The transit of civilization from England to America in the seventeenth century / by Edward Eggleston.

  • Eggleston, Edward, 1837-1902.
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The transit of civilization from England to America in the seventeenth century / by Edward Eggleston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    IV. The interest in astronomy was mainly prac- tical ; the stars were thought to exert a controlling influence on human affairs. Kepler himself lived in part by casting horoscopes for princes, as Tycho had done before him; it is by such scullion work that the world in every age contrives to degrade its superior men and dissipate their energies. John Winthrop, the younger, Governor of Con- necticut, a fellow of the Royal Society and a man of much learning, as learning was then understood, possessed some of the works on astrology so much esteemed at that time. Among these is a book with astrological figures set one on each page with the lower half of the page blank. These diagrams are for every four minutes of time, and by means of them “ any reasonable artist ” in such things “ may give judgment of a question.” On one page some reasonable artist has essayed to find out, by casting a horoscope, what was the ailment afflict- ing one Alice Wilkins in 1656. Medicines were administered when the moon was in the proper sign, and the almanacs of the eighteenth century told the farmer to cut his brushwood in certain signs of the zodiac and in the decrease of the moon, that it might not grow again, but to Cut firewood in the increase. Timber to last must be cut in the last quarter of the moon. So Tusser, in his Points of Good Husbandry, says, “ The moon in the wane gather fruit for to last.” The Rev. Jared Elliot, Chap. I. Astrology. A Table of the Astro- logical Houses of the Heaven, 1654. Note 4. Note s.