utility in daily life, soon led to their becoming objects of idolatry, and as their importance increased, astrology, that pseudo-science, Kepler's "foolish daughter of a wise mother," sprang into being, and for a time suppressed, discouraged, and hampered the legitimate and scientific study of the heavens.
Thus early in the history of man we find the stars all- important to his welfare. No course was pursued or plan adopted without first consulting the heavenly bodies. They governed alike the policies of nations and the actions of individuals. They ruled absolutely over the destinies of the high and lowly, the rich and poor, and horoscopes became a necessity of life, and divination the highest pursuit of man.
In Sabianism, or star worship, we have, therefore, the earliest form of religion, and in astrology and the adoration of the stars the progenitors of the modern science of astronomy.
From this universal attention to the stars, there sprang up the myriad fancies and peculiar notions, the products of imagination, that peopled the sky with animals and quaint figures, and gave rise to the constellated stellar groups that have come down to us, and figure on the modern charts of the heavens.
There are many traditions that have emerged from the mists that shroud the distant past respecting the origin of the constellations, and the science of astronomy, and as that origin is antediluvian, the knowledge that we have of the subject must perforce be largely traditional in its character.
An early tradition affirms that the immediate descendants of Adam cultivated a knowledge of the stars, and that Seth and Enoch inscribed upon two pillars, one of brick, the other of stone, the names, meanings, secret virtues, and science of the stars, with the divisions of the zodiac.
Josephus states that he saw in Syria the pillar of stone, which alone remained in his day. The history of two mysterious pillars entwined with a serpent, the symbol of revo-
