Myths and Marvels of Astronomy

XII The Origin of the Constellation-Figures

Although the strange figures which astronomers still allow to straggle over their star maps no longer have any real scientific interest, they still possess a certain charm, not only for the student of astronomy, but for many who care little or nothing about astronomy as a science. When I was giving a course of twelve lectures in Boston, America, a person of considerable culture said to me, ‘I wish you would lecture about the constellations; I care little about the sun and moon and the planets, and not much more about comets; but I have always felt great interest in the Bears and Lions, the Chained and Chaired Ladies, King Cepheus and the Rescuer Perseus, Orion, Ophiuchus, Hercules, and the rest of the mythical and fanciful beings with which the old astronomers peopled the heavens. I say with Carlyle, “Why does not some one teach me the constellations, and make me at home in the starry heavens, which are always overhead, and which I don’t half know to this day.”’ We may notice, too, that the poets by almost unanimous consent have recognised the poetical aspect of the constellations, while they have found little to say about subjects which belong especially to astronomy as a science. Milton has indeed made an Archangel reason (not unskilfully for Milton’s day) about the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems, while Tennyson makes frequent reference to astronomical theories. ‘There sinks the nebulous star we call the Sun, if that hypothesis of theirs be sound,’ said Ida; but she said no more, save ‘let us down and rest,’ as though the subject were wearisome to her. Again, in the Palace of Art the soul of the poet having built herself that ‘great house so royal, rich, and wide,’ thither—

... when all the deep unsounded skies
Shuddered with silent stars, she clomb,
And as with optic glasses her keen eyes
Pierced through the mystic dome,
Regions of lucid matter taking forms,
Brushes of fire, hazy gleams,
Clusters and beds of worlds and beelike swarms
Of suns, and starry streams:
She saw the snowy poles of moonless Mars,
That marvellous round of milky light
Below Orion, and those double stars
Whereof the one more bright
Is circled by the other.

But the poet’s soul so wearied of these astronomical researches that the beautiful lines I have quoted disappeared (more’s the pity) from the second and all later editions. Such exceptions, indeed, prove the rule. Poets have been chary in referring to astronomical researches and results, full though these have been of unspeakable poetry; while from the days of Homer to those of Tennyson, the constellations which ‘garland the heavens’ have always been favourite subjects of poetic imagery.

It is not my present purpose, however, to discuss the poetic aspect of the constellations. I propose to inquire how these singular figures first found their way to the heavens, and, so far as facts are available for the purpose, to determine the history and antiquity of some of the more celebrated constellations.

Long before astronomy had any existence as a science men watched the stars with wonder and reverence. Those orbs, seemingly countless—which bespangle the dark robe of night—have a charm and beauty of their own apart from the significance with which the science of astronomy has invested them. The least fanciful mind is led to recognise on the celestial concave the emblems of terrestrial objects, pictured with more or less distinctness among the mysterious star-groupings. We can imagine that long before the importance of the study of the stars was recognised, men had begun to associate with certain star-groups the names of familiar objects animate or inanimate. The flocks and herds which the earliest observers of the heavens tended would suggest names for certain sets of stars, and thus the Bull, the Ram, the Kids, would appear in the heavens. Other groups would remind those early observers of the animals from whom they had to guard their flocks, or of the animals to whose vigilance they trusted for protection, and thus the Bear, the Lion, and the Dogs would find their place among the stars. The figures of men and horses, and of birds and fishes, would naturally enough be recognised, nor would either the implements of husbandry, or the weapons by which the huntsman secured his prey, remain unrepresented among the star-groupings. And lastly, the altar on which the first-fruits of harvest and vintage were presented, or the flesh of lambs and goats consumed, would be figured among the innumerable combinations which a fanciful eye can recognise among the orbs of heaven.

In thus suggesting that the first observers of the heavens were shepherds, huntsmen, and husbandmen, I am not advancing a theory on the difficult questions connected with the origin of exact astronomy. The first observations of the heavens were of necessity made by men who depended for their subsistence on a familiarity with the progress and vicissitudes of the seasons, and doubtless preceded by many ages the study of astronomy as a science. And yet the observations made by those early shepherds and hunters, unscientific though they must have been in themselves, are full of interest to the student of modern exact astronomy. The assertion may seem strange at first sight, but is nevertheless strictly true, that if we could but learn with certainty the names assigned to certain star-groups, before astronomy had any real existence, we could deduce lessons of extreme importance from the rough observations which suggested those old names. In these days, when observations of such marvellous exactness are daily and nightly made, when instruments capable of revealing the actual constitution of the stars are employed, and observers are so numerous, it may seem strange to attach any interest to the question whether half-savage races recognised in such and such a star-group the likeness of a bear, or in another group the semblance of a ship. But though we could learn more, of course, from exacter observations, yet even such rough and imperfect records would have their value. If we could be certain that in long-past ages a star-group really resembled some known object, we should have in the present resemblance of that group to the same object evidence of the general constancy of stellar lustre, or if no resemblance could be recognised we should have reason to doubt whether other suns (and therefore our own sun) may not be liable to great changes.

The subject of the constellation-figures as first known is interesting in other ways. For instance, it is full of interest to the antiquarian (and most of us are to some degree antiquarians) as relating to the most ancient of all human sciences. The same mental quality which causes us to look with interest on the buildings raised in long-past ages, or on the implements and weapons of antiquity, renders the thought impressive that the stars which we see were gazed on perhaps not less wonderingly in the very infancy of the human race. It is, again, a subject full of interest to the chronologist to inquire in what era of the world’s history exact astronomy began, the moon was assigned her twenty-eight zodiacal mansions, the sun his twelve zodiacal signs. It is well known, indeed, that Newton himself did not disdain to study the questions thus suggested; and the speculations of the ingenious Dupuis found favour with the great mathematician Laplace.

Unfortunately, the evidence is not sufficiently exact to be very trustworthy. In considering, for instance, the chronological inquiries of Newton, one cannot but feel that the reliance placed by him on the statements made by different writers is not justified by the nature of those statements, which were for the most part vague in the extreme. We owe many of them to poets who, knowing little of astronomy, mixed up the phenomena of their own time with those which they found recorded in the writings of astronomers. Some of the statements left by ancient writers are indeed ludicrously incongruous; insomuch that Grotius not unjustly said of the account of the constellations given by the poet Aratus, that it could be assigned to no fixed epoch and to no fixed place. However, this would not be the place to discuss details such as are involved in exact inquiries. I have indicated some of these in an appendix to my treatise on ‘Saturn,’ and others in the preface to my ‘Gnomonic Star Atlas’; but for the most part they do not admit very readily of familiar description. Let us turn to less technical considerations, which fortunately are in this case fully as much to the point as exact inquiries, seeing that there is no real foundation for such inquiries in any of the available evidence.

The first obvious feature of the old constellations is one which somehow has not received the attention it deserves. It is as instructive as any of those which have been made the subject of profound research.

There is a great space in the heavens over which none of the old constellations extend, except the River Eridanus as now pictured, but we do not know where this winding stream of stars was supposed by the old observers to come to an end. This great space surrounds the southern pole of the heavens, and thus shows that the first observers of the stars were not acquainted with the constellations which can be seen only from places far south of Chaldæa, Persia, Egypt, India, China, and indeed of all the regions to which the invention of astronomy has been assigned. Whatever the first astronomers were, however profound their knowledge of astronomy may have been (as some imagine), they had certainly not travelled far enough towards the south to know the constellations around the southern pole. If they had been as well acquainted with geography as some assert, if even any astronomer had travelled as far south as the equator, we should certainly have had pictured in the old star charts some constellations in that region of the heavens wherein modern astronomers have placed the Octant, the Bird of Paradise, the Sword-fish, the Flying-fish, Toucan, the Net, and other uncelestial objects.

In passing I may note that this fact disposes most completely of a theory lately advanced that the constellations were invented in the southern hemisphere, and that thus is to be explained the ancient tradition that the sun and stars have changed their courses. For though all the northern constellations would have been more or less visible from parts of the southern hemisphere near the equator, it is absurd to suppose that a southern observer would leave untenanted a full fourth of the heavens round the southern or visible pole, while carefully filling up the space around the northern or unseen pole with incomplete constellations whose northern unknown portions would include that pole. Supposing it for a moment to be true, as a modern advocate of the southern theory remarks, that ‘one of the race migrating from one side to the other of the equator would take his position from the sun, and fancy he was facing the same way when he looked at it at noon, and so would think the motion of the stars to have altered instead of his having turned round,’ the theory that astronomy was brought to us from south of the equator cannot possibly be admitted in presence of that enormous vacant region around the southern pole. I think, however, that, apart from this, a race so profoundly ignorant as to suppose any such thing, to imagine they were looking north when in reality they were looking south, can hardly be regarded as the first founders of the science of astronomy.

The great gap I have spoken of has long been recognised. But one remarkable feature in its position has not, to the best of my remembrance, been considered—the vacant space is eccentric with regard to the southern pole of the heavens. The old constellations, the Altar, the Centaur, and the ship Argo, extend within twenty degrees of the pole, while the Southern Fish and the great sea-monster Cetus, which are the southernmost constellations on the other side, do not reach within some sixty degrees of the pole.

Of course, in saying that this peculiarity has not been considered, I am not suggesting that it has not been noticed, or that its cause is in any way doubtful or unknown. We know that the earth, besides whirling once a day on its axis, and rushing on its mighty orbit around the sun (spanning some 184,000,000 of miles) reels like a gigantic top, with a motion so slow that 25,868 years are required for a single circuit of the swaying axis around an imaginary line upright to the plane in which the earth travels. And we know that in consequence of this reeling motion the points of the heavens opposite the earth’s poles necessarily change. So that the southern pole, now eccentrically placed amid the region where there were no constellations in old times, was once differently situated. But the circumstance which seems to have been overlooked is this, that by calculating backwards to the time when the southern pole was in the centre of that vacant region, we have a much better chance of finding the date (let us rather say the century) when the older constellations were formed, than by any other process. We may be sure not to be led very far astray; for we are not guided by one constellation but by several, whereas all the other indications which have been followed depend on the supposed ancient position of single constellations. And then most of the other indications are such as might very well have belonged to periods following long after the invention of the constellations themselves. An astronomer might have ascertained, for instance, that the sun in spring was in some particular part of the Ram or of the Fishes, and later a poet like Aratus might describe that relation (erroneously for his own epoch) as characteristic of one or other constellation; but who is to assure us that the astronomer who noted the relation correctly may not have made his observation many hundreds of years after those constellations were invented? Whereas, there was one period, and only one period, when the most southernmost of the old constellations could have marked the limits of the region of sky visible from some northern region. Thus, too, may we form some idea of the latitude in which the first observers lived. For in high latitudes the southernmost of the old constellations would not have been visible at all, and in latitudes much lower than a certain latitude, presently to be noted, these constellations would have ridden high above the southern horizon, other star-groups showing below them which were not included among the old constellations.

I have before me as I write a picture of the southern heavens, drawn by myself, in which this vacant space—eccentric in position but circular in shape—is shown. The centre lies close by the Lesser Magellanic cloud—between the stars Kappa Toucani and Eta Hydri of our modern maps, but much nearer to the last named. Near this spot, then, we may be sure, lay the southern pole of the star-sphere when the old constellations, or at least the southern ones, were invented. (If there had been astronomers in the southern hemisphere Eta Hydri would certainly have been their pole-star.)

Now it is a matter of no difficulty whatever to determine the epoch when the southern pole of the heavens was thus placed.57 Between 2100 and 2200 years before the Christian era the southern constellations had the position described, the invisible southern pole lying at the centre of the vacant space of the star-sphere—or rather of the space free from constellations. It is noteworthy that for other reasons this period, or rather a definite epoch within it, is indicated as that to which must be referred the beginning of exact astronomy. Amongst others must be mentioned this—that in the year 2170 B.C. quam proximè, the Pleiades rose to their highest above the horizon at noon (or technically made their noon culmination), at the spring equinox. We can readily understand that to minds possessed with full faith in the influence of the stars on the earth, this fact would have great significance. The changes which are brought about at that season of the year, in reality, of course, because of the gradual increase in the effect of the sun’s rays as he rises higher and higher above the celestial equator, would be attributed, in part at least, to the remarkable star-cluster coming then close by the sun on the heavens, though unseen. Thus we can readily understand the reference in Job to the ‘sweet influences of the Pleiades.’ Again at that same time, 2170 B.C. when the sun and the Pleiades opened the year (with commencing spring) together, the star Alpha of the Dragon, which was the pole-star of the period, had that precise position with respect to the true pole of the heavens which is indicated by the slope of the long passage extending downwards aslant from the northern face of the Great Pyramid; that is to say, when due north below the pole (or at what is technically called its sub-polar meridional passage) the pole-star of the period shone directly down that long passage, and I doubt not could be seen not only when it came to that position during the night, but also when it came there during the day-time.

But some other singular relations are to be noted in connection with the particular epoch I have indicated.

It is tolerably clear that in imagining figures of certain objects in the heavens, the early observers would not be apt to picture these objects in unusual positions. A group of stars may form a figure so closely resembling that of a familiar object that even a wrong position would not prevent the resemblance from being noticed, as for instance the ‘Chair,’ the ‘Plough,’ and so forth. But such cases are not numerous; indeed, to say the truth, one must ‘make believe a good deal’ to see resemblance between the star-groups and most of the constellation-figures, even under the most favourable conditions. When there is no very close resemblance, as is the case with all the large constellations, position must have counted for something in determining the association between a star-group and a known object.

Now the constellations north of the equator assume so many and such various positions that this special consideration does not apply very forcibly to them. But those south of the equator are only seen above the southern horizon, and change little in position during their progress from east to west of the south point. The lower down they are the less they change in position. And the very lowest—such as those were, for instance, which I have been considering in determining the position of the southern pole—are only fully visible when due south. They must, then, in all probability, have stood upright or in their natural position when so placed, for if they were not rightly placed then they only were so when below the horizon and consequently invisible.

Let us, then, inquire what was the position of the southernmost constellations when fully seen above the southern horizon at midnight.

The Centaur stood then as he does now, upright; only—whereas now in Egypt, Chaldæa, India, Persia, and China, only the upper portions of his figure rise above the horizon, he then stood, the noblest save Orion of all the constellations, with his feet (marked by the bright Alpha and Beta still belonging to the constellation, and by the stars of the Southern Cross which have been taken from it) upon the horizon itself. In latitude twenty degrees or so north he may still be seen thus placed when due south.

The Centaur was represented in old times as placing an offering upon the altar, which was pictured, says Manilius, as bearing a fire of incense represented by stars. This to a student of our modern charts seems altogether perplexing. The Centaur carries the wolf on the end of his spear; but instead of placing the wolf (not a very acceptable meat offering, one would suppose) upon the altar, he is directing this animal towards the base of the altar, whose top is downwards, the flames represented there tending (naturally) downwards also. It is quite certain the ancient observers did not imagine anything of this sort. As I have said, Aratus tells us the celestial Centaur was placing an offering upon the altar, which was therefore upright, and Manilius describes the altar as

Ferens thuris, stellis imitantibus, ignem, so that the fire was where it should be, on the top of an upright altar, where also on the sky itself were stars looking like the smoke from incense fires. Now that was precisely the appearance presented by the stars forming the constellation at the time I have indicated, some 2170 years B.C. Setting the altar upright above the southern horizon (that is, inverting the absurd picture at present given of it) we see it just where it should be placed to receive the Centaur’s offering. A most remarkable portion of the Milky Way is then seen to be directly above the altar in such a way as to form a very good imitation of smoke ascending from it. This part of the Milky Way is described by Sir J. Herschel, who studied it carefully during his stay at the Cape of Good Hope, as forming a complicated system of interlaced streaks and masses which covers the tail of Scorpio (extending from the altar which lies immediately south of the Scorpion’s Tail). The Milky Way divides, in fact, just above the altar as the constellation was seen 4000 years ago above the southern horizon, one branch being that just described, the other (like another stream of smoke) ‘passing,’ says Herschel, ‘over the stars Iota of the Altar, Theta and Iota of the Scorpion, etc., to Gamma of the Archer, where it suddenly collects into a vivid oval mass, so very rich in stars that a very moderate calculation makes their number exceed 100,000.’ Nothing could accord better with the descriptions of Aratus and Manilius.

But there is another constellation which shows in a more marked way than either the Centaur or the Altar that the date when the constellations were invented must have been near that which I have named. Both Ara and Centaurus look now in suitable latitudes (about twenty degrees north) as they looked in higher latitudes (about forty degrees north) 4000 years ago. For, the reeling motion of our earth has changed the place of the celestial pole in such a way as only to depress these constellations southwards without much changing their position; they are nearly upright when due south now as they were 4000 years ago, only lower down. But the great ship Argo has suffered a much more serious displacement. One cannot now see this ship like a ship at any time or from any place on the earth’s surface. If we travel south till the whole constellation comes into visibility above the southern horizon at the proper season (January and February for the midnight hours) the keel of the ship is aslant, the stern being high above the waist (the fore part is wanting). If we travel still further south, we can indeed reach places where the course of the ship is so widened, and the changes of position so increased, that she appears along part of her journey on an even keel, but then she is high above the horizon. Now 4000 years ago she stood on the horizon itself at her southern culmination, with level keel and upright mast.

In passing I may note that for my own part I imagine that this great ship represented the Ark, its fore part being originally the portion of the Centaur now forming the horse, so that the Centaur was represented as a man (not as a man-horse) offering a gift on the Altar. Thus in this group of constellations I recognise the Ark, and Noah going up from the Ark towards the altar ‘which he builded unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.’ I consider further that the constellation-figures of the Ship, the Man with an offering, and the Altar, painted or sculptured in some ancient astrological temple, came at a later time to be understood as picturing a certain series of events, interpreted and expanded by a poetical writer into a complete narrative. Without venturing to insist on so heterodox a notion, I may remark as an odd coincidence that probably such a picture or sculpture would have shown the smoke ascending from the Altar which I have already described, and in this smoke there would be shown the bow of Sagittarius; which, interpreted and expanded in the way I have mentioned, might have accounted for the ‘bow set in the clouds, for a token of a covenant.’ It is noteworthy that all the remaining constellations forming the southern limit of the old star-domes or charts, were watery ones—the Southern Fish, over which Aquarius is pouring a quite unnecessary stream of water, the Great Sea Monster towards which in turn flow the streams of the River Eridanus. The equator, too, was then occupied along a great part of its length by the great sea serpent Hydra, which reared its head above the equator, very probably indicated then by a water horizon, for nearly all the signs below it were then watery. At any rate, as the length of Hydra then lay horizontally above the Ship, whose masts reached it, we may well believe that this part of the picture of the heavens showed a sea-horizon and a ship, the great sea serpent lying along the horizon. On the back of Hydra is the Raven, which again may be supposed by those who accept the theory mentioned above to have suggested the raven which went forth to and fro from the ark. He is close enough to the rigging of Argo to make an easy journey of it. The dove, however, must not be confounded with the modern constellation Columba, though this is placed (suitably enough) near the Ark. We must suppose the idea of the dove was suggested by a bird pictured in the rigging of the celestial ship. The sequence in which the constellations came above the horizon as the year went round corresponded very satisfactorily with the theory, fanciful though this seem to some. First Aquarius pouring streams of water, the three fishes (Pisces and Piscis australis), and the great sea monster Cetus, showing how the waters prevailed over the highest hills, then the Ark sailing on the waters, a little later the Raven (Corvus), the man descending from the ark and offering a gift on the Altar, and last the Bow set amid the clouds.

The theory just described may not meet with much favour. But wilder theories of the story of the deluge have been adopted and advocated with considerable confidence. One of the wildest, I fear, is the Astronomer-Royal’s, that the deluge was simply a great rising of the Nile; and Sir G. Airy is so confident respecting this that he says, ‘I cannot entertain the smallest doubt that the flood of Noah was a flood of the Nile;’ precisely as he might say, ‘I cannot entertain the smallest doubt that the earth moves round the sun.’ On one point we can entertain very little doubt indeed. If it ever rained before the flood, which seems probable, and if the sun ever shone on falling rain, which again seems likely, nothing short of a miracle could have prevented the rainbow from making its appearance before the flood. The wildest theory that can be invented to explain the story of the deluge cannot be wilder than the supposition that the rays of sunlight shining on falling raindrops could have ever failed to show the prismatic colours. The theory I have suggested above, without going so far as strongly to advocate it, far less insist upon it, is free at any rate from objection on this particular score, which cannot be said of the ordinary theory. I am not yet able, however, to say that ‘I cannot entertain the smallest doubt’ about my theory.

We may feel tolerably sure that the period when the old southern constellations were formed must have been between 2400 and 2000 years before the present era, a period, by the way, including the date usually assigned to the deluge,—which, however, must really occupy our attention no further. In fact, let us leave the watery constellations lying below the equator of those remote times and seek at once the highest heavens above them.

Here, at the northern pole of these days, we find the great Dragon, which in any astrological temple of the time must have formed the highest or crowning constellation, surrounding the very key-stone of the dome. He has fallen away from that proud position since. In fact, even 4000 years ago he only held to the pole, so to speak, by his tail, and we have to travel back 2000 years or so to find the pole situate in a portion of the length of the Dragon which can be regarded as central. One might almost, if fancifully disposed, recognise the gradual displacement of the Dragon from his old place of honour, in certain traditions of the downfall of the great Dragon whose ‘tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven.’

The central position of the Dragon, for even when the pole-star had drawn near to the Dragon’s tail the constellation was still central, will remind the classical reader of Homer’s description of the Shield of Hercules—

The scaly horror of a dragon, coil’d
Full in the central field, unspeakable,
With eyes oblique retorted, that ascant
Shot gleaming fire. (Elton’s translation.)

I say Homer’s description, for I cannot understand how any one who compares together the description of the Shield of Achilles in the Iliad and that of the Shield of Hercules in the fragmentary form in which we have it, can doubt for a moment that both descriptions came from the same hand. (The theory that Hesiod composed the latter poem can scarcely be entertained by any scholar.) As I long since pointed out in my essay ‘A New Theory of Achilles’ Shield’ (‘Light Science,’ first series), no poet so inferior as actually to borrow Homer’s words in part of the description of the Shield of Hercules could have written the other parts not found in the Shield of Achilles. ‘I cannot for my own part entertain the slightest doubt’—that is to say, I think it altogether probable—that Homer composed the lines supposed to describe the Shield of Hercules long before he introduced the description, pruned and strengthened, into that particular part of the Iliad where it served his purpose best. And I have as little doubt that the original description, of which we only get fragments in either poem, related to something far more important than a shield. The constellations are not suitable adornments for the shield of fighting man, even though he was under the special care of a celestial mother and had armour made for him by a celestial smith. Yet we learn that Achilles’ shield displayed—

The starry lights that heav’n’s high convex crown’d
The Pleiads, Hyads, and the northern beam,
And great Orion’s more refulgent beam,—
To which, around the cycle of the sky,
The bear revolving, points his golden eye,

—
Still shines exalted.

And so forth. The Shield of Hercules displayed at its centre the polar constellation the Dragon. We read also that—

There was the knight of fair-hair’d Danae born,
Perseus.

Orion is not specially mentioned, but Orion, Lepus, and the Dogs seem referred to:—

Men of chase
Were taking the fleet hares; two keen-toothed dogs
Bounded beside.

Homer would find no difficulty in pluralising the mighty Hunter and the hare into huntsmen and hares when utilising a description originally referring to the constellation.

I conceive that the original description related to one of those zodiac temples whose remains are still found in Egypt, though the Egyptian temples of this kind were probably only copies of more ancient Chaldæan temples. We know from Assyrian sculptures that representations of the constellations (and especially the zodiacal constellations) were common among the Babylonians; and, as I point out in the essay above referred to, ’it seems probable that in a country where Sabæanism or star-worship was the prevailing form of religion, yet more imposing proportions would be given to zodiac temples than in Egypt.’ My theory, then, respecting the two famous ‘Shields’ is that Homer in his eastern travels visited imposing temples devoted to astronomical observation and star-worship, and that nearly every line in both descriptions is borrowed from a poem in which he described a temple of this sort, its domed zodiac, and those illustrations of the labours of different seasons and of military or judicial procedures which the astrological proclivities of star-worshippers led them to associate with the different constellations. For the arguments on which this theory is based I have not here space. They are dealt with in the essay from which I have quoted.

One point only I need touch upon here, besides those I have mentioned already. It may be objected that the description of a zodiac temple has nothing to connect it with the subject of the Iliad. This is certainly true; but no one who is familiar with Homer’s manner can doubt that he would work in, if he saw the opportunity, a poem on some subject outside that of the Iliad, so modifying the language that the description would correspond with the subject in hand. There are many passages, though none of such length, in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, which seem thus to have been brought into the poem; and other passages not exactly of this kind yet show that Homer was not insensible to the advantage of occasionally using memory instead of invention.

Any one who considers attentively the aspect of the constellation Draco in the heavens, will perceive that the drawing of the head in the maps is not correct; the head is no longer pictured as it must have been conceived by those who first formed the constellation. The two bright stars Beta and Gamma are now placed on a head in profile. Formerly they marked the two eyes. I would not lay stress on the description of the Dragon in the Shield of Hercules, ‘with eyes oblique retorted, that askant shot gleaming fire;’ for all readers may not be prepared to accept my opinion that that description related to the constellation Draco. But the description of the constellation itself by Aratus suffices to show that the two bright stars I have named marked the eyes of the imagined monster—in fact, Aratus’s account singularly resembles that given in the Shield of Hercules. ‘Swol’n is his neck,’ says Aratus of the Dragon—

... Eyes charg’d with sparkling fire
His crested head illume. As if in ire,
To Helice he turns his foaming jaw,
And darts his tongue, barb’d with a blazing star.

And the dragon’s head with sparkling eyes can be recognised to this day, so soon as this change is made in its configuration, whereas no one can recognise the remotest resemblance to a dragon’s head in profile. The star barbing the Dragon’s tongue would be Xi of the Dragon according to Aratus’s account, for so only would the eyes be turned towards Helice the Bear. But when Aratus wrote, the practice of separating the constellations from each other had been adopted; in fact, he derived his knowledge of them chiefly from Eudoxus, the astronomer and mathematician, who certainly would not have allowed the constellations to be intermixed. In the beginning, there are reasons for believing it was different, and if a group of stars resembled any known object it would be called after that object, even though some of the stars necessary to make up the figure belonged already to some other figure. This being remembered, we can have no difficulty in retorting the Dragon’s head more naturally—not to the star Xi of the Dragon, but to the star Iota of Hercules. The four stars are situated thus, the larger ones representing the eyes; and so far as the head is concerned it is a matter of indifference whether the lower or the upper small star be taken to represent the tongue. But, as any one will see who looks at these stars when the Dragon is best placed for ordinary (non-telescopic) observation, the attitude of the animal is far more natural when the star Iota of Hercules marks the tongue, for then the creature is situated like a winged serpent hovering above the horizon and looking downwards, whereas when the star Xi marks the tongue, the hovering Dragon is looking upwards and is in an unnaturally constrained position. (I would not, indeed, claim to understand perfectly all the ways of dragons; still it may be assumed that a dragon hovering above the horizon would rather look downwards in a natural position than upwards in an awkward one.)

The star Iota of Hercules marks the heel of this giant, called the Kneeler (Engonasin) from time immemorial. He must have been an important figure on the old zodiac temples, and not improbably his presence there as one of the largest and highest of the human figures may have caused a zodiac-dome to be named after Hercules. The Dome of Hercules would come near enough to the title, ‘The Shield of Hercules,’ borne by the fragmentary poem dealt with above. The foot of the kneeling man was represented on the head of the dragon, the dragon having hold of the heel. And here, again, some imagine that a sculptured representation of these imagined figures in the heavens may have been interpreted and expanded into the narrative of a contest between the man and the old serpent the dragon, Ophiuchus the serpent-bearer being supposed to typify the eventual defeat of the dragon. This fancy might be followed out like that relating to the deluge; but the present place would be unsuitable for further inquiries in that particular direction.

Some interest attaches to the constellation Ophiuchus, to my mind, in the evidence it affords respecting the way in which the constellations were at first intermixed. I have mentioned one instance in which, as I think, the later astronomers separated two constellations which had once been conjoined. Many others can be recognised when we compare the actual star-groups with the constellation-figures as at present depicted. No one can recognise the poop of a ship in the group of stars now assigned to the stern of Argo, but if we include the stars of the Greater Dog, and others close by, a well-shaped poop can be clearly seen. The head of the Lion of our maps is as the head of a dog, so far as stars are concerned; but if stars from the Crab on one side and from Virgo on the other be included in the figure, and especially Berenice’s hair to form the tuft of the lion’s tail, a very fine lion with waving mane can be discerned, with a slight effort of the imagination. So with Bootes the herdsman. He was of old ‘a fine figure of a man,’ waving aloft his arms, and, as his name implies, shouting lustily at the retreating bear. Now, and from some time certainly preceding that of Eudoxus, one arm has been lopped off to fashion the northern crown, and the herdsman holds his club as close to his side as a soldier holds his shouldered musket. The constellation of the Great Bear, once I conceive the only bear (though the lesser bear is a very old constellation), has suffered wofully. Originally it must have been a much larger bear, the stars now forming the tail marking part of the outline of the back; but first some folks who were unacquainted with the nature of bears turned the three stars (the horses of the plough) into a long tail, abstracting from the animal all the corresponding portion of his body, and then modern astronomers finding a great vacant space where formerly the bear’s large frame extended, incontinently formed the stars of this space into a new constellation, the Hunting Dogs. No one can recognise a bear in the constellation as at present shaped, but any one who looks attentively at the part of the skies occupied by the constellation will recognise (always ‘making believe a good deal’) a monstrous bear, with the proper small head of creatures of the bear family, and with exceedingly well-developed plantigrade feet. Of course this figure cannot at all times be recognised with equal facility; but before midnight during the last four or five months in the year, the bear occupies positions favouring his recognition, being either upright on his feet, or as if descending a slope, or squatting on his great haunches. As a long-tailed animal the creature is more like one of those wooden toy-monkeys which used to be made for children, and may be now, in which the sliding motion of a ringed rod carried the monkey over the top of a stick. The little bear has I think been borrowed from the dragon, which was certainly a winged monster originally.

Now the astronomers who separated from each other, and in so doing spoiled the old constellation-figures, seem to have despaired of freeing Ophiuchus from his entanglements. The Serpent is twined around his body, the Scorpion is clawing at one leg. The constellation makers have per fas et nefas separated Scorpio from the Serpent Holder, spoiling both figures. But the Serpent has been too much for them, insomuch that they have been reduced to the abject necessity of leaving one part of the Serpent on one side of the region they allow to Ophiuchus, and the other part of the Serpent to the other.

A group of constellations whose origin and meaning are little understood remains to be mentioned. Close by the Dragon is King Cepheus, beside him his wife Cassiopeia (the Seated Lady), near whom is Andromeda the Chained Lady. The Sea Monster Cetus is not far away, though not near enough to threaten her safety, the Ram and Triangle being between the monster’s head and her feet, the Fishes intervening between the body of the monster and her fair form. Close at hand is Perseus, the Rescuer, with a sword (looking very much like a reaping-hook in all the old pictures) in his right hand, and bearing in his left the head of Medusa. The general way of accounting for the figures thus associated has been by supposing that, having a certain tradition about Cepheus and his family, men imagined in the heavens the pictorial representation of the events of the tradition. I have long believed that the actual order in this and other cases was the reverse of this, that men imagined certain figures in the heavens, pictured these figures in their astronomical temples or observatories, and made stories to fit the pictures afterwards, probably many generations afterwards. Be this as it may, we can at present give no satisfactory explanation of the group of constellations.

Wilford gives an account, in his ‘Asiatic Researches,’ of a conversation with a pundit or astronomer respecting the names of the Indian constellations. ‘Asking him,’ he says, ‘to show me in the heavens the constellation Antarmada, he immediately pointed to Andromeda, though I had not given him any information about it beforehand. He afterwards brought me a very rare and curious work in Sanscrit, which contained a chapter devoted to Upanachatras, or extra-zodiacal constellations, with drawings of Capuja (Cepheus) and of Casyapi (Cassiopeia) seated and holding a lotus-flower in her hand, of Antarmada charmed with the Fish beside her, and last of Paraseia (Perseus), who, according to the explanation of the book, held the head of a monster which he had slain in combat; blood was dropping from it, and for hair it had snakes.’ Some have inferred from the circumstance that the Indian charts thus showed the Cassiopeian set of constellations, that the origin of these figures is to be sought in India. But probably both the Indian and the Greek constellation-figures were derived from a much older source.

The zodiacal twelve are in some respects the most important and interesting of all the ancient constellations. If we could determine the origin of these figures, their exact configuration as at first devised, and the precise influences assigned to them in the old astrological systems, we should have obtained important evidence as to the origin of astronomy itself. Not indeed that the twelve signs of the zodiac were formed at the beginning or even in the early infancy of astronomy. It seems abundantly clear that the division of the zodiac (which includes the moon’s track as well as the sun’s) had reference originally to the moon’s motions. She circuits the star-sphere in about twenty-seven days and a third, while the lunation or interval from new moon to new moon is, as we all know, about twenty-nine days and a half in length. It would appear that the earliest astronomers, who were of course astrologers also, of all nations—the Indian, Egyptian, Chinese, Persian, and Chaldæan astronomers—adopted twenty-eight days (probably as a rough mean between the two periods just named) for their chief lunar period, and divided the moon’s track round the ecliptic into twenty-eight portions or mansions. How they managed about the fractions of days outstanding—whether the common lunation was considered or the moon’s motion round the star-sphere—is not known. The very circumstance, however, that they were for a long time content with their twenty-eight lunar mansions shows that they did not seek great precision at first. Doubtless they employed some rough system of ‘leap-months’ by which, as occasion required, the progress of the month was reconciled with the progress of the moon, just as by our leap-years the progress of the year is reconciled with the progress of the sun or seasons.

The use of the twenty-eight-day period naturally suggested the division of time into weeks of seven days each. The ordinary lunar month is divided in a very obvious manner into four equal parts by the lunar aspects. Every one can recognise roughly the time of full moon and the times of half moon before and after full, while the time of new moon is recognised from these two last epochs. Thus the four quarters of the month, or roughly the four weeks of the month, would be the first time-measure thought of;—after the day, which is the necessary foundation of all time measures. The nearest approach which can be made to a quarter-month in days is the week of seven days; and although some little awkwardness arose from the fact that four weeks differ appreciably from a lunar month, this would not long prevent the adoption of the week as a measure of time. In fact, just as our years begin on different days of the week without causing any inconvenience, so the ancient months might be made to begin with different week-days. All that would be necessary to make the week measure fairly well the quarters of the month, would be to start each month on the proper or nearest week-day. To inform people about this, some ceremony could be appointed for the day of the new moon, and some signal employed to indicate the time when this ceremony was to take place. This—the natural and obvious course—we find was the means actually adopted, the festival of the new moon and the blowing of trumpets in the new moon being an essential part of the arrangements adopted by nations who used the week as a chief measure of time. The seven days were not affected by the new moons so far as the nomenclature of these days, or special duties connected with any one of them, might be concerned.

Originally the idea may have been to have festivals and sacrifices at the time of new moon, first quarter, full moon, and third quarter; but this arrangement would naturally (and did, as we know, actually) give way before long to a new moon festival regulating the month and seventh-day festivals, each class of festival having its appropriate sacrifices and duties. This, I say, was the natural course. Its adoption may have been aided by the recognition of the fact that the seven planets of the old system of astronomy might conveniently be taken to rule the days and the hours in the way described in the essay on astrology. That that nomenclature and that system of association between the planets and the hours, days, and weeks of time-measurement was eventually adopted, is certain; but whether the convenience and apparent mystical fitness of this arrangement led to the use of weekly festivals in conjunction with monthly ones, or whether those weekly festivals were first adopted in the way described above, or whether (which seems altogether more likely) both sets of considerations led to the arrangement, we cannot certainly tell. The arrangement was in every way a natural one; and one may say, considering all the circumstances, that it was almost an inevitable one.

There was, however, another possible arrangement, viz., the division of time into ten-day periods, three to each month, with corresponding new moon festivals. But as the arrival of the moon at the thirds of her progress are not at all so well marked as her arrival at the quarters, and as there is no connection between the number ten and the planets, this arrangement was far less likely to be adopted than the other. Accordingly we find that only one or two nations adopted it. Six sets of five days would be practically the same arrangement; five sets of six for each month would scarcely be thought of, as with that division the use of simple direct observations of the moon for time measurement, which was the real aim of all such divisions, would not be convenient or indeed even possible for the generality of persons. Few could tell easily when the moon is two-fifths or four-fifths full, whereas every one can tell when she is half-full or quite full (the requisite for weekly measurement); and it would be possible to guess pretty nearly when she is one-third or two-thirds full, the requisite for the tridecennial division.

My object in the above discussion of the origin of the week (as distinguished from the origin of the Sabbath, which I considered in the essay on astrology), has been to show that the use of the twelve zodiacal signs was in every case preceded by the use of the twenty-eight lunar mansions. It has been supposed that those nations in whose astronomy the twenty-eight mansions still appear, adopted one system, while the use of the twelve signs implies that another system had been adopted. Thus the following passage occurs in Mr. Blake’s version of Flammarion’s ‘History of the Heavens:’—‘the Chinese have twenty-eight constellations, though the word sion does not mean a group of stars, but simply a mansion or hotel. In the Coptic and ancient Egyptian the word for constellations has the same meaning. They also have twenty-eight, and the same number is found among the Arabians, Persians, and Indians. Among the Chaldæans or Accadians we find no sign of the number twenty-eight. The ecliptic, or “yoke of the sky,” with them, as we see in the newly-discovered tablet, was divided into twelve divisions, as now, and the only connection that can be imagined between this and the twenty-eight is the opinion of M. Biot, who thinks that the Chinese had originally only twenty-four mansions, four more being added by Chenkung, 1100 B.C., and that they corresponded with the twenty-four stars, twelve to the north and twelve to the south, that marked the twelve signs of the zodiac amongst the Chaldæans. But under this supposition the twenty-eight has no reference to the moon, whereas we have every reason to believe it has.’ The last observation is undoubtedly correct—the twenty-eight mansions have been mansions of the moon from the beginning. But in this very circumstance, as also in the very tablets referred to in the preceding passage, we find all the evidence needed to show that originally the Chaldæans divided the zodiac into twenty-eight parts. For we find from the tablets that, like the other nations who had twenty-eight zodiacal mansions, the Chaldæans used a seven-day period, derived from the moon’s motions, every seventh day being called sabbatu, and held as a day of rest. We may safely infer that the Chaldæan astronomers, advancing beyond those of other nations, recognised the necessity of dividing the zodiac with reference to the sun’s motions instead of the moon’s. They therefore discarded the twenty-eight lunar mansions, and adopted instead twelve solar signs; this number twelve, like the number twenty-eight itself, being selected merely as the most convenient approximation to the number of parts into which the zodiac was naturally divided by another period. Thus the twenty-eighth part of the zodiac corresponds roughly with the moon’s daily motion, and the twelfth part of the zodiac corresponds roughly with the moon’s monthly motion; and both the numbers twenty-eight and twelve admit of being subdivided, while twenty-nine (a nearer approach than twenty-eight to the number of days in a lunation) and thirteen (almost as near an approach as twelve to the number of months in a year) do not.

It seems to me highly probable that the date to which all inquiries into the origin of the constellations and the zodiacal signs seems to point—viz. 2170 B.C.—was the date at which the Chaldæan astronomers definitely adopted the new system, the lunisolar instead of lunar division of the zodiac and of time. One of the objects which the architects of the Great Pyramid (not the king who built it) may have had was not improbably this—the erection of a building indicating the epoch when the new system was entered upon, and defining in its proportions, its interior passages, and other features, fundamental elements of the new system. The great difficulty, an overwhelming difficulty it has always seemed to me, in accepting the belief that the year 2170 B.C. defined the beginning of exact astronomy, has been this, that several of the circumstances insisted upon as determining that date imply a considerable knowledge of astronomy. Thus astronomers must have made great progress in their science before they could select as a day for counting from, the epoch when the slow reeling motion of the earth (the so-called precessional motion) brought the Pleiades centrally south, at noon, at the time of the vernal equinox. The construction of the Great Pyramid, again, in all its astronomical features, implies considerable proficiency in astronomical observation. Thus the year 2170 B.C. may very well be regarded as defining the introduction of a new system of astronomy, but certainly not the beginning of astronomy itself. Of course we may cut the knot of this difficulty, as Prof. Smyth and Abbé Moigno do, by saying that astronomy began 2170 B.C., the first astronomers being instructed supernaturally, so that the astronomical Minerva came into full-grown being. But I apprehend that argument against such a belief is as unnecessary as it would certainly be useless.

And now let us consider how this theory accords with the result to which we were led by the position of the great vacant space around the southern pole. So far as the date is concerned, we have already seen that the epoch 2170 B.C. accords excellently with the evidence of the vacant space. But this evidence, as I mentioned at the outset, establishes more than the date; it indicates the latitude of the place where the most ancient of Ptolemy’s forty-eight constellations were first definitely adopted by astronomers. If we assume that at this place the southernmost constellations were just fully seen when due south, we find for the latitude about thirty-eight degrees north. (The student of astronomy who may care to test my results may be reminded here that it is not enough to show that every star of a constellation would when due south be above the horizon of the place—what is wanted is, that the whole constellation when towards the south should be visible at a single view. However, the whole constellation may not have included all the stars now belonging to it.) The station of the astronomers who founded the new system can scarcely have been more than a degree or two north of this latitude. On the other side, we may go a little further, for by so doing we only raise the constellations somewhat higher above the southern horizon, to which there is less objection than to a change thrusting part of the constellations below the horizon. Still it may be doubted whether the place where the constellations were first formed was less than 32 or 33 degrees north of the equator. The Great Pyramid, as we know, is about 30 degrees north of the equator; but we also know that its architects travelled southwards to find a suitable place for it. One of their objects may well have been to obtain a fuller view of the star-sphere south of their constellations. I think from 35 to 39 degrees north would be about the most probable limits, and from 32 to 41 degrees north the certain limits of the station of the first founders of solar zodiacal astronomy.

What their actual station may have been is not so easily established. Some think the region lay between the sources of the Oxus (Amoor) and Indus, others that the station of these astronomers was not very far from Mount Ararat—a view to which I was led long ago by other considerations discussed in the first appendix to my treatise on ‘Saturn and its System.’

At the epoch indicated, the first constellation of the zodiac was not, as now, the Fishes, nor, as when a fresh departure was made by Hipparchus, the Ram, but the Bull, a trace of which is found in Virgil’s words—

Candidus auratis aperit cum cornibus annum Taurus.

The Bull then was the spring sign, the Pleiades and ruddy Aldebaran joining their rays with the sun’s at the time of the vernal equinox. The midsummer sign was the Lion (the bright Cor Leonis nearly marking the sun’s highest place). The autumn sign was the Scorpion, the ruddy Antares and the stars clustering in the head of the Scorpion joining their rays with the sun’s at the time of the autumnal equinox. And lastly the winter sign was the Water Bearer, the bright Fomalhaut conjoining his rays with the sun’s at midwinter. It is noteworthy that all these four constellations really present some resemblance to the objects after which they are named. The Scorpion is in the best drawing, but the Bull’s head is well marked, and, as already mentioned, a leaping lion can be recognised. The streams of stars from the Urn of Aquarius and the Urn itself are much better defined than the Urn Bearer.

I have not left myself much space to speak of the finest of all the constellations, the glorious Orion—the Giant in his might, as he was called of old. In this noble asterism the figure of a giant ascending a slope can be readily discerned when the constellation is due south. At the time to which I have referred the constellation Orion was considerably below the equator, and instead of standing nearly upright when due south high above the horizon, as now in our northern latitudes, he rose upright above the south-eastern horizon. The resemblance to a giant figure must then have been even more striking than it is at present (except in high northern latitudes, where Orion, when due south, is just fully above the horizon). The giant Orion has long been identified with Nimrod; and those who recognise the antitypes of the Ark in Argo, of the old dragon in Draco, and of the first and second Adams in the kneeling Hercules defeated by the serpent and the upright Ophiuchus triumphant over the serpent, may, if they so please, find in the giant Orion, the Two Dogs, the Hare, and the Bull (whom Orion is more directly dealing with), the representations of Nimrod, that mighty hunter before the Lord, his hunting dogs, and the animals he hunted. Pegasus, formerly called the Horse, was regarded in very ancient times as the Steed of Nimrod.

In modern astronomy the constellations no longer have the importance which once attached to them. They afford convenient means for naming the stars, though I think many observers would prefer the less attractive but more business-like methods adopted by Piazzi and others, according to which a star rejoices in no more striking title than ‘Piazzi XIIIh. 273,’ or ‘Struve, 2819.’ They still serve, however, to teach beginners the stars, and probably many years will pass before even exact astronomy dismisses them altogether to the limbo of discarded symbolisms. It is, indeed, somewhat singular that astronomers find it easier to introduce new absurdities among the constellations than to get rid of these old ones. The new and utterly absurd figures introduced by Bode still remain in many charts despite such inconvenient names as Honores Frederici, Globum Ærostaticum and Machina Pneumatica; and I have very little doubt that a new constellation, if it only had a specially inconvenient title, would be accepted. But when Francis Baily tried to simplify the heavens by removing many of Bode’s absurd constellations, he was abused by many as violently as though he had proposed the rejection of the Newtonian system. I myself tried a small measure of reform in the three first editions of my ‘Library Atlas,’ but have found it desirable to return to the old nomenclature in the fourth.

The End

Edinburgh and London

Footnotes

1 These reflections were suggested to Tacitus by the conduct of Thrasyllus (chief astrologer of the Emperor Tiberius), when his skill was tested by his imperial employer after a manner characteristic of that agreeable monarch. The story runs thus (I follow Whewell’s version): ‘Those who were brought to Tiberius on any important matter, were admitted to an interview in an apartment situated on a lofty cliff in the island of Capreæ. They reached this place by a narrow path, accompanied by a single freedman of great bodily strength; and on their return, if the emperor had conceived any doubts of their trustworthiness, a single blow buried the secret and its victim in the ocean below. After Thrasyllus had, in this retreat, stated the results of his art as they concerned the emperor, Tiberius asked him whether he had calculated how long he himself had to live. The astrologer examined the aspect of the stars, and while he did this showed hesitation, alarm, increasing terror, and at last declared that “The present hour was for him critical, perhaps fatal.” Tiberius embraced him, and told him “he was right in supposing he had been in danger, but that he should escape it,” and made him henceforward his confidential counsellor.’ It is evident, assuming the story to be true (as seems sufficiently probable), that the emperor was no match for the charlatan in craft. It was a natural thought on the former’s part to test the skill of his astrologer by laying for him a trap such as the story indicates—a thought so natural, indeed, that it probably occurred to Thrasyllus himself long before Tiberius put the plan into practice. Even if Thrasyllus had not been already on the watch for such a trick, he would have been but a poor trickster himself if he had not detected it the moment it was attempted, or failed to see the sole safe course which was left open to him. Probably, with a man of the temper of Tiberius, such a counter-trick as Galeotti’s in Quentin Durward would have been unsafe.

2 The belief in the influence of the stars and the planets on the fortunes of the new-born child was still rife when Shakespeare made Glendower boast:
At my nativity
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes
Of burning cressets; know, that at my birth
The frame and huge foundation of the earth
Shook like a coward.
And Shakespeare showed himself dangerously tainted with freethought in assigning (even to the fiery Hotspur) the reply:
So it would have done
At the same season, if your mother’s cat
Had kittened, though yourself had ne’er been born.
In a similar vein Butler, in Hudibras ridiculed the folly of those who believe in horoscopes and nativities:
As if the planet’s first aspect
The tender infant did infect
In soul and body, and instil
All future good and future ill;
Which in their dark fatalities lurking,
At destined periods fall a-working,
And break out, like the hidden seeds
Of long diseases, into deeds,
In friendships, enmities, and strife.
And all th’ emergencies of life.

3 Preface to the Rudolphine Tables.

4 It is commonly stated that Bacon opposed the Copernican theory because he disliked Gilbert, who had advocated it. ‘Bacon,’ says one of his editors, ‘was too jealous of Gilbert to entertain one moment any doctrine that he advanced.’ But, apart from the incredible littleness of mind which this explanation imputes to Bacon, it would also have been an incredible piece of folly on Bacon’s part to advocate an inferior theory while a rival was left to support a better theory. Bacon saw clearly enough that men were on their way to the discovery of the true theory, and, so far as in him lay, he indicated how they should proceed in order most readily to reach the truth. It must, then, have been from conviction, not out of mere contradiction, that Bacon declared himself in favour of the Ptolemaic system. In fact, he speaks of the diurnal motion of the earth as ’an opinion which we can demonstrate to be most false;’ doubtless having in his thoughts some such arguments as misled Tycho Brahe.

5 To Bacon’s theological contemporaries this must have seemed a dreadful heresy, and possibly in our own days the assertion would be judged scarcely less harshly, seeing that the observance of the (so-called) Sabbath depends directly upon the belief in quite another origin of the week. Yet there can be little question that the week really had its origin in astrological formulæ.

6 In Bohn’s edition the word ‘defective’ is here used, entirely changing the meaning of the sentence. Bacon registers an Astrologia Sana amongst the things needed for the advancement of learning, whereas he is made to say that such an astrology must be registered as defective.

7 The astrologers were exceedingly ingenious in showing that their art had given warning of the great plague and fire of London. Thus, the star which marks the Bull’s northern horn—and which is described by Ptolemy as like Mars—was, they say, exactly in that part of the sign Gemini which is the ascendant of London, in 1666. Lilly, however, for whom they claim the credit of predicting the year of this calamity, laid no claim himself to that achievement; nay, specially denied that he knew when the fire was to happen. The story is rather curious. In 1651 Lilly had published his Monarchy or no Monarchy, which contained a number of curious hieroglyphics. Amongst these were two (see frontispiece) which appeared to portend plague and fire respectively. The hieroglyphic of the plague represents three dead bodies wrapped in death-clothes, and for these bodies two coffins lie ready and two graves are being dug; whence it was to be inferred that the number of deaths would exceed the supply of coffins and graves. The hieroglyphic of the fire represents several persons, gentlefolk on one side and commonfolk on the other, emptying water vessels on a furious fire into which two children are falling headlong. The occurrence of the plague in 1665 attracted no special notice to Lilly’s supposed prediction of that event, though probably many talked of the coincidence as remarkable. But when in 1666 the great fire occurred, the House of Commons summoned Lilly to attend the committee appointed to enquire into the cause of the fire. ‘At two of the clock on Friday, the 25th of October 1666,’ he attended in the Speaker’s chamber, ‘to answer such questions as should then and there be asked him.’ Sir Robert Brooke spoke to this effect: ‘Mr. Lilly, this committee thought fit to summon you to appear before them this day, to know if you can say anything as to the cause of the late fire, or whether there might be any design therein. You are called the rather hither, because in a book of yours long since printed, you hinted some such thing by one of your hieroglyphics.’ Unto which he replied: ‘May it please your honours, after the beheading of the late king, considering that in the three subsequent years the Parliament acted nothing which concerned the settlement of the nation’s peace, and seeing the generality of the people dissatisfied, the citizens of London discontented, and the soldiery prone to mutiny, I was desirous, according to the best knowledge God had given me, to make enquiry by the art I studied, what might, from that time, happen unto the Parliament and nation in general. At last, having satisfied myself as well as I could, and perfected my judgment therein, I thought it most convenient to signify my intentions and conceptions thereof in forms, shapes, types, hieroglyphics, etc., without any commentary, that so my judgment might be concealed from the vulgar, and made manifest only unto the wise; I herein imitating the examples of many wise philosophers who had done the like. Having found, sir, that the great city of London should be sadly afflicted with a great plague, and not long after with an exorbitant fire, I framed these two hieroglyphics, as represented in the book, which in effect have proved very true.’ ‘Did you foresee the year?’ said one. ‘I did not,’ said Lilly; ‘nor was desirous; of that I made no scrutiny. Now, sir, whether there was any design of burning the city, or any employed to that purpose, I must deal ingenuously with you, that since the fire I have taken much pains in the search thereof, but cannot or could not give myself the least satisfaction therein. I conclude that it was the finger of God only; but what instruments He used thereunto I am ignorant.’

8 Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek were evidently not well taught in astrology. ‘Shall we set about some revels?’ says the latter. ‘What shall we do else?’ says Toby; ‘were we not born under Taurus?’ ‘Taurus, that’s sides and heart,’ says sapient Andrew. ‘No, sir,’ responds Toby, ‘it’s legs and thighs. Let me see thee caper.’

9 ‘This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeit of our own behaviour), we make guilty of our disasters the sun, moon, and stars: as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treacherous by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by inforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are, evil, by a divine thrusting on.’—Shakespeare (King Lear).

10 There are few things more remarkable, or to reasoning minds more inexplicable, than the readiness with which men undertook in old times, and even now undertake, to interpret omens and assign prophetic significance to casual events. One can understand that foolish persons should believe in omens, and act upon the ideas suggested by their superstitions. The difficulty is to comprehend how these superstitions came into existence. For instance, who first conceived the idea that a particular line in the palm of the hand is the line of life; and what can possibly have suggested so absurd a notion? To whom did the thought first present itself that the pips on playing-cards are significant of future events; and why did he think so? How did the ‘grounds’ of a teacup come to acquire that deep significance which they now possess for Mrs. Gamp and Betsy Prig? If the believers in these absurdities be asked why they believe, they answer readily enough either that they themselves or their friends have known remarkable fulfilments of the ominous indications of cards or tea-dregs, which must of necessity be the case where millions of forecasts are daily made by these instructive methods. But the persons who first invented those means of divination can have had no such reasons. They must have possessed imaginations of singular liveliness and not wanting in ingenuity. It is a pity that we know so little of them.

11 Wellington lived too long for the astrologers, his death within the year having unfortunately been predicted by them many times during the last fifteen years of his life. Some astrologers were more cautious, however. I have before me his horoscope, carefully calculated, secundum artem, by Raphaël in 1828, with results ‘sufficiently evincing the surprising verity and singular accuracy of astrological calculations, when founded on the correct time of birth, and mathematically calculated. I have chosen,’ he proceeds, ‘the nativity of this illustrious native, in preference to others, as the subject is now living, and, consequently, all possibility of making up any fictitious horoscope is at once set aside; thus affording me a most powerful shield against the insidious representations of the envious and ignorant traducer of my sublime science.’ By some strange oversight, however, Raphaël omits to mention anything respecting the future fortunes of Wellington, showing only how wonderfully Wellington’s past career had corresponded with his horoscope.

12 ‘I have still observed,’ says an old author, ‘that your right Martialist doth seldom exceed in height, or be at the most above a yard or a yard and a half in height’ (which is surely stint measure). ‘It hath been always thus,’ said that right Martialist Sir Geoffrey Hudson to Julian Peveril; ‘and in the history of all ages, the clean tight dapper little fellow hath proved an overmatch for his burly antagonist. I need only instance, out of Holy Writ, the celebrated downfall of Goliath and of another lubbard, who had more fingers in his hand, and more inches to his stature, than ought to belong to an honest man, and who was slain by a nephew of good King David; and of many others whom I do not remember; nevertheless, they were all Philistines of gigantic stature. In the classics, also, you have Tydeus, and other tight compact heroes, whose diminutive bodies were the abode of large minds.’

13 It is likely that Swedenborg in his youth studied astrology, for in his visions the Mercurial folk have this desire of knowledge as their distinguishing characteristic.

14 It is singular that, when there is this perfectly simple explanation of the origin of the nomenclature of the days of the week, an explanation given by ancient historians and generally received, Whewell should have stated that ‘various accounts are given, all the methods proceeding upon certain arbitrary arithmetical processes connected in some way with astrological views.’ Speaking of the arrangement of the planets in the order of their supposed distances, and of the order in which the planets appear in the days of the week, he says, ‘It would be difficult to determine with certainty why the former order was adopted, and how and why the latter was derived from it.’ But, in reality, there is no difficulty about either point. The former arrangement corresponded precisely with the periodic times of the seven planets of the old Egyptian system (unquestionably far more ancient than the system adopted by the Greeks), while the latter springs directly from the former. Assign to the hours of the day, successively, the seven planets in the former order, continuing the sequence without interruption day after day, and in the course of seven days each one of the planets will have ruled the first hour of a day, in the order,—Saturn, the sun, the moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, and Venus. What arbitrary arithmetical process there is in this it would be difficult to conceive. Arithmetic does not rule the method at all. Nor has any other method ever been suggested; though this method has been presented in several ways, some arithmetical and some geometrical. We need then have no difficulty in understanding what seems so perplexing to Whewell, the universality, namely, of the notions ‘which have produced this result,’ for the notions were not fantastic, but such as naturally sprang from the ideas on which astrology itself depends.

15 The following remarks by the Astronomer-Royal on this subject seem to me just, in the main. They accord with what I had said earlier in my essay on Saturn and the Sabbath of the Jews (‘Our Place among Infinities,’ 11th essay). ‘The importance which Moses attached to it [the hebdomadal rest] is evident; and, with all reverence, I recognise to the utmost degree the justice of his views. No direction was given for religious ceremonial’ (he seems to have overlooked Numbers xxviii. 9, and cognate passages), ‘but it was probably seen that the health given to the mind by a rest from ordinary cares, and by the opportunity of meditation, could not fail to have a most beneficial religious effect. But, to give sanction to this precept, the authority of at least a myth was requisite. I believe it was simply for this reason that the myth of the six days of creation was preserved. It is expressly cited in the first delivery of the commandments, as the solemn authority (Exodus xxxi. 17) for the command. It is remarkable that at the second mention of the commandment (Deuteronomy v.) no reference is made to the creation; perhaps, after the complete establishment of Jehovistic ideas in the minds of the Israelites, they had nearly lost the recollection of the Elohistic account, and it was not thought desirable to refer to it’ (Airy, ‘On the Early Hebrew Scriptures,’ p. 17). It must be regarded as a singular instance of the persistency of myths, if this view be correct, that a myth which had become obsolete for the Jews between the time of Moses and that of the writer (whoever he may have been) who produced the so-called Mosaic book of Deuteronomy, should thereafter have been revived, and have come to be regarded by the Jews themselves and by Christians as the Word of God.

16 Of course it may be argued that nothing in the world is the result of mere accident, and some may assert that even matters which are commonly regarded as entirely casual have been specially designed. It would not be easy to draw the precise line dividing events which all men would regard as to all intents and purposes accidental from those which some men would regard as results of special providence. But common sense draws a sufficient distinction, at least for our present purpose.

17 This star, called Thuban from the Arabian al-Thúban, the Dragon, is now not very bright, being rated at barely above the fourth magnitude, but it was formerly the brightest star of the constellation, as its name indicates. Bayer also assigned to it the first letter of the Greek alphabet; though this is not absolutely decisive evidence that so late as his day it retained its superiority over the second magnitude stars to which Bayer assigned the second and third Greek letters. In the year 2790 B.C., or thereabouts, the star was at its nearest to the true north pole of the heavens, the diameter of the little circle in which it then moved being considerably less than one-fourth the apparent diameter of the moon. At that time the star must have seemed to all ordinary observation an absolutely fixed centre, round which all the other stars revolved. At the time when the pyramid was built this star was about sixty times farther removed from the true pole, revolving in a circle whose apparent diameter was about seven times as great as the moon’s. Yet it would still be regarded as a very useful pole-star, especially as there are very few conspicuous stars in the neighbourhood.

18 Even that skilful astronomer Hipparchus, who may be justly called the father of observational astronomy, overlooked this peculiarity, which Ptolemy would seem to have been the first to recognise.

19 It would only be by a lucky accident, of course, that the direction of the slant tunnel’s axis and that of the vertical from the selected central point would lie in the same vertical plane. The object of the tunnelling would, in fact, be to determine how far apart the vertical planes through these points lay, and the odds would be great against the result proving to be zero.

20 It may, perhaps, occur to the reader to inquire what diameter of the earth, supposed to be a perfect sphere, would be derived from a degree of latitude measured with absolute accuracy near latitude 30°. A degree of latitude measured in polar regions would indicate a diameter greater even than the equatorial; one measured in equatorial regions would indicate a diameter less even than the polar. Near latitude 30° the measurement of a degree of latitude would indicate a diameter very nearly equal to the true polar diameter of the earth. In fact, if it could be proved that the builders of the pyramid used for their unit of length an exact subdivision of the polar diameter, the inference would be that, while the coincidence itself was merely accidental, their measurement of a degree of latitude in their own country had been singularly accurate. By an approximate calculation I find that, taking the earth’s compression at 1⁄300, the diameter of the earth, estimated from the accurate measurement of a degree of latitude in the neighbourhood of the great pyramid, would have made the sacred cubit—taken at one 20,000,000th of the diameter—equal to 24·98 British inches; a closer approximation than Professor Smyth’s to the estimated mean probable value of the sacred cubit.

21 It is, however, almost impossible to mark any limits to what may be regarded as evidence of design by a coincidence-hunter. I quote the following from the late Professor De Morgan’s Budget of Paradoxes. Having mentioned that 7 occurs less frequently than any other digit in the number expressing the ratio of circumference to diameter of a circle, he proceeds: ‘A correspondent of my friend Piazzi Smyth notices that 3 is the number of most frequency, and that 3-1⁄7 is the nearest approximation to it in simple digits. Professor Smyth, whose work on Egypt is paradox of a very high order, backed by a great quantity of useful labour, the results of which will be made available by those who do not receive the paradoxes, is inclined to see confirmation for some of his theory in these phenomena.’ In passing, I may mention as the most singular of these accidental digit relations which I have yet noticed, that in the first 110 digits of the square root of 2, the number 7 occurs more than twice as often as either 5 or 9, which each occur eight times, 1 and 2 occurring each nine times, and 7 occurring no less than eighteen times.

22 I have substituted this value in the article ‘Astronomy,’ of the British Encyclopædia, for the estimate formerly used, viz. 95,233,055 miles. But there is good reason for believing that the actual distance is nearly 92,000,000 miles.

23 It may be matched by other coincidences as remarkable and as little the result of the operation of any natural law. For instance, the following strange relation, introducing the dimensions of the sun himself, nowhere, so far as I have yet seen, introduced among pyramid relations, even by pyramidalists: ‘If the plane of the ecliptic were a true surface, and the sun were to commence rolling along that surface towards the part of the earth’s orbit where she is at her mean distance, while the earth commenced rolling upon the sun (round one of his great circles), each globe turning round in the same time,—then, by the time the earth had rolled its way once round the sun, the sun would have almost exactly reached the earth’s orbit. This is only another way of saying that the sun’s diameter exceeds the earth’s in almost exactly the same degree that the sun’s distance exceeds the sun’s diameter.’

24 It has been remarked that, though Hipparchus had the enormous advantage of being able to compare his own observations with those recorded by the Chaldæans, he estimated the length of the year less correctly than the Chaldæans. It has been thought by some that the Chaldæans were acquainted with the true system of the universe, but I do not know that there are sufficient grounds for this supposition. Diodorus Siculus and Apollonius Myndius mention, however, that they were able to predict the return of comets, and this implies that their observations had been continued for many centuries with great care and exactness.

25 The language of the modern Zadkiels and Raphaëls, though meaningless and absurd in itself, yet, as assuredly derived from the astrology of the oldest times, may here be quoted. (It certainly was not invented to give support to the theory I am at present advocating.) Thus runs the jargon of the tribe: ‘In order to illustrate plainly to the reader what astrologers mean by the “houses of heaven,” it is proper for him to bear in mind the four cardinal points. The eastern, facing the rising sun, has at its centre the first grand angle or first house, termed the Horoscope or ascendant. The northern, opposite the region where the sun is at midnight, or the cusp of the lower heaven or nadir, is the Imum Cœli, and has at its centre the fourth house. The western, facing the setting sun, has at its centre the third grand angle or seventh house or descendant. And lastly, the southern, facing the noonday sun, has at its centre the astrologer’s tenth house, or Mid-heaven, the most powerful angle or house of honour.’ ‘And although,’ proceeds the modern astrologer, ‘we cannot in the ethereal blue discern these lines or terminating divisions, both reason and experience assure us that they certainly exist; therefore the astrologer has certain grounds for the choice of his four angular houses’ (out of twelve in all) ‘which, resembling the palpable demonstration they afford, are in the astral science esteemed the most powerful of the whole. ‘—Raphaël’s Manual of Astrology.

26 Arabian writers give the following account of Egyptian progress in astrology and the mystical arts: Nacrawasch, the progenitor of Misraim, was the first Egyptian prince, and the first of the magicians who excelled in astrology and enchantment. Retiring into Egypt with his family of eighty persons, he built Essous, the most ancient city of Egypt, and commenced the first dynasty of Misraimitish princes, who excelled as cabalists, diviners, and in the mystic arts generally. The most celebrated of the race were Naerasch, who first represented by images the twelve signs of the zodiac; Gharnak, who openly described the arts before kept secret; Hersall, who first worshipped idols; Sehlouk, who worshipped the sun; Saurid (King Saurid of Ibn Abd Alkohm’s account), who erected the first pyramids and invented the magic mirror; and Pharaoh, the last king of the dynasty, whose name was afterwards taken as a kingly title, as Cæsar later became a general imperial title.

27 It is noteworthy how Swedenborg here anticipates a saying of Laplace, the greatest mathematician the world has known, save Newton alone. Newton’s remark that he seemed but as a child who had gathered a few shells on the shores of ocean, is well known. Laplace’s words, ‘Ce que nous connaissons est peu de chose; ce que nous ignorons est immense,’ were not, as is commonly stated, his last. De Morgan gives the following account of Laplace’s last moments, on the authority of Laplace’s friend and pupil, the well-known mathematician Poisson: ‘After the publication (in 1825) of the fifth volume of the Mécanique Céleste, Laplace became gradually weaker, and with it musing and abstracted. He thought much on the great problems of existence, and often muttered to himself, “Qu’est-ce que c’est que tout cela!” After many alternations he appeared at last so permanently prostrated that his family applied to his favourite pupil, M. Poisson, to try to get a word from him. Poisson paid a visit, and after a few words of salutation, said, “J’ai une bonne nouvelle à vous annoncer: on a reçu au Bureau des Longitudes une lettre d’Allemagne annonçant que M. Bessel a vérifié par l’observation vos découvertes théoriques sur les satellites de Jupiter.” Laplace opened his eyes and answered with deep gravity. “L’homme ne poursuit que des chimères.” He never spoke again. His death took place March 5, 1827.’

28 The reason assigned by Swedenborg is fanciful enough. ‘In the spiritual sense,’ he says, ‘a horse signifies the intellectual principle formed from scientifics, and as they are afraid of cultivating the intellectual faculties by worldly sciences, from this comes an influx of fear. They care nothing for scientifics which are of human erudition.’

29 Similar reasoning applies to the moons of Jupiter, and it so chances that the result in their case comes out exactly the same as in the case of Saturn; all the Jovian moons, if full together, would reflect only the sixteenth part of the light which we receive from the full moon. It is strange that scientific men of considerable mathematical power have used the argument from design apparently supplied by the satellites, without being at the pains to test its validity by the simple mathematical calculations necessary to determine the quantity of light which these bodies can reflect to the planets round which they travel. Brewster and Whewell, though they took opposite sides in the controversy about other inhabited worlds, agreed in this. Brewster, of course, holding the theory that all the planets are inhabited, very naturally accepted the argument from design in this case. Whewell, in opposing that theory, did not dwell at all upon the subjects of the satellites. But in his ‘Bridgewater Treatise on Astronomy and General Physics,’ he says, ‘Taking only the ascertained cases of Venus, the Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn, we conceive that a person of common understanding will be strongly impressed with the persuasion that the satellites are placed in the system with a view to compensate for the diminished light of the sun at greater distances. Mars is an exception; some persons might conjecture from this case that the arrangement itself, like other useful arrangements, has been brought about by some wider law which we have not yet detected. But whether or not we entertain such a guess (it can be nothing more), we see in other parts of creation so many examples of apparent exceptions to rules, which are afterwards found to be capable of explanation, or to be provided for by particular contrivances, that no one familiar with such contemplations will, by one anomaly, be driven from the persuasion that the end which the arrangements of the satellites seem suited to answer is really one of the ends of their creation.’

30 The reader who cares enough about such subjects to take the necessary trouble, can easily make a little model of Saturn and his ring system, which will very prettily illustrate the effect of the rings both in reflecting light to the planet’s darkened hemisphere and in cutting off light from the planet’s illuminated hemisphere. Take a ball, say an ordinary hand-ball, and pierce it through the centre with a fine knitting-needle. Cut out a flat ring of card, proportioned to the ball as the ring system of Saturn to his ball. (If the ball is two inches in diameter, strike out on a sheet of cardboard two concentric circles, one of them with a radius of a little more than an inch and a half, the other with a radius of about two inches and three-eights, and cut out the ring between these two circles.) Thrust the knitting-needle through this ring in such a way that the ball shall lie in the middle of the ring, as the globe of Saturn hangs (without knitting-needle connections) in the middle of his ring system. Thrust another knitting-needle centrally through the ball square to the plane of the ring, and use this second needle, which we may call the polar one, as a handle. Now take the ball and ring into sunlight, or the light of a lamp or candle, holding them so that the shadow of the ring is as thin as possible. This represents the position of the shadow at the time of Saturnian spring or autumn. Cause the shadow slowly to shift until it surrounds the part of the ball through which the polar needle passes on one side. This will represent the position of the shadow at the time of midwinter for the hemisphere corresponding to that side of the ball. Notice that while the shadow is traversing this half of the ball, the side of the ring which lies towards that half is in shadow, so that a fly or other small insect on that half of the ball would see the darkened side of the ring. A Saturnian correspondingly placed would get no reflected sunlight from the ring system. Move the ball and ring so that the shadow slowly returns to its first position. You will then have illustrated the changes taking place during one half of a Saturnian year. Continue the motion so that the shadow passes to the other half of the ball, and finally surrounds the other point through which the polar needle passes. The polar point which the shadow before surrounded will now be seen to be in the light, and this half of the ball will illustrate the hemisphere of Saturn where it is midsummer. It will also be seen that the side of the ring towards this half of the ball is now in the light, so that a small insect on this half of the ball would see the bright side of the ring. A Saturnian correspondingly placed would get reflected sunlight from the ring system both by day and by night. Moving the ball and ring so that the shadow returns to its first position, an entire Saturnian year will have been illustrated. These changes can be still better shown with a Saturnian orrery (see plate viii. of my Saturn), which can be very easily constructed.

31 Not ‘of course’ because Tycho used it, for, like other able students of science, he made mistakes from time to time. Thus he argued that the earth cannot rotate on her axis, because if she did bodies raised above her surface would be left behind—an argument which even the mechanical knowledge of his own time should have sufficed to invalidate, though it is still used from time to time by paradoxers of our own day.

32 Chinese chronicles contain other references to new stars. The annals of Ma-touan-lin, which contain the official records of remarkable appearances in the heavens, include some phenomena which manifestly belong to this class. Thus they record that in the year 173 a star appeared between the stars which mark the hind feet of the Centaur. This star remained visible from December in that year until July in the next (about the same time as Tycho Brahe’s and Kepler’s new stars, presently to be described). Another star, assigned by these annals to the year 1011, seems to be the same as a star referred to by Hepidannus as appearing A.D. 1012. It was of extraordinary brilliancy, and remained visible in the southern part of the heavens during three months. The annals of Ma-touan-lin assign to it a position low down in Sagittarius.

33 Still a circumstance must be mentioned which tends to show that the star may have been visible a few hours earlier than Dr. Schmidt supposed. Mr. M. Walter, surgeon of the 4th regiment, then stationed in North India, wrote (oddly enough, on May 12, 1867, the first anniversary of Mr. Birmingham’s discovery) as follows to Mr. Stone:—‘I am certain that this same conflagration was distinctly perceptible here at least six hours earlier. My knowledge of the fact came about in this wise. The night of the 12th of May last year was exceedingly sultry, and about eight o’clock on that evening I got up from the tea-table and rushed into my garden to seek a cooler atmosphere. As my door opens towards the east, the first object that met my view was the Northern Crown. My attention was at once arrested by the sight of a strange star outside the crown’ (that is, outside the circlet of stars forming the diadem, not outside the constellation itself). The new star ‘was then certainly quite as bright—I rather thought more so—as its neighbour Alphecca,’ the chief gem of the crown. ‘I was so much struck with its appearance, that I exclaimed to those indoors, “Why, here is a new comet!’” He made a diagram of the constellation, showing the place of the new star correctly. Unfortunately, Mr. Walter does not state why he is so confident, a year after the event, that it was on the 12th of May, and not on the 13th, that he noticed the new star. If he fixed the date only by the star’s appearance as a second-magnitude star, his letter proves nothing; for we know that on the 13th it was still shining as brightly as Alphecca, though on the 14th it was perceptibly fainter.

34 The velocity of three or four miles per second inferred by the elder Struve must now be regarded (as I long since pointed out would prove to be the case) as very far short of the real velocity of our system’s motion through stellar space.

35 M. Cornu’s observations are full of interest, and he deserves considerable credit for his energy in availing himself of the few favourable opportunities he had for making them. But he goes beyond his province in adding to his account of them some remarks, intended apparently as a reflection on Mr. Huggins’s speculations respecting the star in the Northern Crown. ‘I,’ says M. Cornu, ‘will not try to form any hypothesis about the cause of the outburst. To do so would be unscientific, and such speculations, though interesting, cumber science wofully.’ This is sheer nonsense, and comes very ill from an observer whose successes in science have been due entirely to the employment of methods of observation which would have had no existence had others been as unready to think out the meaning of observed facts as he appears to be himself.

36 The same peculiarity has been noticed since the discovery of the dark ring, the space within that ring being observed by Coolidge and G. Bond at Harvard in 1856 to be apparently darker than the surrounding sky.

37 I cannot understand why Mr. Webb, in his interesting little work, Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes, says that the satellite theory of the rings certainly seems insufficient to account for the phenomena of the dark ring. It seems, on the contrary, manifest that the dark ring can scarcely be explained in any other way. The observations recently made are altogether inexplicable on any other theory.

38 A gentleman, whose acquaintance I made in returning from America last spring, assured me that he had found demonstrative evidence showing that a total eclipse of the moon then occurred; for he could prove that Abraham’s vision occurred at the time of full moon, so that it could not otherwise have been dark when the sun went down (v. 17). But the horror of great darkness occurred when the sun was going down, and total eclipses of the moon do not behave that way—at least, in our time.

39 It is not easy to understand what else it could have been. The notion that a conjunction of three planets, which took place shortly before the time of Christ’s birth, gave rise to the tradition of the star in the east, though propounded by a former president of the Astronomical Society, could hardly be entertained by an astronomer, unless he entirely rejected Matthew’s account, which the author of this theory, being a clergyman, can scarcely have done.

40 As, for instance, when he makes Homer say of the moon that
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole.
It is difficult, indeed, to understand how so thorough an astronomer as the late Admiral Smyth could have called the passage in which these lines occur one of the finest bursts of poetry in our language, except on the principle cleverly cited by Waller when Charles II. upbraided him for the warmth of his panegyric on Cromwell, that ‘poets succeed better with fiction than with truth.’ Macaulay, though not an astronomer, speaks more justly of the passage in saying that this single passage contains more inaccuracies than can be found in all Wordsworth’s ‘Excursion.’

41 It may be necessary to throw in here a few words of explanation, lest the non-astronomical reader should run away with the idea that the so-called exact science is a very inexact science indeed, so far as comets are concerned. The comet of 1680 was one of those which travel on a very eccentric orbit. Coming, indeed, from out depths many times more remote than the path even of the remotest planet, Neptune, this comet approached nearer to the sun than any which astronomers have ever seen, except only the comet of 1843. When at its nearest its nucleus was only a sixth part of the sun’s diameter from his surface. Thus the part of the comet’s orbit along which astronomers traced its motion was only a small part at one end of an enormously long oval, and very slight errors of observation were sufficient to produce very large errors in the determination of the nature of the comet’s orbit. Encke admitted that the period might, so far as the comparatively imperfect observations made in 1680 were concerned, be any whatever, from 805 years to many millions of years, or even to infinity—that is, the comet might have a path not re-entering into itself, but carrying the comet for ever away from the sun after its one visit to our system.

42 For a portion of the passages which I have quoted in this essay I am indebted to Guillemin’s ‘Treatise on Comets,’ a useful contribution to the literature of the subject, though somewhat inadequate so far as exposition is concerned.

43 Something very similar happened only a few years ago, so that we cannot afford to laugh too freely at the terrors of France in 1773. It was reported during the winter of 1871–1872, that Plantamour, the Swiss astronomer, had predicted the earth’s destruction by a comet on August 12, 1872. Yet there was no other foundation for this rumour than the fact that Plantamour, in a lecture upon comets and meteors, had stated that the meteors seen on August 10, 11, and 12 are bodies following in the track of a comet whose orbit passes very near to the earth’s. It was very certainly known to astronomers that there could be no present danger of a collision with this comet, for the comet has a period of at least 150 years, and had last passed close to the earth’s orbit (not to the earth herself, be it understood) in 1862. But it was useless to point this out. Many people insisted on believing that on August 12, 1872, the earth would come into collision, possibly disastrous, with a mighty comet, which Plantamour was said to have detected and to have shown by a profound calculation to be rushing directly upon our unfortunate earth.

44 A rather amusing mistake was made by the stenographers of a New York paper in reporting the above sentence, which I happened to quote in a lecture upon Comets and Meteors. Instead of Paradise they wrote Paris. Those acquainted with Pitman’s system of short-hand, the one most commonly employed by reporters, will easily understand how the mistake was made, the marks made to represent the consonants p, r, d, and s differing little from those made to represent the consonants p, r, and s (the ‘d’ or ’t’ sound is represented, or may be represented, by simply shortening the length of the sign for the preceding consonant). The mistake led naturally to my remarking in my next lecture that I had not before known how thoroughly synonymous the words are in America, though I had heard it said that ‘Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris.’

45 On the occasion of my first visit to America, in 1873, I for the first time succeeded in obtaining a copy of this curious pamphlet. It had been mentioned to me (by Emerson, I think) as an amusing piece of trickery played off by a scientific man on his brethren; and Dr. Wendell Holmes, who was present, remarked that he had a copy in his possession. This he was good enough to lend me. Soon after, a valued friend in New York presented me with a copy.

46 This Locke must not be confounded with Richard Lock, the circle-squarer and general paradoxist, who flourished a century earlier.

47 The nurses’ tale is, that the man was sent to the moon by Moses for gathering sticks on the Sabbath, and they refer to the cheerful story in Numbers xv. 32–36. According to German nurses the day was not the Sabbath, but Sunday. Their tale runs as follows: ‘Ages ago there went one Sunday an old man into the woods to hew sticks. He cut a faggot and slung it on a stout staff, cast it over his shoulder, and began to trudge home with his burthen. On his way he met a handsome man in Sunday suit, walking towards the church. The man stopped, and asked the faggot-bearer; “Do you know that this is Sunday on earth, when all must rest from their labours?” “Sunday on earth or Monday in heaven, it’s all one to me?” laughed the wood-cutter. “Then bear your bundle for ever!” answered the stranger. “And as you value not Sunday on earth, yours shall be a perpetual Moon-day in heaven; you shall stand for eternity in the moon, a warning to all Sabbath-breakers.” Thereupon the stranger vanished; and the man was caught up with his staff and faggot into the moon, where he stands yet.’ According to some narrators the stranger was Christ; but whether from German laxity in such matters or for some other reason, no text is quoted in evidence, as by the more orthodox British nurses. Luke vi. 1–5 might serve.

48 Milton’s opinion may be quoted against me here; and as received ideas respecting angels, good and bad, the fall of man, and many other such matters, are due quite as much to Milton as to any other authority, his opinion must not be lightly disregarded. But though, when Milton’s Satan ‘meets a vast vacuity’ where his wings are of no further service to him,
‘All unawares
Flutt’ring his pennons vain, plumb down he drops
Ten thousand fathoms deep, and to this hour
Down had been falling, had not by ill chance
The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud,
Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him
As many miles aloft,’
yet this was written nearly a quarter of a century before Newton had established the law of gravity. Moreover, there is no evidence to show in what direction Satan fell; ‘above is below and below above,’ says Richter, ‘to one stripped of gravitating body;’ and whether Satan was under the influence of gravity or not, he would be practically exempt from its action when in the midst of that ‘dark, illimitable ocean’ of space,
‘Without bound,
Without dimensions, where length, breadth, and height,
And time and place are lost.’
His lighting ‘on Niphates’ top,’ and overleaping the gate of Paradise, may be used as arguments either way. On the whole, I must (according to my present lights) claim for Satan a freedom from all scientific restraints. This freedom is exemplified by his showing all the kingdoms of the world from an exceeding high mountain, thus affording the first practical demonstration of the flat-earth theory, the maintenance of which led to poor Mr. Hampden’s incarceration.

49 The Sun itself claimed to have established the veracity of the account in a manner strongly recalling a well-known argument used by orthodox believers in the Bible account of the cosmogony. Either, say these, Moses discovered how the world was made, or the facts were revealed to him by some one who had made the discovery: but Moses could not have made the discovery, knowing nothing of the higher departments of science; therefore, the account came from the only Being who could rationally be supposed to know anything about the beginning of the world. ‘Either,’ said the New York Sun, speaking of a mathematical problem discussed in the article, ‘that problem was predicated by us or some other person, who has thereby made the greatest of all modern discoveries in mathematical astronomy. We did not make it, for we know nothing of mathematics whatever; therefore, it was made by the only person to whom it can rationally be ascribed, namely Herschel the astronomer, its only avowed and undeniable author.’ In reality, notwithstanding this convincing argument, the problem was stolen by Locke from a paper by Olbers, shortly before published, and gave the method followed by Beer and Mädler throughout their selenographical researches in 1833–37.

50 I had at the same time the good fortune to satisfy in equal degree, though quite unexpectedly, an English student of the sun, who at that time bore me no great good-will. Something in the article chanced to suggest that it came from another, presumably a rival, hand; while an essay which appeared about the same time (the spring of 1872) was commonly but erroneously attributed to me. Accordingly, a leading article in Nature was devoted to the annihilation of the writer supposed to be myself, and to the lavish and quite undeserved laudation of the article I had written, which was selected as typifying all the good qualities which an article of the kind should possess. Those acquainted with the facts were not a little amused by the mistake.

51 The Astronomer-Royal once told me that he had found that few persons have a clear conception of the fact that the stars rise and set. Still fewer know how the stars move, which stars rise and set, which are always above the horizon, which move on large circles, which on small ones; though a few hours’ observation on half-a-dozen nights in the year (such observations being continuous, but made only at hourly intervals) would show dearly how the stars move. It is odd to find even some who write about astronomy making mistakes on matters so elementary. For instance, in a primer of astronomy recently published, it is stated that the stars which pass overhead in London rise and set on a slant—the real fact being that those stars never rise or set at all, never coming within some two dozen moon-breadths of the horizon.

52 In passing let me note that, of course, I am not discussing the arguments of paradoxists with the remotest idea of disproving them. They are not, in reality, worth the trouble. But they show where the general reader of astronomical text-books, and other such works, is likely to go astray, and thus conveniently indicate matters whose explanation may be useful or interesting.

53 Sterne anticipated this paradoxist in (jestingly) attributing glassiness to an inferior planet. He made the inhabitants, however, not the air, glassy. ‘The intense heat of the country,’ he says, speaking of the planet Mercury, ‘must, I think, long ago have vitrified the bodies of the inhabitants to suit them for the climate; so that all the tenements of their souls may be nothing else, for aught the soundest philosophy can show to the contrary, but one fine transparent body of clear glass; so that till the inhabitant grows old and tolerably wrinkled, whereby the rays of light become monstrously refracted, or return reflected from the surface, etc., his soul might as well play the fool out o’ doors as in her own house.’

54 It will be seen from Table X. of my treatise on Saturn that the ring disappeared on December 12, remaining invisible (because turning its dark side earthwards) till the spring of 1613. But on December 4, the ring must have been quite invisible in a telescope so feeble as Galileo’s. The ring then would have been little more than a fine line of light as seen with one of our powerful modern telescopes.

55 North British Review for August 1860.

56 He had, indeed, at an earlier stage, shown a marvellous ignorance of astronomy by the remark, which doubtless appeared to him a safe one, that when he saw a planet on the sun in September he supposed it was Mercury; a September transit of Mercury being as impossible as an eclipse of the sun during the moon’s third quarter.

57 It is, by the way, somewhat amusing to find Baron Humboldt referring a question of this sort to the great mathematician Gauss, and describing the problem as though it involved the most profound calculations. Ten minutes should suffice to deal with any problem of the kind.