a happy existence in his proper star.[100] Such a doctrine is not identical with that of nativities and the horoscope, but like it exalts the importance of the stars and suggests their control of human life. And when at the close of his _Republic_ Plato speaks of the harmony or music of the spheres of the seven planets and the eighth sphere of the fixed stars, and of “the spindle of Necessity on which all the revolutions turn,” he suggests that when once the human soul has entered upon this life, its destiny is henceforth subject to the courses of the stars. When in the _Timaeus_ he says, “There is no difficulty in seeing that the perfect number of time fulfills the perfect year when all the eight revolutions ... are accomplished together and attain their completion at the same time,”[101] he seems to suggest the astrological doctrine of the _magnus annus_, that history begins to repeat itself in every detail when the heavenly bodies have all regained their original positions. [Sidenote: Aristotle on stars and spirits.] For Aristotle, too, the stars were “beings of superhuman intelligence, incorporate deities. They appeared to him as the purer forms, those more like the deity, and from them a purposive rational influence upon the lower life of the earth seemed to proceed,—a thought which became the root of medieval astrology.”[102] Moreover, “his theory of the subordinate gods of the spheres of the planets ... provided for a later demonology.”[103] [Sidenote: Folk-lore in the _History of Animals_.] Aside from bits of physiognomy and of Pythagorean superstition, or mysticism, Aristotle’s _History of Animals_ contains much on the influence of the stars on animal life, the medicines employed by animals, and their friendships and enmities, and other folk-lore and pseudo-science.[104] But the oldest extant manuscript of that work dates only from the twelfth or thirteenth century and lacks the tenth book. Editors of the text have also rejected books seven and nine, the latter part of book eight, and have questioned various other passages. However, these expurgations save the face of Aristotle rather than of Hellenic science or philosophy generally, as the spurious seventh book is held to be drawn largely from Hippocratic writings and the ninth from Theophrastus.[105] [Sidenote: Differing modes of transmission of ancient oriental and Greek literature.]