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HISTORICAL VIEW OF THE

volution of a wheel, others emptying the contents of acylindrical into a cubical vessel : one cutting out theareas and weighing them, another turning the fourquadrants of a circle inside out ; some finding the qua-drature in the stars, others in the mystical number of thebeast in the Apocalypse.

This mighty secret, and that of the philosopher’sstone, the mysteries of alchemy, and, above all, of ju-dicial astrology, appear to have obtained considerableinfluence in the ages of which we are treating, especiallyamong the Arabians. Indeed the astronomy of thispeople, zealously and ingeniously as it was pursued andcultivated, would appear to have been generally associatedwith astrology, and made subservient to it. The wholetheory of its predictions was built upon the configur-ations of the planets with respect to the sign of thezodiac which was rising at the moment of an indivi-dual’s birth (and which was called his horoscope). This,of course, depended on a tolerably exact knowledge ofthe planetary motions ; and, to construct the horoscopefor any person, required tables of those motions, and afacility of calculating the places of the heavenly bodiesat any given epoch. There can he little doubt that thebelief in these absurdities produced at least one powerfulmotive for the cultivation of astronomy, both in theage of which we are speaking, and even long afterwardsamong the Europeans .

The occult arts had found their way into Europe atan earlier period, and various circumstances conspire toshow that they originated in the East. Astrology wascertainly unknown in Greece before the expeditions ofAlexander; and it appears to have first made its ap-pearance in Rome in the time of Augustus , when animmense influx of Orientals into the capital took place,as we well know from the satirical remarks of Juvenal .

From that time downwards, even to the seventeenthcentury, the whole of the civilised world in the West,as well as the East, was enslaved by this extraordinaryand superstitious delusion ; and, even at this day, we