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ASTRONOMY.

Both admitted plurality of worlds. Democritus was thefirst who taught that the milky wav is occasioned by the con-fused light of an infinite number of stars, Plutarch , inPlacit Philosoph. iii. 1; Manil. i. 753; which doctrine isstill maintained by the best informed of philosophers. Healso extended that idea to comets, Plutarch , ibid, ii; thenumber of which Seneca says, the Greek philosophers didnot know, Senec. 2. Nat. vii. 2; and that Democritus sus-pected there were more planets than we could see, Ibid. 3,which was also the opinion of others; the truth of which be-lief has been verified of late years, by the discoveries of Hard-ing, Gibers, and Hersckell, in the discoveries of the Pallas,Juno, Vesta, and the Georgium Sidus ; which opinion of De-mocritus was maintained by many others, Gell. xvi. 1.

Democritus is considered as the parent of experi-mental philosophy; the greatest part of his time wasdevoted to it; (atatem inter experimenta consumit, et quaessel expertus annulo signabat, Pet. Arbiter. 88. et Vitruv .ix. 3.) and he is said to have made many important discove-ries, Senec. Ep. 90. He, like Meteon and Newton, maintainedthe absurd idea of the existence of a vacuum, which wasdenied by Thales and Descartes. Democritus also main-tained that the sea was constantly diminishing, Diog. Laert.He declared that he would prefer the discovery of one ofthe causes in the works of nature, to the possession ofthe Persian monarchy, Euseb. xiv. 27. Often laughing atthe follies of mankind, he was thought by the vulgar to beout of his mind ; but Hippocrates being sent to cure him,soon found him to be the wisest man of the age, Diog.Laert .; and Seneca reckons him the most acute and ingeni-ous of the ancients, on account of his many useful in-ventions ; particularly his ingenious making of artificialemeralds, tinging them of any colour; of softening ivory,dissolving stones, &c. Ep. 41.

Although the chief attention of Plato and Aristotlkwas directed to other grand objects, yet they much con-tributed to the improvement of astronomy. Notwithstanding,the most famous in this respect was Eudoxus, the scholar of Plato , who was famous for his skill in astrology, naturaland judicial, or the art of foretelling future events by therelative situations of the stars, of their various influences,Cic. Divin. ii. 42, an art which prevailed for many ages amongthe ancients, and is yet assiduously cultivated by the modernArabians and other orientalists, although in a great measure ex-ploded in European nations. By the former of which divisionsof this science are foretold the changes of seasons, rain, wind,