Astrology bore a high antiquity in the East, and contained within itself some rays of light, but never rose above a degraded astronomy. It prepared the way for science, by leading to the habit of grouping phenomena under the pictorial and mythological relations which were supposed to exist among the stars. Actual truths are gradually approximated, but when once really attained, they forever remain the fundamental treasure of man, and may be traced in all the superadditions of brighter days. Thus, in the dim light of speculative suggestion, the Copernican system was anticipated by Aristarchus, the resolution of the heavenly appearances into circular motions was intimated by Plato, and the numerical relations of musical intervals is to be ascribed to Pythagoras. But so completely at fault as to method were even the latest natural philosophers, that no physical doctrine as now received, can be traced so far back as Aristotle. Astronomy is undoubtedly the most ancient and remarkable science. Chaldea and Egypt probably gave to it somewhat of a scientific form, before the age of intellectuality represented by the Greeks. The Egyptians advanced one step in the right direction, when they determined the path of the sun; and Thales, who, like Moses, was learned in all the science of that Pharaonic people, introduced what he had gleaned into his own land, and became the father of astronomy. The great advance which he made is indicated by the fact that he was the first to predict an eclipse. This science, moreover, profited by the authority with which Plato taught the supremacy of mathematical order; and the truths of harmonics which gave rise to the Pythagorean passion for numbers, were cultivated with great care in that school. But after these first impulses, in the opinion of Dr. Whewell, the sciences owed nothing to the philosophical sects; and the vast and complex accumulations and apparatus of the Stagirite, do not appear to have led to any theoretical physical truths.