Chapter CXCVII

QUESTION PROPOSED, WHETHER A MAN BE MAGNIFIED OR MINIFIED BY CONSIDERING HIMSELF UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF THE HEAVENLY BODIES, AND ANSWERED WITH LEARNING AND DISCRETION.

I find by experience that Writing is like Building, wherein the undertaker, to supply some defect, or serve some convenience which at first he foresaw not, is usually forced to exceed his first model and proposal, and many times to double the charge and expence of it.

DR. JOHN SCOTT.

Is man magnified or minified by considering himself as under the influence of the heavenly bodies,—not simply as being

Moved round in earth's dismal course
With rocks and stones and trees;[1]

but as affected by them in his constitution bodily and mental, and dependent on them for weal or woe, for good or evil fortune; as subjected, that is, according to astrological belief to

The Stars, who, by I know not what strange right,
Preside o'er mortals in their own despite,
Who without reason, govern those who most,
(How truly, judge from thence!) of reason boast;
And by some mighty magic, yet unknown,
Our actions guide, yet cannot guide their own.[2]

Apart from what one of our Platonic divines calls “the power of astral necessity, and uncontrollable impressions arising from the subordination and mental sympathy and dependence of all mundane causes,” which is the Platonist's and Stoic's “proper notion of fate;”[3] apart, I say, from this, and from the Calvinist's doctrine of predestination, is it a humiliating, or an elevating consideration, that the same celestial movements which cause the flux and reflux of the ocean, should be felt in the pulse of a patient suffering with a fever: and that the eternal laws which regulate the stars in their courses, should decide the lot of an individual?

[Footnote 1: WORDSWORTH.]

[Footnote 2: CHURCHILL.]

[Footnote 3: JOHN SMITH.]

Here again a distinction must be made,—between the physical theory and the pseudo-science. The former is but a question of more or less; for that men are affected by atmospherical influence is proved by every endemic disease; and invalids feel in themselves a change of weather as decidedly as they perceive its effect upon the weather-glass, the hygrometer, or the strings of a musical instrument. The sense of our weakness in this respect,—of our dependence upon causes over which we have no controul, and which in their operation and nature are inexplicable by us, must have a humbling and therefore a beneficial tendency in every mind disposed to goodness. It is in the order of Providence that we should learn from sickness and adversity lessons which health and prosperity never teach.

Some of the old theoretical physicians went far beyond this. Sachs von Lewenheimb compared the microcosm of man with the macrocosm in which he exists. The heart in the one, he said, is what the ocean is in the other, the blood has its ebbing and flowing like the tide, and as the ocean receives its impulse from the moon and the winds, the brain and the vital spirits act in like manner upon the heart. Baillet has noticed for censure the title of his book in his chapter _Des prejugés des Titres des Livres_; it is _Oceanus Macro-Micro-cosmicus_. Peder Severinsen carrying into his medical studies a fanciful habit of mind which he might better have indulged in his younger days when he was a Professor of Poetry, found in the little world of the human body, antitypes of every thing in the great world, its mountains and its vallies, its rivers and its lakes, its minerals and its vegetables, its elements and its spheres. According to him the stars are living creatures, subject to the same diseases as ourselves. Ours indeed are derived from them by sympathy, or astral influence, and can be remedied only by those medicines, the application of which is denoted by their apparent qualities, or by the authentic signature of nature.

This fancy concerning the origin of diseases is less intelligible than the mythology of those Rosicrucians who held that they were caused by evil demons rulers of the respective planets, or by the Spirits of the Firmament and the Air. A mythology this may more properly be called than a theory; and it would belong rather to the history of Manicheism than of medicine, were it not that in all ages fanaticism and imposture have, in greater or less degree, connected themselves with the art of healing.

But however dignified, or super-celestial the theoretical causes of disease, its effect is always the same in bringing home, even to the proudest heart, a sense of mortal weakness: whereas the belief which places man in relation with the Stars, and links his petty concerns and fortunes of a day with the movements of the heavenly bodies, and the great chain of events, tends to exalt him in his own conceit. The thriftless man in middle or low life who says, in common phrase, that he was born under a threepenny planet, and therefore shall never be worth a groat, finds some satisfaction in imputing his unprosperity to the Stars, and casting upon them the blame which he ought to take upon himself. In vain did an old Almanack-maker say to such men of the Creator, in a better strain than was often attained by the professors of his craft.

He made the Stars to be an aid unto us,
Not (as is fondly dream'd) to help undo us;
Much less without our fault to ruinate
By doom of irrecoverable Fate.
And if our best endeavours use we will,
These glorious Creatures will be helpful still
In all our honest ways: for they do stand
To help, not hinder us, in God's command,
Who doth not only rule them by his powers
But makes their glory servant unto ours.
Be wise in Him, and if just cause there be
The Sun and Moon shall stand and wait on thee.

On the other hand the lucky adventurer proceeds with superstitious confidence in his Fortune; and the ambitious in many instances have devoted themselves, or been deceived to their own destruction. It is found accordingly that the professors of astrology generally in their private practice addressed themselves to the cupidity or the vanity of those by whom they were employed. Honest professors there were who framed their schemes faithfully upon their own rules; but the greater number were those who consulted their own advantage only, and these men being well acquainted with human nature in its ordinary character, always took this course.—Their character has changed as little as human nature itself in the course of two thousand years since Ennius expressed his contempt for them, in a passage preserved by Cicero.

_Non habeo denique nauci Marsum augurem,
Non vicanos haruspices, non de circo astrologos,
Non Isiacos conjectores, non interpretes somnium.
Non enim sunt ii aut scientiâ aut arte, divini,
Sed superstitiosi vates, impudentesque harioli,
Aut inertes, aut insani, aut quibus egestas imperat:
Qui sibi semitam non sapiunt, alteri monstrant viam.
Quibus divitias pollicentur, ab iis drachmam ipsi petunt.
De his divitiis sibi deducant drachmam, reddant cætera._

Pompey, Crassus, and Cæsar were each assured by the Chaldeans that he should die in his own house, in prosperity, and in a good old age. Cicero tells us this upon his own knowledge: _Quam multa ego Pompeio, quam multa Crasso, quam multa huic ipsi Cæsari à Chaldeis dicta memini, neminem eorum nisi senectute, nisi domi, nisi cum claritate esse moriturum! ut mihi permirum videatur, quemquam extare, qui etiam nunc credat iis, quorum prædicta quotidie videat re et eventis refelli._

And before the age of Ennius, Euripides had in the person of Tiresias shewn how surely any such profession, if the professor believed in his own art, must lead to martyrdom, or falsehood. When the blind old Prophet turns away from Creon, he says, in words worthy of Milton's favourite poet,

_Τὰ μὲν παρ᾽ ἡμῶν πάντ᾽ ἔχεις· ἡγοῦ, τέκνον,
Πρὸς οἶκον· ὅστις δ᾽ ἐμπύρῳ χρῆται τέχνῃ,
Μάταιος᾽ ἢν μὲν ἐχθρὰ σημήνας τύχῃ,
Πικρὸς καθέστηχ᾽, οἷς ἂν οἰωνοσκοπῇ,
Ψευδῆ δ᾽ ὑπ᾽ οἴκτου τοῖσι χρωμένοις λέγων,
Ἀδικεῖ τὰ τῶν θεῶν. Φοῖβον ἀνθρώποις μόνον
Χρῆν θεσπιωδεῖν, ὃς δέδοικεν οὐδένα._

The sagacity of the poet will be seen by those who are versed in the history of the Old Testament; and for those who are not versed in it, the sooner they cease to be ignorant in what so nearly concerns them, the better it may be for themselves.

Jeremy Taylor says that he reproves those who practised judicial astrology, and pretended to deliver genethliacal predictions, “not because their reason is against religion, for certainly, said he, it cannot be; but because they have not reason enough in what they say; they go upon weak principles which they cannot prove; they reduce them to practice by impossible mediums; they argue about things with which they have little conversation. Although the art may be very lawful if the stars were upon the earth, or the men were in heaven, if they had skill in what they profess, and reason in all their pretences, and after all that their principles were certain, and that the stars did really signify future events, and that those events were not overruled by every thing in heaven and in earth, by God, and by our own will and wisdom,—yet because here is so little reason and less certainty, and nothing but confidence and illusion, therefore it is that religion permits them not; and it is not the reason in this art that is against religion, but the folly or the knavery of it; and the dangerous and horrid consequents which they feel that run a-whoring after such idols of imagination.”

In our days most of those persons who can afford to employ the greater part of their thoughts upon themselves, fall at a certain age under the influence either of a physical or a spiritual director, for Protestantism has its _Directeurs_ as well as Popery, less to its advantage and as little to its credit. The spiritual professors have the most extensive practice, because they like their patients are of all grades, and are employed quite as much among the sound as the sick. The astrologer no longer contests the ascendancy with either. That calling is now followed by none but such low impostors, that they are only heard of when one of them is brought before a magistrate for defrauding some poor credulous creature in the humblest walks of life. So low has that cunning fallen, which in the seventeenth century introduced its professors into the cabinets of kings, and more powerful ministers. An astrologer was present at the birth of Louis XIV, that he might mark with all possible precision the exact moment of his nativity. After the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day, Catherine de Medici, deep in blood as she was, hesitated about putting to death the king of Navarre and the prince of Condé, and the person of whom she took counsel was an astrologer,—had she gone to her Confessor their death would have been certain. Cosmo Ruggieri was an unprincipled adventurer, but on this occasion he made a pious use of his craft, and when the Queen enquired of him what the nativities of these Princes prognosticated, he assured her that he had calculated them with the utmost exactness, and that according to the principles of his art, the State had nothing to apprehend from either of them. He let them know this as soon as he could, and told them that he had given this answer purely from regard for them, not from any result of his schemes, the matter being in its nature undiscoverable by astrology.

The Imperial astrologers in China excused themselves once for a notable failure in their art, with more notable address. The error indeed was harmless, except in its probable consequences to themselves; they had predicted an eclipse, and no eclipse took place. But instead of being abashed at this proof of their incapacity the ready rogues complimented the Emperor, and congratulated him upon so wonderful and auspicious an event. The eclipse they said portended evil, and therefore in regard to him the Gods had put it by.

An Asiatic Emperor who calls himself Brother to the Sun and Moon, might well believe that his relations would go a little out of their way to oblige him, if the Queen of Navarre could with apparent sincerity declare her belief that special revelations are made to the Great, as one of the privileges of their high estate, and that her mother, that Catherine de Medici, whose name is for ever infamous, was thus miraculously forewarned of every remarkable event that befell her husband and her children, nor was she herself, without her share in this privilege, though her character was not more spotless in one point than her mother's in another. _De ces divins advertissemens_, she says, _je ne me veux estimer digne, toutesfois pour ne me taire comme ingrate des graces que j'ay receües de Dieu, que je dois et veux confesser toute ma vie, pour luy en rendre grace, et que chacun le loue aux merveilles des effets de sa puissance, bonté, et misericorde, qu'il luy a plû faire en moy, j'advoueray n'avoir jamais esté proche de quelques signalez accidens, ou sinistres, ou heureux, que j'en aye eu quelque advertissement ou en songe, ou autrement; et puis bien dire ce vers,_

_De mon bien ou mon mal, mon esprit m'est oracle._