s are drily summarized. During the classic age works of a different
character were commonly read. Many "Chaldeans" interspersed their
cosmological calculations and theories with moral considerations and
mystical speculations. In the first part of a work that he names "Vision,"
([Greek: Horasis]) Critodemus, in prophetic language, represents the truths
he reveals {171} as a secure harbor of refuge from the storms of this
world, and he promises his readers to raise them to the rank of
immortals.[21] Vettius Valens, a contemporary of Marcus Aurelius, implored
them in solemn terms, not to divulge to the ignorant and impious the arcana
he was about to acquaint them with.[22] The astrologers liked to assume the
appearance of incorruptible and holy priests and to consider their calling
a sacerdotal one.[23] In fact, the two ministries sometimes combined: A
dignitary of the Mithraic clergy called himself _studiosus astrologiae_[24]
in his epitaph, and a member of a prominent family of Phrygian prelates
celebrated in verse the science of divination which enabled him to issue a
number of infallible predictions.[25]

The sacred character of astrology revealed itself in some passages that
escaped the orthodox censure and in the tone some of its followers assumed,
but we must go further and show that astrology was religious in its
principles as well as in its conclusions, the debt it owed to mathematics
and observation notwithstanding.

The fundamental dogma of astrology, as conceived by the Greeks, was that of
universal solidarity. The world is a vast organism, all the parts of which
are connected through an unceasing exchange of molecules of effluvia. The
stars, inexhaustible generators of energy, constantly act upon the earth
and man--upon man, the epitome of all nature, a "microcosm" whose every
element corresponds to some part of the starry sky. This was, in a few
words, the theory formulated by the Stoic disciples of the Chaldeans;[26]
but if we divest it of all the philosophic garments with which it has been
adorned, what do we find? The idea of {172} sympathy, a belief as old as
human society! The savage peoples also established mysterious relations
between all bodies and all the beings that inhabit the earth and the
heavens, and which to them were animated with a life of their own endowed
with latent power, but we shall speak of this later on, when taking up the
subject of magic. Even before the propagation of the Oriental r