“You were in the right, great man! The king would have died had he been bled at the instant you mentioned, but the heavens have since changed their aspect, and now is the favorable moment.”
The astrologer assented to the surgeon’s observation. The king was cured; and by degrees it became an established custom among the Boutaniers to bleed their kings whenever it was considered necessary.
Although the Indian astrologers understood the method of calculating eclipses, yet the common people obstinately held to the old belief that the sun, when obscured, had fallen into the throat of a great dragon, and that the only way to free him from thence was by standing naked in the water and making a hideous noise to frighten away the monster, and oblige him to release his hold. This notion, which is quite prevalent among the orientals, is an evident proof how much the symbols of religion and natural philosophy have at all times been perverted by the common people. The astronomers of all ages have been wont to distinguish the two points of intersection, upon which every eclipse happens, and which are called the lunar nodes, by marking them with a dragon’s head and tail. Now the vulgar, who are equally ignorant in every part of the world, took the symbol or sign for the thing itself. Thus, when the astronomers said the sun is in the dragon’s head, the common people said the dragon is going to swallow up the sun; and yet these people were remarkable for their fondness for astrology. But while we laugh at the ignorance and credulity of the Indians, we do not reflect that there are no less than 300,000 almanacs sold yearly in Europe, all of them filled with observations and predictions equally as false and absurd as any to be met with among the Indians. It is surely as reasonable to say that the sun is in the mouth or the claws of a dragon as to tell people every year in print that they must not sow, nor plant, nor take physic, nor be bled, but on certain days of the moon. It is high time, in an age like ours, that some men of learning should think it worth their while to compose a calendar that might be of use to the industrious classes by instructing instead of deceiving them.
A blustering Dominican at Rome said to an English philosopher with whom he was disputing:
“You are a dog; you say that it is the earth that turns round, never reflecting that Joshua made the sun to stand still!”
“Well! my reverend father,” replied the philosopher, “ever since that time has not the sun been immovable?”
The dog and the Dominican embraced each other, and even the devout Italians were at length convinced that the earth turns round.
An augur and a senator lamented, in the time of Cæsar, the declining state of the republic.
“The times, indeed, are very bad,” said the senator; “we have reason to tremble for the liberty of Rome.”
“Ah!” said the augur, “that is not the greatest evil; the people now begin to lose the respect which they formerly had for our order. We seem barely to be tolerated—we cease to be necessary. Some generals have the assurance to give battle without consulting us. And, to complete our misfortunes, even those who sell us the sacred pullets begin to reason.”