Note 12 — Chapter IX

Bute's interest in astrology has been already noted (ante, p. 135), and is also referred to in Mr. Myers' obituary notice (post, Appendix V.). He was not, of course, unaware that the practice of astrology had been forbidden to the Christians of the early Church, and condemned by a sixteenth-century Pope. But he also had the authority of St. Thomas for believing, if he desired to do so, that the heavenly bodies do influence the bodies of men, and so indirectly their passions and their conduct. This is a matter of science, not of theology, which forbids, not the study of the science, but the belief, once so widely current, that the astrologer can predict with certainty the course of events and man's future actions.