As far back as the year B.C. 2154, we find mention of the great importance attaching to the celestial phenomena in the minds of Chinese rulers. It is recorded in the Historical Classic of China that at that time the astrologers Hi and Ho neglected their duties so that when, on the 10th of October, there was a great eclipse of the Sun at Peking between seven and nine o’clock in the morning, the people were wholly unprepared for it, and “ran about here and there in the utmost consternation.” For this offence Hi and Ho were deprived of their offices, their estates were confiscated and they were driven from the kingdom. Among the Hindus we have the classical writers Garga, Parashara, and Mihira, together with their legions of commentators. The Assyrian records are full of astrological allusions regarding the influence of planetary conjunctions and stellar positions. The Greek mythology is nothing but a vast system of cosmographical astrology, and there is no other history in it than what you may read in the constellations of the heavens and the corresponding evolution of the human race. Aristotle made it a part of his philosophy. Hipparchus, Hippocrates, Thales, Galenius, and others subscribed an intelligent belief in its principles. To Claudius Ptolemy, however, we are indebted for the first concise and scientific statement of its principles and practice, so far as Europe is concerned. He wrote the Tetrabiblos, or Four Books, and laid the foundations of a true astrological science. Julius Firmicus confirmed Ptolemy and enlarged upon his observations. The subsequent discovery of the planets Uranus and Neptune by Herschel and Adams, widened the field of research and gave to later astrologers the clue to much that hitherto had been imperfectly understood. Not that these discoveries overturned the whole system of astrology, as some have imagined and foolishly stated, or that they negatived the conclusions drawn from the observed effects of the seven anciently known bodies of the solar system, but it became possible after a lapse of time to fill in the blank spaces and to account for certain events which had not been traced to the action of any of the already known planets. The discovery of argon did not destroy our conclusions regarding the nature and characteristics of oxygen or hydrogen or nitrogen, nor give an entirely new meaning to the word “atmosphere.” If even so many as seven new planets should be discovered, there would yet not be a single paragraph of this book which would need revising. What is known regarding planetary action in human life is known with great certainty, and the effects of one planet can never be confounded with those of another. Incomplete as it must needs be, it is yet a veritable science both as to its principles and practice. It claims for itself a place among the sciences for the sole reason that it is capable of mathematical demonstration, and deals only with the observed