Another objection raised against the idea of planetary influence is that the bodies are so remote and insignificant as to be incapable of producing any marked effects in mundane affairs. The objection is grounded in ignorance. The distance of the planets bears no relation to their influence or power to affect us. This will be obvious to those who have reflected on the fact that etheric vibration becomes “light” only when it impinges on the earth’s atmosphere, and the fact also that the attraction of gravitation operates irrespective of distance and maintains the solidarity of the system. Planetary perturbations due to the mutual attraction of the several bodies is an adequate reply to the objection of Cicero. Sir David Brewster argues that if light could reach us from the distant stars and planets, other influences may also reach us from the same sources. Cicero, on the other hand, while possessed of magnificent ideas of the solar system and fully admitting its solidarity, asks with evident lack of argument, “What contagion can reach us from the planets whose distances are almost infinite?” We have gone beyond the “infinite” of Cicero since that question was asked, and modern astronomers are able to demonstrate the fact that the Sun, while acting as the centre of attraction in its own system, is answering to the gravitational pull of some star in the confines of space, and that it has a proper motion of its own in a vast orbit about that centre. I have already expressed the view that Plato knew of this and that it was the basis of his Great Year. What hinders that our Sun may receive influences from its own lode-star, and that these may be transmitted to us in common with the other planets of our system? There is no harm in using the scientific imagination providing that we have some fact from which to proceed. In connection with the teachings of astrology there is the scientific fact of natural selection to be considered. What is it that determines birth under particular astral conditions. We say that it is innate tendency. Locke, who in his _Human Understanding_ argued for “no innate ideas” had a faulty perspective. He failed to account for genius through sense-impressions, as others have later failed to account for it through cumulative heredity. We have instances before us where it is obvious that there was nothing to accumulate so far as special forms of genius were concerned.