It was in ancient Babylon that this pseudo-science mainly took its rise. Here the five planets which we now call Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Mars and Mercury, and also the Sun and Moon, were identified, in certain senses, with seven great Gods. The movements of these heavenly bodies were supposed to represent in symbolic fashion the deeds of these Gods. It was thought possible to interpret the movements and relative positions of the planets and the sun and moon, in a way that threw light upon the fate of mankind, in so far as it depended upon the Gods in question. Some centuries before the Christian era, Babylonian astrology began to influence the nations farther to the West. In Greece, the subject took a more personal turn and it was believed that the fate, not only of nations but of individuals, was determined in the skies, and could be foretold from the position of the planets at the time of a man’s birth. At a later period, speculation on the subject was carried further and further, until finally not only men, but all animals, vegetables and minerals were associated, either with particular planets, or with the constellations of the Zodiac. That a belief in the influence of the moon upon plants dates back to very early times in western Europe, is shown by the statement, in Pliny’s ‘Natural History,’ that the Druids in Britain gathered the Mistletoe for medical purposes, with many rites and ceremonies, when the moon was six days old. To trace the history of astrology in detail is altogether beyond our province, but, as an example of its universal acceptance, we may recall the reference to the supreme influence of the stars in the preface of the Herbarius zu Teutsch of 1485 (see p. 19). Astrological ideas were familiar in Elizabethan England, and are reflected in many passages in Shakespeare’s plays, never perhaps more charmingly than in Beatrice’s laughing words—“there was a star danced, and under that I was born.”