high antiquity in the East. The stars were supposed to influence the character and destiny of man, and to be in some way connected with superior natures and powers.

We may, I conceive, look upon the formation of the constellations, and the notions thus connected with them, as a very early attempt to find a meaning in the relations of the stars; and as an utter failure. The first effort to associate the appearances and motions of the skies by conceptions implying unity and connexion, was made in a wrong direction, as may very easily be supposed. Instead of considering the appearances only with reference to space, time, number, in a manner purely rational, a number of other elements, imagination, tradition, hope, fear, awe of the supernatural, belief in destiny, were called into action. Man, young as a philosopher at least, had yet to learn what notions his successful guesses on these subjects must involve, and what they must exclude. At that period, nothing could be more natural or excusable than this ignorance; but it is curious to see how long and obstinately the belief lingered (if indeed it be yet extinct) that the motions of the stars, and the dispositions and fortunes of men, may come under some common conceptions and laws, by which a connexion between the one and the other may be established.

We cannot, therefore, agree with those who consider astrology in the early ages as only a de

66

graded astronomy, the abuse of a more ancient science""." It was the first step to astronomy, by leading to habits and means of grouping phenomena; and, after a while, by showing that pictorial and mythological relations among the stars had at least no very obvious value. From that time, the inductive process went on steadily in the true road, under the guidance of ideas of space, time, and number.

Sect. 7.-The Planets.

WHILE men were becoming familiar with the fixed stars, the planets must have attracted their notice. Venus, from her brightness, and from her accompanying the sun at no great distance, and thus appearing as the morning and evening star, was very conspicuous. Pythagoras is said to have maintained that the evening and morning star are the same body; which certainly must have been one of the earliest discoveries on this subject; and indeed, we can hardly conceive men noticing the stars for a year or two without coming to this conclusion.

Jupiter and Mars, sometimes still brighter than Venus, were also very noticeable. Saturn and Mercury were less so, but in fine climates they and their motion would soon be detected by persons observant of the heavens. To reduce to any rule the movements of these luminaries must have taken

32 Dupuis vi. 546.

time and thought; probably before this was done, certainly very early, these heavenly bodies were brought more peculiarly under those views which we have noticed as leading to astrology.

At a time beyond the reach of certain history, the planets, along with the sun and moon, had been arranged in a certain recognised order by the Egyptians or some other ancient nation. Probably this arrangement had been made according to the slowness of their motions among the stars; for though the motion of each is very variable, the gradation of their velocities is, on the whole, very manifest; and the different rate of travelling of the different planets, and probably other circumstances of difference, led, in the ready fancy of early times, to the attribution of a peculiar character to each luminary. Thus Saturn was held to be of a cold and gelid nature; Jupiter, who, from his more rapid motion, was supposed to be lower in place, was temperate; Mars, fiery, and the like.

It is not necessary to dwell on the details of these speculations, but we may notice a very remarkable evidence of their antiquity and generality in the

33 Achilles Tatius (Uranol. p. 135, 136,) gives the Grecian and Egyptian names of the planets.

structure of one of the most familiar of our measures of time, the week. This distribution of time according to periods of seven days, comes down to us, as we learn from the Jewish scriptures, from the beginning of man's existence on the earth. The same usage is found over all the East; it existed among the Arabians, Assyrians, Egyptians. The same week is found in India among the Bramins; it has, there also, its days marked by those of the heavenly bodies; and it has been ascertained that the same day has, in that country, the name corresponding with its designation in other nations.

The notion which led to the usual designations of the days of the week is not easily unravelled. The days each correspond to one of the heavenly bodies, which were, in the earliest systems of the world, conceived to be the following, enumerating them in the order of their remoteness from the earth; Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, the Moon. At a later period, the received systems placed these seven luminaries in the seven spheres. The knowledge which was implied in this view, and the time when it was obtained, we must consider hereafter. The order in which the names are assigned to the days of the week (beginning with Saturday,) is, Saturn, the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus; and various accounts are given of the manner in which one of these orders is obtained from the

34

Laplace, Hist. Astron. p. 16.

35 Philol. Mus. No. 1.

other; all the methods proceeding upon certain arbitrary arithmetical processes, connected in some way with astrological views. It is perhaps not worth our while here to examine further the steps of this process; it would be difficult to determine with certainty why the former order of the planets was adopted, and how and why the latter was deduced from it. But there is something very remarkable in the universality of the notions, apparently so fantastic, which have produced this result; and we may probably consider the week, with Laplace", as "the most ancient monument of astronomical knowledge." This period has gone on without interruption or irregularity from the earliest recorded times to our own days, traversing the extent of ages and the revolutions of empires; the names of the ancient deities which were associated with the stars have been replaced by those of the objects of the worship of our Teutonic ancestors, according to their views of the correspondence of the two mythologies; and the Quakers, in rejecting these names of days, have cast aside the most ancient existing relic of astrological as well as idolatrous superstition.

Sect. 8.-The Circles of the Sphere.

THE inventions hitherto noticed, though undoubtedly they were steps in astronomical knowledge, can

36 Hist. Ast. p. 17.