until the social, intellectual, and moral character of the occupants has sunk to the level of the earth. The limitation of landownership to actual possession and use would vary the industry of every community, prevent stagnation, do away with intermarriage between the related offspring of families already injured by that method, and excite a wholesome revival of all the spiritual powers and aspirations of the given community. My notion of the ideal condition of human society is that in which the people, divided into families, reside on small estates, in proximity to large commercial marts, and cultivate those estates and beautify them to a high stage of perfection. Around these estates and homes shall be drawn by statutory enactment a limit of area which shall checkmate in advance that inordinate greed which left to itself will soon transform any country into one or a few vast estates, composed of fields under cultivation by peasant hands, stone walls and hedges produced by the many for the benefit of the one, and gamekeeps in which a rabbit is more prized than the best young man, and a pheasant more regarded than the handsomest girl in the county. The writer is not foolish enough to suppose that an ideal state such as that described above can be produced out of thought, transferred to paper, and thence converted into a reality; but it is the business of thinkers nevertheless to show what ought to be and what might be, and to indicate those conditions in society which being undeniably the cause of the social distress of mankind, undeniably antagonistic to justice and right reason, ought to be amended or wholly reformed and obliterated. It was the misfortune of the great men who drew and adopted and defended the Declaration of Independence that they did not include in their list of inalienable rights the right of landownership; and it is something worse than the misfortune of the legislative power now in control of the destinies of our people that that power has not the intelligence, the discernment, and the courage to lay with a strong hand a limitation upon landownership in the United States so strict and rigorous as to reverse the tides of American population from the cityful to the countryside, offering thus a way for man into his native fields again, and substituting homes and industry and virtue for dens and idleness and vice. MAN IN HIS RELATION TO THE SOLAR SYS- BY J. HEBER SMITH, M. D. PART I. Mankind's knowledge and interests appear to move in vast spirals of centuries, and once more we are seriously confronted with the question of the truth or falsity of the doctrine of planetary influences. It is a fitting time for the concerted application to the remnants of the old astrology of the modern methods of observation and induction. It seems opportune to take up again the inquiry whether consequences are yet hanging in the stars, for the reason that the scientists of this auspicious period are freed from superstition, and are distinguished for clearness of mental vision, precision of method, unison of work, and independence of restraints of every kind, as never before. Let the vulgar pervert this knowledge if they will, and seek to make the stars panderers to their vices, or guilty of their disasters. Have we not recently seen them crowding to the sale of handkerchiefs which the venders declared had been "blessed" by Schlatter? Only truth, knowledge full-orbed, can reconvert the baser elements of human nature, and subdue in us the ape and the tiger. Until this transformation, through pure knowledge, there is that in us all that might infect even the north star. In the study of mankind in relation to his remoter environment, the solar system, the theologies and philosophies of the centuries need be neither courted nor repelled, though they may yet be found related to our inquiries in undreamed-of ways. Should zodiacal influence on the physical, mental, and even moral, evolution of individuals become a demonstrated fact to the scientific world, it will be found so through natural laws already well recognized in the realm of science. A preliminary knowledge, somewhat more than cursory, of the elements of astrology is necessary to guide the judgment, not only in nativities, but as well in estimating the merits of the question as to the value or worthlessness of the science itself. The astronomer is not the sole arbiter in this discussion. He is a specialist, whose strength is in his limitation. From the observatory, with enlarging vision and ever bolder mathematical propositions, he interprets the limitless spaces of the sidereal universe. But his observation of the stars by no means comprehends the measure of their relation to mankind. Indeed, the human aspect of the problem goes quite unnoted by the astronomer, in most modern instances. He may, perchance, fatally mislead his neighbor in assuming to decide, from his level of vision, the limitations of astral influences. The article on astrology-it might with more truth be said, against astrology-in the Encyclopædia Britannica, is often referred to, as having furnished the stroke of grace to an expiring superstition. The publishers, in disregard of a good custom, entrusted its preparation, not to a responsible and scholarly exponent of astrology, such as might easily have been found, even among the graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, but to one who dips his pen in venom at the start, and with the erudition of a bibliophile brings to light from musty folios (the rubbish of centuries), many things that convict the old star-gazers, to be sure, of mediæval folly. But this ingenious alignment of inimical statements is in no instance distinguished for its illustration of the application to the subject of the modern methods of careful original observation and deduction. The author shows practical unfamiliarity with the processes of the art he traduces, and deals with mere hypothesis in place of tests and counter-tests. He studiously omits everything tending to exhibit in any favorable light the really congruous assemblage of recorded demonstrations and observations open to the scrutiny of all students, and that give a certain dignity and impressiveness to this ancient science, even though it appear but as a collection of noble ruins. The conviction that man is never a thing separate from the stars has become an age-long verity, as much as any other part of human consciousness, and against it the waves of science beat in vain. It is a belief that has been evolved coëval with human reverence for the Supreme Being "that maketh the seven planets and Orion, and turneth the shadows of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night." Science in its terms and limitations is continually changing, but such grand a priori intuitions continue. Who can tell whether they are not born of memories of the soul, returning from an abyss of prehistoric ages of experimental knowledge or inspiration? Born of human interests, astrology, as known to us by the few records not lost, it would seem, was probably evolved in centuries of observation. Referring to primitive humanity, Eschylus (born B. C. 520) puts into the lips of Prometheus the following plaintive words, of thrilling interest in view of the discoveries of modern geology and archæ ology: But for the misfortunes that existed among mortals, hear how I made them that aforetime lived as infants rational and possessed of intellect; they who at first seeing, saw in vain, hearing they heard in vain. But, like to the forms of dreams, for a long time they used to huddle together; they dwelt in the excavated earth like tiny emmets in the sunless depths of caverns. And they had no sure sign of winter, or of flowery spring, or of fruitful summer; but they used to do everything without judgment, until I showed them the risings of the stars and their settings, hard to be discerned; and I brought to light the fiery symbols that were aforetime wrapt in darkness. The Chaldeans and Egyptians, Chinese and Indians, Gauls and Peruvians, equally regard themselves as the founders of astronomy. Does not this fact itself suggest the probability of their having received their knowledge of the stars from some common source, inconceivably remote? Plato proposed to the astronomers of his day the problem of representing the courses of the stars and planets by circular and regular motions, and the assiduous cultivation of geometry for the promotion of their science. Aristotle recorded a number of original observations, and among others mentions an occultation of Mars by the moon, and another of a star in the constellation Gemini by the planet Jupiter. But astronomy acquired a systematic form from the genius of Hipparchus of Bithynia (B. C. 150). The apparition of a new star in his time led him to undertake the formation of a catalogue of all the stars visible above his horizon, to fix their relative positions, in order that posterity might have the means of noting any subsequent changes that might take place in the heavens. He was rewarded in this great undertaking by the discovery of the precession of the equinoxes, one of the fundamental elements both of astronomy and of astrology. His catalogue contained one thousand eighty stars. He was the first who determined longitudes by the eclipses of the moon. In the catalogue of the stars published by Ptolemy (c. 150 A. D.) which is thought to have been largely formed by Hipparchus three hundred years before, the twelve hundred stars readily visible to the unaided eye at Alexandria were divided into six classes, according to their lustre ("magnitude"), from the brightest down to the least discernible. For upwards of fifteen hundred years no real improvement was made in the estimations of lustre by any of his successors in this field of research. Indeed it does not appear that by any unaided effort of the eye there can be estimated subdivisions of lustre exceeding those adopted by this still esteemed and often quoted astrologer. These indisputable facts are mentioned, in passing, to indicate that the older astrologers were not such ignorant and blind gropers as it is customary to picture them. Neither will it appear on examination, that Cardan, Napier (inventor of logarithms), or Kepler was worthy of obloquy for having practised astrology. That the science fell into decay upon the Continent of Europe about the time of the Protestant Reformation, may be traced to whatever cause suits the prejudices or convictions of inquirers; it does not now concern us the least bit. It is the truth we are seeking. The insular position of England saved astrology from death among the so-called Christian nations. The survival of the science, even in England, appears one of the evidences of its marvellous vitality, for her laws have been ever hostile to its practice. But in this century, India has exercised a silent though potent influence in its favor over resident Englishmen. At the present time, there is seen to be a remarkable revival of interest in the science among even the most prominent Englishmen of the day-members of Parliament and leaders in the civil and military administration, at home and in the colonies. Drastic statutes, religious prejudices even, avail nothing against its brightening dawn. Again it may with truth be said, thanks to the encircling of the globe by England's predestined flag: "There is no speech nor language where the terms of the stars are not heard." They gem our most loved English classics, surviving the recent centuries of indifference and periods of efforts at suppression of all knowledge of the stareyed science from sources that it is not now of consequence to mention. It must be confessed that the real mystery of space lies still unsolved-incapable of solution for us, it would seem, as much now, despite the vast attainments of astronomy in its modern form, as it was in the prescientific ages. The cavilers at astral influences have illustrated science in the state of hypothesis rather than science in the state of fact. Let the ban of exclusion fall where it belongs, on mere |