Copy 1, Volume 1

The history of the heavens, considered according to the notions of the poets and philosophers, compared with the doctrines of Moses / Translated from the French ... By J.B. De Freval.

  • Noël-Antoine Pluche
Date:
1740
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The history of the heavens, considered according to the notions of the poets and philosophers, compared with the doctrines of Moses / Translated from the French ... By J.B. De Freval. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    'The invention of the Zodiack. ONE of the moft learned among the ancients Zo- by fhewing the natural reafons which caufed theDIACK< conftellations of Cancer and Capricorn to be called * y[acrf by the names they now go by, undefignedly dif- Saturnal. covered to us the true reafons that determined the#£. i. <v choice of the names given to the reft. Nay, if17* there is any thing folid and coherent in the hiftory I lhall here exhibit of the origine of the poetical heaven, I own 1 am indebted for it to the inge¬ nious but plain explication, whereby the author of the Saturnals has difplay’d the origine of the names of thefe two figns, The other thoughts came into my mind, as it were, of themfelves, in confequence of the firft, and I have hardly any other ftiare in this work, but my having continued to argue on the reft as he has done on thefe two points. “ Thefe are, fays he, the motives that occa- “ fioned the two figns which we call the doors, “ or the barriers of the courfe of the fun, to go “ by the names of Cancer and Capricorn. The “ crab, or Cancer, is an animal that walks back- “ wards and obliquely: The fun likewife, arriving “ at thisfign, begins his rétrogradation, and again defcends obliquely, As to the wild-goat, or “ Capricorn, its way of feeding is always to afcend “ and to climb the hills as it browfes on the (C grafs. The fun, in like manner, being come “ to Capricorn, begins to quit the loweft point of its courfe, in order to regain the higheft.,, If the two conftellations, under which the fun is at both folftices, have received thefe names for pq other reafpn than to fignify by a Angle word, and
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