It is quite clear that man and the other animals can exist very well
without bakers, without novelists, and without theologians, witness the
whole of America, witness three quarters of our continent.
The newness of the arts among us does not therefore prove the newness of
the globe, as was claimed by Epicurus, one of our predecessors in
reverie, who supposed that by chance the eternal atoms in declining, had
one day formed our earth. Pomponace said: "_Se il mondo non e eterno,
per tutti santi e molto vecchio._"
_ASTROLOGY_
Astrology may rest on better foundations than Magic. For if no one has
seen either Goblins, or Lemures, or Dives, or Peris, or Demons, or
Cacodemons, the predictions of astrologers have often been seen to
succeed. If of two astrologers consulted on the life of a child and on
the weather, one says that the child will live to manhood, the other
not; if one announces rain, and the other fine weather, it is clear that
one of them will be a prophet.
The great misfortune of the astrologers is that the sky has changed
since the rules of the art were established. The sun, which at the
equinox was in Aries in the time of the Argonauts, is to-day in Taurus;
and the astrologers, to the great ill-fortune of their art, to-day
attribute to one house of the sun what belongs visibly to another.
However, that is not a demonstrative reason against astrology.
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