poets have given them. Thus, to Saturn, [symbol:
Saturn], they gave languid and even destructive influences, for no other
reason but because they had been pleased to make this planet the
residence of Saturn, who was painted with grey hairs and a scythe. To
Jupiter [symbol: Jupiter] they gave the power of bestowing crowns and
distributing long life, wealth, and grandeur, merely because it bears
the name of the father of life. Mars [symbol: Mars] was supposed to
inspire a strong inclination for war, because it was believed to be the
residence of the god of war. Venus [symbol: Venus] had the power of
rendering men voluptuous and fond of pleasure, because they had been
pleased to give it the name of one who by some was thought to be the
mother of pleasure. Mercury [symbol: Mercury], though almost always
invisible, would never have been thought to superintend the property of
states, and the affairs of wit and commerce, had not men, without the
least reason, given it the name of one who was supposed to be the
inventor of civil polity.

According to Astrologers, the power of the ascending planet is greatly
increased by that of an ascending sign; then the benign influences are
all united, and fall together on the head of all the happy infants who
at that moment enter the world; yet can anything be more contrary to
experience, which shews us, that the characters and events produced by
persons born under the same aspect of the stars, are so far from being
alike, that they are directly opposite.

"What completes the ridicule," says the Abbe La Pluche, to whom we are
obliged for these judicious observations, "is, that what astronomers
call the first degree of the ram, the balance, or of sagitarius, is no
longer the first sign, which gives fruitfulness to the flocks, inspires
men with a love of justice, or forms the hero. It has been found that
all the celestial signs have, by degrees, receded from the vernal
equinox, and drawn back to the East: notwithstanding this, the point of
the zodiac that cuts the equator is still called the first degree of the
ram, though the first star of the ram be thirty degrees beyond it, and
all the other signs in the same proportion. When, therefore, any one is
said to be born under the first degree of the ram, it was in reality one
of the degrees of pisces that then came above the horizon: and when
another is said to be born with a royal soul and heroic disposition,
because at his birth the planet Ju