ct that four weeks differ
appreciably from a lunar month, this would not long prevent the adoption
of the week as a measure of time. In fact, just as our years begin on
different days of the week without causing any inconvenience, so the
ancient months might be made to begin with different week-days. All that
would be necessary to make the week measure fairly well the quarters of
the month, would be to start each month on the proper or nearest
week-day. To inform people about this, some ceremony could be appointed
for the day of the new moon, and some signal employed to indicate the
time when this ceremony was to take place. This--the natural and obvious
course--we find was the means actually adopted, the festival of the new
moon and the blowing of trumpets in the new moon being an essential part
of the arrangements adopted by nations who used the week as a chief
measure of time. The seven days were not affected by the new moons so
far as the nomenclature of these days, or special duties connected with
any one of them, might be concerned.

Originally the idea may have been to have festivals and sacrifices at
the time of new moon, first quarter, full moon, and third quarter; but
this arrangement would naturally (and did, as we know, actually) give
way before long to a new moon festival regulating the month and
seventh-day festivals, each class of festival having its appropriate
sacrifices and duties. This, I say, was the natural course. Its adoption
_may_ have been aided by the recognition of the fact that the seven
planets of the old system of astronomy might conveniently be taken to
rule the days and the hours in the way described in the essay on
astrology. That that nomenclature and that system of association between
the planets and the hours, days, and weeks of time-measurement was
eventually adopted, is certain; but whether the convenience and apparent
mystical fitness of this arrangement led to the use of weekly festivals
in conjunction with monthly ones, or whether those weekly festivals were
first adopted in the way described above, or whether (which seems
altogether more likely) both sets of considerations led to the
arrangement, we cannot certainly tell. The arrangement was in every way
a natural one; and one may say, considering all the circumstances, that
it was almost an inevitable one.

There was, however, another possible arrangement, viz., the division of
time into ten-day periods, three to each month, w