accord with calculations to prove that
+the length of the habitable earth must be taken from the
+rising to the setting of the sun. This length extends from
+the extremity of India to that of Iberia, and the breadth
+from the parallel of Ethiopia to that of Ierne.</p>
+
+<p>That the earth is an island, Strabo considers to be
+proved by the testimony of our senses. For wherever men
+have reached to the extremities of the earth they have
+found the sea, and for regions where this has not been
+verified it is established by reasoning. Those who have
+retraced their steps have not done so because their passage
+was barred by any continent, but because their supplies
+have run short, and they were afraid of the solitude; the
+water always ran freely in front of them.</p>
+
+<p>It is extraordinary that Strabo and the astronomers of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>
+that age, who recognised so clearly the sphericity of the
+earth and the real insignificance of mountains, should yet
+have supposed the stars to have played so humble a part,
+but so it was; and we find Strabo arguing in what we may
+call quite the contrary direction. He says, "the larger the
+mass of water that is spread round the earth, so much more
+easy is it to conceive how the vapours arising from it are
+sufficient to nourish the heavenly bodies."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 680px;">
+<img src="images/280.jpg" width="680" height="360" alt="Fig. 33." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 33.&mdash;The Earth of the Later Greeks.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Among the Latin cosmographers we may here cite one
+who flourished in the first century after Christ, Pomponius
+Mela, who wrote a treatise, called <i>De Situ Orbis</i>. From whatever
+source, whether traditional or otherwise, he arrived at
+the conclusion, he divided the earth into two continents,
+our own and that of the Antichthones, which reached to our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>
+antipodes. This map was in use till the time of Christopher
+Columbus, who modified it in the matter of the position of
+this second continent, which till then remained a matter of
+mystery.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/281.jpg" width="350" height="290" alt="Fig. 34." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 34.&mdash;Pomponius Mela&#39;s Cosmography.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Of those who in ancient times added to the knowledge
+then possessed of cosmography, we should not omit to
+mention the name of Pytheas, of Marseilles, who flourished
+in the fourth century before our era. His chief observations,
+however, were not so closely related to geography as to the
+relation of the earth with the heavenly bodies. By the observation
+of the gnomon at mid-day on the day of the solstice
+he determined the obliquity of the ecliptic in his epoch. By
+the observation of the height of the pole, he discovered that
+in his time it was not marked by any star, but formed a
+quadrilateral with three neighbouring stars, &#946; of the little
+Bear and &#954; and &#945; of the Dragon.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+<h3>COSMOGRAPHY AND GEOGRAPHY OF THE CHURCH.</h3>
+
+
+<p>After the writers mentioned in the last chapter a long
+interval elapsed without any progress being made in the
+knowledge of the shape or configuration of the earth. From
+the fall of the Roman Empire, whose colonies themselves
+gave a certain knowledge of geography, down to the
+fifteenth century, when the great impetus was given to
+discovery by the adventurous voyagers of Spain and Portugal,
+there was nothing but servile copying from ancient authors,
+who were even misrepresented when they were not understood.
+Even the peninsula of India was only known by the
+accounts of Orientals and the writings of the Ancients until
+the beginning of the fifteenth century. Vague notions, too,
+were held as to the limits of Africa, and even of Europe
+and Asia&mdash;while of course they knew nothing of America,
+in spite of their marking on their maps an antichthonal
+continent to the south.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Denys, the traveller, a Greek writer of the first century,
+and Priscian, his Latin commentator of the fourth, still
+maintained the old errors with regard to the earth. According
+to them the earth is not round, but leaf-shaped; its
+boundaries are not so arranged as to form everywhere a
+regular circle. Macrobius, in his system of the world,
+proves clearly that he had no notion that Africa was
+continued to the south of Ethiopia, that is of the tenth
+degree of N. latitude. He thought, like Cleanthus and
+Crates and other ancient authors, that the regions that lay
+nearest the tropics, and were burnt by the sun, could not
+be inhabited; and that the equatorial regions were occupied
+by the ocean. He divided the hemisphere into five zones,
+of which only two were habitable. "One of them," he
+said, "is occupied by us, and the other by men of whose
+nature we are ignorant."</p>
+
+<p>Orosus, writing in the same century (fourth), and whose
+work exercised so great an influence on the cosmographers of
+the middle ages and on those who made the maps of the
+world during that long period, was ignorant of the form or
+boundaries of Africa, and of the contours of the peninsulas
+of Southern Asia. He made the heavens rest upon the
+earth.</p>
+
+<p>S. Basil, also of the fourth century, placed the firmament
+on the earth, and on this heaven a second, whose upper
+surface was flat, notwithstanding that the inner surface<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>
+which is turned towards us is in the form of a vault; and
+he explains in this way how the waters can be held there.
+S. Cyril shows how useful this reservoir of water is to
+the life of men and of plants.</p>
+
+<p>Diodorus, Bishop of Tarsus, in the same century, also
+divided the world into two stages, and compared it to a
+tent. Severianus, Bishop of Gabala, about the same time,
+compared the world to a house of which the earth is the
+ground floor, the lower heavens the ceiling, and the upper,
+or heaven of heavens, the roof. This double heaven was
+also admitted by Eusebius of C&aelig;sar&aelig;a.</p>
+
+<p>In the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries science made no
+progress whatever. It was still taught that there were
+limits to the ocean. Thus Lactantius asserted that there
+could not be inhabitants beyond the line of the tropics.
+This Father of the Church considered it a monstrous opinion
+that the earth is round, that the heavens turn about it, and
+that all parts of the earth are inhabited. "There are some
+people," he says, "so extravagant as to persuade themselves
+that there are men who have their heads downwards and
+their feet upwards; that all that lies down here is hung
+up there; that the trees and herbs grow downwards; and
+that the snow and hail fall upwards.... Those people who
+maintain such opinions do so for no other purpose than
+to amuse themselves by disputation, and to show their
+spirit; otherwise it would be easy to prove by invincible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>
+argument that it is impossible for the heavens to be underneath
+the earth." (Divine Institution). Saint Augustin also,
+in his <i>City of God</i>, says: "There is no reason to believe
+in that fabulous hypothesis of the antipodes, that is to
+say, of men who inhabit the other side of the earth&mdash;where
+the sun rises when it sets with us, and who have their
+feet opposed to ours." ... "But even if it were demonstrated
+by any argument that the earth and world have a
+spherical form, it would be too absurd to pretend that any
+hardy voyagers, after having traversed the immensity of
+the ocean, had been able to reach that part of the world
+and there implant a detached branch of the prim&aelig;val
+human family."</p>
+
+<p>In the same strain wrote S. Basil, S. Ambrose, S. Justin
+Martyr, S. Chrysostom, Procopius of Gaza, Severianus,
+Diodorus Bishop of Tarsus, and the greater number of the
+thinkers of that epoch.</p>
+
+<p>Eusebius of C&aelig;sar&aelig;a was bold enough on one occasion
+to write in his Commentaries on the Psalms, that,
+"according to the opinion of some the earth is round;"
+but he draws back in another work from so rash an assertion.
+Even in the fifteenth century the monks of Salamanca
+and Alcala opposed the old arguments against the antipodes
+to all the theories of Columbus.</p>
+
+<p>In the middle of the sixteenth century Gregory of Tours
+adopted also the opinion that the intertropical zone was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 243px;">
+<img src="images/286.jpg" width="243" height="448" alt="Fig. 35." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 35.&mdash;The Earth&#39;s Shadow.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>uninhabitable, and, like other historians, he taught that the
+Nile came from the unknown land in the east, descended
+to the south, crossed the ocean which separated the antichthone
+from Africa, and then alone became: visible. The
+geographical and cosmographical ideas that were then preva<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>lent
+may also be judged of by what S. Avitus, a Latin poet
+of the sixth century and nephew of the Emperor Flavius
+Avitus, says in his poem on the Creation, where he describes
+the terrestrial Paradise. "Beyond India," he writes, "<i>where
+the world commences</i>, where the confines of heaven and earth
+are joined, is an exalted asylum, inaccessible to mortals,
+and closed by eternal barriers, since the first sin was
+committed."</p>
+
+<p>In a treatise on astronomy, published a little after this
+in 1581, by Apian and Gemma Frison, they very distinctly
+state their belief in a round earth, though they do not go into
+details of its surface. The argument is the old one from
+eclipses, but the figures they give in illustration are very
+amusing, with three or four men of the size of the moon
+disporting themselves on the earth's surface. As, however,
+they all have their feet to the globe representing the earth,
+and consequently have their feet in opposite directions at
+the antipodes, the idea is very clearly shown.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 760px;">
+<img src="images/287.jpg" width="760" height="190" alt="Fig. 36." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 36.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"If," they say, "the earth were square, its shadow on the
+moon would be square also.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"If the earth were triangular, its shadow, during an
+eclipse of the moon, would also be triangular.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 760px;">
+<img src="images/288a.jpg" width="760" height="200" alt="Fig. 37." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 37.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"If the earth had six sides, its shadow would have the
+same figure.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 760px;">
+<img src="images/288b.jpg" width="760" height="180" alt="Fig. 38." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 38.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Since, then, the shadow of the earth is round, it is a
+proof that the earth is round also."</p>
+
+<p>This of course is one of the proofs that would be
+employed in the present day for the same purpose.</p>
+
+<p>The most remarkable of all the fantastical systems,
+however, the <i>chef d'&#339;uvre</i> of the cosmography of that age,
+was the famous system of the square earth, with solid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>
+walls for supporting the heavens. Its author was <i>Cosmas</i>,
+surnamed <i>Indicopleustes</i> after his voyage to India and
+Ethiopia. He was at first a merchant, and afterwards a
+monk. He died in 550. His manuscript was entitled
+"Christian Topography," and was written in 535. It
+was with the object of refuting the opinions of those
+who gave a spherical form to the earth that Cosmas
+composed his work after the systems of the Church
+Fathers, and in opposition to the cosmography of the
+Gentiles. He reduced to a systematic form the opinions of
+the Fathers, and undertook to explain all the phenomena
+of the heavens in accordance with the Scriptures. In
+his first book he refutes the opinion of the sphericity
+of the earth, which he regarded as a heresy. In the
+second he expounds his own system, and the fifth to
+the ninth he devotes to the courses of the stars.
+This mongrel composition is a singular mixture of the
+doctrines of the Indians, Chaldeans, Greeks, and Christian
+Fathers.</p>
+
+<p>With respect to his opponents he says, "There are on
+all sides vigorous attacks against the Church," and accuses
+them of misunderstanding Scripture, being misled by the
+eclipses of the sun and moon. He makes great fun of
+the idea of rain falling upwards, and yet accuses his opponents
+of making the earth at the same time the centre
+and the base of the universe. The zeal with which these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>
+pretended refutations are used proves, no doubt, that in
+the sixth century there were some men, more sensible and
+better instructed than others, who preserved the deposit of
+progress accomplished by the Grecian genius in the
+Alexandrian school, and defended the labours of Hipparchus
+and Ptolemy; while it is manifest that the greater
+number of their contemporaries kept the old Indian and
+Homeric traditions, which were easier to understand, and
+more accessible to the false witness of the senses, and not
+improved by combination with texts of Scripture misinterpreted.
+In fact, cosmographical science in the general
+opinion retrograded instead of advancing.</p>
+
+<p>According to Cosmas and his map of the world, the
+habitable earth is a plane surface. But instead of being
+supposed, as in the time of Thales, to be a disc, he represented
+it in the form of a parallelogram, whose long sides
+are twice the shorter ones, so that man is on the earth
+like a bird in a cage. This parallelogram is surrounded
+by the ocean, which breaks in in four great gulfs, namely,
+the Mediterranean and Caspian seas, and the Persian and
+Arabian gulfs.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the ocean in every direction there exists another
+continent which cannot be reached by man, but of which
+one part was once inhabited by him before the Deluge. To
+the east, just as in other maps of the world, and in later
+systems, he placed the <i>Terrestrial Paradise</i>, and the four<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>
+rivers that watered Eden, which come by subterranean
+channels to water the post-diluvian earth.</p>
+
+<p>After the Fall, Adam was driven from Paradise; but he
+and his descendants remained on its coasts until the Deluge
+carried the ark of Noah to our present earth.</p>
+
+<p>On the four outsides of the earth rise four perpendicular
+walls, which surround it, and join together at the top in
+a vault, the heavens forming the cupola of this singular
+edifice.</p>
+
+<p>The world, according to Cosmas, was therefore a large
+oblong box, and it was divided into two parts; the first,
+the abode of men, reaches from the earth to the firmament,
+above which the stars accomplish their revolutions; there
+dwell the angels, who cannot go any higher. The second
+reaches upwards from the firmament to the upper vault,
+which crowns and terminates the world. On this firmament
+rest the waters of the heavens.</p>
+
+<p>Cosmas justifies this system by declaring that, according
+to the doctrine of the Fathers and the Commentators on the
+Bible, the earth has the form of the Tabernacle that Moses
+erected in the desert; which was like an oblong box, twice
+as long as broad. But we may find other similarities,&mdash;for
+this land beyond the ocean recalls the Atlantic of the
+ancients, and the Mahomedans, and Orientals in general, say
+that the earth is surrounded by a high mountain, which
+is a similar idea to the walls of Cosmas.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 860px;">
+<img src="images/292.jpg" width="860" height="470" alt="Fig. 39." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 39.&mdash;The Cosmography of Cosmas.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"God," he says, "in creating the earth, rested it on
+nothing. The earth is therefore sustained by the power of
+God, the Creator of all things, supporting all things by the
+word of His power. If below the earth, or outside of it,
+anything existed, it would fall of its own accord. So God
+made the earth the base of the universe, and ordained that
+it should sustain itself by its own proper gravity."</p>
+
+<p>After having made a great square box of the universe, it
+remained for him to explain the celestial phenomena, such
+as the succession of days and nights and the vicissitudes
+of the seasons.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 580px;">
+<img src="images/293.jpg" width="580" height="450" alt="Fig. 40." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 40.&mdash;The Square Earth.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>This is the remarkable explanation he gives. He says
+that the earth, that is, the oblong table circumscribed on all
+sides by high walls, is divided into three parts; first the
+habitable earth, which occupies the middle; secondly, the
+ocean which surrounds this on all sides; and thirdly, another
+dry land which surrounds the ocean, terminated itself by
+these high walls on which the firmament rests. According
+to him the habitable earth is always higher as we go north,
+so that southern countries are always much lower than
+northern. For this reason, he says, the Tigris and Euphrates,
+which run towards the south, are much more rapid than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>
+the Nile, which runs northwards. At the extreme north
+there is a large conical mountain, behind which the sun,
+moon, planets, and comets all set. These stars never pass
+below the earth, they only pass behind this great mountain,
+which hides them for a longer or shorter time from our
+observation. According as the sun departs from or approaches
+the north, and consequently is lower or higher in
+the heavens, he disappears at a point nearer to or further
+from the base of the mountain, and so is behind it a longer
+or shorter time, whence the inequality of the days and
+nights, the vicissitudes of the seasons, eclipses, and other
+phenomena. This idea is not peculiar to Cosmas, for
+according to the Indians, the mountain of Someirat is in
+the centre of the earth, and when the sun appears to set, he
+is really only hiding behind this mountain.</p>
+
+<p>His idea, too, of the manner in which the motions are
+performed is strange, but may be matched elsewhere. "All
+the stars are created," he says, "to regulate the days and
+nights, the months and the years, and they move, not at all
+by the motion of the heaven itself, but by the action of
+certain divine Beings, or <i>lampadophores</i>. God made the
+angels for His service, and He has charged some of them with
+the motion of the air, others with that of the sun, or the
+moon, or the other stars, and others again with the collecting
+of clouds and preparing the rain."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 336px;">
+<img src="images/295.jpg" width="336" height="356" alt="Fig. 41." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 41.&mdash;Explanation of Sunrise.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Similar to this were the ideas of other doctors of the
+Church, such as S. Hilary and Theodorus, some of whom
+supposed that the angels carried the stars on their shoulders
+like the <i>omophores</i> of the Manichees; others that they rolled
+them in front of them or drew them behind; while the
+Jesuit Riccioli, who made astronomical observations, remarks
+that each angel that pushes a star takes great care
+to observe what the others are doing, so that the relative
+distances between the stars may always remain what
+they ought to be. The Abbot Trithemus gives the exact<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>
+succession of the seven angels or spirits of the planets, who
+take it in turns during a cycle of three hundred and fifty-four
+years to govern the celestial motions from the creation
+to the year 1522. The system thus introduced seems to
+have been spread abroad, and to have lingered even into the
+nineteenth century among the Arabs. A guide of that
+nationality hired at Cairo in 1830, remarked to two travellers
+how the earth had been made square and covered with
+stones, but the stones had been thrown into the four corners,
+now called France, Italy, England, and Russia, while the
+centre, forming a circle round Mount Sinai, had been given
+to the Arabians.</p>
+
+<p>Alongside of this system of the square was another equally
+curious&mdash;that of the egg. Its author was the famous Venerable
+Bede, one of the most enlightened men of his time, who
+was educated at the University of Armagh, which produced
+Alfred and Alcuin. He says: "The earth is an element
+placed in the middle of the world, as the yolk is in the
+middle of an egg; around it is the water, like the white
+surrounding the yolk; outside that is the air, like the membrane
+of the egg; and round all is the fire which closes it in
+as the shell does. The earth being thus in the centre receives
+every weight upon itself, and though by its nature it is cold
+and dry in its different parts, it acquires accidentally
+different qualities; for the portion which is exposed to the
+torrid action of the air is burnt by the sun, and is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>
+uninhabitable; its two extremities are too cold to be inhabited,
+but the portion that lies in the temperate region
+of the atmosphere is habitable. The ocean, which surrounds
+it by its waves as far as the horizon, divides it into two parts,
+the upper of which is inhabited by us, while the lower is
+inhabited by our antipodes; although not one of them can
+come to us, nor one of us to them."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 530px;">
+<img src="images/297.jpg" width="530" height="350" alt="Fig. 42." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 42.&mdash;The Earth as an Egg.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>This last sentence shows that however far he may have
+been from the truth, he did not, like so many of his contemporaries,
+stumble over the idea of up and down in the
+universe, and so consider the notion of antipodes absurd.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/298.jpg" width="640" height="570" alt="Fig. 43." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 43.&mdash;The Earth as a Floating Egg.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>A great number of the maps of the world of the period
+followed this idea, and drew the world in the shape of an egg
+at rest. It was broached, however, in another form by
+Edrisi, an Arabian geographer of the eleventh century, who,
+with many others, considered the earth to be like an egg
+with one half plunged into the water. The regularity of the
+surface is only interrupted by valleys and mountains. He
+adopted the system of the ancients, who supposed that the
+torrid zone was uninhabited. According to him the known
+world only forms a single half of the egg, the greater part of
+the water belonging to the surrounding ocean, in the midst of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>
+which earth floats like an egg in a basin. Several artists
+and map-makers adopted this theory in the geographical
+representations, and so, whether in this way or the last, the
+egg has had the privilege of representing the form of the
+earth for nearly a thousand years.</p>
+
+<p>The celebrated Raban Maur, of Mayence, composed in the
+ninth century a treatise, entitled <i>De Universo</i>, divided into
+twenty-two books. It is a kind of encyclop&aelig;dia, in which he
+gives an abridged view of all the sciences. According to his
+cosmographic system the earth is in the form of a wheel,
+and is placed in the middle of the universe, being surrounded
+by the ocean; on the north it is bounded by the
+Caucasus, which he supposes to be mountains of gold, which
+no one can reach because of dragons, and griffins, and men
+of monstrous shape that dwell there. He also places
+Jerusalem in the centre of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>The treatise of Honorus, entitled <i>Imago Mundi</i>, and many
+other authors of the same kind, represent, 1st, the terrestrial
+paradise in the most easterly portion of the world, in a
+locality inaccessible to man; 2nd, the four rivers which had
+their sources in Paradise; 3rd, the torrid zone, uninhabited;
+4th, fantastic islands, transformed from the Atlantis into
+<i>Antillia</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 710px;">
+<img src="images/300.jpg" width="710" height="650" alt="Fig 44." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig 44.&mdash;Eighth Century Map of the World.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In a manuscript commentary on the Apocalypse, which is
+in the library of Turin, is a very curious chart, referred to
+the tenth, but belonging possibly to the eighth century. It
+represents the earth as a circular planisphere. The four
+sides of the earth are each accompanied by a figure of a
+wind, as a horse on a bellows, from which air is poured out,
+as well as from a shell in his mouth. Above, or to the east,
+are Adam, and Eve with the serpent. To their right is
+Asia with two very elevated mountains&mdash;Cappadocia and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>
+Caucasus. From thence comes the river <i>Eusis</i>, and the sea
+into which it falls forms an arm of the ocean which surrounds
+the earth. This arm joins the Mediterranean, and
+separates Europe from Asia. Towards the middle is
+Jerusalem, with two curious arms of the sea running past
+it; while to the south there is a long and straight sea in
+an east and west direction. The various islands of the
+Mediterranean are put in a square patch, and Rome, France,
+and Germany are indicated, while Thula, Britannia, and
+Scotia are marked as islands in the north-west of the ocean
+that surrounds the whole world.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 448px;">
+<img src="images/301.jpg" width="448" height="212" alt="Fig. 45." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 45.&mdash;Tenth Century Maps.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>We figure below two very curious maps of the world of
+the tenth century&mdash;one of which is round, the other square.
+The first is divided into three triangles; that of the east, or
+Asia, is marked with the name of <i>Shem</i>; that of the north,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>
+or Europe, with that of <i>Japhet</i>; that of the south, or
+Africa, with that of <i>Cham</i>. The second is also divided
+between the three sons of Noah; the ocean surrounds it,
+the Mediterranean forms the upright portion of a cross of
+water which divides the Adamic world.</p>
+
+<p>Omons, the author of a geographical poem entitled <i>The
+Image of the World</i>, composed in 1265, who was called the
+Lucretius of the thirteenth century, was not more advanced
+than the cosmographers of the former centuries of which
+we have hitherto spoken. The cosmographical part of his
+poem is borrowed from the system of Pythagoras and the
+Venerable Bede. He maintains that the earth is enveloped
+in the heavens, as the yoke in the white of an egg, and that
+it is in the middle as the centre is within the circle, and he
+speaks like Pythagoras of the harmony of the celestial
+spheres.</p>
+
+<p>Omons supposed also that in his time the terrestrial
+paradise was still existing in the east, with its tree of life,
+its four rivers, and its angel with a flaming sword. He
+appears to have confounded Hecla with the purgatory of St.
+Patrick, and he places the latter in Iceland, saying that it
+never ceases to burn. The volcanoes were only, according to
+him, the breathing places or mouths of the infernal regions.
+The latter he placed with other cosmographers in the
+centre of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>Another author, Nicephorus Blemmyde, a monk who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>
+lived during the same century, composed three cosmographical
+works, among them the following: <i>On the Heavens
+and the Earth, On the Sun and Moon, the Stars, and
+Times and Days</i>. According to his system the earth is
+flat, and he adopts the Homeric theory of the ocean
+surrounding the world, and that of the seven climates.</p>
+
+<p>Nicolas of Oresmus, a celebrated cosmographer of the
+fourteenth century, although his celebrity as a mathematician
+attracted the attention of King John of France, who made
+him tutor to his son Charles V., was not wiser than those we
+have enumerated above. He composed among other works
+a <i>Treatise on the Sphere</i>. He rejected the theory of an
+antichthonal continent as contrary to the faith. A map of
+the world, prepared by him about the year 1377, represents
+the earth as round, with one hemisphere only inhabited,
+the other, or lower one, being plunged in the water. He
+seems to have been led by various borrowed ideas, as, for
+instance, theological ones, such as the statement in the
+Psalms that God had founded the earth upon the waters,
+and Grecian ones borrowed from the school of Thales, and
+the theories of the Arabian geographers. In fact we have
+seen that Edrisi thought that half of the earth was in the
+water, and Aboulfeda thought the same. The earth was
+placed by Nicolas in the centre of the universe, which he
+represented by painting the sky blue, and dotting it over
+with stars in gold.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Leonardo Dati, who composed a geographical poem entitled
+<i>Della Spera</i>, during this century, advanced no further. A
+coloured planisphere showed the earth in the centre of
+the universe surrounded by the ocean, then the air, then
+the circles of the planets after the Ptolemaic system,
+and in another representation of the same kind he
+figures the infernal regions in the centre of the earth,
+and gives its diameter as seven thousand miles. He
+proves himself not to have known one half of the globe
+by his statement of the shape of the earth&mdash;that it is
+like a T inside an O. This is a comparison given in
+many maps of the world in the middle ages, the mean
+parallel being about the 36th degree of north latitude,
+that is to say at the Straits of Gibraltar; the Mediterranean
+is thus placed so as to divide the earth into two
+equal parts.</p>
+
+<p>John Beauvau, Bishop of Angiers under Louis XL,
+expresses his ideas as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The earth is situated and rests in the middle of the
+firmament, as the centre or point is in the middle of a
+circle. Of the whole earth mentioned above only one
+quarter is inhabited. The earth is divided into four parts,
+as an apple is divided through the centre by cutting it
+lengthways and across. If one part of such an apple is
+taken and peeled, and the peel is spread out over anything
+flat, such as the palm of the hand, then it resembles the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>
+habitable earth, one side of which is called the east, and
+the other the west."</p>
+
+<p>The Arabians adopted not only the ideas of the ancients,
+but also the fundamental notions of the cosmographical
+system of the Greeks. Some of them, as <i>Bakouy</i>, regarded
+the earth as a flat surface, like a table, others as a ball, of
+which one half is cut off, others as a complete revolving
+ball, and others that it was hollow within. Others again
+went as far as to say that there were several suns and
+moons for the several parts of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>In a map, preserved in the library at Cambridge, by Henry,
+Canon of St. Marie of Mayence, the form of the world
+is given after Herodotus. The four cardinal points are
+indicated, and the orientation is that of nearly all the cartographic
+monuments of the middle ages, namely, the east at
+the top of the map. The four cardinal points are four angels,
+one foot placed on the disc of the earth; the colours of
+their vestments are symbolical. The angel placed at the
+Boreal extremity of the earth, or to the north of the
+Scythians, points with his finger to people enclosed in the
+ramparts of Gog and Magog, <i>gens immunda</i> as the legend
+says. In his left hand he holds a die to indicate, no doubt,
+that there are shut up the Jews who cast lots for the clothes
+of Christ. His vestments are green, his mantle and his wings
+are red. The angel placed to the left of Paradise has a
+green mantle and wings, and red vestments. In his left<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>
+hand he holds a kind of palm, and by the right he seems
+to mark the way to Paradise. The position of the other
+angels placed at the west of the world is different. They
+seem occupied in stopping the passage beyond the <i>Columns</i>
+(that is, the entrance to the Atlantic Ocean). All of them
+have golden aureolas. The surrounding ocean is painted of
+a clear green.</p>
+
+<p>Another remarkable map of the world is that of Andrea
+Bianco. In it we see Eden at the top, which represents the
+east, and the four rivers are running out of it. Much of
+Europe is indicated, including Spain, Paris, Sweden, Norway,
+Ireland, which are named, England, Iceland, Spitzbergen, &amp;c.,
+which are not named. The portion round the North Pole
+to the left is indicated as "cold beneath the Pole star." In
+these maps the systematic theories of the ancient geographers
+seem mixed with the doctrines of the Fathers of the Church.
+They place generally in the Red Sea some mark denoting the
+passage of the Hebrews, the terrestrial paradise at the
+extreme east, and Jerusalem in the centre. The towns are
+figured often by edifices, as in the list of Theodosius, but
+without any regard to their respective positions. Each town
+is ordinarily represented by two towers, but the principal
+ones are distinguished by a little wall that appears between
+these two towers, on which are painted several windows, or
+else they may be known by the size of the edifices. St.
+James of Compostella in Gallicia and Rome are represented<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>
+by edifices of considerable size, as are Nazareth, Troy,
+Antioch, Damascus, Babylon, and Nineveh.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 683px;">
+<img src="images/307.jpg" width="683" height="600" alt="Fig. 46." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 46.&mdash;The Map of Andrea Bianco.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>One of the most remarkable monuments of the geography
+of the last centuries of the middle ages is the map in
+Hereford Cathedral, by Richard of Haldingham, not only on
+account of its numerous legends, but because of its large
+dimensions, being several square yards in area.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On the upper part of this map is represented the Last
+Judgment; Jesus Christ, with raised arms, holding in His
+hands a scroll with these words, <i>Ecce testimonium meum</i>.
+At His side two angels carry in their hands the instruments
+of His passion. On the right hand stands an angel with a
+trumpet to his mouth, out of which come these words,
+<i>Levez si vendres vous par</i>. An angel brings forward a bishop
+by the hand, behind whom is a king, followed by other
+personages; the angel introduces them by a door formed of
+two columns, which seems to serve as an entrance to an
+edifice.</p>
+
+<p>The Virgin is kneeling at the feet, of her Son. Behind her
+is another woman kneeling, who holds a crown, which she
+seems ready to place on the head of the Mother of Christ,
+and by the side of the woman is a kneeling angel, who
+appears to be supporting the maternal intercessor. The
+Virgin uncovers her breast and pronounces the words of a
+scroll which is held by an angel kneeling in front of her,
+<i>Vei i b' fiz mon piz de deuiz lauele chare preistes&mdash;Eles mame
+lettes dont leit de Virgin qui estes&mdash;Syes merci de tous si com
+nos mesmes deistes.&mdash;R ... em ... ont servi kaut sauveresse me
+feistes</i>.</p>
+
+<p>To the left another angel, also with a trumpet to his mouth,
+gives out the following words, which are written on a scroll,
+<i>Leves si alles all fu de enfer estable</i>. A gate, drawn like that of
+the entrance, represents probably the passage by which those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>
+must go out who are condemned to eternal pains. In fact the
+devil is seen dragging after him a crowd of men, who are tied
+by a cord which he holds in his hand.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/309.jpg" width="640" height="369" alt="Fig. 47." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 47.&mdash;From the Map in Hereford Cathedral.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/310.jpg" width="600" height="673" alt="Fig. 48." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 48.&mdash;From the Map in Hereford Cathedral.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The map itself commences at its upper part, that is, the
+east, by the terrestrial paradise. It is a circle, in the centre
+of which is represented the tree of the knowledge of good
+and evil. Adam and Eve are there in company with the
+serpent that beguiled them. The four legendary rivers come
+out of the base of the tree, and they are seen below crossing
+the map. Outside Eden the flight of the first couple, and the
+angel that drove them away, are represented. At this extreme
+eastern portion is the region of giants with the heads of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>
+beasts. There, too, is seen the first human habitation, or
+town, built by Enoch. Below appears the Tower of Babel.
+Near this are two men seated on a hill close to the river
+Jaxartes; one of them is eating a human leg and the other
+an arm, which the legend explains thus:&mdash;"Here live the
+Essedons, whose custom it is to sing at the funerals of their
+parents; they tear the corpses with their teeth, and prepare
+their food with these fragments of flesh, mixed with that of
+animals. In their opinion it is more honourable to the dead
+to be enclosed in the bodies of their relations than in those
+of worms."</p>
+
+<p>Below are seen dragons and pigmies, always to the east of
+Asia, and a little further away in the midst of a strange
+country, <i>the King of the Cyclops</i>.</p>
+
+<p>This extraordinary geography shows us in India the "Mantichore,
+who has a triple range of teeth, the face of a man,
+blue eyes, the red colour of blood, the body of a lion, and
+the tail of a scorpion; its voice is a whistle."</p>
+
+<p>On the north of the Ganges is represented a man with one
+leg, shading his head with his foot, which is explained by the
+following legend:&mdash;"In India dwell the Monocles, who have
+only one leg, but who nevertheless move with surprising
+velocity; when they wish to protect themselves from the heat
+of the sun they make a shadow with the sole of their foot,
+which is very large."</p>
+
+<p>The Blemmys have their mouth and eyes in their chest;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>
+others have their mouths and eyes on their shoulders. The
+Parvini are Ethiopians that have four eyes.</p>
+
+<p>To the east of Syene is a man seated who is covering his
+head with his lip, "people who with their prominent lip
+shade their faces from the sun."</p>
+
+<p>Above is drawn a little sun, with the word <i>sol</i>. Then
+comes an animal of human form, having the feet of a horse
+and the head and beak of a bird; he rests on a stick, and
+the legend tells us it is a satyr; the fauns, half men and
+half horses; the cynocephales&mdash;men with the head of a dog;
+and the cyanthropes&mdash;dogs with the heads of men. The
+sphinx has the wings of a bird, the tail of a serpent, the
+head of a woman. It is placed in the midst of the Cordilleras,
+which are joined to a great chain of mountains.
+Here lastly is seen the <i>monoceros</i>, a terrible animal; but here
+is the marvel: "When one shows to this <i>monoceros</i> a young
+girl, who, when the animal approaches, uncovers her breast,
+the monster, forgetting his ferocity, lays his head there, and
+when he is asleep may be taken defenceless."</p>
+
+<p>Near to the lake Meotides is a man clothed in Oriental
+style, with a hat that terminates in a point, and holding by
+the bridle a horse whose harness is a human skin, and which
+is explained thus by the Latin legend: "Here live the
+griffins, very wicked men, for among other crimes they
+proceed so far as to make clothes for themselves and their
+horses out of the skins of their enemies."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>More to the south is a large bird, the ostrich; according to
+the legend, "the ostrich has the head of a goose, the body
+of a crane, the feet of a calf; it eats iron."</p>
+
+<p>Not far from the Riphean Mountains two men with long
+tunics and round bonnets are represented in the attitude of
+fighting; one brandishes a sword, the other a kind of club,
+and the legend tells us, "The customs of the people of the
+interior of Scythia are somewhat wild; they inhabit caves;
+they drink the blood of the slain by sucking their wounds;
+they pride themselves on the number of people they have
+slain&mdash;not to have slain any one in combat is reckoned
+disgraceful."</p>
+
+<p>Near the river that empties itself into the Caspian Sea it
+is written: "This river comes from the infernal regions; it
+enters the sea after having descended from mountains covered
+with wood, and it is there, they say, that the mouth of hell
+opens."</p>
+
+<p>To the south of this river, and to the north of Hyrcania, is
+represented a monster having the body of a man, the head,
+tail, and feet of a bull: this is the Minotaur. Further on
+are the mountains of Armenia, and the ark of Noah on
+one of its plateaux. Here, too, is seen a large tiger, and we
+read: "The tiger, when he sees that he has been deprived of
+his young, pursues the ravisher precipitately; but the latter,
+hastening away on his swift horse, throws a mirror to him
+and is safe."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Elsewhere appears Lot's wife changed into a pillar of salt;
+the lynx who can see through a stone wall; the river Lethe; so
+called because all who drink of it forget everything.</p>
+
+<p>Numerous other details might be mentioned, but enough
+has been said to show the curious nature and exceeding
+interest of this map, in which matters of observation and
+imagination are strangely mixed. Another very curious
+geographical document of that epoch is the map of the world
+of the <i>Grandes Chroniques de Saint-Denis</i>. This belongs to
+the fourteenth century. The capitals here too are represented
+by edifices. The Mediterranean is a vertical canal, which
+goes from the Columns of Hercules to Jerusalem. The
+Caspian Sea communicates with it to the north, and the Red
+Sea to the south-east, by the Nile. It preserves the same position
+for Paradise and for the land of Gog and Magog that we
+have seen before. The geography of Europe is very defective.
+Britannia and Anglia figure as two separate islands, being
+represented off the west coast of Spain, with Allemania and
+Germania, also two distinct countries, to the north. The ocean
+is represented as round the whole, and the various points of
+the compass are represented by different kinds of winds on
+the outside.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 720px;">
+<img src="images/315.jpg" width="720" height="650" alt="Fig. 49." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 49.&mdash;Cosmography of St. Denis.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>This was the general style of the maps of the world at that
+period, as we may perceive from the various illustrations we
+have been able to give, and it curiously initiates us into the
+medi&aelig;val ideas. Sometimes they are surrounded by laughable
+figures of the winds with inflated cheeks, sometimes there
+are drawn light children of Eolus seated on leathern bottles,
+rotating the liquid within; at other times, saints, angels,
+Adam and Eve, or other people, adorn the circumference of
+the map. Within are shown a profusion of animals, trees,
+populations, monuments, tents, draperies, and monarchs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>
+seated on their thrones&mdash;an idea which was useful, no
+doubt, and which gave the reader some knowledge of the
+local riches, the ethnography, the local forms of government
+and of architecture in the various countries represented; but
+the drawings were for the most part childish, and more
+fantastic than real. The language, too, in which they were
+written was as mixed as the drawings; no regularity was
+preserved in the orthography of a name, which on the same
+map may be written in ten different ways, being expressed in
+barbarous Latin, Roman, or Old French, Catalan, Italian,
+Castilian, or Portuguese!</p>
+
+<p>During the same epoch other forms of maps in less detail
+and of smaller size show the characters that we have seen in
+the maps of earlier centuries.</p>
+
+<p>Marco Polo, the traveller, at the end of the fourteenth
+century, has preserved in his writings all the ancient traditions,
+and united them in a singular manner with the results
+of his own observations. He had not seen Paradise, but he
+had seen the ark of Noah resting on the top of Ararat. His
+map of the world, preserved in the library at Stockholm, is
+oval, and represents two continents.</p>
+
+<p>In that which we inhabit, the only seas indicated are the
+Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Asia appears at the east,
+Europe to the north, and Africa to the south. The other
+continent to the south of the equator, which is not marked,
+is Antichthonia.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In a map of the world engraved on a medal of the fifteenth
+century during the reign of Charles V. there is still a reminiscence
+of the ideas of the concealed earth and Meropides,
+as described by Theopompus. We see the winds as cherubim;
+Europe more accurately represented than usual; but Africa
+still unknown, and a second continent, called Brum&aelig;, instead
+of Antichthonia, with imaginary details upon it.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 560px;">
+<img src="images/317.jpg" width="560" height="500" alt="Fig. 50." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 50.&mdash;The Map of Marco Polo.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>If such were the ideas entertained amongst the most
+enlightened nations, what may we expect among those who
+were less advanced? It would take us too long to describe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span>
+all that more Eastern nations have done upon this point since
+the commencement of our present era, but we may give an
+example or two from the Arabians.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 370px;">
+<img src="images/318.jpg" width="370" height="336" alt="Fig. 51." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 51.&mdash;Map on a Medal of Charles V.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the ancient Arabian chronicle of Tabari is a system
+founded on the earth being the solid foundation of all things;
+we read: "The prophet says, the all-powerful and inimitable
+Deity has created the mountain of Kaf round about the
+earth; it has been called the foundation pile of the earth, as it
+is said in the Koran, 'The mountains are the piles.' This
+world is in the midst of the mountain of Kaf, just as the
+finger is in the midst of the ring. This mountain is emerald,
+and blue in colour; no man can go to it, because he would
+have to pass four months in darkness to do so. There is in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>
+that mountain neither sun, nor moon, nor stars; it is so blue
+that the azure colour you see in the heavens comes from the
+brilliancy of the mountain of Kaf, which is reflected in the
+sky. If this were not so the sky would not be blue. All the
+mountains that you see are supported by Kaf; if it did not
+exist, all the earth would be in a continual tremble, and not
+a creature could live upon its surface. The heavens rest upon
+it like a tent."</p>
+
+<p>Another Arabian author, Benakaty, writing in 1317, says:
+"Know that the earth has the form of a globe suspended in
+the centre of the heavens. It is divided by the two great
+circles of the meridian and equator, which cut each other at
+light angles, into four equal parts, namely, those of the north-west,
+north-east, south-west, and south-east. The inhabited
+portion of the earth is situated in the southern hemisphere,
+of which one half is inhabited."</p>
+
+<p>Ibn-Wardy, who lived in the same century, adopted the
+idea of the ocean surrounding all the earth, and said we knew
+neither its depth nor its extent.</p>
+
+<p>This ocean was also acknowledged by the author of the
+Kaf mountain; he says it lies between the earth and that
+mountain, and calls it Bahr-al-Mohith.</p>
+
+<p>The end of the fifteenth century saw the dawn of a new
+era in knowledge and science. The discoveries of Columbus
+changed entirely the aspect of matters, the imagination was
+excited to fresh enterprises, and the hardihood of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>
+adventurers through good or bad success was such as want
+of liberty could not destroy.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, as we have seen, Columbus imagined the
+earth to have the shape of a pear. Not that he obtained
+this idea from his own observations, but rather retained it
+as a relic of past traditions. It is probable that it really
+dates from the seventh century. We may read in several
+cosmographical manuscripts of that epoch, that the earth has
+the form of a cone or a top, its surface rising from south to
+north. These ideas were considerably spread by the compilations
+of John of Beauvais in 1479, from whom probably
+Columbus derived his notion.</p>
+
+<p>Although Columbus is generally and rightly known as the
+discoverer of the New World, a very curious suit was brought
+by Pinzon against his heirs in 1514. Pinzon pretended
+that the discovery was due to him alone, as Columbus had
+only followed his advice in making it. Pinzon told the
+admiral himself that the required route was intimated by
+an inspiration, or revelation. The truth was that this
+"revelation" was due to a flock of parrots, flying in the
+evening towards the south-west, which Pinzon concluded
+must be going in the direction of an invisible coast to pass
+the night in the bushes. Certainly the consequences of
+Columbus resisting the advice of Pinzon would have been most
+remarkable; for had he continued to sail due west he would
+have been caught by the Gulf Stream and carried to Florida,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>
+or possibly to Virginia, and in this case the United States
+would have received a Spanish and Catholic population,
+instead of an English and Protestant one.</p>
+
+<p>The discoveries of those days were often commemorated
+by the formation of heraldic devices for the authors of them,
+and we have in this way some curious coats of arms on record.
+That, for instance, of Sebastian Cano was a globe, with the
+legend, <i>Primus circumdedisti me</i>. The arms given to Columbus
+in 1493 consisted of the first map of America, with a
+range of islands in a gulf. Charles V. gave to Diego
+of Ordaz the figure of the Peak of Orizaba as his arms, to
+commemorate his having ascended it; and to the historian
+Oviedo, who passed thirty-four years without interruption
+(1513-47) in tropical America, the four beautiful stars of
+the Southern Cross.</p>
+
+<p>We have arrived at the close of our history of the attempts
+that preceded the actual discovery of the form and constitution
+of the globe; since these were established our further
+progress has been in matters of detail. There now remains
+briefly to notice the attempts at discovering the size of the
+earth on the supposition, and afterwards certainty, of its
+being a globe.</p>
+
+<p>The earliest attempt at this was made by Eratosthenes,
+246 years before our era, and it was founded on the following
+reasoning. The sun illuminates the bottom of pits at Syene
+at the summer solstice; on the same day, instead of being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>
+vertical over the heads of the inhabitants of Alexandria, it is
+7&frac14; degrees from the zenith. Seven-and-a-quarter degrees
+is the fiftieth part of an entire circumference; and the
+distance between the two towns is five thousand stadia; hence
+the circumference of the earth is fifty times this distance,
+or 250 thousand stadia.</p>
+
+<p>A century before our era Posidonius arrived at an analogous
+result by remarking that the star Canopus touched the horizon
+at Rhodes when it was 7 degrees 12 minutes above that of
+Alexandria.</p>
+
+<p>These measurements, which, though rough, were ingenious,
+were, followed in the eighth century by similar
+ones by the Arabian Caliph, Almamoun, who did not
+greatly modify them.</p>
+
+<p>The first men who actually went round the world were
+the crew of the ship under Magellan, who started to the west in
+1520; he was slain by the Philippine islanders in 1521, but his
+ship, under his lieutenant, Sebastian Cano, returned by the
+east in 1522. The first attempt at the actual measurement of
+a part of the earth's surface along the meridian was made by
+Fernel in 1528. His process was a singular, but simple one,
+namely, by counting the number of the turns made by the
+wheels of his carriage between Paris and Amiens. He made
+the number 57,020, and accurate measurements of the distance
+many years after showed he had not made an error of
+more than four turns<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>.</p>
+
+<p>The astronomer Picard attempted it again under Louis
+XIV. by triangulation.</p>
+
+<p>The French astronomers have always been forward in this
+inquiry, and to them we owe the systematic attempts to
+arrive at a truer knowledge of the length of an arc of the
+meridian which were made in 1735-45 in Lapland and in
+Peru; and later under Mechain and Delambre, by order of the
+National Assembly, for the basis of the metrical system.</p>
+
+<p>Observations of this kind have also been made by the
+English, as at Lough Foyle in Ireland, and in India.</p>
+
+<p>The review which has here been made of the various
+ideas on what now seems so simple a matter cannot but
+impress us with the vast contrast there is between the wild
+attempts of the earlier philosophers and our modern affirmations.
+What progress has been made in the last two thousand
+years! And all of this is due to hard work. The true
+revelation of nature is that which we form ourselves, by our
+persevering efforts. We now know that the earth is approximately
+spherical, but flattened by about 1/300 at the poles, is
+three-quarters covered with water, and enveloped everywhere
+by a light atmospheric mantle. The distance from the centre
+of the earth to its surface is 3,956 miles, its area is 197
+million square miles, its volume is 256,000 millions of cubic
+miles, its weight is six thousand trillion tons. So, thanks to
+the bold measurements of its inhabitants, we know as much
+about it as we are likely to know for a long time to come.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+<h3>LEGENDARY WORLDS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The legends that were for so many ages prevalent in Europe
+had their foundation in the attempt to make the accounts of
+Scripture and the ideas and dogmas of the Fathers of the
+Church fit into the few and insignificant facts that were
+known with respect to the earth, and the system of which
+it forms a part, and the far more numerous imaginations that
+were entertained about it.</p>
+
+<p>We are therefore led on to examine some of these legends,
+that we may appreciate how far a knowledge of astronomy will
+effect the eradication of errors and fantasies which, under the
+aspect of truth, have so long enslaved the people. No doubt
+the authors of the legendary stories knew well enough their
+allegorical nature; but those who received them supposed
+that they gave true indications of the nature of the earth
+and world, and therefore accepted them as facts.</p>
+
+<p>Some indeed considered that the whole physical constitution
+of the world was a scaffold or a model, and that there was a real<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>
+theological universe hidden beneath this semblance. No one
+omitted from his system the spiritual heaven in which the
+angels and just men might spend their existence; but in
+addition to this there were places whose reality was believed
+in, but whose locality is more difficult to settle, and which
+therefore were moved from one place to another by various
+writers, viz., the infernal regions, purgatory, and the terrestrial
+paradise.</p>
+
+<p>We will here recount some of those legends, which wielded
+sufficient sway over men's minds as to gain their belief in the
+veritable existence of the places described, and in this way
+to influence their astronomical and cosmographical ideas.</p>
+
+<p>And for the first we will descend to the infernal regions
+with Plutarch and Thespesius.</p>
+
+<p>This Thespesius relates his adventures in the other world.
+Having fallen head-first from an elevated place, he found
+himself unwounded, but was contused in such a way as to
+be insensible. He was supposed to be dead, but, after three
+days, as they were about to bury him, he came to life again.
+In a few days he recovered his former powers of mind and
+body; but made a marvellous change for the better in
+his life.</p>
+
+<p>He said that at the moment that he lost consciousness he
+found himself like a sailor at the bottom of the sea; but
+afterwards, having recovered himself a little, he was able to
+breathe perfectly, and seeing only with the eyes of his soul,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>
+he looked round on all that was about him. He saw no longer
+the accustomed sights, but stars of prodigious magnitude,
+separated from each other by immense distances. They were
+of dazzling brightness and splendid colour. His soul, carried
+like a vessel on the luminous ocean, sailed along freely and
+smoothly, and moved everywhere with rapidity.  Passing
+over in silence a large number of the sights that met his eye,
+he stated that the souls of the dead, taking the form of
+bubbles of fire, rise through the air, which opens a passage
+above them; at last the bubbles, breaking without noise, let
+out the souls in a human form and of a smaller size, and
+moving in different ways.  Some, rising with astonishing
+lightness, mounted in a straight line; others, running round
+like a whipping-top, went up and down by turns with a confused
+and irregular motion, making small advance by long
+and painful efforts. Among this number he saw one of his
+parents, whom he recognised with difficulty, as she had died
+in his infancy; but she approached him, and said, "Good
+day, Thespesius." Surprised to hear himself called by this
+name, he told her that he was called Arideus, and not
+Thespesius.  "That was once your name," she replied,
+"but in future you will bear that of Thespesius, for you
+are not dead, only the intelligent part of your soul has
+come here by the particular will of the gods; your other
+faculties are still united to your body, which keeps them
+like an anchor. The proof I will give you is that the souls<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>
+of the dead do not cast any shadow, and they cannot move
+their eyes."</p>
+
+<p>Further on, in traversing a luminous region, he heard, as
+he was passing, the shrill voice of a female speaking in verse,
+who presided over the time Thespesius should die. His
+genius told him that it was the voice of the Sibyl, who, turning
+on the orbit of the moon, foretold the future. Thespesius
+would willingly have heard more, but, driven off by a rapid
+whirlwind, he could make out but little of her predictions.
+In another place he remarked several parallel lakes, one filled
+with melted and boiling gold, another with lead colder than
+ice, and a third with very rough iron. They were kept by
+genii, who, armed with tongs like those used in forges, plunged
+into these lakes, and then withdrew by turns, the souls of
+those whom avarice or an insatiable cupidity had led into
+crime; after they had been plunged into the lake of gold,
+where the fire made them red and transparent, they were
+thrown into the lake of lead. Then, frozen by the cold, and
+made as hard as hail, they were put into the lake of iron,
+where they became horribly black. Broken and bruised on
+account of their hardness, they changed their form, and passed
+once more into the lake of gold, and suffered in these changes
+inexpressible pain.</p>
+
+<p>In another place he saw the souls of those who had to
+return to life and be violently forced to take the form of all
+sorts of animals. Among the number he saw the soul of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>
+Nero, which had already suffered many torments, and was
+bound with red-hot chains of iron. The workmen were seizing
+him to give him the form of a viper, under which he was
+destined to live, after having devoured the womb that bore him.</p>
+
+<p>The locality of these infernal regions was never exactly
+determined. The ancients were divided upon the point.
+In the poems of Homer the infernal regions appear under
+two different forms: thus, in the <i>Iliad</i>, it is a vast
+subterranean cavity; while in the <i>Odyssey</i>, it is a distant
+and mysterious country at the extremity of the earth, beyond
+the ocean, in the neighbourhood of the Cimmerians.</p>
+
+<p>The description which Homer gives of the infernal region
+proves that in his time the Greeks imagined it to be a copy
+of the terrestrial world, but one which had a special character.
+According to the philosophers it was equally remote from all
+parts of the earth. Thus Cicero, in order to show that
+it was of no consequence where one died, said, wherever we
+die there is just as long a journey to be made to reach the
+"infernal regions."</p>
+
+<p>The poets fixed upon certain localities as the entrance to
+this dismal empire: such was the river Lethe, on the borders
+of the Scythians; the cavern Acherusia in Epirus, the mouth
+of Pluto, in Laodic&#339;a, the cave of Zenarus near Laced&aelig;mon.</p>
+
+<p>In the map of the world in the <i>Polychronicon</i> of Ranulphus
+Uygden, now in the British Museum, it is stated: "The
+Island of Sicily was once a part of Italy. There is Mount<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>
+Etna, containing the infernal regions and purgatory, and it
+has Scylla and Charybdis, two whirlpools."</p>
+
+<p>Ulysses was said to reach the place of the dead by crossing
+the ocean to the Cimmerian land, &AElig;neas to have entered it
+by the Lake of Avernus. Xenophon says that Hercules went
+there by the peninsula of Arechusiade.</p>
+
+<p>Much of this, no doubt, depends on the exaggeration and
+misinterpretation of the accounts of voyagers; as when the
+Ph&#339;nicians related that, after passing the Columns of Hercules,
+to seek tin in Thule and amber in the Baltic, they came,
+at the extremity of the world, to the Fortunate Isles, the
+abode of eternal spring, and further on to the Hyperborean
+regions, where a perpetual night enveloped the country&mdash;the
+imagination of the people developed from this the Elysian
+fields, as the places of delight in the lower regions, having
+their own sun, moon, and stars, and Tartarus, a place of
+shades and desolation.</p>
+
+<p>In every case, however, both among pagans and Christians,
+the locality was somewhere in the centre of the earth. The
+poets and philosophers of Greece and Rome made very
+detailed and circumstantial maps of the subterranean regions.
+They enumerated its rivers, its lakes, and woods, and mountains,
+and the places where the Furies perpetually tormented
+the wicked souls who were condemned to eternal punishment.
+These ideas passed naturally into the creeds of Christians
+through the sect of the Essenes, of whom Josephus writes as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>
+follows:&mdash;"They thought that the souls of the just go beyond
+the ocean to a place of repose and delight, where they were
+troubled by no inconvenience, no change of seasons. Those
+of the wicked, on the contrary, were relegated to places
+exposed to all the inclemencies of the weather, and suffered
+eternal torments. The Essenes," adds the same author, "have
+similar ideas about these torments to those of the Greeks
+about Tartarus and the kingdom of Pluto. The greater part
+of the Gnostic sects, on the contrary, considered the lower
+regions as simply a place of purgatory, where the soul is
+purified by fire."</p>
+
+<p>Amongst all the writings of Christian ages in which matters
+such as we are now passing in review are described, there is
+one that stands out beyond all others as a masterpiece, and
+that is the magnificent poem of Dante, his <i>Divine Comedy</i>,
+wherein he described the infernal regions as they presented
+themselves to his lively and fertile imagination. We have in
+it a picture of medi&aelig;val ideas, painted for us in indelible
+lines, before the remembrance of them was lost in the past.
+The poem is at once a tomb and a cradle&mdash;the tomb of a
+world that was passing, the cradle of the world that was to
+come: a portico between two temples, that of the past and
+that of the future. In it are deposited the traditions, the
+ideas, the sciences of the past, as the Egyptians deposited
+their kings and symbolic gods in the sepulchres of Thebes
+and Memphis. The future brings into it its aspirations and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>
+its germs enveloped in the swaddling clothes of a rising
+language and a splendid poetry&mdash;a mysterious infant that is
+nourished by the two teats of sacred tradition and profane
+fiction, Moses and St. Paul, Homer and Virgil.</p>
+
+<p>The theology of Dante, strictly orthodox, was that of St.
+Thomas and the other doctors of the Church. Natural philosophy,
+properly so called, was not yet in existence. In
+astronomy, Ptolemy reigned supreme, and in the explanation
+of celestial phenomena no one dreamt or dared to dream of
+departing in any way from the traditionally sacred system.</p>
+
+<p>In those days astronomy was indissolubly linked with a
+complete series of philosophical and theological ideas, and
+included the physics of the world, the science of life in
+every being, of their organisation, and the causes on which
+depended the aptitudes, inclinations, and even in part the
+actions, of men, the destinies of individuals, and the events
+of history. In this theological, astronomical, and terrestrial
+universe everything emanated from God; He had created
+everything, and the creation embraced two orders of beings,
+the immaterial and the corporeal.</p>
+
+<p>The pure spirits composed the nine choirs of the celestial
+hierarchy. Like so many circles, they were ranged round a
+fixed point, the Eternal Being, in an order determined by their
+relative perfection. First the seraphim, then the cherubim,
+and afterwards the simple angels. Those of the first circle
+received immediately from the central point the light and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>
+the virtue which they communicated to those of the second;
+and so on from circle to circle, like mirrors which reflect,
+with an ever-lessening light, the brilliancy of a single
+luminous point. The nine choirs, supported by Love, turned
+without ceasing round their centre in larger and larger circles
+according to their distance; and it was by their means that
+the motion and the divine inflatus was communicated to the
+material creation.</p>
+
+<p>This latter had in the upper part of it the empyreal, or
+heaven of pure light. Below that, was the <i>Primum mobile</i>,
+the greatest body in the heavens, as Dante calls it, because it
+surrounds all the rest of the circle, and bounds the material
+world. Then came the heaven of the fixed stars; then, continuing
+to descend, the heavens of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the
+sun, Venus, Mercury, the moon, and lastly, the earth, whose
+solid and compact nucleus is surrounded by the spheres of
+water, air, and fire.</p>
+
+<p>As the choirs of angels turn about a fixed point, so the
+nine material circles turn also about another fixed point, and
+are moved by the pure spirits.</p>
+
+<p>Let us now descend to the geography of the interior of the
+earth. Within the earth is a large cone, whose layers are the
+frightful abodes of the condemned, and which ends in the
+centre, where the divine Justice keeps bound up to his chest
+in ice the prince of the rebellious angels, the emperor of
+the kingdom of woe. Such are the infernal regions which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>
+Dante describes according to ideas generally admitted in
+the middle ages.</p>
+
+<p>The form of the infernal regions was that of a funnel or
+reversed cone. All its circles were concentric, and continually
+diminished; the principal ones were nine in number. Virgil
+also admitted nine divisions&mdash;three times three, a number
+sacred <i>par excellence</i>. The seventh, eighth, and ninth circles
+were divided into several regions; and the space between the
+entrance to the infernal regions and the river Acheron,
+where the resting-place of the damned really commenced,
+was divided into two parts. Dante, guided by Virgil,
+traversed all these circles.</p>
+
+<p>It was in 1300 that the poet, "in the midst of the course
+of life," at the age of thirty-five, passed in spirit through the
+three regions of the dead. Lost in a lonely, wild, and dismal
+forest, he reached the base of a hill, which he attempted to
+climb. But three animals, a panther, a lion, and a thin and
+famished wolf, prevented his passage; so, returning again
+where the sun was powerless, into the shades of the
+depths of the valley, there met him a shadow of the
+dead. This human form, whom a long silence had deprived
+of speech, was Virgil, who was sent to guide and succour him
+by a celestial dame, Beatrice, the object of his love, who was
+at the same time a real and a mystically ideal being.</p>
+
+<p>Virgil and Dante arrived at the gate of the infernal
+regions; they read the terrible inscription placed over the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>
+gate; they entered and found first those unhappy souls who
+had lived without virtue and without vice. They reached
+the banks of Acheron and saw Charon, who carried over the
+souls in his bark to the other side; and Dante was surprised
+by a profound sleep. He woke beyond the river, and he
+descended into the Limbo which is the first circle of the
+infernal regions. He found there the souls of those who had
+died without baptism, or who had been indifferent to religion.</p>
+
+<p>They descended next to the second circle, where Minos, the
+judge of those below, is enthroned. Here the luxurious are
+punished. The poet here met with Francesca of Rimini and
+Paul, her friend. He completely recovered the use of his
+senses, and passed through the third circle, where the gourmands
+are punished. In the fourth he found Plutus, who
+guards it. Here are tormented the prodigal and the avaricious.
+In the fifth are punished those who yield to anger. Dante
+and Virgil there saw a bark approaching, conducted by
+Phlegias; they entered it, crossed a river, and arrived thus
+at the base of the red-hot iron walls of the infernal town of
+Dite. The demons that guarded the gates refused them
+admittance, but an angel opened them, and the two travellers
+there saw the heretics that were enclosed in tombs surrounded
+by flames.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/335.jpg" width="600" height="621" alt="Fig. 52." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 52.&mdash;Dante&#39;s Infernal Regions.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The travellers then visited the circles of violence, fraud,
+and usury, when they came to a river of blood guarded
+by a troop of centaurs; suddenly they saw coming to them
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>
+Geryon, who represents fraud, and this beast took them
+behind him to carry them across the rest of the infernal
+space.</p>
+
+<p>The eighth circle was divided into ten valleys, comprising:
+the flatterers; the simoniacal; the astrologers; the sorcerers;
+the false judges; the hypocrites who walked about clothed
+with heavy leaden garments; the thieves, eternally stung
+by venomous serpents; the heresiarchs; the charlatans,
+and the forgers.</p>
+
+<p>At last the poets descended into the ninth circle, divided
+into four regions, where are punished four kinds of traitors.
+Here is recounted the admirable episode of Count Ugolin.
+In the last region, called the region of Judas, <span class="smcap">Lucifer</span> is
+enchained. There is the centre of the earth, and Dante,
+hearing the noise of a little brook, reascended to the other
+hemisphere, on the surface of which he found, surrounded
+by the Southern Ocean, the mountain of Purgatory.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the famous <i>Inferno</i> of Dante.</p>
+
+<p>Not only was the geography of the infernal regions
+attempted in the middle ages, but even their size. Dexelius
+calculated that the number of the damned was a hundred
+millions, and that their abode need not measure more than
+one German mile in every direction. Cyrano of Bergerac
+amusingly said that it was the damned that kept turning
+the earth, by hanging on the ceiling like bats, and trying
+to get away.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In 1757 an English clergyman, Dr. Swinden, published
+a book entitled, <i>Researches on the Nature of the Fire of
+Hell and the Place where it is situated</i>. He places it in
+the sun. According to him the Christians of the first
+century had placed it beneath the earth on account of a
+false interpretation of the descent of Jesus into hell after
+his crucifixion, and by false ideas of cosmography. He
+attempted to show, 1st, that the terrestrial globe is too
+small to contain even the angels that fell from heaven after
+their battle; 2nd, that the fire of hell is real, and that the
+closed globe of earth could not support it a sufficiently long
+period; 3rd, that the sun alone presents itself as the necessary
+place, being a well-sustained fire, and directly opposite
+in situation to heaven, since the empyreal is round the
+outside of the universe, and the sun in the centre. What
+a change to the present ideas, even of doctors of divinity,
+in a hundred years!</p>
+
+<p>So far, then, for medi&aelig;val ideas on the position and
+character of hell. Next as to purgatory.</p>
+
+<p>The voyage to purgatory that has met with most success
+is certainly the celebrated Irish legend of St. Patrick,
+which for several centuries was admitted as authentic, and
+the account of which was composed certainly a century
+before the poem of Dante.</p>
+
+<p>This purgatory, the entrance to which is drawn in more
+than one illuminated manuscript, is situated in Ireland, on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>
+one of the islands of Lough Derg, County Donegal, where
+there are still two chapels and a shrine, at which annual
+ceremonies are performed. A knight, called Owen, resolved
+to visit it for penance; and the chronicle gives us an
+account of his adventures.</p>
+
+<p>First he had his obsequial rites performed, as if he had
+been dead, and then he advanced boldly into the deep
+ravine; he marched on courageously, and entered into
+the semi-shadows; he marched on, and even this funereal
+twilight abandoned him, and "when he had gone for a long
+time in this obscurity, there appeared to him a little light
+as it were from a glimmer of day." He arrived at a house,
+built with much care, an imposing mansion of grief and
+hope, a marvellous edifice, but similar nevertheless to a
+monkish cloister, where there was no more light than there
+is in this world in winter at vesper-time.</p>
+
+<p>The knight was in dreadful suspense. Suddenly he
+heard a terrible noise, as if the universe was in a riot; for
+it seemed certainly to him as if every kind of beast and
+every man in the world were together, and each gave utterance
+to their own cry, at one time and with one voice, so
+that they could not make a more frightful noise.</p>
+
+<p>Then commenced his trials, and discourse with the infernal
+beings; the demons yelled with delight or with fury round
+him. "Miserable wretch," said some, "you are come
+here to suffer."  "Fly," said others, "for you have not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span>
+behaved well in the time that is passed: if you will take
+our advice, and will go back again to the world, we will
+take it as a great favour and courtesy."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+<img src="images/339.jpg" width="550" height="800" alt="Plate XII." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Plate XII.&mdash;The Legend of Owen.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Owen was thrown on the dark shadowy earth, where the
+demons creep like hideous serpents. A mysterious wind,
+which he scarcely heard, passed over the mud, and it seemed
+to the knight as if he had been pierced by a spear-head.
+After a while the demons lifted him up; they took him
+straight off to the east, where the sun rises, as if they were
+going to the place where the universe ends. "Now, after
+they had journeyed for a long time here and there over
+divers countries, they brought him to an open field, very
+long and very full of griefs and chastisements; he could
+not see the end of the field, it was so long; there were men
+and women of various ages, who lay down all naked on
+the ground with their bellies downwards, who had hot nails
+driven into their hands and feet; and there was a fiery
+dragon, who sat upon them and drove his teeth into their
+flesh, and seemed as if he would eat them; hence they
+suffered great agony, and bit the earth in spite of its
+hardness, and from time to time they cried most piteously
+'Mercy, mercy;' but there was no one there who had pity
+or mercy, for the devils ran among them and over them,
+and beat them most cruelly."</p>
+
+<p>The devils brought the knight towards a house of punishment,
+so broad and long that one could not see the end.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>
+This house is the house of baths, like those of the infernal
+regions, and the souls that are bathed in ignominy are there
+heaped in large vats. "Now so it was, that each of these
+vats was filled with some kind of metal, hot and boiling,
+and there they plunged and bathed many people of various
+ages, some of whom were plunged in over their heads, others
+up to the eyebrows, others up to the eyes, and others up
+to the mouth. Now all in truth of these people cried out
+with a loud voice and wept most piteously."</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely had the knight passed this terrible place, and
+left behind in his mysterious voyage that column of fire
+which rose like a lighthouse in the shades, and which shone
+so sadly betwixt hope and eternal despair, than a vast
+and magnificent spectacle displayed itself in the subterranean
+space.</p>
+
+<p>This luminous and odorescent region, where one might
+see so many archbishops, bishops, and monks of every order,
+was the terrestrial paradise; man does not stay there
+always; they told the knight that he could not taste too
+long its rapid delights; it is a place of transition between
+purgatory and the abodes of heaven, just as the dark places
+which he had traversed were made by the Creator between
+the world and the infernal regions.</p>
+
+<p>"In spite of our joys," said the souls, "we shall pass
+away from here." Then they took him to a mountain, and
+told him to look, and asked of him what colour the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span>
+heavens seemed to be there where he was standing, and he
+replied it was the colour of burning gold, such as is in
+the furnace; and then they said to him, "That which
+you see is the entrance to heaven and the gate of
+paradise."</p>
+
+<p>The attempts at identification of hell and purgatory have
+not been so numerous, perhaps because the subjects were
+not very attractive, except as the spite of men might think
+of them in reference to other people; but when we come to
+the terrestrial paradise, quite a crowd of attempts by every
+kind of writer to fix its position in any and every part of
+the globe is met with on every side.</p>
+
+<p>In the seventeenth century, under Louis XIV., Daniel
+Huet, Bishop of Avranches, gave great attention to the
+question, and collected every opinion that had been expressed
+upon it, with a view to arriving at some definite
+conclusion for himself. He was astonished at the number
+of writings and the diversity of the opinions they
+expressed.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," he says, "could show me better how little is
+really known about the situation of the terrestrial paradise
+than the differences in the opinions of those who have
+occupied themselves about the question. Some have placed
+it in the third heaven, some in the fourth, in the heaven of
+the moon, in the moon itself, on a mountain near the lunar
+heaven, in the middle region of the air, out of the earth,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span>
+upon the earth, beneath the earth, in a place that is hidden
+and separated from man.  It has been placed under the
+North Pole, in Tartary, or in the place now occupied by the
+Caspian Sea. Others placed it in the extreme south, in the
+land of fire. Others in the Levant, or on the borders of the
+Ganges, or in the Island of Ceylon, making the name India
+to be derived from Eden, the land where the paradise was
+situated. It has been placed in China, or in an inaccessible
+place beyond the Black Sea; by others in America, in Africa,
+beneath the equator, in the East, &amp;c. &amp;c."</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding this formidable array, the good bishop
+was bold enough to make his choice between them all. His
+opinion was that the dwelling-place of the first man was
+situated between the Tigris and Euphrates, above the place
+where they separate before falling into the Persian Gulf;
+and, founding this opinion on very extensive reading, he
+declared that of all his predecessors, Calvin had come nearest
+to the truth.</p>
+
+<p>Among the other authors of greater or less celebrity that
+have occupied themselves in this question, we may instance
+the following:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Raban Maur (ninth century) believed that the terrestrial
+paradise was at the eastern extremity of the earth. He
+described the tree of life, and added that there was
+neither heat nor cold in that garden; that immense rivers of
+water nourished all the forest; and that the paradise was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>
+surrounded by a wall of fire, and its four rivers watered
+the earth.</p>
+
+<p>James of Vitry supposed Pison to come out of the terrestrial
+paradise. He describes also the garden of Eden; and,
+like all the cosmographers of the middle ages, he placed
+it in the most easterly portion of the world in an inaccessible
+place, and surrounded by a wall of fire, which
+rose up to heaven.</p>
+
+<p>Dati placed also the terrestrial paradise in Asia, like
+the cosmographers that preceded him, and made the Nile
+come from the east. Stenchus, the librarian of St. Si&eacute;ge,
+who lived in the sixteenth century, devoted several years to
+the problem, but discovered nothing. The celebrated orientalist
+and missionary Bochart wrote a treatise on this subject
+in 1650. Th&eacute;venot published also in the seventeenth
+century a map representing the country of the Lybians, and
+adds that "several great doctors place the terrestrial paradise
+there."</p>
+
+<p>An Armenian writer who translated and borrowed from
+St. Epiphanius (eighth century) produced a <i>Memorial on the
+Four Rivers of the Terrestrial Paradise</i>. He supposes they
+rise in the unknown land of the Amazons, whence also arise
+the Danube and the Hellespont, and they deliver their waters
+into that great sea that is the source of all seas, and which
+surrounds the four quarters of the globe. He afterwards
+says, following up the same theory, that the rivers of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span>
+paradise surround the world and enter again into the sea,
+which is the universal ocean."</p>
+
+<p>Gervais and Robert of St. Marien d'Auxerre taught that the
+terrestrial paradise was on the eastern border of the <i>square</i>
+which formed the world. Alain de Lille, who lived in the
+thirteenth century, maintained in his <i>Anticlaudianus</i> that
+the earth is circular, and the garden of Eden is in the east
+of Asia. Joinville, the friend of St. Louis, gives us a curious
+notion of his geographical ideas, since, with regard to paradise,
+he assures us that the four great rivers of the south come out
+of it, as do the spices. "Here," he says, referring to the
+Nile, "it is advisable to speak of the river which passes by
+the countries of Egypt, and comes from the terrestrial
+paradise. Where this river enters Egypt there are people
+very expert and experienced, as thieves are here, at stealing
+from the river, who in the evening throw their nets on the
+streams and rivers, and in the morning they often find and
+carry off the spices which are sold here in Europe as coming
+from Egypt at a good rate, and by weight, such as cinnamon,
+ginger, rhubarb, cloves, lignum, aloes, and several other good
+things, and they say that these good things come <i>from the
+terrestrial paradise</i>, and that the wind blows them off the
+trees that are growing there." And he says that near the
+end of the world are the peoples of Gog and Magog, who
+will come at the end of the world with Antichrist.</p>
+
+<p>We find, however, more than descriptions&mdash;we have repre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span>sentations
+of the terrestrial paradise by cartographers of the
+middle ages, some of which we have seen in speaking of
+their general ideas of geography, and we will now introduce
+others.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/346.jpg" width="640" height="352" alt="Fig. 53." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 53.&mdash;Paradise of Fra Mauro.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Fra Mauro, a religious cosmographer of the fifteenth century,
+gives on the east side of a map of the world a representation
+which shows us that at that epoch the "garden of
+delights" had become very barren. It is a vast plain, on
+which we see Jehovah and the first human couple, with a
+circular rampart surrounding it. The four rivers flow out of
+it by bifurcating. An angel protects the principal gate, which
+cannot be reached but by crossing barren mountains.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The cosmographical map of Gervais, dedicated to the
+Emperor Otho IV., shows the terrestrial paradise in the
+centre of the earth, which is square, and is situated in the
+midst of the seas. Adam and Eve appear in consultation.</p>
+
+<p>The map of the world prepared by Andreas Bianco, in the
+fifteenth century, represents Eden, Adam and Eve, and the
+tree of life. On the left, on a peninsula, are seen the reprobated
+people of Gog and Magog, who are to accompany
+Antichrist. Alexander is also represented there, but without
+apparent reason. The paradisaical peninsula has a building
+on it with this inscription, "Ospitius Macarii."</p>
+
+<p>Formalconi says, on this subject, that a certain Macarius
+lives near paradise, who is a witness to all that the author
+states, and as Bianco has indicated, his cell was close to the
+gates of paradise.</p>
+
+<p>This legend has reference to the pilgrims of St. Macarius, a
+tradition that was spread on the return of the Crusaders, of
+three monks who undertook a voyage to discover the point
+where the earth and heaven meet, that is to say, the place of
+the terrestrial paradise. The map of Rudimentum, a vast
+compilation published at L&uuml;beck in 1475 by the Dominican
+Brocard, represents the terrestrial paradise surrounded by
+walls, but it is less sterile that in the last picture, as may
+be seen on the next page.</p>
+
+<p>In the year 1503, when Varthema, the adventurous Bolognian,
+went to the Indies by the route of Palestine and Syria,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span>
+he was shown the evil-reputed house which Cain dwelt in,
+which was not far from the terrestrial paradise. Master
+Gilius, the learned naturalist who travelled at the expense
+of Francis I., had the same satisfaction. The simple faith
+of our ancestors had no hesitation in accepting such
+arch&aelig;ology.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/348.jpg" width="640" height="408" alt="Fig. 54." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 54.&mdash;The Paradise of the Fifteenth Century.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The most curious and interesting of all attempts to discover
+the situation of paradise was that made half unconsciously
+by Columbus when he first found the American shore.</p>
+
+<p>In his third voyage, when for the first time he reached the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span>
+main land, he was persuaded not only that he had arrived at
+the extremity of Asia, but that he could not be far from the
+position of paradise. The Orinoco seemed to be one of those
+four great rivers which, according to tradition, came out of
+the garden inhabited by our first parents, and his hopes
+were supported by the fragrant breezes that blew from the
+beautiful forests on its banks. This, he thought, was but the
+entrance to the celestial dwelling-place, and if he had dared&mdash;if
+a religious fear had not held back him who had risked
+everything amidst the elements and amongst men, he would
+have liked to push forward to where he might hope to find
+the celestial boundaries of the world, and, a little further, to
+have bathed his eyes, with profound humility, in the light of
+the flaming swords which were wielded by two seraphim
+before the gate of Eden.</p>
+
+<p>He thus expresses himself on this subject in his letter to
+one of the monarchs of Spain, dated Hayti, October, 1498.
+"The Holy Scriptures attest that the Lord created paradise,
+and placed in it the tree of life, and made the four great rivers
+of the earth to pass out of it, the Ganges of India, the
+Tigris, the Euphrates (passing from the mountains to form
+Mesopotamia, and ending in Persia), and the Nile, which
+rises in Ethiopia and goes to the Sea of Alexander. I
+cannot, nor have been ever able to find in the books of the
+Latins or Greeks anything authentic on the site of this
+terrestrial paradise, nor do I see anything more certain in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span>
+the maps of the world. Some place it at the source of the
+Nile, in Ethiopia; but the travellers who have passed
+through those countries have not found either in the mildness
+of the climate or in the elevation of the site towards
+heaven anything that could lead to the presumption that
+paradise was there, and that the waters of the Deluge were
+unable to reach it or cover it. Several pagans have written
+for the purpose of proving it was in the Fortunate Isles, which
+are the Canaries. St. Isidore, Bede, and Strabo, St. Ambrosius,
+Scotus, and all judicious theologians affirm with one accord
+that paradise was in the East. It is from thence only that
+the enormous quantity of water can come, seeing that the
+course of the rivers is extremely long; and these waters (of
+paradise) arrive here, where I am, and form a lake. There
+are great signs here of the neighbourhood of the terrestrial
+paradise, for the site is entirely conformable to the opinion of
+the saints and judicious theologians. The climate is of admirable
+mildness. I believe that if I passed beneath the equinoctial
+line, and arrived at the highest point of which I have
+spoken, I should find a milder temperature, and a change in
+the stars and the waters; not that I believe that the point
+where the greatest height is situated is navigable, or even
+that there is water there, or that one could reach it, but I
+am convinced that <i>there</i> is the terrestrial paradise, where no
+one can come except by the will of God."</p>
+
+<p>In the opinion of this illustrious navigator the earth had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span>
+the form of a pear, and its surface kept rising towards the
+east, indicated by the point of the fruit. It was there that he
+supposed might be found the garden where ancient tradition
+imagined the creation of the first human couple was accomplished.</p>
+
+<p>We can scarcely think without astonishment of the great
+amount of darkness that obscured scientific knowledge,
+when this great man appeared on the scene of the world, nor
+of the rapidity with which the obscurity and vagueness of
+ideas were dissipated almost immediately after his marvellous
+discoveries. Scarcely had a half century elapsed after his
+death, than all the geographical fables of the middle ages did
+no more than excite smiles of incredulity, although during
+his life the universal opinion was not much advanced upon
+the times of the famous knight John of Mandeville, who
+wrote gravely as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"No mortal man can go to or approach this paradise. By
+land no one can go there on account of savage beasts which
+are in the deserts, and because of mountains and rocks that
+cannot be passed over, and dark places without number; nor
+can one go there any better by sea; the water rushes so wildly,
+it comes in so great waves, that no vessel dare sail against
+them. The water is so rapid, and makes so great a noise and
+tempest, that no one can hear however loud he is spoken to,
+and so when some great men with good courage have
+attempted several times to go by this river to paradise, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span>
+large companies, they have never been able to accomplish
+their journey. On the contrary, many have died with fatigue
+in swimming against the watery waves. Many others have
+become blind, others have become deaf by the noise of the
+water, and others have been suffocated and lost in the waves,
+so that no mortal man can approach it except by the special
+grace of God."</p>
+
+<p>With one notable exception, no attempts have been made of
+late years to solve such a question. That exception is by the
+noble and indefatigable Livingstone, who declared his conviction
+to Sir Roderick Murchison, in a letter published in the
+<i>Athen&aelig;um</i>, that paradise was situated somewhere near the
+sources of the Nile.</p>
+
+<p>Those generally who now seek an answer to the question
+of the birthplace of the human race do not call it paradise.</p>
+
+<p>Since man is here, and there was a time quite recent,
+geologically speaking, when he was not, there must have
+been some actual locality on the earth's surface where he was
+first a man. Whether we have, or even can hope to have,
+enough information to indicate where that locality was
+situated, is a matter of doubt. We have not at present. Those
+who have attended most to the subject appear to think some
+island the most probable locality, but it is quite conjectural.</p>
+
+<p>The name "Paradise" appears to have been derived from
+the Persian, in which it means a garden; similarly derived
+words express the same idea in other languages; as in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span>
+Hebrew <i>pard&ecirc;s</i>, in the Arabian <i>firdaus</i>, in the Syriac <i>pardiso</i>,
+and in the Armenian <i>partes</i>. It has been thought that the
+Persian word itself is derived from the Sanscrit <i>pradesa</i>, or
+<i>paradesa</i>, which means a circle, a country, or strange region;
+which, though near enough as to sound, does not quite agree
+as to meaning. "Eden" is from a Hebrew root meaning
+delights.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+<h3>ECLIPSES AND COMETS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>We have seen in the earlier chapters on the systems of the
+ancients and their ideas of the world how everything was
+once supposed to have exclusive reference to man, and how he
+considered himself not only chief of animate objects, but
+that his own city was the centre of the material world, and
+his own world the centre of the material universe; that the
+sun was made to shine, as well as the moon and stars, for his
+benefit; and that, were it not for him they would have
+no reason for existence. And we have seen how, step
+by step, these illusions have been dispelled, and he has
+learnt to appreciate his own littleness in proportion as
+he has realised the immensity of the universe of which he
+forms part.</p>
+
+<p>If such has been his history, and such his former ideas on
+the regular parts, as we may call them, of nature, much more
+have similar ideas been developed in relation to those other
+phenomena which, coming at such long intervals, have not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span>
+been recognised by him as periodic, but have seemed to have
+some relation to mundane affairs, often of the smallest consequence.
+Such are eclipses of the sun and moon, comets,
+shooting-stars, and meteors. Among the less instructed of
+men, even when astronomers of the same age and nation
+knew their real nature, eclipses have always been looked upon
+as something ominous of evil.</p>
+
+<p>Among the ancient nations people used to come to the
+assistance of the moon, by making a confused noise with all
+kinds of instruments, when it was eclipsed. It is even done
+now in Persia and some parts of China, where they fancy
+that the moon is fighting with a great dragon, and they think
+the noise will make him loose his hold and take to flight.
+Among the East Indians they have the same belief that
+when the sun and the moon are eclipsed, a dragon is seizing
+them, and astronomers who go there to observe eclipses
+are troubled by the fears of their native attendants, and by
+their endeavours to get into the water as the best place under
+the circumstances. In America the idea is that the sun and
+moon are tired when they are eclipsed. But the more refined
+Greeks believed for a long time that the moon was bewitched,
+and that the magicians made it descend from heaven, to put
+into the herbs a certain maleficent froth. Perhaps the idea
+of the Dragon arose from the ancient custom of calling the
+places in the heavens at which the eclipses of the moon took
+place the head and tail of the Dragon.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In ancient history we have many curious instances of the
+very critical influence that eclipses have had, especially in
+the case of events in a campaign, where it was thought
+unfavourable to some projected attempt.</p>
+
+<p>Thus an eclipse of the moon was the original cause of the
+death of the Athenian general Nicias. Just at a critical
+juncture, when he was about to depart from the harbour
+of Syracuse, the eclipse filled him and his whole army
+with dismay. The result of his terror was that he delayed
+the departure of his fleet, and the Athenian army was
+cut in pieces and destroyed, and Nicias lost his liberty
+and life.</p>
+
+<p>Plutarch says they could understand well enough the
+cause of the eclipse of the sun by the interposition of the
+moon, but they could not imagine by the opposition of what
+body the moon itself could be eclipsed.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most famous eclipses of antiquity was that of
+Thales, recorded by Herodotus, who says:&mdash;"The Lydians
+and the Medes were at war for five consecutive years. Now
+while the war was sustained on both sides with equal chance,
+in the sixth year, one day when the armies were in battle
+array, it happened that in the midst of the combat the day
+suddenly changed into night. Thales of Miletus had predicted
+this phenomenon to the Ionians, and had pointed out
+precisely that very year as the one in which it would take
+place. The Lydians and Medes, seeing the night succeeding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span>
+suddenly to the day, put an end to the combat, and only cared
+to establish peace."</p>
+
+<p>Another notable eclipse is that related by Diodorus Siculus.
+It was a total eclipse of the sun, which took place while
+Agathocles, fleeing from the port of Syracuse, where he
+was blockaded by the Carthaginians, was hastening to gain
+the coast of Africa. "When Agathocles was already surrounded
+by the enemy, night came on, and he escaped
+contrary to all hope. On the day following so complete an
+eclipse of the sun took place that it seemed altogether night,
+for the stars shone out in all places. The soldiers therefore
+of Agathocles, persuaded that the gods were intending them
+some misfortune, were in the greatest perturbation about the
+future. Agathocles was equal to the occasion. When disembarked
+in Africa, where, in spite of all his fine words, he was
+unable to reassure his soldiers, whom the eclipse of the
+sun had frightened, he changed his tactics, and pretending
+to understand the prodigy, "I grant, comrades," he said,
+"that had we perceived this, eclipse before our embarkation
+we should indeed have been in a critical situation, but now
+that we have seen it after our departure, and as it always
+signifies a change in the present state of affairs, it
+follows that our circumstances, which were very bad in
+Sicily, are about to amend, while we shall indubitably ruin
+those of the Carthaginians, which have been hitherto so
+flourishing."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We are reminded by this of the story of Pericles, who,
+when ready to set sail with his fleet on a great expedition,
+saw himself stopped by a similar phenomenon. He spread
+his mantle over the eyes of the pilot, whom fear had prevented
+acting, and asked him if that was any sign of misfortune,
+when the pilot answered in the negative. "What
+misfortune then do you suppose," said he, "is presaged by
+the body that hides the sun, which differs from this in
+nothing but being larger?"</p>
+
+<p>With reference to these eclipses, when their locality
+and approximate date is known, astronomy comes to the
+assistance of history, and can supply the exact day, and
+even hour, of the occurrence. For the eclipses depend on
+the motions of the moon, and just as astronomers can calculate
+both the time and the path of a solar eclipse in the
+future, so they can for the past. If then the eclipses are
+calculated back to the epoch when the particular one
+is recorded, it can be easily ascertained which one it
+was that about that time passed over the spot at which
+it was observed, and as soon as the particular eclipse
+is fixed upon, it may be told at what hour it would be
+seen.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the eclipse of Thales has been assigned by different
+authors to various dates, between the 1st of October, 583 <small>B.C.</small>,
+and the 3rd of February, 626 <small>B.C.</small> The only eclipse of the sun
+that is suitable between those dates has been found by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span>
+Astronomer-Royal to be that which would happen in Lydia on
+the 28th of May, 585 <small>B.C.</small>, which must therefore be the date
+of the event.</p>
+
+<p>So of the eclipse of Agathocles, M. Delaunay has fixed
+its date to the 15th August, 310 <small>B.C.</small></p>
+
+<p>In later days, when Christopher Columbus had to deal
+with the ignorant people of America, the same kind of story
+was repeated. He found himself reduced to famine by the
+inhabitants of the country, who kept him and his companions
+prisoners; and being aware of the approach of the eclipse, he
+menaced them with bringing upon them great misfortunes,
+and depriving them of the light of the moon, if they did not
+instantly bring him provisions. They cared little for his
+menaces at first; but as soon as they saw the moon disappear,
+they ran to him with abundance of victuals, and implored
+pardon of the conqueror. This was on the 1st of March,
+1504, a date which may be tested by the modern tables of
+the moon, and Columbus's account proved to be correct.
+The eclipse was indeed recorded in other places by various
+observers.</p>
+
+<p>Eclipses in their natural aspect have thus had considerable
+influence on the vulgar, who knew nothing of their cause.
+This of course was the state with all in the early ages, and
+it is interesting to trace the gradual progress from their being
+quite unexpected to their being predicted.</p>
+
+<p>It is very probable, if not certain, that their recurrence in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span>
+the case of the moon at least was recognised long before their
+nature was understood.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 540px;">
+<img src="images/360.jpg" width="540" height="800" alt="Plate XIII." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Plate XIII.&mdash;Christopher Columbus and the Eclipse of the Moon.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Among the Chinese they were long calculated, and, in fact,
+it is thought by some that they have pretended to a greater
+antiquity by calculating backwards, and recording as observed
+eclipses those which happened before they understood or noticed
+them. It seems, however, authenticated that they did in the
+year 2169 <small>B.C.</small> observe an eclipse of the sun, and that at that
+date they were in the habit of predicting them. For this
+particular eclipse is said to have cost several of the astronomers
+their lives, as they had not calculated it rightly. As
+the lives of princes were supposed to be dependent on these
+eclipses, it became high treason to expose them to such a
+danger without forewarning them. They paid more attention
+to the eclipses of the sun than of the moon.</p>
+
+<p>Among the Babylonians the eclipses of the moon were
+observed from a very early date, and numerous records of
+them are contained in the Observations of Bel in Sargon's
+library, the tablets of which have lately been discovered.
+In the older portion they only record that on the 14th
+day of such and such a (lunar) month an eclipse takes
+place, and state in what watch it begins, and when it ends.
+In a later portion the observations were more precise, and the
+descriptions of the eclipse more accurate. Long before
+1700 <small>B.C.</small> the discovery of the lunar cycle of 223 lunar
+months had been made, and by means of it they were able<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span>
+to state of each lunar eclipse, that it was either "according
+to calculation" or "contrary to calculation."</p>
+
+<p>They dealt also with solar eclipses, and tried to trace on
+a sphere the path they would take on the earth. Accordingly,
+like the eclipses of the moon, these too were spoken of
+as happening either "according to calculation" or "contrary
+to calculation." "In a report sent in to one of the later
+kings of Assyria by the state astronomer, Abil Islar states
+that a watch had been kept on the 28th, 29th, and 30th of
+Sivan, or May, for an eclipse of the sun, which did not,
+however, take place after all. The shadow, it is clear, must
+have fallen outside the field of observation." Besides the
+more ordinary kind of solar eclipses, mention is made in the
+Observations of Bel of annular eclipses which, strangely
+enough, are seldom alluded to by classical writers.</p>
+
+<p>A record of a later eclipse has been found by Sir
+Henry Rawlinson on one of the Nineveh Tablets. This
+occurred near that city in <small>B.C.</small> 763, and from the character
+of the inscription it may be inferred that it was a rare
+occurrence with them, indeed that it was nearly, if not
+quite, a total eclipse. This has an especial interest as
+being the earliest that we have any approximate date
+for.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible that the remarkable phenomenon, alluded to
+by the prophet Isaiah, of the shadow going backwards ten
+degrees on the dial of Ahaz, may be really a record of an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span>
+eclipse of the sun, such as astronomy proves to have occurred
+at Jerusalem in the year 689 <small>B.C.</small></p>
+
+<p>We have very little notice of the calculation of eclipses by
+the Egyptians; all that is told us is more or less fabulous.
+Thus Diogenes Laertius says that they reckoned that during
+a period of 48,863 years, 373 eclipses of the sun and 832
+eclipses of the moon had occurred, which is far fewer than
+the right number for so long a time, and which, of course,
+has no basis in fact.</p>
+
+<p>Among the Greeks, Anaxagoras was the first who entertained
+clear ideas about the nature of eclipses; and it was
+from him that Pericles learnt their harmlessness.</p>
+
+<p>Plutarch relates that Helicon of Cyzicus predicted an
+eclipse of the sun to Dionysius of Syracuse, and received
+as a reward a talent of silver.</p>
+
+<p>Livy records an eclipse of the sun as having taken place
+on the 11th of Quintilis, which corresponds to the 11th
+of July. It happened during the Appollinarian games,
+190 <small>B.C.</small></p>
+
+<p>The same author tells us of an eclipse of the moon that
+was predicted by one Gallus, a tribune of the second legion,
+on the eve of the battle of Pydna&mdash;a prediction which was
+duly fulfilled on the following night. The fact of its having
+been foretold quieted the superstitious fears of the soldiers,
+and gave them a very high opinion of Gallus. Other
+authors, among them Cicero, do not give so flattering a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span>
+story, but state that Gallus's part consisted only in explaining
+the cause of the eclipse after it had happened. The date
+of this eclipse was the 3rd of September, 168 <small>B.C.</small></p>
+
+<p>Ennius, writing towards the end of the second century
+<small>B.C.</small>, describes an eclipse which was said to have happened
+nearly two hundred years before (404, <small>B.C.</small>), in the following
+remarkable words:&mdash;"On the nones of July the moon
+passed over the sun, and there was night." Aristarchus,
+three centuries before Christ, understood and explained the
+nature of eclipses; but the chief of the ancient authors
+upon this subject was Hipparchus. He and his disciples
+were able to predict eclipses with considerable accuracy,
+both as to their time and duration. Geminus and
+Cleomedes were two other writers, somewhat later, who
+explained and predicted eclipses. In later times regular
+tables were drawn up, showing when the eclipses would
+happen. One that Ptolemy was the author of was founded
+on data derived from ancient observers&mdash;Callipus, Democritus,
+Eudoxus, Hipparchus&mdash;aided by his own calculations.
+After the days of Ptolemy the knowledge of the eclipses
+advanced <i>pari passu</i> with the advance of astronomy generally.
+So long as astronomy itself was empirical, the time of
+the return of an eclipse was only reckoned by the intervals
+that had elapsed during the same portion of previous cycles;
+but after the discovery of elliptic orbits and the force
+of gravitation the whole motion of the moon could be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span>
+calculated with as great accuracy as any other astronomical
+phenomenon.</p>
+
+<p>In point of fact, if the new moon is in the plane of the
+ecliptic there must be an eclipse of the sun; if the full
+moon is there, there must be an eclipse of the moon; and
+if it should in these cases be only partially in that plane,
+the eclipses also will be partial. The cycle of changes that
+the position of the moon can undergo when new and full
+occupies a period of eighteen years and eleven days, in
+which period there are forty-one eclipses of the sun and
+twenty-nine of the moon. Each year there are at most seven
+and at least two eclipses; if only two, they are eclipses of the
+sun. Although more numerous in reality for the whole
+earth, eclipses of the sun are more rarely observed in any
+particular place, because they are not seen everywhere, but
+only where the shadow of the moon passes; while all that
+part of the earth that sees the moon at all at the time sees
+it eclipsed.</p>
+
+<p>We now come to comets.</p>
+
+<p>The ancients divided comets into different classes, the
+chief points of distinction being derived from the shape,
+length, and brilliancy of the tails. Pliny distinguished
+twelve kinds, which he thus characterised:&mdash;"Some frighten
+us by their blood-coloured mane; their bristling hair rises
+towards the heaven. The bearded ones let their long hair
+fall down like a majestic beard.  The javelin-shaped ones<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span>
+seem to be projected forwards like a dart, as they rapidly
+attain their shape after their first appearance; if the tail is
+shorter, and terminates in a point, it is called a sword; this is
+the palest of all the comets; it has the appearance of a bright
+sword without any diverging rays. The plate or disc derives
+its name from its shape, its colour is that of amber, it gives
+out some diverging rays from its sides, but not in large
+quantity. The cask has really the form of a cask, which
+one might suppose to be staved in smoke enveloped in
+light. The retort imitates the figure of a horn, and the
+lamp that of a burning flame. The horse-comet represents
+the mane of a horse which is violently agitated, as by a
+circular, or rather cylindrical, motion. Such a comet appears
+also of singular whiteness, with hair of a silver hue; it is
+so bright that one can scarcely look at it. There are bristling
+comets, they are like the skins of beasts with their hair on,
+and are surrounded by a nebulosity. Lastly, the hair of the
+comet sometimes takes the form of a lance."</p>
+
+<p>Pingr&eacute;, a celebrated historian of comets, tells us that one
+of the first comets noticed in history is that which appeared
+over Rome forty years before Christ, and in which the Roman
+people imagined they saw the soul of C&aelig;sar endowed with
+divine honours. Next comes that which threw its light on
+Jerusalem when it was being besieged and remained for a
+whole year above the city, according to the account of
+Josephus. It was of this kind that Pliny said it "is of so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span>
+great a whiteness that one can scarcely look at it, and <i>one
+may see in it the image of God in human form</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Diodorus tells us that, a little after the subversion of the
+towns of Helix and Bura, there were seen, for several nights
+in succession, a brilliant light, which was called a beam of
+fire, but which Aristotle says was a true comet.</p>
+
+<p>Plutarch, in his life of Timoleon, says a burning flame
+preceded the fleet of this general until his arrival at Sicily,
+and that during the consulate of Caius Servilius a bright
+shield was seen suspended in the heavens.</p>
+
+<p>The historians Sazoncenas and Socrates relate that in
+the year 400 <small>A.D.</small> a comet in the form of a sword shone over
+Constantinople, and appeared to touch the town just at the
+time when great misfortunes were impending through the
+treachery of Gainas.</p>
+
+<p>The same phenomenon appeared over Rome previous to
+the arrival of Alaric.</p>
+
+<p>In fact the ancient chroniclers always associated the
+appearance of a comet with some terrestrial event, which
+it was not difficult to do, seeing that critical situations
+were at all times existing in some one country or other
+where the comet would be visible, and probably those which
+could not be connected with any were not thought worthy
+of being recorded.</p>
+
+<p>It is well known that the year 1000 <small>A.D.</small> was for a long
+time predicted to be the end of the world. In this year the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span>
+astronomers and chroniclers registered the fall of an enormous
+burning meteor and the appearance of a comet. Pingr&eacute; says:
+"On the 19th of the calends of January"&mdash;that is the 14th of
+December&mdash;"the heavens being dark, a kind of burning sword
+fell to the earth, leaving behind it a long train of light. Its
+brilliancy was such that it frightened not only those who
+were in the fields, but even those who were shut up in their
+houses. This great opening in the heavens was gradually
+closed, and then was seen the figure of a dragon, whose feet
+were blue, and whose head kept continually increasing. A
+comet having appeared at the same time as this chasm, or
+meteor, they were confounded." This relation is given in the
+chronicles of Seigbert in Hermann Corner, in the Chronique
+de Tours, in Albert Casin, and other historians of the time.</p>
+
+<p>Bodin, resuscitating an idea of Democritus, wrote that the
+comets were the souls of illustrious personages, who, after
+having lived on the earth a long series of centuries, and being
+ready at last to pass away, were carried in a kind of triumph
+to heaven. For this reason, famine, epidemics, and civil wars
+followed on the apparition of comets, the towns and their
+inhabitants finding themselves then deprived of the help of
+the illustrious souls who had laboured to appease their
+intestinal feuds.</p>
+
+<p>One of the comets of the middle ages which made the
+greatest impression on the minds of the people was that
+which appeared during Holy Week of the year 837, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span>
+frightened Louis the Debonnaire. The first morning of its
+appearance he sent for his astrologer. "Go," he said, "on to
+the terrace of the palace, and come back again immediately
+and tell me what you have seen, for I have not seen that star
+before, and you have not shown it to me; but I know that this
+sign is a comet: it announces a change of reign and the death
+of a prince." The son of Charlemagne having taken counsel
+with his bench of bishops, was convinced that the comet was
+a notice sent from heaven expressly for him. He passed the
+nights in prayer, and gave large donations to the monasteries,
+and finally had a number of masses performed out of fear
+for himself and forethought for the Church committed to his
+care. The comet, however, was a very inoffensive one, being
+none other than that known as Halley's comet, which returned
+in 1835. While they were being thus frightened in
+France, the Chinese were observing it astronomically.</p>
+
+<p>The historian of Merlin the enchanter relates that a few days
+after the <i>f&ecirc;tes</i> which were held on the occasion of the erection
+of the funeral monument of Salisbury, a sign appeared in
+heaven. It was a comet of large size and excessive splendour.
+It resembled a dragon, out of whose mouth came a long two-forked
+tongue, one part of which turned towards the north
+and the other to the east. The people were in a state of
+fear, each one asking what this sign presaged. Uter, in
+the absence of the king, Ambrosius, his brother, who was
+engaged in pursuing one of the sons of Vortigern, consulted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span>
+all the wise men of Britain, but no one could give him any
+answer. Then he thought of Merlin the enchanter, and sent
+for him to the court. "What does this apparition presage?"
+demanded the king's brother. Merlin began to weep. "O son
+of Britain, you have just had a great loss&mdash;the king is dead."
+After a moment of silence he added, "But the Britons have
+still a king. Haste thee, Uter, attack the enemy. All the
+island will submit to you, for the figure of the fiery dragon
+is thyself. The ray that goes towards Gaul represents a son
+who shall be born to thee, who will be great by his achievements,
+and not less so by his power. The ray that goes
+towards Ireland represents a daughter of whom thou shalt
+be the father, and her sons and grandsons shall reign over all
+the Britons." These predictions were realised; but it is
+more than probable that they were made up after the event.</p>
+
+<p>The comet of 1066 was regarded as a presage of the
+Conquest under William of Normandy. In the Bayeaux
+tapestry, on which Matilda of Flanders had drawn all the
+most memorable episodes in the transmarine expedition of
+her husband, the comet appears in one of the corners with
+the inscription, <i>Isti mirantur stellam</i>, which proves that the
+comet was considered a veritable marvel. It is said even to
+be traditionally reported that one of the jewels of the British
+crown was taken from the tail of this comet. Nevertheless
+it was no more than Halley's comet again in its periodical
+visit every seventy-six years.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In July, 1214, a brilliant comet appeared which was lost
+to view on the same day as the Pope, Urban IV., died, <i>i.e.</i>
+the third of October.</p>
+
+<p>In June, 1456, a similar body of enormous size, with
+a very long and extraordinarily bright tail, put all Christendom
+in a fright. The Pope, Calixtus III., was engaged in
+a war at that time with the Saracens. He showed the
+Christians that the comet "had the form of a cross," and
+announced some great event. At the same time Mahomet
+announced to his followers that the comet, "having the form
+of a yataghan," was a blessing of the Prophet's. It is said
+that the Pope afterwards recognised that it had this form,
+and excommunicated it. Nevertheless, the Christians obtained
+the victory under the walls of Belgrade. This was
+another appearance of Halley's comet.</p>
+
+<p>In the early months of 1472 appeared a large comet, which
+historians agree in saying was very horrible and alarming.
+Belleforest said it was a hideous and frightening comet, which
+threw its rays from east to west, giving great cause for fear
+to great people, who were not ignorant that comets are the
+menacing rods of God, which admonish those who are in
+authority, that they may be converted.</p>
+
+<p>Pingr&eacute;, who has told us of so many of the comets that
+were seen before his time, wrote of this epoch: "Comets
+became the most efficacious signs of the most important and
+doubtful events.  They were charged to announce wars,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span>
+seditions, and the internal movements of republics; they
+presaged famines, pestilence, and epidemics; princes, or even
+persons of dignity, could not pay the tribute of nature
+without the previous appearance of that universal oracle,
+a comet; men could no longer be surprised by any unexpected
+event; the future might be as easily read in the
+heavens as the past in history. Their effect depended on the
+place in the heavens where they shone, the countries over
+which they directly lay, the signs of the zodiac that they
+measured by their longitude, the constellations they traversed,
+the form and length of their tails, the place where they went
+out, and a thousand other circumstances more easily indicated
+than distinguished; they also announced in general wars, and
+the death of princes, or some grand personage, but there
+were few years that passed without something of this kind
+occurring. The devout astrologers&mdash;for there were many of
+that sort&mdash;risked less than the others. According to them,
+the comet threatened some misfortune; if it did not happen,
+it was because the prayers of penitence had turned aside the
+wrath of God; he had returned his sword to the scabbard.
+But a rule was invented which gave the astrologers free
+scope, for they said that events announced by a comet might
+be postponed for one or more periods of forty years, or even
+as many years as the comet had appeared days; so that one
+which had appeared for six months need not produce its
+effect for 180 years."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 396px;">
+<img src="images/373.jpg" width="396" height="336" alt="Fig. 55." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 55.&mdash;Representation of a Comet, 16th Century.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The most frightful of the comets of this period, according
+to Simon Goulart, was that of 1527. "It put some into so
+great a fright that they died; others fell sick. It was seen
+by several thousand people, and appeared very long, and of
+the colour of blood. At the summit was seen the representation
+of a curved arm, holding a large sword in its hand, as
+if it would strike; at the top of the point of the sword
+were three stars, but that which touched the point was
+more brilliant than the others. On the two sides of the
+rays of this comet were seen large hatchets, poignards,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span>
+bloody swords, among which were seen a great number of
+men decapitated, having their heads and beards horribly
+bristling."</p>
+
+<p>A view of this comet is given in the <i>History of Prodigies</i>.</p>
+
+<p>There was another comet remarked in 1556, and another
+in 1577, like the head of an owl, followed by a mantle of
+scattered light, with pointed ends. Of this comet we read
+in the same book that recorded the last described: "The
+comet is an infallible sign of a very evil event. Whenever
+eclipses of the sun or moon, or comets, or earthquakes,
+conversions of water into blood, and such like prodigies
+happen, it has always been known that very soon after these
+miserable portents afflictions, effusion of human blood, massacres,
+deaths of great monarchs, kings, princes, and rulers, seditions,
+treacheries, raids, overthrowings of empires, kingdoms,
+or villages; hunger and scarcity of provisions, burning and
+overthrowing of towns; pestilences, widespread mortality,
+both of beasts and men; in fact all sorts of evils and misfortunes
+take place. Nor can it be doubted that all these
+signs and prodigies give warning that the end of the world
+is come, and with it the terrible last judgment of God."</p>
+
+<p>But even now comets were being observed astronomically,
+and began to lose their sepulchral aspect.</p>
+
+<p>A remarkable comet, however, which appeared in 1680,
+was not without its fears for the vulgar. We are told that it
+was recognised as the same which appeared the year of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span>
+C&aelig;sar's death, then in 531, and afterwards in 1106, having
+a period of about 575 years. The terror it produced in the
+towns was great; timid spirits saw in it the sign of a new
+deluge, as they said water was always announced by fire.
+While the fearful were making their wills, and, in anticipation
+of the end of the world, were leaving their money to the
+monks, who in accepting them showed themselves better
+physicists than the testators, people in high station were
+asking what great person it heralded the death of, and it is
+reported of the brother of Louis XIV., who apparently was
+afraid of becoming too suddenly like C&aelig;sar, that he said
+sharply to the courtiers who were discussing it, "Ah,
+gentlemen, you may talk at your ease, if you please; you
+are not princes."</p>
+
+<p>This same comet gave rise to a curious story of an "extraordinary
+prodigy, how at Rome a hen laid an egg on which
+was drawn a picture of the comet.</p>
+
+<p>"The fact was attested by his Holiness, by the Queen of
+Sweden, and all the persons of first quality in Rome. On
+the 4th December, 1680, a hen laid an egg on which was
+seen the figure of the comet, accompanied by other marks
+such as are here represented. The cleverest naturalists in
+Rome have seen and examined it, and have never seen such
+a prodigy before."</p>
+
+<p>Of this same comet Bernouilli wrote, "<i>That if the body of
+the comet is not a visible sign of the anger of God, the tail may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span>
+be</i>." It was this too that suggested to Whiston the idea that
+he put forward, not as a superstitious, but as a physical
+speculation, that a comet approaching the earth was the cause
+of the deluge.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 336px;">
+<img src="images/376.jpg" width="336" height="336" alt="Fig. 56." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 56.&mdash;An Egg Marked with a Comet.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The last blow to the superstitious fear of the comets was
+given by Halley, when he proved that they circulated like
+planets round the sun, and that the comets noticed in 837,
+1066, 1378, 1456, 1531, 1607, 1682 were all one, whose period
+was about 76 years, and which would return in 1759, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span>
+prediction was verified, and the comet went afterwards by
+the name of this astronomer. It returned again in 1835,
+and will revisit us in 1911.</p>
+
+<p>Even after the fear arising from the relics of astrology had
+died away, another totally different alarm was connected with
+comets&mdash;an alarm which has not entirely subsided even in
+our own times. This is that a comet may come in contact
+with the earth and destroy it by the collision. The most
+remarkable panic in this respect was that which arose in
+Paris in 1773. At the previous meeting of the Academy of
+Sciences, M. Lalande was to have read an interesting paper,
+but the time failed. It was on the subject of comets that
+could, by approaching the earth, cause its destruction, with
+special reference to the one that was soon to come. From
+the title only of the paper the most dreadful fears were
+spread abroad, and, increasing day by day, were with great
+difficulty allayed. The house of M. Lalande was filled with
+those who came to question him on the memoir in question.
+The fermentation was so great that some devout people, as
+ignorant as weak, asked the archbishop to make a forty
+hours' prayer to turn away the enormous deluge that they
+feared, and the prelate was nearly going to order these prayers,
+if the members of the Academy had not persuaded him how
+ridiculous it would be. Finally, M. Lalande, finding it impossible
+to answer all the questions put to him about his
+fatal memoir, and wishing to prevent the real evils that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span>
+might arise from the frightened imaginations of the weak,
+caused it to be printed, and made it as clear as was possible.
+When it appeared, it was found that he stated that of the
+sixty comets known there were eight which could, by coming
+too near the earth, say within 40,000 miles, occasion such
+a pressure that the sea would leave its bed and cover part
+of the globe, but that in any case this could not happen
+till after twenty years. This was too long to make it
+worth while to make provision for it, and the effervescence
+subsided.</p>
+
+<p>A similar case to this occurred with respect to Biela's
+comet, which was to return in 1832. In calculating its reappearance
+in this year, Damoiseau found that it would pass
+through the plane of the earth's orbit on the 29th of October.
+Rushing away with this, the papers made out that a collision
+was inevitable, and the end of the world was come. But no
+one thought to inquire where the earth would be when
+the comet passed through the plane in which it revolved.
+Arago, however, set people's minds at rest by pointing out
+that at that time the earth would be a month's journey
+from the spot, which with the rate at which the earth is
+moving would correspond to a distance of sixty millions
+of miles.</p>
+
+<p>This, like other frights, passed away, but was repeated
+again in 1840 and 1857 with like results, and even in 1872
+a similar end to the world was announced to the public for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span>
+the 12th of August, on the supposed authority of a Professor
+at Geneva, but who had never said what was supposed.</p>
+
+<p>But in reality all cause of fear has now passed away,
+since it has been proved that the comet is made of gaseous
+matter in a state of extreme tenuity, so that, though it may
+make great show in the heavens, the whole mass may not
+weigh more than a few pounds; and we have in addition
+the testimony of experience, which might have been relied
+on on the occasions above referred to, for in 1770 Lexele's
+comet was seen to pass through the satellites of Jupiter
+without deranging them in the least, but was itself thrown
+entirely out of its path, while there is reason to believe that
+on the 29th of June, 1861, the earth remained several hours
+in the tail of a comet without having experienced the
+slightest inconvenience.</p>
+
+<p>As to the nature of comets, the opinions that have been
+held have been mostly very vague. Metrodorus thought
+they were reflections from the sun; Democritus, a concourse
+of several stars; Aristotle, a collection of exhalations which
+had become dry and inflamed; Strabo, that they are the
+splendour of a star enveloped in a cloud; Heracletes of
+Pontus, an elevated cloud which gave out much light;
+Epigenes, some terrestrial matter that had caught fire, and
+was agitated by the wind; B&#339;cius, part of the air, coloured;
+Anaxagoras, sparks fallen from the elementary fire; Xenophanes,
+a motion and spreading out of clouds which caught<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span>
+fire; and Descartes, the d&eacute;bris of vortices that had
+been destroyed, the fragments of which were coming
+towards us.</p>
+
+<p>It is said that the Chald&aelig;ans held the opinion that they
+were analogous to planets by their regular course, and that
+when we ceased to see them, it was because they had
+gone too far from us; and Seneca followed this explanation,
+since he regarded them as globes turning in the heavens,
+and which appear and disappear in certain times, and
+whose periodical motions might be known by regular
+observation.</p>
+
+<p>We have thus traced the particular ideas that have
+attached themselves to eclipses and comets, as the two
+most remarkable of the extraordinary phenomena of the
+heavens, and have seen how the fears and superstitions of
+mankind have been inevitably linked with them in the
+earlier days of ignorance and darkness, but they are only
+part of a system of phenomena, and have been no more
+connected with superstition than others less remarkable,
+except in proportion to their remarkableness. Other minor
+appearances that are at all unusual have, on the same
+belief in the inextricable union of celestial and terrestrial
+matters, been made the signs of calamities or extra-prosperity;
+the doleful side of human nature being usually the
+strongest, the former have been chosen more often than the
+latter.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>According to Seneca, the tradition of the Chaldees
+announced that a universal deluge would be caused by the
+conjunction of all the planets in the sign of Capricorn, and
+that a general breaking up of the earth would take place
+at the moment of their conjunction in Cancer. "The general
+break-up of the world," they said, "will happen when the
+stars which govern the heaven, penetrated with a quality
+of heat and dryness, meet one another in a fiery triplicity."</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere, and in all ages of the past, men have
+thought that a protecting providence, always watching over
+them, has taken care to warn them of the destinies which
+await them; thence the good and evil <i>presages</i> taken from
+the appearance of certain heavenly bodies, of divers meteors,
+or even the accidental meeting of certain animate or inanimate
+objects. The Indian of North America dying of
+famine in his miserable cabin, will not go out to the chase
+if he sees certain presages in the atmosphere. Nor need we
+be astonished at such ideas in an uncultivated man, when
+even among Europeans, a salt-cellar upset, a glass broken,
+a knife and fork crossed, the number thirteen at dinner, and
+such things are regarded as unlucky accidents. The employment
+of sorcery and divination is closely connected with
+these superstitions. Besides eclipses and comets, meteors
+were taken as the signs of divine wrath. We learn from
+S. Maximus of Turin, that the Christians of his time
+admitted the necessity of making a noise during eclipses,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span>
+so as to prevent the magicians from hurting the sun or
+moon, a superstition entirely pagan. They used to fancy
+they could see celestial armies in the air, coming to
+bring miraculous assistance to man. They thought the
+hurricanes and tempests the work of evil spirits, whose
+rage kept them set against the earth. S. Thomas Aquinas,
+the great theologian of the thirteenth century, accepted this
+opinion, just as he admitted the reality of sorceries. But
+the full development, as well as the nourishment of these
+superstitious ideas, was derived from the storehouse of
+astrology, which dealt with matters of ordinary occurrence,
+both in the heavens and on the earth&mdash;and to the history
+of which our next chapter is devoted.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+<img src="images/382.jpg" width="550" height="800" alt="Plate XIV." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Plate XIV.&mdash;Prodigies in the Middle Ages.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE GREATNESS AND THE FALL OF ASTROLOGY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Our study of the opinions of the ancients on the various
+phenomena of astronomy, leads us inevitably to the discussion
+of their astrology, which has in every age and among every
+people accompanied it&mdash;and though astrology be now no
+more as a science, or lingers only with those who are ignorant
+and desirous of taking advantage of the still greater ignorance
+of others&mdash;yet it is not lacking in interest as showing the
+effect of the phenomena of the heavens on the human mind,
+when that effect is brought to its most technical and complete
+development.</p>
+
+<p>We must distinguish in the first place two kinds of astrology,
+viz., natural and judicial. The first proposed to foresee
+and announce the changes of the seasons, the rains, wind,
+heat, cold, abundance, or sterility of the ground, diseases, &amp;c.,
+by means of a knowledge of the causes which act on the air
+and on the atmosphere. The other is occupied with objects
+which would be still more interesting to men. It traced at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span>
+the moment of his birth, or at any other period of his life,
+the line that each must travel according to his destiny. It
+pretended to determine our characters, our passions, fortune,
+misfortunes, and perils in reserve for each mortal.</p>
+
+<p>We have not here to consider the natural astrology, which
+is a veritable science of observation and does not deserve the
+name of astrology. It is rather worthy to be called the
+meteorological calendar of its cultivators. More rural than
+their descendants of the nineteenth century, the ancients
+had recognised the connection between the celestial phenomena
+and the vicissitudes of the seasons; they observed
+these phenomena carefully to discover the return of the
+same inclemencies; and they were able (or thought they
+were) to state the date of the return of particular kinds of
+weather with the same positions of the stars. But the very
+connection with the stars soon led the way to a degeneracy.
+The autumnal constellations, for example, Orion and Hercules,
+were regarded as rainy, because the rains came at the time
+when these stars rose. The Egyptians who observed in the
+morning, called Sirius "the burning," because his appearance
+in the morning was followed by the great heat of the summer:
+and it was the same with the other stars. Soon they regarded
+them as the cause of the rain and the heat&mdash;although they
+were but remote witnesses. The star Sirius is still connected
+with heat&mdash;since we call it the dog-star&mdash;and the hottest days
+of the year, July 22nd to August 23rd, we call dog-days.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span>
+At the commencement of our era, the morning rising of
+Sirius took place on the earlier of those days&mdash;though it does
+not now rise in the morning till the middle of August&mdash;and
+4,000 years ago it rose about the 20th of June, and preceded
+the annual rise of the Nile.</p>
+
+<p>The belief in the meteorological influence of the stars is
+one of the causes of judicial astrology. This latter has
+simply subjected man, like the atmosphere, to the influence
+of the stars; it has made dependent on them the risings of
+his passions, the good and ill fortune of his life, as well as
+the variations of the seasons. Indeed, it was very easy to
+explain. It is the stars, or heavenly bodies in general, that
+bring the winds, the rains, and the storms; their influences
+mixed with the action of the rays of the sun modify the
+cold or heat; the fertility of the fields, health or sickness,
+depend on these beneficial or injurious influences; not a
+blade of grass can grow without all the stars having contributed
+to its increase; man breathes the emanations which
+escaping from the heavenly bodies fill the air; man is
+therefore in his entire nature subjected to them; these
+stars must therefore influence his will and his passions;
+the good and evil passages in his career, in a word, must
+direct his life.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as it was established that the rising of a certain
+star or planet, and its aspect with regard to other planets,
+announced a certain destiny to man, it was natural to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span>
+believe that the rarer configurations signified extraordinary
+events, which concerned great empires, nations, and towns.
+And lastly, since errors grow faster than truth, it was natural
+to think that the configurations which were still more rare,
+such as the reunion of all the planets in conjunction with the
+same star, which can occur only after thousands of centuries,
+while nations have been renewed an infinity of times, and
+empires have been ruined, had reference to the earth itself,
+which had served as the theatre for all these events. Joined
+to these superstitious ideas was the tradition of a deluge, and
+the belief that the world must one day perish by fire, and
+so it was announced that the former event took place when
+all the planets were in conjunction in the sign of the Fishes,
+and the latter would occur when they all met in the sign of
+the Lion.</p>
+
+<p>The origin of astrology, like that of the celestial sphere,
+was in all probability in upper Asia.</p>
+
+<p>There, the starry heavens, always pure and splendid, invited
+observation and struck the imagination. We have already
+seen this with respect to the more matter-of-fact portions
+of astronomy. The Assyrians looked upon the stars as
+divinities endued with beneficent or maleficent power. The
+adoration of the heavenly bodies was the earliest form of
+religion among the pastoral population that came down from
+the mountains of Kurdestan to the plains of Babylon. The
+Chald&aelig;ans at last set apart a sacerdotal and learned caste<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span>
+devoted to the observation of the heavens; and the temples
+became regular observatories. Such doubtless was the tower
+of Babel&mdash;a monument consecrated to the seven planets, and
+of which the account has come down to us in the ancient
+book of Genesis.</p>
+
+<p>A long series of observations put the Chald&aelig;ans in possession
+of a theological astronomy, resting on a more or less
+chimerical theory of the influence of the celestial bodies on
+the events of nations and private individuals. Diodorus
+Siculus, writing towards the commencement of our era, has
+put us in possession of the most circumstantial details that
+have reached us with regard to the Chald&aelig;an priests.</p>
+
+<p>At the head of the gods, the Assyrians placed the sun and
+moon, whose courses and daily positions they had noted in
+the constellation of the zodiac, in which the sun remained,
+one month in each. The twelve signs were governed by as
+many gods, who had the corresponding months under their
+influence. Each of these months were divided into three
+parts, which made altogether thirty-six subdivisions, over
+which as many stars presided, called gods of consultation.
+Half of these gods had under their control the things which
+happen above the earth, and the other half those below. The
+sun and moon and the five planets occupied the most elevated
+rank in the divine hierarchy and bore the name of gods of
+interpretation. Among these planets Saturn or old Bel,
+which was regarded as the highest star and the most distant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span>
+from us, was surrounded by the greatest veneration; he was
+the interpreter <i>par excellence</i>&mdash;the revealer. Each of the other
+planets had his own particular name. Some of them, such
+as <i>Bel</i> (Jupiter), <i>Merodaez</i> (Mars), <i>Nebo</i> (Mercury), were
+regarded as male, and the others, as <i>Sin</i> (the Moon), and
+<i>Mylitta</i> or <i>Baulthis</i> (Venus), as females; and from their
+position relative to the zodiacal constellations, which were
+also called <i>Lords</i> or masters of the <i>Gods</i>, the Chald&aelig;ans
+derived the knowledge of the destiny of the men who were
+born under such and such a conjunction&mdash;predictions which
+the Greeks afterwards called horoscopes. The Chald&aelig;ans
+invented also relations between each of the planets and
+meteorological phenomena, an opinion partly founded on
+fortuitous coincidences which they had more or less frequently
+observed. In the time of Alexander their credit was considerable,
+and the king of Macedonia, either from superstition
+or policy, was in the habit of consulting them.</p>
+
+<p>It is probable that the Babylonian priests, who referred
+every natural property to sidereal influences, imagined there
+were some mysterious relations between the planets and the
+metals whose colours were respectively somewhat analogous
+to theirs. Gold corresponded to the sun, silver to the moon,
+lead to Saturn, iron to Mars, tin to Jupiter, and mercury
+still retains the name of the planet with which it was
+associated. It is less than two centuries ago, since the
+metals have ceased to be designated by the signs of their
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span>
+respective planets. Alchemy, the mother of chemistry, was
+an intimately connected sister of Astrology, the mother of
+Astronomy.</p>
+
+<p>Egyptian civilisation dates back to a no less remote period
+than that of Babylon. Not less careful observers than the
+Babylonish astrologers of the meteors and the atmospheric
+revolutions, they could predict certain phenomena, and they
+gave it out that they had themselves been the cause of
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Diodorus Siculus tells us that the Egyptian priests pretty
+generally predicted the years of barrenness or abundance, the
+contagions, the earthquakes, inundations, and comets. The
+knowledge of celestial phenomena made an essential part of
+the theology of the Egyptians as it did of the Chald&aelig;ans.
+They had colleges of priests specially attached to the study
+of the stars, at which Pythagoras, Plato, and Eudoxus were
+instructed.</p>
+
+<p>Religion was besides completely filled with the symbols
+relating to the sun or moon. Each month, each decade, each
+day was consecrated to a particular god. These gods, to the
+number of thirty, were called in the Alexandrine astronomy
+<i>decans</i> (&#948;&#941;&#954;&#945;&#957;&#959;&#953;). The festivals were marked by the periodical
+return of certain astronomical phenomena, and those heliacal
+risings to which any mythological ideas were attached, were
+noted with great care. We find even now proof of this old
+sacerdotal science in the zodiac sculptured on the ceilings of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span>
+certain temples, and in the hieroglyphic inscriptions relating to
+celestial phenomena.</p>
+
+<p>According to the Egyptians, who were no less aware than
+the Greeks, of the influence of atmospheric changes on our
+organs, the different stars had a special action on each part of
+the body. In the funeral rituals which were placed at the
+bottom of the coffins, constant allusion is made to this
+theory. Each limb of the dead body was placed under the
+protection of a particular god. The divinities divided between
+them, so to speak, the spoils of the dead. The head belonged
+to Ra, or the Sun, the nose and lips to Anubis, and so on.
+To establish the horoscope of anyone, this theory of specific
+influences was combined with the state of the heavens at the
+time of his birth. It seems even to have been the doctrine
+of the Egyptians, that a particular star indicated the coming
+of each man into the world, and this opinion was held also by
+the Medes, and is alluded to in the Gospels. In Egypt, as in
+Persia and Chald&aelig;a, the science of nature was a sacred
+doctrine, of which magic and astrology constituted the two
+branches, and in which the phenomena of the universe were
+attached very firmly to the divinities or genii with which
+they believed it filled. It was the same in the primitive
+religions of Greece.</p>
+
+<p>The Thessalian women had an especially great reputation
+in the art of enchantments. All the poets rival one another
+in declaring how they are able, by their magical hymns, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span>
+bring down the moon. Menander, in his comedy entitled <i>The
+Thessalian</i>, represents the mysterious ceremonies by the aid of
+which these sorcerers force the moon to leave the heavens, a
+prodigy which so completely became the type of enchantments
+that Nonnus tells us it is done by the Brahmins. There was,
+in addition, another <i>cultus</i> in Greece, namely, that of Hecate
+with mysterious rays, the patron of sorcerers. Lucian of
+Samosate&mdash;if the work on astrology which is ascribed to him
+be really his&mdash;justifies his belief in the influence of the stars
+in the following terms:&mdash;"The stars follow their orbit in the
+heaven; but independently of their motion, they act upon
+what passes here below. If you admit that a horse in a
+gallop, that birds in flying, and men in walking, make the
+stones jump or drive the little floating particles of dust by
+the wind of their course, why should you deny that the stars
+have any effect? The smallest fire sends us its emanations,
+and although it is not for us that the stars burn, and they
+care very little about warming us, why should we not receive
+any emanations from them? Astrology, it is true, cannot
+make that good which is evil. It can effect no change in
+the course of events; but it renders a service to those who
+cultivate it by announcing to them good things to come; it
+procures joy by anticipation at the same time that it fortifies
+them against the evil. Misfortune, in fact, does not take them
+by surprise, the foreknowledge of it renders it easier and
+lighter. That is my way of looking at astrology."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Very different is the opinion of the satirist Juvenal, who
+says that women are the chief cultivators of it. "All that
+an astrologer predicts to them," he says, "they think to come
+from the temple of Jupiter. Avoid meeting with a lady who
+is always casting up her <i>ephemerides</i>, who is so good an
+astrologer that she has ceased to consult, and is already
+beginning to be consulted; such a one on the inspection of
+the stars will refuse to accompany her husband to the army
+or to his native land. If she only wishes to drive a mile, the
+hour of departure is taken from her book of astrology. If
+her eye itches and wants rubbing, she will do nothing till she
+has run through her conjuring book. If she is ill in bed,
+she will take her food only at the times fixed in her <i>Petosiris</i>.
+Women of second-rate condition," he adds, "go round the
+circus before consulting their destiny, after which they show
+their hands and face to the diviner."</p>
+
+<p>When Octavius came into the world a senator versed in
+astrology, Nigidius Figulus, predicted the glorious destiny of
+the future emperor. Livia, the wife of Tiberius, asked
+another astrologer, Scribius, what would be the destiny of her
+infant; his reply was, they say, like the other's.</p>
+
+<p>The house of Poppea, the wife of Nero, was always full of
+astrologers. It was one of the soothsayers attached to her
+house, Ptolemy, who predicted to Otho his elevation to the
+empire, at the time of the expedition into Spain, where he
+accompanied him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The history of astrology under the Roman empire supplies
+some very curious stories, of which we may select an illustrative
+few.</p>
+
+<p>Octavius, in company with Agrippa, consulted one day the
+astrologer Theagenes.  The future husband of Julia, more
+credulous or more curious than the nephew of C&aelig;sar, was the
+first to take the horoscope. Theagenes foretold astonishing
+prosperity for him. Octavius, jealous of so happy a destiny,
+and fearing that the reply would be less favourable to him,
+instead of following the example of his companion, refused
+at first to state the day of his birth. But, curiosity getting
+the better of him, he decided to reply. No sooner had he
+told the day of his birth than the astrologer threw himself at
+his feet, and worshipped him as the future master of the
+empire. Octavius was transported with joy, and from that
+moment was a firm believer in astrology. To commemorate
+the happy influence of the zodiacal sign under which he
+was born, he had the picture of it struck on some of the
+medals that were issued in his reign.</p>
+
+<p>The masters of the empire believed in astrological divination,
+but wished to keep the advantages to themselves. They wanted
+to know the future without allowing their subjects to do the
+same. Nero would not permit anyone to study philosophy,
+saying it was a vain and frivolous thing, from which one
+might take a pretext to divine future events. He feared lest
+some one should push his curiosity so far as to wish to find<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span>
+out when and how the emperor should die&mdash;a sort of indiscreet
+question, replies to which lead to conspiracies and attempts.
+This was what the heads of the state were most
+afraid of.</p>
+
+<p>Tiberius had been to Rhodes, to a soothsayer of renown, to
+instruct himself in the rules of astrology. He had attached
+to his person the celebrated astrologer Thrasyllus, whose fate-revealing
+science he proved by one of those pleasantries
+which are only possible with tyrants.</p>
+
+<p>Whenever Tiberius consulted an astrologer he placed
+him in the highest part of his palace, and employed for
+his purpose an ignorant and powerful freedman, who
+brought by difficult paths, bounded by precipices, the
+astrologer whose science his Majesty wished to prove. On
+the return journey, if the astrologer was suspected of indiscretion
+or treachery, the freedman threw him into the
+sea, to bury the secret. Thrasyllus having been brought by
+the same route across these precipices, struck Tiberius with
+awe while he questioned him, by showing him his sovereign
+power, and easily disclosing the things of the future.
+C&aelig;sar asked him if he had taken his own horoscope, and
+with what signs were marked that day and hour for
+himself. Thrasyllus then examined the position and the
+distance of the stars; he hesitated at first, then he grew
+pale; then he looked again, and finally, trembling with
+astonishment and fear, he cried out that the moment was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span>
+perilous, and he was very near his last hour. Tiberius then
+embraced him and congratulated him on having escaped
+a danger by foreseeing it; and accepting henceforth all his
+predictions as oracles, he admitted him to the number of
+his intimate friends.</p>
+
+<p>Tiberius had a great number of people put to death
+who were accused of having taken their horoscope to know
+what honours were in store for them, although in secret he
+took the horoscopes of great people, that he might ascertain
+that he had no rivalry to fear from them. Septimus
+Severus was very nearly paying with his head for one of
+those superstitious curiosities that brought the ambitious
+of the time to the astrologer. In prosperous times he had
+gained faith in their predictions, and consulted them about
+important acts. Having lost his wife, and wishing to contract
+a second marriage, he took the horoscopes of the well-connected
+ladies who were at the time open to marriage.
+None of their fortunes, taken by the rules of astrology, were
+encouraging. He learnt at last that there was living in Syria
+a young woman to whom the Chald&aelig;ans had predicted
+that she should be the wife of a king. Severus was as
+yet but a legate. He hastened to demand her in marriage,
+and he obtained her; Julia was the name of the woman
+who was born under so happy a star; but was he the
+crowned husband which the stars had promised to the
+young Syrian? This reflection soon began to perplex<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span>
+Severus, and to get out of his perplexity he went to Sicily
+to consult an astrologer of renown. The matter came to
+the ears of the Emperor Commodus; and judge of his anger!
+The anger of Commodus was rage and frenzy; but the
+event soon gave the response that Severus was seeking
+in Sicily,&mdash;Commodus was strangled.</p>
+
+<p>Divination which had the emperor for its object at last
+came to be a crime of high treason. The rigorous measures
+resorted to against the indiscreet curiosity of ambition
+took more terrible proportions under the Christian emperors.</p>
+
+<p>Under Constantine, a number of persons who had applied
+to the oracles were punished with cruel tortures.</p>
+
+<p>Under Valens, a certain Palladius was the agent of a terrible
+persecution. Everyone found himself exposed to being
+denounced for having relations with soothsayers. Traitors
+slipped secretly into houses magic formul&aelig; and charms,
+which then became so many proofs against the inhabitant.
+The fear was so great in the East, says Ammienus Marcellinus,
+that a great number burned their books, lest matter should
+be found in them for an accusation of magic or sorcery.</p>
+
+<p>One day in anger, Vitellius commanded all the astrologers
+to leave Italy by a certain day. They responded by a poster,
+which impudently commanded the prince to leave the
+earth before that date, and at the end of the year Vitellius
+was put to death; on the other hand, the confidence accorded
+to astrologers led sometimes to the greatest extremes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span>
+For instance, after having consulted Babylus, Nero put
+to death all those whose prophecies promised the elevation
+of Heliogabalus. Another instance was that of Marcus
+Aurelius and his wife Faustina. The latter was struck
+with the beauty of a gladiator. For a long time she vainly
+strove in secret with the passion that consumed her, but the
+passion did nothing but increase. At last Faustina revealed
+the matter to her husband, and asked him for some remedy
+that should restore peace to her troubled soul. The philosophy
+of Marcus Aurelius could not suggest anything.
+So he decided to consult the Chald&aelig;ans, who were adepts
+at the art of mixing philters and composing draughts.
+The means prescribed were more simple than might have
+been expected from their complicated science; it was that
+the gladiator should be cut in pieces. They added that
+Faustina should afterwards be anointed with the blood
+of the victim. The remedy was applied, the innocent
+athlete was immolated, and the empress afterwards only
+dreamed of him with great pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>The first Christians were as much addicted to astrology
+as the other sects. The Councils of Laodicea (366, <small>A.D.</small>),
+of Arles (314), of Agdus (505), Orleans (511), Auxerre
+(570), and Narbonne (589), condemned the practice. According
+to a tradition of the commencement of our era, which
+appears to have been borrowed from Mazdeism, it was the
+rebel angels who taught men astrology and the use of charms.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Under Constantius the crime of high treason served as
+a pretext for persecution. A number of people were
+accused of it, who simply continued to practise the ancient
+religion. It was pretended that they had recourse to
+sorceries against the life of the emperor, in order to bring
+about his fall. Those who consulted the oracles were
+menaced with severe penalties and put to death by torture,
+under the pretence that by dealing with questions of fate
+they had criminal intentions. Plots without number
+multiplied the accusations; and the cruelty of the judges
+aggravated the punishments. The pagans, in their turn
+had to suffer the martyrdom which they had previously
+inflicted on the early disciples of Christ&mdash;or rather, to
+be truer, it was authority, always intolerable, whether pagan
+or Christian, that showed itself inexorable against those
+who dared to differ from the accepted faith. Libanius and
+Jamblicus were accused of having attempted to discover the
+name of the successor to the empire. Jamblicus, being
+frightened at the prosecution brought against him, poisoned
+himself. The name only of philosopher was sufficient to
+found an accusation upon. The philosopher Maximus
+Diogenes Alypius, and his son Hierocles, were condemned
+to lose their lives on the most frivolous pretence. An old
+man was put to death because he was in the habit of
+driving off the approach of fever by incantations, and a
+young man who was surprised in the act of putting his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span>
+hands alternately to a marble and his breast, because he
+thought that by counting in this way seven times seven, he
+might cure the stomach-ache, met with the same fate.</p>
+
+<p>Theodosius prohibited every kind of manifestation or usage
+connected with pagan belief. Whoever should dare to immolate
+a victim, said his law, or consult the entrails of the
+animals he had killed, should be regarded as guilty of the
+crime of high treason.</p>
+
+<p>The fact of having recourse to a process of divination was
+sufficient for an accusation against a man.</p>
+
+<p>Theodosius II. thought that the continuation of idolatrous
+practices had drawn down the wrath of heaven, and
+brought upon them the recent calamities that had afflicted
+his empire&mdash;the derangement of the seasons and the sterility
+of the soil&mdash;and he thundered out terrible threats when his
+faith and his anger united themselves into fanaticism.</p>
+
+<p>He wrote as follows to Florentius, prefect of the pr&aelig;torium
+in 439, the year that preceded his death:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Are we to suffer any longer from the seasons being
+upset by the effect of the divine wrath, on account of the
+atrocious perfidy of the pagans, which disturbs the equilibrium
+of nature? For what is the cause that now the
+spring has no longer its ordinary beauty, that the autumn
+no longer furnishes a harvest to the laborious workman
+and that the winter, by its rigour, freezes the soil and
+renders it sterile?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Perhaps we are unduly amused with these ideas of Theodosius
+so long as we retain the custom of asking the special intervention
+of Providence for the presence or absence of rain!</p>
+
+<p>In the middle ages, when astrology took such a hold on the
+world, several philosophers went so far as to consider the
+celestial vault as a book, in which each star, having the value
+of one of the letters of the alphabet, told in ineffaceable
+characters the destiny of every empire. The book of <i>Unheard-of
+Curiosities</i>, by Gaffarel, gives us the configuration of these
+celestial characters, and we find them also in the writings of
+Cornelius Agrippa. The middle ages took their astrological
+ideas from the Arabians and Jews. The Jews themselves at
+this epoch borrowed their principles from such contaminated
+sources that we are not able to trace in them the transmission
+of the ancient ideas. To give an example, Simeon Ben-Jochai,
+to whom is attributed the famous book called <i>Zohar</i>, had
+attained in their opinion such a prodigious acquaintance with
+celestial mysteries as indicated by the stars, that he could
+have read the divine law in the heavens before it had been
+promulgated on the earth. During the whole of the middle
+ages, whenever they wanted to clear up doubts about geography
+or astronomy, they always had recourse to this
+Oriental science, as cultivated by the Jews and Arabians.
+In the thirteenth century Alphonse X. was very importunate
+with the Jews to make them assist him with their advice in
+his vast astronomical and historical works.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Nicholas Oresmus, when the most enlightened monarch in
+Europe was supplying Du Guesclin with an astrologer to
+guide him in his strategical operations, was physician to
+Charles V. of France, who was himself devoted to astrology,
+and gave him the bishopric of Lisieux. He composed the
+<i>Treatise of the Sphere</i>, of which we have already spoken. A
+few years later, a learned man, the bishop Peter d'Ailly,
+actually dared to take the horoscope of Jesus Christ, and
+proved by most certain rules that the great event which
+inaugurated the new era was marked with very notable signs
+in astrology.</p>
+
+<p>Mathias Corvin, King of Hungary, never undertook anything
+without first consulting the astrologers. The Duke of
+Milan and Pope Paul also governed themselves by their
+advice. King Louis XI., who so heartily despised the rest of
+mankind, and had as much malice in him as he had weakness,
+had a curious adventure with an astrologer.</p>
+
+<p>It was told him that an astrologer had had the hardihood
+to predict the death of a woman of whom the king was very
+fond. He sent for the wretched prophet, gave him a severe
+reprimand, and then asked him the question, "You, who
+know everything, when will <i>you</i> die?" The astrologer, suspecting
+a trick, replied immediately, "Sire, three days before
+your Majesty." Fear and superstition overcame the monarch's
+resentment, and the king took particular care of the adroit
+impostor.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is well known how much Catherine de Medicis was
+under the influence of the astrologers. She had one in her
+H&ocirc;tel de Soissons in Paris, who watched constantly at the
+top of a tower. This tower is still in existence, by the
+Wool-Market, which was built in 1763 on the site of the
+hotel. It is surmounted by a sphere and a solar dial, placed
+there by the astronomer Pingr&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most celebrated of the astrologers who was
+under her patronage was Nostradamus. He was a physician
+of Provence, and was born at St. Reny in 1503. To medicine
+he joined astrology, and undertook to predict future events.
+He was called to Paris by Catherine in 1556, and attempted
+to write his oracles in poetry. His little book was much
+sought after during the whole of the remainder of the sixteenth
+century, and even in the beginning of the next.
+According to contemporary writers many imitations were
+made of it. It was written in verses of four lines, and was
+called <i>Quatrains Astronomiques</i>. As usual, the prophecies
+were obscure enough to suit anything, and many believers have
+thought they could trace in the various verses prophecies of
+known events, by duly twisting and manipulating the sense.</p>
+
+<p>A very amusing prophecy, which happened to be too clear
+to leave room for mistakes as to its meaning, and which
+turned out to be most ludicrously wrong, was one contained
+in a little book published in 1572 with this title:&mdash;<i>Prognostication
+touching the marriage of the very honourable and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span>
+beloved Henry, by the Grace of God King of Navarre, and
+the very illustrious Princess Marguerite of France, calculated
+by Master Bernard Abbatio, Doctor in Medicine, and Astrologer
+to the very Christian King of France.</i></p>
+
+<p>First he asked if the marriage would be happy, and
+says:&mdash;"Having in my library made the figure of the
+heavens, I found that the lord of the ascendant is joined
+to the lord of the seventh house, which is for the woman
+of a trine aspect, from whence I have immediately concluded,
+according to the opinion of Ptolemy, Haly, Zael, Messahala,
+and many other sovereign astrologers, that they will love
+one another intensely all their lives." In point of fact they
+always detested each other. Again, "as to length of
+life, I have prepared another figure, and have found that
+Jupiter and Venus are joined to the sun with fortification,
+and that they will approach a hundred years;" after all
+Henri IV. died before he was sixty. "Our good King of
+Navarre will have by his most noble and virtuous Queen
+many children; since, after I had prepared another figure of
+heaven, I found the ascendant and its lord, together with
+the moon, all joined to the lord of the fifth house, called
+that of children, which will be pretty numerous, on account
+of Jupiter and also of Venus;" and yet they had no children!
+"Jupiter and Venus are found domiciled on the aquatic
+signs, and since these two planets are found concordant
+with the lord of the ascendant, all this proves that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span>
+children will be upright and good, and that they will love
+their father and mother, without doing them any injury, nor
+being the cause of their destruction, as is seen in the fruit
+of the nut, which breaks, opens, and destroys the stock
+from which it took its birth. The children will live long,
+they will be good Christians, and with their father will
+make themselves so benign and favourable towards those of
+our religion, that at last they will be as beloved as any man
+of our period, and there will be no more wars among the
+French, as there would have been but for the present
+marriage. God grant us grace that so long as we are in
+this transitory life we may see no other king but
+Charles IX., the present King of France." And yet these
+words were written in the year of the massacre of St.
+Bartholomew's day! and the marriage was broken off, and
+Henri IV. married to Marie de Medici. So much for the
+astrological predictions!</p>
+
+<p>The aspect in which astrology was looked upon by the
+better minds even when it was flourishing may be illustrated
+by two quotations we may make, from Shakespeare and
+Voltaire.</p>
+
+<p>Our immortal poet puts into the mouth of Edmund in
+<i>King Lear</i>:&mdash;"This is the excellent foppery of the world,
+that when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeit of
+our own behaviour) we make guilty of our disasters the
+sun, the moon, and the stars, as if we were villains by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span>
+necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and
+treacherous, by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and
+adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence;
+and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An
+admirable evasion of a libertine to lay his goatish disposition
+to the charge of a star! My father married my mother
+under the Dragon's tail; and my nativity was under <i>Ursa
+major</i>; so that it follows I am rough lecherous. Tut, I
+should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in
+the firmament twinkled on my birth."</p>
+
+<p>Voltaire writes thus:&mdash;"This error is ancient, and that is
+enough. The Egyptians, the Chald&aelig;ans, the Jews could predict,
+and therefore we can predict now. If no more predictions
+are made it is not the fault of the art. So said the alchemists
+of the philosopher's stone. If you do not find to-day
+it is because you are not clever enough; but it is certain that
+it is in the clavicle of Solomon, and on that certainty more
+than two hundred families in Germany and France have
+been ruined. Do you wonder either that so many men,
+otherwise much exalted above the vulgar, such as princes
+or popes, who knew their interests so well, should be so
+ridiculously seduced by this impertinence of astrology.
+They were very proud and very ignorant. There were no
+stars but for them; the rest of the universe was <i>canaille</i>, for
+whom the stars did not trouble themselves. I have not
+the honour of being a prince. Nevertheless, the celebrated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span>
+Count of Boulainvilliers and an Italian, called Colonne, who
+had great reputation in Paris, both predicted to me that I
+should infallibly die at the age of thirty-two. I have had
+the malice already to deceive them by thirty years, for
+which I humbly beg their pardon."</p>
+
+<p>The method by which these predictions were arrived at
+consisted in making the different stars and planets responsible
+for different parts of the body, different properties, and
+different events, and making up stories from the association
+of ideas thus obtained, which of course admitted of the
+greatest degree of latitude. The principles are explained by
+Manilius in his great poem entitled <i>The Astronomicals</i>,
+written two thousand years ago.</p>
+
+<p>According to him the sun presided over the head, the
+moon over the right arm, Venus over the left, Jupiter over
+the stomach, Mars the parts below, Mercury over the right
+leg, and Saturn over the left.</p>
+
+<p>Among the constellations, the Ram governed the head; the
+Bull the neck; the Twins the arms and shoulders; the Crab
+the chest and the heart; the Lion the stomach; the abdomen
+corresponded to the sign of the Virgin; the reins to the
+Balance; then came the Scorpion; the Archer, governing the
+thighs; the He-goat the knees; the Waterer the legs; and
+the Fishes the feet.</p>
+
+<p>Albert the Great assigned to the stars the following
+influences:&mdash;Saturn was thought to rule over life, changes,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span>
+sciences, and buildings; Jupiter over honour, wishes, riches,
+and cleanness; Mars over war, prisons, marriages, and
+hatred; the sun over hope, happiness, gain, and heritages;
+Venus over friendships and amours; Mercury over illness,
+debts, commerce, and fear; the moon over wounds, dreams,
+and larcenies.</p>
+
+<p>Each of these stars also presides over particular days of
+the week, particular colours, and particular metals.</p>
+
+<p>The sun governed the Sunday; the moon, Monday;
+Mars, Tuesday; Mercury, Wednesday; Jupiter, Thursday;
+Venus, Friday; and Saturn, Saturday; which is partially
+indicated by our own names of the week, but more particularly
+in the French names, which are each and all derived
+from these stars.</p>
+
+<p>The sun represented yellow; the moon, white; Venus,
+green; Mars, red; Jupiter, blue; Saturn, black; Mercury,
+shaded colours.</p>
+
+<p>We have already indicated the metals that corresponded
+to each.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was reckoned to be beneficent and favourable;
+Saturn to be sad, morose, and cold; Jupiter, temperate and
+benign; Mars, vehement; Venus, benevolent and fertile;
+Mercury, inconstant; and the moon, melancholy.</p>
+
+<p>Among the constellations, the Ram, the Lion, and the Archer
+were hot, dry and vehement. The Bull, the Virgin, and the
+He-goat were heavy, cold, and dry; the Twins, the Balance,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span>
+and the Waterer were light, hot, and moist; the Crab,
+Scorpion, and the Fishes were moist, soft, and cold.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+<img src="images/409.jpg" width="550" height="800" alt="Plate XV." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Plate XV.&mdash;An Astrologer at Work.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In this way the heavens were made to be intimately
+connected with the affairs of earth; and astrology was in
+equally intimate connection with astronomy, of which it
+may in some sense be considered the mother. The drawers
+of horoscopes were at one time as much in request as
+lawyers or doctors.  One Thurneisen, a famous astrologer
+and an extraordinary man, who lived last century at the
+electoral court of Berlin, was at the same time physician,
+chemist, drawer of horoscopes, almanack maker, printer, and
+librarian. His astrological reputation was so widespread
+that scarcely a birth took place in families of any rank in
+Germany, Poland, Hungary, or even England without there
+being sent an immediate envoy to him to announce the
+precise moment of birth.  He received often three and
+sometimes as many as ten messages a day, and he was at
+last so pressed with business that he was obliged to take
+associates and agents.</p>
+
+<p>In the days of Kepler we know that astrology was more
+thought of than astronomy, for though on behalf of the
+world he worked at the latter, for his own daily bread he
+was in the employ of the former, making almanacks and
+drawing horoscopes that he might live.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>TIME AND THE CALENDAR.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The opinions of thinkers on the nature of time have been
+very varied. Some have considered time as an absolute
+reality, which is exactly measured by hours, days, and years,
+and is as known and real as any other object whose existence
+is known to us. Others maintain that time is only a matter
+of sensation, or that it is an illusion, or a hallucination
+of a lively brain.</p>
+
+<p>The definitions given of it by different great writers is
+as various. Thus Kant calls it "one of the forms of
+sensibility." Schelling declares it is "pure activity with
+the negation of all being." Leibnitz defines it "the order
+of successions" as he defined space to be the order of
+co-existences. Newton and Clarke make space and time
+two attributes of the Deity.</p>
+
+<p>A study of the astronomical phenomena of the universe,
+and a consideration of their teaching, give us authority for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span>
+saying, that neither space nor time are realities, but that
+the only things absolute are eternity and infinity.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, we give the name of time to the succession of
+the terrestrial events measured by the motion of the earth.
+If the earth were not to move, we should have no means
+of measuring, and consequently no idea of time as we
+have it now. So long as it was believed that the earth was
+at rest, and that the sun and all the stars turned round us,
+this apparent motion was then, as the real motion of the
+earth is now, the method of generating time. In fact, the
+Fathers said that at the end of the world the diurnal
+motion would cease, and there would be no more time.
+But let us examine the fact a little further.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose for an instant that the earth was, as it was
+formerly believed to be, an immense flat surface, which was
+illuminated by a sun which remained always immovable at
+the zenith, or by an invariable diffused light&mdash;such an
+earth being supposed to be alone by itself in the universe
+and immovable. Now if there were a man created on that
+earth, would there be such a thing as "time" for him?
+The light which illumines him is immovable. No moving
+shadow, no gnomon, no sun-dial would be possible. No day
+nor night, no morning nor evening, no year. Nothing that
+could be divided into days, hours, minutes, and seconds.</p>
+
+<p>In such a case one would have to fall back upon some
+other terminating events, which would indicate a lapse of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span>
+time; such for instance as the life of a man. This, however,
+would be no universal measure, for on one planet the life
+might be a thousand years, and on another only a hundred.</p>
+
+<p>Or we may look at it in another way. Suppose the
+earth were to turn twice as fast about itself and about the
+sun, the persons who lived sixty of such years would only
+have lived thirty of our present years, but they would
+have seen sixty revolutions of the earth, and, rigorously
+speaking, would have lived sixty years. If the earth turned
+ten times as fast, sixty years would be reduced to ten, but
+they would still be sixty of those years. We should live
+just as long; there would be four seasons, 365 days, &amp;c.,
+only everything would be more rapid: but it would be
+exactly the same thing for us, and the other apparently
+celestial motions having a similar diminution, there would
+be no change perceived by us.</p>
+
+<p>Again, consider the minute animals that are observable
+under the microscope, which live but for five minutes.
+During that period, they have time to be born and to grow.
+From embryos they become adult, marry, so to speak, and
+have a numerous progeny, which they develop and send into
+the world. Afterwards they die, and all this in a few
+minutes. The impressions which, in spite of their minuteness,
+we are justified in presuming them to possess, though
+rapid and fleeting, may be as profound for them in proportion
+as ours are to us, and their measure of time would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span>
+be very different from ours. All is relative. In absolute
+value, a life completed in a hundred years is not longer than
+one that is finished in five minutes.</p>
+
+<p>It is the same for space. The earth has a diameter of
+8,000 miles, and we are five or six feet high. Now if, by
+any process, the earth should diminish till it became as
+small as a marble, and if the different elements of the world
+underwent a corresponding diminution, our mountains might
+become as small as grains of sand, the ocean might be
+but a drop, and we ourselves might be smaller than the
+microscopic animals adverted to above. But for all that
+nothing would have changed for us. We should still be our
+five or six feet high, and the earth would remain exactly
+the same number of our miles.</p>
+
+<p>A value then that can be decreased and diminished at
+pleasure without change is not a mathematical absolute
+value. In this sense then it may be said that neither time
+nor space have any real existence.</p>
+
+<p>Or once again. Suppose that instead of our being on
+the globe, we were placed in pure space. What time should
+we find there? No time. We might remain ten years,
+twenty, a hundred, or a thousand years, but we should never
+arrive at the next year! In fact each planet makes its own
+time for its inhabitants, and where there is no planet or
+anything answering to it there is no time. Jupiter makes
+for its inhabitants a year which is equal to twelve years<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span>
+of ours, and a day of ten of our hours. Saturn has a year
+equal to thirty of ours, and days of ten hours and a quarter.
+In other solar systems there are two or three suns, so that
+it is difficult to imagine what sort of time they can have.
+All this infinite diversity of time takes place in eternity,
+the only thing that is real. The whole history of the earth
+and its inhabitants takes place, not in time, but in eternity.
+Before the existence of the earth and our solar system, there
+was another time, measured by other motions, and having
+relation to other beings. When the earth shall exist no
+longer, there may be in the place we now occupy, another
+time again, for other beings. But they are not realities. A
+hundred millions of centuries, and a second, have the same
+real length in eternity. In the middle of space, we could
+not tell the difference. Our finite minds are not capable of
+grasping the infinite, and it is well to know that our only
+idea of time is relative, having relation to the regular events
+that befall this planet in its course, and not a thing which
+we can in any way compare with that, which is so alarming
+to the ideas of some&mdash;eternity.</p>
+
+<p>We have then to deal with the particular form of time
+that our planet makes for us, for our personal use.</p>
+
+<p>It turns about the sun. An entire circuit forms a
+period, which we can use for a measure in our terrestrial
+affairs. We call it a year, or in Latin <i>annus</i>, signifying a
+circle, whence our word <i>annual</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A second, shorter revolution, turns the earth upon itself, and
+brings each meridian directly facing the sun, and then round
+again to the opposite side. This period we call a <i>day</i>, from
+the Latin <i>dies</i>, which in Italian becomes <i>giorne</i>, whence the
+French <i>jour</i>. In Sanscrit we have the same word in <i>dyaus</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The length of time that it takes for the earth to arrive at
+the same position with respect to the stars, which is called
+a sidereal year, amounts to 365&middot;2563744 days. But during
+this time, as we have seen, the equinox is displaced among
+the stars. This secular retrogression brings it each year a
+little to the east of its former position, so that the sun
+arrives there about eleven minutes too soon. By taking
+this amount from the sidereal we obtain the tropical year,
+which has reference to the seasons and the calendar. Its
+length is 365&middot;2422166 days, or 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes,
+47&middot;8 seconds.</p>
+
+<p>In what way was the primitive year regulated? was it
+a solar or a sidereal year?</p>
+
+<p>There can be no doubt that when there was an absence
+of all civilisation and a calendar of any sort was unknown,
+the year meant simply the succession of seasons, and that
+no attempt would be made to reckon any day as its
+commencement. And as soon as this was attempted a
+difficulty would arise from there not being an exact number
+of days in the year. So that when reckoned as the interval
+between certain positions of the sun they would be of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span>
+different lengths, which would introduce some difficulty as to
+the commencement of the year. Be this the case, however,
+or not, Mr. Haliburton's researches seem to show that the
+earliest form of year was the sidereal one, and that it was
+regulated by the Pleiades.</p>
+
+<p>In speaking of that constellation we have noticed that
+among the islanders of the southern hemisphere and others
+there are two years in one of ours, the first being called the
+Pleiades above and the second the Pleiades below; and we
+have seen how the same new year's day has been recognised
+in very many parts of the world and among the ancient
+Egyptians and Hindoos. This year would begin in November,
+and from the intimate relation of all the primitive calendars
+that have been discovered to a particular day, taken as
+November 17 by the Egyptians, it would appear probable that
+for a long time corrections were made both by the Egyptians
+and others in order to keep the phenomenon of the Pleiades
+just rising at sunset to one particular named day of their year&mdash;showing
+that the year they used was a sidereal one. This
+can be traced back as far as 1355 <small>B.C.</small> among the Egyptians,
+and to 1306 <small>B.C.</small> among the Hindoos. There seem to have
+been in use also shorter periods of three months, which, like
+the two-season year, appear to have been, as they are now
+among the Japanese, regulated by the different positions of
+the Pleiades.</p>
+
+<p>Among the Siamese of the present day, there are both<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span>
+forms of the year existing, one sidereal, beginning in
+November, and regulated by the fore-named constellation;
+and the other tropical, beginning in April. Whether, however,
+the year be reckoned by the stars or by the sun, there
+will always be a difficulty in arranging the length of the
+year, because in each case there will be about a quarter of a
+day over.</p>
+
+<p>It seems, too, to have been found more convenient in early
+times to take 360 days as the length of the year, and to
+add an intercalary month now and then, rather than 365
+and add a day.</p>
+
+<p>Thus among the earliest Egyptians the year was of 360
+days, which were reckoned in the months, and five days
+were added each year, between the commencement of one
+and the end of the other, and called unlucky days. It was
+the belief of the Egyptians that these five days were the
+birthdays of their principal gods; Osiris being born on the
+first, Anieris (or Apollo) on the second, Typhon on the third,
+Isis on the fourth, Nephys (or Aphrodite) on the fifth. These
+appear to have some relation with similar unlucky days
+among the Greeks and Romans, and other nations.</p>
+
+<p>The 360 days of the Egyptian year were represented at
+Acantho, near Memphis, in a symbolical way, there being
+placed a perforated vessel, which each day was filled with
+water by one of a company of 360 priests, each priest having
+charge over one day in the year. A similar symbolism was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span>
+used at the tomb of Osiris, around which were placed 360
+pitchers, one of which each day was filled with milk.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the 365 days were represented by the
+tomb of Osymandyas, at Thebes, being surrounded by a circle
+of gold which was one cubit broad and 365 cubits in circumference.
+On the side were written the risings and
+settings of the stars, with the prognostications derived from
+them by the Egyptian astrologers. It was destroyed, however,
+by Cambyses when the Persians conquered Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>They divided their year according to Herodotus into
+twelve months, the names of which have come down to us.</p>
+
+<p>Even with the 365 days, which their method of reckoning
+would practically come to, they would still be a quarter of
+a day each year short; so that in four years it would amount
+to a whole day, an error which would amount to something
+perceptible even during the life of a single man, by
+its bringing the commencement of the civil year out of
+harmony with the seasons. In fact the first day of the year
+would gradually go through all the seasons, and at the end
+of 1460 solar years there would have been completed 1461
+civil years, which would bring back the day to its original
+position. This period represents a cycle of years in which
+approximately the sun and the earth come to the same
+relative position again, as regards the earth's rotation on its
+axis and revolution round the sun. This cycle was noticed
+by Firmicius. Another more accurate cycle of the same<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span>
+kind, noticed by Syncellus, is obtained by multiplying 1461
+by 25, making 36,525 years, which takes into account the
+defect which the extra hours over 365 have from six. The
+Egyptians, however, did not allow their year to get into so
+large an error, though it was in error by their using sidereal
+time, regulating their year, and intercalating days, first
+according to the risings of the Pleiades, and after according
+to that of Sirius, the dog-star, which announced to them
+the approaching overflowing of the Nile, a phenomenon of
+such great value to Egypt that they celebrated it with annual
+f&ecirc;tes of the greatest magnificence.</p>
+
+<p>Among the Babylonians, as we are informed by Mr. Sayce,
+the year was divided into twelve lunar months and 360 days,
+an intercalary month being added whenever a certain star,
+called the "star of stars," or Icu, also called Dilgan, by the
+ancient Accadians, meaning the "messenger of light," and
+what is now called Aldebaran, which was just in advance of
+the sun when it crossed the vernal equinox, was not parallel
+with the moon until the third of Nisan, that is, two days
+after the equinox. They also added shorter months of a
+few days each when this system became insufficient to keep
+their calendar correct.</p>
+
+<p>They divided their year into four quarters of three months
+each; the spring quarter not commencing with the beginning
+of the year when the sun entered the spring equinox, proving
+that the arrangement of seasons was subsequent to the settling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span>
+of the calendar. The names of their months were given them
+from the corresponding signs of the zodiac; which was the
+same as our own, though the zodiac began with Aries and the
+year with Nisan.</p>
+
+<p>They too had cycles, but they arose from a very different
+cause; not from errors of reckoning in the civil year or the
+revolution of the earth, but from the variations of the weather.
+Every twelve solar years they expected to have the same
+weather repeated. When we connect this with their observations
+on the varying brightness of the sun, especially at the
+commencement of the year on the first of Nisan, which they
+record at one time as "bright yellow" and at another as
+"spotted," and remember that modern researches have shown
+that weather is certainly in some way dependent on the
+solar spots, which have a period <i>now</i> of about eleven years,
+we cannot help fancying that they were very near to
+making these discoveries.</p>
+
+<p>The year of the ancient Persians consisted of 365 days.
+The extra quarter of a day was not noticed for 120 years,
+at the end of which they intercalated a month&mdash;in the first
+instance, at the end of the first month, which was thus
+doubled. At the end of another 120 years they inserted an
+intercalary month after the second month, and so on through
+all their twelve months. So that after 1440 years the series
+began again. This period they called the intercalary cycle.</p>
+
+<p>The calendar among the Greeks was more involved, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span>
+more useful. It was <i>luni-solar</i>, that is to say, they regulated
+it at the same time by the revolutions of the moon and the
+motion about the sun, in the following manner:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The year commenced with the new moon nearest to the
+20th or 21st of June, the time of the summer solstice; it
+was composed in general of twelve months, each of which
+commenced on the day of the new moon, and which had
+alternately twenty-nine and thirty days.</p>
+
+<p>This arrangement, conformable to the lunar year, only gave
+354 days to the civil year, and as this was too short by ten
+days, twenty-one hours, this difference, by accumulation,
+produced nearly eighty-seven days at the end of eight years,
+or three months of twenty-nine days each. To bring the
+lunar years into accordance with the solstices, it was necessary
+to add three intercalary months every eight years.</p>
+
+<p>The phases of the moon being thus brought into comparison
+with the rotation of the earth, a cycle was discovered
+by Meton, now known as the Metonic cycle, useful also in
+predicting eclipses, which comprised nineteen years, during
+which time 235 lunations will have very nearly occurred, and
+the full moons will return to the same dates. In fact,
+the year and the lunation are to one another very nearly in
+the proportion of 235 to 19. By observing for nineteen
+years the positions and phases of the moon, they will be
+found to return again in the same order at the same times,
+and they can therefore be predicted. This lunar cycle was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span>
+adopted in the year 433 <small>B.C.</small> to regulate the luni-solar
+calendar, and it was engraved in letters of gold on the walls
+of the temple of Minerva, from whence comes the name
+<i>golden number</i>, which is given to the number that marks
+the place of the given year in this period of nineteen.</p>
+
+<p>Caliphus made a larger and more exact cycle by multiplying
+by four and taking away one day. Thus he made
+of 27,759 days 76 Julian years, during which there were
+940 lunations.</p>
+
+<p>The Roman calendar was even more complicated than the
+Greek, and not so good. Romulus is said to have given to his
+subjects a strange arrangement that we can no longer understand.
+More of a warrior than a philosopher, this founder
+of Rome made the year to consist of ten months, some being
+of twenty days and others of fifty-five. These unequal
+lengths were probably regulated by the agricultural works
+to be done, and by the prevailing religious ideas. After the
+conclusion of these days they began counting again in the
+same order; so that the year had only 304 days.</p>
+
+<p>The first of these ten months was called <i>Mars</i> after the
+name of the god from whom Romulus pretended to have
+descended. The name of the second, Aprilis, was derived
+from the word <i>aperire</i>, to open, because it was at the time
+that the earth opened; or it may be, from Aphrodite, one of
+the names of Venus, the supposed grandmother of &AElig;neas.
+The third month was consecrated to <i>Ma&iuml;a</i>, the mother of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span>
+Mercury. The names of the six others expressed simply
+their order&mdash;Quintilis, the fifth; Sextilis, the sixth; September,
+the seventh; and so on.</p>
+
+<p>Numa added two months to the ten of Romulus; one took
+the name of <i>Januarius</i>, from <i>Janus</i>: the name of the other
+was derived either from the sacrifices (<i>februalia</i>), by which
+the faults committed during the course of the past year were
+expiated, or from <i>Februo</i>, the god of the dead, to which the
+last month was consecrated. The year then had 355 days.</p>
+
+<p>These Roman months have become our own, and hence a
+special interest attaches to the consideration of their origin,
+and the explanation of the manner in which they have been
+modified and supplemented. Each of them was divided into
+unequal parts, by the days which were known as the calends,
+nones, and ides. The calends were invariably fixed to the
+first day of each month; the nones came on the 5th or 7th,
+and the ides the 13th or 15th.</p>
+
+<p>The Romans, looking forward, as children do to festive
+days, to the f&ecirc;te which came on these particular days, named
+each day by its distance from the next that was following.
+Immediately after the calends of a month, the dates were
+referred to the nones, each day being called seven, six, five,
+and so on days before the nones; on the morrow of the
+nones they counted to the ides; and so the days at the
+end of the month always bore the name of the calends of
+the month following.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>To complete the confusion the 2nd day before the f&ecirc;te
+was called the 3rd, by counting the f&ecirc;te itself as the 1st, and
+so they added one throughout to the number that <i>we</i> should
+now say expressed our distance from a certain date.</p>
+
+<p>Since there were thus ten days short in each year, it was
+soon found necessary to add them on, so a supplementary
+month was created, which was called Mercedonius. This
+month, by another anomaly, was placed between the 23rd
+and 24th of February. Thus, after February 23rd, came
+1st, 2nd, 3rd of Mercedonius; and then after the dates of
+this supplementary month were gone through, the original
+month was taken up again, and they went on with the 24th
+of February.</p>
+
+<p>And finally, to complete the medley, the priests who had
+the charge of regulating this complex calendar, acquitted
+themselves as badly as they could; by negligence or an
+arbitrary use of their power they lengthened or shortened
+the year without any uniform rule. Often, indeed, they
+consulted in this nothing but their own convenience, or the
+interests of their friends.</p>
+
+<p>The disorder which this license had introduced into the
+calendar proceeded so far that the months had changed from
+the seasons, those of winter being advanced to the autumn,
+those of the autumn to the summer. The f&ecirc;tes were celebrated
+in seasons different from those in which they were
+instituted, so that of Ceres happened when the wheat was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span>
+in the blade, and that of Bacchus when the raisins were
+green. Julius C&aelig;sar, therefore, determined to establish a
+solar year according to the known period of revolution of
+the sun, that is 365 days and a quarter. He ordained that
+each fourth year a day should be intercalated in the place
+where the month Mercedonius used to be inserted, <i>i.e.</i>
+between the 23rd and 24th of February.</p>
+
+<p>The 6th of the calends of March in ordinary years was
+the 24th of February; it was called <i>sexto-kalendas</i>. When an
+extra day was put in every fourth year before the 24th, this
+was a second 6th day, and was therefore called <i>bissexto-kalendas</i>,
+whence we get the name bissextile, applied to leap year.</p>
+
+<p>But it was necessary also to bring back the public f&ecirc;tes
+to the seasons they ought to be held in: for this purpose
+C&aelig;sar was obliged to insert in the current year, 46 <small>B.C.</small> (or
+708 <small>A.U.C.</small>), two intercalary months beside the month Mercedonius.
+There was, therefore, a year of fifteen months divided
+into 445 days, and this was called the year of confusion.</p>
+
+<p>C&aelig;sar gave the strictest injunctions to Sosigenes, a celebrated
+Alexandrian astronomer whom he brought to Rome
+for this purpose; and on the same principles Flavius was
+ordered to compose a new calendar, in which all the Roman
+f&ecirc;tes were entered&mdash;following, however, the old method of
+reckoning the days from the calends, nones, and ides.
+Antonius, after the death of C&aelig;sar, changed the name of
+Quintilis, in which Julius C&aelig;sar was born, into the name<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span>
+<i>Julius</i>, whence we derive our name July. The name of
+<i>Augustus</i> was given to the month <i>Sextilis</i>, because the Emperor
+Augustus obtained his greatest victories during that month.</p>
+
+<p>Tiberius, Nero, and other imperial monsters attempted
+to give their names to the other months. But the people
+had too much independence and sense of justice to accord
+them such a flattery.</p>
+
+<p>The remaining months we have as they were named in
+the days of Numa Pompilius.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 430px;">
+<img src="images/427.jpg" width="430" height="260" alt="Fig. 57." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 57.&mdash;The Roman Calendar.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>A cubical block of white marble has been found at
+Pompeii which illustrates this very well.</p>
+
+<p>Each of the four sides is divided into three columns, and
+on each column is the information about the month. Each
+month is surmounted by the sign of the zodiac through
+which the sun is passing. Beneath the name of the month
+is inscribed the number of days it contains; the date
+of the nones, the number of the hours of the day, and of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span>
+the night; the place of the sun, the divinity under whose
+protection the month is placed, the agricultural works that
+are to be done in it, the civil and ecclesiastical ceremonies
+that are to be performed.  These inscriptions are to be seen
+under the month January to the left of the woodcut.</p>
+
+<p>The reform thus introduced by Julius C&aelig;sar is commonly
+known as the <i>Julian reform</i>. The first year in which this
+calendar was followed was 44 <small>B.C.</small></p>
+
+<p>The Julian calendar was in use, without any modification,
+for a great number of years; nevertheless, the mean value
+which had been assigned to the civil year being a little
+different to that of the tropical, a noticeable change at length
+resulted in the dates in which, each year, the seasons commenced;
+so that if no remedy had been introduced, the
+same season would be displaced little by little each year,
+so as to commence successively in different months.</p>
+
+<p>The Council of Nice, which was held in the year 325 of
+the Christian era, adopted a fixed rule to determine the
+time at which Easter falls. This rule was based on the
+supposed fact that the spring equinox happened every year
+on the 21st of March, as it did at the time of the meeting
+of the Council. This would indeed be the case if the mean
+value of the civil year of the Julian calendar was exactly
+equal to the tropical year. But while the first is 365&middot;25
+days, the second is 365&middot;242264 days; so that the tropical
+year is too small by 11 minutes and 8 seconds. It follows<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span>
+hence that after the lapse of four Julian years the vernal
+equinox, instead of happening exactly at the same time
+as it did four years before, will happen 44 minutes 32
+seconds too soon; and will gain as much in each succeeding
+four years. So that at the end of a certain number of
+years, after the year 325, the equinox will happen on the
+20th of March, afterwards on the 19th, and so on. This continual
+advance notified by the astronomers, determined Pope
+Gregory XIII. to introduce a new reform into the calendar.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the year 1582 that the <i>Gregorian reform</i> was
+put into operation. At that epoch the vernal equinox
+happened on the 11th instead of the 21st of March. To get
+rid of this advance of ten days that the equinox had made
+and to bring it back to the original date, Pope Gregory
+decided that the day after the 4th of October, 1582, should
+be called the 15th instead of the 5th. This change only did
+away with the inconvenience at the time attaching to the
+Julian calendar; it was necessary to make also some modification
+in the rule which served to determine the lengths of
+the civil years, in order to avoid the same error for the future.</p>
+
+<p>So the Pope determined that in each 400 years there
+should be only 97 bissextile years, instead of 100, as there
+used to be in the Julian calendar. This made three days
+taken off the 400 years, and in consequence the mean value of
+the civil year is reduced to 365&middot;2425 days, which is not far
+from the true tropical year. The Gregorian year thus obtained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span>
+is still too great by &middot;000226 of a day; the date of the vernal
+equinox will still then advance in virtue of this excess, but
+it is easy to see that the Gregorian reform will suffice for a
+great number of centuries.</p>
+
+<p>The method in which it is carried out is as follows:&mdash;In
+the Julian calendar each year that divided by four when
+expressed in its usual way, by <small>A.D.</small>, was a leap year, and
+therefore each year that completed a century was such,
+as 1300, 1400 and so on&mdash;but in the Gregorian reform, all
+these century numbers are to be reckoned common years, unless
+the number without the two cyphers divides by four; thus
+1,900 will be a common year and 2,000 a leap year. It is
+easy to see that this will leave out three leap years in
+every 400 years.</p>
+
+<p>The Gregorian calendar was immediately adopted in France
+and Germany, and a little later in England. Now it is in
+operation in all the Christian countries of Europe, except
+Russia, where the Julian calendar is still followed. It
+follows that Russian dates do not agree with ours. In 1582,
+the difference was ten days, and this difference remained
+the same till the end of the seventeenth century, when the
+year 1700 was bissextile in the Julian, but not in the
+Gregorian calendar, so the difference increased to eleven
+days, and now in the same way is twelve days.</p>
+
+<p>Next to the year, comes the day as the most natural
+division of time in connection with the earth, though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span>
+it admits of less difference in its arrangements, as we
+cannot be mistaken as to its length. It is the natural
+standard too of our division of time into shorter intervals
+such as hours, minutes, and seconds. By the word <i>day</i> we
+mean of course the interval during which the earth makes
+a complete revolution round itself, while <i>daytime</i> may be
+used to express the portion of it during which our portion
+of the earth is towards the sun. The Greeks to avoid
+ambiguity used the word <i>nyctemere</i>, meaning night and day.</p>
+
+<p>No ancient nation is known that did not divide the
+day into twenty-four hours, when they divided it at all into
+such small parts, which seems to show that such a division
+was comparatively a late institution, and was derived from
+the invention of a single nation. It would necessarily
+depend on the possibility of reckoning shorter periods of
+time than the natural one of the day. In the earliest
+ages, and even afterwards, the position of the sun in the
+heavens by day, and the position of the constellations
+by night, gave approximately the time. Instead of asking
+What "o'clock" is it? the Greeks would say, "What star is
+passing?" The next method of determining time depended
+on the uniform motion of water from a cistern. It was
+invented by the Egyptians, and was called a clepsydra,
+and was in use among the Babylonians, the Greeks, and
+the Romans. The more accurate measurement of time by
+means of clocks was not introduced till about 140 <small>B.C.</small>,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span>
+when Trimalcion had one in his dining chamber. The
+use of them, however, had been so lost that in 760 <small>A.D.</small>
+they were considered quite novelties. The clocks, of course,
+have to be regulated by the sun, an operation which has
+been the employment of astronomers, among other things,
+for centuries. Each locality had its own time according
+to the moment when the sun passed the meridian of the
+place, a moment which was determined by observation.</p>
+
+<p>Before the introduction of the hour, the day and night
+appear to have been divided into watches. Among the
+Babylonians the night was reckoned from what we call
+6 <small>A.M.</small> to 6 <small>P.M.</small>, and divided into three watches of four
+hours each&mdash;called the "evening," "middle," and "morning"
+watch. These were later superseded by the more
+accurate hour, or rather "double hour" or <i>casbri</i>, each of
+which was divided into sixty minutes and sixty seconds,
+and the change taking place not earlier than 2,000 <small>B.C.</small>
+Whether the Babylonians (or Accadians) were the inventors
+of the hour it is difficult to say, though they almost
+certainly were of other divisions of time. It is remarkable
+that in the ancient Jewish Scriptures we find no
+mention of any such division until the date at which
+the prophecy of Daniel was written, that is, until the Jews
+had come in contact with the Babylonians.</p>
+
+<p>Some nations have counted the twenty-four hours consecutively
+from one to twenty-four as astronomers do now,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span>
+but others and the majority have divided the whole period
+into two of twelve hours each.</p>
+
+<p>The time of the commencement of the day has varied
+much with the different nations.</p>
+
+<p>The Jews, the ancient Athenians, the Chinese, and
+several other peoples, more or less of the past, have commenced
+the day with the setting of the sun, a custom which
+perhaps originated with the determination of the commencement
+of the year, and therefore of the day, by the observation
+of some stars that were seen at sunset, a custom continued
+in our memory by the well-known words, "the evening and
+the morning were the first day."</p>
+
+<p>The Italians, till recently, counted the hours in a single
+series, between two settings of the sun. The only gain in
+such a method would be to sailors, that they might know
+how many hours they had before night overtook them; the
+sun always setting at twenty-four o'clock; if the watch
+marked nineteen or twenty, it would mean they had five or
+four hours to see by&mdash;but such a gain would be very small
+against the necessity of setting their watches differently
+every morning, and the inconvenience of never having
+fixed hours for meals.</p>
+
+<p>Among the Babylonians, Syrians, Persians, the modern
+Greeks, and inhabitants of the Balearic Isles, &amp;c., the day
+commenced with the rising of the sun. Nevertheless, among
+all the astronomical phenomena that may be submitted to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span>
+observation, none is so liable to uncertainty as the rising
+and setting of the heavenly bodies, owing among other
+things to the effects of refraction.</p>
+
+<p>Among the ancient Arabians, followed in this by the
+author of the <i>Almagesta</i>, and by Ptolemy, the day commenced
+at noon. Modern astronomers adopt this usage. The
+moment of changing the date is then always marked by a
+phenomenon easy to observe.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, that we may see how every variety possible is sure
+to be chosen when anything is left to the free choice of men,
+we know that with the Egyptians, Hipparchus, the ancient
+Romans, and all the European nations at present, the day
+begins at midnight. Copernicus among the astronomers of
+our era followed this usage. We may remark that the commencement
+of the astronomical day commences twelve hours
+<i>after</i> the civil day.</p>
+
+<p>Of the various periods composed of several days, the week
+of seven days is the most widely spread&mdash;and of considerable
+antiquity. Yet it is not the universal method of
+dividing months. Among the Egyptians the month was
+divided into periods of ten days each; and we find no sign of
+the seven days&mdash;the several days of the whole month having
+a god assigned to each. Among the Hindoos no trace has
+been found by Max M&uuml;ller in their ancient Vedic literature
+of any such division, but the month is divided into two
+according to the moon; the <i>clear</i> half from the new to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span>
+the full moon, the <i>obscure</i> half from the full to the
+new, and a similar division has been found among the
+Aztecs. The Chinese divide the month like the Egyptians.
+Among the Babylonians two methods of dividing the month
+existed, and both of them from the earliest times. The first
+method was to separate it into two halves of fifteen days
+each, and each of these periods into three shorter ones of
+five days, making six per month. The other method is the
+week of seven days. The days of the week with them, as
+they are with many nations now, were named after the sun
+and moon and the five planets, and the 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st,
+and 28th days of each month&mdash;days separated by seven
+days each omitting the 19th&mdash;were termed "days of rest," on
+which certain works were forbidden to be done. From this
+it is plain that we have here all the elements of our modern
+week. We find it, as is well known, in the earliest of
+Hebrew writings, but without the mark which gives reason
+for the number seven, that is the names of the seven
+heavenly bodies. It would seem most probable, then, that
+we must look to the Accadians as the originators of our
+modern week, from whom the Hebrews may have&mdash;and, if
+so, at a very early period&mdash;borrowed the idea.</p>
+
+<p>It is known that the week was not employed in the ancient
+calendars of the Romans, into which it was afterwards introduced
+through the medium of the biblical traditions, and
+became a legal usage under the first Christian Emperors.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span>
+From thence it has been propagated together with the Julian
+calendar amongst all the populations that have been subjected
+to the Roman power. We find the period of seven days
+employed in the astronomical treatises of Hindoo writers, but
+not before the fifth century.</p>
+
+<p>Dion Cassius, in the third century, represents the week as
+universally spread in his times, and considers it a recent
+invention which he attributes to the Egyptians; meaning
+thereby, doubtless, the astrologers of the Alexandrian school,
+at that time very eager to spread the abstract speculations of
+Plato and Pythagoras.</p>
+
+<p>If the names of the days of the week were derived from
+the planets, the sun and moon, as is easy to see, it is not so
+clear how they came to have their present order. The original
+order in which they were supposed to be placed in the various
+heavens that supported them according to their distance from
+the earth was thus:&mdash;Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus,
+Mercury, the Moon. One supposition is that each hour of
+the day was sacred to one of these, and that each day was
+named from the god that presided over the first hours. Now,
+as seven goes three times into twenty-four, and leaves
+three over, it is plain that if Saturn began the first
+hour of Saturday, the next day would begin with the planet
+three further on in the series, which would bring us to the
+Sun for Sunday, three more would bring us next day to the
+Moon for Monday, and so to Mars for Tuesday, to Mercury<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span>
+for Wednesday, to Jupiter for Thursday, to Venus for Friday,
+and so round again to Saturn for Saturday.</p>
+
+<p>The same method is illustrated by putting the symbols in
+order round the circumference of a circle, and joining them
+by lines to the one most opposite, following always in the
+same order as in the following figure. We arrive in this way
+at the order of the days of the week.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 580px;">
+<img src="images/437.jpg" width="580" height="420" alt="Fig. 58." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Fig. 58.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>All the nations who have adopted the week have not kept
+to the same names for them, but have varied them according
+to taste. Thus Sunday was changed by the Christian Church
+to the "Lord's Day," a name it still partially retains among
+ourselves, but which is the regular name among several<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span>
+continental nations, including the corrupted <i>Dimanche</i> of
+the French. The four middle days have also been very
+largely changed, as they have been among ourselves and most
+northern nations to commemorate the names of the great
+Scandinavian gods Tuesco, Woden, Thor, and Friga. This
+change was no doubt due to the old mythology of the
+Druids being amalgamated with the new method of collecting
+the days into weeks.</p>
+
+<p>We give below a general table of the names of the days
+of the week in several different languages.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="1" frame="border" rules="groups" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="6" summary="">
+<colgroup></colgroup><colgroup></colgroup><colgroup></colgroup><colgroup></colgroup><colgroup></colgroup><colgroup></colgroup><colgroup></colgroup><colgroup></colgroup><colgroup></colgroup>
+<tbody>
+<tr><th> <span class="smcap">English.</span></th><th> <span class="smcap">French.</span></th><th> <span class="smcap">Italian.</span></th><th> <span class="smcap">Spanish.</span></th><th> <span class="smcap">Portuguese.</span></th></tr>
+</tbody>
+<tbody>
+<tr><td align='left'> Sunday.</td><td align='left'> Dimanche.</td><td align='left'> Domenica.</td><td align='left'> Domingo.</td><td align='left'> Domingo.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'> Monday.</td><td align='left'> Lundi.</td><td align='left'> Lunedi.</td><td align='left'> Luneo.</td><td align='left'> Secunda feira.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'> Tuesday.</td><td align='left'> Mardi.</td><td align='left'> Marteti.</td><td align='left'> Martes.</td><td align='left'> Ter&ccedil;a feira.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'> Wednesday.</td><td align='left'> Mercredi</td><td align='left'> Mercoledi.</td><td align='left'> Miercoles.</td><td align='left'> Quarta feira.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'> Thursday.</td><td align='left'> Jeudi.</td><td align='left'> Giovedi.</td><td align='left'> Jueves.</td><td align='left'> Quinta feira.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'> Friday.</td><td align='left'> Vendredi.</td><td align='left'> Venerdi.</td><td align='left'> Viernes.</td><td align='left'> Sexta feira.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'> Saturday.</td><td align='left'> Samedi.</td><td align='left'> Sabbato.</td><td align='left'> Sabado.</td><td align='left'> Sabbado.</td></tr>
+</tbody>
+<tbody>
+<tr><th> <span class="smcap">German.</span></th><th> <span class="smcap">Anglo-Saxon.</span></th><th> <span class="smcap">Ancient Frisian.</span></th><th> <span class="smcap">Ancient  Northmen.</span></th><th> <span class="smcap">Dutch.</span></th></tr>
+</tbody>
+<tbody>
+<tr><td align='left'> Sonntag.</td><td align='left'> Sonnan d&auml;g.</td><td align='left'> Sonna dei.</td><td align='left'> Sunnu dagr.</td><td align='left'> Zondag.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'> Montag.</td><td align='left'> Monan d&auml;g.</td><td align='left'> Mona dei.</td><td align='left'> M&acirc;na dagr.	</td><td align='left'> Maandag.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'> Dienstag.</td><td align='left'> Tives d&auml;g.</td><td align='left'> Tys dei.</td><td align='left'> Tyrs dagr.	</td><td align='left'> Dingsdag.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'> Mitwoch.</td><td align='left'> V&ocirc;denes d&auml;g.</td><td align='left'> Werns dei.</td><td align='left'> Odins dagr.</td><td align='left'> Woensdag.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'> Donnerstag.</td><td align='left'> Thunores d&auml;g.</td><td align='left'> Thunres dei.</td><td align='left'> Thors dagr.</td><td align='left'> Donderdag.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'> Freitag.</td><td align='left'> Frige d&auml;g.</td><td align='left'> Frigen dei.</td><td align='left'> Fria dagr.	</td><td align='left'> Vrijdag.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'> Samstag.</td><td align='left'> S&#339;ternes d&auml;g.</td><td align='left'> Sater dei.</td><td align='left'> Laugar dagr (washing day)</td><td align='left'> Zaturdag.</td></tr>
+</tbody>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>The cycle which must be completed with the present
+calendar to bring the same day of the year to the same
+day of the week, is twenty-eight years, since there is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span>
+one day over every ordinary year, and two every leap
+year; which will make an overlapping of days which,
+except at the centuries, will go through all the changes
+in twenty-eight times, which forms what is called the
+solar cycle.</p>
+
+<p>There is but one more point that will be interesting about
+the calendar, namely, the date from which we reckon our
+years.</p>
+
+<p>Among the Jews it was from the creation of the world,
+as recorded in their sacred books&mdash;but no one can determine
+when that was with sufficient accuracy to make it represent
+anything but an agreement of the present day. Different interpreters
+do not come within a thousand years of one another
+for its supposed date; although some of them have determined
+it very accurately to their own satisfaction&mdash;one going so
+far as to say that creation finished at nine o'clock one Sunday
+morning! In other cases the date has been reckoned from
+national events&mdash;as in the Olympiads, the foundation of
+Rome, &amp;c. The word we now use, <small>&AElig;RA</small>, points to a particular
+date from which to reckon, since it is composed of the
+initials of the words AB EXORDIO REGNI AUGUSTI
+"from the commencement of the reign of Augustus." At the
+present day the point of departure, both forwards and backwards,
+is the year of the birth of Jesus Christ&mdash;a date which
+is itself controverted, and the use of which did not exist
+among the first Christians. They exhibited great indifference,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span>
+for many centuries, as to the year in which Jesus Christ
+entered the world. It was a monk who lived in obscurity
+at Rome, about the year 580, who was a native of so
+unknown a country that he has been called a Scythian, and
+whose name was Denys, surnamed <i>Exiguus</i>, or the Little,
+who first attempted to discover by chronological calculations
+the year of the birth of Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>The era of Denys the Little was not adopted by his
+contemporaries. Two centuries afterwards, the Venerable
+Bede exhorted Christians to make use of it&mdash;and it only
+came into general use about the year 800.</p>
+
+<p>Among those who adopted the Christian era, some made
+the year commence with March, which was the first month
+of the year of Romulus; others in January, which commences
+the year of Numa; others commenced on Christmas
+Day; and others on Lady Day, March 25. Another form of
+nominal year was that which commenced with Easter Day,
+in which case, the festival being a movable one, some years
+were shorter than others, and in some years there might
+be two 2nd, 3rd, &amp;c., of April, if Easter fell in one year on
+the 2nd, and next year a few days later.</p>
+
+<p>The 1st of January was made to begin the year in
+Germany in 1500. An edict of Charles IX. prescribes the
+same in France in 1563. But it was not till 1752 that the
+change was made in England by Lord Chesterfield's Act.
+The year 1751, as the year that had preceded it, began on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span>
+March 25th, and it should have lasted till the next Lady
+Day; but according to the Act, the months of January,
+February, and part of March were to be reckoned as part
+of the year 1752. By this means the unthinking seemed
+to have grown old suddenly by three months, and popular
+clamour was raised against the promoter of the Bill, and
+cries raised of "Give us our three months." Such have
+been the various changes that our calendar has undergone
+to bring it to its present state.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE END OF THE WORLD.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Perhaps the most anxious question that has been asked of
+the astronomer is when the world is to come to an end. It is
+a question which, of course, he has no power to answer with
+truth; but it is also one that has often been answered in good
+faith. It has perhaps been somewhat natural to ask such a
+question of an astronomer, partly because his science naturally
+deals with the structure of the universe, which might give
+some light as to its future, and partly because of his connection
+with astrology, whose province it was supposed to be to
+open the destiny of all things. Yet the question has been
+answered by others than by astronomers, on grounds connected
+with their faith. In the early ages of the Church, the belief
+in the rapid approach of the end of the world was universally
+spread amongst Christians. The Apocalypse of St. John and
+the Acts of the Apostles seemed to announce its coming
+before that generation passed away. Afterwards, it was expected
+at the year 1000; and though these beliefs did not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span>
+rest in any way on astronomical grounds, yet to that science
+was recourse had for encouragement or discouragement of the
+idea. The middle ages, fall of simple faith and superstitious
+credulity, were filled with fear of this terrible catastrophe.</p>
+
+<p>As the year 1000 approached, the warnings became frequent
+and very pressing. Thus, for example, Bernard of Thuringia,
+about 960, began to announce publicly that the world was
+about to end, declaring that he had had a particular revelation
+of the fact. He took for his text the enigmatical words of
+the Apocalypse: "At the end of one thousand years, Satan
+shall be loosed from his prison, and shall seduce the people
+that are in the four quarters of the earth. The book of life
+shall be open, and the sea shall give up her dead." He
+fixed the day when the Annunciation of the Virgin should
+coincide with Good Friday as the end of all things. This
+happened in 992, but nothing extraordinary happened.</p>
+
+<p>During the tenth century the royal proclamations opened
+by this characteristic phrase: <i>Whereas the end of the world is
+approaching</i>....</p>
+
+<p>In 1186 the astrologers frightened Europe by announcing a
+conjunction of all the planets. Rigord, a writer of that
+period, says in his <i>Life of Philip Augustus</i>: "The astrologers
+of the East, Jews, Saracens, and even Christians, sent letters
+all over the world, in which they predicted, with perfect
+assurance, that in the month of September there would be
+great tempests, earthquakes, mortality among men, seditions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span>
+and discords, revolutions in kingdoms, and the destruction of
+all things. But," he adds, "the event very soon belied their
+predictions."</p>
+
+<p>Some years after, in 1198, another alarm of the end of the
+world was raised, but this time it was not dependent on
+celestial phenomena. It was said that Antichrist was
+born in Babylon, and therefore all the human race would be
+destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>It would be a curious list to make of all the years in which
+it was said that Antichrist was born; they might be counted
+by hundreds, to say nothing of the future.</p>
+
+<p>At the commencement of the fourteenth century, the
+alchemist Arnault of Villeneuve announced the end of the
+world for 1335. In his treatise <i>De Sigillis</i> he applies the
+influence of the stars to alchemy, and expounds the mystical
+formula by which demons are to be conjured.</p>
+
+<p>St. Vincent Ferrier, a famous Spanish preacher, gave to
+the world as many years' duration as there were verses in
+the Psalms&mdash;about 2537.</p>
+
+<p>The sixteenth century produced a very plentiful crop of
+predictions of the final catastrophe. Simon Goulart, for
+example, gave the world an appalling account of terrible
+sights seen in Assyria&mdash;where a mountain opened and showed
+a scroll with letters of Greek&mdash;"The end of the world is
+coming." This was in 1532; but after that year had passed
+in safety, Leovitius, a famous astrologer, predicted it again<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span>
+for 1584. Louis Gayon reports that the fright at this time
+was great. The churches could not hold those who sought
+a refuge in them, and a great number made their wills,
+without reflecting that there was no use in it if the whole
+world was to finish.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most famous mathematicians of Europe, named
+Stoffler, who flourished in the 16th century, and who worked
+for a long time at the reform of the calendar proposed by
+the Council of Constance, predicted a universal deluge for
+1524. This deluge was to happen in the month of February,
+because Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars were then together in
+the sign of the Fishes. Everyone in Europe, Asia, and Africa,
+to whom these tidings came, was in a state of consternation.
+They expected a deluge, in spite of the rainbow. Many
+contemporary authors report that the inhabitants of the
+maritime provinces of Germany sold their lands for a mere
+trifle to those who had more money and less credulity.
+Each built himself a boat like an ark. A doctor of
+Toulouse, named Auriol, made a very large ark for himself,
+his family, and his friends, and the same precautions were
+taken by a great many people in Italy. At last the month
+of February came, and not a drop of rain fell. Never
+was a drier month or a more puzzled set of astrologers.
+Nevertheless they were not discouraged nor neglected for
+all that, and Stoffler himself, associated with the celebrated
+Regiomontanus, predicted once more that the end of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span>
+world would come in 1588, or at least that there would
+be frightful events which would overturn the earth.</p>
+
+<p>This new prediction was a new deception; nothing
+extraordinary occurred in 1588. The year 1572, however,
+witnessed a strange phenomenon, capable of justifying all
+their fears. An unknown star came suddenly into view in
+the constellation of Cassiopeia, so brilliant that it was
+visible even in full daylight, and the astrologers calculated
+that it was the star of the Magi which had returned, and
+that it announced the second coming of Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were filled with
+new predictions of great variety.</p>
+
+<p>Even our own century has not been without such. A
+religious work, published in 1826, by the Count Sallmard
+Montfort, demonstrated perfectly that the world had no
+more than ten years to exist. "The world," he said, "is
+old, and its time of ending is near, and I believe that the
+epoch of that terrible event is not far off. Jacob, the
+chief of the twelve tribes of Israel, and consequently of the
+ancient Church, was born in 2168 of the world, <i>i.e.</i>, 1836
+<small>B.C.</small> The ancient Church, which was the figure of the
+new, lasted 1836 years. Hence the new one will only last
+till 1836 <small>A.D.</small>"</p>
+
+<p>Similar prophecies by persons of various nations have
+in like manner been made, without being fulfilled. Indeed,
+we have had our own prophets; but they have proved<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span>
+themselves incredulous of their own predictions, by taking
+leases that should <i>commence</i> in the year of the world's
+destruction.</p>
+
+<p>But we have one in store for us yet. In 1840, Pierre
+Louis of Paris calculated that the end would be in 1900,
+and he calculated in this way:&mdash;The Apocalypse says the
+Gentiles shall occupy the holy city for forty-two months. The
+holy city was taken by Omar in 636. Forty-two months
+of years is 1260, which brings the return of the Jews
+to 1896, which will precede by a few years the final
+catastrophe. Daniel also announces the arrival of Antichrist
+2,300 days after the establishment of Artaxerxes
+on the throne of Persia, 400 <small>B.C.</small>, which again brings us
+to 1900.</p>
+
+<p>Some again have put it at 2000 <small>A.D.</small>, which will make
+6,000 years, as they think, from the creation; these are the
+days of work; then comes the 1,000 years of millennial
+sabbath.</p>
+
+<p>We are led far away by these vain speculations from the
+wholesome study of astronomy; they are useful only in
+showing how by a little latitude that science may wind
+itself into all the questions that in any way affect the
+earth.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, since the world began, the world will doubtless
+end, and astronomers are still asked how could it be
+brought about?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Certainly it is not an impossible event, and there are
+only too many ways in which it has been imagined it
+might occur.</p>
+
+<p>The question is one that stands on a very different footing
+from that it occupied before the days of Galileo and
+Copernicus. <i>Then</i> the earth was believed to be the centre
+of the universe, and all the heavens and stars created for it.
+<i>Then</i> the commencement of the world was the commencement
+of the universe, its destruction would be the destruction
+of all. <i>Now</i>, thanks to the revolution in feeling that has been
+accomplished by the progress of astronomy, we have learned
+our own insignificance, and that amongst the infinite number
+of stars, each supporting their own system of inhabited planets,
+our earth occupies an infinitesimally small portion, and the
+destruction of it would make no difference whatever&mdash;still
+less its becoming uninhabitable. It is an event which
+must have happened and be happening to other worlds,
+without affecting the infinite life of the universe in any
+marked degree.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, for ourselves, the question remains as interesting
+as if we were the all in all, but must be approached
+in a different manner.</p>
+
+<p>Numerous hypotheses have been put forth on the question
+but they may mostly be dismissed as vain.</p>
+
+<p>Buffon calculated that it had taken 74,832 years for the
+earth to cool down to its present temperature, and that it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span>
+will take 93,291 years more before it would be too cold for
+men to live upon it. But Sir William Thomson has shown
+that the internal heat of the earth, supposed to be due to its
+cooling from fusion, cannot have seriously modified climate
+for a long series of years, and that life depends essentially
+on the heat of the sun.</p>
+
+<p>Another hypothesis, the most ancient of all, is that which
+supposes the earth will be destroyed by fire. It comes down
+from Zoroaster and the Jews; and on the improbable supposition
+of the thin crust of the earth over a molten mass,
+this is thought possible. However, as the tendency in the
+past has been all the other way, namely, to make the effect
+of the inner heat of the earth less marked on the surface,
+we have no reason to expect a reversal.</p>
+
+<p>A third theory would make the earth die more gradually
+and more surely. It is known that by the wearing down of
+the surface by the rains and rivers, there is a tendency to
+reduce mountains and all high parts of the earth to a
+uniform level, a tendency which is only counteracted by some
+elevating force within the earth. If these elevating forces
+be supposed to be due to the internal heat&mdash;a hypothesis
+which cannot be proved&mdash;then with the cooling of the earth
+the elevating forces would cease, and, finally, the whole of
+the continent would be brought beneath the sea and
+terrestrial life perish.</p>
+
+<p>Another interesting but groundless hypothesis is that of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span>
+Adh&eacute;mar on the periodicity of deluges. This theory depends
+on the fact of the unequal length of the seasons in the two
+hemispheres. Our autumn and our winter last 179 days.
+In the southern hemisphere they last 186 days. These seven
+days, or 168 hours, of difference, increase each year the
+coldness of the pole. During 10,500 years the ice accumulates
+at one pole and melts at the other, thereby displacing
+the earth's centre of gravity. Now a time will arrive when,
+after the maximum of elevation of temperature on one
+side, a catastrophe will happen, which will bring back the
+centre of gravity to the centre of figure, and cause an
+immense deluge. The deluge of the north pole was 4,200
+years ago, therefore the next will be 6,300 hence. It is
+very obvious to ask on this&mdash;<i>Why</i> should there be a
+<i>catastrophe</i>? and why should not the centre of gravity
+return <i>gradually</i> as it was gradually displaced?</p>
+
+<p>Another theory has been that it would perish by a
+comet. That it will not be by the shock we have already
+seen from the light weight of the comet and from experience;
+but it has been suggested that the gas may
+combine with the air, and an explosion take place that
+would destroy us all; but is not that also contradicted by
+experience?</p>
+
+<p>Another idea is that we shall finally fall into the sun by
+the resistance of the ether to our motion. Encke's comet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span>
+loses in thirty-three years a thousandth part of its velocity.
+It appears then that we should have to wait millions of
+centuries before we came too near the sun.</p>
+
+<p>In reality, however, we are simply dependent on our sun,
+and our destiny depends upon that.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, in its voyage through space it might
+encounter or come within the range of some dark body we
+at present know nothing of, and the attraction might put
+out of harmony all our solar system with calamitous results.
+Or since we are aware that the sun is a radiating body
+giving out its heat on all sides, and therefore growing
+colder, it may one day happen that it will be too cold to
+sustain life on the earth. It is, we know, a variable star,
+and stars have been seen to disappear, or even to have
+a catastrophe happen to them, as the kindling of enormous
+quantities of gas. A catastrophe in the sun will be our
+own end.</p>
+
+<p>Fontenelle has amusingly described in verse the result of
+the sun growing cold, which may be thus Englished:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="noin">
+"Of this, though, I haven't a doubt,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">One day when there isn't much light,</span><br />
+The poor little sun will go out<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And bid us politely&mdash;good-night.</span><br />
+Look out from the stars up on high,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Some other to help you to see;</span><br />
+I can't shine any longer, not I,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Since shining don't benefit me.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span><br />
+"Then down on our poor habitation<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">What numberless evils will fall,</span><br />
+When the heavens demand liquidation,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Why all will go smash, and then all</span><br />
+Society come to an end.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Soon out of the sleepy affair</span><br />
+His way will each traveller wend,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">No testament leaving, nor heir."</span><br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>The cooling of the sun must, however, take place very
+gradually, as no cooling has been perceived during the
+existence of man; and the growth of plants in the earliest
+geological ages, and the life of animals, prove that for so
+long a time it has been within the limits within which life
+has been possible&mdash;and we may look forward to as long in
+the future.</p>
+
+<p>It is not of course the time when the sun will become a
+dark ball, surrounded by illuminated planets, that we must
+reckon as the end of the earth. Life would have ceased
+long before that stage&mdash;no man will witness the death of
+the sun.</p>
+
+<p>The diminution of the sun's heat would have for its
+natural effect the enlargement of the glacial zones! the sea
+and the land in those parts of the earth would cease to
+support life, which would gradually be drawn closer to
+the equatorial belt. Man, who by his nature and his intelligence
+is best fitted to withstand cold climates, would remain
+among the last of the inhabitants, reduced to the most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span>
+miserable nourishment. Drawn together round the equator,
+the last of the sons of earth would wage a last combat
+with death, and exactly as the shades approached, would the
+human genius, fortified by all the acquirements of ages past&mdash;give
+out its brightest light, and attempt in vain to throw
+off the fatal cover that was destined to engulf him. At
+last, the earth, fading, dry, and sterile, would become an
+immense cemetery. And it would be the same with the
+other planets. The sun, already become red, would at last
+become black, and the planetary system would be an
+assemblage of black balls revolving round a larger black
+ball.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+<img src="images/453.jpg" width="550" height="800" alt="Plate XVI." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Plate XVI.&mdash;The End of the World.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Of course this is all imaginary, and cannot affect ourselves,
+but the very idea of it is melancholy, and enough
+to justify the words of Campbell:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="noin">
+"For this hath science searched on weary wing<br />
+By shore and sea&mdash;each mute and living thing,<br />
+Or round the cope her living chariot driven<br />
+And wheeled in triumph through the signs of heaven.<br />
+Oh, star-eyed science, hast thou wandered there<br />
+To waft us home the message of despair?"<br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>In reality, as we know nothing of the origin, so we know
+nothing of the end of the world; and where so much has
+been accomplished, there are obviously infinite possibilities
+enough to satisfy the hopes of every one.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>While some stars may be fading, others may be rising into
+their place, and man need not be identified with one earth
+alone, but may rest content in the idea that the life
+universal is eternal.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 1024px;">
+<a href="images/chart.jpg">
+  <img src="images/chart_small.jpg" width="1024" height="512" alt="" title="" />
+</a>
+</div>
+
+
+<h4>THE END.</h4>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 15%;" />
+<h5>LONDON: P. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.</h5>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="noin"><b>TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:</b> Images have been moved from the middle of a paragraph to the closest
+paragraph break. Obvious errors in punctuation and a few misprints have been silently
+corrected. Other than that, printer's inconsistencies in
+hyphenation and ligature usage have been retained.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Astronomical Myths, by John F. Blake
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,9989 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Astronomical Myths, by John F. Blake
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Astronomical Myths
+       Based on Flammarions's History of the Heavens
+
+Author: John F. Blake
+
+Release Date: June 22, 2011 [EBook #36495]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ASTRONOMICAL MYTHS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eric Hutton and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  ASTRONOMICAL MYTHS.
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+  [Illustration: THE CLIFFS OF FLAMANVILLE.]
+
+
+
+  ASTRONOMICAL MYTHS,
+
+  BASED ON
+  FLAMMARION'S
+  "HISTORY OF THE HEAVENS."
+
+  BY
+
+  JOHN F. BLAKE.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  London:
+  MACMILLAN AND CO.
+  1877.
+
+
+
+  LONDON:
+  R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS,
+  BREAD STREET HILL,
+  QUEEN VICTORIA STREET.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The Book which is here presented to the public is founded upon a French
+work by M. Flammarion which has enjoyed considerable popularity. It
+contained a number of interesting accounts of the various ideas,
+sometimes mythical, sometimes intended to be serious, that had been
+entertained concerning the heavenly bodies and our own earth; with a
+popular history of the earliest commencement of astronomy among several
+ancient peoples. It was originally written in the form of conversations
+between the members of an imaginary party at the seaside. It was
+thought that this style would hardly be so much appreciated by English
+as by French readers, and therefore in presenting the materials of the
+French author in an English dress the conversational form has been
+abandoned. Several facts of extreme interest in relation to the early
+astronomical myths and the development of the science among the ancients
+having been brought to light, especially by the researches of Mr.
+Haliburton, a considerable amount of new matter, including the whole
+chapter on the Pleiades, has been introduced, which makes the present
+issue not exactly a translation, but rather a book founded on the French
+author's work. It is hoped that it may be found of interest to those who
+care to know about the early days of the oldest of our sciences, which
+is now attracting general attention again by the magnitude of its recent
+advances. Astronomy also, in early days, as will be seen by a perusal of
+this book, was so mixed up with all the affairs of life, and contributed
+so much even to religion, that a history of its beginnings is found to
+reveal the origin of several of our ideas and habits, now apparently
+quite unconnected with the science. There is matter of interest here,
+therefore, for those who wish to know only the history of the general
+ideas of mankind.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE ANNUAL REVOLUTION OF THE EARTH ROUND THE SUN, WITH
+THE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC AND THE CONSTELLATIONS.]
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+  THE CLIFFS OF FLAMANVILLE                              _Frontispiece._
+  THE ANNUAL REVOLUTION OF THE EARTH ROUND THE SUN, WITH
+        THE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC AND THE CONSTELLATIONS         Page   ix
+  THE EARTH'S YEAR, AND THE MONTHS                              "    xiv
+  AN ASTRONOMER AT WORK                                To face page    1
+  THE NORTHERN CONSTELLATIONS                                 "       49
+  THE CONSTELLATIONS FROM THE SEA-SHORE                       "       65
+  THE ZODIAC OF DENDERAH                                      "      102
+
+     I. BABYLONIAN ASTRONOMERS                                        19
+    II. DRUIDICAL WORSHIP                                             37
+   III. CHALDEAN ASTRONOMERS                                          87
+    IV. THE ZODIAC AND THE DEAD IN EGYPT                             108
+     V. THE LEGENDS OF THE DRUIDS                                    123
+    VI. THE NEMAEAN LION                                              146
+   VII. HEAVENS OF THE FATHERS                                       191
+  VIII. DEATH OF COPERNICUS                                          208
+    IX. THE SOLAR SYSTEM                                             225
+     X. THE DISCOVERY OF THE TELESCOPE                               227
+    XI. THE FOUNDATION OF THE PARIS OBSERVATORY                      229
+   XII. THE LEGEND OF OWEN                                           315
+  XIII. CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS AND THE ECLIPSE OF THE MOON             336
+   XIV. PRODIGIES IN THE MIDDLE AGES                                 358
+    XV. AN ASTROLOGER AT WORK                                        385
+   XVI. THE END OF THE WORLD                                         429
+
+   1. THE EARLIEST (ARYAN) REPRESENTATION OF THE EARTH                12
+   2. ANCIENT GAULISH MEDALS,  BEARING  ASTRONOMICAL SIGNS            42
+   3. ANCIENT CELESTIAL SPHERE                                        58
+   4. POSITIONS OF THE GREAT BEAR ON SEPTEMBER 4                      62
+   5. CONSTELLATION OF THE BEAR                                       63
+   6. CONSTELLATION OF ORION                                          73
+   7. CHART OF CONSTELLATIONS IN SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES  78
+   8. FLAMSTEED'S CHART                                               79
+   9. ARABIAN SPHERE OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY                          84
+  10. ANCIENT CHINESE PIECES OF MONEY, BEARING REPRESENTATIONS OF
+        THE ZODIAC                                                    93
+  11. THE ZODIAC                                                      96
+  12. DIAGRAM ILLUSTRATING THE POSITION OF CERTAIN STARS, B.C. 1200   98
+  13. CURIOUS FIFTEENTH CENTURY FIGURE, REPRESENTING ELEVEN
+        DIFFERENT HEAVENS                                            150
+  14. PTOLEMY'S ASTRONOMICAL SYSTEM                                  181
+  15. THE EPICYCLES OF PTOLEMY                                       184
+  16. HEAVENS OF THE MIDDLE AGES                                     188
+  17. EMBLEMATIC DRAWING FROM ANCIENT ASTRONOMICAL WORK              193
+  18. EGYPTIAN SYSTEM                                                194
+  19. CAPELLA'S SYSTEM                                               195
+  20. THE COPERNICAN SYSTEM                                          205
+  21. TYCHO BRAHE'S SYSTEM                                           212
+  22. DESCARTES' THEORY OF VORTICES                                  216
+  23. VORTICES OF THE STARS                                          218
+  24. VARIATION OF DESCARTES' THEORY                                 219
+  25. THE EARTH FLOATING                                             237
+  26. THE EARTH WITH ROOTS                                           237
+  27. THE EARTH OF THE VEDIC PRIESTS                                 238
+  28. HINDOO EARTH                                                   239
+  29. THE EARTH OF ANAXIMANDER                                       240
+  30. PLATO'S CUBICAL EARTH                                          241
+  31. EGYPTIAN REPRESENTATION OF THE EARTH                           243
+  32. HOMERIC COSMOGRAPHY                                            247
+  33. THE EARTH OF THE LATER GREEKS                                  256
+  34. POMPONIUS MELA'S COSMOGRAPHY                                   257
+  35. THE EARTH'S SHADOW                                             262
+  36. DITTO                                                          263
+  37. DITTO                                                          264
+  38. DITTO                                                          264
+  39. THE COSMOGRAPHY OF COSMAS                                      268
+  40. THE SQUARE EARTH                                               269
+  41. EXPLANATION OF SUNRISE                                         271
+  42. THE EARTH AS AN EGG                                            273
+  43. THE EARTH AS A FLOATING EGG                                    274
+  44. EIGHTH-CENTURY MAP OF THE WORLD                                276
+  45. TENTH-CENTURY MAPS                                             277
+  46. THE MAP OF ANDREA BIANCO                                       283
+  47. FROM THE MAP IN HEREFORD CATHEDRAL                             285
+  48. DITTO                                                          286
+  49. COSMOGRAPHY OF ST. DENIS                                       291
+  50. THE MAP OF MARCO POLO                                          293
+  51. MAP ON A MEDAL OF CHARLES V                                    294
+  52. DANTE'S INFERNAL REGIONS                                       311
+  53. PARADISE OF FRA MAURO                                          322
+  54. THE PARADISE OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY                          324
+  55. REPRESENTATION OF A COMET, SIXTEENTH CENTURY                   349
+  56. AN EGG MARKED WITH A COMET                                     352
+  57. THE ROMAN CALENDAR                                             403
+  58. DIAGRAM ILLUSTRATING THE ORDER OF THE DAYS OF THE WEEK         413
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE EARTH'S YEAR, AND THE MONTHS.]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+  CHAPTER I.
+  THE FIRST BEGINNINGS OF ASTRONOMY                                    1
+
+  CHAPTER II.
+  ASTRONOMY OF THE CELTS                                              29
+
+  CHAPTER III.
+  ORIGIN OF THE CONSTELLATIONS                                        49
+
+  CHAPTER IV.
+  THE ZODIAC                                                          89
+
+  CHAPTER V.
+  THE PLEIADES                                                       111
+
+  CHAPTER VI.
+  THE NATURE AND STRUCTURE OF THE HEAVENS ACCORDING TO THE ANCIENTS  138
+
+  CHAPTER VII.
+  THE CELESTIAL HARMONY                                              161
+
+  CHAPTER VIII.
+  ASTRONOMICAL SYSTEMS                                               179
+
+  CHAPTER IX.
+  THE TERRESTRIAL WORLD OF THE ANCIENTS.--COSMOGRAPHY AND GEOGRAPHY  231
+
+  CHAPTER X.
+  COSMOGRAPHY AND GEOGRAPHY OF THE CHURCH                            258
+
+  CHAPTER XI.
+  LEGENDARY WORLDS OF THE MIDDLE AGES                                300
+
+  CHAPTER XII.
+  ECLIPSES AND COMETS                                                330
+
+  CHAPTER XIII.
+  THE GREATNESS AND THE FALL OF ASTROLOGY                            360
+
+  CHAPTER XIV.
+  TIME AND THE CALENDAR                                              387
+
+  CHAPTER XV.
+  THE END OF THE WORLD                                               418
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: AN ASTRONOMER AT WORK.]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+HISTORY OF THE HEAVENS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE FIRST BEGINNINGS OF ASTRONOMY.
+
+
+Astronomy is an ancient science; and though of late it has made a fresh
+start in new regions, and we are opening on the era of fresh and
+unlooked-for discoveries which will soon reveal our present ignorance,
+our advance upon primitive ideas has been so great that it is difficult
+for us to realize what they were without an attentive and not
+uninstructive study of them. No other science, not even geology, can
+compare with astronomy for the complete revolution which it has effected
+in popular notions, or for the change it has brought about in men's
+estimate of their place in creation. It is probable that there will
+always be men who believe that the whole universe was made for their
+benefit; but, however this may be, we have already learned from
+astronomy that our habitation is not that central spot men once deemed
+it, but only an ordinary planet circulating round an ordinary star, just
+as we are likely also to learn from biology, that we occupy the
+position, as animals, of an ordinary family in an ordinary class.
+
+That we may more perfectly realize this strange revolution of ideas, we
+must throw ourselves as far as possible into the feeling and spirit of
+our ancestors, when, without the knowledge we now possess, they
+contemplated, as they could not fail to do, the marvellous and
+awe-inspiring phenomena of the heavens by night. To them, for many an
+age, the sun and moon and stars, with all the planets, seemed absolutely
+to rise, to shine, and to set; the constellations to burst out by night
+in the east, and travel slowly and in silence to the west; the ocean
+waves to rise and fall and beat against the rock-bound shore as if
+endowed with life; and even in the infancy of the intellect they must
+have longed to pierce the secrets of this mysterious heavenly vault, and
+to know the nature of the starry firmament as it seemed to them, and
+the condition of the earth which appeared in the centre of these
+universal movements. The simplest hypothesis was for them the truth, and
+they believed that the sky was in reality a lofty and extended canopy
+bestudded with stars, and the earth a vast plain, the solid basis of the
+universe, on which dwelt man, sole creature that lifted his eyes and
+thoughts above. Two distinct regions thus appeared to compose the whole
+system--the upper one, or the air, in which were the moving stars, the
+lights of heaven, and the firmament over all; and the lower one, or
+earth and sea, adorned on the surface with the products of life, and
+below with the minerals, metals, and stones. For a long time the various
+theories of the universe, grotesque and changing as they might be, were
+but modifications of this one central idea, the earth below, the heavens
+above, and on this was based every religious system that was
+promulgated--the very phrases founded upon it remaining to this day for
+a testimony to the intimate relation thus manifested between the infant
+ideas in astronomy and theology. No wonder that early revolutions in the
+conceptions in one science were thought to militate against the other.
+It is only when the thoughts on both are enlarged that it is seen that
+their connection is not necessary, but accidental, or, at least,
+inevitable only in the infancy of both.
+
+It is scarcely possible to estimate fully the enormous change from
+these ideas representing the appearances to those which now represent
+the reality; or to picture to ourselves the total revolution in men's
+minds before they could transform the picture of a vast terrestrial
+surface, to which the sun and all the heavenly bodies were but
+accessories for various purposes, to one in which the earth is but a
+planet like Mars, moving in appearance among the stars, as it does, and
+rotating with a rapidity that brings a whole hemisphere of the heavens
+into view through the course of a single day and night. At first sight,
+what a loss of dignity! but, on closer thought, what a gain of grandeur!
+No longer some little neighbouring lights shine down upon us from a
+solid vault; but we find ourselves launched into the sea of infinity;
+with power to gaze into its almost immeasurable depths.
+
+To appreciate rightly our position, we have to plant ourselves, in
+imagination, in some spot removed from the surface of the earth, where
+we may be uninfluenced by her motion, and picture to ourselves what we
+should see. Were we placed in some spot far enough removed from the
+earth, we should find ourselves in eternal day; the sun would ever
+shine, for no great globe would interpose itself between it and our
+eyes; there would be no night there. Were we in the neighbourhood of the
+earth's orbit, and within it, most wonderful phenomena would present
+themselves. At one time the earth would appear but an ordinary planet,
+smaller than Venus, but, as time wore on, unmeasured by recurring days
+or changing seasons, it would gradually be seen to increase in size--now
+appearing like the moon at the full, and shining like her with a silver
+light. As it came nearer, and its magnitude increased, the features of
+the surface would be distinguished; the brighter sea and the darker
+shining continents, with the brilliant ice-caps at the poles; but,
+unlike what we see in the moon, these features would appear to move,
+and, one after another, every part of the earth would be visible. The
+actual time required for all to pass before us would be what we here
+call a day and night. And still, as it rotates, the earth passes nearer
+to us, assumes its largest apparent size, and so gradually decreasing
+again, becomes once more, after the interval we here call a year, an
+ordinary-looking star-like planet. To us, in these days, this
+description is easy of imagination; we find no difficulty in picturing
+it to ourselves; but, if we will think for a moment what such an idea
+would have been to the earliest observers of astronomy, we shall better
+appreciate the vast change that has taken place--how we are removed from
+them, as we may say, _toto coelo_.
+
+But not only as to the importance of the earth in the universe, but on
+other matters connected with astronomy, we perceive the immensity of the
+change in our ideas--in that of distance, for instance. This celestial
+vault of the ancients was near enough for things to pass from it to us;
+it was in close connection with the earth, supported by it, and
+therefore of less diameter; but now, when our distance from the sun is
+expressed by numbers that we may write, indeed, but must totally fail to
+adequately appreciate, and the distance from the _next_ nearest star is
+such, that with the velocity of light--a velocity we are accustomed to
+regard as instantaneous--we should only reach it after a three years'
+journey, we are reminded of the pathetic lines of Thomas Hood:
+
+  "I remember, I remember, the fir trees straight and high,
+  And how I thought their slender tops were close against the sky;
+  It was a childish fantasy, but now 'tis little joy,
+  To know I'm further off from heaven than when I was a boy."
+
+The astronomer's answer to the last line would be that as far as the
+material heaven goes, we are just as much in it as the stars or as any
+other member of the universe; we cannot, therefore, be far off or near
+to it.
+
+It is probable that we are even yet but little awake to true cosmical
+ideas in other respects;--as to velocity, for instance. We know indeed,
+of light and electricity and the motions of the earth, but revelations
+are now being made to us of motions of material substances in the sun
+with such velocities that in comparison with them any motions on the
+earth appear infinitesimally small. Our progress to our present notions,
+and appreciations of the truth of nature in the heavens, will thus
+occupy much of our thoughts; but we must also recount the history of the
+acquirement of those facts which have ultimately become the basis for
+our changes of idea.
+
+Our rustic forefathers, whatever their nation, were not so enamoured of
+the "wonders of science"--that their astronomy was greatly a collection
+of theories, though theories, and wild ones, they had; it was a more
+practical matter, and was believed too by them to be more practical than
+we now find reason to believe to be the case. They noticed the various
+seasons, and they marked the changes in the appearances of the heavens
+that accompanied them; they connected the two together, and conceived
+the latter to be the cause of the former, and so, with other apparently
+uncertain events. The celestial phenomena thus acquired a fictitious
+importance which rendered their study of primary necessity, but gave no
+occasion for a theory.
+
+That we may better appreciate the earliest observations on astronomy, it
+may be well to mention briefly what are the varying phenomena which may
+most easily be noticed. If we except the phases of the moon, which
+almost without observation would force their recognition on people who
+had no other than lunar light by night, and which must therefore, from
+the earliest periods of human history have divided time into lunar
+months; there are three different sets of phenomena which depend on the
+arrangement of our planetary system, and which were early observed.
+
+The first of these depends upon the earth's rotation on its axis, the
+result of which is that the stars appear to revolve with a uniform
+motion from east to west; the velocity increasing with the distance from
+the pole star, which remains nearly fixed. This circumstance is almost
+as easy of observation as the phases of the moon, and was used from the
+earliest ages to mark the passage of time during the night. The next
+arises from the motion of the earth in her orbit about the sun, by which
+it happens that the earth is in a different position with respect to the
+sun every night, and, therefore, a different set of stars are seen in
+his neighbourhood; these are setting with him, and therefore also a
+different set are just rising at sunset every evening. These changes,
+which would go through the cycle in a year, are, of course, less
+obvious, but of great importance as marking the approach of the various
+seasons during ages in which the hour of the sun's rising could not be
+noted by a clock. The last depends on the proper motions of the moon and
+planets about the earth and sun respectively, by reason of which those
+heavenly bodies occupy varying positions among the stars. Only a careful
+and continuous scrutiny of the heavens would detect these changes,
+except, perhaps, in the case of the moon, and but little of importance
+really depends on them; nevertheless, they were very early the subject
+of observation, as imagination lent them a false value, and in some
+cases because their connection with eclipses was perceived. The
+practical cultivation of astronomy amongst the earliest people had
+always reference to one or other of these three sets of appearances, and
+the various terms and signs that were invented were intended for the
+clearer exposition of the results of their observations on these points.
+
+In looking therefore into extreme antiquity we shall find in many
+instances our only guide to what their knowledge was is the way in which
+they expressed these results.
+
+We do not find, and perhaps we should scarcely expect to find, any one
+man or even one nation who laid the foundation of astronomy--for it was
+an equal necessity for all, and was probably antecedent to the practice
+of remembering men by their names. We cannot, either, conjecture the
+antiquity of ideas and observations met with among races who are
+themselves the only record of their past; and if we are to find any
+origins of the science, it is only amongst those nations which have been
+cultivators of arts by which their ancient doings are recorded.
+
+Amongst the earliest cultivators of astronomy we may refer to the
+Primitive Greeks, the Chinese, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, and the
+Aryans, and also to certain traditions met with amongst many savage as
+well as less barbarous races, the very universality of which proclaims
+as loudly as possible their extreme antiquity.
+
+Each of the four above-mentioned races have names with which are
+associated the beginnings of astronomy--Uranus and Atlas amongst the
+Greeks; Folic amongst the Chinese; Thaut or Mercury in Egypt; Zoroaster
+and Bel in Persia and Babylonia. Names such as these, if those of
+individuals, are not necessarily those of the earliest astronomers--but
+only the earliest that have come down to us. Indeed it is very far from
+certain whether these ancient celebrities have any real historical
+existence. The acts and labours of the earliest investigators are so
+wrapped in obscurity, there is such a mixture of fable with tradition,
+that we can have no reliance that any of them, or that others mentioned
+in ancient mythology, are not far more emblematical than personal. Some,
+such as Uranus, are certainly symbolical; but the very existence of the
+name handed down to us, if it prove nothing else, proves that the
+science was early cultivated amongst those who have preserved or
+invented them.
+
+If we attempt to name in years the date of the commencement--not of
+astronomy itself--for that probably in some form was coeval with the
+race of man itself, but of recorded observations, we are met with a new
+difficulty arising from the various ways in which they reckoned time.
+This was in every case by the occurrence of the phases of one or other
+of the above-mentioned phenomena; sometimes however they selected the
+apparent rotation of the sun in twenty-four hours, sometimes that of the
+moon in a month, sometimes the interval from one solstice to the next,
+and yet they apparently gave to each and all of these the same
+title--such as _annus_--obviously representing a cycle only, but
+without reference to its length. By these different methods of
+counting, hopeless confusion has often been introduced into chronology;
+and the moderns have in many instances unjustly accused the ancients of
+vanity and falsehood. Bailly attempted to reconcile all these various
+methods and consequent dates with each other, and to prove that
+practical astronomy commenced "about 1,500 years before the Deluge, or
+that it is about 7,000 years old;" but we shall see reason in the sequel
+for suspecting any such attempt, and shall endeavour to arrive at more
+reliable dates from independent evidence.
+
+Perhaps the remotest antiquity to which we can possibly mount is that of
+the Aryans, amongst whom the hymns of the _Rig Veda_ were composed. The
+short history of Hebrew and Greco-Roman civilization seems to be lost in
+comparison with this the earliest work of human imagination. When
+seeking for words to express their thoughts, these primitive men by the
+banks of the Oxus personified the phenomena of the heavens and earth,
+the storm, the wind, the rain, the stars and meteors. Here, of course,
+it is not practical but theoretical astronomy we find. We trace the
+first figuring of that primitive idea alluded to before--the heaven
+above, the earth below. Here, as we see, is the earth represented as an
+indefinite plane surface and passive being forming the foundation of
+the world; and above it the sky, a luminous and variable vault beneath
+which shines out the fertile and life-giving light. Thus to the earth
+they gave the name P'RTHOVI, "the wide expanse;" the blue and
+star-bespangled heavens they called VARUNA, "the vault;" and beneath it
+in the region of the clouds they enthroned the light DYAUS, _i.e._ "the
+luminous air."
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
+
+From hence, it would appear, or on this model, the early ideas of all
+peoples have been formed. Among the Greeks the name for heaven expresses
+the same idea of a hollow vault ([Greek: koilos], hollow, concave) and
+the earth is called [Greek: ge], or mother. Among the Latins the name
+_coelum_ has the same signification, while the earth _terra_ comes
+from the participle _tersa_ (the dry element) in contradistinction to
+_mare_ the wet.
+
+In this original Aryan notion, however, as represented by the figure, we
+have more than this, the origin of the names _Jupiter_ and _Deus_ comes
+out. For it is easy to trace the connection between _Dyaus_ (the
+luminiferous air) and the Greek word _Zeus_ from whence _Dios_, [Greek:
+_theos_], _Deus_, and the French word _Dieu_, and then by adding _pater_
+or father we get _Deuspater_, _Zeuspater_, Jupiter.
+
+These etymologies are not however matters beyond dispute, and there are
+at least two other modes of deriving the same words. Thus we are told
+the earliest name for the Deity was Jehovah, the word _Jehov_ meaning
+father of life; and that the Greeks translated this into _Dis_ or
+_Zeus_, a word having, according to this theory, the same sense, being
+derived from [Greek: zao] to live. Of course there can be no question of
+the later word _Deus_ being the direct translation of _Dios_.
+
+A third theory is that there exists in one of the dialects which formed
+the basis of the old languages of Asia, a word _Yahouh_, a participle of
+the verb _nih_, to exist, to be; which therefore signifies the
+self-existent, the principle of life, the origin of all motion, and this
+is supposed to be the allusion of Diodorus, who explaining the theology
+of the Greeks, says that the Egyptians according to Manetho, priest of
+Memphis, in giving names to the five elements have called the spirit or
+ether Youpiter in the _proper sense_ of the word, for the spirit is the
+source of life, the author of the vital principle in animals, and is
+hence regarded as the father or generator of all beings. The people of
+the Homeric ages thought the lightning-bearing Jupiter was the
+commencement, origin, end, and middle of all things, a single and
+universal power, governing the heavens, the earth, fire, water, day and
+night, and all things. Porphyry says that when the philosophers
+discoursed on the nature and parts of the Deity, they could not imagine
+any single figure that should represent all his attributes, though they
+presented him under the appearance of a man, who was _seated_ to
+represent his immovable essence; uncovered in his upper part, because
+the upper parts of the universe or region of the stars manifest most of
+his nature; but clothed below the loins, because he is more hidden in
+terrestrial things; and holding a sceptre in his left hand, because his
+heart is the ruler of all things. There are, besides, the etymologies
+which assert that Jupiter is derived from _juvare_ to help, meaning the
+assisting father; or again that he is _Dies pater_--the god of the
+day--in which case no doubt the sun would be alluded to.
+
+It appears then that the ancient Aryan scheme, though _possibly_
+supplying us with the origin of one of the widest spread of our words,
+is not universally allowed to do so. This origin, however, appears to
+derive support from the apparent occurrence of the original of another
+well-known ancient classical word in the same scheme, that is Varuna,
+obviously the same word as [Greek: Ouranos], and Uranus, signifying the
+heavens. Less clearly too perhaps we may trace other such words to the
+same source. Thus the Sun, which according to these primitive
+conceptions is the husband of the Earth, which it nourishes and makes
+fruitful, was called _Savitr_ and _Surya_, from which the passage to the
+Gothic _Sauil_ is within the limits of known etymological changes, and
+so comes the Lithuanian _Saull_, the Cymric _Haul_, the Greek _Heilos_,
+the Latin _Sol_, and the English _Solar_. So from their _Nakt_, the
+destructive, we get _Nux_, _Nacht_, _Night_. From _Glu_, the Shining,
+whence the participle _Glucina_, and so to _Lucina_, _Luena_, _Luna_,
+_Lune_.
+
+Turning from the ancient Aryans, whose astronomy we know only from poems
+and fables, and so learn but little of their actual advance in the
+science of observation, we come to the Babylonians, concerning whose
+astronomical acquirements we have lately been put in possession of
+valuable evidence by the tablets obtained by Mr. Smith from Kouyunjik,
+an account the contents of which has been given by Mr. Sayce (_Nature_,
+vol. xii. p. 489). As the knowledge thus obtained is more certain, being
+derived from their actual records, than any that we previously
+possessed, it will be well to give as full an account of it as we are
+able.
+
+The originators of Babylonian astronomy were not the Chaldaeans, but
+another race from the mountains of Elam, who are generally called
+Acadians. Of the astronomy of this race we have no complete records, but
+can only judge of their progress by the words and names left by them to
+the science, as afterwards cultivated by the Semitic Babylonians. These
+last were a subsequent race, who entering the country from the East,
+conquered the original inhabitants about 2000 B.C., and borrowed their
+civilization, and with it their language in the arts and sciences. But
+even this latter race is one of considerable antiquity, and when we see,
+as we shortly shall, the great advances they had made in observations of
+the sun and moon, and consider the probable slowness of development in
+those early ages, we have some idea of the remoteness of the date at
+which astronomical science was there commenced. Our chief source of
+information is an extremely ancient work called The _Observations of
+Bell_, supposed to have been written before 1700 B.C., which was
+compiled for a certain King Saigou, of Agave in Babylonia. This work is
+in seventy books or parts, and is composed of numerous small earthen
+tablets having impressed upon them the cuneiform character in which
+they printed, and which we are now able to read. We generally date the
+art of printing from Caxton, in 1474, because it took the place of
+manuscript that had been previously in use in the West; but that method
+of writing, if in some respects an improvement on previous methods of
+recording ideas as more easily executed, was in others a retrogression
+as being less durable: while the manuscripts have perished the
+impressions on stone have remained to this day, and will no doubt last
+longer than even our printed books. These little tablets represented so
+many leaves, and in large libraries, such as that from which those known
+have been derived, they were numbered as our own are now, so that any
+particular one could be asked for by those who might wish to consult it.
+The great difficulty of interpreting these records, which are written in
+two different dialects, and deal often with very technical matters, may
+well be imagined. These difficulties however have been overcome, and a
+good approach to the knowledge of their contents has been made. The
+Chaldaeans, as is well known, were much given to astronomy and many of
+their writings deal with this subject; but they did practical work as
+well, and did not indulge so much in theory as the Aryans. We shall have
+future occasion in this book to refer to their observations on various
+points, as they did not by any means confine themselves to the simplest
+matters; much, in fact, of that with which modern astronomy deals, the
+dates and duration of eclipses of the sun and moon, the accurate
+measurement of time, the existence of cycles in lunar and solar
+phenomena, was studied and recorded by them. We can make some approach
+to the probable dates of the invention of some part of their system, by
+means of the signs of the Zodiac, which were invented by them and which
+we will discuss more at length hereafter. We need only say at present
+that what is now the sign of spring, was not reckoned so with them, and
+that we can calculate how long ago it is that the sign they reckoned the
+spring sign was so.
+
+Semiramis also raised in the centre of Babylon a temple consecrated to
+Jupiter, whom the Babylonians called Bel. It was of an extraordinary
+height and served for an observatory. The whole edifice was constructed
+with great art in asphalte and brick. On its summit were placed the
+statues of Jupiter, Juno, and Rhea, covered with gold.
+
+The Egyptians have always been named as the earliest cultivators of
+astronomy by the Grecian writers, by whom the science has been handed
+down to us, and the Chaldaeans have even been said to have borrowed from
+them. The testimony of such writers however is not to be received
+implicitly, but to be weighed with the knowledge we may now obtain, as
+we have noticed above with respect to the Babylonians, from the actual
+records they have left us, whether by actual records, or by words and
+customs remaining to the present day.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE I.--BABYLONIAN ASTRONOMERS.]
+
+Herodotus declares that the Egyptians had made observations for 11,340
+years and had seen the course of the sun change four times, and the
+ecliptic placed perpendicular to the equator. This is the style of
+statement on which opinions of the antiquity of Egyptian astronomy have
+been founded, and it is obviously unworthy of credit.
+
+Diodorus says that there is no country in which the positions and
+motions of the stars have been so accurately observed as in Egypt
+(_i.e._ to his knowledge). They have preserved, he says, for a great
+number of years registers in which their observations are recorded.
+Expositions are found in these registers of the motions of the planets,
+their revolutions and their stations, and, moreover, the relation which
+each bears to the birthdays of animals, and its good or evil influence.
+They often predicted the future with success. The earthquakes,
+inundations, the appearance of comets, and many other phenomena which it
+is impossible for the vulgar to know beforehand, were foreseen by them
+by means of the observations they had made over a long series of years.
+
+On the occasion of the French expedition to Egypt, a long passage was
+discovered leading from Karnak to Lucksor. This passage was adorned on
+each side of the way with a range of 1600 sphinxes with the body of a
+lion and the head of a ram. Now in Egyptian architecture, the ornaments
+are never the result of caprice or chance; on the contrary, all is done
+with intention, and what often appears at first sight strange, appears,
+after having been carefully examined and studied, to present allegories
+full of sense and reason, founded on a profound knowledge of natural
+phenomena, that the ornaments are intended to record. These sphinxes and
+rams of the passage were probably the emblems of the different signs of
+the Zodiac along the route of the sun. The date of the avenue is not
+known; but it would doubtless lead us to a high antiquity for the
+Egyptian observations.
+
+The like may be said of the great pyramid, which according to Piazzi
+Smyth was built about 2170 B.C. Certainly there are no carvings about it
+exhibiting any astronomical designs; but the exact way in which it is
+executed would seem to indicate that the builders had a very clear
+conception of the importance of the meridian line. It should, however,
+be stated that Piazzi Smyth does not consider it to have been built by
+the Egyptians for themselves; but under the command of some older race.
+
+There seem, however, to be indications in various festivals and
+observances, which are met with widely over the earth's surface, as will
+be indicated more in detail in the chapter on the Pleiades, that some
+astronomical observations, though of the rudest, were made by races
+anterior even to those whose history we partially possess; and that not
+merely because of its naturalness, but because of positive evidence, we
+must trace back astronomy to a source from whence Egyptians, Indians,
+and perhaps Babylonians themselves derived it.
+
+The Chinese astronomy is totally removed from these and stands on its
+own basis. With them it was a matter concerning the government, and
+stringent laws were enforced on the state astronomers. The advance,
+however, that they made would appear to be small; but if we are to
+believe their writers, they made observations nearly three thousand
+years before our era.
+
+Under the reign of Hoangti, Yuchi recorded that there was a large star
+near the poles of the heavens. By a method which we shall enlarge upon
+further on, it can be astronomically ascertained that about the epoch
+this observation was said to be made there was a star ([Greek: a]
+Draconis) so near the pole as to appear immovable, which is so far a
+confirmation of his statement. In 2169 the first of a series of eclipses
+was recorded by them; but the value of their astronomy seems to be
+doubtful when we learn that calculation proves that not one of them
+previous to the age of Ptolemy can be identified with the dates given.
+
+Amongst all nations except the Chinese, where it was political, and the
+Greeks, where it was purely speculative, astronomy has been intimately
+mixed with religious ideas, and we consequently find it to have taken
+considerable hold on the mind.
+
+Just as we have seen among the Indians that the basis of their
+astronomical ideas was the two-fold division into heaven and earth, so
+among other nations this duality has formed the basis of their
+religion. Two aspects of things have been noticed by men in the
+constitution of things--that which remains always, and that which is
+merely transitory, causes and effects. The heaven and the earth have
+presented the image of this to their minds--one being the eternal
+existence, the other the passing form. In heaven nothing seems to be
+born, increase, decrease, or die above the sphere of the moon. That
+alone showed the traces of alteration in its phases; while on the other
+hand there was an image of perpetuity in its proper substance, in its
+motion, and the invariable succession of the same phases.
+
+From another point of view, the heavens were regarded as the father, and
+the earth as the mother of all things. For the principle of fertility in
+the rains, the dew and the warmth, came from above; while the earth
+brought forth abundantly of the products of nature. Such is the idea of
+Plutarch, of Hesiod, and of Virgil. From hence have arisen the fictions
+which have formed the basis of theogony. Uranus is said to have espoused
+Ghe, or the heavens took the earth to wife, and from their marriage was
+born the god of time or Saturn.
+
+Another partly religious, and partly astronomical antagonism has been
+drawn between light and darkness, associated respectively with good and
+evil. In the days when artificial lights, beyond those of the flickering
+fire, were unknown, and with the setting of the sun all the world was
+enveloped in darkness and seemed for a time to be without life, or at
+least cut off entirely from man, it would seem that the sun and its
+light was the entire origin of life. Hence it naturally became the
+earliest divinity whose brilliant light leaping out of the bosom of
+chaos, had brought with it man and all the universe, as we see it
+represented in the theologies of Orpheus and of Moses; whence the god
+Bel of the Chaldeans, the Oromaza of the Persians, whom they invoke as
+the source of all that is good in nature, while they place the origin of
+all evil in darkness and its god Ahrinam. We find the glories of the sun
+celebrated by all the poets, and painted and represented by numerous
+emblems and different names by the artists and sculptors who have
+adorned the temples raised to nature or the great first cause.
+
+Among the Jews there are traditions of a very high antiquity for their
+astronomy. Josephus assures us that it was cultivated before the Mosaic
+Deluge. According to him it is to the public spirit and the labour of
+the antediluvians that we owe the science of astrology: "and since they
+had learnt from Adam that the world should perish by water and by fire,
+the fear that their science should be lost, made them erect two columns,
+one of brick the other of stone, on which they engraved the knowledge
+they had acquired, so that if a deluge should wash away the column of
+brick, the stone one might remain to preserve for posterity the memory
+of what they had written. The prescience was rewarded, and the column of
+stone is still to be seen in Syria." Whatever we may think of this
+statement it would certainly be interesting if we could find in Syria or
+anywhere else a monument that recorded the ancient astronomical
+observations of the Jews. Ricard and others believe that they were very
+far advanced in the science, and that we owe a great part of our present
+astronomy to them; but such a conjecture must remain without proof
+unless we could prove them anterior to the other nations, whom, we have
+seen, cultivated astronomy in very remote times.
+
+One observation seems peculiar to them, if indeed it be a veritable
+observation. Josephus says, "God prolonged the life of the patriarchs
+that preceded the deluge, both on account of their virtues, and to give
+them the opportunity of perfecting the sciences of geometry and
+astronomy which they had discovered; which they could not have done if
+they had not lived for 600 years, because it is only after the lapse of
+600 years that the _great year_ is accomplished."
+
+Now what is this great year or cycle of 600 years? M. Cassini, the
+director of the Observatory of Paris, has discussed it astronomically.
+He considers it as a testimony of the high antiquity of their astronomy.
+"This period," he says, "is one of the most remarkable that have been
+discovered; for, if we take the lunar month to be 29 days 12h. 44m. 3s.
+we find that 219,146-1/2 days make 7,421 lunar months, and that this
+number of days gives 600 solar years of 365 days 5h. 51m. 36s. If this
+year was in use before the deluge, it appears very probable it must be
+acknowledged that the patriarchs were already acquainted to a
+considerable degree of accuracy with the motions of the stars, for this
+lunar month agrees to a second almost with that which has been
+determined by modern astronomers."
+
+A very similar argument has been used by Prof. Piazzi Smyth to prove
+that the Great Pyramids were built by the descendants of Abraham near
+the time of Noah; namely, that measures of two different elements in the
+measurement of time or space when multiplied or divided produce a number
+which may be found to represent some proportion of the edifice, and
+hence to assume that the two numbers were known to the builders.
+
+We need scarcely point out that numbers have always been capable of
+great manipulation, and the mere fact of one number being so much
+greater than another, is no proof that _both_ were known, unless we knew
+that _one_ of them was known independently, or that they are intimately
+connected.
+
+In the case of Josephus' number the cycle during which the lunar months
+and solar years are commensurable has been long discussed and if the
+number had been 19 instead of 600, we should have had little doubt of
+its reference; yet 600 is a very simple number and might refer to many
+other cycles than the complicated one pointed out by M. Cassini. A
+similar case may be quoted with regard to the Indians, which, according
+to our temperament, may be either considered a proof that these
+reasonings are correct, or that they are easy to make. They say that
+there are two stars diametrically opposite which pass through the zodiac
+in 144 years; nothing can be made of this period, nor yet of another
+equally problematical one of 180 years; but if we multiply the two
+together we obtain 25,920, which is very nearly the length of the cycle
+for the precession of the equinoxes.
+
+In this review of the ancient ideas of different peoples, we have
+followed the most probable order in considering that the observation of
+nature came first, and the different parts of it were afterwards
+individualized and named. It is proper to add that according to some
+ancient authors--such as Diodorus Siculus--the process was considered to
+have been the other way. That Uranus was an actual individual, that
+Atlas and Saturn were his sons or descendants or followers, and that
+because Atlas was a great astronomer he was said to support the heavens,
+and that his seven daughters were real, and being very spiritual they
+were regarded as goddesses after death and placed in heaven under the
+name of the Pleiades.
+
+However, the universality of the ideas seems to forbid this
+interpretation, which is also in itself much less natural.
+
+These various opinions lead us to remark, in conclusion, that the
+fables of ancient mythological astronomy must be interpreted by means of
+various keys. Allegory is the first--the allegory employed by
+philosophers and poets who have spoken in figurative language. Their
+words taken in the letter are quite unnatural, but many of the fables
+are simply the description or explanation of physical facts.
+Hieroglyphics are another key. Having become obscure by the lapse of
+time they sometimes, however, present ideas different from those which
+they originally expressed. It is pretty certain that hieroglyphics have
+been the source of the men with dogs' heads, or feet of goats, &c.
+Fables also arise from the adoption of strange words whose sound is
+something like another word in the borrowing language connected with
+other ideas, and the connection between the two has to be made by
+fable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ASTRONOMY OF THE CELTS.
+
+
+The numerous stone monuments that are to be found scattered over this
+country, and over the neighbouring parts of Normandy, have given rise to
+many controversies as to their origin and use. By some they have been
+supposed to be mere sepulchral monuments erected in late times since the
+Roman occupation of Great Britain. Such an idea has little to rest upon,
+and we prefer to regard them, as they have always been regarded, as
+relics of the Druidical worship of the Celtic or Gaulish races that
+preceded us in this part of Europe.
+
+If we were to believe the accounts of ordinary historians, we might
+believe that the Druids were nothing more than a kind of savage race,
+hidden, like the fallow-deer in the recesses of their woods. Thought to
+be sanguinary, brutal, superstitious, we have learned nothing of them
+beyond their human sacrifices, their worship of the oak, their raised
+stones; without inquiring whether these characteristics which scandalize
+our tastes, are not simply the legacy of a primitive era, to which, by
+the side of the tattered religions of the old Paganism, Druidism
+remained faithful. Nevertheless the Druids were not without merit in the
+order of thought.
+
+For the Celts, as for all primitive people, astronomy and religion were
+intimately associated. They considered that the soul was eternal, and
+the stars were worlds successively inhabited by the spiritual emigrants.
+They considered that the stars were as much the abodes of human life as
+our own earth, and this image of the future life constituted their power
+and their grandeur. They repelled entirely the idea of the destruction
+of life, and preferred to see in the phenomena of death, a voyage to a
+region already peopled by friends.
+
+Under what form did Druidical science represent the universe? Their
+scientific contemplation of the heavens was at the same time a religious
+contemplation. It is therefore impossible to separate in our history
+their astronomical and theological heavens.
+
+In their theological astronomy, or astronomical theology, the Druids
+considered the totality of all living beings as divided into three
+circles. The first of these circles, the circle of immensity, _Ceugant_,
+corresponding to incommunicable, infinite attributes, belonged to God
+alone; it was properly the absolute, and none, save the ineffable
+being, had a right there. The second circle, that of blessedness,
+_Gwyn-fyd_, united in it the beings that have arrived at the superior
+degrees of existence; this was heaven. The third, the circle of voyages,
+_Abred_, comprised all the noviciate; it was there, at the bottom of the
+abysses, in the great oceans, as Taliesin says, that the first breath of
+man commenced. The object proposed to men's perseverance and courage was
+to attain to what the bards called the point of liberty, very probably
+the point at which, being suitably fortified against the assaults of the
+lower passions, they were not exposed to be troubled, against their
+wills, in their celestial aspirations; and when they arrived at such a
+point--so worthy of the ambition of every soul that would be its own
+master--they quitted the circle of Abred and entered that of Gwyn-fyd;
+the hour of their recompense had come.
+
+Demetrius, cited by Plutarch, relates that the Druids believed that
+these souls of the elect were so intimately connected with our circle
+that they could not emerge from it without disturbing its equilibrium.
+This writer states, that being in the suite of the Emperor Claudius, in
+some part of the British isles, he heard suddenly a terrible hurricane,
+and the priests, who alone inhabited these sacred islands, immediately
+explained the phenomenon, by telling him that a vacuum had been produced
+on the earth, by the departure of an important soul. "The great men," he
+said, "while they live are like torches whose light is always
+beneficent and never harms any one, but when they are extinguished their
+death generally occasions, as you have just seen, winds, storm, and
+derangements of the atmosphere."
+
+The palingenetic system of the Druids is complete in itself, and takes
+the being at his origin, and conducts him to the ultimate heaven. At the
+moment of his creation, as Henry Martyn says in his Commentary, the
+being has no conscience of the gifts that are latent in him. He is
+created in the lowest stage of life, in _Annwfn_, the shadowy abyss at
+the base of _Abred_. There, surrounded by nature, submitted to
+necessity, he rises obscurely through the successive degrees of
+inorganic matter, and then through the organic. His conscience at last
+awakes. He is man. "Three things are primarily contemporaneous--man,
+liberty, and light." Before man there was nothing in creation but fatal
+obedience to physical laws; with man commences the great battle between
+liberty and necessity, good and evil. The good and the evil present
+themselves to man in equilibrium, "and he can at his pleasure attach
+himself to one or the other of them."
+
+It might appear at first sight that it was carrying things too far to
+attribute to the Druids the knowledge, not indeed of the true system of
+the world, but the general idea on which it was constructed. But, on
+closer examination, this opinion seems to have some consistency. If it
+was from the Druids that Pythagoras derived the basis of his theology,
+why should it not be from them that he derived also that of his
+astronomy? Why, if there is no difficulty in seeing that the principle
+of the subordination of the earth might arise from the meditations of an
+isolated spirit, should there be any more difficulty in thinking that
+the principles of astronomy should take birth in the midst of a
+corporation of theologians embued with the same ideas as the
+philosophers on the circulation of life, and applied with continued
+diligence to the study of celestial phenomena. The Druid, not having to
+receive mythological errors, might be led by that circumstance to
+imagine in space other worlds similar to our own.
+
+Independently of its intrinsic value, this supposition rests also upon
+the testimony of historians. A singular statement made by Hecataeus with
+regard to the religious rites of Great Britain exhibits this in a
+striking manner. This historian relates that the moon, seen in this
+island, appears much larger than it does anywhere else, and that it is
+possible to distinguish mountains on its surface, such as there are on
+the earth. Now, how had the Druids made an observation of this kind? It
+is of not much consequence whether they had actually seen the lunar
+mountains or had only imagined them, the curious thing is that they were
+persuaded that that body was like the earth, and had mountains and
+other features similar to our own. Plutarch, in his treatise _De facie
+in orbe Lunae_, tells us that, according to the Druids, and conformably
+to an idea which had long been held in science, the surface of the moon
+is furrowed with several Mediterraneans, which the Grecian philosophers
+compare to the Red and Caspian seas. It was also thought that immense
+abysses were seen, which were supposed to be in communication with the
+hemisphere that is turned away from the earth. Lastly, the dimensions of
+this sky-borne country were estimated; (ideas very different to those
+that were current in Greece): its size and its breadth, says the
+traveller depicted by the writer, are not at all such as the geometers
+say, but much larger.
+
+It is through the same author, who is in accordance in this respect with
+all the bards, that we know that this celestial earth was considered by
+the theologians of the West as the residence of happy souls. They rose
+and approached it in proportion as their preparation had been complete,
+but, in the agitation of the whirlwind, many reached the moon that it
+would not receive. "The moon repelled a great number, and rejected them
+by its fluctuations, at the moment they reached it; but those that had
+better success fixed themselves there for good; their soul is like the
+flame, which, raising itself in the ether of the moon, as fire raises
+itself on that of the earth receives force and solidity in the same way
+that red-hot iron does when plunged into the water."
+
+They thus traced an analogy between the moon and the earth, which they
+doubtless carried out to its full development, and made the moon an
+image of what they knew here, picturing there the lunar fields and
+brooks and breezes and perfumes. What a charm such a belief must have
+given to the heavens at night. The moon was the place and visible pledge
+of immortality. On this account it was placed in high position in their
+religion; the order of all the festivals was arranged after that which
+was dedicated to it; its presence was sought in all their ceremonies,
+and its rays were invoked. The Druids are always therefore represented
+as having the crescent in their hands.
+
+Astronomy and theology being so intimately connected in the spirit of
+the Druids, we can easily understand that the two studies were brought
+to the front together in their colleges. From certain points of view we
+may say that the Druids were nothing more than astronomers. This quality
+was not less striking to the ancients in them than in the Chaldaeans. The
+observation of the stars was one of their official functions. Caesar
+tells us, without entering more into particulars, that they taught many
+things about _the form and dimensions of the earth, the size and
+arrangements of the different parts of heaven, and the motions of the
+stars_, which includes the greater part of the essential problems of
+celestial geometry, which we see they had already proposed to
+themselves. We can see the same fact in the magnificent passage of
+Taliesin. "I will ask the bards," he says in his _Hymn of the World_,
+"and why will not the bards answer me? I will ask of them what sustains
+the earth, since having no support it does not fall? or if it falls
+which way does it go? But what can serve for its support? Is the world a
+great traveller? Although it moves without ceasing, it remains tranquil
+in its route; and how admirable is that route, seeing that the world
+moves not in any direction." This suffices to show that the ideas of the
+Druids on material phenomena were not at all inferior to their
+conceptions of the destiny of the soul, and that they had scientific
+views of quite another origin from the Alexandrian Greeks, the Latins,
+their disciples, or the middle ages. An anecdote of the eighth century
+furnishes another proof in favour of Druidical science. Every one knows
+that Virgilius, bishop of Salzburg, was accused of heresy by Boniface
+before the Pope Zacharias, because he had asserted that there were
+antipodes. Now Virgilius was educated in one of the learned monasteries
+of Ireland, which were fed by the Christian bards, who had preserved the
+scientific traditions of Druidism.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE II.--DRUIDICAL WORSHIP.]
+
+The fundamental alliance between the doctrine of the plurality of worlds
+and of the eternity of the soul is perhaps the most memorable character
+in the thoughts of this ancient race. The death upon earth was for them
+only a psychological and astronomical fact, not more grave than that
+which happened to the moon when it was eclipsed, nor the fall of the
+verdant clothing of the oak under the breath of the autumnal breeze. We
+see these conceptions and manners, at first sight so extraordinary,
+clothe themselves with a simple and natural aspect. The Druids were so
+convinced of the future life in the stars, that they used _to lend money
+to be repaid in the other world_. Such a custom must have made a
+profound impression on the minds of those who daily practised it.
+Pomponius Mela and Valerius Maximus both tell us of this custom. The
+latter says, "After having left Marseilles I found that ancient custom
+of the Gauls still in force, namely, of lending one another money to be
+paid back in the infernal regions, for they are persuaded that the souls
+of men are immortal."
+
+In passing to the other world they lost neither their personality, their
+memory, nor their friends; they there re-encountered the business, the
+laws, the magistrates of this world. They had capitals and everything
+the same as here. They gave one another rendezvous as emigrants might
+who were going to America. This superstition, so laudable as far as it
+had the effect of pressing on the minds of men the firm sentiment of
+immortality, led them to burn, along with the dead, all the objects
+which had been dear to them, or of which they thought they might still
+wish to make use. "The Gauls," says Pomponius Mela, "burn and bury with
+the dead that which had belonged to the living."
+
+They had another custom prompted by the same spirit, but far more
+touching. When any one bade farewell to the earth, each one charged him
+to take letters to his absent friends, who should receive him on his
+arrival and doubtless load him with questions as to things below. It is
+to Diodorus that we owe the preservation of the remembrance of this
+custom. "At their funerals," he says, "they place letters with the dead
+which are written to those already dead by their parents, so that they
+may be read by them." They followed the soul in thought in its passage
+to the other planets, and the survivors often regretted that they could
+not accomplish the voyage in their company; sometimes, indeed, they
+could not resist the temptation. "There are some," says Mela, "who burn
+themselves with their friends in order that they may continue to live
+together." They entertained another idea also, which led even to worse
+practices than this, namely, that death was a sort of recruiting that
+was commanded by the laws of the universe for the sustenance of the army
+of existences. In certain cases they would replace one death by another.
+Posidonius, who visited Gaul at an epoch when it had not been broken up,
+and who knew it far better than Caesar, has left us some very curious
+information on this subject. If a man felt himself seriously warned by
+his disease that he must hold himself in readiness for departure, but
+who, nevertheless, had, for the moment, some important business on hand,
+or the needs of his family chained him to this life, or even that death
+was disagreeable to him; if no member of his family or his clients were
+willing to offer himself instead, he looked out for a substitute; such a
+one would soon arrive accompanied by a troop of friends, and stipulating
+for his price a certain sum of money, he distributed it himself as
+remembrances among his companions,--often even he would only ask for a
+barrel of wine. Then they would erect a stage, improvise a sort of
+festival, and finally, after the banquet was over, our hero would lie
+down on the shield, and driving a sword into his bosom, would take his
+departure for the other world.
+
+Such a custom, indeed, shows anything but what we should rightly call
+civilization, however admirable may have been their opinions; but it
+receives its only palliation from the fact that their indifference to
+death did not arise from their undervaluing life here, but that they had
+so firm a belief in the existence and the happiness of a life hereafter.
+
+That these beliefs were not separated from their astronomical ideas is
+seen from the fact that they peopled the firmament with the departed.
+The Milky Way was called the town of Gwyon (Coer or Ker Gwydion, Ker in
+Breton, Caer in Gaulish, Kohair in Gaelic); certain bardic legends gave
+to Gwyon as father a genius called Don, who resides in the constellation
+of Cassiopeia, and who figures as "the king of the fairies" in the
+popular myths of Ireland. The empyrean is thus divided between various
+heavenly spirits. Arthur had for residence the Great Bear, called by
+the Druids "Arthur's Chariot."
+
+We are not, however, entirely limited to tradition and the reports of
+former travellers for our information as to the astronomy of the Druids,
+but we have also at our service numerous coins belonging to the old
+Gauls, who were of one family with those who cultivated Druidism in our
+island, which have been discovered buried in the soil of France. The
+importance which was given to astronomy in that race becomes immediately
+evident upon the discovery of the fact that these coins are marked with
+figures having reference to the heavenly bodies, in other words are
+astronomical coins. If we examine, from a general point of view, a large
+collection of Gaulish medals such as that preserved in the National
+Museum of Paris, we observe that among the essential symbols that occupy
+the fields are types of the Horse, the Bull, the Boar, the Eagle, the
+Lion, the Horseman, and the Bear. We remark next a great number of
+signs, most often astronomical, ordinarily accessory, but occasionally
+the chief, such as the sign [symbol: rotated mirrored S], globules
+surrounded by concentric circles, stars of five, six, or eight points,
+radiated and flaming bodies, crescents, triangles, wheels with four
+spokes, the sign [symbol: infinity], the lunar crescent, the zigzag, &c.
+Lastly, we remark other accessory types represented by images of real
+objects or imaginary figures, such as the Lyre, the Diota, the Serpent,
+the Hatchet, the Human Eye, the Sword, the Bough, the Lamp, the Jewel,
+the Bird, the Arrow, the Ear of Corn, the Fishes, &c.
+
+On a great number of medals, on the stateres of Vercingetorix, on the
+reverses of the coins of several epochs, we recognize principally the
+sign of the Waterer, which appears to symbolize for one part of
+antiquity the knowledge of the heavenly sphere. On the Gaulish types
+this sign (an amphora with two handles) bears the name of Diota, and
+represents amongst the Druids as amongst the Magi the sciences of
+astronomy and astrology.
+
+Some of these coins are represented in the woodcut below.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
+
+The first of these represents the course of the Sun-Horse reaching the
+Tropic of Cancer (summer solstice), and brought back to the Tropic of
+Capricorn (winter solstice).
+
+On the second is seen the symbol of the year between the south
+(represented by the sun [symbol: sun]) and the north (represented by the
+Northern Bear). In the third the calendar (or course of the year)
+between the sun [symbol: sun] and the moon [symbol: moon]. Time the Sun,
+and the Bear are visible on the fourth. The diurnal motion of the
+heavens is represented on the fifth; and lastly, on the sixth, appears
+the Watering-pot, the Sun-Horse, and the sign of the course of the
+heavenly bodies.
+
+On other groups of money the presence of the zodiac may be made out.
+
+These medals would seem to show that some part of the astronomical
+knowledge of the Druids was not invented by themselves, but borrowed
+from the Chaldeans or others who in other lands invented them in
+previous ages, and from whom they may have possibly derived them from
+the Phenicians.
+
+We may certainly expect, however, from these pieces of money, if found
+in sufficient number and carefully studied, to discover a good many
+positive facts now wanting to us, of the religion, sciences, manners,
+language, commercial relation, &c. which belonged to the Celtic
+civilization. It was far from being so barbarous as is ordinarily
+supposed, and we shall do more justice to it when we know it better.
+
+M. Fillioux, the curator of the museum of Gueret, who has studied these
+coins with care, after having sought for a long time for a clear and
+concise method of determining exactly the symbolic and religious
+character of the Gaulish money, has been able to give the following
+general statements.
+
+The coins have for their ordinary field the heavens.
+
+On the right side they present almost universally the ideal heads of
+gods or goddesses, or in default of these, the symbols that are
+representative of them.
+
+On the reverse for the most part, they reproduce, either by direct types
+or by emblems artfully combined, the principal celestial bodies, the
+divers aspects of the constellations, and probably the laws, which,
+according to their ancient science, presided over their course; in a
+smaller proportion they denote the religious myths which form the base
+of the national belief of the Gauls. As we have seen above, for them the
+present life was but a transitory state of the soul, only a prodrome of
+the future life, which should develop itself in heaven and the
+astronomical worlds with which it is filled.
+
+Borrowed from an elevated spiritualism, incessantly tending towards the
+celestial worlds, these ideas were singularly appropriate to a nation at
+once warlike and commercial. These circumstances explain the existence
+of these strange types, founded at the same time on those of other
+nations, and on the symbolism which was the soul of the Druidical
+religion. To this religious caste, indeed, we must give the merit of
+this ingenious and original conception, of turning the reverses of the
+coins into regular charts of the heavens. Nothing indeed could be better
+calculated to inspire the people with respect and confidence than these
+mysterious and learned symbols, representing the phenomena of the
+heavens.
+
+Not making use of writing to teach their dogmas, which they wished to
+maintain as part of the mysteries of their caste, the Druids availed
+themselves of this method of placing on the money that celestial
+symbolism of which they alone possessed the key.
+
+The religious ideas founded on astronomical observations were not
+peculiar to, or originated by, the Druids, any more than their zodiac.
+There seems reason to believe that they had come down from a remote
+antiquity, and been widely spread over many nations, as we shall see in
+the chapter on the Pleiades; but we can certainly trace them to the
+East, where they first prevailed in Persia and Egypt, and were
+afterwards brought to Greece, where they disappeared before the new
+creations of anthropomorphism, though they were not forgotten in the
+days of the poet Anacreon, who says, "Do not represent for me, around
+this vase" (a vase he had ordered of the worker in silver), "either the
+heavenly bodies, or the chariot, or the melancholy Orion; I have nothing
+to do with the Pleiades or the Herdsman." He only wanted mythological
+subjects which were more to his taste.
+
+The characters which are made use of in these astronomical moneys of
+the Druids would appear to have a more ancient origin than we are able
+to trace directly, since they are most of them found on the arms and
+implements of the bronze age. Some of them, such as the concentric
+pointed circles, the crescent with a globule or a star, the line in
+zigzag, were used in Egypt; where they served to mark the sun, the
+month, the year, the fluid element; and they appear to have had among
+the Druids the same signification. The other signs, such as the
+[symbol: wave], and its multiple combinations, the centred circles,
+grouped in one or two, the little rings, the alphabetical characters
+recalling the form of a constellation, the wheel with rays, the
+radiating discs, &c. are all represented on the bronze arms found in the
+Celtic, Germanic, Breton, and Scandinavian lands. From this remote
+period, which was strongly impressed with the Oriental genius, we must
+date the origin of the Celtic symbolism. It has been supposed, and not
+without reason, that this epoch, besides being contemporaneous with the
+Phenician establishments on the borders of the ocean, was an age of
+civilization and progress in Gaul, and that the ideas of the Druids
+became modified at the same time that they acquired just notions in
+astronomy and in the art of casting metals. At a far later period, the
+Druidic theocracy having, with religious care, preserved the symbols of
+its ancient traditions, had them stamped on the coins which they caused
+to be struck.
+
+This remarkable fact is shown in an incontestable manner in the rougher
+attempts in Gaulish money, and this same state of things was perpetuated
+even into the epoch of the high arts, since we find on the imitation
+statues of Macedonia the old Celtic symbols associated with emblems of a
+Grecian origin.
+
+In Italy a different result was arrived at, because the warlike element
+of the nobles soon predominated over the religious. Nevertheless the
+most ancient Roman coins, those which are known to us under the name of
+Consular, have not escaped the common law which seems to have presided,
+among all nations, over the origin of money. The two commonest types,
+one in bronze of _Janus Bifrons_ with the _palus_; the other in silver,
+the _Dioscures_ with their stars, have an eminently astronomical aspect.
+
+The comparison between the Gaulish and Roman coins may be followed in a
+series of analogies which are very remarkable from an astronomical point
+of view. To cite only a few examples, we may observe on a large number
+of pennies of different families, the impression of Auriga "the
+Coachman" conducting a quadriga; or the sun under another form (with his
+head radiated and drawn in profile); or Diana with her lunar attributes;
+or the five planets well characterised; for example, Venus by a double
+star, as that of the morning or of the evening; or the constellations of
+the Dog, Hercules, the Kid, the Lyre, and almost all those of the
+zodiac and of the circumpolar region and the seven-kine (septemtriones).
+In later times, under the Caesars, in the villa of Borghese, is found a
+calendar whose arrangements very much recall the ancient Gaulish coin.
+The head of the twelve great gods and the twelve signs of the zodiac are
+represented, and the drawing of the constellations establishes a
+correspondence between their rising and the position of the sun in the
+zodiac. It may therefore be affirmed that in the coinage and works of
+art in Italy and Greece, the characteristic influence of astronomical
+worship is found as strongly as among the Druids. Nor have the Western
+nations alone had the curious habit of impressing their astronomical
+ideas upon their coinage, for in China and Japan coins of a similar
+description have been met with, containing on their reverse all the
+signs of the zodiac admitted by them.
+
+In conclusion, we may say, that it was cosmography, that constructed the
+dogmas of the Druidical religion, which was, in its essential elements,
+the same as that of the old Oriental theocracies. The outward ceremonies
+were addressed to the sun, the moon, the stars, and other visible
+phenomena; but, above nature, there was the great generating and moving
+principle, which the Celts placed, at a later period perhaps, among the
+attributes of their supreme deities.
+
+[Illustration: THE NORTHERN CONSTELLATIONS.
+
+The Lyre--Cassiopeia--The Little Bear--The Dragon--Andromeda--The Great
+Bear--Capella--Algol, or Medusa's Head.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+ORIGIN OF THE CONSTELLATIONS.
+
+
+When we look upon the multitude of heavenly bodies with which the
+celestial vault is strewed, our attention is naturally arrested by
+certain groupings of brilliant stars, apparently associated together on
+account of their great proximity; and also by certain remarkable single
+stars which have excessive brilliancy or are completely isolated from
+the rest. These natural groups seem to have some obscure connection with
+or dependence on each other. They have always been noticed, even by the
+most savage races. The languages of several such races contain different
+names for the same identical groups, and these names, mostly borrowed
+from terrestrial beings, give an imaginary life to the solitude and
+silence of the skies. A celestial globe, as we know, presents us with a
+singular menagerie, rich in curious monsters placed in inconceivable
+positions. How these constellations, as they are called, were first
+invented, and by whom, is an interesting question which by the aid of
+comparative philology we must endeavour now to answer.
+
+Among these constellations there are twelve which have a more than
+ordinary importance, and to which more attention has always been paid.
+They are those through which the sun appears to pass in his annual
+journey round the ecliptic, entering one region each month. At least,
+this is what they were when first invented. They were called the
+zodiacal constellations or signs of the zodiac--the name being derived
+from their being mostly named after living beasts. In our own days the
+zodiacal constellations are no longer the signs of the zodiac. When they
+were arranged the sun entered each one on a certain date. He now is no
+longer at the same point in the heavens at that date, nevertheless he is
+still said to enter the same sign of the zodiac--which therefore no
+longer coincides with the zodiacal constellation it was named from--but
+merely stands for a certain twelfth part of the ecliptic, which varies
+from time to time. It will be of course of great interest to discover
+the origin of these particular constellations, the date of their
+invention, &c.; and we shall hope to do so after having discussed the
+origin of those seen in the Northern hemisphere which may be more
+familiar even than those.
+
+We have represented in the frontispiece the two halves of the Grecian
+celestial sphere--the Northern and the Southern, with the various
+constellations they contain. This sphere was not invented by the Greeks,
+but was received by them from more ancient peoples, and corrected and
+augmented. It was used by Hipparchus two thousand years ago; and Ptolemy
+has given us a description of it. It contained 48 constellations, of
+which 21 belonged to the Northern, 15 to the Southern hemisphere, and
+the remaining twelve were those of the zodiac, situated along the
+ecliptic.
+
+The constellations reckoned by Ptolemy contained altogether 1,026 stars,
+whose relative positions were determined by Hipparchus; with reference
+to which accomplishment Pliny says, "Hipparchus, with a height of
+audacity too great even for a god, has ventured to transmit to posterity
+the number of the stars!"
+
+Ptolemy's catalogue contains:--
+
+      For the northern constellations          361 stars
+      For the zodiacal                         350   "
+      For the southern                         318   "
+          or                                 -----
+      For all the 48 constellations          1,029   "
+  or, since 3 of these are named twice       1,026   "
+
+Of course this number is not to be supposed to represent the whole of
+the stars visible even to the naked eye; there are twice as many in the
+Northern hemisphere alone, while there are about 5,000 in the whole sky.
+The number visible in a telescope completely dwarfs this, so that more
+than 300,000 are now catalogued; while the number visible in a large
+telescope may be reckoned at not less than 77 millions. The principal
+northern constellations named by Ptolemy are contained in the following
+list, with the stars of the first magnitude that occur in each:--
+
+The Great Bear, or David's Chariot, near the centre.
+
+The Little Bear, with the Pole Star at the end of the tail.
+
+The Dragon.
+
+Cepheus, situated to the right of the Pole.
+
+The Herdsman, or the Keeper of the Bear, with the star Arcturus.
+
+The Northern Crown to the right.
+
+Hercules, or the Man who Kneels.
+
+The Lyre, or Falling Vulture, with the beautiful star Vega.
+
+The Swan, or Bird, or Cross.
+
+Cassiopeia, or the Chair, or the Throne.
+
+Perseus.
+
+The Carter, or the Charioteer, with Capella Ophiuchus, or Serpentarius,
+or Esculapius.
+
+The Serpent.
+
+The Bow and Arrow, or the Dart.
+
+The Eagle, or the Flying Vulture, with Altair.
+
+The Dolphin.
+
+The Little Horse, or the Bust of the Horse.
+
+Pegasus, or the Winged Horse, or the Great Cross.
+
+Andromeda, or the Woman with the Girdle.
+
+The Northern Triangle, or the Delta.
+
+The fifteen constellations on the south of the ecliptic were:--
+
+The Whale.
+
+Orion, with the beautiful stars Rigel and Betelgeuse.
+
+The River Endanus, or the River Orion, with the brilliant Achernar.
+
+The Hare.
+
+The Great Dog, with the magnificent Sirius.
+
+The Little Dog, or the Dog which runs before, with Procyon.
+
+The ship Argo, with its fine Alpha (Canopus) and Eta.
+
+The Female Hydra, or the Water Snake.
+
+The Cup, or the Urn, or the Vase.
+
+The Raven.
+
+The Altar, or the Perfuming Pot.
+
+The Centaur, whose star Alpha is the nearest to the earth.
+
+The Wolf, or the Centaur's Lance, or the Panther, or the Beast.
+
+The Southern Crown, or the Wand of Mercury, or Uraniscus.
+
+The Southern Fish, with Fomalhaut.
+
+The twelve zodiacal constellations, which are of more importance than
+the rest, are generally named in the order in which the sun passes
+through them in its passage along the ecliptic, and both Latins and
+English have endeavoured to impress their names on the vulgar by
+embodying them in verses. The poet Ausonius thus catalogues them:--
+
+  "Sunt: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo,
+  Libraque, Scorpius, Arcitenens, Caper, Amphora, Pisces."
+
+and the English effusion is as follows:--
+
+  "The Ram, the Bull, the Heavenly Twins,
+  And next the Crab the Lion shines,
+      The Virgin and the Scales.
+  The Scorpion, Archer, and He Goat,
+  The Man that holds the watering-pot,
+      And Fish with glittering scales."
+
+These twelve have hieroglyphics assigned to them, by which they are
+referred to in calendars and astronomical works, some of the marks being
+easily traced to their origin. Thus [symbol: aries] refers to the horns
+of the Ram; [symbol: taurus] to the head of the Bull; [symbol: scorpion]
+to the joints and tail-sting of the Scorpion; [symbol: saggitarius] is
+very clearly connected with an archer; [symbol: capricorn] is formed by
+the junction of the first two letters [Greek: t] and [Greek: r] in
+[Greek: tragos], the Sea-goat, or Capricorn; [symbol: libra] for the
+Balance, is suggestive of its shape; [symbol: aquarius] refers to the
+water in the Watering-pot; and perhaps [symbol: pisces] to the Two
+Fishes; [symbol: gemini] for Twins may denote two sides alike; [symbol:
+cancer] for the Crab, has something of its side-walking appearance;
+while [symbol: leo] for the Lion, and [symbol: virgo] for the Virgin,
+seem to have no reference that is traceable.
+
+These constellations contain the following stars of the first
+magnitude--Aldebaran, Antares, and Spica.
+
+To these constellations admitted by the Greeks should be added the Locks
+of Berenice, although it is not named by Ptolemy. It was invented indeed
+by the astronomer Conon. The story is that Berenice was the spouse and
+the sister of Ptolemy Euergetes, and that she made a vow to cut off her
+locks and devote them to Venus if her husband returned victorious; to
+console the king the astronomer placed her locks among the stars. If
+this is a true account Arago must be mistaken in asserting that the
+constellation was created by Tycho Brahe in 1603. The one he did add to
+the former ones was that of Antinoeus, by collecting into one figure some
+unappropriated stars near the Eagle. At about the same time J. Bayer,
+from the information of Vespuccius and the sailors, added twelve to the
+southern constellations of Ptolemy; among which may be mentioned the
+Peacock, the Toucan, the Phoenix, the Crane, the Fly, the Chameleon,
+the Bird of Paradise, the Southern Triangle, and the Indian.
+
+Augustus Royer, in 1679, formed five new groups, among which we may name
+the Great Cloud, the Fleur-de-Lis, and the Southern Cross.
+
+Hevelius, in 1690, added 16; the most important being the Giraffe, the
+Unicorn, the Little Lion, the Lynx, the Little Triangle.
+
+Among these newer-named constellations none is more interesting than the
+Southern Cross, which is by some considered as the most brilliant of all
+that are known. Some account of it, possibly from the Arabs, seems to
+have reached Dante, who evidently refers to it, before it had been named
+by Royer, in a celebrated passage in his "Purgatory." Some have thought
+that his reference to such stars was only accidental, and that he really
+referred only to the four cardinal virtues of theology, chiefly on
+account of the difficulty of knowing how he could have heard of them;
+but as the Arabs had establishments along the entire coast of Africa,
+there is no difficulty in understanding how the information might reach
+Italy.
+
+Americus Vespuccius, who in his third voyage refers to these verses of
+Dante, does not mention the name of the Southern Cross. He simply says
+that the four stars form a rhomboidal figure. As voyages round the Cape
+multiplied, however, the constellation became rapidly more celebrated,
+and it is mentioned as forming a brilliant cross by the Florentine
+Andrea Corsali, in 1517, and a little later by Pigafetta, in 1520.
+
+All these constellations have not been considered sufficient, and many
+subsequent additions have been made. Thus Lacaille, in 1752, created
+fourteen new ones, mostly characterized by modern names--as the
+Sculptor's Studio, the Chemical Furnace, the Clock, the Compass, the
+Telescope, the Microscope, and others.
+
+Lemonnier, in 1766, added the Reindeer, the Solitaire, and the Indian
+Bird, and Lalande the Harvestman. Poczobut, in 1777, added one more,
+and P. Hell another. Finally, in the charts drawn by Bode, eight more
+appear, among which the Aerostat, and the Electrical and Printing
+Machines.
+
+We thus arrive at a total of 108 constellations. To which we may add
+that the following groups are generally recognized. The Head of Medusa,
+near Perseus; the Pleiades, on the back, and the Hyades on the forehead
+of the Bull; the Club of Hercules; the Shield of Orion, sometimes called
+the Rake; the Three Kings; the Staff of S. James; the Sword of Orion;
+the Two Asses in the Crab, having between them the Star Cluster, called
+the Stall, or the Manger; and the Kids, near Capella, in the
+constellation of the Coachman.
+
+This brings the list of the constellations to 117, which is the total
+number now admitted.
+
+A curious episode with respect to these star arrangements may here be
+mentioned.
+
+About the eighth century Bede and certain other theologians and
+astronomers wished to depose the Olympian gods. They proposed,
+therefore, to change the names and arrangements of the constellations;
+they put S. Peter in the place of the Ram; S. Andrew instead of the
+Bull; and so on. In more recent calendars David, Solomon, the Magi, and
+other New and Old Testament characters were placed in the heavens
+instead of the former constellations; but these changes of name were not
+generally adopted.
+
+As an example of these celestial spheres we figure a portion of one
+named _Coeli stellati Christiani hemisphericum prius_. We here see the
+Great Bear replaced by the Barque of S. Peter, the Little Bear by S.
+Michael, the Dragon by the Innocents, the Coachman by S. Jerome, Perseus
+by S. Paul, Cassiopeia by the Magdalene, Andromache by S. Sepulchre, and
+the Triangle by S. Peter's mitre; while for the zodiac were substituted
+the Twelve Apostles.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
+
+In the seventeenth century a proposal was made by Weigel, a professor
+in the University of Jena, to form a series of heraldic constellations,
+and to use for the zodiac the arms of the twelve most illustrious
+families in Europe; but these attempts at change have been in vain, the
+old names are still kept.
+
+Having now explained the origin in modern times of 69 out of the 117
+constellations, there remain the 48 which were acknowledged by the
+Greeks, whose origin is involved in more obscurity.
+
+One of the first to be noticed and named, as it is now the most easily
+recognized and most widely known, is the _Great Bear_, which attracts
+all the more attention that it is one of those that never sets, being at
+a less distance from the pole than the latter is from the horizon.
+
+Every one knows the seven brilliant stars that form this constellation.
+The four in the rectangle and the three in a curved line at once call to
+mind the form of a chariot, especially one of antique build. It is this
+resemblance, no doubt, that has obtained for the constellation the name
+of "the Chariot" that it bears among many people. Among the ancient
+Gauls it was "Arthur's Chariot." In France it is "David's Chariot," and
+in England it goes by the name of "King Charles' Wain," and by that of
+the "Plough." The latter name was in vogue, too, among the Latins
+(_Plaustrum_), and the three stars were three oxen, from whence it would
+appear that they extended the idea to all the seven stars, and at last
+called them the _seven_ oxen, _septem-triones_, from whence the name
+sometimes used for the north--septentrional. The Greeks also called it
+the Chariot ([Greek: Hamaxa]), and the same word seems to have stood
+sometimes for a plough. It certainly has some resemblance to this
+instrument.
+
+If we take the seven stars as representing the characteristic points of
+a chariot, the four stars of the quadrilateral will represent the four
+wheels, and the three others will represent the three horses. Above the
+centre of the three horses any one with clear sight may perceive a small
+star of the fifth or sixth magnitude, called the Cavalier. Each of these
+several stars is indicated, as is usual with all the constellations, by
+a Greek letter, the largest being denoted by the first letter. Thus the
+4 stars in the quadrilateral are [Greek: a], [Greek: b], [Greek: g],
+[Greek: d], and the 3 tail stars [Greek: e], [Greek: x], [Greek: e]. The
+Arabs give to each star its special name, which in this case are as
+follows:--Dubhe and Merak are the stars at the back; Phegda and Megrez
+those of the front; Alioth, Mizat, and Ackiar the other three, while the
+little one over Mizat is Alcor. Another name for it is Saidak, or the
+Tester, the being able to see it being a mark of clear vision.
+
+There is some little interest in the Great Bear on account of the
+possibility of its being used as a kind of celestial time-keeper, and
+its easy recognition makes it all the more available. The line through
+[Greek: a] and [Greek: b] passes almost exactly through the pole. Now
+this line revolves of course with the constellation round the pole in 24
+hours; in every such interval being once, vertical above the pole, and
+once vertical below, taking the intermediate positions to right and left
+between these times. The instant at which this line is vertical over the
+pole is not the same on any two consecutive nights, since the stars
+advance each day 4 minutes on the sun. On the 21st of March the superior
+passage takes place at 5 minutes to 11 at night; on the following night
+four minutes earlier, or at 9 minutes to 11. In three months the
+culmination takes place 6 hours earlier, or at 5 minutes to 5. In six
+months, _i.e._ on Sept. 22, it culminates at 10.55 in the morning, being
+vertically below the pole at the same hour in the evening. The following
+woodcut exhibits the positions of the Great Bear at the various hours of
+September 4th. It is plain from this that, knowing the day of the month,
+the hour of the night may be told by observing what angle the line
+joining [Greek: a] and [Greek: b] of this constellation makes with the
+vertical.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 4.]
+
+We have used the name _Great Bear_, by which the constellation is best
+known. It is one of the oldest names also, being derived from the
+Greeks, who called it Arctos megale ([Greek: Arktos megale]), whence the
+name Arctic; and singularly enough the Iroquois, when America was
+discovered, called it Okouari, their name for a bear. The explanation of
+this name is certainly not to be found in the resemblance of the
+constellation to the animal. The three stars are indeed in the tail, but
+the four are in the middle of the back; and even if we take in the
+smaller stars that stand in the feet and head, no ingenuity can make it
+in this or any other way resemble a bear. It would appear, as Aristotle
+observes, that the name is derived from the fact, that of all known
+animals the bear was thought to be the only one that dared to venture
+into the frozen regions of the north and tempt the solitude and cold.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 5.]
+
+Other origins of the name, and other names, have been suggested, of
+which we may mention a few. For example, "Ursa" is said to be derived
+from _versus_, because the constellation is seen to _turn_ about the
+pole. It has been called the Screw ([Greek: Elike]), or Helix, which has
+plainly reference to its turning. Another name is Callisto, in reference
+to its beauty; and lastly, among the Arabs the Great and Little Bears
+were known as the Great and Little Coffins in reference to their slow
+and solemn motion. These names referred to the four stars of each
+constellation, the other three being the mourners following the bearers.
+The Christian Arabs made it into the grave of Lazarus and the three
+weepers, Mary, Martha, and their maid.
+
+Next as to the Little Bear. This constellation has evidently received
+its name from the similarity of its form to that of the Great Bear. In
+fact, it is composed of seven stars arranged in the same way, only in an
+inverse order. If we follow the line from [Greek: b] to [Greek: a] of
+the Great Bear to a distance of five times as great as that between
+these stars we reach the brightest star of the Little Bear, called the
+Pole Star. All the names of the one constellation have been applied to
+the other, only at a later date.
+
+The new constellations were added one by one to the celestial sphere by
+the Greeks before they arranged certain of them as parts of the zodiac.
+The successive introduction of the constellations is proved completely
+by a long passage of Strabo, which has been often misunderstood. "It is
+wrong," he says, "to accuse Homer of ignorance because he speaks only of
+one of the two Celestial Bears. The second was probably not formed at
+that time. The Phenicians were the first to form them and to use them
+for navigation. They came later to the Greeks."
+
+[Illustration: THE CONSTELLATIONS FROM THE SEA-SHORE.
+
+The Swan--The Lyre--Hercules--The Crown--The Herdsman--The Eagle--The
+Serpent--The Balance--The Scorpion--Sagittarius.]
+
+All the commentators on Homer, Hygin and Diogenes Laertes, attribute to
+Thales the introduction of this constellation. Pseudo-Eratosthenes
+called the Little Bear [Greek: Phoinike], to indicate that it was a
+guide to the Phenicians. A century later, about the seventeenth
+Olympiad, Cleostrates of Tenedos enriched the sphere with the Archer
+([Greek: Toxotes], Sagittarius) and the Ram ([Greek: Krios], Aries), and
+about the same time the zodiac was introduced into the Grecian sphere.
+
+With regard to the Little Bear there is another passage of Strabo which
+it will be interesting to quote. He says--"The position of the people
+under the parallel of Cinnamomophore, _i.e._ 3,000 stadia south of Meroe
+and 8,800 stadia north of the equator, represents about the middle of
+the interval between the equator and the tropic, which passes by Syene,
+which is 5,000 stadia north of Meroe. These same people are the first
+for whom the Little Bear is comprised entirely in the Arctic circle and
+remains always visible; the most southern star of the constellation, the
+brilliant one that ends the tail being placed on the circumference of
+the Arctic circle, so as just to touch the horizon." The remarkable
+thing in this passage is that it refers to an epoch anterior to Strabo,
+when the star [Greek: a] of the Little Bear, which now appears almost
+immovable, owing to its extreme proximity to the pole, was then more to
+the south than the other stars of the constellation, and moved in the
+Arctic circle so as to touch the horizon of places of certain latitudes,
+and to set for latitudes nearer the equator.
+
+In those days it was not the _Pole_ Star--if that word has any relation
+to [Greek: poleo], I turn--for the heavens did not turn about it then as
+they do now.
+
+The Grecian geographer speaks in this passage of a period when the most
+brilliant star in the neighbourhood of the pole was [Greek: a] of the
+Dragon. This was more than three thousand years ago. At that time the
+Little Bear was nearer to the pole than what we now call the Polar Star,
+for this latter was "the most southern star in the constellation." If we
+could alight upon documents dating back fourteen thousand years, we
+should find the star Vega ([Greek: a] Lyra) referred to as occupying the
+pole of the world, although it now is at a distance of 51 degrees from
+it, the whole cycle of changes occupying a period of about twenty-six
+thousand years.
+
+Before leaving these two constellations we may notice the origin of the
+names according to Plutarch. He would have it that the names are derived
+from the use that they were put to in navigation. He says that the
+Phenicians called that constellation that guided them in their route the
+_Dobebe_, or _Doube_, that is, the speaking constellation, and that this
+same word happens to mean also in that language a bear; and so the name
+was confounded. Certainly there is still a word _dubbeh_ in Arabic
+having this signification.
+
+Next as to the Herdsman. The name of its characteristic star and of
+itself, Arcturus ([Greek: Arktos], bear; [Greek: Ouros], guardian), is
+explained without difficulty by its position near the Bears. There are
+six small stars of the third magnitude in the constellation round its
+chief one--three of its stars forming an equilateral triangle. Arcturus
+is in the continuation of the curved line through the three tail stars
+of the Great Bear. The constellation has also been called Atlas, from
+its nearness to the pole--as if it held up the heavens, as the fable
+goes.
+
+Beyond this triangle, in the direction of the line continued straight
+from the Great Bear, is the Northern Crown, whose form immediately
+suggests its name. Among the stars that compose it one, of the second
+magnitude, is called the Pearl of the Crown. It was in this point of the
+heavens that a temporary star appeared in May, 1866, and disappeared
+again in the course of a few weeks.
+
+Among the circumpolar constellations we must now speak of Cassiopeia, or
+the Chair--or Throne--which is situated on the opposite side of the Pole
+from the Great Bear; and which is easily found by joining its star
+[Greek: d] to the Pole and continuing it. The Chair is composed
+principally of five stars, of the third magnitude, arranged in the form
+of an M. A smaller star of the fourth magnitude completes the square
+formed by the three [Greek: b], [Greek: a], and [Greek: g]. The figure
+thus formed has a fair resemblance to a chair or throne, [Greek: d] and
+[Greek: e] forming the back; and hence the justification for its popular
+name. The other name Cassiopeia has its connection and meaning unknown.
+
+We may suitably remark in this place, with Arago, that no precise
+drawing of the ancient constellations has come down to us. We only know
+their forms by written descriptions, and these often very short and
+meagre. A verbal description can never take the place of a drawing,
+especially if it is a complex figure, so that there is a certain amount
+of doubt as to the true form, position, and arrangement of the figures
+of men, beasts, and inanimate objects which composed the star-groups of
+the Grecian astronomers--so that unexpected difficulties attend the
+attempt to reproduce them on our modern spheres. Add to this that
+alterations have been avowedly introduced by the ancient astronomers
+themselves, among others by Ptolemy, especially in those given by
+Hipparchus. Ptolemy says he determined to make these changes because it
+was necessary to give a better proportion to the figures, and to adapt
+them better to the real positions of the stars. Thus in the
+constellation of the Virgin, as drawn by Hipparchus, certain stars
+corresponded to the shoulders; but Ptolemy placed them in the sides, so
+as to make the figure a more beautiful one. The result is that modern
+designers give scope to their imagination rather than consult the
+descriptions of the Greeks. _Cassiopeia_, _Cepheus_, _Andromeda_, and
+_Perseus_ holding in his hand the _Head of Medusa_, appear to have been
+established at the same epoch, no doubt subsequently to the Great Bear.
+They form one family, placed together in one part of the heavens, and
+associated in one drama; the ardent Perseus delivering the unfortunate
+Andromeda, daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia. We can never be sure,
+however, whether the constellations suggested the fable, or the fable
+the constellations: the former may only mean that Perseus, rising before
+Andromeda, seems to deliver it from the Night and from the constellation
+of the Whale. The Head of Medusa, a celebrated woman, that Perseus cut
+off and holds in his hand, is said by Volney to be only the head of the
+constellation Virgo, which passes beneath the horizon precisely as the
+Perseus rises, and the serpents which surround it are Ophiucus and the
+polar Dragon, which then occupies the zenith.
+
+Either way, we have no account of the origin of the _names_, and it is
+possible that we may have to seek it, if ever we find it, from other
+sources--for it would appear that similar names were used for the same
+constellations by the Indians. This seems inevitably proved by what is
+related by Wilford (_Asiatic Researches_, III.) of his conversation with
+his pundit, an astronomer, on the names of the Indian constellations.
+"Asking him," he says, "to show me in the heavens the constellation of
+Antarmada, he immediately pointed to Andromeda, though I had not given
+him any information about it beforehand. He afterwards brought me a very
+rare and curious work in Sanscrit, which contained a chapter devoted to
+_Upanacchatras_, or extra-zodiacal constellations, with drawings of
+_Capuja_ (Cepheus), and of _Casyapi_ (Cassiopeia) seated and holding a
+lotus flower in her hand, of _Antarmada_ charmed with the fish beside
+her, and last of _Parasiea_ (Perseus) who, according to the explanation
+of the book, held the head of a monster which he had slain in combat;
+blood was dropping from it, and for hair it had snakes." As the stars
+composing a constellation have often very little connection with the
+figure they are supposed to form, when we find the same set of stars
+called by the same name by two different nations, as was the case, for
+instance, in some of the Indian names of constellations among the
+Americans, it is a proof that one of the nations copied it from the
+other, or that both have copied from a common source. So in the case
+before us, we cannot think these similar names have arisen
+independently, but must conclude that the Grecian was borrowed from the
+Indian.
+
+Another well-known constellation in this neighbourhood, forming an
+isosceles triangle with Arcturus and the Pole Star, is the Lyre. Lucian
+of Samosatus says that the Greeks gave this name to the constellation to
+do honour to the Lyre of Orpheus. Another possible explanation is this.
+The word for lyre in Greek [Greek: chelys] and in Latin (_testudo_)
+means also a tortoise. Now at the time when this name was imposed the
+chief star in the Lyre may have been very near to the pole of the
+heavens and therefore have had a very slow motion, and hence it might
+have been named the tortoise, and this in Greek would easily be
+interpreted into lyre instead. Indeed this double meaning of the word
+seems certainly to have given rise to the fable of Mercury having
+constructed a lyre out of the back of a tortoise. Circling round the
+pole of the ecliptic, and formed by a sinuous line of stars passing
+round from the Great Bear to the Lyre, is the Dragon, which owes its
+name to its form. Its importance is derived from its relation to the
+ecliptic, the pole of which is determined by reference to the stars of
+the first coil of the body. The centre of the zodiacal circle is a very
+important point, that circle being traced on the most ancient spheres,
+and probably being noticed even before the pole of the heavens.
+
+Closely associated with the Dragon both in mythology and in the
+celestial sphere is Hercules. He is always drawn kneeling; in fact, the
+constellation is rather a man in a kneeling posture than any particular
+man. The poets called it Engonasis with reference to this, which is too
+melancholy or lowly a position than would agree well with the valiant
+hero of mythology. There is a story related by AEschylus about the stones
+in the Champ des Cailloux, between Marseilles and the embouchure of the
+Rhone, to the effect that Hercules, being amongst the Ligurians, found
+it necessary to fight with them; but he had no more missiles to throw;
+when Jupiter, touched by the danger of his son, sent a rain of round
+stones, with which Hercules repulsed his enemies. The Engonasis is thus
+considered by some to represent him bending down to pick up the stones.
+Posidonius remarks that it was a pity Jupiter did not rain the stones on
+the Ligurians at once, without giving Hercules the trouble to pick them
+up.
+
+Ophiucus, which comes close by, simply means the man that holds the
+serpent [Greek: ophi-ouchos].
+
+It is obviously impossible to know the origins of all the names, as
+those we now use are only the surviving ones of several that from time
+to time have been applied to the various constellations according to
+their temporary association with the local legends. The prominent ones
+are favoured with quite a crowd of names. We need only cite a few.
+Hercules, for instance, has been called [Greek: Okalzon Korynetes],
+Engonasis, Ingeniculus, Nessus, Thamyris, Desanes, Maceris, Almannus,
+Al-chete, &c. The Swan has the names of [Greek: Kyknos], [Greek: Iktin],
+[Greek: Ornis], Olar, Helenae genitor, Ales Jovis, Ledaeus, Milvus,
+Gallina, The Cross, while the Coachman has been [Greek: Ippilates],
+[Greek: Elastippos], [Greek: Airoelates], [Greek: Eniochos], Auriga,
+Acator, Hemochus, Erichthonus, Mamsek, Alanat, Athaiot, Alatod, &c. With
+respect to the Coachman, in some old maps he is drawn with a whip in his
+left hand turned towards the chariot, and is called the charioteer. No
+doubt its proximity to the former constellation has acquired for it its
+name. The last we need mention, as of any celebrity, is that of Orion,
+which is situated on the equator, which runs exactly through its midst.
+Regel forms its left foot, and the Hare serves for a footstool to the
+right foot of the hero. Three magnificent stars in the centre of the
+quadrilateral, which lie in one straight line are called the Rake, or
+the Three Kings, or the Staff of Jacob, or the Belt. These names have
+an obvious origin; but the meaning of Orion itself is more doubtful. In
+the Grecian sphere it is written [Greek: Orion], which also means a kind
+of bird. The allied word [Greek: oros] has very numerous meanings, the
+only one of which that could be conjectured to be connected with the
+constellations is a "guardian." The word [Greek: horion], on the
+contrary, the diminutive of [Greek: horos], means a limit, and has been
+assigned to Jupiter; and in this case may have reference to the
+constellation being situated on the confines of the two hemispheres. In
+mythology Orion was an intrepid hunter of enormous size. He was the same
+personage as Orus, Arion, the Minotaur, and Nimrod, and afterwards
+became Saturn. Orion is called _Tsan_ in Chinese, which signifies three,
+and corresponds to the three kings.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 6.]
+
+The Asiatics used not to trace the images of their constellations, but
+simply joined the component stars by straight lines, and placed at the
+side the hieroglyphic characters that represented the object they wished
+to name. Thus joining by five lines the principal stars in Orion, they
+placed at the side the hieroglyphics representing a man and a sword,
+from whence the Greeks derived the figure they afterwards drew of a
+giant armed with a sword.
+
+We must include in this series that brightest of all stars, Sirius. It
+forms part of the constellation of the Great Dog, and lies to the south
+of Orion near the extreme limit of our vision into the Southern
+hemisphere in our latitudes. This star seems to have been intimately
+connected with Egypt, and to have derived its name--as well as the name
+of the otherwise unimportant constellation it forms part of--from that
+country, and in this way:--
+
+The overflowing of the Nile was always preceded by an Etesian wind,
+which, blowing from north to south about the time of the passage of the
+sun beneath the stars of the Crab, drove the mists to the south, and
+accumulated them over the country whence the Nile takes its source,
+causing abundant rains, and hence the flood. The greatest importance
+attached to the foretelling the time of this event, so that people might
+be ready with their provisions and their places of security. The moon
+was no use for this purpose, but the stars were, for the inundation
+commenced when the sun was in the stars of the Lion. At this time the
+stars of the Crab just appeared in the morning, but with them, at some
+distance from the ecliptic, the bright star Sirius also rose. The
+morning rising of this star was a sure precursor of the inundation. It
+seemed to them to be the warning star, by whose first appearance they
+were to be ready to move to safer spots, and thus acted for each family
+the part of a faithful dog. Whence they gave it the name of the Dog, or
+Monitor, in Egyptian _Anubis_, in Phenician _Hannobeach_, and it is
+still the Dog-Star--_Caniculus_, and its rising commences our
+_dog-days_. The intimate connection between the rising of this star and
+the rising of the Nile led people to call it also the Nile star, or
+simply the Nile; in Egyptian and Hebrew, _Sihor_; in Greek, [Greek:
+Sothis]; in Latin, _Sirius_.
+
+In the same way the Egyptians and others characterised the different
+days of the year by the stars which first appeared in the evening--as we
+shall see more particularly with reference to the Pleiades--and in this
+way certain stars came to be associated in their calendar with
+variations of temperature and operations of agriculture. They soon took
+for the cause what was originally but the sign, and thus they came to
+talk of moist stars, whose rising brought rain, and arid stars, which
+brought drought. Some made certain plants to grow, and others had
+influence over animals.
+
+In the case of Egypt, no other so great event could occur as that which
+the Dog-Star foretold, and its appearance was consequently made the
+commencement of the year. Instead, therefore, of painting it as a simple
+star, in which case it would be indistinguishable from others, they gave
+it shape according to its function and name. When they wished to signify
+that it opened the year, it was represented as a porter bearing keys, or
+else they gave it two heads, one of an old man, to represent the passing
+year, the other of a younger, to denote the succeeding year. When they
+would represent it as giving warning of the inundation they painted it
+as a dog. To illustrate what they were to do when it appeared, Anubis
+had in his arms a stew-pot, wings to his feet, a large feather under his
+arm, and two reptiles behind him, a tortoise and a duck.
+
+There is also in the celestial sphere a constellation called the Little
+Dog and Procyon; the latter name has an obvious meaning, as appearing
+_before_ the Dog-Star.
+
+We cannot follow any farther the various constellations of the northern
+sphere, nor of the southern. The zodiacal constellations we must
+reserve for the present, while we conclude by referring to some of the
+changes in form and position that some of the above-mentioned have
+undergone in the course of their various representations.
+
+These changes are sometimes very curious, as, for example, in a coloured
+chart, printed at Paris in 1650, we have the Charioteer drawn in the
+costume of Adam, with his knees on the Milky Way, and turning his back
+to the public; the she-goat appears to be climbing over his neck, and
+two little she-goats seem to be running towards their mother. Cassiopeia
+is more like King Solomon than a woman. Compare this with the _Phenomena
+of Aratus_, published 1559, where Cassiopeia is represented sitting on
+an oak chair with a ducal back, holding the holy palm in her left hand,
+while the Coachman, "Erichthon," is in the costume of a minion of Henry
+the Third of France. Now compare the Cassiopeia of the Greeks with that
+drawn in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or the Coachman of the
+same periods, and we can easily see the fancies of the painters have
+been one of the most fertile sources of change. They seem, too, to have
+had the fancy in the middle ages to draw them all hideous and turning
+their backs. Compare, for instance, the two pictures of Andromeda and
+Hercules, as given below, where those on one side are as heavy and gross
+as the others are artistic and pretty. Unfortunately for the truth of
+Andromeda's beauty, as depicted in these designs, she was supposed to
+be a negress, being the daughter of the Ethiopians, Cepheus and
+Cassiopeia. Not one of the drawings indicates this; indeed they all take
+after their local beauties.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 7.]
+
+In Flamsteed's chart, as drawn above, the Coachman is a female; and
+instead of the she-goat being on the back, she holds it in her arms. No
+one, indeed, from any of the figures of this constellation would ever
+dream it was intended to represent a coachman.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 8.]
+
+One more fundamental cause of changes has been the confusion of names
+derived by one nation from another, these having sometimes followed
+their signification, but at others being translated phonetically. Thus
+the Latins, in deriving names from the Greek [Greek: Arktos], have
+partly translated it by Ursa, and partly have copied it in the form
+Arcticus. So also with reference to the three stars in the head of the
+Bull, called by the Greeks Hyades. The Romans thought it was derived
+from [Greek: hyes], sows, so they called them _suculae_, or little sows;
+whereas the original name was derived from [Greek: hyein], to rain, and
+signified stars whose appearance indicated the approach of the rainy
+season.
+
+More curious still is the transformation of the Pearl of the Northern
+Crown (Margarita Coronae) in a saint--S. Marguerite.
+
+The names may have had many origins whose signification is lost, owing
+to their being misunderstood. Thus figurative language may have been
+interpreted as real, as when a conjunction is called a marriage; a
+disappearance, death; and a reappearance, a resurrection; and then
+stories must be invented to fit these words; or the stars that have in
+one country given notice of certain events lose the meaning of their
+names when these are used elsewhere; as when a boat painted near the
+stars that accompany an inundation, becomes the ship Argo; or when, to
+represent the wind, the bird's wing is drawn; or those stars that mark a
+season are associated with the bird of passage, the insect or the animal
+that appears at that time: such as these would soon lose their original
+signification.
+
+The celestial sphere, therefore, as we now possess it, is not simply a
+collection of unmeaning names, associated with a group of stars in no
+way connected with them, which have been imposed at various epochs by
+capricious imagination, but in most instances, if not in all, they
+embody a history, which, if we could trace it, would probably lead us to
+astronomical facts, indicating the where and the when of their first
+introduction; and the story of their changes, so far as we can trace it,
+gives us some clue to the mental characteristics or astronomical
+progress of the people who introduced the alterations.
+
+We shall find, indeed, in a subsequent chapter, that many of our
+conclusions as to the birth and growth of astronomy are derived from
+considerations connected with the various constellations, more
+especially those of the zodiac.
+
+With regard to the date when and the country where the constellations of
+the sphere were invented, we will here give what evidence we possess,
+independent of the origin of the zodiac.
+
+In the first place it seems capable of certain proof that they were not
+invented by the Greeks, from whom we have received them, but adopted
+from an older source, and it is possible to give limits to the date of
+introduction among them.
+
+Newton, who attributes its introduction to Musaeus, a contemporary of
+Chiron, remarks, that it must have been settled _after_ the expedition
+of the Argonauts, and _before_ the destruction of Troy; because the
+Greeks gave to the constellation names that were derived from their
+history and fables, and devoted several to celebrate the memory of the
+famous adventurers known as the Argonauts, and they would certainly have
+dedicated some to the heroes of Troy, if the siege of that place had
+happened at the time. We remark that at this time astronomy was in too
+infant a state in Greece for them to have fixed with so much accuracy
+the position of the stars, and that we have in this a proof they must
+have borrowed their knowledge from older cultivators of the science.
+
+The various statements we meet with about the invention of the sphere
+may be equally well interpreted of its introduction only into Greece.
+Such, for instance, as that Eudoxus first constructed it in the
+thirteenth or fourteenth century B.C., or that by Clement of Alexandria,
+that Chiron was the originator.
+
+The oldest direct account of the names of the constellations and their
+component stars is that of Hesiod, who cites by name in his _Works and
+Days_ the Pleiades, Arcturus, Orion, and Sirius. He lived, according to
+Herodotus, about 884 years before Christ.
+
+The knowledge of all the constellations did not reach the Greeks at the
+same time, as we have seen from the omission by Homer of any mention of
+the Little Bear, when if he had known it, he could hardly have failed to
+speak of it. For in his description of the shield of Achilles, he
+mentions the Pleiades, the Hyades, Orion and the Bear, "which alone does
+not bathe in the Ocean." He could never have said this last if he had
+known of the Dragon and Little Bear.
+
+We may then safely conclude that the Greeks received the idea of the
+constellations from some older source, probably the Chaldeans. They
+received it doubtless as a sphere, with figured, but nameless
+constellations; and the Greeks by slight changes adapted them to
+represent the various real or imaginary heroes of their history. It
+would be a gracious task, for their countrymen would glory in having
+their great men established in the heavens. When they saw a ship
+represented, what more suitable than to name it the ship Argo? The Swan
+must be Jupiter transformed, the Lyre is that of Orpheus, the Eagle is
+that which carried away Ganymede, and so on.
+
+This would be no more than what other nations have done, as, for
+example, the Chinese, who made greater changes still, unless we consider
+theirs to have had an entirely independent origin.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 9.]
+
+That the celestial sphere was a conception known to others than the
+Greeks is easily proved. The Arabians, for instance, certainly did not
+borrow it from them; yet they have the same things represented. Above is
+a figure of a portion of an Arabian sphere drawn in the eleventh
+century, where we get represented plainly enough the Great and Little
+Bears, the Dragon, Cassiopeia, Andromeda, Perseus, with the Triple Head
+of Medusa; the Triangle, one of the Fishes, Auriga, the Ram, the Bull
+obscurely, and the Twins.
+
+There is also the famous so-called zodiac of Denderah, brought from
+Egypt to Paris. This in reality contains more constellations than those
+of the zodiac. Most of the northern ones can be traced, with certain
+modifications. Its construction is supposed to belong to the eighth
+century B.C. Most conspicuous on it is the Lion, in a kind of barque,
+recalling the shape of the Hydra. Below it is the calf Isis, with
+Sirius, or the Dog-Star, on the forehead; above it is the Crab, to the
+right the Twins, over these along instrument, the Plough, and above that
+a small animal, the Little Bear, and so we may go on:--all the zodiacal
+constellations, especially the Balance, the Scorpion, and the Fishes
+being very clear. This sphere is indeed of later date than that supposed
+for the Grecian, but it certainly appears to be independent. The remains
+we possess of older spheres are more particularly connected with the
+zodiac, and will be discussed hereafter.
+
+From what people the Greeks received the celestial sphere, is a question
+on which more than one opinion has been formed. One is that it was
+originated in the tropical latitudes of Egypt. The other, that it came
+from the Chaldeans, and a third that it came from more temperate
+latitudes further to the east. The arguments for the last of these are
+as follow:
+
+There is an empty space of about 90 deg., formed by the last constellations
+of the sphere, towards the south pole, that is by the Centaur, the
+Altar, the Archer, the Southern Fish, the Whale, and the Ship. Now in a
+systematic plan, if the author were situated near the equator there
+would be no vacant space left in this way, for in this case the southern
+stars, attracting as much attention as the northern, would be inevitably
+inserted in the system of constellations which would be extended to the
+horizon on all sides. But a country of sufficiently high latitude to be
+unable to see at any time the stars about the southern pole must be
+north both of Egypt and Chaldea.
+
+This empty space remained unfilled until the discovery of the Cape of
+Good Hope, except that the star Canopus was included in the
+constellation Argo, and the river Eridan had an arbitrary extension
+given to it, instead of terminating in latitude 40 deg..
+
+Another less cogent argument is derived from the interpretation of the
+fable of the Phoenix. This is supposed to represent the course of the
+sun, which commences its growth at the time of its death. A similar
+fable is found among the Swedes. Now a tropical nation would find the
+difference of days too little to lead it to invent such a fable to
+represent it. It must needs have arisen where the days of winter were
+very much shorter than those of summer.
+
+The Book of Zoroaster, in which some of the earliest notices of
+astronomy are recorded, states that the length of a summer day is twice
+as long as that of winter. This fixes the latitude in which that book
+must have been composed, and makes it 49 deg.. Whence it follows, that to
+such a place must we look for the origin of these spheres, and not to
+Egypt or Chaldea.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE III.--CHALDEAN ASTRONOMERS.]
+
+Diodorus Siculus speaks of a nation in that part of the world, whom he
+calls Hyperboreans, who had a tradition that their country is the
+nearest to the moon, on which they discovered mountains like those on
+the earth, and that Apollo comes there once every nineteen years. This
+period being that of the metonic cycle of the moon, shows that if this
+could have really been discovered by them, they must have had a long
+acquaintance with astronomy.
+
+The Babylonian tablets lead us to the belief that astronomy, and with it
+the sphere, and the zodiac were introduced by a nation coming from the
+East, from the mountains of Elam, called the Accadians, before 3000
+B.C., and these may have been the nation to whom the whole is due.
+
+On the other hand, the arguments for the Egyptians, or Chaldeans being
+the originators depend solely on the tradition handed down by many, that
+one or other are the oldest people in the world, with the oldest
+civilization, and they have long cultivated astronomy. More precise
+information, however, seems to render these traditions, to say the
+least, doubtful, and certainly incapable of overthrowing the arguments
+adduced above.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE ZODIAC.
+
+
+The zodiac, as already stated, is the course in the heavens apparently
+pursued by the sun in his annual journey through the stars. Let us
+consider for a moment, however, the series of observations and
+reflections that must have been necessary to trace this zone as
+representing such a course.
+
+First, the diurnal motion of the whole heavens from east to west must
+have been noticed during the night, and the fact that certain stars
+never set, but turn in a circle round a fixed point. What becomes then,
+the next question would be, of those stars that do descend beneath the
+horizon, since they rise in the same relative positions as those in
+which they set. They could not be thought to be destroyed, but must
+complete the part of the circle that is invisible _beneath the earth_.
+The possibility of any stars finding a path beneath the earth must have
+led inevitably to the conception of the earth as a body suspended in the
+centre with nothing to support it. But leaving this alone, it would
+also be concluded that the sun went with the stars, and was in a certain
+position among them, even when both they and it were invisible. The next
+observations necessary would be that the zodiacal constellations visible
+during the nights of winter were not the same as those seen in summer,
+that such and such a group of stars passed the meridian at midnight at a
+certain time, and that six months afterwards the group exactly opposite
+in the heavens passed at the same hour. Now since at midnight the sun
+will be exactly opposite the meridian, if it continues uniformly on its
+course, it will be among that group of stars that is opposite the group
+that culminates at midnight, and so the sign of the zodiac the sun
+occupies would be determined.
+
+This method would be checked by comparisons made in the morning and
+evening with the constellations visible nearest to the sun at its rising
+and setting.
+
+The difficulty and indirectness of these observations would make it
+probable that originally the zodiac would be determined rather by the
+path of the moon, which follows nearly the same path as the sun, and
+which could be observed at the same time as, and actually associated
+with, the constellations. Now the moon is found each night so far to the
+east of its position on the previous night that it accomplishes the
+whole circumference in twenty-seven days eight hours. The two nearest
+whole number of days have generally been reckoned, some taking
+twenty-eight, and others twenty-seven. The zodiac, or, as the Chinese
+called it, the Yellow Way, was thus divided into twenty-eight parts,
+which were called _Nakshatras_ (mansions, or hotels), because the moon
+remains in each of them for a period of twenty-four hours. These
+mansions were named after the brightest stars in each, though sometimes
+they went a long way off to fix upon a characteristic star, as in the
+sixteenth Indian constellation, _Vichaca_, which was named after the
+Northern Crown, in latitude 40 deg.. This arose from the brightness of the
+moon extinguishing the light of those that lie nearest to it.
+
+This method of dividing the zodiac was very widely spread, and was
+common to almost all ancient nations. The Chinese have twenty-eight
+constellations, but the word _siou_ does not mean a group of stars, but
+simply a mansion or hotel. In the Coptic and ancient Egyptian the word
+for constellation has the same meaning. They also had twenty-eight, and
+the same number is found among the Arabians, Persians, and Indians.
+Among the Chaldeans, or Accadians, we find no sign of the number
+twenty-eight. The ecliptic or "Yoke of the Sky," with them, as we see in
+the newly-discovered tablets, was divided into twelve divisions as now,
+and the only connection that can be imagined between this and the
+twenty-eight is the opinion of M. Biot, who thinks that the Chinese had
+originally only twenty-four mansions, four more being added by Chenkung
+(B.C. 1100), and that they corresponded with the twenty-four stars,
+twelve to the north and twelve to the south, that marked the twelve
+signs of the zodiac among the Chaldeans. But under this supposition the
+twenty-eight has no reference to the moon, whereas we have every reason
+to believe that it has.
+
+The Siamese only reckoned twenty-seven, and occasionally inserted an
+extra one, called _Abigitten_, or intercalary moon. They made use,
+moreover, of the constellations to tell the hour of the night by their
+position in the heavens, and their method of doing this appears to have
+involved their having twenty-eight constellations. The names of the
+twenty-eight divisions among the Arabs were derived from parts of the
+larger constellations that made the twelve signs, the first being the
+horns, and the second the belly, of the Ram.
+
+The twenty-eight divisions among the Persians, of which we may notice
+that the second was formed by the Pleiades, and called _Pervis_, soon
+gave way to the twelve, the names of which, recorded in the works of
+Zoroaster, and therefore not less ancient than he, were not quite the
+same as those now used. They were the Lamb, the Bull, the Twins, the
+Crab, the Lion, the Ear of Corn, the Balance, the Scorpion, the Bow, the
+Sea-Goat, the Watering-pot, and the Fishes.
+
+Nor were the Chinese continually bound to the number twenty-eight. They,
+too, had a zodiac for the sun as well as the moon, as may be seen on
+some very curious pieces of money, of which those figured below are
+specimens.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 10.]
+
+On some of these the various constellations of the Northern hemisphere
+are engraved, especially the Great Bear--under innumerable
+disguises--and on others the twelve signs of the zodiac. These are very
+different, however, from the Grecian set--they are the Mouse, the Bull,
+the Tiger, the Hare, the Dragon, the Serpent, the Horse, the Ram, the
+Monkey, the Cock, the Dog, and the Pig. The Japanese series were the
+same. The Mongolians had a series of zodiacal coins struck in the reign
+of Jehanjir Shah (1014). He had pieces of gold stamped, representing the
+sun in the constellation of the Lion; and some years afterwards other
+coins were made, with one side having the impress of the particular sign
+in which the sun happened to be when the coin was struck. In this way a
+series is preserved having all the twelve signs. Tavernier tells the
+story that one of the wives of the Sultan, wishing to immortalise
+herself, asked Jehanjir to be allowed to reign for four-and-twenty
+hours, and took the opportunity to have a large quantity of new gold and
+silver zodiacal coins struck and distributed among the people.
+
+The twenty-eight divisions are less known now, simply from the fact that
+the Greeks did not adopt them; but they were much used by the early
+Asian peoples, who distinguished them, like the twelve, by a series of
+animals, and they are still used by the Arabs.
+
+So far for the nature of the zodiac, as used in various countries, and
+as adopted from more ancient sources by the Greeks and handed on to us.
+It is very remarkable that the arrangement of it, and its relation to
+the pole of the equator, carries with it some indication of the age in
+which it must have been invented, as we now proceed to show.
+
+We may remark, in the first place, that from very early times the centre
+of the zodiacal circle has been marked in the celestial sphere, though
+there is no remarkable star near the spot; and the centre of the
+equatorial circle, or pole, has been even less noticed, though much more
+obvious. We cannot perhaps conclude that the instability of the pole was
+known, but that the necessity for drawing the zodiac led to attention
+being paid to its centre. Both the Persians and the Chinese noted in
+addition four bright stars, which they said watched over the rest,
+_Taschter_ over the east, _Sateris_ over the west, _Venaud_ over the
+south, and _Hastorang_ over the north. Now we must understand these
+points to refer to the sun, the east being the spring equinox, the west
+the autumnal, and the north and south the summer and winter solstices.
+There are no stars of any brilliancy that we could now suppose referred
+to in these positions; but if we turn the zodiac through 60 deg. we shall
+find Aldebaran, the Antares, Regulus, and Fomalhaut, four stars of the
+first magnitude, pretty nearly in the right places. Does the zodiac then
+turn in this way? The answer is, It does.
+
+The effect of the attraction of the sun and moon upon the equatorial
+protuberance of the earth is to draw it round from west to east by a
+very slow motion, and make the ecliptic cross the equator each year
+about one minute of arc to the east of where it crossed it the year
+before. So, then, the sidereal year, or interval between the times at
+which the sun is in a certain position amongst the stars, is longer than
+the solar year, or interval between the times at which the sun crosses
+the equator at the vernal equinox. Now the sun's position in the zodiac
+refers to the former, his appearance at the equinox to the latter kind
+of year. Each solar year then--and these are the years we usually reckon
+by--the equinox is at a point fifty seconds of arc to the east on the
+zodiac, an effect which is known by the name of the precession of the
+equinoxes.
+
+Now it is plain that if it keeps moving continuously to the east it will
+at last come round to the same point again, and the whole period of its
+revolution can easily be calculated from the distance it moves each
+year. The result of such a calculation shows that the whole revolution
+is completed in 25,870 years, after which time all will be again as it
+is now in this respect.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 11.]
+
+If we draw a figure of the zodiac, as below, and know that at this time
+the vernal equinox takes place when the sun is in the Fishes, then, the
+constellation of the Ram being to the west of this, the date at which
+the equinox was there must be before our present date, while at some
+time in the future it will be in Aquarius.
+
+Now if in any old description we find that the equinox is referred to as
+being in the Ram or in the Bull, it tells us at once how long ago such a
+description was a true one, and, therefore, when it was written. This is
+the way in which the Zodiac carries with it an intimation of its date.
+Thus in the example lately referred to of the Persians and their four
+stars, it must have been about 5,000 years ago, according to the above
+calculation, that these were in the positions assigned, which is
+therefore the date of this part of Persian astronomy, if we have rightly
+conjectured the stars referred to.
+
+We have already said that the signs of the zodiac are not now the same
+as the zodiacal constellations, and this is now easily understood. It is
+not worth while to say that the sun enters such and such a part of the
+Fishes at the equinox, and changes every year. So the part of the
+heavens it _does_ then enter--be it Fishes, or Aquarius, or the Ram--is
+called by the same name--and is called a _sign_; the name chosen is the
+Ram or Aries, which coincided with the constellation of that name when
+the matter was arranged. There is another equally important and
+instructive result of this precession of the equinox. For the earth's
+axis is always perpendicular to the plane of the equator, and if the
+latter moves, the former must too, and change its position with respect
+to the axis of the ecliptic, which remains immovable. And the ends of
+these axes, or the points they occupy among the stars, called their
+poles, will change in the same way; the pole of the equator, round which
+the heavens appear to move, describing a curve about the pole of the
+ecliptic; and since the ecliptic and equator are always _nearly_ at the
+same angle, this curve will be very nearly a circle, as represented on
+preceding page.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 12.]
+
+Now the pole of the equator is a very marked point in the heavens,
+because the star nearest to it appears to have no motion. If then we
+draw such a figure as above, so as to see where this pole would be at
+any given date, and then read in any old record that such and such a
+star had no motion, we know at once at what date such a statement must
+have been made. This means of estimating dates is less certain than the
+other, because any star that is nearer to the pole than any other will
+appear to have no motion _relatively_ to the rest, unless accurate
+measurements were made. Nevertheless, when we have any reason to believe
+that observations were carefully made, and there is any evidence that
+some particular star was considered the Pole Star, we have some
+confidence in concluding the date, examples of which will appear in the
+sequel; and we may give one illustration now, though not a very
+satisfactory one. Hipparchus cites a passage from the sphere of Eudoxus,
+in which he says, _Est vero stella quaedam in eodem consistens loco, quae
+quidem polus est mundi._ (There is a certain immovable star, which is
+the pole of the world.)
+
+Now referring to our figure, we find that about 1300 B.C. the two stars,
+[Greek: b] Ursae Minoris and [Greek: k] Draconis were fairly near the
+pole, and this fact leads us to date the invention of this sphere at
+about this epoch, rather than a little before or a little after,
+although, of course, there is nothing in _this_ argument (though there
+may be in others), to prevent us dating it when [Greek: a] Draconis was
+near the pole, 2850 B.C. This star was indeed said by the Chinese
+astronomers in the reign of Hoangti to mark the pole, which gives a date
+to their observations. The chief use of this latter method is to
+_confirm_ our conclusions from the former, rather than to originate any.
+Let us now apply our knowledge to the facts.
+
+In the first place we may notice that in the time of Hipparchus the
+vernal equinox was in the first degree of the Ram, from which our own
+arrangement has originated. Hipparchus lived 128 years B.C., or nearly
+2,000 years ago, at which time the equinox was exactly at [Greek: b]
+Aries. Secondly, there are many reasons for believing that at the time
+of the invention of the zodiac, indeed in the first dawning of
+astronomy, the Bull was the first sign into which the sun entered at the
+vernal equinox. Now it takes 2,156 years to retrograde through a sign,
+and therefore the Bull might occupy this position any time between 2400
+and 4456 B.C., and any nearer approximation must depend on our ability
+to fix on any particular _part_ of the constellation as the original
+equinoctial point. We may say that whoever invented the zodiac would no
+doubt make this point the _beginning_ of a sign, and therefore date its
+invention 2400 B.C.; or on the other hand, if it can be proved that the
+constellations were known and observed before this, we may have to put
+back the date to near the end of the sign, and make its last remarkable
+stars the equinoctial ones, say those in the horns of Taurus. Compare
+the line of Virgil,
+
+  "Candidus auratis aperit cum cornibus annum
+  Taurus."
+
+The date in this case would be about 4500 B.C.--or once more some
+remarkable part of the constellation may give proof that its appearance
+with the sun commenced the year--and our date would be intermediate
+between these two. In fact, the remarkable group of stars known as the
+_Pleiades_ actually does play this part. So much interest clusters,
+however, round this group, so much light is thrown by it on the past
+history of astronomical ideas--and so much new information has recently
+been obtained about it--that it requires a chapter to itself, and we
+shall therefore pass over its discussion here. Let us now review some of
+the indications that some part of the constellation of the Bull was
+originally the first sign of the zodiac.
+
+We need perhaps only mention the astrological books of the Jews--the
+Cabal--in which the Bull is dealt with as the first zodiacal sign. Among
+the Persians, who designate the successive signs by the letters of the
+alphabet, _A_ stands for Taurus, _B_ for the Twins, and so on. The
+Chinese attribute the commencement of the sun's apparent motion to the
+stars of Taurus. In Thebes is a sepulchral chamber with zodiacal signs,
+and Taurus at the head of them. The zodiac of the pagoda of Elephanta
+(Salsette) commences with the same constellation.
+
+However, reasons have been given for assigning to the zodiac a still
+earlier date than this would involve. Thus Laplace writes:--"The names
+of the constellations of the zodiac have not been given to them by
+chance--they embody the results of a large number of researches and of
+astronomical systems. Some of the names appear to have reference to the
+motion of the sun. The Crab, for instance, and the He-Goat, indicate its
+retrogression at the solstices. The Balance marks the equality of the
+days and nights at the equinoxes, and the other names seem to refer to
+agriculture and to the climate of the country in which the zodiac was
+invented. The He-Goat appears better placed at the highest point of the
+sun's course than the lowest. In this position, which it occupied
+fifteen thousand years ago, the Balance was at the vernal equinox, and
+the zodiacal constellations match well with the climate and agriculture
+of Egypt." If we examine this, however, we see that all that is probable
+in it is satisfied by the Ram being at the vernal, and the Balance at
+the autumnal equinox, which corresponds much better with other evidence.
+
+[Illustration: THE ZODIAC OF DENDERAH.]
+
+In the first instance, no doubt, the names of the zodiacal
+constellations would depend on the principal star or stars in each, and
+these stars and the portion of the ecliptic assigned to each may have
+been noticed before the stars round them were grouped into
+constellations with different names. In any case, the introduction of
+the zodiac into Greece seems to have been subsequent to that of the
+celestial sphere, and not to have taken place more than five or six
+centuries before our era. Eudemus, of Rhodes, one of the most
+distinguished of the pupils of Aristotle, and author of a History of
+Astronomy, attributes the introduction of the zodiac to Oenopides of
+Chio, a contemporary of Anaxagoras. They did not receive it complete, as
+at first it had only eleven constellations, one of them, the Scorpion,
+being afterwards divided, to complete the necessary number. Their
+zodiacal divisions too would have been more regular had they derived
+them directly from the East, and would not have stretched in some
+instances over 36 deg. to 48 deg., like the Lion, the Bull, the Fishes, or the
+Virgin--while the Crab, the Ram, and the He-Goat, have only 19 deg. to 23 deg..
+Nor would their constellations be disposed so irregularly, some to the
+north and some to the south of the ecliptic, nor some spreading out
+widely and others crammed close together, so that we see that they only
+borrowed the idea from the Easterns, and filled it out with their
+ancient constellations. Such is the opinion of Humboldt.
+
+With regard to the origin of the names of the signs of the zodiac, we
+must remember that a certain portion of the zodiacal circle, and not any
+definite group of stars, forms each sign, and that the constellations
+may have been formed separately, and have received independent names,
+though afterwards receiving those of the sign in which they were. The
+only rational suggestion for the origin of the names is that they were
+connected with some events which took place, or some character of the
+sun's motion observed, when it was in each sign. Thus we have seen that
+the Balance may refer to equal nights and days (though only introduced
+among the _Greeks_ in the time of Hipparchus), and the Crab to the
+retrogression or stopping of the sun at the solstice.
+
+The various pursuits of husbandry, having all their necessary times,
+which in the primeval days were determined by the positions of the
+stars, would give rise to more important names. Thus the Ethiopian, at
+Thebes, would call the stars that by their rising at a particular time
+indicated the inundation, Aquarius, or the Waterer; those beneath which
+it was necessary to put the plough to the earth, the Bull stars. The
+Lion stars would be those at whose appearance this formidable animal,
+driven from the deserts by thirst, showed himself on the borders of the
+river. Those of the Ear of Corn, or the Virgin of harvest, those beneath
+which the harvest was to be gathered in; and the sign of the Goat, that
+in which the sun was when these animals were born.
+
+There can be but little doubt but that such was the origin of the names
+imposed, and for a time they would be understood in that sense. But
+afterwards, when time was more accurately kept, and calendars
+regulated, without each man studying the stars for himself, when the
+precession of the equinoxes made the periods not exactly coincide, the
+original meaning would be lost, the stars would be associated with the
+animals, as though there was a real bull, a real lion, &c., in the
+heavens; and then the step would be easy to represent these by living
+animals, whom they would endow with the heavenly attributes of what they
+represented; and so the people came at last to pray to and worship the
+several creatures for the sake of their supposed influence. They asked
+of the Ram from their flocks the influences they thought depended on the
+constellation. They prayed the Scorpion not to spread his evil venom on
+the world; they revered the Crab, the Scarabaeus, and the Fish, without
+perceiving the absurdity of it.
+
+It is certain at least that the gods of many nations are connected or
+are identical with the signs of the zodiac, and it seems at least more
+reasonable to suppose the former derived from the latter than _vice
+versa_.
+
+Among the Greeks indeed, who had, so to speak, their gods ready made
+before they borrowed the idea of the zodiac, the process appears to have
+been the reverse, they made the signs to represent as far as they could
+their gods. In the more pastoral peoples, however, of the East, and in
+Egypt, this process can be very clearly traced. Among the Jews there
+seems to be some remarkable connection between their patriarchs and
+these signs, though the history of that connection may not well be made
+out. The twelve signs are mentioned as being worshipped, along with the
+sun and moon, in the Book of Kings. But what is more remarkable is the
+dream of Joseph, in which the sun and moon and the other eleven stars
+worshipped him, coupled with the various designations or descriptions
+given to each son in the blessing of Jacob. In Reuben we have the man
+who is said to be "unstable as water," in which we may recognise
+Aquarius. In Simeon and Levi "the brethren," we trace the Twins. Judah
+is the "Lion." Zebulun, "that dwells at the haven of the sea,"
+represents Fishes. Issachar is the Bull, or "strong ass couching down
+between two burdens." Dan, "the serpent by the way, the adder in the
+path," represents the Scorpion. Gad is the Ram, the leader to a flock or
+troop of sheep. Asher the Balance, as the weigher of bread. Naphtali,
+"the hind let loose," is the Capricorn, Joseph the Archer, whose bow
+abode in strength. Brujanin the Crab, changing from morning to evening,
+and Dinah, the only daughter, represents the Virgin.
+
+There is doubtless something far-fetched in some of these comparisons,
+but when we consider the care with which the number twelve was retained,
+and that the four chief tribes carried on their sacred standards these
+very signs--namely, Judah a lion, Reuben a man, Ephraim a bull, and Dan
+a scorpion--and notice the numerous traces of astronomical culture in
+the Jewish ceremonies, the seven lights of the candlestick, the twelve
+stones of the High Priest, the feasts at the two equinoxes, the
+ceremonies connected with a ram and a bull, we cannot doubt that there
+is something more than chance in the matter, but rather conclude that we
+have an example of the process by which, in the hands of the Egyptians
+themselves, astronomical representations became at last actually
+deified.
+
+It has been thought possible indeed to assign definitely each god of the
+Egyptians to one of the twelve zodiacal signs. The Ram was consecrated
+to Jupiter Ammon, who was represented with a ram's head and horns. The
+Bull became the god Apis, who was worshipped under that similitude. The
+Twins correspond to Horus and Harpocrates, two sons of Osiris. The Crab
+was consecrated to Anubis or Mercury. The Lion belonged to the summer
+sun, Osiris; the Virgin to Isis. The Balance and the Scorpion were
+included together under the name of Scorpion, which animal belongs to
+Typhon, as did all dangerous animals. The Archer was the image of
+Hercules, for whom the Egyptians had great veneration. The Capricorn was
+consecrated to Pan or Mendes. The Waterer--or man carrying a
+water-pot--is found on many Egyptian monuments.
+
+This process of deification was rendered easier by the custom they had
+of celebrating a festival each month, under the name _neomenia_. They
+characterised the neomenias of the various months by making the animal
+whose sign the sun was entering accompany the Isis which announced the
+_fete_. They were not content with a representation only, but had the
+animal itself. The dog, being the symbol of Cannulus, with which the
+year commenced, a living dog was made to head the ceremonial of the
+first neomenia. Diodorus testifies to this as an eye-witness.
+
+These neomenias thus came to be called the festival of the Bull, of the
+Ram, the Dog, or the Lion. That of the Ram would be the most solemn and
+important in places where they dealt much in sheep. That of the Bull in
+the fat pasture-lands of Memphis and Lower Egypt. That of Capella would
+be brilliant at Mendes, where they bred goats more than elsewhere.
+
+We may fortify these opinions by a quotation from Lucian, who gives
+expression to them very clearly. "It is from the divisions of the
+zodiac," he says, "that the crowd of animals worshipped in Egypt have
+had their origin. Some employed one constellation, and some another.
+Those who used to consult that of the Ram came to adore a ram. Those who
+took their presages from the Fishes would not eat fish. The goat was not
+killed in places were they observed Capricornus, and so on, according to
+the stars whose influence they cared most for. If they adored a bull it
+was certainly to do honour to the celestial Bull. The Apis, which was a
+sacred object with them, and wandered at liberty through the country,
+and for which they founded an oracle, was the astrological symbol of the
+Bull that shone in the heavens."
+
+[Illustration: PLATE IV.--THE ZODIAC AND THE DEAD IN EGYPT.]
+
+Their use of the zodiac is illustrated in an interesting manner by a
+mummy found some years ago in Egypt. At the bottom of the coffin was
+found painted a zodiac, something like that of Denderah; underneath the
+lid, along the body of a great goddess, were drawn eleven signs, but
+with that of _Capricornus_ left out. The inscription showed that the
+mummy was that of a young man, aged 21 years, 4 months, and 22 days, who
+died the 19th year of Trajan, on the 8th of the month Pazni, which
+corresponds to the 2nd of June, A.D. 116. The embalmed was therefore
+born on the 12th of January, A.D. 95, at which time the sun was in the
+constellation of Capricornus. This shows that the zodiac was the
+representation of the astrological theories about the person embalmed,
+who was doubtless a person of some importance. (See Plate IV.) Any such
+use as this, however, must have been long subsequent to the invention of
+the signs themselves, as it involves a much more complicated idea.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE PLEIADES.
+
+
+Among the most remarkable of the constellations is a group of seven
+stars arranged in a kind of triangular cluster, and known as the
+Pleiades. It is not, strictly speaking, one of the constellations, as it
+forms only part of one. We have seen that one of the ancient signs of
+the zodiac is the Bull, or Taurus; the group of stars we are now
+speaking of forms part of this, lying towards the eastern part in the
+shoulders of the Bull. The Pleiades scarcely escape anybody's
+observation now, and we shall not be, therefore, surprised that they
+have always attracted great attention. So great indeed has been the
+attention paid to them that festivals and seasons, calendars and years,
+have by many nations been regulated by their rising or culmination, and
+they have been thus more mixed up with the early history of astronomy,
+and have left more marks on the records of past nations, than any other
+celestial object, except the sun and moon.
+
+The interesting details of the history of the Pleiades have been very
+carefully worked out by R. G. Haliburton, F.S.A., to whom we owe the
+greater part of the information we possess on the subject.[1]
+
+Let us first explain what may be observed with respect to the Pleiades.
+It is a group possessing peculiar advantages for observation; it is a
+compact group, the whole will appear at once; and it is an unmistakable
+group and it is near the equator, and is therefore visible to observers
+in either hemisphere.
+
+Now suppose the sun to be in the same latitude as the Pleiades on some
+particular day; owing to the proximity of the group to the ecliptic, it
+will be then very near the sun, and it will set with it and be invisible
+during the night. If the sun were to the east of the Pleiades they would
+have already set, and the first view of the heavens at sunset would not
+contain this constellation; and so it would be so long as the sun was to
+the east, or for nearly half a year; though during some portion of this
+time it would rise later on in the night. During the other half year,
+while the sun was to the west, the Pleiades would be visible at sunset,
+and we immediately see how they are thus led to divide the whole year
+into two portions, one of which might be called _the Pleiades below_,
+and the other _the Pleiades above_. It is plain that the Pleiades first
+become visible at sunset, when they are then just rising, in which case
+they will culminate a little after midnight (not at midnight, on account
+of the twilight) and be visible all night. This will occur when the sun
+is about half a circle removed from them--that is, at this time, about
+the beginning of November; which would thus be the commencement of one
+half of the year, the other half commencing in May. The culmination of
+the Pleiades at midnight takes place a few days later, when they rise at
+the time that the sun is really on the horizon, in which case they are
+exactly opposite to it; and this will happen on the same day all over
+the earth. The opposite effect to this would be when the sun was close
+to the Pleiades--a few days before which the latter would be just
+setting after sunset, and a few days after would be just rising before
+sunrise.
+
+  [1] Mr. Haliburton's observations are contained in an interesting
+      pamphlet, entitled _New Materials for the History of Man_, which
+      is quoted by Prof. Piazzi Smyth, but which is not easy to obtain.
+      It may be seen, however, in the British Museum.
+
+We have thus the following observations, that might be made with respect
+to this, or any other well-marked constellation. First, the period
+during which it was visible at sunset; secondly, the date of its
+culmination at midnight; thirdly, its setting in the evening; and
+fourthly, its rising in the morning: the last two dates being nearly six
+months removed from the second. There are also the dates of its
+culmination at sunrise and sunset, which would divide these intervals
+into two equal halves. On account of the precession of the equinoxes,
+as explained in the last chapter, the time at which the sun has any
+particular position with respect to the stars, grows later year by year
+in relation to the equinoctial points. And as we regulate our year by
+the date of the sun's entrance on the northern hemisphere, the sidereal
+dates, as we may call them, keep advancing on the months. As, however,
+the change is slow, it has not prevented years being commenced and
+husbandry being regulated by the dates above mentioned. Any date that is
+regulated by the stars we might expect to be nearly the same all over
+the world, and the customs observed to be universal, though the date
+itself might alter, and in this way. So long as the date was directly
+obtained from the position of the star, all would agree; but as soon as
+a solar calendar was arranged, and it was found that at that time this
+position coincided with a certain day, say the Pleiades culminating at
+midnight on November 17, then some would keep on the date November 17 as
+the important day, even when the Pleiades no longer culminated at
+midnight then, and others would keep reckoning by the stars, and so have
+a different date.
+
+With these explanations we shall be able to recognise how much the
+configurations of the Pleiades have had to do with the festivals and
+calendars of nations, and have even left their traces on customs and
+names in use among ourselves to the present day.
+
+We have evidences from two very different quarters of the universality
+of the division of the year into two parts by means of the Pleiades. On
+the one hand we learn from Hesiod that the Greeks commenced their winter
+seasons in his days by the setting of the Pleiades in the morning, and
+the summer season by their rising at that time. And Mr. Ellis, in his
+_Polynesian Researches_, tells us that "the Society Islanders divided
+the year into two seasons of the Pleiades, or _Matarii_. The first they
+called _Matarii i nia_, or the _Pleiades above_. It commenced when, in
+the evening, these stars appeared at or near the horizon, and the half
+year during which, immediately after sunset, they were seen above the
+horizon was called _Matarii i nia_. The other season commenced when at
+sunset these stars are invisible, and continued until at that time they
+appeared again above the horizon. This season was called _Matarii i
+raro_, i.e. _the Pleiades below_." Besides these direct evidences we
+shall find that many semi-annual festivals connected with these stars
+indicate the commencement of the two seasons among other nations.
+
+One of these festivals was of course always taken for the commencement
+of the year, and much was made of it as new-year's day. A new-year's
+festival connected with and determined by the Pleiades appears to be one
+of the most universal of all customs; and though some little difficulty
+arises, as we have already pointed out, in fixing the date with
+reference to solar calendars, and differences and coincidences in this
+respect among different nations may be to a certain extent accidental,
+yet the fact of the wide-spread observance of such a festival is certain
+and most interesting.
+
+The actual observance at the present day of this festival is to be found
+among the Australian savages. At their midnight culmination in November,
+they still hold a new-year's _corroboree_, in honour of the
+_Mormodellick_, as they call the Pleiades, which they say are "very good
+to the black fellows." With them November is somewhat after the
+beginning of spring, but in former days it would mark the actual
+commencement, and the new year would be regulated by the seasons.
+
+In the northern hemisphere this culmination of the Pleiades has the same
+relation to the autumnal equinox, which would never be taken as the
+commencement of the year; and we must therefore look to the southern
+hemisphere for the origin of the custom; especially as we find the very
+Pleiades themselves called _Vergiliae_, or stars of spring. Of course we
+might suppose that the rising of the constellation in the _morning_ had
+been observed in the northern hemisphere, which would certainly have
+taken place in the beginning of spring some 5,000 years ago; but this
+seems improbable, first, because it is unlikely that different phenomena
+of the Pleiades should have been most noticed, and secondly, because
+neither April nor May are among any nations connected with this
+constellation by name. Whereas in India the year commenced in the month
+they called _Cartiguey_, which means the Pleiades. Among the ancient
+Egyptians we find the same connection between _Athar-aye_, the name of
+the Pleiades, with the Chaldeans and Hebrews, and _Athor_ in the
+Egyptian name of November. The Arabs also call the constellation
+_Atauria_. We shall have more to say on this etymology presently, but in
+the meantime we learn that it was the phenomenon connected with the
+Pleiades at or about November that was noticed by all ancient nations,
+from which we must conclude that the origin of the new-year's spring
+festival came from the southern hemisphere.
+
+There is some corroboration of this in the ancient traditions as to the
+stars having changed their courses. In the southern hemisphere a man
+standing facing the position of the sun at noon would see the stars rise
+on his right hand and move towards his left. In the northern hemisphere,
+if he also looked in the direction of the sun at noon, he would see them
+rise on his left hand. Now one of a race migrating from one side to the
+other of the equator would take his position from the sun, and fancy he
+was facing the same way when he looked at it at noon, and so would think
+the motion of the stars to have altered, instead of his having turned
+round. Such a tradition, then, seems to have arisen from such a
+migration, the fact of which seems to be confirmed by the calling the
+Pleiades stars of spring, and commencing the year with their
+culmination at midnight. In order to trace this new-year's festival into
+other countries, and by this means to show its connection with the
+Pleiades, we must remark that every festival has its peculiar features
+and rites, and it is by these that we must recognise it, where the
+actual date of its occurrence has slightly changed; bearing, of course,
+in mind that the actual change of date must not be too great to be
+accounted for by the precession of the equinoxes, or about seventy-one
+years for each day of change, since the institution of the festival, and
+that the change is in the right direction.
+
+Now we find that everywhere this festival of the Pleiades' culmination
+at midnight (or it may be of the slightly earlier one of their first
+appearance at the horizon at apparent sunset) was always connected with
+the memory of the dead. It was a "feast of ancestors."
+
+Among the Australians themselves, the _corroborees_ of the natives are
+connected with a worship of the dead. They paint a white stripe over
+their arms, legs, and ribs, and, dancing by the light of their fires by
+night, appear like so many skeletons rejoicing. What is also to be
+remarked, the festival lasts three days, and commences in the evening;
+the latter a natural result of the date depending on the appearance of
+the Pleiades on the horizon at that time.
+
+The Society Islanders, who, as we have seen, divided their year by the
+appearance of the Pleiades at sunset, commenced their year on the first
+day of the appearance, about November, and also celebrated the closing
+of one and the opening of a new year by a "usage resembling much the
+popish custom of mass for souls in purgatory," each man returning to his
+home to offer special prayers for the spirits of departed relatives.
+
+In the Tonga Islands, which belong to the Fiji group, the festival of
+_Inachi_, a vernal first-fruits' celebration, and also a commemoration
+of the dead takes place towards the end of October, and commences at
+sunset.
+
+In Peru the new-year's festival occurs in the beginning of November, and
+is "called _Ayamarca_ from _aya_, a corpse, and _marca_, carrying in
+arms, because they celebrated the solemn festival of the dead, with
+tears, lugubrious songs, and plaintive music; and it was customary to
+visit the tombs of relations, and to leave in them food and drink." The
+fact that this took place at the time of the discovery of Peru on the
+very same day as a similar ceremony takes place in Europe, was only an
+accidental coincidence, which is all the more remarkable because the two
+appear, as will be seen in the sequel, to have had the same origin, and
+therefore at first the same date, and to have altered from it by exactly
+the same amount. These instances from races south of the equator prove
+clearly that there exists a very general connection with new-year's day,
+as determined by the rising of the Pleiades at sunset, and a festival of
+the dead; and in some instances with an offering of first-fruits. What
+the origin of this connection may be is a more difficult matter. At
+first sight one might conjecture that with the year that was passed it
+was natural to connect the men that had passed away; and this may indeed
+be the true interpretation: but there are traditions and observances
+which may be thought by some to point to some ancient wide-spread
+catastrophe which happened at this particular season, which they yearly
+commemorated, and reckoned a new year from each commemoration. Such
+traditions and observances we shall notice as we trace the spread of
+this new-year's festival of the dead among various nations, and its
+connection, with the Pleiades.
+
+We have seen that in India November is called the month of the Pleiades.
+Now on the 17th day of that month is celebrated the Hindoo Durga, a
+festival of the dead, and said by Greswell to have been a new-year's
+commemoration at the earliest time to which Indian calendars can be
+carried back.
+
+Among the ancient Egyptians the same day was very noticeable, and they
+took care to regulate their solar calendars that it might remain
+unchanged. Numerous altered calendars have been discovered, but they are
+all regulated by this one day. This was determined by the culmination of
+the Pleiades at midnight. On this day commenced the solemn festival of
+the Isia, which, like the _corroborees_ of the Australians, lasted three
+days, and was celebrated in honour of the dead, and of Osiris, the lord
+of tombs. Now the month Athyr was undoubtedly connected with the
+Pleiades, being that "in which the Pleiades are most distinct"--that
+is, in which they rise near and before sunset. Among the Egyptians,
+however, more attention was paid to astronomy than amongst the savage
+races with which the year of the Pleiades would appear to have
+originated, and they studied very carefully the connection between the
+positions of the stars and the entrance of the sun into the northern
+hemisphere, and regulated their calendar accordingly; as we shall see
+shortly in speaking of the pyramid builders.
+
+The Persians formerly called the month of November _Mordad_, the angel
+of death, and the feast of the dead took place at the same time as in
+Peru, and was considered a new-year's festival. It commenced also in the
+evening.
+
+In Ceylon a combined festival of agriculture and of the dead takes place
+at the beginning of November.
+
+Among the better known of the ancient nations of the northern
+hemispheres, such as the Greeks and Romans, the anomaly of having the
+beginning of the year at the autumnal equinox seems to have induced them
+to make a change to that of spring, and with this change has followed
+the festival of the dead, although some traces of it were left in
+November.
+
+The commemoration of the dead was connected among the Egyptians with a
+deluge, which was typified by the priest placing the image of Osiris in
+a sacred coffer or ark, and launching it out into the sea till it was
+borne out of sight. Now when we connect this fact, and the celebration
+taking place on the 17th day of Athyr, with the date on which the Mosaic
+account of the deluge of Noah states it to have commenced, "in the
+second month (of the Jewish year, which corresponds to November), the
+17th day of the month," it must be acknowledged that this is no chance
+coincidence, and that the precise date here stated must have been
+regulated by the Pleiades, as was the Egyptian date. This coincidence is
+rendered even stronger by the similiarity of traditions among the two
+nations concerning the dove and the tree as connected with the deluge.
+We find, however, no festival of the dead among the Hebrews; their
+better form of faith having prevented it.
+
+We have not as yet learnt anything of the importance of the Pleiades
+among the ancient Babylonian astronomers, but as through their tablets
+we have lately become acquainted with their version of the story of the
+deluge, we may be led in this way to further information about their
+astronomical appreciation of this constellation.
+
+From whatever source derived, it is certain that the Celtic races were
+partakers in this general culture, we might almost call it, of the
+Pleiades, as shown by the time and character of their festival of the
+dead. This is especially interesting to ourselves, as it points to the
+origin of the superstitions of the Druids, and accounts for customs
+remaining even to this day amongst us.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE V.--THE LEGENDS OF THE DRUIDS.]
+
+The first of November was with the Druids a night full of mystery, in
+which they annually celebrated the reconstruction of the world. A
+terrible rite was connected with this; for the Druidess nuns were
+obliged at this time to pull down and rebuild each year the roof of
+their temple, as a symbol of the destruction and renovation of the
+world. If one of them, in bringing the materials for the new roof, let
+fall her sacred burden, she was lost. Her companions, seized with a
+fanatic transport, rushed upon her and tore her to pieces, and scarcely
+a year is said to have passed without there being one or more victims.
+On this same night the Druids extinguished the sacred fire, which was
+kept continually burning in the sacred precincts, and at that signal all
+the fires in the island were one by one put out, and a primitive night
+reigned throughout the land. Then passed along to the west the phantoms
+of those who had died during the preceding year, and were carried away
+by boats to the judgment-seat of the god of the dead. (Plate V.)
+Although Druidism is now extinct, the relics of it remain to this day,
+for in our calendar we still find November 1 marked as All Saints' Day,
+and in the pre-Reformation calendars the last day of October was marked
+All Hallow Eve, and the 2nd of November as All Souls'; indicating
+clearly a three days' festival of the dead, commencing in the evening,
+and originally regulated by the Pleiades--an emphatic testimony how much
+astronomy has been mixed up with the rites and customs even of the
+English of to-day. In former days the relics were more numerous, in the
+Hallowe'en torches of the Irish, the bonfires of the Scotch, the
+_coel-coeth_ fires of the Welsh, and the _tindle_ fires of Cornwall, all
+lighted on Hallowe'en. In France it still lingers more than here, for to
+this very day the Parisians at this festival repair to the cemeteries,
+and lunch at the graves of their ancestors.
+
+If the extreme antiquity of a rite can be gathered from the remoteness
+of the races that still perform it, the fact related to us by Prescott
+in his _History of the Conquest of Mexico_ cannot fail to have great
+interest. There we find that the great festival of the Mexican cycle was
+held in November, at the time of the midnight culmination of the
+Pleiades. It began at sunset, and at midnight as that constellation
+approached the zenith, a human victim, was offered up, to avert the
+dread calamity which they believed impended over the human race. They
+had a tradition that the world had been previously destroyed at this
+time, and they were filled with gloom and dismay, and were not at rest
+until the Pleiades were seen to culminate, and a new cycle had begun;
+this great cycle, however, was only accomplished in fifty-two years.
+
+It is possible that the festival of lanthorns among the Japanese, which
+is celebrated about November, may be also connected with this same day,
+as it is certain that that nation does reckon days by the Pleiades.
+
+These instances of a similar festival at approximately the same period
+of the year, and regulated (until fixed to a particular day in a solar
+calendar) by the midnight culmination of the Pleiades, show conclusively
+how great an influence that constellation has had on the manners and
+customs of the world, and throw some light on the history of man.
+
+Even where we find no festival connected with the particular position of
+the Pleiades which is the basis of the above, they still are used for
+the regulation of the seasons--as amongst the Dyaks of Borneo. This race
+of men are guided in their farming operations by this constellation.
+"When it is low in the east at early morning, before sunrise, the elders
+know it is time to cut down the jungle; when it approaches mid-heaven,
+then it is time to burn what they have cut down; when it is declining
+towards the west, then they plant; and when in the early evening it is
+seen thus declining, then they may reap in safety and in peace;" the
+latter period is also that of their feast of _Nycapian_, or
+first-fruits.
+
+We find the same regulations amongst the ancient Greeks in the days of
+Hesiod, who tells us that the corn is to be cut when the Pleiades rise,
+and ploughing is to be done when they set. Also that they are invisible
+for forty days, and reappear again at harvest. When the Pleiades rise,
+the care of the vine must cease; and when, fleeing from Orion, they are
+lost in the waves, sailing commences to be dangerous. The name, indeed,
+by which we now know these stars is supposed to be derived from the word
+[Greek: plein], to sail--because sailing was safe after they had risen;
+though others derive it from [Greek: peleiai], a flight of doves.
+
+Any year that is regulated by the Pleiades, or by any other group of
+stars, must, as we have seen before, be what is called a sidereal, and
+not a solar year. Now a year in uncivilised countries can only mean a
+succession of seasons, as is illustrated by the use of the expression "a
+person of so many summers." It is difficult of course to say when any
+particular season begins by noticing its characteristics as to weather;
+even the most regular phenomena are not certain enough for that; we
+cannot say that when the days and nights become exactly equal any marked
+change takes place in the temperature or humidity of the atmosphere, or
+in any other easily-noticed phenomena. The day therefore on which spring
+commences is arbitrary, except that, inasmuch as spring depends on the
+position of the sun, its commencement, ought to be regulated by that
+luminary, and not by some star-group which has no influence in the
+matter. Nevertheless the position of such a group is much more easily
+observed, and in early ages could almost alone be observed; and so long
+as the midnight culmination of the Pleiades--judged of, it must be
+noticed, by their appearance _on the horizon_ at sunset--fairly
+coincided with that state of weather which might be reckoned the
+commencement of spring conditions, no error would be detected, because
+the change in their position is so slow. The solar spring is probably a
+later discovery, which now, from its greater reasonableness and
+constancy, has superseded the old one. But since the time of the sun's
+crossing the equator is the natural commencement of spring, whether
+discovered or not, it is plain that no group of stars could be taken as
+a guide instead, if their indication did not approximately coincide with
+this.
+
+If then we can determine the exact date at which the Pleiades indicated
+by their midnight culmination the sun's passage across the equator, we
+can be sure that the spring could only have been regulated by this
+during, say, a thousand years at most, on either side of this date. It
+is very certain that if the method of reckoning spring by the stars had
+been invented at a more remote date, some other set of stars would have
+been chosen instead.
+
+Now when was this date? It is a matter admitting of certain calculation,
+depending only on numbers derived from observation in our own days and
+records of the past few centuries, and the answer is that this date is
+about 2170 B.C.
+
+We have seen that, though it was probably brought from the southern
+hemisphere, the Egyptians adopted the year of the Pleiades, and
+celebrated the new-year's festival of the dead; but they were also
+advanced astronomers, and would soon find out the change that took place
+in the seasons when regulated by the stars. And to such persons the date
+at which the two periods coincided, or at least were exactly half a year
+apart, would be one of great importance and interest, and there seems
+to be evidence that they did commemorate it in a very remarkable manner.
+The evidence, however, is all circumstantial, and the conclusion
+therefore can only claim probability. The evidence is as follows:--The
+most remarkable buildings of Egypt are the pyramids. These are of
+various sizes and importance, but are built very much after the same
+plan. They seem, however, to be all copies from one, the largest,
+namely, the Pyramid of Gizeh, and to be of subsequent date to this.
+Their object has long been a puzzle, and the best conclusion has been
+supposed to be that they were for sepulchral purposes, as in some of
+them coffins have been found. The large one, however, shows far more
+than the rest of the structure, and cannot have been meant for a funeral
+pile alone.
+
+Its peculiarities come out on a careful examination and measurement such
+as it has been subjected to at the devoted hands of Piazzi Smyth, the
+Astronomer Royal for Scotland. He has shown that it is not built at
+random, as a tomb might be, but it is adjusted with exquisite design,
+and with surprising accuracy. In the first place it lies due north,
+south, east, and west, and the careful ascertainment of the meridian of
+the place, by modern astronomical instruments, could not suggest any
+improvement in its position in this respect. The outside of it is now,
+so to speak, pealed, that is to say, there was originally, covering the
+whole, another layer of stones which have been taken away. These stones,
+which were of a different material, were beautifully polished, as some
+of the remaining ones, now covered and concealed, can testify. The angle
+at which they are cut, and which of course gives the angle and elevation
+of the whole pyramid, is such that the height of it is in the same
+proportion to its circumference or perimeter, as the radius of a circle
+is to its circumference approximately. The height, in fact, is proved by
+measurement and observation to be 486 ft., and the four sides together
+to be 3,056 ft., or about 6-2/7 times the height. It does not seem
+improbable that, considering their advancement, the Egyptians might have
+calculated approximately how much larger the circumference of the circle
+is than its diameter, and it is a curious coincidence that the pyramid
+expresses it. Professor Piazzi Smyth goes much further and believes that
+they knew, or were divinely taught, the shape and size of the earth, and
+by a little manipulation of the length of their unit, or as he expresses
+it the "pyramid inch," he makes the base of the pyramid express the
+number of miles in the diameter of the earth.
+
+Now in the interior of the apparently solid structure, besides the usual
+slanting passage down to a kind of cellar or vault beneath the middle of
+the base, which may have been used for a sepulchral resting-place, there
+are two slanting passages, one running north and the other running
+south, and slanting up at different angles. Part of that which leads
+south is much enlarged, and is known as the grand gallery. It is of a
+very remarkable shape, being perfectly smooth and polished along its
+ascending base, as indeed it is in every part, and having a number of
+steps or projections, pointing also upwards at certain angles, very
+carefully maintained. Whether we understand its use or not, it is very
+plain that it has been made with a very particular design, and one not
+easily comprehended. This leads into a chamber known as the king's
+chamber, whose walls are exquisitely polished and which contains a
+coffer known as _Cheops' Coffin_. This coffer has been villainously
+treated by travellers, who have chipped and damaged it, but originally
+it was very carefully made and polished. It is too large to have been
+brought in by the only entrance into the chamber after it was finished,
+and therefore is obviously no coffin at all, as is proved also by the
+elaborateness of the means of approach. Professor Piazzi Smyth has made
+the happy suggestion that it represents their standard of length and
+capacity, and points out the remarkable fact that it contains exactly as
+much as four quarters of our dry measure. As no one has ever suggested
+what our "quarters" are quarters of, Professor Smyth very naturally
+supplies the answer--"of the contents of the pyramid coffer." There are
+various other measurements that have been made by the same worker, and
+their meaning suggested in his interesting book, _Our Inheritance in the
+Great Pyramid_, which we may follow or agree to as we can; but from all
+that has been said above, it will appear probable that this pyramid was
+built with a definite design to mark various natural phenomena or
+artificial measures, which is all we require for our present purpose.
+Now we come to the question, what is the meaning of the particular
+angles at which the north-looking and south-looking passages rise, if,
+as we now believe, they must have _some_ meaning.
+
+The exits of these passages were closed, and they could not therefore
+have been for observation, but they may have been so arranged as to be a
+memorial of any remarkable phenomena to be seen in those directions. To
+ascertain if there be any such to which they point, we must throw back
+the heavens to their position in the days of the Egyptians, because, as
+we have seen, the precession of the equinoxes alters the meridian
+altitude of every star. As the passages point north and south, if they
+refer to any star at all, it must be to their passing the meridian.
+
+Now let us take the heavens as they were 2170 B.C., the date at which
+the Pleiades _really_ commenced the spring, by their midnight
+culmination, and ask how high they would be then. The answer of
+astronomy is remarkable--"_Exactly at that height that they could be
+seen in the direction of the southward-pointing passage of the
+pyramid._" And would any star then be in a position to be seen in the
+direction of the other or northward-looking passage? Yes, the largest
+star in the constellation of the Dragon, which would be so near the pole
+(3 deg. 52') as to be taken as the Pole Star in those days. These are such
+remarkable coincidences in a structure admittedly made with mathematical
+accuracy and design, and truly executed, that we cannot take them to be
+accidental, but must endeavour to account for them.
+
+The simplest explanation seems to be, that everything in the pyramid is
+intended to represent some standard or measure, and that these passages
+have to do with their year. They had received the year of the Pleiades
+from a remoter antiquity than their own, they had discovered the true
+commencement of solar spring, as determined from the solar autumnal
+equinox, and they commemorated by the building of the pyramid the
+coincidence of the two dates, making passages in it which would have no
+meaning except at that particular time.
+
+Whether the pyramid was built _at that time_, or whether their
+astronomical knowledge was sufficient to enable them to predict it and
+build accordingly, just as we calculate back to it, we have no means of
+knowing. It is very possible that the pyramid may have been built by
+some immigrating race more learned in astronomy, like the Accadians
+among the Babylonians.
+
+Either the whole of the conclusions respecting the pyramid is founded on
+pure imagination and the whole work upon it thrown away, or we have here
+another very remarkable proof of the influence of the Pleiades on the
+reckoning of the year, and a very interesting chapter in the history of
+the heavens.
+
+Following the guidance of Mr. Haliburton, we shall find still more
+customs, and names depending in all probability on the influence the
+Pleiades once exerted, and the observances connected with the feasts in
+their honour.
+
+The name by which the Pleiades are known among the Polynesians is the
+"Tau," which means a season, and they speak of the years of the Tau,
+that is of the Pleiades. Now we have seen that the Egyptians had similar
+feasts at similar times, in relation to this constellation, and argued
+that they did not arise independently. This seems still further proved
+by their name for these stars--the Atauria.
+
+Now the Egyptians do not appear to have derived their signs of the
+Zodiac from the same source; these had a Babylonian origin, and the
+constellation in which the Pleiades were placed by the latter people was
+the Bull, by whatever name he went. The Egyptians, we may make the fair
+surmise, adopted from both sources; they took the Pleiades to indicate
+the Bull, and they called this animal after the Atauria. From thence we
+got the Latin Taurus, and the German Thier.
+
+It is possible that this somehow got connected with the letter "tau" in
+Greek, which seems itself connected with the sacred scarabaeus or
+Tau-beetle of Egypt; but the nature of the connection is by no means
+obvious. Mr. Haliburton even suggests that the "tors" and "Arthur's
+seat," which are names given to British hill-tops, may be connected with
+the "high places," of the worship of the Pleiades, but of this we have
+no proof.
+
+Among the customs possibly derived from the ancients, through the
+Phoenicians, though now adopted as conveying a different meaning in a
+Christian sense, is that of the "hot cross bun," or "bull cake." It is
+found on Egyptian monuments, signifying the four quarters of the year,
+and sometimes stamped with the head and horns of the bull. It is found
+among ourselves too, essentially connected with the dead, and something
+similar to it appears in the "soul cake" connected originally with All
+Souls' Day.
+
+Among the Scotch it was traditionally thought that on New Year's Eve the
+Candlemas Bull can be seen, rising at twilight and sailing over the
+heavens--a very near approach to a matter-of-fact statement.
+
+We have seen that among the ancient Indians there was some notice taken
+of the Pleiades, and that they in all probability guided their year by
+them or by some other stars: it would therefore behove them to know
+something of the precession of the equinoxes. It seems very well proved
+that their days of Brahma and other periods were meant to represent some
+astronomical cycles, and among these we find one that is applicable to
+the above. They said that in every thousand divine ages, or in every day
+of Brahma, fourteen Menus are successively invested with the sovereignty
+of the earth. Each Menu transmits his empire to his sons during
+seventy-one divine ages. We may find a meaning for this by putting it
+that the equinox goes forward fourteen days in each thousand years, and
+each day takes up seventy-one years.
+
+These may not be the only ones among the various customs, sayings, and
+names that are due in one way or other to this primitive method of
+arranging the seasons by the positions of the stars, especially of those
+most remarkable and conspicuous ones the Pleiades, but they are those
+that are best authenticated. If the connection between the Pleiades and
+the festival of the dead, the new year and a deluge, can be clearly made
+out; if the tradition of the latter be found as universal as that of the
+former, and be connected with it in the Mosaic narrative; if we can
+trace all these traditions to the south of the equator, and find
+numerous further traditions connected with islands, we may find some
+reason for believing in their theory who suggest that the early
+progenitors of the human race (? all of them) were inhabitants of some
+fortunate islands of even temperature in the southern hemisphere, where
+they made some progress in civilisation, but that their island was
+swallowed up by the sea, and that they only escaped by making huge
+vessels, and, being carried by the waves, they landed on continental
+shores, where they commemorated yearly the great catastrophe that had
+happened to them, notifying its time by the position of the Pleiades,
+making it a feast of the dead whom they had left behind, and opening
+the year with the day, whether it were spring or not, and handing down
+to their descendants and to those among whom they came, the traditions
+and customs which such events had impressed upon them.
+
+Whether such an account be probable, mythical, or unnatural, there are
+certainly some strange things to account for in connection with the
+Pleiades.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE NATURE AND STRUCTURE OF THE HEAVENS ACCORDING TO THE ANCIENTS.
+
+
+Many and various have been the ideas entertained by reflecting men in
+former times on the nature and construction of the heavenly vault,
+wherein appeared those stars and constellations whose history we have
+already traced. Is it solid? or liquid? or gaseous? Each of these and
+many other suppositions have been duly formulated by the ancient
+philosophers and sages, although, as we are told by modern astronomy, it
+does not exist at all.
+
+In our study of the ancient ideas about the structure of the universe,
+we will commence with that early and curious system which considered the
+heavenly vault to be material and solid.
+
+The theory of a solid sky received the assent of all the most ancient
+philosophers. In his commentary on Aristotle's work on the heavens,
+Simplicius reveals the repugnance the ancient philosophers felt in
+admitting that a star could stand alone in space, or have a free motion
+of its own. It must have a support, and they therefore conceived that
+the sky must be solid. However strange this idea may now appear, it
+formed for many centuries the basis of all astronomical theories. Thus
+Anaximenas (in the sixth century B.C.) is related by Plutarch to have
+said that "the outer sky is solid and crystalline," and that the stars
+are "fixed to its surface like studs," but he does not say on what this
+opinion was founded, though it is probable that, like his master
+Anaximander, he could not understand how the stars could move without
+being supported.
+
+Pythagoras, who lived about the same epoch, is also supposed by some to
+have held the same views, and it is possible that they all borrowed
+these ideas from the Persians, whose earliest astronomers are said in
+the _Zend avesta_ to have believed in concentric solid skies.
+
+Eudoxus of Cnidus, in the fifth century B.C., is said by his commentator
+Aratus to have also believed in the solidity of the heavens, but his
+reasons are not assigned.
+
+Notwithstanding these previously expressed opinions, Aristotle (fourth
+century, B.C.) has for a long time been generally supposed to be the
+inventor of solid skies, but in fact he only gave the idea his valuable
+and entire support. The sphere of the stars was his eighth heaven. The
+less elevated heavens, in which he also believed, were invented to
+explain as well as they might, the proper motions of the sun, moon, and
+planets.
+
+The philosopher of Stagira said that the motion of his eighth or
+outermost solid sky was uniform, nor ever troubled by any perturbation.
+"Within the universe there is," he says, "a fixed and immovable centre,
+the earth; and without there is a bounding surface enclosing it on all
+sides. The outermost part of the universe is the sky. It is filled with
+heavenly bodies which we know as stars, and it has a perpetual motion,
+carrying round with it these immortal bodies in its unaltering and
+unending revolution."
+
+Euclid, to whom we may assign a date of about 275 before our present
+era, also considered the stars to be set in a solid sphere, having the
+eye of the observer as centre; though for him this conception was simply
+a deduction from exact and fundamental observations, namely, that their
+revolution took place as a whole, the shape and size of the
+constellation being never altered.
+
+Cicero, in the last century before Christ, declared himself a believer
+in the solidity of the sky. According to him the ether was too rarefied
+to enable it to move the stars, which must therefore require to be fixed
+to a sphere of their own, independent of the ether.
+
+In the time of Seneca there seem to have been difficulties already
+raised about the solidity of the heavens, for he only mentions it in the
+form of a question--"Is the sky solid and of a firm and compact
+substance?" (_Questions_, Book ii.)
+
+In the fifth century the idea of the star sphere still lingered, and in
+the eyes of Simplicius, the commentator of Aristotle, it was not merely
+an artifice suitable for the representation of the apparent motions, but
+a firm and solid reality; while Mahomet and most of the Fathers of the
+Christian Church had the same conception of these concentric spheres.
+
+It appears then from this review that the phrases "starry vault," and
+especially "fixed stars," have been used in two very distinct senses.
+When we meet with them in Aristotle or Ptolemy, it is obvious that they
+have reference to the crystal sphere of Anaximenas, to which they were
+supposed to be affixed, and to move with it; but that later the word
+"fixed" carried with it the sense of immovable, and the stars were
+conceived as fixed in this sense, independently of the sphere to which
+they were originally thought to be attached. Thus Seneca speaks of them
+as the _fixum et immobilem populum_.
+
+If we would inquire a little further into the supposed nature of this
+solid sphere, we find that Empedocles considered it to be a solid mass,
+formed of a portion of the ether which the elementary fire has converted
+into crystal, and his ideas of the connection between cold and
+solidification being not very precise, he described it by names that
+give the best idea of transparence, and, like Lactantius, called it
+_vitreum caelum_, or said _caelum aerem glaciatum esse_, though we cannot
+suppose that he made any allusion to what we now call glass, but simply
+meant some body eminently transparent into which the fire had
+transformed the air; while so far from having any idea of cold, as we
+might imagine possible from observations of the snowy tops of mountains,
+they actually believed in a warm region above the lower atmosphere. Thus
+Aristotle considers that the spheres heat by their motion the air below
+them, without being heated themselves, and that there is thus a
+production of heat. "The motion of the sphere of fixed stars," he says,
+"is the most rapid, as it moves in a circle with all the bodies attached
+to it, and the spaces immediately below are strongly heated by the
+motion, and the heat, thus engendered, is propagated downwards to the
+earth." This however, strangely enough, does not appear to have
+prevented their supposing an eternal cold to reign in the regions next
+below, for Macrobius, in his commentary on Cicero, speaks of the
+decrease of temperature with the height, and concludes that the extreme
+zones of the heavens where Saturn moves must be eternally cold; but this
+they reckoned as part of the atmosphere, beyond whose limits alone was
+to be found the fiery ether.
+
+It is to the Fathers of the Church that we owe the transmission during
+the middle ages of the idea of a crystal vault. They conceived a heaven
+of glass composed of eight or ten superposed layers, something like so
+many skins in an onion. This idea seems to have lingered on in certain
+cloisters of southern Europe even into the nineteenth century, for a
+venerable Prince of the Church told Humboldt in 1815, that a large
+aerolite lately fallen, which was covered with a vitrified crust, must
+be a fragment of the crystalline sky. On these various spheres, one
+enveloping without touching another, they supposed the several planets
+to be fixed, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter.
+
+Whether the greater minds of antiquity, such as Plato, Plutarch,
+Eudoxus, Aristotle, Apollonius, believed in the reality of these
+concentric spheres to carry the planets, or whether this conception was
+not rather with them an imaginary one, serving only to simplify
+calculation and assist the mind in the solution of the difficult problem
+of their motion, is a point on which even Humboldt cannot decide. It is
+certain, however, that in the middle of the sixteenth century, when the
+theory involved no less than seventy-seven concentric spheres, and
+later, when the adversaries of Copernicus brought them all into
+prominence to defend the system of Ptolemy, the belief in the existence
+of these solid spheres, circles and epicycles, which was under the
+especial patronage of the Church, was very widespread.
+
+Tycho Brahe expressly boasts of having been the first, by considerations
+concerning the orbits of the comets, to have demonstrated the
+impossibility of solid spheres, and to have upset this ingenious
+scaffolding. He supposed the spaces of our system to be filled with air,
+and that this medium, disturbed by the motion of the heavenly bodies,
+opposed a resistance which gave rise to the harmonic sounds.
+
+It should be added also that the Grecian philosophers, though little
+fond of observation, but rejoicing rather in framing systems for the
+explanation of phenomena of which they possessed but the faintest
+glimpse, have left us some ideas about the nature of shooting stars and
+aerolites that come very close to those that are now accepted. "Some
+philosophers think," says Plutarch in his life of Lysander, "that
+shooting stars are not detached particles of ether which are
+extinguished by the atmosphere soon after being ignited, nor do they
+arise from the combustion of the rarefied air in the upper regions, but
+that they are rather heavenly bodies which fall, that is to say, which
+escaping in some way from the general force of rotation are precipitated
+in an irregular manner, sometimes on inhabited portions of the earth,
+but sometimes also in the ocean, where of course they cannot be found."
+Diogenes of Apollonius expresses himself still more clearly: "Amongst
+the stars that are visible move others that are invisible, to which in
+consequence we are unable to give any name. These latter often fall to
+the earth and take fire like that star-stone which fell all on fire near
+AEgos Potamos." These ideas were no doubt borrowed from some more ancient
+source, as he believed that all the stars were made of something like
+pumice-stone. Anaxagoras, in fact, thought that all the heavenly bodies
+were fragments of rocks which the ether, by the force of its circular
+motion, had detached from the earth, set fire to, and turned into
+stars. Thus the Ionic school, with Diogenes of Apollonius, placed the
+aerolites and the stars in one class, and assigned to all of them a
+terrestrial origin, though in this sense only, that the earth, being the
+central body, had furnished the matter for all those that surround it.
+
+Plutarch speaks thus of this curious combination:--"Anaxagoras teaches
+that the ambient ether is of an igneous nature, and by the force of its
+gyratory motion it tears off blocks of stone, renders them incandescent,
+and transforms them into stars." It appears that he explained also by an
+analogous effect of the circular motion the descent of the Nemaean Lion,
+which, according to an old tradition, fell out of the moon upon the
+Peloponnesus. According to Boeckh, this ancient myth of the Nemaean
+Lion had an astronomical origin, and was symbolically connected in
+chronology with the cycle of intercalation of the lunar year, with the
+worship of the moon in Nemaea, and the games by which it was
+accompanied.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VI.--THE NEMAEAN LION.]
+
+Anaxagoras explains the apparent motion of the celestial sphere from
+east to west by the hypothesis of a general revolution, the interruption
+of which, as we have just seen, caused the fall of meteoric stones. This
+hypothesis is the point of departure of the theory of vortices, which
+more than two thousand years later, by the labours of Descartes,
+Huyghens, and Hooke, took so prominent a place among the theories of
+the world.
+
+It may be worth adding with regard to the famous aerolite of AEgos
+Potamus, alluded to above, that when the heavens were no longer believed
+to be solid, the faith in the celestial origin of this, as of other
+aerolites, was for a long time destroyed. Thus Bailly the astronomer,
+alluding to it, says, "if the fact be true, this stone must have been
+thrown out by a volcano." Indeed it is only within the last century that
+it has been finally accepted for fact that stones do fall from the sky.
+Laplace thought it probable that they came from the moon; but it has now
+been demonstrated that aerolites, meteors, and shooting stars belong all
+to one class of heavenly bodies, that they are fragments scattered
+through space, and circulate like the planets round the sun. When the
+earth in its motion crosses this heavenly host, those which come near
+enough to touch its atmosphere leave a luminous train behind them by
+their heating by friction with the air: these are the _shooting stars_.
+Sometimes they come so close as to appear larger than the moon, then
+they are _meteors;_ and sometimes too the attraction of the earth makes
+them fall to it, and these become _aerolites_.
+
+But to return to our ancient astronomers:--
+
+They believed the heavens to be in motion, not only because they saw the
+motion with their eyes, but because they believed them to be animated,
+and regarded motion as the essence of life. They judged of the rapidity
+of the stars' motion by a very ingenious means. They perceived that it
+was greater than that of a horse, a bird, an arrow, or even of the
+voice, and Cleomenas endeavoured to estimate it in the following way. He
+remarks that when the king of Persia made war upon Greece he placed men
+at certain intervals, so as to lie in hearing of each other, and thus
+passed on the news from Athens to Susa. Now this news took two days and
+nights to pass over this distance. The voice therefore only accomplished
+a fraction of the distance that the stars had accomplished twice in the
+same time.
+
+The heavens, as we have seen, were not supposed to consist of a single
+sphere, but of several concentric ones, the arrangement and names of
+which we must now inquire into.
+
+The early Chaldeans established three. The first was the empyreal
+heaven, which was the most remote. This, which they called also the
+solid firmament, was made of fire, but of fire of so rare and
+penetrating a nature, that it easily passed through the other heavens,
+and became universally diffused, and in this way reached the earth. The
+second was the ethereal heaven, containing the stars, which were simply
+formed of the more compact and denser parts of this substance; and the
+third heaven was that of the planets. The Persians, however, gave a
+separate heaven to the sun, and another to the moon.
+
+The system which has enjoyed the longest and most widely-spread reign
+is that which places above, or rather round, the solid firmament a
+heaven of water--(the nature of which is not accurately defined), and
+round this a _primum mobile_, prime mover, or originator of all the
+motions, and round all this the empyreal heaven, or abode of the
+blessed. In the most anciently printed scientific encyclopaedia known,
+the _Magarita philosophica_, edited in the fifteenth century, that is,
+two centuries before the adoption of the true system of the world, we
+have the curious figure represented on the next page, in which we find
+no less than eleven different heavens. We here see on the exterior the
+solid empyreal heaven, which is stated in the body of the work to be the
+abode of the blessed and to be immovable, while the next heaven gives
+motion to all within, and is followed by the aqueous heaven, then the
+crystal firmament, and lastly by the several heavens of the planets,
+sun, and moon. The revolution of these spheres was not supposed to take
+place, like the motion of the earth in modern astronomy, round an
+imaginary axis, but round one which had a material existence, which was
+provided with pivots moving in fixed sockets. Thus Vitruvius, architect
+to Augustus, teaches it expressly in these words:--
+
+"The heaven turns continually round the earth and sea upon an axis,
+where two extremities are like two pivots that sustain it: for there are
+two places in which the Governor of Nature has fashioned and set these
+pivots as two centres; one is above the earth among the northern stars;
+the other is at the opposite end beneath the earth to the south; and
+around these pivots, as round two centres, he has placed little naves,
+like those of a wheel upon which the heaven turns continually."
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 13.]
+
+Similarly curious ideas we shall find to have prevailed with respect to
+the meaning of everything that they observed in the heavens: thus what a
+number of opinions have been hazarded on the nature of the "Milky Way"
+alone! some of which we may learn from Plutarch. The Milky Way, he says,
+is a nebulous circle, which constantly appears in the sky, and which
+owes its name to its white appearance. Certain Pythagoreans assert that
+when Phaeton lit up the universe, one star, which escaped from its
+proper place, set light to the whole space it passed over in its
+circular course, and so formed the Milky Way. Others thought that this
+circle was where the sun had been moving at the beginning of the world.
+According to others it is but an optical phenomenon produced by the
+reflection of the sun's rays from the vault of the sky as from a mirror,
+and comparable with the effects seen in the rainbow and illuminated
+clouds. Metrodorus says it is the mark of the sun's passage which moves
+along this circle. Parmenidas pretends that the milky colour arises from
+a mixture of dense and rare air. Anaxagoras thinks it an effect of the
+earth's shadow projected on this part of the heavens, when the sun is
+below. Democritus says that it is the lustre of several little stars
+which are very near together, and which reciprocally illuminate each
+other. Aristotle believes it to be a vast mass of arid vapours, which
+takes fire from a glowing tress, above the region of the ether, and far
+below that of the planets. Posidonius says that the circle is a
+compound of fire less dense than that of the stars, but more luminous.
+All such opinions, except that of Democritus, are of little value,
+because founded on nothing; perhaps the worst is that of Theophrastus,
+who said it was the junction between the two hemispheres, which together
+formed the vault of heaven: and that it was so badly made that it let
+through some of the light that he supposed to exist everywhere behind
+the solid sky.
+
+We now know that the Milky Way, like many of the nebulae, is an immense
+agglomeration of suns. The Milky Way is itself a nebula, a mass of
+sidereal systems, with our own among them, since our sun is a single
+star in this vast archipelago of eighteen million orbs. The Greeks
+called it the Galaxy. The Chinese and Arabians call it the River of
+Heaven. It is the Path of Souls among the North American Indians, and
+the Road of S. Jacques de Compostelle among French peasants.
+
+In tracing the history of ideas concerning the structure of the heavens
+among the Greek philosophers, we meet with other modifications which it
+will be interesting to recount. Thus Eudoxus, who paid greater attention
+than others to the variations of the motions of the planets, gave more
+than one sphere to each of them to represent these observed changes.
+Each planet, according to him, has a separate part of the heaven to
+itself, which is composed of several concentric spheres, whose
+movements, modifying each other, produce that of the planet. He gave
+three spheres to the sun: one which turned from east to west in
+twenty-four hours, to represent the diurnal rotation; a second, which
+turned about the pole of the ecliptic in 365-1/4 days, and produced its
+annual movement; and a third was added to account for a certain supposed
+motion, by which the sun was drawn out of the ecliptic, and turned about
+an axis, making such an angle with that of the ecliptic, as represented
+the supposed aberration. The moon also had three spheres to produce its
+motions in longitude and latitude, and its diurnal motion. Each of the
+other planets had four, the extra one being added to account for their
+stations and retrogressions. It should be added that these concentric
+spheres were supposed to fit each other, so that the different planets
+were only separated by the thicknesses of these crystal zones.
+
+Polemarch, the disciple of Eudoxus, who went to Athens with his pupil
+Calippus for the express purpose of consulting Aristotle on these
+subjects, was not satisfied with the exactness with which these spheres
+represented the planetary motions, and made changes in the direction of
+still greater complication. Instead of the twenty-six spheres which
+represented Eudoxus' system, Calippus established thirty-three, and by
+adding also intermediary spheres to prevent the motion of one planet
+interfering with that of the adjacent ones, the number was increased to
+fifty-six.
+
+There is extant a small work, ascribed to Aristotle, entitled "Letter of
+Aristotle to Alexander on the system of the world," which gives so clear
+an account of the ideas entertained in his epoch that we shall venture
+to give a somewhat long extract from it. The work, it should be said, is
+not by all considered genuine, but is ascribed by some to Nicolas of
+Damas, by others to Anaximenas of Lampsacus, a contemporary of
+Alexander's, and by others to the Stoic Posidonius. It is certain,
+however, that Aristotle paid some attention to astronomy, for he records
+the rare phenomena of an eclipse of Mars by the moon, and the
+occultation of one of the Gemini by the planet Jupiter, and the work may
+well be genuine. It contains the following:--
+
+"There is a fixed and immovable centre to the universe. This is occupied
+by the earth, the fruitful mother, the common focus of every kind of
+living thing. Immediately surrounding it on all sides is the air. Above
+this in the highest region is the dwelling-place of the gods, which is
+called the heavens. The heavens and the universe being spherical and in
+continual motion, there must be two points on opposite sides, as in a
+globe which turns about an axis, and these points must be immovable, and
+have the sphere between them, since the universe turns about them. They
+are called the poles. If a line be drawn from one of these points to the
+other it will be the diameter of the universe, having the earth in the
+centre and the two poles at the extremities; of these two poles the
+northern one is always visible above our horizon, and is called the
+Arctic pole; the other, to the south, is always invisible to us--it is
+called the Antarctic pole.
+
+"The substance of the heavens and of the stars is called ether; not that
+it is composed of flame, as pretended by some who have not considered
+its nature, which is very different from that of fire, but it is so
+called because it has an eternal circular motion, being a divine and
+incorruptible element, altogether different from the other four.
+
+"Of the stars contained in the heavens some are fixed, and turn with the
+heavens, constantly maintaining their relative positions. In their
+middle portion is the circle called the _zoophore_, which stretches
+obliquely from one tropic to the other, and is divided into twelve
+parts, which are the twelve signs (of the zodiac). The others are
+wandering stars, and move neither with the same velocity as the fixed
+stars, nor with a uniform velocity among themselves, but all in
+different circles, and with velocities depending on the distances of
+these circles from the earth.
+
+"Although all the fixed stars move on the same surface of the heavens,
+their number cannot be determined. Of the movable stars there are seven,
+which circulate in as many concentric circles, so arranged that the
+lower circle is smaller than the higher, and that the seven so placed
+one within the other are all within the spheres of the fixed stars.
+
+"On the nearer, that is inner, side of this ethereal, immovable,
+unalterable, impassible nature is placed our movable, corruptible, and
+mortal nature. Of this there are several kinds, the first of which is
+fire, a subtle inflammable essence, which is kindled by the great
+pressure and rapid motion of the ether. It is in this region of air,
+when any disturbance takes place in it, that we see kindled
+shooting-stars, streaks of light, and shining motes, and it is there
+that comets are lighted and extinguished.
+
+"Below the fire comes the air, by nature cold and dark, but which is
+warmed and enflamed, and becomes luminous by its motion. It is in the
+region of the air, which is passive and changeable in any manner, that
+the clouds condense, and rain, snow, frost, and hail are formed and fall
+to the earth. It is the abode of stormy winds, of whirlwinds, thunder,
+lightning, and many other phenomena.
+
+"The cause of the heaven's motion is God. He is not in the centre, where
+the earth is a region of agitation and trouble, but he is above the
+outermost circumference, which is the purest of all regions, a place
+which we call rightly _ouranos_, because it is the highest part of the
+universe, and _olympos_, that is, perfectly bright, because it is
+altogether separated from everything like the shadow and disordered
+movements which occur in the lower regions."
+
+We notice in this extract a curious etymology of the word ether, namely,
+as signifying perpetual motion ([Greek: aei teein]), though it is more
+probable that its true, as its more generally accepted derivation is
+from [Greek: aithein], to burn or shine, a meaning doubtless alluded to
+in a remarkable passage of Hippocrates, [Greek: Peri Sarkon]. "It
+appears to me," he says, "that what we call the principle of heat is
+immortal, that it knows all, sees all, hears all, perceives all, both in
+the past and in the future. At the time when all was in confusion, the
+greater part of this principle rose to the circumference of the
+universe; it is this that the ancients have called _ether_."
+
+The first Greek that can be called an astronomer was Thales, born at
+Miletus 641 B.C., who introduced into Greece the elements of astronomy.
+His opinions were these: that the stars were of the same substance as
+the earth, but that they were on fire; that the moon borrowed its light
+from the sun, and caused the eclipses of the latter, while it was itself
+eclipsed when it entered the earth's shadow; that the earth was round,
+and divisible into five zones, by means of five circles, _i.e._ the
+Arctic and Antarctic, the two tropics, and the equator; that the latter
+circle is cut obliquely by the ecliptic, and perpendicularly by the
+meridian. Up to his time no division of the sphere had been made beyond
+the description of the constellations. These opinions do not appear to
+have been rapidly spread, since Herodotus, one of the finest intellects
+of Greece, who lived two centuries later, was still so ill-instructed as
+to say, in speaking of an eclipse, "The sun abandoned its place, and
+night took the place of day."
+
+Anaxagoras, of whom we have spoken before, asserted that the sun was a
+mass of fire larger than the Peloponnesus. Plutarch says he regarded it
+as a burning stone, and Diogenes Laertius looked upon it as hot iron.
+For this bold idea he was persecuted. They considered it a crime that he
+taught the causes of the eclipses of the moon, and pretended that the
+sun is larger than it looks. He first taught the existence of one God,
+and he was taxed with impiety and treason against his country. When he
+was condemned to death, "Nature," he said, "has long ago condemned me to
+the same; and as to my children, when I gave them birth I had no doubt
+but they would have to die some day." His disciple Pericles, however,
+defended him so eloquently that his life was spared, and he was sent
+into exile.
+
+Pythagoras, who belonged to the school of Thales, and who travelled in
+Phoenicia, Chaldea, Judaea, and Egypt, to learn their ideas, ventured,
+in spite of the warnings of the priests, to submit to the rites of
+initiation at Heliopolis, and thence returned to Samos, but meeting with
+poor reception there, he went to Italy to teach. From him arose the
+_Italian School_, and his disciples took the name of philosophers
+(lovers of wisdom) instead of that of sages. We shall learn more about
+him in the chapter on the Harmony of the Spheres.
+
+His first disciple, Empedocles, famous for the curiosity which led him
+to his death in the crater of AEtna, as the story goes, thought that the
+true sun, the fire that is in the centre of the universe, illuminated
+the other hemisphere, and that what we see is only the reflected image
+of that, which is invisible to us, and all of whose movements it
+follows.
+
+His disciple, Philolaus, also taught that the sun was a mass of glass,
+which sent us by reflection all the light that it scattered through the
+universe. We must not, however, forget that these opinions are recorded
+by historians who probably did not understand them, and who took in the
+letter what was only intended for a comparison or figure.
+
+If we are to believe Plutarch, Xenophanes, who flourished about 360
+B.C., was very wild in his opinions. He thought the stars were lighted
+every night and extinguished every morning; that the sun is a fiery
+cloud; that eclipses take place by the sun being extinguished and
+afterwards rekindled; that the moon is inhabited, but is eighteen times
+larger than the earth; that there are several suns and several moons for
+giving light to different countries. This can only be matched by those
+who said the sun went every night through a hole in the earth round
+again to the east; or that it went above ground, and if we did not see
+it going back it was because it accomplished the journey in the night.
+
+Parmenidas was the disciple of Xenophanes. He divided the earth, like
+Thales, into zones; and he added that it was suspended in the centre of
+the universe, and that it did not fall because there was no reason why
+it should move in one direction rather than another. This argument is
+perfectly philosophical, and illustrates a principle employed since the
+time of Archimedes, and of which Leibnitz made so much use.
+
+Such are some of the general ideas which were held by the Greeks and
+others on the nature of the heavens, omitting that of Ptolemy, of which
+we shall give a fuller account hereafter. We see that they were all
+affected by the dominant idea of the superiority of the earth over the
+rest of the universe, and were spoiled for want of the grand conception
+of the immensity of space. The universe was for them a closed space,
+outside of which there was _nothing_; and they busied themselves with
+metaphysical questions as to the possibility of space being infinite. In
+the meantime their conceptions of the distances separating us from other
+visible parts of the universe were excessively cramped. Hesiod, for
+instance, thinks to give a grand idea of the size of the universe by
+saying that Vulcan's anvil took seven days to fall from heaven to earth,
+when in reality, as now calculated, it would take no less than
+seventy-two years for the light, even travelling at a far greater rate,
+to reach us from one of the nearest of the fixed stars.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE CELESTIAL HARMONY.
+
+
+Nature presents herself to us under various aspects. At times, it may
+be, she presents to us the appearance of discord, and we fail to
+perceive the unity that pervades the whole of her actions. At others,
+however, and most often to an instructed mind, there is a concord
+between her various powers, a harmony even in her sounds, that will not
+escape us. Even the wild notes of the tempest and the bass roll of the
+thunder form themselves into part of the grand chorus which in the great
+opera are succeeded by the solos of the evening breeze, the songs of
+birds, or the ripple of the waves. These are ideas that would most
+naturally present themselves to contemplative minds, and such must have
+been the students of the silent, but to them harmonious and tuneful,
+star-lit sky, under the clear atmosphere of Greece. The various motions
+they observed became indissolubly connected in their minds with music,
+and they did not doubt that the heavenly spheres made harmony, if
+imperceptible to human ears. But their ideas were more precise than
+this. They discovered that harmony depended on number, and they
+attempted to prove that whether the music they might make were audible
+or not, the celestial spheres had motions which were connected together
+in the same way as the numbers belonging to a harmony. The study of
+their opinions on this point reveals some very curious as well as very
+interesting ideas. We may commence by referring to an ancient treatise
+by Timaeus of Locris on the soul of the universe. To him we owe the first
+serious exposition of the complete harmonic cosmography of Pythagoras.
+We must premise that, according to this school, God employed all
+existing matter in the formation of the universe--so that it comprehends
+all things, and all is in it. "It is a unique, perfect, and spherical
+production, since the sphere is the most perfect of figures; animated
+and endowed with reason, since that which is animated and endowed with
+reason is better than that which is not."
+
+So begins Timaeus, and then follows, as a quotation from Plato, a
+comparison of the earth to what would appear to us nowadays to be a very
+singular animal. Not only, says Plato, is the earth a sphere, but this
+sphere is perfect, and its maker took care that its surface should be
+perfectly uniform for many reasons. The universe in fact has no need of
+eyes, since there is nothing outside of it to see; nor yet of ears,
+since there is nothing but what is part of itself to make a sound; nor
+of breathing organs, as it is not surrounded by air: any organ that
+should serve to take in nourishment, or to reject the grosser parts,
+would be absolutely useless, for there being nothing outside it, it
+could not receive or reject anything. For the same reason it needs no
+hands with which to defend itself, nor yet of feet with which to walk.
+Of the seven kinds of motion, its author has given it that which is most
+suitable for its figure in making it turn about its axis, and since for
+the execution of this rotatory motion no arms or legs are wanted, its
+maker gave it none.
+
+With regard to the soul of the universe, Plato, according to Timaeus,
+says that God composed it "of a mixture of the divisible and indivisible
+essences, so that the two together might be united into one, uniting two
+forces, the principles of two kinds of motion, one that which is _always
+the same_, and the other that which is _always changing_. The mixture of
+these two essences was difficult, and was not accomplished without
+considerable skill and pains. The proportions of the mixture were
+according to harmonic numbers, so chosen that it is possible to know of
+what, and by what rule, the soul of the universe is compounded."
+
+By harmonic numbers Timaeus means those that are proportional to those
+representing the consonances of the musical scale. The consonances known
+to the ancients were three in number: the diapason, or octave, in the
+proportion of 2 to 1, the diapent, or fifth, in that of 3 to 2, and the
+diatessaron, or fourth, in that of 4 to 3; when to these are joined the
+tones which fill the intervals of the consonances, and are in the
+proportion of 9 to 8, and the semitones in that of 256 to 243, all the
+degrees of the musical scale is complete.
+
+The discovery of these harmonic numbers is due to Pythagoras. It is
+stated that when passing one day near a forge, he noticed that the
+hammers gave out very accurate musical concords. He had them weighed,
+and found that of those which sounded the octave, one weighed twice as
+much as the other; that of those which made a perfect fifth, one weighed
+one third more than the other, and in the case of a fourth, one quarter
+more. After having tried the hammers, he took a musical string stretched
+with weights, and found that when he had applied a given weight in the
+first instance to make any particular note, he had to double the weight
+to obtain the octave, to add one third extra only to obtain a fifth, a
+quarter for the fourth, and eight for one tone, and about an eighteenth
+for a half-tone; or more simply still, he stretched a cord once for all,
+and then when the whole length sounded any note, when stopped in the
+middle it gave the octave, at the third it gave the fifth, at the
+quarter the fourth, at the eighth the tone, and at the eighteenth the
+semi-tone.
+
+Since the ancients conceived of the soul by means of motion, the
+quantity of motion developed in anything was their measure of the
+quantity of its soul. Now the motion of the heavenly bodies seemed to
+them to depend on their distance from the centre of the universe, the
+fastest being those at the circumference of the whole. To determine the
+relative degrees of velocity, they imagined a straight line drawn
+outwards from the centre of the earth, as far as the empyreal heaven,
+and divided it according to the proportions of the musical scale, and
+these divisions they called the harmonic degrees of the soul of the
+universe. Taking the earth's radius for the first number, and calling it
+unity, or, in order to avoid fractions, denoting it by 384, the second
+degree, which is at the distance of an harmonic third, will be
+represented by 384 plus its eighth part, or 432. The third degree will
+be 432, plus its eighth part, or 486. The fourth, being a semitone, will
+be as 243 to 256, which will give 512; and so on. The eighth degree will
+in this way be the double of 384 or 768, and represents the first
+octave.
+
+They continued this series to 36 degrees, as in the following table:--
+
+The Earth.
+
+  Mi           384 + 1/8 = 432
+  Re           432 + 1/8 = 486
+  Ut           486 : 512 : : 243 : 256
+  Si           512 + 1/8 = 576
+  La           576 + 1/8 = 648
+  Sol          648 + 1/8 = 729
+  Fa           729 : 768 : : 243 : 256
+  Mi           768 + 1/8 = 864
+  Re           864 + 1/8 = 972
+  Ut           972 : 1024 : : 243 : 256
+  Si          1024 + 1/8 = 1152
+  La          1152 + 1/8 = 1296
+  Sol         1296 + 1/8 = 1458
+  Fa          1458 : 1536 : : 243 : 256
+  Mi          1536 + 1/8 = 1728
+  Re          1728 + 1/8 = 1944
+  Ut          1944 : 2048 : 243 : 256
+  Si          2048 + 139 = 2187
+  Si 2        2187 : 2304 : : 243 : 256
+  La          2304 + 1/8 = 2592
+  Sol         2592 + 1/8 = 2916
+  Fa          2916 : 3072 : : 243 : 256
+  Mi          3072 + 1/8 = 3456
+  Re          3457 + 1/8 = 3888
+  Ut          3888 + 1/8 = 4374
+  Si          4374 : 4608 : : 243 : 256
+  La          4608 + 1/8 = 5184
+  Sol         5184 + 1/8 = 5832
+  Fa          5832 : 6144 : : 243 : 256
+  Mi          6144 + 417 = 6561
+  Mi 2        6561 : 6912 : : 243 : 256
+  Re          6912 + 1/8 = 7776
+  Ut          7776 + 1/8 = 8748
+  Si          8748 : 9216 : : 243 : 256
+  La          9216 + 1/8 = 10368
+  Sol         10368 = 384 + 27
+
+  The empyreal heaven.
+  Sum of all the terms, 114,695.
+
+This series they considered a complete one, because by taking the terms
+in their proper intervals, the last becomes 27 times the original
+number, and in the school of Pythagoras this 27 had a mystic
+signification, and was considered as the perfect number.
+
+The reason for considering 27 a perfect number was curious. It is the
+sum of the first linear, square, and cubic numbers added to unity. First
+there is 1, which represents the point, then 2 and 3, the first linear
+numbers, even and uneven, then 4 and 9, the first square or surface
+numbers, even and uneven, and the last 8 and 27, the first solid or
+cubic numbers, even and uneven, and 27 is the sum of all the former.
+Whence, taking the number 27 as the symbol of the universe, and the
+numbers which compose it as the elements, it appeared right that the
+soul of the universe should be composed of the same elements.
+
+On this scale of distances, with corresponding velocities, they arranged
+the various planets, and the universe comprehended all these spheres,
+from that of the fixed stars (which was excluded) to the centre of the
+earth. The sphere of the fixed stars was the common envelope, or
+circumference of the universe, and Saturn, immediately below it,
+corresponded to the thirty-sixth tone, and the earth to the first, and
+the other planets with the sun and moon at the various harmonic
+distances.
+
+They reckoned one tone from the earth to the moon, half a tone from the
+moon to Mercury, another half-tone to Venus, one tone and a half from
+Venus to the sun, one from the sun to Mars, a semitone from Mars to
+Jupiter, half a tone from Jupiter to Saturn, and a tone and a half from
+Saturn to the fixed stars; but these distances were not, as we shall
+see, universally agreed upon.
+
+According to Timaeus, the sphere of the fixed stars, which contains
+within it no principle of contrariety, being entirely divine and pure,
+always moves with an equal motion in the same direction from east to
+west. But the stars which are within it, being animated by the mixed
+principle, whose composition has been just explained, and thus
+containing two contrary forces, yield on account of one of these forces
+to the motion of the sphere of fixed stars from east to west, and by the
+other they resist it, and move in a contrary direction, in proportion to
+the degree with which they are endowed with each; that is to say, that
+the greater the proportion of the material to the divine force that they
+possess, the greater is their motion from west to east, and the sooner
+they accomplish their periodic course. Now the amount of this force
+depends on the matter they contain. Thus, according to this system, the
+planets turn each day by the common motion with all the heavens about
+the earth from east to west, but they also retrograde towards the east,
+and accomplish their periods according to their component parts.
+
+The additions which Plato made to this theory have always been a proverb
+of obscurity, and none of his commentators have been able to make
+anything of them, and very possibly they were never intended to.
+
+So far the harmony of the heavenly bodies has been explained with
+reference to numbers only, and we may add to this that they reckoned
+126,000 stadia, or 14,286 miles, to represent a tone, which was thus the
+distance of the earth to the moon, and the same measurement made it
+500,000 from the earth to the sun, and the same distance from the sun to
+the fixed stars.
+
+But Plato teaches in his _Republic_ that there is actual musical,
+harmony between the planets. Each of the spheres, he said, carried with
+it a Siren, and each of these sounding a different note, they formed by
+their union a perfect concert, and being themselves delighted with their
+own harmony, they sang divine songs, and accompanied them by a sacred
+dance. The ancients said there were nine Muses, eight of whom, according
+to Plato, presided over celestial, and the ninth over terrestrial
+things, to protect them from disorder and irregularity.
+
+Cicero and Macrobius also express opinions on this harmonious concert.
+Such great motions, says Cicero, cannot take place in silence, and it is
+natural that the two extremes should have related sounds as in the
+octave. The fixed stars must execute the upper note, and the moon the
+base. Kepler has improved on this, and says Jupiter and Saturn sing
+bass, Mars takes the tenor, the earth and Venus are contralto, and
+Mercury is soprano! True, no one has ever heard these sounds, but
+Pythagoras himself may answer this objection. We are always surrounded,
+he says, by this melody, and our ears are accustomed to it from our
+birth, so that, having nothing different to compare it with, we cannot
+perceive it.
+
+We may here recall the further development of the idea of the soul of
+the universe, which was the source of this harmony, and endeavour to
+find a rational interpretation of their meaning. They said that nature
+had made the animals mortal and ephemeral, and had infused their souls
+into them, as they had been extracts from the sun or moon, or even from
+one of the planets. A portion of the unchangeable essence was added to
+the reasoning part of man, to form a germ of wisdom in privileged
+individuals. For the human soul there is one part which possesses
+intelligence and reason, and another part which has neither the one nor
+the other.
+
+The various portions of the general soul of the universe resided,
+according to Timaeus, in the different planets, and depended on their
+various characters. Some portions were in the moon, others in Mercury,
+Venus, or Mars, and so on, and thus they give rise to the various
+characters and dispositions that are seen among men. But to these parts
+of the human soul that are taken from the planets is joined a spark of
+the supreme Divinity, which is above them all, and this makes man a more
+holy animal than all the rest, and enables him to have immediate
+converse with the Deity himself. All the different substances in nature
+were supposed to be endowed with more or less of this soul, according to
+their material nature or subtilty, and were placed in the same order
+along the line, from the centre to the circumference, on which the
+planets were situated, as we have seen above. In the centre was the
+earth, the heaviest and grossest of all, which had but little if any
+soul at all. Between the earth and the moon, Timaeus placed first water,
+then the air, and lastly elementary fire, which he considered to be
+principles, which were less material in proportion as they were more
+remote and partook of a larger quantity of the soul of the universe.
+Beyond the moon came all the planets, and thus were filled up the
+greater number of the harmonic degrees, the motions of the various
+bodies being guided by the principle enunciated above.
+
+When we carefully consider this theory we find that by a slight change
+of name we may bring it more into harmony with modern ideas. It would
+appear indeed that the ancients called that "soul" which we now call
+"force," and while we say that this force of attraction is in proportion
+to the masses and the inverse square of the distance, they put it that
+it was proportional to the matter, and to the divine substance on which
+the distance depended. So that we may interpret Timaeus as stating this
+proposition: _The distances of the stars and their forces are
+proportional among themselves to their periodic times._ "Some people,"
+says Plutarch, "seek the proportions of the soul of the universe in the
+velocities (or periodic times), others in the distances from the centre;
+some in the masses of the heavenly bodies, and others more acute in the
+ratios of the diameters of their orbits. It is probable that the mass of
+each planet, the intervals between the spheres and the velocities of
+their motions, are like well-tuned musical instruments, all proportional
+harmonically with each other and with all other parts of the universe,
+and by necessary consequence that there are the same relative
+proportions in the soul of the universe by which they were formed by the
+Deity."
+
+It is marvellous how deeply occupied were all the best minds in Greece
+and Italy on this subject, both poets and philosophers; Ocellus,
+Democritus, Timaeus, Aristotle, and Lucretius have all left treatises on
+the same subject, and almost with the same title, "The Nature of the
+Universe."
+
+Though somewhat similar to that of Timaeus, it will be interesting to
+give an account of the ideas of one of these, Ocellus of Lucania.
+
+Ocellus represents the universe as having a spherical form. This sphere
+is divided into concentric layers; above that of the moon they were
+called celestial spheres, while below it and inwards as far as the
+centre of the earth they were called the elementary spheres, and the
+earth was the centre of them all.
+
+In the celestial spheres all the stars were situated, which were so many
+gods, and among them the sun, the largest and most powerful of all. In
+these spheres is never any disturbance, storm, or destruction, and
+consequently no reparation, no reproduction, no action of any kind was
+required on the part of the gods. Below the moon all is at war, all is
+destroyed and reconstructed, and here therefore it is that generations
+are possible. But these take place under the influence of the stars, and
+particularly that of the sun, which in its course acts in different ways
+on the elementary spheres, and produces continual variations in them,
+from whence arises the replenishing and diversifying of nature. It is
+the sun that lights up the region of fire, that dilates the air, melts
+the water, and renders fertile the earth, in its daily course from east
+to west, as well as in this annual journey into the two tropics. But to
+what does the earth owe its germs and its species? According to some
+philosophers these germs were celestial ideas which both gods and demons
+scattered from above over every part of nature, but according to Ocellus
+they arise continually under the influence of the heavenly bodies. The
+divisions of the heavens were supposed to separate the portion that is
+unalterable from that which is in ceaseless change. The line dividing
+the mortal from the immortal is that described by the moon: all that
+lies above that, inclusive, is the habitation of the gods; all that lies
+below is the abode of nature and discord; the latter tending constantly
+to destruction, the former to the reconstruction of all created things.
+
+Ideas such as these, of which we could give other examples more remotely
+connected with harmony, whatever amount of truth we may discover in
+them, prove themselves to have been made before the sciences of
+observation had enabled men to make anything better than empty theories,
+and to support them with false logic. No better example of the latter
+can perhaps be mentioned here than the way in which Ocellus pretends to
+prove that the world is eternal. "The universe," he says, "_having_
+always existed, it follows that everything in it and every arrangement
+of it must always have been as it is now. The several parts of the
+universe _having_ always existed with it, we may say the same of the
+parts of these parts; thus the sun, the moon, the fixed stars, and the
+planets have always existed with the heavens; animals, vegetables, gold,
+and silver with the earth; the currents of air, winds, and changes from
+hot to cold, from cold to hot, with the air. _Therefore_ the heaven,
+with all that it now contains; the earth, with all that it produces and
+supports; and lastly, the whole aerial region, with all its phenomena,
+have always existed." When this system of argument passed away, and
+exact observation took its place, it was soon found that so far from
+what the ancients had argued _must be_ really being the case, no such
+relation as they indicated between the distances or velocities of the
+planets could be traced, and therefore no harmony in the heavens in this
+sense. It is not indeed that we can say no sounds exist because we hear
+none; but considering harmony really to consist of the relations of
+numbers, no such relations exist between the planets' distances, as
+measured now of course from the sun, instead of being, as then, imagined
+from the earth.
+
+The gamut is nothing else than the series of numbers:--
+
+  do  re  mi   fa   sol  la   si   do
+  1  9/8  5/4  4/3  3/2  5/3  15/8  2
+
+and is independent of our perception of the corresponding notes. A
+concert played before a deaf assembly would be a concert still. If one
+note is made by 10,000 vibrations per second, and another by 20,000, we
+should hear them as an octave, but if one had only 10 and the other 20,
+they would still be an octave, though inaudible as notes to us; so too
+we may speak even of the harmony of luminous vibrations of ether, though
+they do not affect our ears.
+
+The velocities of the planets do not coincide with the terms of this
+series. The nearer they are to the sun the faster is their motion,
+Mercury travelling at the mean rate of 55,000 metres a second, Venus,
+36,800, the earth 30,550, Mars 24,448, Jupiter 13,000, Saturn 9,840,
+Uranus 6,800, and Neptune 5,500, numbers which are in the proportion
+roundly of 100, 67, 55, 44, 24, 16, 12, 10, which have no sufficient
+relation to the terms of an harmonic series, to make any harmony
+obvious.
+
+Returning, however, to the ancient philosophers, we are led by their
+ideas about the soul of the universe to discover the origin of their
+gods and natural religion. They were persuaded that only living things
+could move, and consequently that the moving stars must be endowed with
+superior intelligence. It may very well be that from the number seven
+of the planets, including the sun and moon, which were their earliest
+gods, arose the respect and superstition with which all nations, and
+especially the Orientals, regarded that number. From these arose the
+seven superior angels that are found in the theologies of the Chaldeans,
+Persians, and Arabians; the seven gates of Mithra, through which all
+souls must pass to reach the abode of bliss; the seven worlds of
+purification of the Indians, and all the other applications of the
+number seven which so largely figure in Judaism, and have descended from
+it to our own time. On the other hand, as we have seen, this number
+seven may have been derived from the number of the stars in the
+Pleiades.
+
+We have noticed in our chapter on the History of the Zodiac how the
+various signs as they came round and were thought to influence the
+weather and other natural phenomena, came at last to be worshipped. Not
+less, of course, were the sun and moon deified, and that by nations who
+had no zodiac. Among the Egyptians the sun was painted in different
+forms according to the time of year, very much as he is represented in
+our own days in pictures of the old and new years. At the winter
+solstice with them he was an infant, at the spring equinox he was a
+young man, in summer a man in full age with flowing beard, and in the
+autumn an old man. Their fable of Osiris was founded on the same idea.
+They represented the sun by the hawk, and the moon by the Ibis, and to
+these two, worshipped under the names of Osiris and Isis they attributed
+the government of the world, and built a city, Heliopolis, to the
+former, in the temple of which they placed his statue.
+
+The Phenicians in the same way, who were much influenced by ideas of
+religion, attributed divinity to the sun, moon, and stars, and regarded
+them as the sole causes of the production and destruction of all things.
+The sun, under the name of Hercules, was their great divinity.
+
+The Ethiopians worshipped the same, and erected the famous table of the
+sun. Those who lived above Meroe, admitted the existence of eternal and
+incorruptible gods, among which they included the sun, moon, and the
+universe. Like the Incas of Peru, they called themselves the children of
+the sun, whom they regarded as their common father.
+
+The moon was the great divinity of the Arabs. The Saracens called it
+Cabar, or the great, and its crescent still adorns the religious
+monuments of the Turks. Each of their tribes was under the protection of
+some particular star. Sabeism was the principal religion of the east.
+The heavens and the stars were its first object.
+
+In reading the sacred books of the ancient Persians contained in the
+_Zendavesta_, we find on every page invocations addressed to Mithra, to
+the moon, the stars, the elements, the mountains, the trees, and every
+part of nature. The ethereal fire circulating through all the universe,
+and of which the sun is the principal focus, was represented among the
+fire-worshippers by the sacred and perpetual fire of their priests. Each
+planet had its own particular temple, where incense was burnt in its
+honour. These ancient peoples embodied in their religious systems the
+ideas which, as we have seen, led among the Greeks to the representation
+of the harmony of heaven. All the world seemed to them animated by a
+principle of life which circulated through all parts, and which
+preserved it in an eternal activity. They thought that the universe
+lived like man and the other animals, or rather that these latter only
+lived because the universe was essentially alive, and communicated to
+them for an instant an infinitely small portion of its own immortality.
+They were not wise, it may be, in this, but they appear to have caught
+some of the ideas that lie at the basis of religious thought, and to
+have traced harmony where we have almost lost the perception of it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+ASTRONOMICAL SYSTEMS.
+
+
+In our former chapters we have gained some idea of the general structure
+of the heavens as represented by ancient philosophers, and we no longer
+require to know what was thought in the infancy of astronomy, when any
+ideas promulgated were more or less random ones; but in this chapter we
+hope to discuss those arrangements of the heavenly bodies which have
+been promulgated by men as complete systems, and were supposed to
+represent the totality of the facts.
+
+The earliest thoroughly-established system is that of Ptolemy. It was
+not indeed invented by him. The main ideas had been entertained long
+before his time, but he gave it consistence and a name.
+
+We obtain an excellent view of the general nature of this system from
+Cicero. He writes:--
+
+"The universe is composed of nine circles, or rather of nine moving
+globes. The outermost sphere is that of the heavens which surrounds all
+the others, and on which are fixed the stars. Beneath this revolve
+seven other globes, carried round by a motion in a direction contrary to
+that of the heavens. On the first circle revolves the star which men
+call Saturn; on the second Jupiter shines, that beneficent and
+propitious star to human eyes; then follows Mars, ruddy and awful.
+Below, and occupying the middle region, revolves the Sun, the chief,
+prince, and moderator of the other stars, the soul of the world, whose
+immense globe spreads its light through space. After him come, like two
+companions, Venus and Mercury. Lastly, the lowest globe is occupied by
+the moon, which borrows its light from the star of day. Below this last
+celestial circle, there is nothing but what is mortal and corruptible,
+except the souls given by a beneficent Divinity to the race of men.
+Above the moon all is eternal. The earth, situated in the centre of the
+world, and separated from heaven on all sides, forms the ninth sphere;
+it remains immovable, and all heavy bodies are drawn to it by their own
+weight."
+
+The earth, we should add, is surrounded by the sphere of air, and then
+by that of fire, and by that of ether and the meteors.
+
+With respect to the motions of these spheres. The first circle described
+about the terrestrial system, namely, that of the moon, was accomplished
+in 27 days, 7 hours, and 43 minutes. Next to the moon, Mercury in the
+second, and Venus in the third, and the sun in the fourth circle, all
+turned about the earth in the same time, 365 days, 5 hours, and 49
+minutes. But these planets, in addition to the general movement, which
+carried them in 24 hours round from east to west and west to east, and
+the annual revolution, which made them run through the zodiacal circle,
+had a third motion by which they described a circle about each point of
+their orbit taken as a centre.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 14.--PTOLEMY'S ASTRONOMICAL SYSTEM.]
+
+The fifth sphere, carrying Mars, accomplished its revolution in two
+years. Jupiter took 11 years, 313 days, and 19 hours to complete his
+orbit, and Saturn in the seventh sphere took 29 years and 169 days.
+Above all the planets came the sphere of the fixed stars, or Firmament,
+turning from east to west in 24 hours with inconceivable rapidity, and
+endued also with a proper motion from west to east, which was measured
+by Hipparchus, and which we now call the precession of the equinoxes,
+and know that it has a period of 25,870 years. Above all these spheres,
+a _primum mobile_ gave motion to the whole machine, making it turn from
+east to west, but each planet and each fixed star made an effort against
+this motion, by means of which each of them accomplished their
+revolution about the earth in greater or less time, according to its
+distance, or the magnitude of the orbit it had to accomplish.
+
+One immense difficulty attended this system. The apparent motions of the
+planets is not uniform, for sometimes they are seen to advance from west
+to east, when their motion is called _direct_, sometimes they are seen
+for several nights in succession at the same point in the heavens, when
+they are called _stationary_, and sometimes they return from east to
+west, and then their motion is called _retrograde_.
+
+We know now that this apparent variation in the motion of the planets is
+simply due to the annual motion of the earth in its orbit round the sun.
+For example, Saturn describes its vast orbit in about thirty years, and
+the earth describes in one year a much smaller one inside. Now if the
+earth goes faster in the same direction as Saturn, it is plain that
+Saturn will be left behind and appear to go backwards, while if the
+earth is going in the same direction the velocity of Saturn will appear
+to be decreased, but his direction of motion will appear unaltered.
+
+To explain these variations, however, according to his system, Ptolemy
+supposed that the planets did not move exactly in the circumference of
+their respective orbits, but about an _ideal centre_, which itself moved
+along this circumference. Instead therefore of describing a circle, they
+described parts of a series of small circles, which would combine, as is
+easy to see, into a series of uninterrupted waves, and these he called
+_Epicycles_.
+
+Another objection, which even this arrangement did not overcome, was the
+variation of the size of the planets. To overcome this Hipparchus gave
+to the sphere of each planet a considerable thickness, and saw that the
+planet did not turn centrally round the earth, but round a centre of
+motion placed outside the earth. Its revolution took place in such a
+manner, that at one time it reached the inner boundary, at another time
+the outer boundary of its spherical heaven.
+
+But this reply was not satisfactory, for the differences in the apparent
+sizes proved by the laws of optics such a prodigious difference between
+their distances from the earth at the times of conjunction and
+opposition, that it would be extremely difficult to imagine spheres
+thick enough to allow of it.
+
+It was a gigantic and formidable piece of machinery to which it was
+necessary to be continually adding fresh pieces to make observation
+accord with theory. In the thirteenth century, in the times of the
+King-Astronomer, Alphonso X. of Castile, there were already seventy-five
+circles, one within the other. It is said that one day he exclaimed, in
+a full assemblage of bishops, that if the Deity had done him the honour
+to ask his advice before creating the world, he could have told Him how
+to make it a little better, or at all events more simply. He meant to
+express how unworthy this complication was of the dignity of nature.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 15.--THE EPICYCLES OF PTOLEMY.]
+
+Fracastor, in his _Homocentrics_, says that nothing is more monstrous or
+absurd than all the excentrics and epicycles of Ptolemy, and proposes
+to explain the difference of velocity in the planets at different parts
+of their orbits by the medium offering greater or less resistance, and
+their alteration in apparent size by the effect of refraction.
+
+The essential element of this system was that it took appearances for
+realities, and was founded on the assumption that the earth is fixed in
+the centre of the universe, and of course therefore neglected all the
+appearances produced by its motion, or had to explain them by some
+peculiarity in the other planets.
+
+Although it was corrected from time to time to make it accord better
+with observation, it was the same essentially that was taught officially
+everywhere. It reigned supreme in Egypt, Greece, Italy, and Arabia, and
+in the great school of Alexandria, which consolidated it and enriched it
+by its own observations.
+
+But though the same in essence, the details, and especially the means of
+overcoming the difficulties raised by increased observations, have much
+varied, and it will be interesting and instructive to record some of the
+chief of them.
+
+One of the most important influences in modifying the astronomical
+systems taught to the world has been that of the Fathers of the
+Christian Church. When, after five centuries of patient toil, of hopes,
+ambitions, and discussions, the Christian Church took possession of the
+thrones and consciences of men, they founded their physical edifice on
+the ancient system, which they adapted to their special wants. With them
+Aristotle and Ptolemy reigned supreme. They decreed that the earth
+constituted the universe, that the heavens were made for it, that God,
+the angels, and the saints inhabited an eternal abode of joy situated
+above the azure sphere of the fixed stars, and they embodied this
+gratifying illusion in all their illuminated manuscripts, their
+calendars, and their church windows.
+
+The doctors of the Church all acknowledged a plurality of heavens, but
+they differed as to the number. St. Hilary of Poitiers would not fix it,
+and the same doubt held St. Basil back; but the rest, for the most part
+borrowing their ideas from paganism, said there were six or seven, or up
+to ten. They considered these heavens to be so many hemispheres
+supported on the earth, and gave to each a different name. In the system
+of Bede, which had many adherents, they were the Air, Ether, Fiery
+Space, Firmament, Heaven of the Angels, and Heaven of the Trinity.
+
+The two chief varieties in the systems of the middle ages may be
+represented as follows:--
+
+Those who wished to have everything as complete as possible combined the
+system of Ptolemy with that of the Fathers of the Church, and placed in
+the centre of the earth the infernal regions which they surrounded by a
+circle. Another circle marked the earth itself, and after that the
+surrounding ocean, marked as water, then the circle of air, and lastly
+that of fire. Enveloping these, and following one after the other, were
+the seven circles of the seven planets; the eighth represented the
+sphere of the fixed stars on the firmament, then came the ninth heaven,
+then a tenth, the _coelum cristallinum_, and lastly an eleventh and
+outermost, which was the empyreal heaven, where dwelt the cherubim and
+seraphim, and above all the spheres was a throne on which sat the
+Father, as Jupiter Olympus.
+
+The others who wished for more simplicity, represented the earth in the
+centre of the universe, with a circle to indicate the ocean, the second
+sphere was that of the moon; the third was that of the sun; on the
+fourth were placed the four planets, Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury;
+there was a fifth for the space outside the planets, and the last
+outside one was the firmament; altogether seven spheres instead of
+eleven. As a specimen of the style of representation of the astronomical
+systems of the middle ages, we may take the figure on the following
+page:--
+
+Here we see the earth placed immovable in the centre of the universe,
+and represented by a disc traversed by the Mediterranean, and surrounded
+by the ocean. Round this are circumscribed the celestial spheres. That
+of the moon first, then that of Mercury, in which several
+constellations, as the Lyre, Cassiopeia, the Crown, and others, are
+roughly indicated, then comes the sphere of Venus with Sagittarius and
+the Swan. After this comes the _celestis_ _paradisus_, and the legend
+that, "the paradise to which Paul was raised is in this third locality;
+some of these must reach to us, since in them repose the souls of the
+prophets." In the other circles are yet other constellations: for
+example Pegasus, Andromeda, the Dog, Argo, the He-goat, Aquarius, the
+Fishes, and Canopus, figured by a star of the first magnitude. To the
+north is seen near the constellation of the Swan a large star with seven
+rays, meant to represent the brightest of those which compose the Great
+Bear. The stars of Cassiopeia are not only misplaced, but roughly
+represented. The Lyre is curiously drawn. The positions of the
+constellations just named are all wrong in this figure, just as we find
+those of towns in maps of the earth. The cartographers of the middle
+ages, with incredible ignorance, misplaced in general every locality.
+They did the same for the constellations in the celestial hemispheres.
+In the heaven of Jupiter, and in that of Saturn we read the
+words--Seraphim, Dominationes, Potestates, Archangeli, Virtutes
+coelorum, Principatus, Throni, Cherubim, all derived from their
+theology. A veritable muddle! The angels placed with the heroes of
+mythology, the immortal virgins with Venus and Andromeda, and the Saints
+with the Great Bear, the Hydra, and the Scorpion!
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 16.--HEAVENS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.]
+
+Another such richly illuminated manuscript in the library at Ghent,
+entitled Liber Floridus, contains a drawing similar to this under the
+title _Astrologia secundum Bedum_. Only, instead of the earth, there is
+a serpent in the centre with the name Great Bear, and the twins are
+represented by a man and woman, Andromeda in a chasuble, and Venus as a
+nun!
+
+Several similar ones might be quoted, varying more or less from this;
+one, executed in a geographical manuscript of the fifteenth century, has
+the tenth sphere, being that of the fixed stars, then the crystalline
+heaven, and then the immovable heaven, "which," it says, "according to
+sacred and certain theology, is the dwelling-place of the blessed, where
+may we live for ever and ever, Amen;" "this is also called the empyreal
+heaven." Near each planet the author marks the time of its revolution,
+but not at all correctly.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VII.--HEAVENS OF THE FATHERS.]
+
+The constructors of these systems were not in the least doubt as to
+their reality, for they actually measured the distance between one
+sphere and another, though in every case their numbers were far from the
+truth as we now know it. We may cite as an example an Italian system
+whose spheres were as follows:--Terra, Aqua, Aria, Fuoco, Luna,
+Mercurio, Venus, Sol, Marte, Giove, Saturno, Stelle fixe, Sfera nona,
+Cielo empyreo. Attached to the design is the following table of
+dimensions which we may copy:--
+
+                                                            Miles.
+  From the centre of the Earth to the surface                3,245
+    "        "             "      "   inner side of the
+    heaven of the Moon                                     107,936
+  Diameter of Moon                                           1,896
+  From the centre of the Earth to Mercury                  209,198
+  Diameter of Mercury                                          230
+  From the centre of the Earth to Venus                    579,320
+  Diameter of Venus                                          2,884
+  From the centre of the Earth to the Sun                3,892,866
+  Diameter of the Sun                                       35,700
+  From the centre of the Earth to Mars                   4,268,629
+  Diameter of Mars                                           7,572
+  From the centre of the Earth to Jupiter                8,323,520
+  Diameter of Jupiter                                       29,641
+  From the centre of the Earth to outside of Saturn's
+     heaven                                             52,544,702
+  Diameter of Saturn                                        29,202
+  From the centre of the Earth to the fixed stars       73,387,747
+
+The author states that he cannot pursue his calculations further, and
+condescends to acknowledge that it is very difficult to know accurately
+what is the thickness of the ninth and of the crystalline heavens!
+
+Perhaps, however, these reckonings are better than those of the
+Egyptians, who came to the conclusion that Saturn was only distant 492
+miles, the sun only 369, and the moon 246.
+
+These numerous variations and adaptations of the Ptolemaic system, prove
+what a firm hold it had taken, and how it reigned supreme over all
+minds. Nor are we merely left to gather this. They consciously looked to
+Ptolemy as their great light, if we may judge from an emblematic drawing
+taken from an authoritative astronomical work, the _Margarita
+Philosophica_, which we give on the opposite page.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 17.]
+
+In all the systems derived from Ptolemy, the order of the planets
+remained the same, and Mercury and Venus were placed nearer to the earth
+than the sun is. According to many authors, however, Plato made a
+variation in this respect, by putting them outside the sun, on the
+ground that they never were seen to pass across its surface. He had
+obviously never heard of the "Transit of Venus." This arrangement was
+adopted by Theon, in his commentary on the _Almagesta_ of Ptolemy, and
+afterwards by Geber, who alone among the Arabians departed from the
+strict Ptolemaic system.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 18.--EGYPTIAN SYSTEM.]
+
+The Egyptians improved upon this idea, and made the first step towards
+the true system, by representing these two planets, Mercury and Venus,
+as revolving round the sun instead of the earth. All the rest of their
+system was the same as that of Ptolemy, for the sun itself, and the
+other planets and the fixed stars all revolved round the earth in the
+centre. This system of course accounted accurately for the motions of
+the two inferior planets, whose nearness to the sun may have suggested
+their connection with it. This system was in vogue at the same time as
+Ptolemy's, and numbers Vitruvius amongst its supporters.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 19.--CAPELLA'S SYSTEM.]
+
+In the fifth century of our era Martian Capella taught a variation on
+the Egyptian system, in which he made Mercury and Venus revolve in the
+same orbit round the sun. In the treatise entitled _Quod Tellus non sit
+Centrum Omnibus Planetis_, he explains that when Mercury is on this side
+of the orbit it is nearer to us than Venus, and farther off from us
+than that planet when it is on the other side. This hypothesis was also
+adopted in the middle ages.
+
+We have here indicated the time of the revolution of the various
+planets, and notice that the firmament is said to move round from west
+to east in 7,000 years; the second heaven in 49,000, while the _primum
+mobile_ outside moved in the contrary direction in twenty-four hours.
+
+These Egyptian systems survived in some places the true one, as they
+were thought to overcome the chief difficulties of the Ptolemaic without
+interfering with the stability of the earth, and they were known as the
+_common system_, _i.e._ containing the elements of both.
+
+Such were the astronomical systems in vogue before the time of
+Copernicus--all of them based upon the principle of the earth being the
+immovable centre of the universe. We must now turn to trace the history
+of the introduction of that system which has completely thrown over all
+these former ones, and which every one knows now to be the true one--the
+Copernican.
+
+No revolution is accomplished, whether in science or politics, without
+having been long in preparation. The theory of the motion of the earth
+had been conceived, discussed, and even taught many ages before the
+birth of Copernicus. And the best proof of this is the acknowledgment of
+Copernicus himself in his great work _De Revolutionibus Orbium
+Caelestium_, in which he laid down the principles of his system. We will
+quote the passage in which it is contained.
+
+"I have been at the trouble," he writes, "to read over all the works of
+philosophers that I could procure, to see if I could find in them any
+different opinion to that which is now taught in the schools respecting
+the motions of the celestial spheres. And I saw first in Cicero that
+Maetas had put forth the opinion that the earth moves. (Maetam sensisse
+terram moveri.) Afterwards I found in Plutarch that others had
+entertained the same idea."
+
+Here Copernicus quotes the original as far as it relates to the system
+of Philolaus, to the effect "that the earth turns round the region of
+fire (ethereal region), and runs through the zodiac like the sun and the
+moon." The principal Pythagoreans, such as Archytas of Tarentum,
+Heraclides of Pontium, taught also the same doctrine, saying that "the
+earth is not immovable in the centre of the universe, but revolves in a
+circle, and is far from occupying the chief place among the celestial
+bodies."
+
+Pythagoras learnt this doctrine, it is said, from the Egyptians, who in
+their hieroglyphics represented the symbol of the sun by the stercoral
+beetle, because this insect forms a ball with the excrement of the oxen,
+and lying down on its back, turns it round and round with its legs.
+
+Timaeus of Locris was more precise than the other Pythagoreans in calling
+"the five planets the organs of time, on account of their revolutions,"
+adding that we must conclude that the earth is not immovable in one
+place, but that it turns, on the contrary, about itself, and travels
+also through space.
+
+Plutarch records that Plato, who had always taught that the sun turned
+round the earth, had changed his opinion towards the end of his life,
+regretting that he had not placed the sun in the centre of the universe,
+which was the only place, he then thought, that was suitable for that
+star.
+
+Three centuries before Jesus Christ, Aristarchus of Samos is said by
+Aristotle to have composed a special work to defend the motion of the
+earth against the contrary opinions of philosophers. In this work, which
+is now lost, he laid down in the most positive manner that "the sun
+remains immovable, and that the Earth moves round it in a circular
+curve, of which that star is the centre." It would be impossible to
+state this in clearer terms; and what makes his meaning more clear, if
+possible, is that he was persecuted for it, being accused of irreligion
+and of troubling the repose of Vesta--"because," says Plutarch, "in
+order to explain the phenomena, he taught that the heavens were
+immovable, and that the earth accomplished a motion of translation in an
+oblique line, at the same time that it turned round its own axis." This
+is exactly the opinion that Copernicus took up, after an interval of
+eighteen centuries--and he too was accused of irreligion.
+
+In passing from the Greeks to the Romans, and from them to the middle
+ages, the doctrine of Aristarchus underwent a curious modification,
+assimilating it to the system of Tycho Brahe, which we shall hereafter
+consider, rather than to that of Copernicus. This consisted in making
+the planets move round the sun, while the sun itself revolved round the
+earth, and carried them with him, and the heavens revolved round all.
+Vitruvius and Macrobius both taught this doctrine. Although Cicero and
+Seneca, with Aristotle and the Stoics, taught the immobility of the
+earth in the centre of the universe, the question seemed undecided, to
+Seneca at least, who writes:--"It would be well to examine whether it is
+the universe that turns about the immovable earth, or the earth that
+moves, while the universe remains at rest. Indeed some men have taught
+that the earth is carried along, unknown to ourselves, that it is not
+the motion of the heavens that produces the rising and setting of the
+stars, but that it is we who rise and set relatively to them. It is a
+matter worthy of contemplation, to know in what state we are--whether we
+are assigned an immovable or rapidly-moving home--whether God makes all
+things revolve round us, or we round them."
+
+The double motion of the earth, then, is an idea revived from the
+Grecian philosophers. The theory was known indeed to Ptolemy, who
+devotes a whole chapter in his celebrated _Almagesta_ to combat it. From
+his point of view it seemed very absurd, and he did not hesitate to call
+it so; and it was in reality only when fresh discoveries had altered the
+method of examining the question that the absurdities disappeared, and
+were transferred to the other side. Not until it was discovered that the
+earth was no larger and no heavier than the other planets could the idea
+of its revolution and translation have appeared anything else than
+absurd. We are apt to laugh at the errors of former great men, while we
+forget the scantiness of the knowledge they then possessed. So it will
+be instructive to draw attention to Ptolemy's arguments, that we may see
+where it is that new knowledge and ideas have led us, as they would
+doubtless have led him, had he possessed them, to a different
+conclusion.
+
+His argument depends essentially on the observed effects of weight.
+"Light bodies," he says, "are carried towards the circumference, they
+appear to us to go _up_; because we so speak of the space that is over
+our heads, as far as the surface which appears to surround us. Heavy
+bodies tend, on the contrary, towards the middle, as towards a centre,
+and they appear to us to fall _down_, because we so speak of whatever is
+under our feet, in the direction of the centre of the earth. These
+bodies are piled up round the centre by the opposed forces of their
+impetus and friction. We can easily see that the whole mass of the
+earth, being so large compared with the bodies that fall upon it, can
+receive them without their weight or their velocity communicating to it
+any perceptible oscillation. Now if the earth had a motion in common
+with all the other heavy bodies, it would not be long, on account of its
+weight, in leaving the animals and other bodies behind it, and without
+support, and it would soon itself fall out of heaven. Such would be the
+consequences of its motion, which are most ridiculous even to imagine."
+
+Against the idea of the earth's diurnal rotation he argued as
+follows:--"There are some who pretend that nothing prevents us from
+supposing that the heaven remains immovable, and the earth turns round
+upon its axis from west to east, accomplishing the rotation each day. It
+is true that, as far as the stars are concerned, there is nothing
+against our supposing this, if guided only by appearances, and for
+greater simplicity; but those who do so forget how thoroughly ridiculous
+it is when we consider what happens near us and in the air. For even if
+we admit, which is not the case, that the lighter bodies have no motion,
+or only move as bodies of a contrary nature, although we see that aerial
+bodies move with greater velocity than terrestrial--if we admit that
+very dense and heavy bodies have a rapid and constant motion of their
+own, whereas in reality they obey but with difficulty the impulses
+communicated to them--we should then be obliged to assert that the
+earth, by its rotation, has a more rapid motion than any of the bodies
+that are round it, as it makes so large a circuit in so short a time. In
+this case the bodies which are not supported by it would appear to have
+a motion contrary to it, and no cloud or any flying bird could ever
+appear to go to the east, since the earth would always move faster than
+it in that direction."
+
+The _Almagesta_ was for a long time the gospel of astronomers; to
+believe in the motion of the earth was to them more than an innovation,
+it was simply folly. Copernicus himself well expresses the state of
+opinion in which he found the question, and the process of his own
+change, in the following words:--"And I too, taking occasion by these
+testimonies, commenced to cogitate on the motion of the earth, and
+although that opinion appeared absurd, I thought that as others before
+me had invented an assemblage of circles to explain the motion of the
+stars, I might also try if, by supposing the earth to move, I could not
+find a better account of the motions of the heavenly bodies than that
+with which we are at present contented. After long researches, I am at
+last convinced that if we assign to the circulation of the earth the
+motions of the other planets, calculation and observation will agree
+better together. And I have no doubt that mathematicians will be of my
+opinion, if they will take the trouble to consider carefully and not
+superficially the demonstrations I shall give in this work." Although
+the opinions of Copernicus had been held before, it is very just that
+his should be the name by which they are known; for during the time that
+elapsed before he wrote, the adherents of such views became fewer and
+fewer, until at last the very remembrance of them was almost forgotten,
+and it required research to know who had held them and taught them. It
+took him thirty years' work to establish them on a firm basis. We shall
+make no excuse for quoting further from his book, that we may know
+exactly the circumstances, as far as he tells us, of his giving this
+system to the world.
+
+"I hesitated for a long time whether I should publish my commentaries on
+the motions of the heavenly bodies, or whether it would not be better to
+follow the example of certain Pythagoreans, who left no writings, but
+communicated the mysteries of their philosophy orally from man to man
+among their adepts and friends, as is proved by the letter of Lysidas to
+Hipparchus. They did not do this, as some suppose, from a spirit of
+jealousy, but in order that weighty questions, studied with great care
+by illustrious men, might not be disparaged by the idle, who do not care
+to undertake serious study, unless it be lucrative, or by shallow-minded
+men, who, though devoting themselves to science, are of so indolent a
+spirit that they only intrude among philosophers, like drones among
+bees.
+
+"When I hesitated and held back, my friends pressed me on. The first was
+Nicolas Schonberg, Cardinal of Capua, a man of great learning. The other
+was my best friend, Tideman Gysius, Bishop of Culm, who was as well
+versed in the Holy Scriptures as in the sciences. The latter pressed me
+so much that he decided me at last to give to the public the work I had
+kept for more than twenty-seven years. Many illustrious men urged me, in
+the interest of mathematics, to overcome my repugnance and to let the
+fruit of my labours see the light. They assured me that the more my
+theory of the motion of the earth appeared absurd, the more it would be
+admired when the publication of my work had dissipated doubts by the
+clearest demonstrations. Yielding to these entreaties, and buoying
+myself with the same hope, I consented to the printing of my work."
+
+He tried to guard himself against the attacks of dogmatists by saying,
+"If any evil-advised person should quote against me any texts of
+Scripture, I deprecate such a rash attempt. Mathematical truths can only
+be judged by mathematicians."
+
+Notwithstanding this, however, his work, after his death, was condemned
+by the Index in 1616, under Paul V.
+
+On examining the ancient systems, Copernicus was struck by the want of
+harmony in the arrangements proposed, and by the arbitrary manner in
+which new principles were introduced and old ones neglected, comparing
+the system to a collection of legs and arms not united to any trunk, and
+it was the simplicity and harmony which the one idea of the motion of
+the earth introduced into the whole system that convinced him most
+thoroughly of its truth.
+
+He knew well that new views and truths would appear as paradoxes, and be
+rejected by men who were wedded to old doctrines, and on this account he
+took such pains to show that these views had been held before, and thus
+to disarm them of their apparent novelty.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 20.--THE COPERNICAN SYSTEM.]
+
+Copernicus dealt only with the six planets then known and the sun and
+moon. As to the stars, he had no idea that they were suns like our own,
+at immense and various distances from us. The knowledge of the magnitude
+of the sidereal universe was reserved for our own century, when it was
+discovered by the method of parallaxes. We will give Copernicus's own
+sketch of the planetary system:--
+
+"In the highest place is the sphere of the fixed stars, an immovable
+sphere, which surrounds the whole of the universe. Among the movable
+planets the first is Saturn, which requires thirty years to make its
+revolution. After it Jupiter accomplishes its journey in twelve years;
+Mars follows, requiring two years. In the fourth line come the earth and
+the moon which in the course of one year return to their original
+position. The fifth place is occupied by Venus, which requires nine
+months for its journey. Mercury occupies the sixth place, whose orbit is
+accomplished in eighty days. In the midst of all is the sun. What man is
+there, who in this majestic temple could choose another and better place
+for that brilliant lamp which illuminates all the planets with their
+satellites? It is not without reason that the sun is called the lantern
+of the world, the soul and thought of the universe. In placing it in the
+centre of the planets, as on a regal throne, we give it the government
+of the great family of celestial bodies."
+
+The hypothesis of the motion of the earth in its orbit appeared simply
+to Copernicus as a good basis for the exact determination of the ratios
+of the distances of the several planets about the sun. But he did not
+give up the excentrics and epicycles for the explanation of the
+irregular motions of the planets, and certain imaginary variations in
+the precession of the equinoxes and the obliquity of the ecliptic.
+According to him the earth was endowed with three different motions, the
+first about its axis, the second along the ecliptic, and a third, which
+he called the declination, moving it backwards along the signs of the
+zodiac from east to west. This last motion was invented to explain the
+phenomena of the seasons. He thought, like many other ancient
+philosophers, that a body could not turn about another without being
+fixed in some way to it--by a crystal sphere, or something--and in this
+case that the same surface would each day be presented to the sun, and
+so it requires a third rotation, by which its axis may remain constantly
+parallel to itself. Galileo, however, afterwards demonstrated the
+independence of the two motions in question, and proved that the third
+was unnecessary.
+
+Copernicus was born in the Polish village of Thorn, in 1473, and died in
+1543, at Warmia, of which he was canon, and where he built an
+observatory. The voyages of his youth, his labours, adversities, and old
+age at last broke him down, and in the winter of 1542 he took to his
+bed, and was incapable of further work. His work, which was just
+finished printing at Nuremberg, was brought to him by his friends before
+he died. He soon after completely failed in strength, and passed away
+tranquilly on the 23rd of May, 1543.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VIII.--DEATH OF COPERNICUS.]
+
+The Copernican system required, however, establishing in the minds of
+astronomers generally before it took the place it now holds, and this
+work was done by Galileo--a name as celebrated as that of Copernicus
+himself, if not more so. This perhaps is due not only to his
+demonstration of the motion of the earth, but to his introduction of
+experimental philosophy, and his observational method in astronomy.
+
+The next advance was made by Kepler, who overthrew at one blow all the
+excentrics and epicycles of the ancients, when by his laborious
+calculations he proved the ellipticity of the orbit of Mars.
+
+The Grecian hypotheses were the logical consequences of two propositions
+which were universally admitted as axioms in the early and middle ages.
+First, that the motions of the heavenly bodies were uniform; second,
+that their orbits were perfect circles. Nothing appeared more natural
+than this belief, though false. So then when Kepler, in 1609, recognised
+the fact, by incontestable geometrical measurements, that Mars described
+an oval orbit round the sun, in which its velocity varied periodically,
+he could not believe either his observation or his calculation, and he
+puzzled his brain to discover what secret principle it was that forced
+the planet to approach and depart from the sun by turns. Fortunately for
+him, in this inquietude he came across a treatise by Gilbert, _De
+Magnate_, which had been published in London nine years before. In this
+remarkable work Gilbert proved by experiment that the earth acts on
+magnetized needles and on bars of iron placed near its surface just as a
+magnet does--and by a conjectural extension of this fact, which was a
+vague presentiment of the truth, he supposed that the earth itself might
+be retained in its constant orbit round the sun by a magnetic
+attraction. This idea was a ray of light to Kepler. It led him to see
+the secret cause of the alternating motions that had troubled him so
+much, and in the joy of that discovery he said, "If we find it
+impossible to attribute the vibration to a magnetic power residing in
+the sun, acting on the planet without any material medium between, we
+must conclude that the planet is itself endowed with a kind of
+intelligent perception which gives it power to know at each instant the
+proper angles and distances for its motion." In the result Kepler was
+led to enunciate to the world his three celebrated laws:--
+
+1st. That the planets move in ellipses, of which the sun is in one of
+the foci.
+
+2nd. The spaces described by the ideal radius which joins each planet to
+the sun are proportional to the times of their description. In other
+words, the nearer a planet is to the sun, the faster it moves.
+
+3rd. The squares of the times of revolution are as the cubes of the
+major axes of the orbits.
+
+Such were the laws of Kepler, the basis of modern astronomy, which led
+in the hands of Newton to the simple explanation by universal
+gravitation, which itself is now asking to be explained.
+
+We are not to suppose that the system of Copernicus was universally
+accepted even by astronomers of note. By some an attempt was made to
+invent a system which should have all the advantages of this, and yet if
+possible save the immobility of the earth. Such was that of Tycho Brahe,
+who was born three years after the death of Copernicus, and died in
+1601. He was one of the most laborious and painstaking observers of his
+time, although by the peculiarity of fate he is known generally only by
+his false system.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 21.--TYCHO BRAHE'S SYSTEM.]
+
+In 1577, Tycho Brahe wrote a little treatise, _Tychonis Brahe, Dani, De
+Mundi AEtherei Recentioribus phenomenis, a propos_ of a comet that had
+lately appeared. He speaks at length of his system as follows:--"I have
+remarked that the ancient system of Ptolemy is not at all natural, and
+too complicated. But neither can I approve of the new one introduced by
+the great Copernicus after the example of Aristarchus of Samos. This
+heavy mass of earth, so little fit for motion, could not be displaced in
+this manner, and moved in three ways, like the celestial bodies, without
+a shock to the principles of physics. Besides, it is opposed to
+Scripture! I think then," he adds, "that we must decidedly and without
+doubt place the earth immovable in the centre of world, according to the
+belief of the ancients and the testimony of Scripture. In my opinion the
+celestial motions are arranged in such a way that the sun, the moon,
+and the sphere of the fixed stars, which incloses all, have the earth
+for their centre. The five planets turn about the sun as about their
+chief and king, the sun being constantly in the centre of their orbits,
+and accompany it in its annual motion round the earth." This system
+perfectly accounts for the apparent motions of the planets as seen from
+the earth, and is essentially a variation on the Copernican, rather than
+on the Ptolemaic system, but it lent itself less readily to future
+discoveries. It simply amounts, as far as the solar system is concerned,
+to impressing upon all the rest of it the motions of the earth, so as to
+leave the latter at rest; and were the sun only as large with respect
+to the earth as it seems, were the planets really smaller than the moon,
+and the stars only at a short distance, and smaller than the planets, it
+might seem more natural that they should move than the earth; but when
+all these suppositions were disproved, the very argument of Tycho Brahe
+for the stability of the earth turned the other way, and proved as
+incontestably that it moved. In the Copernican system, however, these
+questions are of no consequence; if the sun be at rest, this mass makes
+no difference; if the earth moves like the planets, their relative size
+does not alter anything; and if stars are immovable they may be at any
+distance and of any magnitude.
+
+The objections of Tycho Brahe to the earth's motion were: First, that it
+was too heavy--we know now, however, that some other planets are
+heavier--and that the sun, which he would make move instead, is 340,000
+times as heavy. Secondly, that if the earth moved, all loose things
+would be carried from east to west; but we have experience of many loose
+things being kept by friction on moving bodies, and can conceive how,
+all things may be kept by the attraction of the earth under the
+influence of its own motion. Thirdly, that he could not imagine that the
+earth was turned upside down every day, and that for twelve hours our
+heads are downwards.
+
+But the existence of the antipodes overcomes this objection, and shows
+that there is no up and down in the universe, but each man calls that
+_down_ which is nearer to the centre of the earth than himself.
+
+A variation on Tycho Brahe's system was attempted by one Longomontanus,
+who had lived with him for ten years. It consisted in admitting the
+diurnal rotation, but not the annual revolution, of the earth; but it
+made no progress, and was soon forgotten.
+
+More remarkable than this was the attempt by Descartes in the same
+direction, namely, to hold the principles of Copernicus, and yet to
+teach the immobility of the earth. His idea of immobility was however
+very different from that of Tycho Brahe, or of any one else, and would
+only be called so by those who were bound to believe it at all costs.
+
+His Theory of Vortices, as it is called, will be best given in his own
+words as contained in his _Les Principes de la Philosophie_, third part,
+chap. xxvi., entitled, "That the earth is at rest in its heaven, which
+does not prevent its being carried along with it, and that it is the
+same with all the planets."
+
+"I adhere," he says, "to the hypothesis of Copernicus, because it seems
+to me the simplest and clearest. There is no vacuum anywhere in
+space.... The heavens are full of a universal liquid substance. This is
+an opinion now commonly received among astronomers, because they cannot
+see how the phenomena can be explained without it. The substance of the
+heavens has the common property of all liquids, that its minutest
+particles are easily moved in any direction, and when it happens that
+they all move in one way, they necessarily carry with them all the
+bodies they surround, and which are not prevented from moving by any
+external cause. The matter of the heaven in which the planets are turns
+round continually like a vortex, which has the Sun for its centre. The
+parts that are nearest the Sun move faster than those that are at a
+greater distance; and all the planets, including the earth, remain
+always suspended in the same place in the matter of the heaven. And just
+as in the turns of rivers, when the water turns back on itself and
+twists round in circles, if any twig or light body floats on it, we see
+it carry them round, and make them move with it, and even among these
+twigs we may see some turning on their own centre, and those that are
+nearest to the middle of the vortex moving quicker than those on the
+outside; so we may easily imagine it to be with the planets, and this is
+all that is necessary to explain the phenomena. The matter that is round
+Saturn takes about thirty years to run its circle; that which surrounds
+Jupiter carries it and its satellites round in twelve years, and so
+on.... The satellites are carried round their primaries by smaller
+vortices.... The earth is not sustained by columns, nor suspended in the
+air by ropes, but it is environed on all sides by a very liquid heaven.
+It is at rest, and has no propulsion or motion, since we do not perceive
+any in it. This does not prevent it being carried round by its heaven,
+and following its motion without moving itself, just as a vessel which
+is not moved by winds or oars, and is not retained by anchors, remains
+in repose in the middle of the sea, although the flood of the great
+mass of water carries it insensibly with it. Like the earth, the planets
+remain at rest in the region of heaven where each one is found.
+Copernicus made no difficulty in allowing that the earth moves. Tycho,
+to whom this opinion seemed absurd and unworthy of common sense, wished
+to correct him, but the earth has far more motion in his hypothesis than
+in that of Copernicus."
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 22.--DESCARTES' THEORY OF VORTICES.]
+
+Such is the celebrated theory of vortices. The comparison of the
+rotation of the earth and planets and their revolution round the sun to
+the turning of small portions of a rapid stream, may contain an idea yet
+destined to be developed to account for these motions; but as used by
+Descartes it is a mere playing upon words admirably adapted to secure
+the concurrence of all parties; those who believed in the motion of the
+earth seeing that it did not interfere with their ideas in the least,
+and those who believed in its stability being gratified to find some way
+by which they might still cling to that belief and yet adopt the new
+ideas. This was its purpose, and that purpose it well served; but as a
+philosophical speculation it was worthless. When former astronomers
+declared that any planet moved, whether it were the earth or any other,
+they had no idea of attraction, but supposed the planet fixed to a
+sphere; this sphere moving and carrying the planet with it was what they
+meant by the planet moving: the theory of vortices merely substituted a
+liquid for a solid sphere, with this disadvantage, that if the planet
+were fixed to a solid moving sphere, it _must_ move; if only placed in a
+liquid one, that liquid might pass it if it did not have motion of its
+own.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 23.--VORTICES OF THE STARS.]
+
+A variation on Descartes' system of vortices was proposed in the
+eighteenth century, which supposed that the sun, instead of being fixed
+in the centre of the system, itself circulated round another centre,
+carrying Mercury with it. This motion of the sun was intented to explain
+the changes of magnitude of its disc as seen from the earth, and the
+diurnal and annual variations in its motion, without discarding its
+circular path.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 24.--VARIATION OF DESCARTES' THEORY.]
+
+We have thus noticed all the chief astronomical systems that have at any
+time been entertained by astronomers. They one and all have given way
+before the universally acknowledged truth about which there is no longer
+any dispute. Systems are not now matters of opinion or theory. We speak
+of facts as certain as any that can be ascertained in any branch of
+knowledge. We have much to learn, but what we have settled as the basis
+of our knowledge will never more be altered as far as we can see.
+
+Of course there have been always fantastic fancies put forth about the
+solar system, but they are more amusing than instructive. Some have said
+that there is no sun, moon, or stars, but that they are reflections from
+an immense light under the earth. Some savage races say that the moon
+when decreasing breaks up into stars, and is renewed each month by a
+creative act. The Indians used to say that it was full of nectar which
+the gods ate up when it waned, and which grew again when it waxed. The
+Brahmins placed the earth in the centre, and said that the stars moved
+like fishes in a sea of liquid. They counted nine planets, of which two
+are invisible dragons which cause eclipses; which, since they happen in
+various parts of the zodiac, show that these dragons revolve like the
+rest. They said the sun was nearer than the moon, perhaps because it is
+hotter and brighter. Berosus the Chaldean gave a very original
+explanation of the phases and eclipses of the moon. He said it had one
+side bright, and the other side just the colour of the sky, and in
+turning it represented the different colours to us.
+
+Before concluding this chapter we may notice what information we possess
+as to the origin of the names by which the planets are known. These
+names have not always been given to them, and date only from the time
+when the poets began to associate the Grecian mythology with astronomy.
+The earlier names had reference rather to their several characters,
+although there appear to have been among every people two sets of names
+applied to them.
+
+The earliest Greek names referred to their various degrees of
+brilliancy: thus Saturn, which is not easily distinguished, was called
+Phenon, or _that which appears_; Jupiter was named Phaeton, _the
+brilliant_; Mars was Pysois, or _flame-coloured_; Mercury, Stilbon, _the
+sparkling_; Venus, Phosphorus; and Lucifer, _the light-bearer_. They
+called the latter also Calliste, _the most beautiful_. It was also known
+then as now under the appellations of the morning star and evening star,
+indicating its special position.
+
+With the ancient Accadians, the planets had similar names, among others.
+Thus, "Mars was sometimes called _the vanishing star_, in allusion to
+its recession from the earth, and Jupiter the _planet of the ecliptic_,
+from its neighbourhood to the latter" (Sayce). The name of Mars raises
+the interesting question as to whether they had noticed its phases as
+well as its movements--especially when, with reference to Venus, it is
+recorded in the "Observations of Bel," that "it rises, and in its orbit
+duly grows in size." They had also a rather confusing system of
+nomenclature by naming each planet after the star that it happened to be
+the nearest to at any point of its course round the ecliptic.
+
+Among less cultivated nations also the same practice held, as with the
+natives of South America, whose name for the sun is a word meaning _it
+brings the day_; for the moon, _it brings the night_; and for Venus, _it
+announces the day_.
+
+But even among the Eastern nations, from whom the Greeks and Romans
+borrowed their astronomical systems, it soon became a practice to
+associate these planets with the names of the several divinities they
+worshipped. This was perhaps natural from the adoration they paid to the
+celestial luminaries themselves on account of their real or supposed
+influence on terrestrial affairs; and, moreover, as time went on, and
+heroes had appeared, and they had to find them dwelling-places in the
+heavens, they would naturally associate them with one or other of the
+most brilliant and remarkable luminaries, to which they might suppose
+them translated. Beyond these general remarks, only conjectures can be
+made why any particular divinity should among the Greeks be connected
+with the several planets as we now know them. Such conjectures as the
+following we may make. Thus Jupiter, the largest, would take first rank,
+and be called after the name of the chief divinity. The soft and
+sympathising Venus--appearing at the twilight--would well denote the
+evening star. Mars would receive its name from its red appearance,
+naturally suggesting carnage and the god of war. Saturn, or Kronos, the
+god of time, is personified by the slow and almost imperceptible motion
+of that remote planet. While Mercury, the fiery and quick god of thieves
+and commerce, is well matched with the hide-and-seek planet which so
+seldom can be seen, and moves so rapidly.
+
+These were the only planets known to the ancients, and were indeed all
+that could be discovered without a telescope. If the ancient Babylonians
+possessed telescopes, as has been conjectured from their speaking, as we
+have noticed above, of the increase of the size of Venus, and from the
+finding a crystal lens among the ruins of Nineveh, they did not use them
+for this purpose.
+
+The other planets now known have a far shorter history. Uranus was
+discovered by Sir William Herschel on the 13th of March, 1781, and was
+at first taken for a comet. Herschel proposed to call it Georgium Sidus,
+after King George III. Lalande suggested it should be named Herschel,
+after its discoverer, and it bore this name for some time. Afterwards
+the names, Neptune, Astroea, Cybele, and Uranus were successively
+proposed, and the latter, the suggestion of Bode, was ultimately
+adopted. It is the name of the most ancient of the gods, connected with
+the then most modern of planets in point of discovery, though also most
+ancient in formation, if recent theories be correct. Neptune, as
+everybody knows, was calculated into existence, if one may so speak, by
+Adams and Leverrier independently, and was first seen, in the quarter
+indicated, by Dr. Galle at Berlin, in September, 1846, and by universal
+consent it received the name it now bears.
+
+There are now also known a long series of what are called minor planets,
+all circulating between Mars and Jupiter, with their irregular orbits
+inextricably mingled together. Their discovery was led to in a
+remarkable manner. It was observed that the distances of the several
+planets might approximately be expressed by the terms of a certain
+mathematical series, if one term was supplied between Mars and
+Jupiter--a fact known by the name of Bode's law. When the new planet,
+Uranus, was found to obey this law, the feeling was so strong that there
+must be something to represent this missing term, that strong efforts
+were made to discover it, which led to success, and several, whose names
+are derived from the minor gods and goddesses, are now well known.
+
+All these planets, like the signs of the zodiac, are indicated by
+astronomers by certain symbols, which, as they derive their form from
+the names or nature of the planets, may properly here be explained. The
+sign of Neptune is [symbol: neptune], representing the trident of the
+sea; for Uranus [symbol: uranus], which is the first letter of Herschel
+with a little globe below; [symbol: saturn] is the sickle of time, or
+Saturn; [symbol: jupiter] is the representation of the first letter of
+Zeus or Jupiter; [symbol: mars] is the lance and buckler of Mars;
+[symbol: venus] the mirror of Venus; [symbol: mercury] the wand of
+Mercury; [symbol: sun] the sun's disc; and [symbol: moon] the crescent
+of the moon.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE IX.--THE SOLAR SYSTEM.]
+
+The more modern discoveries have, of course, been all made by means of
+the telescope, and a few words on the history of its discovery may fitly
+close this chapter.
+
+According to Olbers, a concave and convex lens were first used in
+combination, to render objects less distant in appearance, in the year
+1606. In that year the children of one Jean Lippershey, an optician of
+Middelburg, in Zealand, were playing with his lenses, and happened to
+hold one before the other to look at a distant clock. Their great
+surprise in seeing how near it seemed attracted their father's
+attention, and he made several experiments with them, at last fixing
+them as in the modern telescope--in draw tubes. On the 2nd of October,
+1606, he made a petition to the States-General of Holland for a patent.
+The aldermen, however, saw no advantage in it, as you could only look
+with one eye instead of two. They refused the patent, and though the
+discovery was soon found of value, Lippershey reaped no benefit.
+
+Galileo was the first to apply the telescope to astronomical
+observations. He did not have it made in Holland, but constructed it
+himself on Lippershey's principle. This was in 1609. Its magnifying
+power was at first 4, and he afterwards increased it to 7, and then to
+30. With this he discovered the phases of Venus, the spots on the sun,
+the four satellites of Jupiter, and the mountains of the moon.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE X.--THE DISCOVERY OF THE TELESCOPE.]
+
+Kepler, in 1611, made the first astronomical telescope with two concave
+glasses.
+
+Huyghens increased the magnifying power successively to 48, 50, and 92,
+and discovered Saturn's ring and his satellite No. 4.
+
+Cassini, the first director of the Paris Observatory, brought it to 150,
+aided by Auzout Campani of Rome, and Rives of London. He observed the
+rotation of Jupiter (1665), that of Venus and Mars (1666), the fifth and
+third satellites of Saturn (1671), and afterwards the two nearer ones
+(1684); the other satellites of this planet were discovered, the sixth
+and seventh, by Sir William Herschel (1789), and the eighth by Bond and
+Lasel (1848).
+
+We may add here that the satellites of Uranus were discovered, six by
+Herschel from 1790 to 1794, and two by Lassel in 1851, the latter also
+discovering Neptune's satellite in 1847.
+
+The rotation of Saturn was discovered by Herschel in 1789, and that of
+Mercury by Schroeter in 1800.
+
+The earliest telescopes which were reflectors were made by Gregory in
+1663 and Newton in 1672. The greatest instruments of our century are
+that of Herschel, which magnifies 3,000 times, and Lord Rosse's,
+magnifying 6,000 times, the Foucault telescope at Marseilles, of 4,000,
+the reflector at Melbourne, of 7,000, and the Newall refractor.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XI.--THE FOUNDATION OF PARIS OBSERVATORY.]
+
+The exact knowledge of the heavens, which makes so grand a feature in
+modern science, is due, however, not only to the existence of
+instruments, but also to the establishment of observatories especially
+devoted to their use. The first astronomical observatory that was
+constructed was that at Paris. In 1667 Colbert submitted the designs of
+it to Louis XIV., and four years afterwards it was completed. The
+Greenwich Observatory was established in 1676, that of Berlin in 1710,
+and that of St. Petersburg in 1725. Since then numerous others have been
+erected, private as well as public, in all parts of the world, and no
+night passes without numerous observations being taken as part of the
+ordinary duty of the astronomers attached to them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE TERRESTRIAL WORLD OF THE ANCIENTS.--COSMOGRAPHY AND GEOGRAPHY.
+
+
+With respect to the shape and position of the earth itself in the
+material universe, and the question of its motion or immobility, we
+cannot go so far back as in the case of the heavens, since it obviously
+requires more observation, and is not so pressing for an answer.
+
+Amongst the Greeks several authors appear to have undertaken the
+subject, but only one complete work has come down to us which undertakes
+it directly. This is a work attributed to Aristotle, _De Mundo_. It is
+addressed to Alexander, and by some is considered to be spurious,
+because it lacks the majestic obscurity that in his acknowledged works
+repels the reader. Although, however, it is not as obscure as it might
+be, for the writer, it is quite bad enough, and its dryness and
+vagueness, its mixture of metaphysical and physical reasoning, logic and
+observation, and the change that has naturally passed over the meanings
+of many common words since they were written, render it very tedious
+and unpleasant reading.
+
+Nevertheless, as presenting us with the first recorded ideas on these
+questions of the nature and properties of the earth, it deserves
+attentive study. It is not a system of observations like those of
+Ptolemy and the Alexandrian School, but an entirely theoretical work. It
+is founded entirely on logic; but unfortunately, if the premisses are
+bad, the better the syllogism the more erroneous will be the conclusion;
+and it is just this which we find here. Thus if he be asked whether the
+earth turns or the heavens, he will reply that the earth is _evidently_
+in repose, and that this is the case not only because we observe it to
+be so, but because it is a necessity that it should be; because repose
+is _natural_ to the earth, and it is _naturally_ in equilibrium. This
+idea of "natural" leads very often astray. He is guided to his idea of
+what is natural by seeing what is, and then argues that what is, or
+appears to be, must be, because it is natural--thus arguing in a circle.
+Another example may be given in his answer to the question, Why must the
+stars move round the earth? He says it is natural, because a circle is a
+more perfect line, and must therefore be described by the perfect stars,
+and a circle is perfect because it has no ends! Unfortunately there are
+other curves that have no ends; but the circle was considered, without
+more reason, the most perfect curve, and therefore the planets must move
+in circles--an idea which had to wait till Kepler's time to be
+exploded. One more specimen of this style may be quoted, namely, his
+proof that every part of heaven must be eternally moving, while the
+earth must be in the centre and at rest. The proof is this. Everything
+which performs any act has been made for the purpose of that act. Now
+the work of God is immortality, from which it follows that all that is
+divine must have an eternal motion. But the heavens have a divine
+quality, and for this reason they have a spherical shape and move
+eternally in a circle. Now when a body has a circular motion, one part
+of it must remain at rest in its place, namely, that which is in the
+centre; the earth is in the centre--therefore it is at rest.
+
+Aristotle says in this work that there are two kinds of simple motion,
+that in a circle and that in a straight line. The latter belongs to the
+elements, which either go up or down, and the former to the celestial
+bodies, whose nature is more divine, and which have never been known to
+change; and the earth and world must be the only bodies in existence,
+for if there were another, it must be the contrary to this, and there is
+no contrary to a circle; and again, if there were any other body, the
+earth would be attracted towards it, and move, which it does not. Such
+is the style of argument which was in those days thought conclusive, and
+which with a little development and inflation of language appeared
+intensely profound.
+
+But what brings these speculations to the subject we have now in hand
+is this: that when Aristotle thus proves the earth to be immovable in
+the centre of the universe, he is led on to inquire how it is possible
+for it to remain in one fixed place. He observed that even a small
+fragment of earth, when it is raised into the air and then let go,
+immediately falls without ever stopping in one place--falling, as he
+supposed, all the quicker according to its weight; and he was therefore
+puzzled to know why the whole mass of the earth, notwithstanding its
+weight, could be kept from falling.
+
+Aristotle examines one by one the answers that have been given to this
+question. Thus Xenophanes gave to the earth infinitely extended roots,
+against which Empedocles uses such arguments as we should use now.
+Thales of Miletus makes the earth rest upon water, without finding
+anything on which the water itself can rest, or answering the question
+how it is that the heavier earth can be supported on the lighter water.
+Anaxemenes, Anaxagoras, and Democritus, who make the earth flat,
+consider it to be sustained by the air, which is accumulated below it,
+and also presses down upon it like a great coverlet. Aristotle himself
+says that he agrees with those philosophers who think that the earth is
+brought to the centre by the primitive rotation of things, and that we
+may compare it, as Empedocles does, to the water in glasses which are
+made to turn rapidly, and which does not fall out or move, even though
+upside down. He also quotes with approval another opinion somewhat
+similar to this, namely, that of Anaximander, which states that the
+earth is in repose, on account of its own equilibrium. Placed in the
+centre and at an equal distance from its extremities, there is no reason
+why it should move in one direction rather than the other, and rests
+immovable in the centre without being able to leave it.
+
+The result of all is that Aristotle concludes that the earth is
+immovable, in the centre of the universe, and that it is not a star
+circulating in space like other stars, and that it does not rotate upon
+its axis; and he completes the system by stating that the earth is
+spherical, which is proved by the different aspects of the heavens to a
+voyager to the north or to the south.
+
+Such was the Aristotelian system, containing far more error than truth,
+which was the first of any completeness. Scattered ideas, however, on
+the shape and method of support of the earth and the cause of various
+phenomena, such as the circulation of the stars, are met with besides in
+abundance.
+
+The original ideas of the earth were naturally tinged by the
+prepossessions of each race, every one thinking his own country to be
+situated in the centre. Thus among the Hindoos, who lived near the
+equator, and among the Scandinavians, inhabiting regions nearer the
+pole, the same meaning attaches to the words by which they express their
+own country, _medpiama_ and _medgard_, both meaning the central
+habitation. Olympus among the Greeks was made the centre of the earth,
+and afterwards the temple of Delphi. For the Egyptians the central point
+was Thebes; for the Assyrians it was Babylon; for the Indians it was the
+mountain Mero; for the Hebrews Jerusalem. The Chinese always called
+their country the central empire. It was then the custom to denote the
+world by a large disc, surrounded on all sides by a marvellous and
+inaccessible ocean. At the extremities of the earth were placed
+imaginary regions and fortunate isles, inhabited by giants or pigmies.
+The vault of the sky was supposed to be supported by enormous mountains
+and mysterious columns.
+
+Numerous variations have been suggested on the earliest supposed form of
+the earth, which was, as we have seen in a former chapter, originally
+supposed to be an immense flat of infinite depth, and giving support to
+the heavens.
+
+As travels extended and geography began to be a science, it was remarked
+that an immense area of water circumscribed the solid earth by irregular
+boundaries--whence the idea of a universal ocean.
+
+When, however, it was perceived that the horizon at sea was always
+circular, it was supposed that the ocean was bounded, and the whole
+earth came to be represented as contained in a circle, beneath which
+were roots reaching downwards without end, but with no imagined
+support.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 25.--THE EARTH FLOATING.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 26.--THE EARTH WITH ROOTS.]
+
+The Vedic priests asserted that the earth was supported on twelve
+columns, which they very ingeniously turned to their own account by
+asserting that these columns were supported by virtue of the sacrifices
+that were made to the gods, so that if these were not made the earth
+would collapse.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 27.--THE EARTH OF THE VEDIC PRIESTS.]
+
+These pillars were invented in order to account for the passing of the
+sun beneath the earth after his setting, for which at first they were
+obliged to imagine a system of tunnels, which gradually became enlarged
+to the intervals between the pillars.
+
+The Hindoos made the hemispherical earth to be supported upon four
+elephants, and the four elephants to stand on the back of an immense
+tortoise, which itself floated on the surface of a universal ocean. We
+are not however to laugh at this as intended to be literal; the
+elephants symbolised, it may be, the four elements, or the four
+directions of the compass, and the tortoise was the symbol for strength
+and for eternity, which was also sometimes represented by a serpent.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 28.--HINDOO EARTH.]
+
+The floating of the earth on water or some other liquid long held
+ground. It was adopted by Thales, and six centuries later Seneca adopts
+the same opinion, saying that the humid element that supports the
+earth's disc like a vessel may be either the ocean or some liquid more
+simple than water.
+
+Diodorus tells us that the Chaldeans considered the earth hollow and
+boat-shaped--perhaps turned upside down--and this doctrine was
+introduced into Greece by Heraclitus of Ephesus.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 29.--THE EARTH OF ANAXIMANDER.]
+
+Anaximander represents the earth as a cylinder, the upper face of which
+alone is inhabited. This cylinder, he states, is one-third as high as
+its diameter, and it floats freely in the centre of the celestial vault,
+because there is no reason why it should move to one side rather than
+the other. Leucippus, Democritus, Heraclitus, and Anaxagoras all adopted
+this purely imaginary form. Europe made the northern half, and Lybia
+(Africa) and Asia the southern, while Delphi was in the centre.
+
+Anaximenes, without giving a precise opinion as to the form of the
+earth, made it out to be supported on compressed air, though he gave no
+idea as to how the air was to be compressed.
+
+Plato thought to improve upon these ideas by making the earth cubical.
+The cube, which is bound by six equal faces, appeared to him the most
+perfect of solids, and therefore most suitable for the earth, which was
+to stand in the centre of the universe.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 30.--PLATO'S CUBICAL EARTH.]
+
+Eudoxus, who in his long voyages throughout Greece and Egypt had seen
+new constellations appear as he went south, while others to the north
+disappeared, deduced the sphericity of the earth, in which opinion he
+was followed by Archimedes, and, as we have seen, by Aristotle.
+
+According to Achilles Tatius, Xenophanes gave to the earth the shape of
+an immense inclined plane, which stretched out to infinity. He drew it
+in the form of a vast mountain. The summit only was inhabited by men,
+and round it circulated the stars, and the base was at an infinite
+depth. Hesiod had before this obscurely said: "The abyss is surrounded
+by a brazen barrier; above it rest the roots of the earth." Epicurus and
+his school were well pleased with this representation. If such were the
+foundations of the earth, then it was impossible that the sun, and moon,
+and stars should complete their revolutions beneath it. A solid and
+indefinite support being once admitted, the Epicurean ideas about the
+stars were a necessary consequence; the stars must inevitably be put out
+each day in the west, since they are not seen to return to the place
+whence they started, and they must be rekindled some hours afterwards in
+the east. In the days of Augustus, Cleomedes still finds himself obliged
+to combat these Epicurean ideas about the setting and rising of the sun
+and stars. "These stupid ideas," he says, "have no other foundation than
+an old woman's story--that the Iberians hear each night the hissing
+noise made by the burning sun as it is extinguished, like a hot iron in
+the waters of the ocean." Modern travellers have shown us that similar
+ideas about the support of the earth have been entertained by more
+remote people. Thus, in the opinion of the Greenlanders, handed down
+from antiquity to our own days, the earth is supported on pillars, which
+are so consumed by time that they often crack, and were it not that they
+are supported by the incantations of the magicians, they would long
+since have broken down. This idea of the breaking of the pillars may
+possibly have originated in the known sinking of the land beneath the
+sea, which is still going on even at the present day.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 31.--EGYPTIAN REPRESENTATION OF THE EARTH.]
+
+An ancient Egyptian papyrus in the library of Paris gives a very curious
+hieroglyphical representation of the universe. The earth is here figured
+under the form of a reclining figure, and is covered with leaves. The
+heavens are personified by a goddess, which forms the vault by her
+star-bespangled body, which is elongated in a very peculiar manner. Two
+boats, carrying, one the rising sun, and the other the setting sun, are
+represented as moving along the heavens over the body of the goddess. In
+the centre of the picture is the god, Maon, a divine intelligence, which
+presides over the equilibrium of the universe.
+
+We will now pass on from the early ideas of the general shape and
+situation of the world to inquire into the first outlines of
+geographical knowledge of details.
+
+Of all the ancient writings which deal with such questions, the Hebrew
+Scriptures have the greatest antiquity, and in them are laid down many
+details of known countries, from which a fair map of the world as known
+to them might be made out. The prophet Esdras believed that six-sevenths
+of the earth was dry land--an idea which could not well be exploded till
+the great oceans had been traversed and America discovered.
+
+More interesting, as being more complete, and written to a certain
+extent for the very purpose of relating what was known of the geography
+of the earth, are the writings of the oldest Grecian poets. The first
+elements of Grecian geography are contained in the two national and
+almost sacred poems, the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. So important have these
+writings been considered in regard to ancient geography, that for many
+centuries discussions have been carried on with regard to the details,
+though evidently fictitious, of the voyage of Ulysses, and twenty lines
+of the _Iliad_ have furnished matter for a book of thirty volumes.
+
+The shield of Achilles, forged by Vulcan and described in the eighteenth
+book of the _Iliad_, gives us an authentic representation of the
+primitive cosmographical ideas of the age. The earth is there figured as
+a disc, surrounded on all sides by the _River Ocean_. However strange it
+may appear to us, to apply the term _river_ to the ocean, it occurs too
+often in Homer and the other ancient poets to admit of a doubt of its
+being literally understood by them. Hesiod even describes the sources of
+the ocean at the western extremity of the world, and the representation
+of these sources was preserved from age to age amongst authors posterior
+to Homer by nearly a thousand years. Herodotus says plainly that the
+geographers of his time drew their maps of the world according to the
+same ideas; the earth was figured with them as a round disc, and the
+ocean as a river, which washed it on all sides.
+
+The earth's disc, the _orbis terrarum_, was covered according to Homer
+by a solid vault or firmament, beneath which the stars of the day and
+night were carried by chariots supported by the clouds. In the morning
+the sun rose from the eastern ocean, and in the evening it declined into
+the western; and a vessel of gold, the mysterious work of Vulcan,
+carried it quickly back by the north, to the east again. Beneath the
+earth Homer places, not the habitation of the dead, the caverns of
+Hades, but a vault called Tartarus, corresponding to the firmament. Here
+lived the Titans, the enemies of the gods, and no breath of wind, no
+ray of light, ever penetrated to this subterranean world. Writers
+subsequent to Homer by a century determined even the height of the
+firmament and the depth of Tartarus. An anvil, they said, would take
+nine days to fall from heaven to earth, and as many more to fall from
+earth to the bottom of Tartarus. This estimate of the height of heaven
+was of course far too small. If a body were to fall for nine days and
+nights, or 777,600 seconds under the attraction of the earth, it would
+only pass over 430,500 miles, that is not much more than half as far
+again as the moon. A ray of light would only take two seconds to pass
+over that distance, whereas it takes eight minutes to reach us from the
+sun, and four hours to come from Neptune--to say nothing of the distance
+of the stars.
+
+The limits of the world in the Homeric cosmography were surrounded by
+obscurity. The columns of which Atlas was the guardian were supported on
+unknown foundations, and disappeared in the systems subsequent to Homer.
+Beyond the mysterious boundary where the earth ended and the heavens
+began an indefinite chaos spread out--a confused medley of life and
+inanity, a gulf where all the elements of heaven, Tartarus, and earth
+and sea are mixed together, a gulf of which the gods themselves are
+afraid.
+
+Ideas such as these prevailed long after geometers and astronomers had
+proved the spherical form of the globe, and they were revived by the
+early Christian geographers and have left their trace even on the
+common language of to-day.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 32.--HOMERIC COSMOGRAPHY.]
+
+The centre of the terrestrial disc was occupied by the continent and
+isles of Greece, which in the time of Homer possessed no general name.
+The centre of Greece passed therefore for the centre of the whole world;
+and in Homer's system it was reckoned to be Olympus in Thessaly, but the
+priests of the celebrated Temple of Apollo at Delphi (known then under
+the name of Python) gave out a tradition that that sacred place was the
+real centre of the habitable world.
+
+The straits which separate Italy from Sicily were so to speak the
+vestibule of the fabulous world of Homer. The threefold ebb and flow,
+the howling of the monster Scylla, the whirlpools of Charybdis, the
+floating rocks--all tell us that we are quitting here the region of
+truth. Sicily itself, although already known under the name of
+_Trinacria_, was filled with marvels; here the flocks of the Sun
+wandered in a charming solitude under the guardianship of nymphs; here
+the Cyclops, with one eye only, and the anthropophagous Lestrigons
+scared away the traveller from a land that was otherwise fertile in corn
+and wine. Two historical races were placed by Homer in Sicily, namely
+the _Sicani_, and the _Siceli_, or _Siculi_.
+
+To the west of Sicily we find ourselves in the midst of a region of
+fables. The enchanted islands of Circe and Calypso, and the floating
+island of Eolus can no longer be found, unless we imagine them to have
+originated, like Graham's Island in this century, from volcanic
+eruptions or elevations, and to have disappeared again by the action of
+the sea.
+
+The Homeric map of the world terminated towards the west by two fabulous
+countries which have given rise to many traditions among the ancients,
+and to many discussions among moderns. Near to the entrance of the
+ocean, and not far from the sombre caverns where the dead are
+congregated, Ulysses found the _Cimmerians_, "an unhappy people, who,
+constantly surrounded by thick shadows, never enjoyed the rays of the
+sun, neither when it mounted the skies, nor when it descended below the
+earth." Still farther away, and in the ocean itself, and therefore
+beyond the limits of the earth, beyond the region of winds and seasons,
+the poet paints for us a Fortunate Land, which he calls _Elysium_, a
+country where tempests and winter are unknown, where a soft zephyr
+always blows, and where the elect of Jupiter, snatched from the common
+lot of mortals, enjoy a perpetual felicity.
+
+Whether these fictions had an allegory for their basis, or were founded
+on the mistaken notions of voyagers--whether they arose in Greece, or,
+as the Hebrew etymology of the name Cimmerian might seem to indicate, in
+the east, or in Phenicia, it is certain that the images they present,
+transferred to the world of reality, and applied successively to various
+lands, and confused by contradictory explanations, have singularly
+embarrassed the progress of geography through many centuries. The Roman
+travellers thought they recognised the Fortunate Isles in a group to the
+west of Africa, now known as the Canaries. The philosophical fictions of
+Plato and Theopompus about Atlantes and Meropis have been long
+perpetuated in historical theories; though of course it is possible that
+in the numerous changes that have taken place in the surface of the
+earth, some ancient vast and populous island may have descended beneath
+the level of the sea. On the other side, the poetic imagination created
+the _Hyperboreans_, beyond the regions where the northern winds were
+generated, and according to a singular kind of meteorology, they
+believed them for that reason to be protected from the cold winds.
+Herodotus regrets that he has not been able to discover the least trace
+of them; he took the trouble to ask for information about them from
+their neighbours, the _Arimaspes_, a very clear-sighted race, though
+having but a single eye; but they could not inform him where the
+Hyperboreans dwelt. The Enchanted Isles, where the Hesperides used to
+guard the golden fruit, and which the whole of antiquity placed in the
+west, not far from the Fortunate Isles, are sometimes called Hyperborean
+by authors well versed in the ancient traditions. It is also in this
+sense that Sophocles speaks of the Garden of Phoebus, near the vault
+of heaven, and not far from the _sources of the night_, _i.e._ of the
+setting of the sun.
+
+Avienus explains the mild temperature of the Hyperborean country by the
+temporary proximity of the sun, since, according to the Homeric ideas,
+it passes during the night by the northern ocean to return to its palace
+in the east. This ancient tradition was not entirely exploded in the
+time of Tacitus, who states that on the confines of Germany might be
+seen the veritable setting of Apollo beyond the water, and he believes
+that as in the east the sun gives rise to incense and balm by its great
+proximity to the earth, so in the regions where it sets it makes the
+most precious of juices to transude from the earth and form amber. It is
+this idea that is embedded in the fables of amber being the tears of
+gold that Apollo shed when he went to the Hyperborean land to mourn the
+loss of his son AEsculapius, or by the sisters of Phaeton, changed into
+poplars; and it is denoted by the Greek name for amber, _electron_--a
+sun-stone. The Grecian sages, long before the time of Tacitus, said that
+this very precious material was an exhalation from the earth that was
+produced and hardened by the rays of the sun, which they thought came
+nearer to the earth in the west and in the north.
+
+Florus, in relating the expedition of Decimus Brutus along the coast of
+Spain, gives great effect to the Epicurean views about the sun, by
+declaring that Brutus only stopped his conquests after having witnessed
+the actual descent of the sun into the ocean, and having heard with
+horror the terrible noise occasioned by its extinction. The ancients
+also believed that the sun and the other heavenly bodies were nourished
+by the waters--partly the fresh water of the rivers, and partly the salt
+water of the sea. Cleanthes gave the reason for the sun returning
+towards the equator on reaching the solstices, that it could not go too
+far away from the source of its nourishment. Pytheas relates that in the
+Island of Thule, six days' journey north of Great Britain, and in all
+that neighbourhood, there was no land nor sea nor air, but a compound of
+all three, on which the earth and the sea were suspended, and which
+served to unite together all the parts of the universe, though it was
+not possible to go into these places, neither on foot nor in ships.
+Perhaps the ice floating in the frozen seas and the hazy northern
+atmosphere had been seen by some navigator, and thus gave rise to this
+idea. As it stands, the history may be perhaps matched by that of the
+amusing monk who said he had been to the end of the world and had to
+stoop down, as there was not room to stand between heaven and earth at
+their junction.
+
+Homer lived in the tenth century before our era. Herodotus, who lived in
+the fifth, developed the Homeric chart to three times its size. He
+remarks at the commencement of his book that for several centuries the
+world has been divided into three parts--Europe, Asia, and Libya; the
+names given to them being female. The exterior limits of these countries
+remained in obscurity notwithstanding that those boundaries of them that
+lay nearest to Greece were clearly defined.
+
+One of the greatest writers on ancient geography was Strabo, whose ideas
+we will now give an account of. He seems to have been a disciple of
+Hipparchus in astronomy, though he criticises and contradicts him
+several times in his geography. He had a just idea of the sphericity of
+the earth; but considered it as the centre of the universe, and
+immovable. He takes pains to prove that there is only one inhabited
+earth--not in this refuting the notion that the moon and stars might
+have inhabitants, for these he considered to be insignificant meteors
+nourished by the exhalations of the ocean; but he fought against the
+fact of there being on this globe any other inhabited part than that
+known to the ancients.
+
+It is remarkable to notice that the proofs then used by geographers of
+the sphericity of the earth are just those which we should use now. Thus
+Strabo says, "The indirect proof is drawn from the centripetal force in
+general, and the tendency that all bodies have in particular towards a
+centre of gravity. The direct proof results from the phenomena observed
+on the sea and in the sky. It is evident, for example, that it is the
+curvature of the earth that alone prevents the sailor from seeing at a
+distance the lights that are placed at the ordinary height of the eye,
+and which must be placed a little higher to become visible even at a
+greater distance; in the same way, if the eye is a little raised it will
+see things which previously were hidden." Homer had already made the
+same remark.
+
+On this globe, representing the world, Strabo and the cosmographers of
+his time placed the habitable world in a surface which he describes in
+the following way: "Suppose a great circle, perpendicular to the
+equator, and passing through the poles to be described about the sphere.
+It is plain that the surface will be divided by this circle, and by the
+equator into four equal parts. The northern and southern hemispheres
+contain, each of them, two of these parts. Now on any one of these
+quarters of the sphere let us trace a quadrilateral which shall have for
+its southern boundary the half of the equator, for northern boundary a
+circle marking the commencement of polar cold, and for the other sides
+two equal and opposite segments of the circle that passes through the
+poles. It is on one such quadrilateral that the habitable world is
+placed." He figures it as an island, because it is surrounded on all
+sides by the sea. It is plain that Strabo had a good idea of the nature
+of gravity, because he does not distinguish in any way an upper or a
+lower hemisphere, and declares that the quadrilateral on which the
+habitable world is situated may be any one of the four formed in this
+way.
+
+The form of the habitable world is that of a "chlamys," or cloak. This
+follows, he says, both from geometry and the great spread of the sea,
+which, enveloping the land, covers it both to the east and to the west
+and reduces it to a shortened and truncated form of such a figure that
+its greatest breadth preserved has only a third of its length. As to the
+actual length and breadth, he says, "it measures seventy thousand stadia
+in length, and is bounded by a sea whose immensity and solitude renders
+it impassable; while the breadth is less than thirty thousand stadia,
+and has for boundaries the double region where the excess of heat on
+one side and the excess of cold on the other render it uninhabitable."
+
+The habitable world was thus much longer from east to west than it was
+broad from north to south; from whence come our terms _longitude_, whose
+degrees are counted in the former direction, and _latitude_, reckoned in
+the latter direction.
+
+Eratosthenes, and after him Hipparchus, while he gives larger numbers
+than the preceding for the dimensions of the inhabited part of the
+earth, namely, thirty-eight thousand stadia of breadth and eighty
+thousand of length, declares that physical laws accord with calculations
+to prove that the length of the habitable earth must be taken from the
+rising to the setting of the sun. This length extends from the extremity
+of India to that of Iberia, and the breadth from the parallel of
+Ethiopia to that of Ierne.
+
+That the earth is an island, Strabo considers to be proved by the
+testimony of our senses. For wherever men have reached to the
+extremities of the earth they have found the sea, and for regions where
+this has not been verified it is established by reasoning. Those who
+have retraced their steps have not done so because their passage was
+barred by any continent, but because their supplies have run short, and
+they were afraid of the solitude; the water always ran freely in front
+of them.
+
+It is extraordinary that Strabo and the astronomers of that age, who
+recognised so clearly the sphericity of the earth and the real
+insignificance of mountains, should yet have supposed the stars to have
+played so humble a part, but so it was; and we find Strabo arguing in
+what we may call quite the contrary direction. He says, "the larger the
+mass of water that is spread round the earth, so much more easy is it to
+conceive how the vapours arising from it are sufficient to nourish the
+heavenly bodies."
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 33.--THE EARTH OF THE LATER GREEKS.]
+
+Among the Latin cosmographers we may here cite one who flourished in the
+first century after Christ, Pomponius Mela, who wrote a treatise, called
+_De Situ Orbis_. From whatever source, whether traditional or otherwise,
+he arrived at the conclusion, he divided the earth into two continents,
+our own and that of the Antichthones, which reached to our antipodes.
+This map was in use till the time of Christopher Columbus, who modified
+it in the matter of the position of this second continent, which till
+then remained a matter of mystery.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 34.--POMPONIUS MELA'S COSMOGRAPHY.]
+
+Of those who in ancient times added to the knowledge then possessed of
+cosmography, we should not omit to mention the name of Pytheas, of
+Marseilles, who flourished in the fourth century before our era. His
+chief observations, however, were not so closely related to geography as
+to the relation of the earth with the heavenly bodies. By the
+observation of the gnomon at mid-day on the day of the solstice he
+determined the obliquity of the ecliptic in his epoch. By the
+observation of the height of the pole, he discovered that in his time it
+was not marked by any star, but formed a quadrilateral with three
+neighbouring stars, [Greek: b] of the little Bear and [Greek: k] and
+[Greek: a] of the Dragon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+COSMOGRAPHY AND GEOGRAPHY OF THE CHURCH.
+
+
+After the writers mentioned in the last chapter a long interval elapsed
+without any progress being made in the knowledge of the shape or
+configuration of the earth. From the fall of the Roman Empire, whose
+colonies themselves gave a certain knowledge of geography, down to the
+fifteenth century, when the great impetus was given to discovery by the
+adventurous voyagers of Spain and Portugal, there was nothing but
+servile copying from ancient authors, who were even misrepresented when
+they were not understood. Even the peninsula of India was only known by
+the accounts of Orientals and the writings of the Ancients until the
+beginning of the fifteenth century. Vague notions, too, were held as to
+the limits of Africa, and even of Europe and Asia--while of course they
+knew nothing of America, in spite of their marking on their maps an
+antichthonal continent to the south.
+
+Denys, the traveller, a Greek writer of the first century, and Priscian,
+his Latin commentator of the fourth, still maintained the old errors
+with regard to the earth. According to them the earth is not round, but
+leaf-shaped; its boundaries are not so arranged as to form everywhere a
+regular circle. Macrobius, in his system of the world, proves clearly
+that he had no notion that Africa was continued to the south of
+Ethiopia, that is of the tenth degree of N. latitude. He thought, like
+Cleanthus and Crates and other ancient authors, that the regions that
+lay nearest the tropics, and were burnt by the sun, could not be
+inhabited; and that the equatorial regions were occupied by the ocean.
+He divided the hemisphere into five zones, of which only two were
+habitable. "One of them," he said, "is occupied by us, and the other by
+men of whose nature we are ignorant."
+
+Orosus, writing in the same century (fourth), and whose work exercised
+so great an influence on the cosmographers of the middle ages and on
+those who made the maps of the world during that long period, was
+ignorant of the form or boundaries of Africa, and of the contours of the
+peninsulas of Southern Asia. He made the heavens rest upon the earth.
+
+S. Basil, also of the fourth century, placed the firmament on the earth,
+and on this heaven a second, whose upper surface was flat,
+notwithstanding that the inner surface which is turned towards us is in
+the form of a vault; and he explains in this way how the waters can be
+held there. S. Cyril shows how useful this reservoir of water is to the
+life of men and of plants.
+
+Diodorus, Bishop of Tarsus, in the same century, also divided the world
+into two stages, and compared it to a tent. Severianus, Bishop of
+Gabala, about the same time, compared the world to a house of which the
+earth is the ground floor, the lower heavens the ceiling, and the upper,
+or heaven of heavens, the roof. This double heaven was also admitted by
+Eusebius of Caesaraea.
+
+In the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries science made no progress
+whatever. It was still taught that there were limits to the ocean. Thus
+Lactantius asserted that there could not be inhabitants beyond the line
+of the tropics. This Father of the Church considered it a monstrous
+opinion that the earth is round, that the heavens turn about it, and
+that all parts of the earth are inhabited. "There are some people," he
+says, "so extravagant as to persuade themselves that there are men who
+have their heads downwards and their feet upwards; that all that lies
+down here is hung up there; that the trees and herbs grow downwards; and
+that the snow and hail fall upwards.... Those people who maintain such
+opinions do so for no other purpose than to amuse themselves by
+disputation, and to show their spirit; otherwise it would be easy to
+prove by invincible argument that it is impossible for the heavens to
+be underneath the earth." (Divine Institution). Saint Augustin also, in
+his _City of God_, says: "There is no reason to believe in that fabulous
+hypothesis of the antipodes, that is to say, of men who inhabit the
+other side of the earth--where the sun rises when it sets with us, and
+who have their feet opposed to ours." ... "But even if it were
+demonstrated by any argument that the earth and world have a spherical
+form, it would be too absurd to pretend that any hardy voyagers, after
+having traversed the immensity of the ocean, had been able to reach that
+part of the world and there implant a detached branch of the primaeval
+human family."
+
+In the same strain wrote S. Basil, S. Ambrose, S. Justin Martyr, S.
+Chrysostom, Procopius of Gaza, Severianus, Diodorus Bishop of Tarsus,
+and the greater number of the thinkers of that epoch.
+
+Eusebius of Caesaraea was bold enough on one occasion to write in his
+Commentaries on the Psalms, that, "according to the opinion of some the
+earth is round;" but he draws back in another work from so rash an
+assertion. Even in the fifteenth century the monks of Salamanca and
+Alcala opposed the old arguments against the antipodes to all the
+theories of Columbus.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 35.--THE EARTH'S SHADOW.]
+
+In the middle of the sixteenth century Gregory of Tours adopted also the
+opinion that the intertropical zone was uninhabitable, and, like other
+historians, he taught that the Nile came from the unknown land in the
+east, descended to the south, crossed the ocean which separated the
+antichthone from Africa, and then alone became: visible. The
+geographical and cosmographical ideas that were then prevalent may also
+be judged of by what S. Avitus, a Latin poet of the sixth century and
+nephew of the Emperor Flavius Avitus, says in his poem on the Creation,
+where he describes the terrestrial Paradise. "Beyond India," he writes,
+"_where the world commences_, where the confines of heaven and earth are
+joined, is an exalted asylum, inaccessible to mortals, and closed by
+eternal barriers, since the first sin was committed."
+
+In a treatise on astronomy, published a little after this in 1581, by
+Apian and Gemma Frison, they very distinctly state their belief in a
+round earth, though they do not go into details of its surface. The
+argument is the old one from eclipses, but the figures they give in
+illustration are very amusing, with three or four men of the size of the
+moon disporting themselves on the earth's surface. As, however, they all
+have their feet to the globe representing the earth, and consequently
+have their feet in opposite directions at the antipodes, the idea is
+very clearly shown.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 36.]
+
+"If," they say, "the earth were square, its shadow on the
+moon would be square also.
+
+"If the earth were triangular, its shadow, during an eclipse of the
+moon, would also be triangular.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 37.]
+
+"If the earth had six sides, its shadow would have the same figure.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 38.]
+
+"Since, then, the shadow of the earth is round, it is a proof that the
+earth is round also."
+
+This of course is one of the proofs that would be employed in the
+present day for the same purpose.
+
+The most remarkable of all the fantastical systems, however, the _chef
+d'oeuvre_ of the cosmography of that age, was the famous system of the
+square earth, with solid walls for supporting the heavens. Its author
+was _Cosmas_, surnamed _Indicopleustes_ after his voyage to India and
+Ethiopia. He was at first a merchant, and afterwards a monk. He died in
+550. His manuscript was entitled "Christian Topography," and was written
+in 535. It was with the object of refuting the opinions of those who
+gave a spherical form to the earth that Cosmas composed his work after
+the systems of the Church Fathers, and in opposition to the cosmography
+of the Gentiles. He reduced to a systematic form the opinions of the
+Fathers, and undertook to explain all the phenomena of the heavens in
+accordance with the Scriptures. In his first book he refutes the opinion
+of the sphericity of the earth, which he regarded as a heresy. In the
+second he expounds his own system, and the fifth to the ninth he devotes
+to the courses of the stars. This mongrel composition is a singular
+mixture of the doctrines of the Indians, Chaldeans, Greeks, and
+Christian Fathers.
+
+With respect to his opponents he says, "There are on all sides vigorous
+attacks against the Church," and accuses them of misunderstanding
+Scripture, being misled by the eclipses of the sun and moon. He makes
+great fun of the idea of rain falling upwards, and yet accuses his
+opponents of making the earth at the same time the centre and the base
+of the universe. The zeal with which these pretended refutations are
+used proves, no doubt, that in the sixth century there were some men,
+more sensible and better instructed than others, who preserved the
+deposit of progress accomplished by the Grecian genius in the
+Alexandrian school, and defended the labours of Hipparchus and Ptolemy;
+while it is manifest that the greater number of their contemporaries
+kept the old Indian and Homeric traditions, which were easier to
+understand, and more accessible to the false witness of the senses, and
+not improved by combination with texts of Scripture misinterpreted. In
+fact, cosmographical science in the general opinion retrograded instead
+of advancing.
+
+According to Cosmas and his map of the world, the habitable earth is a
+plane surface. But instead of being supposed, as in the time of Thales,
+to be a disc, he represented it in the form of a parallelogram, whose
+long sides are twice the shorter ones, so that man is on the earth like
+a bird in a cage. This parallelogram is surrounded by the ocean, which
+breaks in in four great gulfs, namely, the Mediterranean and Caspian
+seas, and the Persian and Arabian gulfs.
+
+Beyond the ocean in every direction there exists another continent which
+cannot be reached by man, but of which one part was once inhabited by
+him before the Deluge. To the east, just as in other maps of the world,
+and in later systems, he placed the _Terrestrial Paradise_, and the
+four rivers that watered Eden, which come by subterranean channels to
+water the post-diluvian earth.
+
+After the Fall, Adam was driven from Paradise; but he and his
+descendants remained on its coasts until the Deluge carried the ark of
+Noah to our present earth.
+
+On the four outsides of the earth rise four perpendicular walls, which
+surround it, and join together at the top in a vault, the heavens
+forming the cupola of this singular edifice.
+
+The world, according to Cosmas, was therefore a large oblong box, and it
+was divided into two parts; the first, the abode of men, reaches from
+the earth to the firmament, above which the stars accomplish their
+revolutions; there dwell the angels, who cannot go any higher. The
+second reaches upwards from the firmament to the upper vault, which
+crowns and terminates the world. On this firmament rest the waters of
+the heavens.
+
+Cosmas justifies this system by declaring that, according to the
+doctrine of the Fathers and the Commentators on the Bible, the earth has
+the form of the Tabernacle that Moses erected in the desert; which was
+like an oblong box, twice as long as broad. But we may find other
+similarities,--for this land beyond the ocean recalls the Atlantic of
+the ancients, and the Mahomedans, and Orientals in general, say that the
+earth is surrounded by a high mountain, which is a similar idea to the
+walls of Cosmas.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 39.--THE COSMOGRAPHY OF COSMAS.]
+
+"God," he says, "in creating the earth, rested it on nothing. The earth
+is therefore sustained by the power of God, the Creator of all things,
+supporting all things by the word of His power. If below the earth, or
+outside of it, anything existed, it would fall of its own accord. So God
+made the earth the base of the universe, and ordained that it should
+sustain itself by its own proper gravity."
+
+After having made a great square box of the universe, it remained for
+him to explain the celestial phenomena, such as the succession of days
+and nights and the vicissitudes of the seasons.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 40.--THE SQUARE EARTH.]
+
+This is the remarkable explanation he gives. He says that the earth,
+that is, the oblong table circumscribed on all sides by high walls, is
+divided into three parts; first the habitable earth, which occupies the
+middle; secondly, the ocean which surrounds this on all sides; and
+thirdly, another dry land which surrounds the ocean, terminated itself
+by these high walls on which the firmament rests. According to him the
+habitable earth is always higher as we go north, so that southern
+countries are always much lower than northern. For this reason, he says,
+the Tigris and Euphrates, which run towards the south, are much more
+rapid than the Nile, which runs northwards. At the extreme north there
+is a large conical mountain, behind which the sun, moon, planets, and
+comets all set. These stars never pass below the earth, they only pass
+behind this great mountain, which hides them for a longer or shorter
+time from our observation. According as the sun departs from or
+approaches the north, and consequently is lower or higher in the
+heavens, he disappears at a point nearer to or further from the base of
+the mountain, and so is behind it a longer or shorter time, whence the
+inequality of the days and nights, the vicissitudes of the seasons,
+eclipses, and other phenomena. This idea is not peculiar to Cosmas, for
+according to the Indians, the mountain of Someirat is in the centre of
+the earth, and when the sun appears to set, he is really only hiding
+behind this mountain.
+
+His idea, too, of the manner in which the motions are performed is
+strange, but may be matched elsewhere. "All the stars are created," he
+says, "to regulate the days and nights, the months and the years, and
+they move, not at all by the motion of the heaven itself, but by the
+action of certain divine Beings, or _lampadophores_. God made the angels
+for His service, and He has charged some of them with the motion of the
+air, others with that of the sun, or the moon, or the other stars, and
+others again with the collecting of clouds and preparing the rain."
+
+Similar to this were the ideas of other doctors of the
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 41.--EXPLANATION OF SUNRISE.]
+
+Church, such as S. Hilary and Theodorus, some of whom supposed that the
+angels carried the stars on their shoulders like the _omophores_ of the
+Manichees; others that they rolled them in front of them or drew them
+behind; while the Jesuit Riccioli, who made astronomical observations,
+remarks that each angel that pushes a star takes great care to observe
+what the others are doing, so that the relative distances between the
+stars may always remain what they ought to be. The Abbot Trithemus gives
+the exact succession of the seven angels or spirits of the planets, who
+take it in turns during a cycle of three hundred and fifty-four years to
+govern the celestial motions from the creation to the year 1522. The
+system thus introduced seems to have been spread abroad, and to have
+lingered even into the nineteenth century among the Arabs. A guide of
+that nationality hired at Cairo in 1830, remarked to two travellers how
+the earth had been made square and covered with stones, but the stones
+had been thrown into the four corners, now called France, Italy,
+England, and Russia, while the centre, forming a circle round Mount
+Sinai, had been given to the Arabians.
+
+Alongside of this system of the square was another equally curious--that
+of the egg. Its author was the famous Venerable Bede, one of the most
+enlightened men of his time, who was educated at the University of
+Armagh, which produced Alfred and Alcuin. He says: "The earth is an
+element placed in the middle of the world, as the yolk is in the middle
+of an egg; around it is the water, like the white surrounding the yolk;
+outside that is the air, like the membrane of the egg; and round all is
+the fire which closes it in as the shell does. The earth being thus in
+the centre receives every weight upon itself, and though by its nature
+it is cold and dry in its different parts, it acquires accidentally
+different qualities; for the portion which is exposed to the torrid
+action of the air is burnt by the sun, and is uninhabitable; its two
+extremities are too cold to be inhabited, but the portion that lies in
+the temperate region of the atmosphere is habitable. The ocean, which
+surrounds it by its waves as far as the horizon, divides it into two
+parts, the upper of which is inhabited by us, while the lower is
+inhabited by our antipodes; although not one of them can come to us, nor
+one of us to them."
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 42.--THE EARTH AS AN EGG.]
+
+This last sentence shows that however far he may have been from the
+truth, he did not, like so many of his contemporaries, stumble over the
+idea of up and down in the universe, and so consider the notion of
+antipodes absurd.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 43.--THE EARTH AS A FLOATING EGG.]
+
+A great number of the maps of the world of the period followed this
+idea, and drew the world in the shape of an egg at rest. It was
+broached, however, in another form by Edrisi, an Arabian geographer of
+the eleventh century, who, with many others, considered the earth to be
+like an egg with one half plunged into the water. The regularity of the
+surface is only interrupted by valleys and mountains. He adopted the
+system of the ancients, who supposed that the torrid zone was
+uninhabited. According to him the known world only forms a single half
+of the egg, the greater part of the water belonging to the surrounding
+ocean, in the midst of which earth floats like an egg in a basin.
+Several artists and map-makers adopted this theory in the geographical
+representations, and so, whether in this way or the last, the egg has
+had the privilege of representing the form of the earth for nearly a
+thousand years.
+
+The celebrated Raban Maur, of Mayence, composed in the ninth century a
+treatise, entitled _De Universo_, divided into twenty-two books. It is a
+kind of encyclopaedia, in which he gives an abridged view of all the
+sciences. According to his cosmographic system the earth is in the form
+of a wheel, and is placed in the middle of the universe, being
+surrounded by the ocean; on the north it is bounded by the Caucasus,
+which he supposes to be mountains of gold, which no one can reach
+because of dragons, and griffins, and men of monstrous shape that dwell
+there. He also places Jerusalem in the centre of the earth.
+
+The treatise of Honorus, entitled _Imago Mundi_, and many other authors
+of the same kind, represent, 1st, the terrestrial paradise in the most
+easterly portion of the world, in a locality inaccessible to man; 2nd,
+the four rivers which had their sources in Paradise; 3rd, the torrid
+zone, uninhabited; 4th, fantastic islands, transformed from the Atlantis
+into _Antillia_.
+
+[Illustration: FIG 44.--EIGHTH CENTURY MAP OF THE WORLD.]
+
+In a manuscript commentary on the Apocalypse, which is in the library of
+Turin, is a very curious chart, referred to the tenth, but belonging
+possibly to the eighth century. It represents the earth as a circular
+planisphere. The four sides of the earth are each accompanied by a
+figure of a wind, as a horse on a bellows, from which air is poured out,
+as well as from a shell in his mouth. Above, or to the east, are Adam,
+and Eve with the serpent. To their right is Asia with two very elevated
+mountains--Cappadocia and Caucasus. From thence comes the river
+_Eusis_, and the sea into which it falls forms an arm of the ocean which
+surrounds the earth. This arm joins the Mediterranean, and separates
+Europe from Asia. Towards the middle is Jerusalem, with two curious arms
+of the sea running past it; while to the south there is a long and
+straight sea in an east and west direction. The various islands of the
+Mediterranean are put in a square patch, and Rome, France, and Germany
+are indicated, while Thula, Britannia, and Scotia are marked as islands
+in the north-west of the ocean that surrounds the whole world.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 45.--TENTH CENTURY MAPS.]
+
+We figure below two very curious maps of the world of the tenth
+century--one of which is round, the other square. The first is divided
+into three triangles; that of the east, or Asia, is marked with the name
+of _Shem_; that of the north, or Europe, with that of _Japhet_; that of
+the south, or Africa, with that of _Cham_. The second is also divided
+between the three sons of Noah; the ocean surrounds it, the
+Mediterranean forms the upright portion of a cross of water which
+divides the Adamic world.
+
+Omons, the author of a geographical poem entitled _The Image of the
+World_, composed in 1265, who was called the Lucretius of the thirteenth
+century, was not more advanced than the cosmographers of the former
+centuries of which we have hitherto spoken. The cosmographical part of
+his poem is borrowed from the system of Pythagoras and the Venerable
+Bede. He maintains that the earth is enveloped in the heavens, as the
+yoke in the white of an egg, and that it is in the middle as the centre
+is within the circle, and he speaks like Pythagoras of the harmony of
+the celestial spheres.
+
+Omons supposed also that in his time the terrestrial paradise was still
+existing in the east, with its tree of life, its four rivers, and its
+angel with a flaming sword. He appears to have confounded Hecla with the
+purgatory of St. Patrick, and he places the latter in Iceland, saying
+that it never ceases to burn. The volcanoes were only, according to him,
+the breathing places or mouths of the infernal regions. The latter he
+placed with other cosmographers in the centre of the earth.
+
+Another author, Nicephorus Blemmyde, a monk who lived during the same
+century, composed three cosmographical works, among them the following:
+_On the Heavens and the Earth, On the Sun and Moon, the Stars, and Times
+and Days_. According to his system the earth is flat, and he adopts the
+Homeric theory of the ocean surrounding the world, and that of the seven
+climates.
+
+Nicolas of Oresmus, a celebrated cosmographer of the fourteenth century,
+although his celebrity as a mathematician attracted the attention of
+King John of France, who made him tutor to his son Charles V., was not
+wiser than those we have enumerated above. He composed among other works
+a _Treatise on the Sphere_. He rejected the theory of an antichthonal
+continent as contrary to the faith. A map of the world, prepared by him
+about the year 1377, represents the earth as round, with one hemisphere
+only inhabited, the other, or lower one, being plunged in the water. He
+seems to have been led by various borrowed ideas, as, for instance,
+theological ones, such as the statement in the Psalms that God had
+founded the earth upon the waters, and Grecian ones borrowed from the
+school of Thales, and the theories of the Arabian geographers. In fact
+we have seen that Edrisi thought that half of the earth was in the
+water, and Aboulfeda thought the same. The earth was placed by Nicolas
+in the centre of the universe, which he represented by painting the sky
+blue, and dotting it over with stars in gold.
+
+Leonardo Dati, who composed a geographical poem entitled _Della Spera_,
+during this century, advanced no further. A coloured planisphere showed
+the earth in the centre of the universe surrounded by the ocean, then
+the air, then the circles of the planets after the Ptolemaic system, and
+in another representation of the same kind he figures the infernal
+regions in the centre of the earth, and gives its diameter as seven
+thousand miles. He proves himself not to have known one half of the
+globe by his statement of the shape of the earth--that it is like a T
+inside an O. This is a comparison given in many maps of the world in the
+middle ages, the mean parallel being about the 36th degree of north
+latitude, that is to say at the Straits of Gibraltar; the Mediterranean
+is thus placed so as to divide the earth into two equal parts.
+
+John Beauvau, Bishop of Angiers under Louis XL, expresses his ideas as
+follows:--
+
+"The earth is situated and rests in the middle of the firmament, as the
+centre or point is in the middle of a circle. Of the whole earth
+mentioned above only one quarter is inhabited. The earth is divided into
+four parts, as an apple is divided through the centre by cutting it
+lengthways and across. If one part of such an apple is taken and peeled,
+and the peel is spread out over anything flat, such as the palm of the
+hand, then it resembles the habitable earth, one side of which is
+called the east, and the other the west."
+
+The Arabians adopted not only the ideas of the ancients, but also the
+fundamental notions of the cosmographical system of the Greeks. Some of
+them, as _Bakouy_, regarded the earth as a flat surface, like a table,
+others as a ball, of which one half is cut off, others as a complete
+revolving ball, and others that it was hollow within. Others again went
+as far as to say that there were several suns and moons for the several
+parts of the earth.
+
+In a map, preserved in the library at Cambridge, by Henry, Canon of St.
+Marie of Mayence, the form of the world is given after Herodotus. The
+four cardinal points are indicated, and the orientation is that of
+nearly all the cartographic monuments of the middle ages, namely, the
+east at the top of the map. The four cardinal points are four angels,
+one foot placed on the disc of the earth; the colours of their vestments
+are symbolical. The angel placed at the Boreal extremity of the earth,
+or to the north of the Scythians, points with his finger to people
+enclosed in the ramparts of Gog and Magog, _gens immunda_ as the legend
+says. In his left hand he holds a die to indicate, no doubt, that there
+are shut up the Jews who cast lots for the clothes of Christ. His
+vestments are green, his mantle and his wings are red. The angel placed
+to the left of Paradise has a green mantle and wings, and red vestments.
+In his left hand he holds a kind of palm, and by the right he seems to
+mark the way to Paradise. The position of the other angels placed at the
+west of the world is different. They seem occupied in stopping the
+passage beyond the _Columns_ (that is, the entrance to the Atlantic
+Ocean). All of them have golden aureolas. The surrounding ocean is
+painted of a clear green.
+
+Another remarkable map of the world is that of Andrea Bianco. In it we
+see Eden at the top, which represents the east, and the four rivers are
+running out of it. Much of Europe is indicated, including Spain, Paris,
+Sweden, Norway, Ireland, which are named, England, Iceland, Spitzbergen,
+&c., which are not named. The portion round the North Pole to the left
+is indicated as "cold beneath the Pole star." In these maps the
+systematic theories of the ancient geographers seem mixed with the
+doctrines of the Fathers of the Church. They place generally in the Red
+Sea some mark denoting the passage of the Hebrews, the terrestrial
+paradise at the extreme east, and Jerusalem in the centre. The towns are
+figured often by edifices, as in the list of Theodosius, but without any
+regard to their respective positions. Each town is ordinarily
+represented by two towers, but the principal ones are distinguished by a
+little wall that appears between these two towers, on which are painted
+several windows, or else they may be known by the size of the edifices.
+St. James of Compostella in Gallicia and Rome are represented by
+edifices of considerable size, as are Nazareth, Troy, Antioch, Damascus,
+Babylon, and Nineveh.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 46.--THE MAP OF ANDREA BIANCO.]
+
+One of the most remarkable monuments of the geography of the last
+centuries of the middle ages is the map in Hereford Cathedral, by
+Richard of Haldingham, not only on account of its numerous legends, but
+because of its large dimensions, being several square yards in area.
+
+On the upper part of this map is represented the Last Judgment; Jesus
+Christ, with raised arms, holding in His hands a scroll with these
+words, _Ecce testimonium meum_. At His side two angels carry in their
+hands the instruments of His passion. On the right hand stands an angel
+with a trumpet to his mouth, out of which come these words, _Levez si
+vendres vous par_. An angel brings forward a bishop by the hand, behind
+whom is a king, followed by other personages; the angel introduces them
+by a door formed of two columns, which seems to serve as an entrance to
+an edifice.
+
+The Virgin is kneeling at the feet, of her Son. Behind her is another
+woman kneeling, who holds a crown, which she seems ready to place on the
+head of the Mother of Christ, and by the side of the woman is a kneeling
+angel, who appears to be supporting the maternal intercessor. The Virgin
+uncovers her breast and pronounces the words of a scroll which is held
+by an angel kneeling in front of her, _Vei i b' fiz mon piz de deuiz
+lauele chare preistes--Eles mame lettes dont leit de Virgin qui
+estes--Syes merci de tous si com nos mesmes deistes.--R ... em ... ont
+servi kaut sauveresse me feistes_.
+
+To the left another angel, also with a trumpet to his mouth, gives out
+the following words, which are written on a scroll, _Leves si alles all
+fu de enfer estable_. A gate, drawn like that of the entrance,
+represents probably the passage by which those must go out who are
+condemned to eternal pains. In fact the devil is seen dragging after him
+a crowd of men, who are tied by a cord which he holds in his hand.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 47.--FROM THE MAP IN HEREFORD CATHEDRAL.]
+
+The map itself commences at its upper part, that is, the east, by the
+terrestrial paradise. It is a circle, in the centre of which is
+represented the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve are
+there in company with the serpent that beguiled them. The four legendary
+rivers come out of the base of the tree, and they are seen below
+crossing the map. Outside Eden the flight of the first couple, and the
+angel that drove them away, are represented. At this extreme eastern
+portion is the region of giants with the heads of beasts. There, too,
+is seen the first human habitation, or town, built by Enoch. Below
+appears the Tower of Babel. Near this are two men seated on a hill close
+to the river Jaxartes; one of them is eating a human leg and the other
+an arm, which the legend explains thus:--"Here live the Essedons, whose
+custom it is to sing at the funerals of their parents; they tear the
+corpses with their teeth, and prepare their food with these fragments of
+flesh, mixed with that of animals. In their opinion it is more
+honourable to the dead to be enclosed in the bodies of their relations
+than in those of worms."
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 48.--FROM THE MAP IN HEREFORD CATHEDRAL.
+
+  Tower of Babel.
+  Essedons.
+  Dragons.
+  Pigmies.
+  The Monoceros.
+  The Mantichore.
+  A Sphinx.
+  The King of the Cyclops.
+  Blemmye.
+  Parasol lip.
+  Monocle.]
+
+Below are seen dragons and pigmies, always to the east of Asia, and a
+little further away in the midst of a strange country, _the King of the
+Cyclops_.
+
+This extraordinary geography shows us in India the "Mantichore, who has
+a triple range of teeth, the face of a man, blue eyes, the red colour of
+blood, the body of a lion, and the tail of a scorpion; its voice is a
+whistle."
+
+On the north of the Ganges is represented a man with one leg, shading
+his head with his foot, which is explained by the following legend:--"In
+India dwell the Monocles, who have only one leg, but who nevertheless
+move with surprising velocity; when they wish to protect themselves from
+the heat of the sun they make a shadow with the sole of their foot,
+which is very large."
+
+The Blemmys have their mouth and eyes in their chest; others have their
+mouths and eyes on their shoulders. The Parvini are Ethiopians that have
+four eyes.
+
+To the east of Syene is a man seated who is covering his head with his
+lip, "people who with their prominent lip shade their faces from the
+sun."
+
+Above is drawn a little sun, with the word _sol_. Then comes an animal
+of human form, having the feet of a horse and the head and beak of a
+bird; he rests on a stick, and the legend tells us it is a satyr; the
+fauns, half men and half horses; the cynocephales--men with the head of
+a dog; and the cyanthropes--dogs with the heads of men. The sphinx has
+the wings of a bird, the tail of a serpent, the head of a woman. It is
+placed in the midst of the Cordilleras, which are joined to a great
+chain of mountains. Here lastly is seen the _monoceros_, a terrible
+animal; but here is the marvel: "When one shows to this _monoceros_ a
+young girl, who, when the animal approaches, uncovers her breast, the
+monster, forgetting his ferocity, lays his head there, and when he is
+asleep may be taken defenceless."
+
+Near to the lake Meotides is a man clothed in Oriental style, with a hat
+that terminates in a point, and holding by the bridle a horse whose
+harness is a human skin, and which is explained thus by the Latin
+legend: "Here live the griffins, very wicked men, for among other crimes
+they proceed so far as to make clothes for themselves and their horses
+out of the skins of their enemies."
+
+More to the south is a large bird, the ostrich; according to the legend,
+"the ostrich has the head of a goose, the body of a crane, the feet of a
+calf; it eats iron."
+
+Not far from the Riphean Mountains two men with long tunics and round
+bonnets are represented in the attitude of fighting; one brandishes a
+sword, the other a kind of club, and the legend tells us, "The customs
+of the people of the interior of Scythia are somewhat wild; they inhabit
+caves; they drink the blood of the slain by sucking their wounds; they
+pride themselves on the number of people they have slain--not to have
+slain any one in combat is reckoned disgraceful."
+
+Near the river that empties itself into the Caspian Sea it is written:
+"This river comes from the infernal regions; it enters the sea after
+having descended from mountains covered with wood, and it is there, they
+say, that the mouth of hell opens."
+
+To the south of this river, and to the north of Hyrcania, is represented
+a monster having the body of a man, the head, tail, and feet of a bull:
+this is the Minotaur. Further on are the mountains of Armenia, and the
+ark of Noah on one of its plateaux. Here, too, is seen a large tiger,
+and we read: "The tiger, when he sees that he has been deprived of his
+young, pursues the ravisher precipitately; but the latter, hastening
+away on his swift horse, throws a mirror to him and is safe."
+
+Elsewhere appears Lot's wife changed into a pillar of salt; the lynx who
+can see through a stone wall; the river Lethe; so called because all who
+drink of it forget everything.
+
+Numerous other details might be mentioned, but enough has been said to
+show the curious nature and exceeding interest of this map, in which
+matters of observation and imagination are strangely mixed. Another very
+curious geographical document of that epoch is the map of the world of
+the _Grandes Chroniques de Saint-Denis_. This belongs to the fourteenth
+century. The capitals here too are represented by edifices. The
+Mediterranean is a vertical canal, which goes from the Columns of
+Hercules to Jerusalem. The Caspian Sea communicates with it to the
+north, and the Red Sea to the south-east, by the Nile. It preserves the
+same position for Paradise and for the land of Gog and Magog that we
+have seen before. The geography of Europe is very defective. Britannia
+and Anglia figure as two separate islands, being represented off the
+west coast of Spain, with Allemania and Germania, also two distinct
+countries, to the north. The ocean is represented as round the whole,
+and the various points of the compass are represented by different kinds
+of winds on the outside.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 49.--COSMOGRAPHY OF ST. DENIS.]
+
+This was the general style of the maps of the world at that period, as
+we may perceive from the various illustrations we have been able to
+give, and it curiously initiates us into the mediaeval ideas. Sometimes
+they are surrounded by laughable figures of the winds with inflated
+cheeks, sometimes there are drawn light children of Eolus seated on
+leathern bottles, rotating the liquid within; at other times, saints,
+angels, Adam and Eve, or other people, adorn the circumference of the
+map. Within are shown a profusion of animals, trees, populations,
+monuments, tents, draperies, and monarchs seated on their thrones--an
+idea which was useful, no doubt, and which gave the reader some
+knowledge of the local riches, the ethnography, the local forms of
+government and of architecture in the various countries represented; but
+the drawings were for the most part childish, and more fantastic than
+real. The language, too, in which they were written was as mixed as the
+drawings; no regularity was preserved in the orthography of a name,
+which on the same map may be written in ten different ways, being
+expressed in barbarous Latin, Roman, or Old French, Catalan, Italian,
+Castilian, or Portuguese!
+
+During the same epoch other forms of maps in less detail and of smaller
+size show the characters that we have seen in the maps of earlier
+centuries.
+
+Marco Polo, the traveller, at the end of the fourteenth century, has
+preserved in his writings all the ancient traditions, and united them in
+a singular manner with the results of his own observations. He had not
+seen Paradise, but he had seen the ark of Noah resting on the top of
+Ararat. His map of the world, preserved in the library at Stockholm, is
+oval, and represents two continents.
+
+In that which we inhabit, the only seas indicated are the Mediterranean
+and the Black Sea. Asia appears at the east, Europe to the north, and
+Africa to the south. The other continent to the south of the equator,
+which is not marked, is Antichthonia.
+
+In a map of the world engraved on a medal of the fifteenth century
+during the reign of Charles V. there is still a reminiscence of the
+ideas of the concealed earth and Meropides, as described by Theopompus.
+We see the winds as cherubim; Europe more accurately represented than
+usual; but Africa still unknown, and a second continent, called Brumae,
+instead of Antichthonia, with imaginary details upon it.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 50--THE MAP OF MARCO POLO.]
+
+If such were the ideas entertained amongst the most enlightened nations,
+what may we expect among those who were less advanced? It would take us
+too long to describe all that more Eastern nations have done upon this
+point since the commencement of our present era, but we may give an
+example or two from the Arabians.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 51.--MAP ON A MEDAL OF CHARLES V.]
+
+In the ancient Arabian chronicle of Tabari is a system founded on the
+earth being the solid foundation of all things; we read: "The prophet
+says, the all-powerful and inimitable Deity has created the mountain of
+Kaf round about the earth; it has been called the foundation pile of the
+earth, as it is said in the Koran, 'The mountains are the piles.' This
+world is in the midst of the mountain of Kaf, just as the finger is in
+the midst of the ring. This mountain is emerald, and blue in colour; no
+man can go to it, because he would have to pass four months in darkness
+to do so. There is in that mountain neither sun, nor moon, nor stars;
+it is so blue that the azure colour you see in the heavens comes from
+the brilliancy of the mountain of Kaf, which is reflected in the sky. If
+this were not so the sky would not be blue. All the mountains that you
+see are supported by Kaf; if it did not exist, all the earth would be in
+a continual tremble, and not a creature could live upon its surface. The
+heavens rest upon it like a tent."
+
+Another Arabian author, Benakaty, writing in 1317, says: "Know that the
+earth has the form of a globe suspended in the centre of the heavens. It
+is divided by the two great circles of the meridian and equator, which
+cut each other at light angles, into four equal parts, namely, those of
+the north-west, north-east, south-west, and south-east. The inhabited
+portion of the earth is situated in the southern hemisphere, of which
+one half is inhabited."
+
+Ibn-Wardy, who lived in the same century, adopted the idea of the ocean
+surrounding all the earth, and said we knew neither its depth nor its
+extent.
+
+This ocean was also acknowledged by the author of the Kaf mountain; he
+says it lies between the earth and that mountain, and calls it
+Bahr-al-Mohith.
+
+The end of the fifteenth century saw the dawn of a new era in knowledge
+and science. The discoveries of Columbus changed entirely the aspect of
+matters, the imagination was excited to fresh enterprises, and the
+hardihood of the adventurers through good or bad success was such as
+want of liberty could not destroy.
+
+Nevertheless, as we have seen, Columbus imagined the earth to have the
+shape of a pear. Not that he obtained this idea from his own
+observations, but rather retained it as a relic of past traditions. It
+is probable that it really dates from the seventh century. We may read
+in several cosmographical manuscripts of that epoch, that the earth has
+the form of a cone or a top, its surface rising from south to north.
+These ideas were considerably spread by the compilations of John of
+Beauvais in 1479, from whom probably Columbus derived his notion.
+
+Although Columbus is generally and rightly known as the discoverer of
+the New World, a very curious suit was brought by Pinzon against his
+heirs in 1514. Pinzon pretended that the discovery was due to him alone,
+as Columbus had only followed his advice in making it. Pinzon told the
+admiral himself that the required route was intimated by an inspiration,
+or revelation. The truth was that this "revelation" was due to a flock
+of parrots, flying in the evening towards the south-west, which Pinzon
+concluded must be going in the direction of an invisible coast to pass
+the night in the bushes. Certainly the consequences of Columbus
+resisting the advice of Pinzon would have been most remarkable; for had
+he continued to sail due west he would have been caught by the Gulf
+Stream and carried to Florida, or possibly to Virginia, and in this
+case the United States would have received a Spanish and Catholic
+population, instead of an English and Protestant one.
+
+The discoveries of those days were often commemorated by the formation
+of heraldic devices for the authors of them, and we have in this way
+some curious coats of arms on record. That, for instance, of Sebastian
+Cano was a globe, with the legend, _Primus circumdedisti me_. The arms
+given to Columbus in 1493 consisted of the first map of America, with a
+range of islands in a gulf. Charles V. gave to Diego of Ordaz the figure
+of the Peak of Orizaba as his arms, to commemorate his having ascended
+it; and to the historian Oviedo, who passed thirty-four years without
+interruption (1513-47) in tropical America, the four beautiful stars of
+the Southern Cross.
+
+We have arrived at the close of our history of the attempts that
+preceded the actual discovery of the form and constitution of the globe;
+since these were established our further progress has been in matters of
+detail. There now remains briefly to notice the attempts at discovering
+the size of the earth on the supposition, and afterwards certainty, of
+its being a globe.
+
+The earliest attempt at this was made by Eratosthenes, 246 years before
+our era, and it was founded on the following reasoning. The sun
+illuminates the bottom of pits at Syene at the summer solstice; on the
+same day, instead of being vertical over the heads of the inhabitants
+of Alexandria, it is 7-1/4 degrees from the zenith. Seven-and-a-quarter
+degrees is the fiftieth part of an entire circumference; and the
+distance between the two towns is five thousand stadia; hence the
+circumference of the earth is fifty times this distance, or 250 thousand
+stadia.
+
+A century before our era Posidonius arrived at an analogous result by
+remarking that the star Canopus touched the horizon at Rhodes when it
+was 7 degrees 12 minutes above that of Alexandria.
+
+These measurements, which, though rough, were ingenious, were, followed
+in the eighth century by similar ones by the Arabian Caliph, Almamoun,
+who did not greatly modify them.
+
+The first men who actually went round the world were the crew of the
+ship under Magellan, who started to the west in 1520; he was slain by
+the Philippine islanders in 1521, but his ship, under his lieutenant,
+Sebastian Cano, returned by the east in 1522. The first attempt at the
+actual measurement of a part of the earth's surface along the meridian
+was made by Fernel in 1528. His process was a singular, but simple one,
+namely, by counting the number of the turns made by the wheels of his
+carriage between Paris and Amiens. He made the number 57,020, and
+accurate measurements of the distance many years after showed he had not
+made an error of more than four turns.
+
+The astronomer Picard attempted it again under Louis XIV. by
+triangulation.
+
+The French astronomers have always been forward in this inquiry, and to
+them we owe the systematic attempts to arrive at a truer knowledge of
+the length of an arc of the meridian which were made in 1735-45 in
+Lapland and in Peru; and later under Mechain and Delambre, by order of
+the National Assembly, for the basis of the metrical system.
+
+Observations of this kind have also been made by the English, as at
+Lough Foyle in Ireland, and in India.
+
+The review which has here been made of the various ideas on what now
+seems so simple a matter cannot but impress us with the vast contrast
+there is between the wild attempts of the earlier philosophers and our
+modern affirmations. What progress has been made in the last two
+thousand years! And all of this is due to hard work. The true revelation
+of nature is that which we form ourselves, by our persevering efforts.
+We now know that the earth is approximately spherical, but flattened by
+about 1/300 at the poles, is three-quarters covered with water, and
+enveloped everywhere by a light atmospheric mantle. The distance from
+the centre of the earth to its surface is 3,956 miles, its area is 197
+million square miles, its volume is 256,000 millions of cubic miles, its
+weight is six thousand trillion tons. So, thanks to the bold
+measurements of its inhabitants, we know as much about it as we are
+likely to know for a long time to come.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+LEGENDARY WORLDS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
+
+
+The legends that were for so many ages prevalent in Europe had their
+foundation in the attempt to make the accounts of Scripture and the
+ideas and dogmas of the Fathers of the Church fit into the few and
+insignificant facts that were known with respect to the earth, and the
+system of which it forms a part, and the far more numerous imaginations
+that were entertained about it.
+
+We are therefore led on to examine some of these legends, that we may
+appreciate how far a knowledge of astronomy will effect the eradication
+of errors and fantasies which, under the aspect of truth, have so long
+enslaved the people. No doubt the authors of the legendary stories knew
+well enough their allegorical nature; but those who received them
+supposed that they gave true indications of the nature of the earth and
+world, and therefore accepted them as facts.
+
+Some indeed considered that the whole physical constitution of the world
+was a scaffold or a model, and that there was a real theological
+universe hidden beneath this semblance. No one omitted from his system
+the spiritual heaven in which the angels and just men might spend their
+existence; but in addition to this there were places whose reality was
+believed in, but whose locality is more difficult to settle, and which
+therefore were moved from one place to another by various writers, viz.,
+the infernal regions, purgatory, and the terrestrial paradise.
+
+We will here recount some of those legends, which wielded sufficient
+sway over men's minds as to gain their belief in the veritable existence
+of the places described, and in this way to influence their astronomical
+and cosmographical ideas.
+
+And for the first we will descend to the infernal regions with Plutarch
+and Thespesius.
+
+This Thespesius relates his adventures in the other world. Having fallen
+head-first from an elevated place, he found himself unwounded, but was
+contused in such a way as to be insensible. He was supposed to be dead,
+but, after three days, as they were about to bury him, he came to life
+again. In a few days he recovered his former powers of mind and body;
+but made a marvellous change for the better in his life.
+
+He said that at the moment that he lost consciousness he found himself
+like a sailor at the bottom of the sea; but afterwards, having recovered
+himself a little, he was able to breathe perfectly, and seeing only with
+the eyes of his soul, he looked round on all that was about him. He saw
+no longer the accustomed sights, but stars of prodigious magnitude,
+separated from each other by immense distances. They were of dazzling
+brightness and splendid colour. His soul, carried like a vessel on the
+luminous ocean, sailed along freely and smoothly, and moved everywhere
+with rapidity. Passing over in silence a large number of the sights that
+met his eye, he stated that the souls of the dead, taking the form of
+bubbles of fire, rise through the air, which opens a passage above them;
+at last the bubbles, breaking without noise, let out the souls in a
+human form and of a smaller size, and moving in different ways. Some,
+rising with astonishing lightness, mounted in a straight line; others,
+running round like a whipping-top, went up and down by turns with a
+confused and irregular motion, making small advance by long and painful
+efforts. Among this number he saw one of his parents, whom he recognised
+with difficulty, as she had died in his infancy; but she approached him,
+and said, "Good day, Thespesius." Surprised to hear himself called by
+this name, he told her that he was called Arideus, and not Thespesius.
+"That was once your name," she replied, "but in future you will bear
+that of Thespesius, for you are not dead, only the intelligent part of
+your soul has come here by the particular will of the gods; your other
+faculties are still united to your body, which keeps them like an
+anchor. The proof I will give you is that the souls of the dead do not
+cast any shadow, and they cannot move their eyes."
+
+Further on, in traversing a luminous region, he heard, as he was
+passing, the shrill voice of a female speaking in verse, who presided
+over the time Thespesius should die. His genius told him that it was the
+voice of the Sibyl, who, turning on the orbit of the moon, foretold the
+future. Thespesius would willingly have heard more, but, driven off by a
+rapid whirlwind, he could make out but little of her predictions. In
+another place he remarked several parallel lakes, one filled with melted
+and boiling gold, another with lead colder than ice, and a third with
+very rough iron. They were kept by genii, who, armed with tongs like
+those used in forges, plunged into these lakes, and then withdrew by
+turns, the souls of those whom avarice or an insatiable cupidity had led
+into crime; after they had been plunged into the lake of gold, where the
+fire made them red and transparent, they were thrown into the lake of
+lead. Then, frozen by the cold, and made as hard as hail, they were put
+into the lake of iron, where they became horribly black. Broken and
+bruised on account of their hardness, they changed their form, and
+passed once more into the lake of gold, and suffered in these changes
+inexpressible pain.
+
+In another place he saw the souls of those who had to return to life and
+be violently forced to take the form of all sorts of animals. Among the
+number he saw the soul of Nero, which had already suffered many
+torments, and was bound with red-hot chains of iron. The workmen were
+seizing him to give him the form of a viper, under which he was destined
+to live, after having devoured the womb that bore him.
+
+The locality of these infernal regions was never exactly determined. The
+ancients were divided upon the point. In the poems of Homer the infernal
+regions appear under two different forms: thus, in the _Iliad_, it is a
+vast subterranean cavity; while in the _Odyssey_, it is a distant and
+mysterious country at the extremity of the earth, beyond the ocean, in
+the neighbourhood of the Cimmerians.
+
+The description which Homer gives of the infernal region proves that in
+his time the Greeks imagined it to be a copy of the terrestrial world,
+but one which had a special character. According to the philosophers it
+was equally remote from all parts of the earth. Thus Cicero, in order to
+show that it was of no consequence where one died, said, wherever we die
+there is just as long a journey to be made to reach the "infernal
+regions."
+
+The poets fixed upon certain localities as the entrance to this dismal
+empire: such was the river Lethe, on the borders of the Scythians; the
+cavern Acherusia in Epirus, the mouth of Pluto, in Laodicoea, the cave
+of Zenarus near Lacedaemon.
+
+In the map of the world in the _Polychronicon_ of Ranulphus Uygden, now
+in the British Museum, it is stated: "The Island of Sicily was once a
+part of Italy. There is Mount Etna, containing the infernal regions and
+purgatory, and it has Scylla and Charybdis, two whirlpools."
+
+Ulysses was said to reach the place of the dead by crossing the ocean to
+the Cimmerian land, AEneas to have entered it by the Lake of Avernus.
+Xenophon says that Hercules went there by the peninsula of Arechusiade.
+
+Much of this, no doubt, depends on the exaggeration and
+misinterpretation of the accounts of voyagers; as when the Phoenicians
+related that, after passing the Columns of Hercules, to seek tin in
+Thule and amber in the Baltic, they came, at the extremity of the world,
+to the Fortunate Isles, the abode of eternal spring, and further on to
+the Hyperborean regions, where a perpetual night enveloped the
+country--the imagination of the people developed from this the Elysian
+fields, as the places of delight in the lower regions, having their own
+sun, moon, and stars, and Tartarus, a place of shades and desolation.
+
+In every case, however, both among pagans and Christians, the locality
+was somewhere in the centre of the earth. The poets and philosophers of
+Greece and Rome made very detailed and circumstantial maps of the
+subterranean regions. They enumerated its rivers, its lakes, and woods,
+and mountains, and the places where the Furies perpetually tormented the
+wicked souls who were condemned to eternal punishment. These ideas
+passed naturally into the creeds of Christians through the sect of the
+Essenes, of whom Josephus writes as follows:--"They thought that the
+souls of the just go beyond the ocean to a place of repose and delight,
+where they were troubled by no inconvenience, no change of seasons.
+Those of the wicked, on the contrary, were relegated to places exposed
+to all the inclemencies of the weather, and suffered eternal torments.
+The Essenes," adds the same author, "have similar ideas about these
+torments to those of the Greeks about Tartarus and the kingdom of Pluto.
+The greater part of the Gnostic sects, on the contrary, considered the
+lower regions as simply a place of purgatory, where the soul is purified
+by fire."
+
+Amongst all the writings of Christian ages in which matters such as we
+are now passing in review are described, there is one that stands out
+beyond all others as a masterpiece, and that is the magnificent poem of
+Dante, his _Divine Comedy_, wherein he described the infernal regions as
+they presented themselves to his lively and fertile imagination. We have
+in it a picture of mediaeval ideas, painted for us in indelible lines,
+before the remembrance of them was lost in the past. The poem is at once
+a tomb and a cradle--the tomb of a world that was passing, the cradle of
+the world that was to come: a portico between two temples, that of the
+past and that of the future. In it are deposited the traditions, the
+ideas, the sciences of the past, as the Egyptians deposited their kings
+and symbolic gods in the sepulchres of Thebes and Memphis. The future
+brings into it its aspirations and its germs enveloped in the swaddling
+clothes of a rising language and a splendid poetry--a mysterious infant
+that is nourished by the two teats of sacred tradition and profane
+fiction, Moses and St. Paul, Homer and Virgil.
+
+The theology of Dante, strictly orthodox, was that of St. Thomas and the
+other doctors of the Church. Natural philosophy, properly so called, was
+not yet in existence. In astronomy, Ptolemy reigned supreme, and in the
+explanation of celestial phenomena no one dreamt or dared to dream of
+departing in any way from the traditionally sacred system.
+
+In those days astronomy was indissolubly linked with a complete series
+of philosophical and theological ideas, and included the physics of the
+world, the science of life in every being, of their organisation, and
+the causes on which depended the aptitudes, inclinations, and even in
+part the actions, of men, the destinies of individuals, and the events
+of history. In this theological, astronomical, and terrestrial universe
+everything emanated from God; He had created everything, and the
+creation embraced two orders of beings, the immaterial and the
+corporeal.
+
+The pure spirits composed the nine choirs of the celestial hierarchy.
+Like so many circles, they were ranged round a fixed point, the Eternal
+Being, in an order determined by their relative perfection. First the
+seraphim, then the cherubim, and afterwards the simple angels. Those of
+the first circle received immediately from the central point the light
+and the virtue which they communicated to those of the second; and so
+on from circle to circle, like mirrors which reflect, with an
+ever-lessening light, the brilliancy of a single luminous point. The
+nine choirs, supported by Love, turned without ceasing round their
+centre in larger and larger circles according to their distance; and it
+was by their means that the motion and the divine inflatus was
+communicated to the material creation.
+
+This latter had in the upper part of it the empyreal, or heaven of pure
+light. Below that, was the _Primum mobile_, the greatest body in the
+heavens, as Dante calls it, because it surrounds all the rest of the
+circle, and bounds the material world. Then came the heaven of the fixed
+stars; then, continuing to descend, the heavens of Saturn, Jupiter,
+Mars, the sun, Venus, Mercury, the moon, and lastly, the earth, whose
+solid and compact nucleus is surrounded by the spheres of water, air,
+and fire.
+
+As the choirs of angels turn about a fixed point, so the nine material
+circles turn also about another fixed point, and are moved by the pure
+spirits.
+
+Let us now descend to the geography of the interior of the earth. Within
+the earth is a large cone, whose layers are the frightful abodes of the
+condemned, and which ends in the centre, where the divine Justice keeps
+bound up to his chest in ice the prince of the rebellious angels, the
+emperor of the kingdom of woe. Such are the infernal regions which
+Dante describes according to ideas generally admitted in the middle
+ages.
+
+The form of the infernal regions was that of a funnel or reversed cone.
+All its circles were concentric, and continually diminished; the
+principal ones were nine in number. Virgil also admitted nine
+divisions--three times three, a number sacred _par excellence_. The
+seventh, eighth, and ninth circles were divided into several regions;
+and the space between the entrance to the infernal regions and the river
+Acheron, where the resting-place of the damned really commenced, was
+divided into two parts. Dante, guided by Virgil, traversed all these
+circles.
+
+It was in 1300 that the poet, "in the midst of the course of life," at
+the age of thirty-five, passed in spirit through the three regions of
+the dead. Lost in a lonely, wild, and dismal forest, he reached the base
+of a hill, which he attempted to climb. But three animals, a panther, a
+lion, and a thin and famished wolf, prevented his passage; so, returning
+again where the sun was powerless, into the shades of the depths of the
+valley, there met him a shadow of the dead. This human form, whom a long
+silence had deprived of speech, was Virgil, who was sent to guide and
+succour him by a celestial dame, Beatrice, the object of his love, who
+was at the same time a real and a mystically ideal being.
+
+Virgil and Dante arrived at the gate of the infernal regions; they read
+the terrible inscription placed over the gate; they entered and found
+first those unhappy souls who had lived without virtue and without vice.
+They reached the banks of Acheron and saw Charon, who carried over the
+souls in his bark to the other side; and Dante was surprised by a
+profound sleep. He woke beyond the river, and he descended into the
+Limbo which is the first circle of the infernal regions. He found there
+the souls of those who had died without baptism, or who had been
+indifferent to religion.
+
+They descended next to the second circle, where Minos, the judge of
+those below, is enthroned. Here the luxurious are punished. The poet
+here met with Francesca of Rimini and Paul, her friend. He completely
+recovered the use of his senses, and passed through the third circle,
+where the gourmands are punished. In the fourth he found Plutus, who
+guards it. Here are tormented the prodigal and the avaricious. In the
+fifth are punished those who yield to anger. Dante and Virgil there saw
+a bark approaching, conducted by Phlegias; they entered it, crossed a
+river, and arrived thus at the base of the red-hot iron walls of the
+infernal town of Dite. The demons that guarded the gates refused them
+admittance, but an angel opened them, and the two travellers there saw
+the heretics that were enclosed in tombs surrounded by flames.
+
+The travellers then visited the circles of violence, fraud, and usury,
+when they came to a river of blood guarded by a troop of centaurs;
+suddenly they saw coming to them Geryon, who represents fraud, and
+this beast took them behind him to carry them across the rest of the
+infernal space.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 52.--DANTE'S INFERNAL REGIONS.]
+
+The eighth circle was divided into ten valleys, comprising: the
+flatterers; the simoniacal; the astrologers; the sorcerers; the false
+judges; the hypocrites who walked about clothed with heavy leaden
+garments; the thieves, eternally stung by venomous serpents; the
+heresiarchs; the charlatans, and the forgers.
+
+At last the poets descended into the ninth circle, divided into four
+regions, where are punished four kinds of traitors. Here is recounted
+the admirable episode of Count Ugolin. In the last region, called the
+region of Judas, LUCIFER is enchained. There is the centre of the earth,
+and Dante, hearing the noise of a little brook, reascended to the other
+hemisphere, on the surface of which he found, surrounded by the Southern
+Ocean, the mountain of Purgatory.
+
+Such was the famous _Inferno_ of Dante.
+
+Not only was the geography of the infernal regions attempted in the
+middle ages, but even their size. Dexelius calculated that the number of
+the damned was a hundred millions, and that their abode need not measure
+more than one German mile in every direction. Cyrano of Bergerac
+amusingly said that it was the damned that kept turning the earth, by
+hanging on the ceiling like bats, and trying to get away.
+
+In 1757 an English clergyman, Dr. Swinden, published a book entitled,
+_Researches on the Nature of the Fire of Hell and the Place where it is
+situated_. He places it in the sun. According to him the Christians of
+the first century had placed it beneath the earth on account of a false
+interpretation of the descent of Jesus into hell after his crucifixion,
+and by false ideas of cosmography. He attempted to show, 1st, that the
+terrestrial globe is too small to contain even the angels that fell from
+heaven after their battle; 2nd, that the fire of hell is real, and that
+the closed globe of earth could not support it a sufficiently long
+period; 3rd, that the sun alone presents itself as the necessary place,
+being a well-sustained fire, and directly opposite in situation to
+heaven, since the empyreal is round the outside of the universe, and the
+sun in the centre. What a change to the present ideas, even of doctors
+of divinity, in a hundred years!
+
+So far, then, for mediaeval ideas on the position and character of hell.
+Next as to purgatory.
+
+The voyage to purgatory that has met with most success is certainly the
+celebrated Irish legend of St. Patrick, which for several centuries was
+admitted as authentic, and the account of which was composed certainly a
+century before the poem of Dante.
+
+This purgatory, the entrance to which is drawn in more than one
+illuminated manuscript, is situated in Ireland, on one of the islands
+of Lough Derg, County Donegal, where there are still two chapels and a
+shrine, at which annual ceremonies are performed. A knight, called Owen,
+resolved to visit it for penance; and the chronicle gives us an account
+of his adventures.
+
+First he had his obsequial rites performed, as if he had been dead, and
+then he advanced boldly into the deep ravine; he marched on
+courageously, and entered into the semi-shadows; he marched on, and even
+this funereal twilight abandoned him, and "when he had gone for a long
+time in this obscurity, there appeared to him a little light as it were
+from a glimmer of day." He arrived at a house, built with much care, an
+imposing mansion of grief and hope, a marvellous edifice, but similar
+nevertheless to a monkish cloister, where there was no more light than
+there is in this world in winter at vesper-time.
+
+The knight was in dreadful suspense. Suddenly he heard a terrible noise,
+as if the universe was in a riot; for it seemed certainly to him as if
+every kind of beast and every man in the world were together, and each
+gave utterance to their own cry, at one time and with one voice, so that
+they could not make a more frightful noise.
+
+Then commenced his trials, and discourse with the infernal beings; the
+demons yelled with delight or with fury round him. "Miserable wretch,"
+said some, "you are come here to suffer." "Fly," said others, "for you
+have not behaved well in the time that is passed: if you will take our
+advice, and will go back again to the world, we will take it as a great
+favour and courtesy."
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XII.--THE LEGEND OF OWEN.]
+
+Owen was thrown on the dark shadowy earth, where the demons creep like
+hideous serpents. A mysterious wind, which he scarcely heard, passed
+over the mud, and it seemed to the knight as if he had been pierced by a
+spear-head. After a while the demons lifted him up; they took him
+straight off to the east, where the sun rises, as if they were going to
+the place where the universe ends. "Now, after they had journeyed for a
+long time here and there over divers countries, they brought him to an
+open field, very long and very full of griefs and chastisements; he
+could not see the end of the field, it was so long; there were men and
+women of various ages, who lay down all naked on the ground with their
+bellies downwards, who had hot nails driven into their hands and feet;
+and there was a fiery dragon, who sat upon them and drove his teeth into
+their flesh, and seemed as if he would eat them; hence they suffered
+great agony, and bit the earth in spite of its hardness, and from time
+to time they cried most piteously 'Mercy, mercy;' but there was no one
+there who had pity or mercy, for the devils ran among them and over
+them, and beat them most cruelly."
+
+The devils brought the knight towards a house of punishment, so broad
+and long that one could not see the end. This house is the house of
+baths, like those of the infernal regions, and the souls that are bathed
+in ignominy are there heaped in large vats. "Now so it was, that each of
+these vats was filled with some kind of metal, hot and boiling, and
+there they plunged and bathed many people of various ages, some of whom
+were plunged in over their heads, others up to the eyebrows, others up
+to the eyes, and others up to the mouth. Now all in truth of these
+people cried out with a loud voice and wept most piteously."
+
+Scarcely had the knight passed this terrible place, and left behind in
+his mysterious voyage that column of fire which rose like a lighthouse
+in the shades, and which shone so sadly betwixt hope and eternal
+despair, than a vast and magnificent spectacle displayed itself in the
+subterranean space.
+
+This luminous and odorescent region, where one might see so many
+archbishops, bishops, and monks of every order, was the terrestrial
+paradise; man does not stay there always; they told the knight that he
+could not taste too long its rapid delights; it is a place of transition
+between purgatory and the abodes of heaven, just as the dark places
+which he had traversed were made by the Creator between the world and
+the infernal regions.
+
+"In spite of our joys," said the souls, "we shall pass away from here."
+Then they took him to a mountain, and told him to look, and asked of him
+what colour the heavens seemed to be there where he was standing, and
+he replied it was the colour of burning gold, such as is in the furnace;
+and then they said to him, "That which you see is the entrance to heaven
+and the gate of paradise."
+
+The attempts at identification of hell and purgatory have not been so
+numerous, perhaps because the subjects were not very attractive, except
+as the spite of men might think of them in reference to other people;
+but when we come to the terrestrial paradise, quite a crowd of attempts
+by every kind of writer to fix its position in any and every part of the
+globe is met with on every side.
+
+In the seventeenth century, under Louis XIV., Daniel Huet, Bishop of
+Avranches, gave great attention to the question, and collected every
+opinion that had been expressed upon it, with a view to arriving at some
+definite conclusion for himself. He was astonished at the number of
+writings and the diversity of the opinions they expressed.
+
+"Nothing," he says, "could show me better how little is really known
+about the situation of the terrestrial paradise than the differences in
+the opinions of those who have occupied themselves about the question.
+Some have placed it in the third heaven, some in the fourth, in the
+heaven of the moon, in the moon itself, on a mountain near the lunar
+heaven, in the middle region of the air, out of the earth, upon the
+earth, beneath the earth, in a place that is hidden and separated from
+man. It has been placed under the North Pole, in Tartary, or in the
+place now occupied by the Caspian Sea. Others placed it in the extreme
+south, in the land of fire. Others in the Levant, or on the borders of
+the Ganges, or in the Island of Ceylon, making the name India to be
+derived from Eden, the land where the paradise was situated. It has been
+placed in China, or in an inaccessible place beyond the Black Sea; by
+others in America, in Africa, beneath the equator, in the East, &c. &c."
+
+Notwithstanding this formidable array, the good bishop was bold enough
+to make his choice between them all. His opinion was that the
+dwelling-place of the first man was situated between the Tigris and
+Euphrates, above the place where they separate before falling into the
+Persian Gulf; and, founding this opinion on very extensive reading, he
+declared that of all his predecessors, Calvin had come nearest to the
+truth.
+
+Among the other authors of greater or less celebrity that have occupied
+themselves in this question, we may instance the following:--
+
+Raban Maur (ninth century) believed that the terrestrial paradise was at
+the eastern extremity of the earth. He described the tree of life, and
+added that there was neither heat nor cold in that garden; that immense
+rivers of water nourished all the forest; and that the paradise was
+surrounded by a wall of fire, and its four rivers watered the earth.
+
+James of Vitry supposed Pison to come out of the terrestrial paradise.
+He describes also the garden of Eden; and, like all the cosmographers of
+the middle ages, he placed it in the most easterly portion of the world
+in an inaccessible place, and surrounded by a wall of fire, which rose
+up to heaven.
+
+Dati placed also the terrestrial paradise in Asia, like the
+cosmographers that preceded him, and made the Nile come from the east.
+Stenchus, the librarian of St. Siege, who lived in the sixteenth
+century, devoted several years to the problem, but discovered nothing.
+The celebrated orientalist and missionary Bochart wrote a treatise on
+this subject in 1650. Thevenot published also in the seventeenth century
+a map representing the country of the Lybians, and adds that "several
+great doctors place the terrestrial paradise there."
+
+An Armenian writer who translated and borrowed from St. Epiphanius
+(eighth century) produced a _Memorial on the Four Rivers of the
+Terrestrial Paradise_. He supposes they rise in the unknown land of the
+Amazons, whence also arise the Danube and the Hellespont, and they
+deliver their waters into that great sea that is the source of all seas,
+and which surrounds the four quarters of the globe. He afterwards says,
+following up the same theory, that the rivers of paradise surround the
+world and enter again into the sea, which is the universal ocean."
+
+Gervais and Robert of St. Marien d'Auxerre taught that the terrestrial
+paradise was on the eastern border of the _square_ which formed the
+world. Alain de Lille, who lived in the thirteenth century, maintained
+in his _Anticlaudianus_ that the earth is circular, and the garden of
+Eden is in the east of Asia. Joinville, the friend of St. Louis, gives
+us a curious notion of his geographical ideas, since, with regard to
+paradise, he assures us that the four great rivers of the south come out
+of it, as do the spices. "Here," he says, referring to the Nile, "it is
+advisable to speak of the river which passes by the countries of Egypt,
+and comes from the terrestrial paradise. Where this river enters Egypt
+there are people very expert and experienced, as thieves are here, at
+stealing from the river, who in the evening throw their nets on the
+streams and rivers, and in the morning they often find and carry off the
+spices which are sold here in Europe as coming from Egypt at a good
+rate, and by weight, such as cinnamon, ginger, rhubarb, cloves, lignum,
+aloes, and several other good things, and they say that these good
+things come _from the terrestrial paradise_, and that the wind blows
+them off the trees that are growing there." And he says that near the
+end of the world are the peoples of Gog and Magog, who will come at the
+end of the world with Antichrist.
+
+We find, however, more than descriptions--we have representations of
+the terrestrial paradise by cartographers of the middle ages, some of
+which we have seen in speaking of their general ideas of geography, and
+we will now introduce others.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 53.--PARADISE OF FRA MAURO.]
+
+Fra Mauro, a religious cosmographer of the fifteenth century, gives on
+the east side of a map of the world a representation which shows us that
+at that epoch the "garden of delights" had become very barren. It is a
+vast plain, on which we see Jehovah and the first human couple, with a
+circular rampart surrounding it. The four rivers flow out of it by
+bifurcating. An angel protects the principal gate, which cannot be
+reached but by crossing barren mountains.
+
+The cosmographical map of Gervais, dedicated to the Emperor Otho IV.,
+shows the terrestrial paradise in the centre of the earth, which is
+square, and is situated in the midst of the seas. Adam and Eve appear in
+consultation.
+
+The map of the world prepared by Andreas Bianco, in the fifteenth
+century, represents Eden, Adam and Eve, and the tree of life. On the
+left, on a peninsula, are seen the reprobated people of Gog and Magog,
+who are to accompany Antichrist. Alexander is also represented there,
+but without apparent reason. The paradisaical peninsula has a building
+on it with this inscription, "Ospitius Macarii."
+
+Formalconi says, on this subject, that a certain Macarius lives near
+paradise, who is a witness to all that the author states, and as Bianco
+has indicated, his cell was close to the gates of paradise.
+
+This legend has reference to the pilgrims of St. Macarius, a tradition
+that was spread on the return of the Crusaders, of three monks who
+undertook a voyage to discover the point where the earth and heaven
+meet, that is to say, the place of the terrestrial paradise. The map of
+Rudimentum, a vast compilation published at Luebeck in 1475 by the
+Dominican Brocard, represents the terrestrial paradise surrounded by
+walls, but it is less sterile that in the last picture, as may be seen
+on the next page.
+
+In the year 1503, when Varthema, the adventurous Bolognian, went to the
+Indies by the route of Palestine and Syria, he was shown the
+evil-reputed house which Cain dwelt in, which was not far from the
+terrestrial paradise. Master Gilius, the learned naturalist who
+travelled at the expense of Francis I., had the same satisfaction. The
+simple faith of our ancestors had no hesitation in accepting such
+archaeology.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 54.--THE PARADISE OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.]
+
+The most curious and interesting of all attempts to discover the
+situation of paradise was that made half unconsciously by Columbus when
+he first found the American shore.
+
+In his third voyage, when for the first time he reached the main land,
+he was persuaded not only that he had arrived at the extremity of Asia,
+but that he could not be far from the position of paradise. The Orinoco
+seemed to be one of those four great rivers which, according to
+tradition, came out of the garden inhabited by our first parents, and
+his hopes were supported by the fragrant breezes that blew from the
+beautiful forests on its banks. This, he thought, was but the entrance
+to the celestial dwelling-place, and if he had dared--if a religious
+fear had not held back him who had risked everything amidst the elements
+and amongst men, he would have liked to push forward to where he might
+hope to find the celestial boundaries of the world, and, a little
+further, to have bathed his eyes, with profound humility, in the light
+of the flaming swords which were wielded by two seraphim before the gate
+of Eden.
+
+He thus expresses himself on this subject in his letter to one of the
+monarchs of Spain, dated Hayti, October, 1498. "The Holy Scriptures
+attest that the Lord created paradise, and placed in it the tree of
+life, and made the four great rivers of the earth to pass out of it, the
+Ganges of India, the Tigris, the Euphrates (passing from the mountains
+to form Mesopotamia, and ending in Persia), and the Nile, which rises in
+Ethiopia and goes to the Sea of Alexander. I cannot, nor have been ever
+able to find in the books of the Latins or Greeks anything authentic on
+the site of this terrestrial paradise, nor do I see anything more
+certain in the maps of the world. Some place it at the source of the
+Nile, in Ethiopia; but the travellers who have passed through those
+countries have not found either in the mildness of the climate or in the
+elevation of the site towards heaven anything that could lead to the
+presumption that paradise was there, and that the waters of the Deluge
+were unable to reach it or cover it. Several pagans have written for the
+purpose of proving it was in the Fortunate Isles, which are the
+Canaries. St. Isidore, Bede, and Strabo, St. Ambrosius, Scotus, and all
+judicious theologians affirm with one accord that paradise was in the
+East. It is from thence only that the enormous quantity of water can
+come, seeing that the course of the rivers is extremely long; and these
+waters (of paradise) arrive here, where I am, and form a lake. There are
+great signs here of the neighbourhood of the terrestrial paradise, for
+the site is entirely conformable to the opinion of the saints and
+judicious theologians. The climate is of admirable mildness. I believe
+that if I passed beneath the equinoctial line, and arrived at the
+highest point of which I have spoken, I should find a milder
+temperature, and a change in the stars and the waters; not that I
+believe that the point where the greatest height is situated is
+navigable, or even that there is water there, or that one could reach
+it, but I am convinced that _there_ is the terrestrial paradise, where
+no one can come except by the will of God."
+
+In the opinion of this illustrious navigator the earth had the form of
+a pear, and its surface kept rising towards the east, indicated by the
+point of the fruit. It was there that he supposed might be found the
+garden where ancient tradition imagined the creation of the first human
+couple was accomplished.
+
+We can scarcely think without astonishment of the great amount of
+darkness that obscured scientific knowledge, when this great man
+appeared on the scene of the world, nor of the rapidity with which the
+obscurity and vagueness of ideas were dissipated almost immediately
+after his marvellous discoveries. Scarcely had a half century elapsed
+after his death, than all the geographical fables of the middle ages did
+no more than excite smiles of incredulity, although during his life the
+universal opinion was not much advanced upon the times of the famous
+knight John of Mandeville, who wrote gravely as follows:--
+
+"No mortal man can go to or approach this paradise. By land no one can
+go there on account of savage beasts which are in the deserts, and
+because of mountains and rocks that cannot be passed over, and dark
+places without number; nor can one go there any better by sea; the water
+rushes so wildly, it comes in so great waves, that no vessel dare sail
+against them. The water is so rapid, and makes so great a noise and
+tempest, that no one can hear however loud he is spoken to, and so when
+some great men with good courage have attempted several times to go by
+this river to paradise, in large companies, they have never been able
+to accomplish their journey. On the contrary, many have died with
+fatigue in swimming against the watery waves. Many others have become
+blind, others have become deaf by the noise of the water, and others
+have been suffocated and lost in the waves, so that no mortal man can
+approach it except by the special grace of God."
+
+With one notable exception, no attempts have been made of late years to
+solve such a question. That exception is by the noble and indefatigable
+Livingstone, who declared his conviction to Sir Roderick Murchison, in a
+letter published in the _Athenaeum_, that paradise was situated somewhere
+near the sources of the Nile.
+
+Those generally who now seek an answer to the question of the birthplace
+of the human race do not call it paradise.
+
+Since man is here, and there was a time quite recent, geologically
+speaking, when he was not, there must have been some actual locality on
+the earth's surface where he was first a man. Whether we have, or even
+can hope to have, enough information to indicate where that locality was
+situated, is a matter of doubt. We have not at present. Those who have
+attended most to the subject appear to think some island the most
+probable locality, but it is quite conjectural.
+
+The name "Paradise" appears to have been derived from the Persian, in
+which it means a garden; similarly derived words express the same idea
+in other languages; as in the Hebrew _pardes_, in the Arabian
+_firdaus_, in the Syriac _pardiso_, and in the Armenian _partes_. It has
+been thought that the Persian word itself is derived from the Sanscrit
+_pradesa_, or _paradesa_, which means a circle, a country, or strange
+region; which, though near enough as to sound, does not quite agree as
+to meaning. "Eden" is from a Hebrew root meaning delights.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+ECLIPSES AND COMETS.
+
+
+We have seen in the earlier chapters on the systems of the ancients and
+their ideas of the world how everything was once supposed to have
+exclusive reference to man, and how he considered himself not only chief
+of animate objects, but that his own city was the centre of the material
+world, and his own world the centre of the material universe; that the
+sun was made to shine, as well as the moon and stars, for his benefit;
+and that, were it not for him they would have no reason for existence.
+And we have seen how, step by step, these illusions have been dispelled,
+and he has learnt to appreciate his own littleness in proportion as he
+has realised the immensity of the universe of which he forms part.
+
+If such has been his history, and such his former ideas on the regular
+parts, as we may call them, of nature, much more have similar ideas been
+developed in relation to those other phenomena which, coming at such
+long intervals, have not been recognised by him as periodic, but have
+seemed to have some relation to mundane affairs, often of the smallest
+consequence. Such are eclipses of the sun and moon, comets,
+shooting-stars, and meteors. Among the less instructed of men, even when
+astronomers of the same age and nation knew their real nature, eclipses
+have always been looked upon as something ominous of evil.
+
+Among the ancient nations people used to come to the assistance of the
+moon, by making a confused noise with all kinds of instruments, when it
+was eclipsed. It is even done now in Persia and some parts of China,
+where they fancy that the moon is fighting with a great dragon, and they
+think the noise will make him loose his hold and take to flight. Among
+the East Indians they have the same belief that when the sun and the
+moon are eclipsed, a dragon is seizing them, and astronomers who go
+there to observe eclipses are troubled by the fears of their native
+attendants, and by their endeavours to get into the water as the best
+place under the circumstances. In America the idea is that the sun and
+moon are tired when they are eclipsed. But the more refined Greeks
+believed for a long time that the moon was bewitched, and that the
+magicians made it descend from heaven, to put into the herbs a certain
+maleficent froth. Perhaps the idea of the Dragon arose from the ancient
+custom of calling the places in the heavens at which the eclipses of the
+moon took place the head and tail of the Dragon.
+
+In ancient history we have many curious instances of the very critical
+influence that eclipses have had, especially in the case of events in a
+campaign, where it was thought unfavourable to some projected attempt.
+
+Thus an eclipse of the moon was the original cause of the death of the
+Athenian general Nicias. Just at a critical juncture, when he was about
+to depart from the harbour of Syracuse, the eclipse filled him and his
+whole army with dismay. The result of his terror was that he delayed the
+departure of his fleet, and the Athenian army was cut in pieces and
+destroyed, and Nicias lost his liberty and life.
+
+Plutarch says they could understand well enough the cause of the eclipse
+of the sun by the interposition of the moon, but they could not imagine
+by the opposition of what body the moon itself could be eclipsed.
+
+One of the most famous eclipses of antiquity was that of Thales,
+recorded by Herodotus, who says:--"The Lydians and the Medes were at war
+for five consecutive years. Now while the war was sustained on both
+sides with equal chance, in the sixth year, one day when the armies were
+in battle array, it happened that in the midst of the combat the day
+suddenly changed into night. Thales of Miletus had predicted this
+phenomenon to the Ionians, and had pointed out precisely that very year
+as the one in which it would take place. The Lydians and Medes, seeing
+the night succeeding suddenly to the day, put an end to the combat, and
+only cared to establish peace."
+
+Another notable eclipse is that related by Diodorus Siculus. It was a
+total eclipse of the sun, which took place while Agathocles, fleeing
+from the port of Syracuse, where he was blockaded by the Carthaginians,
+was hastening to gain the coast of Africa. "When Agathocles was already
+surrounded by the enemy, night came on, and he escaped contrary to all
+hope. On the day following so complete an eclipse of the sun took place
+that it seemed altogether night, for the stars shone out in all places.
+The soldiers therefore of Agathocles, persuaded that the gods were
+intending them some misfortune, were in the greatest perturbation about
+the future. Agathocles was equal to the occasion. When disembarked in
+Africa, where, in spite of all his fine words, he was unable to reassure
+his soldiers, whom the eclipse of the sun had frightened, he changed his
+tactics, and pretending to understand the prodigy, "I grant, comrades,"
+he said, "that had we perceived this, eclipse before our embarkation we
+should indeed have been in a critical situation, but now that we have
+seen it after our departure, and as it always signifies a change in the
+present state of affairs, it follows that our circumstances, which were
+very bad in Sicily, are about to amend, while we shall indubitably ruin
+those of the Carthaginians, which have been hitherto so flourishing."
+
+We are reminded by this of the story of Pericles, who, when ready to set
+sail with his fleet on a great expedition, saw himself stopped by a
+similar phenomenon. He spread his mantle over the eyes of the pilot,
+whom fear had prevented acting, and asked him if that was any sign of
+misfortune, when the pilot answered in the negative. "What misfortune
+then do you suppose," said he, "is presaged by the body that hides the
+sun, which differs from this in nothing but being larger?"
+
+With reference to these eclipses, when their locality and approximate
+date is known, astronomy comes to the assistance of history, and can
+supply the exact day, and even hour, of the occurrence. For the eclipses
+depend on the motions of the moon, and just as astronomers can calculate
+both the time and the path of a solar eclipse in the future, so they can
+for the past. If then the eclipses are calculated back to the epoch when
+the particular one is recorded, it can be easily ascertained which one
+it was that about that time passed over the spot at which it was
+observed, and as soon as the particular eclipse is fixed upon, it may be
+told at what hour it would be seen.
+
+Thus the eclipse of Thales has been assigned by different authors to
+various dates, between the 1st of October, 583 B.C., and the 3rd of
+February, 626 B.C. The only eclipse of the sun that is suitable between
+those dates has been found by the Astronomer-Royal to be that which
+would happen in Lydia on the 28th of May, 585 B.C., which must therefore
+be the date of the event.
+
+So of the eclipse of Agathocles, M. Delaunay has fixed its date to the
+15th August, 310 B.C.
+
+In later days, when Christopher Columbus had to deal with the ignorant
+people of America, the same kind of story was repeated. He found himself
+reduced to famine by the inhabitants of the country, who kept him and
+his companions prisoners; and being aware of the approach of the
+eclipse, he menaced them with bringing upon them great misfortunes, and
+depriving them of the light of the moon, if they did not instantly bring
+him provisions. They cared little for his menaces at first; but as soon
+as they saw the moon disappear, they ran to him with abundance of
+victuals, and implored pardon of the conqueror. This was on the 1st of
+March, 1504, a date which may be tested by the modern tables of the
+moon, and Columbus's account proved to be correct. The eclipse was
+indeed recorded in other places by various observers.
+
+Eclipses in their natural aspect have thus had considerable influence on
+the vulgar, who knew nothing of their cause. This of course was the
+state with all in the early ages, and it is interesting to trace the
+gradual progress from their being quite unexpected to their being
+predicted.
+
+It is very probable, if not certain, that their recurrence in the case
+of the moon at least was recognised long before their nature was
+understood.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XIII.--CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS AND THE ECLIPSE OF THE
+MOON.]
+
+Among the Chinese they were long calculated, and, in fact, it is thought
+by some that they have pretended to a greater antiquity by calculating
+backwards, and recording as observed eclipses those which happened
+before they understood or noticed them. It seems, however, authenticated
+that they did in the year 2169 B.C. observe an eclipse of the sun, and
+that at that date they were in the habit of predicting them. For this
+particular eclipse is said to have cost several of the astronomers their
+lives, as they had not calculated it rightly. As the lives of princes
+were supposed to be dependent on these eclipses, it became high treason
+to expose them to such a danger without forewarning them. They paid more
+attention to the eclipses of the sun than of the moon.
+
+Among the Babylonians the eclipses of the moon were observed from a very
+early date, and numerous records of them are contained in the
+Observations of Bel in Sargon's library, the tablets of which have
+lately been discovered. In the older portion they only record that on
+the 14th day of such and such a (lunar) month an eclipse takes place,
+and state in what watch it begins, and when it ends. In a later portion
+the observations were more precise, and the descriptions of the eclipse
+more accurate. Long before 1700 B.C. the discovery of the lunar cycle of
+223 lunar months had been made, and by means of it they were able to
+state of each lunar eclipse, that it was either "according to
+calculation" or "contrary to calculation."
+
+They dealt also with solar eclipses, and tried to trace on a sphere the
+path they would take on the earth. Accordingly, like the eclipses of the
+moon, these too were spoken of as happening either "according to
+calculation" or "contrary to calculation." "In a report sent in to one
+of the later kings of Assyria by the state astronomer, Abil Islar states
+that a watch had been kept on the 28th, 29th, and 30th of Sivan, or May,
+for an eclipse of the sun, which did not, however, take place after all.
+The shadow, it is clear, must have fallen outside the field of
+observation." Besides the more ordinary kind of solar eclipses, mention
+is made in the Observations of Bel of annular eclipses which, strangely
+enough, are seldom alluded to by classical writers.
+
+A record of a later eclipse has been found by Sir Henry Rawlinson on one
+of the Nineveh Tablets. This occurred near that city in B.C. 763, and
+from the character of the inscription it may be inferred that it was a
+rare occurrence with them, indeed that it was nearly, if not quite, a
+total eclipse. This has an especial interest as being the earliest that
+we have any approximate date for.
+
+It is possible that the remarkable phenomenon, alluded to by the prophet
+Isaiah, of the shadow going backwards ten degrees on the dial of Ahaz,
+may be really a record of an eclipse of the sun, such as astronomy
+proves to have occurred at Jerusalem in the year 689 B.C.
+
+We have very little notice of the calculation of eclipses by the
+Egyptians; all that is told us is more or less fabulous. Thus Diogenes
+Laertius says that they reckoned that during a period of 48,863 years,
+373 eclipses of the sun and 832 eclipses of the moon had occurred, which
+is far fewer than the right number for so long a time, and which, of
+course, has no basis in fact.
+
+Among the Greeks, Anaxagoras was the first who entertained clear ideas
+about the nature of eclipses; and it was from him that Pericles learnt
+their harmlessness.
+
+Plutarch relates that Helicon of Cyzicus predicted an eclipse of the sun
+to Dionysius of Syracuse, and received as a reward a talent of silver.
+
+Livy records an eclipse of the sun as having taken place on the 11th of
+Quintilis, which corresponds to the 11th of July. It happened during the
+Appollinarian games, 190 B.C.
+
+The same author tells us of an eclipse of the moon that was predicted by
+one Gallus, a tribune of the second legion, on the eve of the battle of
+Pydna--a prediction which was duly fulfilled on the following night. The
+fact of its having been foretold quieted the superstitious fears of the
+soldiers, and gave them a very high opinion of Gallus. Other authors,
+among them Cicero, do not give so flattering a story, but state that
+Gallus's part consisted only in explaining the cause of the eclipse
+after it had happened. The date of this eclipse was the 3rd of
+September, 168 B.C.
+
+Ennius, writing towards the end of the second century B.C., describes an
+eclipse which was said to have happened nearly two hundred years before
+(404, B.C.), in the following remarkable words:--"On the nones of July
+the moon passed over the sun, and there was night." Aristarchus, three
+centuries before Christ, understood and explained the nature of
+eclipses; but the chief of the ancient authors upon this subject was
+Hipparchus. He and his disciples were able to predict eclipses with
+considerable accuracy, both as to their time and duration. Geminus and
+Cleomedes were two other writers, somewhat later, who explained and
+predicted eclipses. In later times regular tables were drawn up, showing
+when the eclipses would happen. One that Ptolemy was the author of was
+founded on data derived from ancient observers--Callipus, Democritus,
+Eudoxus, Hipparchus--aided by his own calculations. After the days of
+Ptolemy the knowledge of the eclipses advanced _pari passu_ with the
+advance of astronomy generally. So long as astronomy itself was
+empirical, the time of the return of an eclipse was only reckoned by the
+intervals that had elapsed during the same portion of previous cycles;
+but after the discovery of elliptic orbits and the force of gravitation
+the whole motion of the moon could be calculated with as great accuracy
+as any other astronomical phenomenon.
+
+In point of fact, if the new moon is in the plane of the ecliptic there
+must be an eclipse of the sun; if the full moon is there, there must be
+an eclipse of the moon; and if it should in these cases be only
+partially in that plane, the eclipses also will be partial. The cycle of
+changes that the position of the moon can undergo when new and full
+occupies a period of eighteen years and eleven days, in which period
+there are forty-one eclipses of the sun and twenty-nine of the moon.
+Each year there are at most seven and at least two eclipses; if only
+two, they are eclipses of the sun. Although more numerous in reality for
+the whole earth, eclipses of the sun are more rarely observed in any
+particular place, because they are not seen everywhere, but only where
+the shadow of the moon passes; while all that part of the earth that
+sees the moon at all at the time sees it eclipsed.
+
+We now come to comets.
+
+The ancients divided comets into different classes, the chief points
+of distinction being derived from the shape, length, and brilliancy
+of the tails. Pliny distinguished twelve kinds, which he thus
+characterised:--"Some frighten us by their blood-coloured mane; their
+bristling hair rises towards the heaven. The bearded ones let their long
+hair fall down like a majestic beard. The javelin-shaped ones seem to
+be projected forwards like a dart, as they rapidly attain their shape
+after their first appearance; if the tail is shorter, and terminates in
+a point, it is called a sword; this is the palest of all the comets; it
+has the appearance of a bright sword without any diverging rays. The
+plate or disc derives its name from its shape, its colour is that of
+amber, it gives out some diverging rays from its sides, but not in large
+quantity. The cask has really the form of a cask, which one might
+suppose to be staved in smoke enveloped in light. The retort imitates
+the figure of a horn, and the lamp that of a burning flame. The
+horse-comet represents the mane of a horse which is violently agitated,
+as by a circular, or rather cylindrical, motion. Such a comet appears
+also of singular whiteness, with hair of a silver hue; it is so bright
+that one can scarcely look at it. There are bristling comets, they are
+like the skins of beasts with their hair on, and are surrounded by a
+nebulosity. Lastly, the hair of the comet sometimes takes the form of a
+lance."
+
+Pingre, a celebrated historian of comets, tells us that one of the first
+comets noticed in history is that which appeared over Rome forty years
+before Christ, and in which the Roman people imagined they saw the soul
+of Caesar endowed with divine honours. Next comes that which threw its
+light on Jerusalem when it was being besieged and remained for a whole
+year above the city, according to the account of Josephus. It was of
+this kind that Pliny said it "is of so great a whiteness that one can
+scarcely look at it, and _one may see in it the image of God in human
+form_."
+
+Diodorus tells us that, a little after the subversion of the towns of
+Helix and Bura, there were seen, for several nights in succession, a
+brilliant light, which was called a beam of fire, but which Aristotle
+says was a true comet.
+
+Plutarch, in his life of Timoleon, says a burning flame preceded the
+fleet of this general until his arrival at Sicily, and that during the
+consulate of Caius Servilius a bright shield was seen suspended in the
+heavens.
+
+The historians Sazoncenas and Socrates relate that in the year 400 A.D.
+a comet in the form of a sword shone over Constantinople, and appeared
+to touch the town just at the time when great misfortunes were impending
+through the treachery of Gainas.
+
+The same phenomenon appeared over Rome previous to the arrival of
+Alaric.
+
+In fact the ancient chroniclers always associated the appearance of a
+comet with some terrestrial event, which it was not difficult to do,
+seeing that critical situations were at all times existing in some one
+country or other where the comet would be visible, and probably those
+which could not be connected with any were not thought worthy of being
+recorded.
+
+It is well known that the year 1000 A.D. was for a long time predicted
+to be the end of the world. In this year the astronomers and
+chroniclers registered the fall of an enormous burning meteor and the
+appearance of a comet. Pingre says: "On the 19th of the calends of
+January"--that is the 14th of December--"the heavens being dark, a kind
+of burning sword fell to the earth, leaving behind it a long train of
+light. Its brilliancy was such that it frightened not only those who
+were in the fields, but even those who were shut up in their houses.
+This great opening in the heavens was gradually closed, and then was
+seen the figure of a dragon, whose feet were blue, and whose head kept
+continually increasing. A comet having appeared at the same time as this
+chasm, or meteor, they were confounded." This relation is given in the
+chronicles of Seigbert in Hermann Corner, in the Chronique de Tours, in
+Albert Casin, and other historians of the time.
+
+Bodin, resuscitating an idea of Democritus, wrote that the comets were
+the souls of illustrious personages, who, after having lived on the
+earth a long series of centuries, and being ready at last to pass away,
+were carried in a kind of triumph to heaven. For this reason, famine,
+epidemics, and civil wars followed on the apparition of comets, the
+towns and their inhabitants finding themselves then deprived of the help
+of the illustrious souls who had laboured to appease their intestinal
+feuds.
+
+One of the comets of the middle ages which made the greatest impression
+on the minds of the people was that which appeared during Holy Week of
+the year 837, and frightened Louis the Debonnaire. The first morning of
+its appearance he sent for his astrologer. "Go," he said, "on to the
+terrace of the palace, and come back again immediately and tell me what
+you have seen, for I have not seen that star before, and you have not
+shown it to me; but I know that this sign is a comet: it announces a
+change of reign and the death of a prince." The son of Charlemagne
+having taken counsel with his bench of bishops, was convinced that the
+comet was a notice sent from heaven expressly for him. He passed the
+nights in prayer, and gave large donations to the monasteries, and
+finally had a number of masses performed out of fear for himself and
+forethought for the Church committed to his care. The comet, however,
+was a very inoffensive one, being none other than that known as Halley's
+comet, which returned in 1835. While they were being thus frightened in
+France, the Chinese were observing it astronomically.
+
+The historian of Merlin the enchanter relates that a few days after the
+_fetes_ which were held on the occasion of the erection of the funeral
+monument of Salisbury, a sign appeared in heaven. It was a comet of
+large size and excessive splendour. It resembled a dragon, out of whose
+mouth came a long two-forked tongue, one part of which turned towards
+the north and the other to the east. The people were in a state of fear,
+each one asking what this sign presaged. Uter, in the absence of the
+king, Ambrosius, his brother, who was engaged in pursuing one of the
+sons of Vortigern, consulted all the wise men of Britain, but no one
+could give him any answer. Then he thought of Merlin the enchanter, and
+sent for him to the court. "What does this apparition presage?" demanded
+the king's brother. Merlin began to weep. "O son of Britain, you have
+just had a great loss--the king is dead." After a moment of silence he
+added, "But the Britons have still a king. Haste thee, Uter, attack the
+enemy. All the island will submit to you, for the figure of the fiery
+dragon is thyself. The ray that goes towards Gaul represents a son who
+shall be born to thee, who will be great by his achievements, and not
+less so by his power. The ray that goes towards Ireland represents a
+daughter of whom thou shalt be the father, and her sons and grandsons
+shall reign over all the Britons." These predictions were realised; but
+it is more than probable that they were made up after the event.
+
+The comet of 1066 was regarded as a presage of the Conquest under
+William of Normandy. In the Bayeaux tapestry, on which Matilda of
+Flanders had drawn all the most memorable episodes in the transmarine
+expedition of her husband, the comet appears in one of the corners with
+the inscription, _Isti mirantur stellam_, which proves that the comet
+was considered a veritable marvel. It is said even to be traditionally
+reported that one of the jewels of the British crown was taken from the
+tail of this comet. Nevertheless it was no more than Halley's comet
+again in its periodical visit every seventy-six years.
+
+In July, 1214, a brilliant comet appeared which was lost to view on the
+same day as the Pope, Urban IV., died, _i.e._ the third of October.
+
+In June, 1456, a similar body of enormous size, with a very long and
+extraordinarily bright tail, put all Christendom in a fright. The Pope,
+Calixtus III., was engaged in a war at that time with the Saracens. He
+showed the Christians that the comet "had the form of a cross," and
+announced some great event. At the same time Mahomet announced to his
+followers that the comet, "having the form of a yataghan," was a
+blessing of the Prophet's. It is said that the Pope afterwards
+recognised that it had this form, and excommunicated it. Nevertheless,
+the Christians obtained the victory under the walls of Belgrade. This
+was another appearance of Halley's comet.
+
+In the early months of 1472 appeared a large comet, which historians
+agree in saying was very horrible and alarming. Belleforest said it was
+a hideous and frightening comet, which threw its rays from east to west,
+giving great cause for fear to great people, who were not ignorant that
+comets are the menacing rods of God, which admonish those who are in
+authority, that they may be converted.
+
+Pingre, who has told us of so many of the comets that were seen before
+his time, wrote of this epoch: "Comets became the most efficacious signs
+of the most important and doubtful events. They were charged to announce
+wars, seditions, and the internal movements of republics; they presaged
+famines, pestilence, and epidemics; princes, or even persons of dignity,
+could not pay the tribute of nature without the previous appearance of
+that universal oracle, a comet; men could no longer be surprised by any
+unexpected event; the future might be as easily read in the heavens as
+the past in history. Their effect depended on the place in the heavens
+where they shone, the countries over which they directly lay, the signs
+of the zodiac that they measured by their longitude, the constellations
+they traversed, the form and length of their tails, the place where they
+went out, and a thousand other circumstances more easily indicated than
+distinguished; they also announced in general wars, and the death of
+princes, or some grand personage, but there were few years that passed
+without something of this kind occurring. The devout astrologers--for
+there were many of that sort--risked less than the others. According to
+them, the comet threatened some misfortune; if it did not happen, it was
+because the prayers of penitence had turned aside the wrath of God; he
+had returned his sword to the scabbard. But a rule was invented which
+gave the astrologers free scope, for they said that events announced by
+a comet might be postponed for one or more periods of forty years, or
+even as many years as the comet had appeared days; so that one which had
+appeared for six months need not produce its effect for 180 years."
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 55.--REPRESENTATION OF A COMET, 16TH CENTURY.]
+
+The most frightful of the comets of this period, according to Simon
+Goulart, was that of 1527. "It put some into so great a fright that they
+died; others fell sick. It was seen by several thousand people, and
+appeared very long, and of the colour of blood. At the summit was seen
+the representation of a curved arm, holding a large sword in its hand,
+as if it would strike; at the top of the point of the sword were three
+stars, but that which touched the point was more brilliant than the
+others. On the two sides of the rays of this comet were seen large
+hatchets, poignards, bloody swords, among which were seen a great
+number of men decapitated, having their heads and beards horribly
+bristling."
+
+A view of this comet is given in the _History of Prodigies_.
+
+There was another comet remarked in 1556, and another in 1577, like the
+head of an owl, followed by a mantle of scattered light, with pointed
+ends. Of this comet we read in the same book that recorded the last
+described: "The comet is an infallible sign of a very evil event.
+Whenever eclipses of the sun or moon, or comets, or earthquakes,
+conversions of water into blood, and such like prodigies happen, it has
+always been known that very soon after these miserable portents
+afflictions, effusion of human blood, massacres, deaths of great
+monarchs, kings, princes, and rulers, seditions, treacheries, raids,
+overthrowings of empires, kingdoms, or villages; hunger and scarcity of
+provisions, burning and overthrowing of towns; pestilences, widespread
+mortality, both of beasts and men; in fact all sorts of evils and
+misfortunes take place. Nor can it be doubted that all these signs and
+prodigies give warning that the end of the world is come, and with it
+the terrible last judgment of God."
+
+But even now comets were being observed astronomically, and began to
+lose their sepulchral aspect.
+
+A remarkable comet, however, which appeared in 1680, was not without its
+fears for the vulgar. We are told that it was recognised as the same
+which appeared the year of Caesar's death, then in 531, and afterwards
+in 1106, having a period of about 575 years. The terror it produced in
+the towns was great; timid spirits saw in it the sign of a new deluge,
+as they said water was always announced by fire. While the fearful were
+making their wills, and, in anticipation of the end of the world, were
+leaving their money to the monks, who in accepting them showed
+themselves better physicists than the testators, people in high station
+were asking what great person it heralded the death of, and it is
+reported of the brother of Louis XIV., who apparently was afraid of
+becoming too suddenly like Caesar, that he said sharply to the courtiers
+who were discussing it, "Ah, gentlemen, you may talk at your ease, if
+you please; you are not princes."
+
+This same comet gave rise to a curious story of an "extraordinary
+prodigy, how at Rome a hen laid an egg on which was drawn a picture of
+the comet.
+
+"The fact was attested by his Holiness, by the Queen of Sweden, and all
+the persons of first quality in Rome. On the 4th December, 1680, a hen
+laid an egg on which was seen the figure of the comet, accompanied by
+other marks such as are here represented. The cleverest naturalists in
+Rome have seen and examined it, and have never seen such a prodigy
+before."
+
+Of this same comet Bernouilli wrote, "_That if the body of the comet is
+not a visible sign of the anger of God, the tail may be_." It was this
+too that suggested to Whiston the idea that he put forward, not as a
+superstitious, but as a physical speculation, that a comet approaching
+the earth was the cause of the deluge.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 56.--AN EGG MARKED WITH A COMET.]
+
+The last blow to the superstitious fear of the comets was given by
+Halley, when he proved that they circulated like planets round the sun,
+and that the comets noticed in 837, 1066, 1378, 1456, 1531, 1607, 1682
+were all one, whose period was about 76 years, and which would return in
+1759, which prediction was verified, and the comet went afterwards by
+the name of this astronomer. It returned again in 1835, and will revisit
+us in 1911.
+
+Even after the fear arising from the relics of astrology had died away,
+another totally different alarm was connected with comets--an alarm
+which has not entirely subsided even in our own times. This is that a
+comet may come in contact with the earth and destroy it by the
+collision. The most remarkable panic in this respect was that which
+arose in Paris in 1773. At the previous meeting of the Academy of
+Sciences, M. Lalande was to have read an interesting paper, but the time
+failed. It was on the subject of comets that could, by approaching the
+earth, cause its destruction, with special reference to the one that was
+soon to come. From the title only of the paper the most dreadful fears
+were spread abroad, and, increasing day by day, were with great
+difficulty allayed. The house of M. Lalande was filled with those who
+came to question him on the memoir in question. The fermentation was so
+great that some devout people, as ignorant as weak, asked the archbishop
+to make a forty hours' prayer to turn away the enormous deluge that they
+feared, and the prelate was nearly going to order these prayers, if the
+members of the Academy had not persuaded him how ridiculous it would be.
+Finally, M. Lalande, finding it impossible to answer all the questions
+put to him about his fatal memoir, and wishing to prevent the real evils
+that might arise from the frightened imaginations of the weak, caused
+it to be printed, and made it as clear as was possible. When it
+appeared, it was found that he stated that of the sixty comets known
+there were eight which could, by coming too near the earth, say within
+40,000 miles, occasion such a pressure that the sea would leave its bed
+and cover part of the globe, but that in any case this could not happen
+till after twenty years. This was too long to make it worth while to
+make provision for it, and the effervescence subsided.
+
+A similar case to this occurred with respect to Biela's comet, which was
+to return in 1832. In calculating its reappearance in this year,
+Damoiseau found that it would pass through the plane of the earth's
+orbit on the 29th of October. Rushing away with this, the papers made
+out that a collision was inevitable, and the end of the world was come.
+But no one thought to inquire where the earth would be when the comet
+passed through the plane in which it revolved. Arago, however, set
+people's minds at rest by pointing out that at that time the earth would
+be a month's journey from the spot, which with the rate at which the
+earth is moving would correspond to a distance of sixty millions of
+miles.
+
+This, like other frights, passed away, but was repeated again in 1840
+and 1857 with like results, and even in 1872 a similar end to the world
+was announced to the public for the 12th of August, on the supposed
+authority of a Professor at Geneva, but who had never said what was
+supposed.
+
+But in reality all cause of fear has now passed away, since it has been
+proved that the comet is made of gaseous matter in a state of extreme
+tenuity, so that, though it may make great show in the heavens, the
+whole mass may not weigh more than a few pounds; and we have in addition
+the testimony of experience, which might have been relied on on the
+occasions above referred to, for in 1770 Lexele's comet was seen to pass
+through the satellites of Jupiter without deranging them in the least,
+but was itself thrown entirely out of its path, while there is reason to
+believe that on the 29th of June, 1861, the earth remained several hours
+in the tail of a comet without having experienced the slightest
+inconvenience.
+
+As to the nature of comets, the opinions that have been held have been
+mostly very vague. Metrodorus thought they were reflections from the
+sun; Democritus, a concourse of several stars; Aristotle, a collection
+of exhalations which had become dry and inflamed; Strabo, that they are
+the splendour of a star enveloped in a cloud; Heracletes of Pontus, an
+elevated cloud which gave out much light; Epigenes, some terrestrial
+matter that had caught fire, and was agitated by the wind; Boecius,
+part of the air, coloured; Anaxagoras, sparks fallen from the elementary
+fire; Xenophanes, a motion and spreading out of clouds which caught
+fire; and Descartes, the debris of vortices that had been destroyed, the
+fragments of which were coming towards us.
+
+It is said that the Chaldaeans held the opinion that they were analogous
+to planets by their regular course, and that when we ceased to see them,
+it was because they had gone too far from us; and Seneca followed this
+explanation, since he regarded them as globes turning in the heavens,
+and which appear and disappear in certain times, and whose periodical
+motions might be known by regular observation.
+
+We have thus traced the particular ideas that have attached themselves
+to eclipses and comets, as the two most remarkable of the extraordinary
+phenomena of the heavens, and have seen how the fears and superstitions
+of mankind have been inevitably linked with them in the earlier days of
+ignorance and darkness, but they are only part of a system of phenomena,
+and have been no more connected with superstition than others less
+remarkable, except in proportion to their remarkableness. Other minor
+appearances that are at all unusual have, on the same belief in the
+inextricable union of celestial and terrestrial matters, been made the
+signs of calamities or extra-prosperity; the doleful side of human
+nature being usually the strongest, the former have been chosen more
+often than the latter.
+
+According to Seneca, the tradition of the Chaldees announced that a
+universal deluge would be caused by the conjunction of all the planets
+in the sign of Capricorn, and that a general breaking up of the earth
+would take place at the moment of their conjunction in Cancer. "The
+general break-up of the world," they said, "will happen when the stars
+which govern the heaven, penetrated with a quality of heat and dryness,
+meet one another in a fiery triplicity."
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XIV.--PRODIGIES IN THE MIDDLE AGES.]
+
+Everywhere, and in all ages of the past, men have thought that a
+protecting providence, always watching over them, has taken care to warn
+them of the destinies which await them; thence the good and evil
+_presages_ taken from the appearance of certain heavenly bodies, of
+divers meteors, or even the accidental meeting of certain animate or
+inanimate objects. The Indian of North America dying of famine in his
+miserable cabin, will not go out to the chase if he sees certain
+presages in the atmosphere. Nor need we be astonished at such ideas in
+an uncultivated man, when even among Europeans, a salt-cellar upset, a
+glass broken, a knife and fork crossed, the number thirteen at dinner,
+and such things are regarded as unlucky accidents. The employment of
+sorcery and divination is closely connected with these superstitions.
+Besides eclipses and comets, meteors were taken as the signs of divine
+wrath. We learn from S. Maximus of Turin, that the Christians of his
+time admitted the necessity of making a noise during eclipses, so as
+to prevent the magicians from hurting the sun or moon, a superstition
+entirely pagan. They used to fancy they could see celestial armies in
+the air, coming to bring miraculous assistance to man. They thought the
+hurricanes and tempests the work of evil spirits, whose rage kept them
+set against the earth. S. Thomas Aquinas, the great theologian of the
+thirteenth century, accepted this opinion, just as he admitted the
+reality of sorceries. But the full development, as well as the
+nourishment of these superstitious ideas, was derived from the
+storehouse of astrology, which dealt with matters of ordinary
+occurrence, both in the heavens and on the earth--and to the history of
+which our next chapter is devoted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE GREATNESS AND THE FALL OF ASTROLOGY.
+
+
+Our study of the opinions of the ancients on the various phenomena of
+astronomy, leads us inevitably to the discussion of their astrology,
+which has in every age and among every people accompanied it--and though
+astrology be now no more as a science, or lingers only with those who
+are ignorant and desirous of taking advantage of the still greater
+ignorance of others--yet it is not lacking in interest as showing the
+effect of the phenomena of the heavens on the human mind, when that
+effect is brought to its most technical and complete development.
+
+We must distinguish in the first place two kinds of astrology, viz.,
+natural and judicial. The first proposed to foresee and announce the
+changes of the seasons, the rains, wind, heat, cold, abundance, or
+sterility of the ground, diseases, &c., by means of a knowledge of the
+causes which act on the air and on the atmosphere. The other is occupied
+with objects which would be still more interesting to men. It traced at
+the moment of his birth, or at any other period of his life, the line
+that each must travel according to his destiny. It pretended to
+determine our characters, our passions, fortune, misfortunes, and perils
+in reserve for each mortal.
+
+We have not here to consider the natural astrology, which is a veritable
+science of observation and does not deserve the name of astrology. It is
+rather worthy to be called the meteorological calendar of its
+cultivators. More rural than their descendants of the nineteenth
+century, the ancients had recognised the connection between the
+celestial phenomena and the vicissitudes of the seasons; they observed
+these phenomena carefully to discover the return of the same
+inclemencies; and they were able (or thought they were) to state the
+date of the return of particular kinds of weather with the same
+positions of the stars. But the very connection with the stars soon led
+the way to a degeneracy. The autumnal constellations, for example, Orion
+and Hercules, were regarded as rainy, because the rains came at the time
+when these stars rose. The Egyptians who observed in the morning, called
+Sirius "the burning," because his appearance in the morning was followed
+by the great heat of the summer: and it was the same with the other
+stars. Soon they regarded them as the cause of the rain and the
+heat--although they were but remote witnesses. The star Sirius is still
+connected with heat--since we call it the dog-star--and the hottest days
+of the year, July 22nd to August 23rd, we call dog-days. At the
+commencement of our era, the morning rising of Sirius took place on the
+earlier of those days--though it does not now rise in the morning till
+the middle of August--and 4,000 years ago it rose about the 20th of
+June, and preceded the annual rise of the Nile.
+
+The belief in the meteorological influence of the stars is one of the
+causes of judicial astrology. This latter has simply subjected man, like
+the atmosphere, to the influence of the stars; it has made dependent on
+them the risings of his passions, the good and ill fortune of his life,
+as well as the variations of the seasons. Indeed, it was very easy to
+explain. It is the stars, or heavenly bodies in general, that bring the
+winds, the rains, and the storms; their influences mixed with the action
+of the rays of the sun modify the cold or heat; the fertility of the
+fields, health or sickness, depend on these beneficial or injurious
+influences; not a blade of grass can grow without all the stars having
+contributed to its increase; man breathes the emanations which escaping
+from the heavenly bodies fill the air; man is therefore in his entire
+nature subjected to them; these stars must therefore influence his will
+and his passions; the good and evil passages in his career, in a word,
+must direct his life.
+
+As soon as it was established that the rising of a certain star or
+planet, and its aspect with regard to other planets, announced a certain
+destiny to man, it was natural to believe that the rarer configurations
+signified extraordinary events, which concerned great empires, nations,
+and towns. And lastly, since errors grow faster than truth, it was
+natural to think that the configurations which were still more rare,
+such as the reunion of all the planets in conjunction with the same
+star, which can occur only after thousands of centuries, while nations
+have been renewed an infinity of times, and empires have been ruined,
+had reference to the earth itself, which had served as the theatre for
+all these events. Joined to these superstitious ideas was the tradition
+of a deluge, and the belief that the world must one day perish by fire,
+and so it was announced that the former event took place when all the
+planets were in conjunction in the sign of the Fishes, and the latter
+would occur when they all met in the sign of the Lion.
+
+The origin of astrology, like that of the celestial sphere, was in all
+probability in upper Asia.
+
+There, the starry heavens, always pure and splendid, invited observation
+and struck the imagination. We have already seen this with respect to
+the more matter-of-fact portions of astronomy. The Assyrians looked upon
+the stars as divinities endued with beneficent or maleficent power. The
+adoration of the heavenly bodies was the earliest form of religion among
+the pastoral population that came down from the mountains of Kurdestan
+to the plains of Babylon. The Chaldaeans at last set apart a sacerdotal
+and learned caste devoted to the observation of the heavens; and the
+temples became regular observatories. Such doubtless was the tower of
+Babel--a monument consecrated to the seven planets, and of which the
+account has come down to us in the ancient book of Genesis.
+
+A long series of observations put the Chaldaeans in possession of a
+theological astronomy, resting on a more or less chimerical theory of
+the influence of the celestial bodies on the events of nations and
+private individuals. Diodorus Siculus, writing towards the commencement
+of our era, has put us in possession of the most circumstantial details
+that have reached us with regard to the Chaldaean priests.
+
+At the head of the gods, the Assyrians placed the sun and moon, whose
+courses and daily positions they had noted in the constellation of the
+zodiac, in which the sun remained, one month in each. The twelve signs
+were governed by as many gods, who had the corresponding months under
+their influence. Each of these months were divided into three parts,
+which made altogether thirty-six subdivisions, over which as many stars
+presided, called gods of consultation. Half of these gods had under
+their control the things which happen above the earth, and the other
+half those below. The sun and moon and the five planets occupied the
+most elevated rank in the divine hierarchy and bore the name of gods of
+interpretation. Among these planets Saturn or old Bel, which was
+regarded as the highest star and the most distant from us, was
+surrounded by the greatest veneration; he was the interpreter _par
+excellence_--the revealer. Each of the other planets had his own
+particular name. Some of them, such as _Bel_ (Jupiter), _Merodaez_
+(Mars), _Nebo_ (Mercury), were regarded as male, and the others, as
+_Sin_ (the Moon), and _Mylitta_ or _Baulthis_ (Venus), as females; and
+from their position relative to the zodiacal constellations, which were
+also called _Lords_ or masters of the _Gods_, the Chaldaeans derived the
+knowledge of the destiny of the men who were born under such and such a
+conjunction--predictions which the Greeks afterwards called horoscopes.
+The Chaldaeans invented also relations between each of the planets and
+meteorological phenomena, an opinion partly founded on fortuitous
+coincidences which they had more or less frequently observed. In the
+time of Alexander their credit was considerable, and the king of
+Macedonia, either from superstition or policy, was in the habit of
+consulting them.
+
+It is probable that the Babylonian priests, who referred every natural
+property to sidereal influences, imagined there were some mysterious
+relations between the planets and the metals whose colours were
+respectively somewhat analogous to theirs. Gold corresponded to the sun,
+silver to the moon, lead to Saturn, iron to Mars, tin to Jupiter, and
+mercury still retains the name of the planet with which it was
+associated. It is less than two centuries ago, since the metals have
+ceased to be designated by the signs of their respective planets.
+Alchemy, the mother of chemistry, was an intimately connected sister of
+Astrology, the mother of Astronomy.
+
+Egyptian civilisation dates back to a no less remote period than that of
+Babylon. Not less careful observers than the Babylonish astrologers of
+the meteors and the atmospheric revolutions, they could predict certain
+phenomena, and they gave it out that they had themselves been the cause
+of them.
+
+Diodorus Siculus tells us that the Egyptian priests pretty generally
+predicted the years of barrenness or abundance, the contagions, the
+earthquakes, inundations, and comets. The knowledge of celestial
+phenomena made an essential part of the theology of the Egyptians as it
+did of the Chaldaeans. They had colleges of priests specially attached to
+the study of the stars, at which Pythagoras, Plato, and Eudoxus were
+instructed.
+
+Religion was besides completely filled with the symbols relating to the
+sun or moon. Each month, each decade, each day was consecrated to a
+particular god. These gods, to the number of thirty, were called in the
+Alexandrine astronomy _decans_ ([Greek: dekavoi]). The festivals were
+marked by the periodical return of certain astronomical phenomena, and
+those heliacal risings to which any mythological ideas were attached,
+were noted with great care. We find even now proof of this old
+sacerdotal science in the zodiac sculptured on the ceilings of certain
+temples, and in the hieroglyphic inscriptions relating to celestial
+phenomena.
+
+According to the Egyptians, who were no less aware than the Greeks, of
+the influence of atmospheric changes on our organs, the different stars
+had a special action on each part of the body. In the funeral rituals
+which were placed at the bottom of the coffins, constant allusion is
+made to this theory. Each limb of the dead body was placed under the
+protection of a particular god. The divinities divided between them, so
+to speak, the spoils of the dead. The head belonged to Ra, or the Sun,
+the nose and lips to Anubis, and so on. To establish the horoscope of
+anyone, this theory of specific influences was combined with the state
+of the heavens at the time of his birth. It seems even to have been the
+doctrine of the Egyptians, that a particular star indicated the coming
+of each man into the world, and this opinion was held also by the Medes,
+and is alluded to in the Gospels. In Egypt, as in Persia and Chaldaea,
+the science of nature was a sacred doctrine, of which magic and
+astrology constituted the two branches, and in which the phenomena of
+the universe were attached very firmly to the divinities or genii with
+which they believed it filled. It was the same in the primitive
+religions of Greece.
+
+The Thessalian women had an especially great reputation in the art of
+enchantments. All the poets rival one another in declaring how they are
+able, by their magical hymns, to bring down the moon. Menander, in his
+comedy entitled _The Thessalian_, represents the mysterious ceremonies
+by the aid of which these sorcerers force the moon to leave the heavens,
+a prodigy which so completely became the type of enchantments that
+Nonnus tells us it is done by the Brahmins. There was, in addition,
+another _cultus_ in Greece, namely, that of Hecate with mysterious rays,
+the patron of sorcerers. Lucian of Samosate--if the work on astrology
+which is ascribed to him be really his--justifies his belief in the
+influence of the stars in the following terms:--"The stars follow their
+orbit in the heaven; but independently of their motion, they act upon
+what passes here below. If you admit that a horse in a gallop, that
+birds in flying, and men in walking, make the stones jump or drive the
+little floating particles of dust by the wind of their course, why
+should you deny that the stars have any effect? The smallest fire sends
+us its emanations, and although it is not for us that the stars burn,
+and they care very little about warming us, why should we not receive
+any emanations from them? Astrology, it is true, cannot make that good
+which is evil. It can effect no change in the course of events; but it
+renders a service to those who cultivate it by announcing to them good
+things to come; it procures joy by anticipation at the same time that it
+fortifies them against the evil. Misfortune, in fact, does not take them
+by surprise, the foreknowledge of it renders it easier and lighter. That
+is my way of looking at astrology."
+
+Very different is the opinion of the satirist Juvenal, who says that
+women are the chief cultivators of it. "All that an astrologer predicts
+to them," he says, "they think to come from the temple of Jupiter. Avoid
+meeting with a lady who is always casting up her _ephemerides_, who is
+so good an astrologer that she has ceased to consult, and is already
+beginning to be consulted; such a one on the inspection of the stars
+will refuse to accompany her husband to the army or to his native land.
+If she only wishes to drive a mile, the hour of departure is taken from
+her book of astrology. If her eye itches and wants rubbing, she will do
+nothing till she has run through her conjuring book. If she is ill in
+bed, she will take her food only at the times fixed in her _Petosiris_.
+Women of second-rate condition," he adds, "go round the circus before
+consulting their destiny, after which they show their hands and face to
+the diviner."
+
+When Octavius came into the world a senator versed in astrology,
+Nigidius Figulus, predicted the glorious destiny of the future emperor.
+Livia, the wife of Tiberius, asked another astrologer, Scribius, what
+would be the destiny of her infant; his reply was, they say, like the
+other's.
+
+The house of Poppea, the wife of Nero, was always full of astrologers.
+It was one of the soothsayers attached to her house, Ptolemy, who
+predicted to Otho his elevation to the empire, at the time of the
+expedition into Spain, where he accompanied him.
+
+The history of astrology under the Roman empire supplies some very
+curious stories, of which we may select an illustrative few.
+
+Octavius, in company with Agrippa, consulted one day the astrologer
+Theagenes. The future husband of Julia, more credulous or more curious
+than the nephew of Caesar, was the first to take the horoscope. Theagenes
+foretold astonishing prosperity for him. Octavius, jealous of so happy a
+destiny, and fearing that the reply would be less favourable to him,
+instead of following the example of his companion, refused at first to
+state the day of his birth. But, curiosity getting the better of him, he
+decided to reply. No sooner had he told the day of his birth than the
+astrologer threw himself at his feet, and worshipped him as the future
+master of the empire. Octavius was transported with joy, and from that
+moment was a firm believer in astrology. To commemorate the happy
+influence of the zodiacal sign under which he was born, he had the
+picture of it struck on some of the medals that were issued in his
+reign.
+
+The masters of the empire believed in astrological divination, but
+wished to keep the advantages to themselves. They wanted to know the
+future without allowing their subjects to do the same. Nero would not
+permit anyone to study philosophy, saying it was a vain and frivolous
+thing, from which one might take a pretext to divine future events. He
+feared lest some one should push his curiosity so far as to wish to
+find out when and how the emperor should die--a sort of indiscreet
+question, replies to which lead to conspiracies and attempts. This was
+what the heads of the state were most afraid of.
+
+Tiberius had been to Rhodes, to a soothsayer of renown, to instruct
+himself in the rules of astrology. He had attached to his person the
+celebrated astrologer Thrasyllus, whose fate-revealing science he proved
+by one of those pleasantries which are only possible with tyrants.
+
+Whenever Tiberius consulted an astrologer he placed him in the highest
+part of his palace, and employed for his purpose an ignorant and
+powerful freedman, who brought by difficult paths, bounded by
+precipices, the astrologer whose science his Majesty wished to prove. On
+the return journey, if the astrologer was suspected of indiscretion or
+treachery, the freedman threw him into the sea, to bury the secret.
+Thrasyllus having been brought by the same route across these
+precipices, struck Tiberius with awe while he questioned him, by showing
+him his sovereign power, and easily disclosing the things of the future.
+Caesar asked him if he had taken his own horoscope, and with what signs
+were marked that day and hour for himself. Thrasyllus then examined the
+position and the distance of the stars; he hesitated at first, then he
+grew pale; then he looked again, and finally, trembling with
+astonishment and fear, he cried out that the moment was perilous, and
+he was very near his last hour. Tiberius then embraced him and
+congratulated him on having escaped a danger by foreseeing it; and
+accepting henceforth all his predictions as oracles, he admitted him to
+the number of his intimate friends.
+
+Tiberius had a great number of people put to death who were accused of
+having taken their horoscope to know what honours were in store for
+them, although in secret he took the horoscopes of great people, that he
+might ascertain that he had no rivalry to fear from them. Septimus
+Severus was very nearly paying with his head for one of those
+superstitious curiosities that brought the ambitious of the time to the
+astrologer. In prosperous times he had gained faith in their
+predictions, and consulted them about important acts. Having lost his
+wife, and wishing to contract a second marriage, he took the horoscopes
+of the well-connected ladies who were at the time open to marriage. None
+of their fortunes, taken by the rules of astrology, were encouraging. He
+learnt at last that there was living in Syria a young woman to whom the
+Chaldaeans had predicted that she should be the wife of a king. Severus
+was as yet but a legate. He hastened to demand her in marriage, and he
+obtained her; Julia was the name of the woman who was born under so
+happy a star; but was he the crowned husband which the stars had
+promised to the young Syrian? This reflection soon began to perplex
+Severus, and to get out of his perplexity he went to Sicily to consult
+an astrologer of renown. The matter came to the ears of the Emperor
+Commodus; and judge of his anger! The anger of Commodus was rage and
+frenzy; but the event soon gave the response that Severus was seeking in
+Sicily,--Commodus was strangled.
+
+Divination which had the emperor for its object at last came to be a
+crime of high treason. The rigorous measures resorted to against the
+indiscreet curiosity of ambition took more terrible proportions under
+the Christian emperors.
+
+Under Constantine, a number of persons who had applied to the oracles
+were punished with cruel tortures.
+
+Under Valens, a certain Palladius was the agent of a terrible
+persecution. Everyone found himself exposed to being denounced for
+having relations with soothsayers. Traitors slipped secretly into houses
+magic formulae and charms, which then became so many proofs against the
+inhabitant. The fear was so great in the East, says Ammienus
+Marcellinus, that a great number burned their books, lest matter should
+be found in them for an accusation of magic or sorcery.
+
+One day in anger, Vitellius commanded all the astrologers to leave Italy
+by a certain day. They responded by a poster, which impudently commanded
+the prince to leave the earth before that date, and at the end of the
+year Vitellius was put to death; on the other hand, the confidence
+accorded to astrologers led sometimes to the greatest extremes. For
+instance, after having consulted Babylus, Nero put to death all those
+whose prophecies promised the elevation of Heliogabalus. Another
+instance was that of Marcus Aurelius and his wife Faustina. The latter
+was struck with the beauty of a gladiator. For a long time she vainly
+strove in secret with the passion that consumed her, but the passion did
+nothing but increase. At last Faustina revealed the matter to her
+husband, and asked him for some remedy that should restore peace to her
+troubled soul. The philosophy of Marcus Aurelius could not suggest
+anything. So he decided to consult the Chaldaeans, who were adepts at the
+art of mixing philters and composing draughts. The means prescribed were
+more simple than might have been expected from their complicated
+science; it was that the gladiator should be cut in pieces. They added
+that Faustina should afterwards be anointed with the blood of the
+victim. The remedy was applied, the innocent athlete was immolated, and
+the empress afterwards only dreamed of him with great pleasure.
+
+The first Christians were as much addicted to astrology as the other
+sects. The Councils of Laodicea (366, A.D.), of Arles (314), of Agdus
+(505), Orleans (511), Auxerre (570), and Narbonne (589), condemned the
+practice. According to a tradition of the commencement of our era, which
+appears to have been borrowed from Mazdeism, it was the rebel angels who
+taught men astrology and the use of charms.
+
+Under Constantius the crime of high treason served as a pretext for
+persecution. A number of people were accused of it, who simply continued
+to practise the ancient religion. It was pretended that they had
+recourse to sorceries against the life of the emperor, in order to bring
+about his fall. Those who consulted the oracles were menaced with severe
+penalties and put to death by torture, under the pretence that by
+dealing with questions of fate they had criminal intentions. Plots
+without number multiplied the accusations; and the cruelty of the judges
+aggravated the punishments. The pagans, in their turn had to suffer the
+martyrdom which they had previously inflicted on the early disciples of
+Christ--or rather, to be truer, it was authority, always intolerable,
+whether pagan or Christian, that showed itself inexorable against those
+who dared to differ from the accepted faith. Libanius and Jamblicus were
+accused of having attempted to discover the name of the successor to the
+empire. Jamblicus, being frightened at the prosecution brought against
+him, poisoned himself. The name only of philosopher was sufficient to
+found an accusation upon. The philosopher Maximus Diogenes Alypius, and
+his son Hierocles, were condemned to lose their lives on the most
+frivolous pretence. An old man was put to death because he was in the
+habit of driving off the approach of fever by incantations, and a young
+man who was surprised in the act of putting his hands alternately to a
+marble and his breast, because he thought that by counting in this way
+seven times seven, he might cure the stomach-ache, met with the same
+fate.
+
+Theodosius prohibited every kind of manifestation or usage connected
+with pagan belief. Whoever should dare to immolate a victim, said his
+law, or consult the entrails of the animals he had killed, should be
+regarded as guilty of the crime of high treason.
+
+The fact of having recourse to a process of divination was sufficient
+for an accusation against a man.
+
+Theodosius II. thought that the continuation of idolatrous practices had
+drawn down the wrath of heaven, and brought upon them the recent
+calamities that had afflicted his empire--the derangement of the seasons
+and the sterility of the soil--and he thundered out terrible threats
+when his faith and his anger united themselves into fanaticism.
+
+He wrote as follows to Florentius, prefect of the praetorium in 439, the
+year that preceded his death:--
+
+"Are we to suffer any longer from the seasons being upset by the effect
+of the divine wrath, on account of the atrocious perfidy of the pagans,
+which disturbs the equilibrium of nature? For what is the cause that now
+the spring has no longer its ordinary beauty, that the autumn no longer
+furnishes a harvest to the laborious workman and that the winter, by its
+rigour, freezes the soil and renders it sterile?"
+
+Perhaps we are unduly amused with these ideas of Theodosius so long as
+we retain the custom of asking the special intervention of Providence
+for the presence or absence of rain!
+
+In the middle ages, when astrology took such a hold on the world,
+several philosophers went so far as to consider the celestial vault as a
+book, in which each star, having the value of one of the letters of the
+alphabet, told in ineffaceable characters the destiny of every empire.
+The book of _Unheard-of Curiosities_, by Gaffarel, gives us the
+configuration of these celestial characters, and we find them also in
+the writings of Cornelius Agrippa. The middle ages took their
+astrological ideas from the Arabians and Jews. The Jews themselves at
+this epoch borrowed their principles from such contaminated sources that
+we are not able to trace in them the transmission of the ancient ideas.
+To give an example, Simeon Ben-Jochai, to whom is attributed the famous
+book called _Zohar_, had attained in their opinion such a prodigious
+acquaintance with celestial mysteries as indicated by the stars, that he
+could have read the divine law in the heavens before it had been
+promulgated on the earth. During the whole of the middle ages, whenever
+they wanted to clear up doubts about geography or astronomy, they always
+had recourse to this Oriental science, as cultivated by the Jews and
+Arabians. In the thirteenth century Alphonse X. was very importunate
+with the Jews to make them assist him with their advice in his vast
+astronomical and historical works.
+
+Nicholas Oresmus, when the most enlightened monarch in Europe was
+supplying Du Guesclin with an astrologer to guide him in his strategical
+operations, was physician to Charles V. of France, who was himself
+devoted to astrology, and gave him the bishopric of Lisieux. He composed
+the _Treatise of the Sphere_, of which we have already spoken. A few
+years later, a learned man, the bishop Peter d'Ailly, actually dared to
+take the horoscope of Jesus Christ, and proved by most certain rules
+that the great event which inaugurated the new era was marked with very
+notable signs in astrology.
+
+Mathias Corvin, King of Hungary, never undertook anything without first
+consulting the astrologers. The Duke of Milan and Pope Paul also
+governed themselves by their advice. King Louis XI., who so heartily
+despised the rest of mankind, and had as much malice in him as he had
+weakness, had a curious adventure with an astrologer.
+
+It was told him that an astrologer had had the hardihood to predict the
+death of a woman of whom the king was very fond. He sent for the
+wretched prophet, gave him a severe reprimand, and then asked him the
+question, "You, who know everything, when will _you_ die?" The
+astrologer, suspecting a trick, replied immediately, "Sire, three days
+before your Majesty." Fear and superstition overcame the monarch's
+resentment, and the king took particular care of the adroit impostor.
+
+It is well known how much Catherine de Medicis was under the influence
+of the astrologers. She had one in her Hotel de Soissons in Paris, who
+watched constantly at the top of a tower. This tower is still in
+existence, by the Wool-Market, which was built in 1763 on the site of
+the hotel. It is surmounted by a sphere and a solar dial, placed there
+by the astronomer Pingre.
+
+One of the most celebrated of the astrologers who was under her
+patronage was Nostradamus. He was a physician of Provence, and was born
+at St. Reny in 1503. To medicine he joined astrology, and undertook to
+predict future events. He was called to Paris by Catherine in 1556, and
+attempted to write his oracles in poetry. His little book was much
+sought after during the whole of the remainder of the sixteenth century,
+and even in the beginning of the next. According to contemporary writers
+many imitations were made of it. It was written in verses of four lines,
+and was called _Quatrains Astronomiques_. As usual, the prophecies were
+obscure enough to suit anything, and many believers have thought they
+could trace in the various verses prophecies of known events, by duly
+twisting and manipulating the sense.
+
+A very amusing prophecy, which happened to be too clear to leave room
+for mistakes as to its meaning, and which turned out to be most
+ludicrously wrong, was one contained in a little book published in 1572
+with this title:--_Prognostication touching the marriage of the very
+honourable and beloved Henry, by the Grace of God King of Navarre, and
+the very illustrious Princess Marguerite of France, calculated by Master
+Bernard Abbatio, Doctor in Medicine, and Astrologer to the very
+Christian King of France._
+
+First he asked if the marriage would be happy, and says:--"Having in my
+library made the figure of the heavens, I found that the lord of the
+ascendant is joined to the lord of the seventh house, which is for the
+woman of a trine aspect, from whence I have immediately concluded,
+according to the opinion of Ptolemy, Haly, Zael, Messahala, and many
+other sovereign astrologers, that they will love one another intensely
+all their lives." In point of fact they always detested each other.
+Again, "as to length of life, I have prepared another figure, and have
+found that Jupiter and Venus are joined to the sun with fortification,
+and that they will approach a hundred years;" after all Henri IV. died
+before he was sixty. "Our good King of Navarre will have by his most
+noble and virtuous Queen many children; since, after I had prepared
+another figure of heaven, I found the ascendant and its lord, together
+with the moon, all joined to the lord of the fifth house, called that of
+children, which will be pretty numerous, on account of Jupiter and also
+of Venus;" and yet they had no children! "Jupiter and Venus are found
+domiciled on the aquatic signs, and since these two planets are found
+concordant with the lord of the ascendant, all this proves that the
+children will be upright and good, and that they will love their father
+and mother, without doing them any injury, nor being the cause of their
+destruction, as is seen in the fruit of the nut, which breaks, opens,
+and destroys the stock from which it took its birth. The children will
+live long, they will be good Christians, and with their father will make
+themselves so benign and favourable towards those of our religion, that
+at last they will be as beloved as any man of our period, and there will
+be no more wars among the French, as there would have been but for the
+present marriage. God grant us grace that so long as we are in this
+transitory life we may see no other king but Charles IX., the present
+King of France." And yet these words were written in the year of the
+massacre of St. Bartholomew's day! and the marriage was broken off, and
+Henri IV. married to Marie de Medici. So much for the astrological
+predictions!
+
+The aspect in which astrology was looked upon by the better minds even
+when it was flourishing may be illustrated by two quotations we may
+make, from Shakespeare and Voltaire.
+
+Our immortal poet puts into the mouth of Edmund in _King Lear_:--"This
+is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune
+(often the surfeit of our own behaviour) we make guilty of our disasters
+the sun, the moon, and the stars, as if we were villains by necessity;
+fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treacherous, by
+spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced
+obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a
+divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of a libertine to lay his
+goatish disposition to the charge of a star! My father married my mother
+under the Dragon's tail; and my nativity was under _Ursa major_; so that
+it follows I am rough lecherous. Tut, I should have been that I am, had
+the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my birth."
+
+Voltaire writes thus:--"This error is ancient, and that is enough. The
+Egyptians, the Chaldaeans, the Jews could predict, and therefore we can
+predict now. If no more predictions are made it is not the fault of the
+art. So said the alchemists of the philosopher's stone. If you do not
+find to-day it is because you are not clever enough; but it is certain
+that it is in the clavicle of Solomon, and on that certainty more than
+two hundred families in Germany and France have been ruined. Do you
+wonder either that so many men, otherwise much exalted above the vulgar,
+such as princes or popes, who knew their interests so well, should be so
+ridiculously seduced by this impertinence of astrology. They were very
+proud and very ignorant. There were no stars but for them; the rest of
+the universe was _canaille_, for whom the stars did not trouble
+themselves. I have not the honour of being a prince. Nevertheless, the
+celebrated Count of Boulainvilliers and an Italian, called Colonne, who
+had great reputation in Paris, both predicted to me that I should
+infallibly die at the age of thirty-two. I have had the malice already
+to deceive them by thirty years, for which I humbly beg their pardon."
+
+The method by which these predictions were arrived at consisted in
+making the different stars and planets responsible for different parts
+of the body, different properties, and different events, and making up
+stories from the association of ideas thus obtained, which of course
+admitted of the greatest degree of latitude. The principles are
+explained by Manilius in his great poem entitled _The Astronomicals_,
+written two thousand years ago.
+
+According to him the sun presided over the head, the moon over the right
+arm, Venus over the left, Jupiter over the stomach, Mars the parts
+below, Mercury over the right leg, and Saturn over the left.
+
+Among the constellations, the Ram governed the head; the Bull the neck;
+the Twins the arms and shoulders; the Crab the chest and the heart; the
+Lion the stomach; the abdomen corresponded to the sign of the Virgin;
+the reins to the Balance; then came the Scorpion; the Archer, governing
+the thighs; the He-goat the knees; the Waterer the legs; and the Fishes
+the feet.
+
+Albert the Great assigned to the stars the following influences:--Saturn
+was thought to rule over life, changes, sciences, and buildings;
+Jupiter over honour, wishes, riches, and cleanness; Mars over war,
+prisons, marriages, and hatred; the sun over hope, happiness, gain, and
+heritages; Venus over friendships and amours; Mercury over illness,
+debts, commerce, and fear; the moon over wounds, dreams, and larcenies.
+
+Each of these stars also presides over particular days of the week,
+particular colours, and particular metals.
+
+The sun governed the Sunday; the moon, Monday; Mars, Tuesday; Mercury,
+Wednesday; Jupiter, Thursday; Venus, Friday; and Saturn, Saturday; which
+is partially indicated by our own names of the week, but more
+particularly in the French names, which are each and all derived from
+these stars.
+
+The sun represented yellow; the moon, white; Venus, green; Mars, red;
+Jupiter, blue; Saturn, black; Mercury, shaded colours.
+
+We have already indicated the metals that corresponded to each.
+
+The sun was reckoned to be beneficent and favourable; Saturn to be sad,
+morose, and cold; Jupiter, temperate and benign; Mars, vehement; Venus,
+benevolent and fertile; Mercury, inconstant; and the moon, melancholy.
+
+Among the constellations, the Ram, the Lion, and the Archer were hot,
+dry and vehement. The Bull, the Virgin, and the He-goat were heavy,
+cold, and dry; the Twins, the Balance, and the Waterer were light,
+hot, and moist; the Crab, Scorpion, and the Fishes were moist, soft, and
+cold.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XV.--AN ASTROLOGER AT WORK.]
+
+In this way the heavens were made to be intimately connected with the
+affairs of earth; and astrology was in equally intimate connection with
+astronomy, of which it may in some sense be considered the mother. The
+drawers of horoscopes were at one time as much in request as lawyers or
+doctors. One Thurneisen, a famous astrologer and an extraordinary man,
+who lived last century at the electoral court of Berlin, was at the same
+time physician, chemist, drawer of horoscopes, almanack maker, printer,
+and librarian. His astrological reputation was so widespread that
+scarcely a birth took place in families of any rank in Germany, Poland,
+Hungary, or even England without there being sent an immediate envoy to
+him to announce the precise moment of birth. He received often three and
+sometimes as many as ten messages a day, and he was at last so pressed
+with business that he was obliged to take associates and agents.
+
+In the days of Kepler we know that astrology was more thought of than
+astronomy, for though on behalf of the world he worked at the latter,
+for his own daily bread he was in the employ of the former, making
+almanacks and drawing horoscopes that he might live.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+TIME AND THE CALENDAR.
+
+
+The opinions of thinkers on the nature of time have been very varied.
+Some have considered time as an absolute reality, which is exactly
+measured by hours, days, and years, and is as known and real as any
+other object whose existence is known to us. Others maintain that time
+is only a matter of sensation, or that it is an illusion, or a
+hallucination of a lively brain.
+
+The definitions given of it by different great writers is as various.
+Thus Kant calls it "one of the forms of sensibility." Schelling declares
+it is "pure activity with the negation of all being." Leibnitz defines
+it "the order of successions" as he defined space to be the order of
+co-existences. Newton and Clarke make space and time two attributes of
+the Deity.
+
+A study of the astronomical phenomena of the universe, and a
+consideration of their teaching, give us authority for saying, that
+neither space nor time are realities, but that the only things absolute
+are eternity and infinity.
+
+In fact, we give the name of time to the succession of the terrestrial
+events measured by the motion of the earth. If the earth were not to
+move, we should have no means of measuring, and consequently no idea of
+time as we have it now. So long as it was believed that the earth was at
+rest, and that the sun and all the stars turned round us, this apparent
+motion was then, as the real motion of the earth is now, the method of
+generating time. In fact, the Fathers said that at the end of the world
+the diurnal motion would cease, and there would be no more time. But let
+us examine the fact a little further.
+
+Suppose for an instant that the earth was, as it was formerly believed
+to be, an immense flat surface, which was illuminated by a sun which
+remained always immovable at the zenith, or by an invariable diffused
+light--such an earth being supposed to be alone by itself in the
+universe and immovable. Now if there were a man created on that earth,
+would there be such a thing as "time" for him? The light which illumines
+him is immovable. No moving shadow, no gnomon, no sun-dial would be
+possible. No day nor night, no morning nor evening, no year. Nothing
+that could be divided into days, hours, minutes, and seconds.
+
+In such a case one would have to fall back upon some other terminating
+events, which would indicate a lapse of time; such for instance as the
+life of a man. This, however, would be no universal measure, for on one
+planet the life might be a thousand years, and on another only a
+hundred.
+
+Or we may look at it in another way. Suppose the earth were to turn
+twice as fast about itself and about the sun, the persons who lived
+sixty of such years would only have lived thirty of our present years,
+but they would have seen sixty revolutions of the earth, and, rigorously
+speaking, would have lived sixty years. If the earth turned ten times as
+fast, sixty years would be reduced to ten, but they would still be sixty
+of those years. We should live just as long; there would be four
+seasons, 365 days, &c., only everything would be more rapid: but it
+would be exactly the same thing for us, and the other apparently
+celestial motions having a similar diminution, there would be no change
+perceived by us.
+
+Again, consider the minute animals that are observable under the
+microscope, which live but for five minutes. During that period, they
+have time to be born and to grow. From embryos they become adult, marry,
+so to speak, and have a numerous progeny, which they develop and send
+into the world. Afterwards they die, and all this in a few minutes. The
+impressions which, in spite of their minuteness, we are justified in
+presuming them to possess, though rapid and fleeting, may be as profound
+for them in proportion as ours are to us, and their measure of time
+would be very different from ours. All is relative. In absolute value,
+a life completed in a hundred years is not longer than one that is
+finished in five minutes.
+
+It is the same for space. The earth has a diameter of 8,000 miles, and
+we are five or six feet high. Now if, by any process, the earth should
+diminish till it became as small as a marble, and if the different
+elements of the world underwent a corresponding diminution, our
+mountains might become as small as grains of sand, the ocean might be
+but a drop, and we ourselves might be smaller than the microscopic
+animals adverted to above. But for all that nothing would have changed
+for us. We should still be our five or six feet high, and the earth
+would remain exactly the same number of our miles.
+
+A value then that can be decreased and diminished at pleasure without
+change is not a mathematical absolute value. In this sense then it may
+be said that neither time nor space have any real existence.
+
+Or once again. Suppose that instead of our being on the globe, we were
+placed in pure space. What time should we find there? No time. We might
+remain ten years, twenty, a hundred, or a thousand years, but we should
+never arrive at the next year! In fact each planet makes its own time
+for its inhabitants, and where there is no planet or anything answering
+to it there is no time. Jupiter makes for its inhabitants a year which
+is equal to twelve years of ours, and a day of ten of our hours. Saturn
+has a year equal to thirty of ours, and days of ten hours and a quarter.
+In other solar systems there are two or three suns, so that it is
+difficult to imagine what sort of time they can have. All this infinite
+diversity of time takes place in eternity, the only thing that is real.
+The whole history of the earth and its inhabitants takes place, not in
+time, but in eternity. Before the existence of the earth and our solar
+system, there was another time, measured by other motions, and having
+relation to other beings. When the earth shall exist no longer, there
+may be in the place we now occupy, another time again, for other beings.
+But they are not realities. A hundred millions of centuries, and a
+second, have the same real length in eternity. In the middle of space,
+we could not tell the difference. Our finite minds are not capable of
+grasping the infinite, and it is well to know that our only idea of time
+is relative, having relation to the regular events that befall this
+planet in its course, and not a thing which we can in any way compare
+with that, which is so alarming to the ideas of some--eternity.
+
+We have then to deal with the particular form of time that our planet
+makes for us, for our personal use.
+
+It turns about the sun. An entire circuit forms a period, which we can
+use for a measure in our terrestrial affairs. We call it a year, or in
+Latin _annus_, signifying a circle, whence our word _annual_.
+
+A second, shorter revolution, turns the earth upon itself, and brings
+each meridian directly facing the sun, and then round again to the
+opposite side. This period we call a _day_, from the Latin _dies_, which
+in Italian becomes _giorne_, whence the French _jour_. In Sanscrit we
+have the same word in _dyaus_.
+
+The length of time that it takes for the earth to arrive at the same
+position with respect to the stars, which is called a sidereal year,
+amounts to 365.2563744 days. But during this time, as we have seen, the
+equinox is displaced among the stars. This secular retrogression brings
+it each year a little to the east of its former position, so that the
+sun arrives there about eleven minutes too soon. By taking this amount
+from the sidereal we obtain the tropical year, which has reference to
+the seasons and the calendar. Its length is 365.2422166 days, or 365
+days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 47.8 seconds.
+
+In what way was the primitive year regulated? was it a solar or a
+sidereal year?
+
+There can be no doubt that when there was an absence of all civilisation
+and a calendar of any sort was unknown, the year meant simply the
+succession of seasons, and that no attempt would be made to reckon any
+day as its commencement. And as soon as this was attempted a difficulty
+would arise from there not being an exact number of days in the year. So
+that when reckoned as the interval between certain positions of the sun
+they would be of different lengths, which would introduce some
+difficulty as to the commencement of the year. Be this the case,
+however, or not, Mr. Haliburton's researches seem to show that the
+earliest form of year was the sidereal one, and that it was regulated by
+the Pleiades.
+
+In speaking of that constellation we have noticed that among the
+islanders of the southern hemisphere and others there are two years in
+one of ours, the first being called the Pleiades above and the second
+the Pleiades below; and we have seen how the same new year's day has
+been recognised in very many parts of the world and among the ancient
+Egyptians and Hindoos. This year would begin in November, and from the
+intimate relation of all the primitive calendars that have been
+discovered to a particular day, taken as November 17 by the Egyptians,
+it would appear probable that for a long time corrections were made both
+by the Egyptians and others in order to keep the phenomenon of the
+Pleiades just rising at sunset to one particular named day of their
+year--showing that the year they used was a sidereal one. This can be
+traced back as far as 1355 B.C. among the Egyptians, and to 1306 B.C.
+among the Hindoos. There seem to have been in use also shorter periods
+of three months, which, like the two-season year, appear to have been,
+as they are now among the Japanese, regulated by the different positions
+of the Pleiades.
+
+Among the Siamese of the present day, there are both forms of the year
+existing, one sidereal, beginning in November, and regulated by the
+fore-named constellation; and the other tropical, beginning in April.
+Whether, however, the year be reckoned by the stars or by the sun, there
+will always be a difficulty in arranging the length of the year, because
+in each case there will be about a quarter of a day over.
+
+It seems, too, to have been found more convenient in early times to take
+360 days as the length of the year, and to add an intercalary month now
+and then, rather than 365 and add a day.
+
+Thus among the earliest Egyptians the year was of 360 days, which were
+reckoned in the months, and five days were added each year, between the
+commencement of one and the end of the other, and called unlucky days.
+It was the belief of the Egyptians that these five days were the
+birthdays of their principal gods; Osiris being born on the first,
+Anieris (or Apollo) on the second, Typhon on the third, Isis on the
+fourth, Nephys (or Aphrodite) on the fifth. These appear to have some
+relation with similar unlucky days among the Greeks and Romans, and
+other nations.
+
+The 360 days of the Egyptian year were represented at Acantho, near
+Memphis, in a symbolical way, there being placed a perforated vessel,
+which each day was filled with water by one of a company of 360 priests,
+each priest having charge over one day in the year. A similar symbolism
+was used at the tomb of Osiris, around which were placed 360 pitchers,
+one of which each day was filled with milk.
+
+On the other hand, the 365 days were represented by the tomb of
+Osymandyas, at Thebes, being surrounded by a circle of gold which was
+one cubit broad and 365 cubits in circumference. On the side were
+written the risings and settings of the stars, with the prognostications
+derived from them by the Egyptian astrologers. It was destroyed,
+however, by Cambyses when the Persians conquered Egypt.
+
+They divided their year according to Herodotus into twelve months, the
+names of which have come down to us.
+
+Even with the 365 days, which their method of reckoning would
+practically come to, they would still be a quarter of a day each year
+short; so that in four years it would amount to a whole day, an error
+which would amount to something perceptible even during the life of a
+single man, by its bringing the commencement of the civil year out of
+harmony with the seasons. In fact the first day of the year would
+gradually go through all the seasons, and at the end of 1460 solar years
+there would have been completed 1461 civil years, which would bring back
+the day to its original position. This period represents a cycle of
+years in which approximately the sun and the earth come to the same
+relative position again, as regards the earth's rotation on its axis and
+revolution round the sun. This cycle was noticed by Firmicius. Another
+more accurate cycle of the same kind, noticed by Syncellus, is obtained
+by multiplying 1461 by 25, making 36,525 years, which takes into account
+the defect which the extra hours over 365 have from six. The Egyptians,
+however, did not allow their year to get into so large an error, though
+it was in error by their using sidereal time, regulating their year, and
+intercalating days, first according to the risings of the Pleiades, and
+after according to that of Sirius, the dog-star, which announced to them
+the approaching overflowing of the Nile, a phenomenon of such great
+value to Egypt that they celebrated it with annual fetes of the greatest
+magnificence.
+
+Among the Babylonians, as we are informed by Mr. Sayce, the year was
+divided into twelve lunar months and 360 days, an intercalary month
+being added whenever a certain star, called the "star of stars," or Icu,
+also called Dilgan, by the ancient Accadians, meaning the "messenger of
+light," and what is now called Aldebaran, which was just in advance of
+the sun when it crossed the vernal equinox, was not parallel with the
+moon until the third of Nisan, that is, two days after the equinox. They
+also added shorter months of a few days each when this system became
+insufficient to keep their calendar correct.
+
+They divided their year into four quarters of three months each; the
+spring quarter not commencing with the beginning of the year when the
+sun entered the spring equinox, proving that the arrangement of seasons
+was subsequent to the settling of the calendar. The names of their
+months were given them from the corresponding signs of the zodiac; which
+was the same as our own, though the zodiac began with Aries and the year
+with Nisan.
+
+They too had cycles, but they arose from a very different cause; not
+from errors of reckoning in the civil year or the revolution of the
+earth, but from the variations of the weather. Every twelve solar years
+they expected to have the same weather repeated. When we connect this
+with their observations on the varying brightness of the sun, especially
+at the commencement of the year on the first of Nisan, which they record
+at one time as "bright yellow" and at another as "spotted," and remember
+that modern researches have shown that weather is certainly in some way
+dependent on the solar spots, which have a period _now_ of about eleven
+years, we cannot help fancying that they were very near to making these
+discoveries.
+
+The year of the ancient Persians consisted of 365 days. The extra
+quarter of a day was not noticed for 120 years, at the end of which they
+intercalated a month--in the first instance, at the end of the first
+month, which was thus doubled. At the end of another 120 years they
+inserted an intercalary month after the second month, and so on through
+all their twelve months. So that after 1440 years the series began
+again. This period they called the intercalary cycle.
+
+The calendar among the Greeks was more involved, but more useful. It
+was _luni-solar_, that is to say, they regulated it at the same time by
+the revolutions of the moon and the motion about the sun, in the
+following manner:--
+
+The year commenced with the new moon nearest to the 20th or 21st of
+June, the time of the summer solstice; it was composed in general of
+twelve months, each of which commenced on the day of the new moon, and
+which had alternately twenty-nine and thirty days.
+
+This arrangement, conformable to the lunar year, only gave 354 days to
+the civil year, and as this was too short by ten days, twenty-one hours,
+this difference, by accumulation, produced nearly eighty-seven days at
+the end of eight years, or three months of twenty-nine days each. To
+bring the lunar years into accordance with the solstices, it was
+necessary to add three intercalary months every eight years.
+
+The phases of the moon being thus brought into comparison with the
+rotation of the earth, a cycle was discovered by Meton, now known as the
+Metonic cycle, useful also in predicting eclipses, which comprised
+nineteen years, during which time 235 lunations will have very nearly
+occurred, and the full moons will return to the same dates. In fact, the
+year and the lunation are to one another very nearly in the proportion
+of 235 to 19. By observing for nineteen years the positions and phases
+of the moon, they will be found to return again in the same order at the
+same times, and they can therefore be predicted. This lunar cycle was
+adopted in the year 433 B.C. to regulate the luni-solar calendar, and it
+was engraved in letters of gold on the walls of the temple of Minerva,
+from whence comes the name _golden number_, which is given to the number
+that marks the place of the given year in this period of nineteen.
+
+Caliphus made a larger and more exact cycle by multiplying by four and
+taking away one day. Thus he made of 27,759 days 76 Julian years, during
+which there were 940 lunations.
+
+The Roman calendar was even more complicated than the Greek, and not so
+good. Romulus is said to have given to his subjects a strange
+arrangement that we can no longer understand. More of a warrior than a
+philosopher, this founder of Rome made the year to consist of ten
+months, some being of twenty days and others of fifty-five. These
+unequal lengths were probably regulated by the agricultural works to be
+done, and by the prevailing religious ideas. After the conclusion of
+these days they began counting again in the same order; so that the year
+had only 304 days.
+
+The first of these ten months was called _Mars_ after the name of the
+god from whom Romulus pretended to have descended. The name of the
+second, Aprilis, was derived from the word _aperire_, to open, because
+it was at the time that the earth opened; or it may be, from Aphrodite,
+one of the names of Venus, the supposed grandmother of AEneas. The third
+month was consecrated to _Maia_, the mother of Mercury. The names of
+the six others expressed simply their order--Quintilis, the fifth;
+Sextilis, the sixth; September, the seventh; and so on.
+
+Numa added two months to the ten of Romulus; one took the name of
+_Januarius_, from _Janus_: the name of the other was derived either from
+the sacrifices (_februalia_), by which the faults committed during the
+course of the past year were expiated, or from _Februo___, the god of
+the dead, to which the last month was consecrated. The year then had 355
+days.
+
+These Roman months have become our own, and hence a special interest
+attaches to the consideration of their origin, and the explanation of
+the manner in which they have been modified and supplemented. Each of
+them was divided into unequal parts, by the days which were known as the
+calends, nones, and ides. The calends were invariably fixed to the first
+day of each month; the nones came on the 5th or 7th, and the ides the
+13th or 15th.
+
+The Romans, looking forward, as children do to festive days, to the fete
+which came on these particular days, named each day by its distance from
+the next that was following. Immediately after the calends of a month,
+the dates were referred to the nones, each day being called seven, six,
+five, and so on days before the nones; on the morrow of the nones they
+counted to the ides; and so the days at the end of the month always bore
+the name of the calends of the month following.
+
+To complete the confusion the 2nd day before the fete was called the
+3rd, by counting the fete itself as the 1st, and so they added one
+throughout to the number that _we_ should now say expressed our distance
+from a certain date.
+
+Since there were thus ten days short in each year, it was soon found
+necessary to add them on, so a supplementary month was created, which
+was called Mercedonius. This month, by another anomaly, was placed
+between the 23rd and 24th of February. Thus, after February 23rd, came
+1st, 2nd, 3rd of Mercedonius; and then after the dates of this
+supplementary month were gone through, the original month was taken up
+again, and they went on with the 24th of February.
+
+And finally, to complete the medley, the priests who had the charge of
+regulating this complex calendar, acquitted themselves as badly as they
+could; by negligence or an arbitrary use of their power they lengthened
+or shortened the year without any uniform rule. Often, indeed, they
+consulted in this nothing but their own convenience, or the interests of
+their friends.
+
+The disorder which this license had introduced into the calendar
+proceeded so far that the months had changed from the seasons, those of
+winter being advanced to the autumn, those of the autumn to the summer.
+The fetes were celebrated in seasons different from those in which they
+were instituted, so that of Ceres happened when the wheat was in the
+blade, and that of Bacchus when the raisins were green. Julius Caesar,
+therefore, determined to establish a solar year according to the known
+period of revolution of the sun, that is 365 days and a quarter. He
+ordained that each fourth year a day should be intercalated in the place
+where the month Mercedonius used to be inserted, _i.e._ between the 23rd
+and 24th of February.
+
+The 6th of the calends of March in ordinary years was the 24th of
+February; it was called _sexto-kalendas_. When an extra day was put in
+every fourth year before the 24th, this was a second 6th day, and was
+therefore called _bissexto-kalendas_, whence we get the name bissextile,
+applied to leap year.
+
+But it was necessary also to bring back the public fetes to the seasons
+they ought to be held in: for this purpose Caesar was obliged to insert
+in the current year, 46 B.C. (or 708 A.U.C.), two intercalary months
+beside the month Mercedonius. There was, therefore, a year of fifteen
+months divided into 445 days, and this was called the year of confusion.
+
+Caesar gave the strictest injunctions to Sosigenes, a celebrated
+Alexandrian astronomer whom he brought to Rome for this purpose; and on
+the same principles Flavius was ordered to compose a new calendar, in
+which all the Roman fetes were entered--following, however, the old
+method of reckoning the days from the calends, nones, and ides.
+Antonius, after the death of Caesar, changed the name of Quintilis, in
+which Julius Caesar was born, into the name _Julius_, whence we derive
+our name July. The name of _Augustus_ was given to the month _Sextilis_,
+because the Emperor Augustus obtained his greatest victories during that
+month.
+
+Tiberius, Nero, and other imperial monsters attempted to give their
+names to the other months. But the people had too much independence and
+sense of justice to accord them such a flattery.
+
+The remaining months we have as they were named in the days of Numa
+Pompilius.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 57.--THE ROMAN CALENDAR.]
+
+A cubical block of white marble has been found at Pompeii which
+illustrates this very well.
+
+Each of the four sides is divided into three columns, and on each column
+is the information about the month. Each month is surmounted by the sign
+of the zodiac through which the sun is passing. Beneath the name of the
+month is inscribed the number of days it contains; the date of the
+nones, the number of the hours of the day, and of the night; the place
+of the sun, the divinity under whose protection the month is placed, the
+agricultural works that are to be done in it, the civil and
+ecclesiastical ceremonies that are to be performed. These inscriptions
+are to be seen under the month January to the left of the woodcut.
+
+The reform thus introduced by Julius Caesar is commonly known as the
+_Julian reform_. The first year in which this calendar was followed was
+44 B.C.
+
+The Julian calendar was in use, without any modification, for a great
+number of years; nevertheless, the mean value which had been assigned to
+the civil year being a little different to that of the tropical, a
+noticeable change at length resulted in the dates in which, each year,
+the seasons commenced; so that if no remedy had been introduced, the
+same season would be displaced little by little each year, so as to
+commence successively in different months.
+
+The Council of Nice, which was held in the year 325 of the Christian
+era, adopted a fixed rule to determine the time at which Easter falls.
+This rule was based on the supposed fact that the spring equinox
+happened every year on the 21st of March, as it did at the time of the
+meeting of the Council. This would indeed be the case if the mean value
+of the civil year of the Julian calendar was exactly equal to the
+tropical year. But while the first is 365.25 days, the second is
+365.242264 days; so that the tropical year is too small by 11 minutes
+and 8 seconds. It follows hence that after the lapse of four Julian
+years the vernal equinox, instead of happening exactly at the same time
+as it did four years before, will happen 44 minutes 32 seconds too soon;
+and will gain as much in each succeeding four years. So that at the end
+of a certain number of years, after the year 325, the equinox will
+happen on the 20th of March, afterwards on the 19th, and so on. This
+continual advance notified by the astronomers, determined Pope Gregory
+XIII. to introduce a new reform into the calendar.
+
+It was in the year 1582 that the _Gregorian reform_ was put into
+operation. At that epoch the vernal equinox happened on the 11th instead
+of the 21st of March. To get rid of this advance of ten days that the
+equinox had made and to bring it back to the original date, Pope Gregory
+decided that the day after the 4th of October, 1582, should be called
+the 15th instead of the 5th. This change only did away with the
+inconvenience at the time attaching to the Julian calendar; it was
+necessary to make also some modification in the rule which served to
+determine the lengths of the civil years, in order to avoid the same
+error for the future.
+
+So the Pope determined that in each 400 years there should be only 97
+bissextile years, instead of 100, as there used to be in the Julian
+calendar. This made three days taken off the 400 years, and in
+consequence the mean value of the civil year is reduced to 365.2425
+days, which is not far from the true tropical year. The Gregorian year
+thus obtained is still too great by .000226 of a day; the date of the
+vernal equinox will still then advance in virtue of this excess, but it
+is easy to see that the Gregorian reform will suffice for a great number
+of centuries.
+
+The method in which it is carried out is as follows:--In the Julian
+calendar each year that divided by four when expressed in its usual way,
+by A.D., was a leap year, and therefore each year that completed a
+century was such, as 1300, 1400 and so on--but in the Gregorian reform,
+all these century numbers are to be reckoned common years, unless the
+number without the two cyphers divides by four; thus 1,900 will be a
+common year and 2,000 a leap year. It is easy to see that this will
+leave out three leap years in every 400 years.
+
+The Gregorian calendar was immediately adopted in France and Germany,
+and a little later in England. Now it is in operation in all the
+Christian countries of Europe, except Russia, where the Julian calendar
+is still followed. It follows that Russian dates do not agree with ours.
+In 1582, the difference was ten days, and this difference remained the
+same till the end of the seventeenth century, when the year 1700 was
+bissextile in the Julian, but not in the Gregorian calendar, so the
+difference increased to eleven days, and now in the same way is twelve
+days.
+
+Next to the year, comes the day as the most natural division of time in
+connection with the earth, though it admits of less difference in its
+arrangements, as we cannot be mistaken as to its length. It is the
+natural standard too of our division of time into shorter intervals such
+as hours, minutes, and seconds. By the word _day_ we mean of course the
+interval during which the earth makes a complete revolution round
+itself, while _daytime_ may be used to express the portion of it during
+which our portion of the earth is towards the sun. The Greeks to avoid
+ambiguity used the word _nyctemere_, meaning night and day.
+
+No ancient nation is known that did not divide the day into twenty-four
+hours, when they divided it at all into such small parts, which seems to
+show that such a division was comparatively a late institution, and was
+derived from the invention of a single nation. It would necessarily
+depend on the possibility of reckoning shorter periods of time than the
+natural one of the day. In the earliest ages, and even afterwards, the
+position of the sun in the heavens by day, and the position of the
+constellations by night, gave approximately the time. Instead of asking
+What "o'clock" is it? the Greeks would say, "What star is passing?" The
+next method of determining time depended on the uniform motion of water
+from a cistern. It was invented by the Egyptians, and was called a
+clepsydra, and was in use among the Babylonians, the Greeks, and the
+Romans. The more accurate measurement of time by means of clocks was not
+introduced till about 140 B.C., when Trimalcion had one in his dining
+chamber. The use of them, however, had been so lost that in 760 A.D.
+they were considered quite novelties. The clocks, of course, have to be
+regulated by the sun, an operation which has been the employment of
+astronomers, among other things, for centuries. Each locality had its
+own time according to the moment when the sun passed the meridian of the
+place, a moment which was determined by observation.
+
+Before the introduction of the hour, the day and night appear to have
+been divided into watches. Among the Babylonians the night was reckoned
+from what we call 6 A.M. to 6 P.M., and divided into three watches of
+four hours each--called the "evening," "middle," and "morning" watch.
+These were later superseded by the more accurate hour, or rather "double
+hour" or _casbri_, each of which was divided into sixty minutes and
+sixty seconds, and the change taking place not earlier than 2,000 B.C.
+Whether the Babylonians (or Accadians) were the inventors of the hour it
+is difficult to say, though they almost certainly were of other
+divisions of time. It is remarkable that in the ancient Jewish
+Scriptures we find no mention of any such division until the date at
+which the prophecy of Daniel was written, that is, until the Jews had
+come in contact with the Babylonians.
+
+Some nations have counted the twenty-four hours consecutively from one
+to twenty-four as astronomers do now, but others and the majority have
+divided the whole period into two of twelve hours each.
+
+The time of the commencement of the day has varied much with the
+different nations.
+
+The Jews, the ancient Athenians, the Chinese, and several other peoples,
+more or less of the past, have commenced the day with the setting of the
+sun, a custom which perhaps originated with the determination of the
+commencement of the year, and therefore of the day, by the observation
+of some stars that were seen at sunset, a custom continued in our memory
+by the well-known words, "the evening and the morning were the first
+day."
+
+The Italians, till recently, counted the hours in a single series,
+between two settings of the sun. The only gain in such a method would be
+to sailors, that they might know how many hours they had before night
+overtook them; the sun always setting at twenty-four o'clock; if the
+watch marked nineteen or twenty, it would mean they had five or four
+hours to see by--but such a gain would be very small against the
+necessity of setting their watches differently every morning, and the
+inconvenience of never having fixed hours for meals.
+
+Among the Babylonians, Syrians, Persians, the modern Greeks, and
+inhabitants of the Balearic Isles, &c., the day commenced with the
+rising of the sun. Nevertheless, among all the astronomical phenomena
+that may be submitted to observation, none is so liable to uncertainty
+as the rising and setting of the heavenly bodies, owing among other
+things to the effects of refraction.
+
+Among the ancient Arabians, followed in this by the author of the
+_Almagesta_, and by Ptolemy, the day commenced at noon. Modern
+astronomers adopt this usage. The moment of changing the date is then
+always marked by a phenomenon easy to observe.
+
+Lastly, that we may see how every variety possible is sure to be chosen
+when anything is left to the free choice of men, we know that with the
+Egyptians, Hipparchus, the ancient Romans, and all the European nations
+at present, the day begins at midnight. Copernicus among the astronomers
+of our era followed this usage. We may remark that the commencement of
+the astronomical day commences twelve hours _after_ the civil day.
+
+Of the various periods composed of several days, the week of seven days
+is the most widely spread--and of considerable antiquity. Yet it is not
+the universal method of dividing months. Among the Egyptians the month
+was divided into periods of ten days each; and we find no sign of the
+seven days--the several days of the whole month having a god assigned to
+each. Among the Hindoos no trace has been found by Max Mueller in their
+ancient Vedic literature of any such division, but the month is divided
+into two according to the moon; the _clear_ half from the new to the
+full moon, the _obscure_ half from the full to the new, and a similar
+division has been found among the Aztecs. The Chinese divide the month
+like the Egyptians. Among the Babylonians two methods of dividing the
+month existed, and both of them from the earliest times. The first
+method was to separate it into two halves of fifteen days each, and each
+of these periods into three shorter ones of five days, making six per
+month. The other method is the week of seven days. The days of the week
+with them, as they are with many nations now, were named after the sun
+and moon and the five planets, and the 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st, and 28th
+days of each month--days separated by seven days each omitting the
+19th--were termed "days of rest," on which certain works were forbidden
+to be done. From this it is plain that we have here all the elements of
+our modern week. We find it, as is well known, in the earliest of Hebrew
+writings, but without the mark which gives reason for the number seven,
+that is the names of the seven heavenly bodies. It would seem most
+probable, then, that we must look to the Accadians as the originators of
+our modern week, from whom the Hebrews may have--and, if so, at a very
+early period--borrowed the idea.
+
+It is known that the week was not employed in the ancient calendars of
+the Romans, into which it was afterwards introduced through the medium
+of the biblical traditions, and became a legal usage under the first
+Christian Emperors. From thence it has been propagated together with
+the Julian calendar amongst all the populations that have been subjected
+to the Roman power. We find the period of seven days employed in the
+astronomical treatises of Hindoo writers, but not before the fifth
+century.
+
+Dion Cassius, in the third century, represents the week as universally
+spread in his times, and considers it a recent invention which he
+attributes to the Egyptians; meaning thereby, doubtless, the astrologers
+of the Alexandrian school, at that time very eager to spread the
+abstract speculations of Plato and Pythagoras.
+
+If the names of the days of the week were derived from the planets, the
+sun and moon, as is easy to see, it is not so clear how they came to
+have their present order. The original order in which they were supposed
+to be placed in the various heavens that supported them according to
+their distance from the earth was thus:--Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun,
+Venus, Mercury, the Moon. One supposition is that each hour of the day
+was sacred to one of these, and that each day was named from the god
+that presided over the first hours. Now, as seven goes three times into
+twenty-four, and leaves three over, it is plain that if Saturn began the
+first hour of Saturday, the next day would begin with the planet three
+further on in the series, which would bring us to the Sun for Sunday,
+three more would bring us next day to the Moon for Monday, and so to
+Mars for Tuesday, to Mercury for Wednesday, to Jupiter for Thursday, to
+Venus for Friday, and so round again to Saturn for Saturday.
+
+The same method is illustrated by putting the symbols in order round the
+circumference of a circle, and joining them by lines to the one most
+opposite, following always in the same order as in the following figure.
+We arrive in this way at the order of the days of the week.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 58.]
+
+All the nations who have adopted the week have not kept to the same
+names for them, but have varied them according to taste. Thus Sunday was
+changed by the Christian Church to the "Lord's Day," a name it still
+partially retains among ourselves, but which is the regular name among
+several continental nations, including the corrupted _Dimanche_ of the
+French. The four middle days have also been very largely changed, as
+they have been among ourselves and most northern nations to commemorate
+the names of the great Scandinavian gods Tuesco, Woden, Thor, and Friga.
+This change was no doubt due to the old mythology of the Druids being
+amalgamated with the new method of collecting the days into weeks.
+
+We give below a general table of the names of the days of the week in
+several different languages.
+
+ +------------+-----------+------------+------------+------------------+
+ | ENGLISH.   | FRENCH.   | ITALIAN.   | SPANISH.   | PORTUGUESE.      |
+ +------------+-----------+------------+------------+------------------+
+ | Sunday.    | Dimanche. | Domenica.  | Domingo.   | Domingo.         |
+ | Monday.    | Lundi.    | Lunedi.    | Luneo.     | Secunda feira.   |
+ | Tuesday.   | Mardi.    | Marteti.   | Martes.    | Terca feira.     |
+ | Wednesday. | Mercredi  | Mercoledi. | Miercoles. | Quarta feira.    |
+ | Thursday.  | Jeudi.    | Giovedi.   | Jueves.    | Quinta feira.    |
+ | Friday.    | Vendredi. | Venerdi.   | Viernes.   | Sexta feira.     |
+ | Saturday.  | Samedi.   | Sabbato.   | Sabado.    | Sabbado.         |
+ +------------+-----------+------------+------------+------------------+
+ +------------+--------------+-------------+---------------+-----------+
+ | GERMAN.    | ANGLO-SAXON. | ANCIENT     | ANCIENT       | DUTCH.    |
+ |            |              | FRISIAN.    | NORTHMEN.     |           |
+ +------------+--------------+-------------+---------------+-----------+
+ | Sonntag.   | Sonnan daeg.  | Sonna dei.  | Sunnu dagr.   | Zondag.   |
+ | Montag.    | Monan daeg.   | Mona dei.   | Mana dagr.    | Maandag.  |
+ | Dienstag.  | Tives daeg.   | Tys dei.    | Tyrs dagr.    | Dingsdag. |
+ | Mitwoch.   | Vodenes daeg. | Werns dei.  | Odins dagr.   | Woensdag. |
+ | Donnerstag.| Thunores daeg.| Thunres dei.| Thors dagr.   | Donderdag.|
+ | Freitag.   | Frige daeg.   | Frigen dei. | Fria dagr.    | Vrijdag.  |
+ | Samstag.   | Soeternes    | Sater dei.  | Laugar dagr   | Zaturdag. |
+ |            |    daeg.      |             |  (washing day)|           |
+ +------------+--------------+-------------+---------------+-----------+
+
+The cycle which must be completed with the present calendar to bring the
+same day of the year to the same day of the week, is twenty-eight years,
+since there is one day over every ordinary year, and two every leap
+year; which will make an overlapping of days which, except at the
+centuries, will go through all the changes in twenty-eight times, which
+forms what is called the solar cycle.
+
+There is but one more point that will be interesting about the calendar,
+namely, the date from which we reckon our years.
+
+Among the Jews it was from the creation of the world, as recorded in
+their sacred books--but no one can determine when that was with
+sufficient accuracy to make it represent anything but an agreement of
+the present day. Different interpreters do not come within a thousand
+years of one another for its supposed date; although some of them have
+determined it very accurately to their own satisfaction--one going so
+far as to say that creation finished at nine o'clock one Sunday morning!
+In other cases the date has been reckoned from national events--as in
+the Olympiads, the foundation of Rome, &c. The word we now use, AERA,
+points to a particular date from which to reckon, since it is composed
+of the initials of the words AB EXORDIO REGNI AUGUSTI "from the
+commencement of the reign of Augustus." At the present day the point of
+departure, both forwards and backwards, is the year of the birth of
+Jesus Christ--a date which is itself controverted, and the use of which
+did not exist among the first Christians. They exhibited great
+indifference, for many centuries, as to the year in which Jesus Christ
+entered the world. It was a monk who lived in obscurity at Rome, about
+the year 580, who was a native of so unknown a country that he has been
+called a Scythian, and whose name was Denys, surnamed _Exiguus_, or the
+Little, who first attempted to discover by chronological calculations
+the year of the birth of Jesus Christ.
+
+The era of Denys the Little was not adopted by his contemporaries. Two
+centuries afterwards, the Venerable Bede exhorted Christians to make use
+of it--and it only came into general use about the year 800.
+
+Among those who adopted the Christian era, some made the year commence
+with March, which was the first month of the year of Romulus; others in
+January, which commences the year of Numa; others commenced on Christmas
+Day; and others on Lady Day, March 25. Another form of nominal year was
+that which commenced with Easter Day, in which case, the festival being
+a movable one, some years were shorter than others, and in some years
+there might be two 2nd, 3rd, &c., of April, if Easter fell in one year
+on the 2nd, and next year a few days later.
+
+The 1st of January was made to begin the year in Germany in 1500. An
+edict of Charles IX. prescribes the same in France in 1563. But it was
+not till 1752 that the change was made in England by Lord Chesterfield's
+Act. The year 1751, as the year that had preceded it, began on March
+25th, and it should have lasted till the next Lady Day; but according to
+the Act, the months of January, February, and part of March were to be
+reckoned as part of the year 1752. By this means the unthinking seemed
+to have grown old suddenly by three months, and popular clamour was
+raised against the promoter of the Bill, and cries raised of "Give us
+our three months." Such have been the various changes that our calendar
+has undergone to bring it to its present state.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE END OF THE WORLD.
+
+
+Perhaps the most anxious question that has been asked of the astronomer
+is when the world is to come to an end. It is a question which, of
+course, he has no power to answer with truth; but it is also one that
+has often been answered in good faith. It has perhaps been somewhat
+natural to ask such a question of an astronomer, partly because his
+science naturally deals with the structure of the universe, which might
+give some light as to its future, and partly because of his connection
+with astrology, whose province it was supposed to be to open the destiny
+of all things. Yet the question has been answered by others than by
+astronomers, on grounds connected with their faith. In the early ages of
+the Church, the belief in the rapid approach of the end of the world was
+universally spread amongst Christians. The Apocalypse of St. John and
+the Acts of the Apostles seemed to announce its coming before that
+generation passed away. Afterwards, it was expected at the year 1000;
+and though these beliefs did not rest in any way on astronomical
+grounds, yet to that science was recourse had for encouragement or
+discouragement of the idea. The middle ages, fall of simple faith and
+superstitious credulity, were filled with fear of this terrible
+catastrophe.
+
+As the year 1000 approached, the warnings became frequent and very
+pressing. Thus, for example, Bernard of Thuringia, about 960, began to
+announce publicly that the world was about to end, declaring that he had
+had a particular revelation of the fact. He took for his text the
+enigmatical words of the Apocalypse: "At the end of one thousand years,
+Satan shall be loosed from his prison, and shall seduce the people that
+are in the four quarters of the earth. The book of life shall be open,
+and the sea shall give up her dead." He fixed the day when the
+Annunciation of the Virgin should coincide with Good Friday as the end
+of all things. This happened in 992, but nothing extraordinary happened.
+
+During the tenth century the royal proclamations opened by this
+characteristic phrase: _Whereas the end of the world is approaching_....
+
+In 1186 the astrologers frightened Europe by announcing a conjunction of
+all the planets. Rigord, a writer of that period, says in his _Life of
+Philip Augustus_: "The astrologers of the East, Jews, Saracens, and even
+Christians, sent letters all over the world, in which they predicted,
+with perfect assurance, that in the month of September there would be
+great tempests, earthquakes, mortality among men, seditions and
+discords, revolutions in kingdoms, and the destruction of all things.
+But," he adds, "the event very soon belied their predictions."
+
+Some years after, in 1198, another alarm of the end of the world was
+raised, but this time it was not dependent on celestial phenomena. It
+was said that Antichrist was born in Babylon, and therefore all the
+human race would be destroyed.
+
+It would be a curious list to make of all the years in which it was said
+that Antichrist was born; they might be counted by hundreds, to say
+nothing of the future.
+
+At the commencement of the fourteenth century, the alchemist Arnault of
+Villeneuve announced the end of the world for 1335. In his treatise _De
+Sigillis_ he applies the influence of the stars to alchemy, and expounds
+the mystical formula by which demons are to be conjured.
+
+St. Vincent Ferrier, a famous Spanish preacher, gave to the world as
+many years' duration as there were verses in the Psalms--about 2537.
+
+The sixteenth century produced a very plentiful crop of predictions of
+the final catastrophe. Simon Goulart, for example, gave the world an
+appalling account of terrible sights seen in Assyria--where a mountain
+opened and showed a scroll with letters of Greek--"The end of the world
+is coming." This was in 1532; but after that year had passed in safety,
+Leovitius, a famous astrologer, predicted it again for 1584. Louis
+Gayon reports that the fright at this time was great. The churches could
+not hold those who sought a refuge in them, and a great number made
+their wills, without reflecting that there was no use in it if the whole
+world was to finish.
+
+One of the most famous mathematicians of Europe, named Stoffler, who
+flourished in the 16th century, and who worked for a long time at the
+reform of the calendar proposed by the Council of Constance, predicted a
+universal deluge for 1524. This deluge was to happen in the month of
+February, because Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars were then together in the
+sign of the Fishes. Everyone in Europe, Asia, and Africa, to whom these
+tidings came, was in a state of consternation. They expected a deluge,
+in spite of the rainbow. Many contemporary authors report that the
+inhabitants of the maritime provinces of Germany sold their lands for a
+mere trifle to those who had more money and less credulity. Each built
+himself a boat like an ark. A doctor of Toulouse, named Auriol, made a
+very large ark for himself, his family, and his friends, and the same
+precautions were taken by a great many people in Italy. At last the
+month of February came, and not a drop of rain fell. Never was a drier
+month or a more puzzled set of astrologers. Nevertheless they were not
+discouraged nor neglected for all that, and Stoffler himself, associated
+with the celebrated Regiomontanus, predicted once more that the end of
+the world would come in 1588, or at least that there would be frightful
+events which would overturn the earth.
+
+This new prediction was a new deception; nothing extraordinary occurred
+in 1588. The year 1572, however, witnessed a strange phenomenon, capable
+of justifying all their fears. An unknown star came suddenly into view
+in the constellation of Cassiopeia, so brilliant that it was visible
+even in full daylight, and the astrologers calculated that it was the
+star of the Magi which had returned, and that it announced the second
+coming of Jesus Christ.
+
+The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were filled with new
+predictions of great variety.
+
+Even our own century has not been without such. A religious work,
+published in 1826, by the Count Sallmard Montfort, demonstrated
+perfectly that the world had no more than ten years to exist. "The
+world," he said, "is old, and its time of ending is near, and I believe
+that the epoch of that terrible event is not far off. Jacob, the chief
+of the twelve tribes of Israel, and consequently of the ancient Church,
+was born in 2168 of the world, _i.e._, 1836 B.C. The ancient Church,
+which was the figure of the new, lasted 1836 years. Hence the new one
+will only last till 1836 A.D."
+
+Similar prophecies by persons of various nations have in like manner
+been made, without being fulfilled. Indeed, we have had our own
+prophets; but they have proved themselves incredulous of their own
+predictions, by taking leases that should _commence_ in the year of the
+world's destruction.
+
+But we have one in store for us yet. In 1840, Pierre Louis of Paris
+calculated that the end would be in 1900, and he calculated in this
+way:--The Apocalypse says the Gentiles shall occupy the holy city for
+forty-two months. The holy city was taken by Omar in 636. Forty-two
+months of years is 1260, which brings the return of the Jews to 1896,
+which will precede by a few years the final catastrophe. Daniel also
+announces the arrival of Antichrist 2,300 days after the establishment
+of Artaxerxes on the throne of Persia, 400 B.C., which again brings us
+to 1900.
+
+Some again have put it at 2000 A.D., which will make 6,000 years, as
+they think, from the creation; these are the days of work; then comes
+the 1,000 years of millennial sabbath.
+
+We are led far away by these vain speculations from the wholesome study
+of astronomy; they are useful only in showing how by a little latitude
+that science may wind itself into all the questions that in any way
+affect the earth.
+
+Indeed, since the world began, the world will doubtless end, and
+astronomers are still asked how could it be brought about?
+
+Certainly it is not an impossible event, and there are only too many
+ways in which it has been imagined it might occur.
+
+The question is one that stands on a very different footing from that it
+occupied before the days of Galileo and Copernicus. _Then_ the earth was
+believed to be the centre of the universe, and all the heavens and stars
+created for it. _Then_ the commencement of the world was the
+commencement of the universe, its destruction would be the destruction
+of all. _Now_, thanks to the revolution in feeling that has been
+accomplished by the progress of astronomy, we have learned our own
+insignificance, and that amongst the infinite number of stars, each
+supporting their own system of inhabited planets, our earth occupies an
+infinitesimally small portion, and the destruction of it would make no
+difference whatever--still less its becoming uninhabitable. It is an
+event which must have happened and be happening to other worlds, without
+affecting the infinite life of the universe in any marked degree.
+
+Nevertheless, for ourselves, the question remains as interesting as if
+we were the all in all, but must be approached in a different manner.
+
+Numerous hypotheses have been put forth on the question but they may
+mostly be dismissed as vain.
+
+Buffon calculated that it had taken 74,832 years for the earth to cool
+down to its present temperature, and that it will take 93,291 years
+more before it would be too cold for men to live upon it. But Sir
+William Thomson has shown that the internal heat of the earth, supposed
+to be due to its cooling from fusion, cannot have seriously modified
+climate for a long series of years, and that life depends essentially on
+the heat of the sun.
+
+Another hypothesis, the most ancient of all, is that which supposes the
+earth will be destroyed by fire. It comes down from Zoroaster and the
+Jews; and on the improbable supposition of the thin crust of the earth
+over a molten mass, this is thought possible. However, as the tendency
+in the past has been all the other way, namely, to make the effect of
+the inner heat of the earth less marked on the surface, we have no
+reason to expect a reversal.
+
+A third theory would make the earth die more gradually and more surely.
+It is known that by the wearing down of the surface by the rains and
+rivers, there is a tendency to reduce mountains and all high parts of
+the earth to a uniform level, a tendency which is only counteracted by
+some elevating force within the earth. If these elevating forces be
+supposed to be due to the internal heat--a hypothesis which cannot be
+proved--then with the cooling of the earth the elevating forces would
+cease, and, finally, the whole of the continent would be brought beneath
+the sea and terrestrial life perish.
+
+Another interesting but groundless hypothesis is that of Adhemar on the
+periodicity of deluges. This theory depends on the fact of the unequal
+length of the seasons in the two hemispheres. Our autumn and our winter
+last 179 days. In the southern hemisphere they last 186 days. These
+seven days, or 168 hours, of difference, increase each year the coldness
+of the pole. During 10,500 years the ice accumulates at one pole and
+melts at the other, thereby displacing the earth's centre of gravity.
+Now a time will arrive when, after the maximum of elevation of
+temperature on one side, a catastrophe will happen, which will bring
+back the centre of gravity to the centre of figure, and cause an immense
+deluge. The deluge of the north pole was 4,200 years ago, therefore the
+next will be 6,300 hence. It is very obvious to ask on this--_Why_
+should there be a _catastrophe_? and why should not the centre of
+gravity return _gradually_ as it was gradually displaced?
+
+Another theory has been that it would perish by a comet. That it will
+not be by the shock we have already seen from the light weight of the
+comet and from experience; but it has been suggested that the gas may
+combine with the air, and an explosion take place that would destroy us
+all; but is not that also contradicted by experience?
+
+Another idea is that we shall finally fall into the sun by the
+resistance of the ether to our motion. Encke's comet loses in
+thirty-three years a thousandth part of its velocity. It appears then
+that we should have to wait millions of centuries before we came too
+near the sun.
+
+In reality, however, we are simply dependent on our sun, and our destiny
+depends upon that.
+
+In the first place, in its voyage through space it might encounter or
+come within the range of some dark body we at present know nothing of,
+and the attraction might put out of harmony all our solar system with
+calamitous results. Or since we are aware that the sun is a radiating
+body giving out its heat on all sides, and therefore growing colder, it
+may one day happen that it will be too cold to sustain life on the
+earth. It is, we know, a variable star, and stars have been seen to
+disappear, or even to have a catastrophe happen to them, as the kindling
+of enormous quantities of gas. A catastrophe in the sun will be our own
+end.
+
+Fontenelle has amusingly described in verse the result of the sun
+growing cold, which may be thus Englished:--
+
+  "Of this, though, I haven't a doubt,
+    One day when there isn't much light,
+  The poor little sun will go out
+    And bid us politely--good-night.
+  Look out from the stars up on high,
+    Some other to help you to see;
+  I can't shine any longer, not I,
+    Since shining don't benefit me.
+
+  "Then down on our poor habitation
+    What numberless evils will fall,
+  When the heavens demand liquidation,
+    Why all will go smash, and then all
+  Society come to an end.
+    Soon out of the sleepy affair
+  His way will each traveller wend,
+    No testament leaving, nor heir."
+
+The cooling of the sun must, however, take place very gradually, as no
+cooling has been perceived during the existence of man; and the growth
+of plants in the earliest geological ages, and the life of animals,
+prove that for so long a time it has been within the limits within which
+life has been possible--and we may look forward to as long in the
+future.
+
+It is not of course the time when the sun will become a dark ball,
+surrounded by illuminated planets, that we must reckon as the end of the
+earth. Life would have ceased long before that stage--no man will
+witness the death of the sun.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XVI.--THE END OF THE WORLD.]
+
+The diminution of the sun's heat would have for its natural effect the
+enlargement of the glacial zones! the sea and the land in those parts of
+the earth would cease to support life, which would gradually be drawn
+closer to the equatorial belt. Man, who by his nature and his
+intelligence is best fitted to withstand cold climates, would remain
+among the last of the inhabitants, reduced to the most miserable
+nourishment. Drawn together round the equator, the last of the sons of
+earth would wage a last combat with death, and exactly as the shades
+approached, would the human genius, fortified by all the acquirements of
+ages past--give out its brightest light, and attempt in vain to throw
+off the fatal cover that was destined to engulf him. At last, the earth,
+fading, dry, and sterile, would become an immense cemetery. And it would
+be the same with the other planets. The sun, already become red, would
+at last become black, and the planetary system would be an assemblage of
+black balls revolving round a larger black ball.
+
+Of course this is all imaginary, and cannot affect ourselves, but the
+very idea of it is melancholy, and enough to justify the words of
+Campbell:--
+
+  "For this hath science searched on weary wing
+  By shore and sea--each mute and living thing,
+  Or round the cope her living chariot driven
+  And wheeled in triumph through the signs of heaven.
+  Oh, star-eyed science, hast thou wandered there
+  To waft us home the message of despair?"
+
+In reality, as we know nothing of the origin, so we know nothing of the
+end of the world; and where so much has been accomplished, there are
+obviously infinite possibilities enough to satisfy the hopes of every
+one.
+
+While some stars may be fading, others may be rising into their place,
+and man need not be identified with one earth alone, but may rest
+content in the idea that the life universal is eternal.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+LONDON: P. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
+
+
+1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_.
+
+2. Images have been moved from the middle of a paragraph to the closest
+paragraph break.
+
+3. The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version
+these letters have been replaced with transliterations, for example,
+[Greek: a] represents first Greek letter alpha.
+
+3. The original text includes certain symbols for planets and zodiac
+signs. For this text version these symbols are replaced by text name
+of the corresponding symbol. For example, [symbol: sun] replaces the
+symbolic representation of sun.
+
+4. In this text version, fractions are represented using hyphen and
+forward slash. For example, 3-1/2 stands for three and a half.
+
+5. Certain words use oe ligature in the original.
+
+6. Obvious errors in punctuation and a few misprints have been silently
+corrected.
+
+7. Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in
+hyphenation and ligature usage have been retained.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Astronomical Myths, by John F. Blake
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