The Arcadians, however,
and none but they, would have naught of this and
yeelded no honour unto astrologie ; and in their folly
they affirm that they are older than the moon.
 
Whereas our forbears were so mightily enamoured
of divination, among this generation there be some
who say that it is an impossibility for mankind to
conceive a useful purpose of astrologie. It is neither
credible, say they, nor truthful, and Mars and Jupiter
do not move in the skye for our sake, but are nothing


 

at all solicitous of the affairs of men, wherewith
they have naught in common, but accomplish their
courses independently, through a necessitude of revolving.
 
And others affirm that astrologie, although
not untruthful, is unprofitable, insomuch as divination will not alter that which draweth nigh by decree
of the fates. Among those who so argue is Lucian’s Cyniscus in Zeus Catechized, 12-14 (II, 76f). 
 
To both these opinions I may answer that although
the stars do verily absolve their own course in the
skye, none the less as a parergy or incidental of their
motion each event among us cometh to pass. Or
will you have it that although if a horse run or
birds or humans move, pebbles are flung up and
strawes set astir by the wind of their motion, yet the
gyration of the stars bringeth naught else to pass?
And that whereas from a little fire an effluxion cometh
to us, although the fire burneth not for our sake at all
and is not a whit sollicitous that we be warmed, yet
from the stars we receive no effluxion whatever?
Furthermore, astrologie is indeed impotent to convert bad into good, or to effect mutation in any of the
effluents, yet is it profitable to those that employ
it, in so much as the good, when they know that it is
to come, delighteth them long beforehand, while the
bad they accept readily, for it cometh not upon them
unawares, but in vertue of contemplation and expectance is deemed easie and light. That is my opinion
in the matter of astrology.