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.