6 OF THF USE AND ADVANTAGE

for the purpose of administering to our wantsand necessities by useful discoveries, and notunder (he vain pretence of searching into thesecret designs of fate, and the hidden events offuturity. This fallacious art, which appears socaptivating to the vulgar, would have been asfatal to our peace, as it is contrary to the natureof things. U nhappy in the past, and dissatisfiedwith the present, we live only by the hope ofwhat is to come. A knowledge of our futuredestiny, would serve only to increase the weightof our present afflictions-, and by destroyingevery motive for exertion and activity, wouldrender existence a misery, and the creation adesert.

But, notwithstanding the absurdity of itsdoctrines, this art is still practised in almostevery country of the world: and it is not longstnee, that, even in Europe itself, the peoplehad their cunning men, and the princes theirastrologers, by whose predictions they regulatedtheir most important concerns. It is the lightof science only that can free us from the grossimpositions of these wretched empiricks. Theimmense distance of the stars is a convincingproof that they are too remote from us, for theirinfluence to have any effect upon our globe.And as their aspects and conjunctions have beensubject, from all eternity, to invariable laws,they must be totally insufficient to account for

that