The City of God, Volume IAugustine, of Hippo, Saint
ReligionChristian
The City of God, Volume I
Augustine, of Hippo, Saint
Apologetics -- Early works to 1800; Kingdom of God -- Early works to 1800
Do not those very persons whom the medical sagacity of Hippocrates
led him to suspect to be twins, because their disease was observed
by him to develope to its crisis and to subside again in the same
time in each of them,--do not these, I say, serve as a sufficient
refutation of those who wish to attribute to the influence of the
stars that which was owing to a similarity of bodily constitution?
For wherefore were they both sick of the same disease, and at the
same time, and not the one after the other in the order of their
birth? (for certainly they could not both be born at the same time.)
Or, if the fact of their having been born at different times by
no means necessarily implies that they must be sick at different
times, why do they contend that the difference in the time of their
births was the cause of their difference in other things? Why could
they travel in foreign parts at different times, marry at different
times, beget children at different times, and do many other things
at different times, by reason of their having been born at different
times, and yet could not, for the same reason, also be sick at
different times? For if a difference in the moment of birth changed
the horoscope, and occasioned dissimilarity in all other things, why
has that simultaneousness which belonged to their conception remained
in their attacks of sickness? Or, if the destinies of health are
involved in the time of conception, but those of other things be
said to be attached to the time of birth, they ought not to predict
anything concerning health from examination of the constellations
of birth, when the hour of conception is not also given, that its
constellations may be inspected. But if they say that they predict
attacks of sickness without examining the horoscope of conception,
because these are indicated by the moments of birth, how could
they inform either of these twins when he would be sick, from the
horoscope of his birth, when the other also, who had not the same
horoscope of birth, must of necessity fall sick at the same time?
Again, I ask, if the distance of time between the births of twins
is so great as to occasion a difference of their constellations on
account of the difference of their horoscopes, and therefore of
all the cardinal points to which so much influence is attributed,
that even from such change there comes a difference of destiny,
how is it possible that this should be so, since they cannot have
been conceived at different times? Or, if two conceived at the same
moment of time could have different destinies with respect to their
births, why may not also two born at the same moment of time have
different destinies for life and for death? For if the one moment
in which both were conceived did not hinder that the one should be
born before the other, why, if two are born at the same moment,
should anything hinder them from dying at the same moment? If a
simultaneous conception allows of twins being differently affected
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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