It becomes pretty obvious, when we consider the conditions of things in these early times, that the stars would be the objects which would first commend themselves to the attention of temple builders, for the reason that the movements and rising-and setting-places of the various planets by night, and of the sun by day, would appear to be so erratic, so long as the order of their movements was not known. To go a step further. It is clear in the first place that no one would think of orienting a temple to the moon, as there is so little constancy about its path in the sky, and, therefore, in its place of rising or setting. If the temple caught it each month, the intervals between which this occurrence takes place would vary very considerably, and in early times would have been impossible to predict. Similarly it would not be worth while to orient temples to the planets. But when we come to the stars, the thing is different. A few years' observations would have appeared to demonstrate the absolute changelessness of the places of rising and setting of the same stars. It is true that this result would have been found to be erroneous when a long period of time had elapsed and when observation became more accurate; but for hundreds of years the stars would certainly appear to represent fixity, while the movements of sun, moon and planets would seem to be bound by no law. Before, then, the yearly apparent movements of the sun had been fully made out, observations of a star rising or setting _with the sun_ at some critical time of the agricultural cycle, say sowing-time or harvest, would be of the highest importance, and would secure the work being done at the right time of the--to the early peoples--still unformulated year. If a star was chosen in or near the ecliptic, sooner or later the sunlight as well as the starlight would enter the temple, and the use of a solar temple might have thus been suggested even before the solstices or equinoxes had been thoroughly grasped. There is no doubt that if we are justified in assuming that the stars were first observed, the next thing that would strike the early astronomers would be the regularity of the annual movement of the sun; the critical times of the sun's movements as related either to their agriculture, or their festivals, or to the year; the equinoxes and the solstices, would soon have revealed themselves to these early observers, if for no other reason than that they were connected in some way or other with some of the important conditions of their environment.