Now, by tracing the effects upon health, character and fortunes produced (or indicated) by the transits of the planets over these sensitive planes, astrologers have been able to determine exactly what effects are due to each, that is to say, what they signify in the course of events. Ptolemy, Tycho and Kepler, Newton, and others among the great astronomers, have confirmed the ascriptions of the astrologers from personal observation, but without in any way contributing to the solution of the problem of their _modus operandi_, presuming them to have a causative relationship in human affairs, or of their status in a scheme of universal symbolism. They have just left the problem where they found it, while confirming the general claim of astrologers that there is a possible means of a scientific method of prediction. Astrologers make no claim to any degree of special inspiration. They merely argue from like causes to like effects, finding illustration of the law of periodicity in lunations, transits, eclipses and revolutional ingresses, which, being connected in experience with a certain succession of events, are found to produce events of a similar nature whenever they recur. Astronomy gives us the periodic values of these several factors, while Astrology supplies an interpretation from experience. Nothing could be more scientific or more satisfactory. I may now pass to the citation of some remarkable instances of scientific prediction. CHAPTER VIII ANCIENT AND MODERN EXAMPLES Among the earliest of the great readers of the Symbolism of the universe was Thales of Miletus, who during the sixth century B.C. formulated a true theory of the cause of eclipses, and proved his theory by predicting the eclipse of May 28, 585 B.C. He founded the Ionic sect of philosophers, which was distinguished for the profundity of its speculations, to which his successors and pupils, Anaxagoras, Anaximander, Anaximenes and Archelaus so largely contributed. Archelaus became the master of Socrates. Anaxagoras proved himself as skilful as his Master in the use of the sphere and in astronomical studies, for he predicted the eclipse of the Sun which was seen at Athens in the first year of the Peloponnesian War. From Thucydides we learn that it happened after noon in the summer, and that the Sun assumed a crescent shape and that some of the stars shone out. Sir J. Herschel has spoken of this eclipse as total, but this cannot be, as the Moon’s apparent diameter was less than that of the Sun, so that even where it was central it would be but annular.