Astrology's absurd precision and its animal logic

For this reason they divided the circle called the zodiac into twelve parts, and because the sun passes through one twelfth of the sphere called the fixed sphere in thirty days, they divided each of the twelfth-parts into thirty degrees. Then they divided each degree into sixty parts, and each of those sixtieths they cut again sixty times. So when they set down the births of children, let us see whether they can preserve this precision in dividing time. For the child is born, and at the same moment the midwife examines whether the newborn is male or female; then she waits for the cry, which is the sign that the child is alive. How many sixtieths do you suppose pass by in that time? Then she tells the Chaldean that the child has been born. Through how many of the very finest divisions, do you suppose, the midwife's voice travels—especially if the one who is supposed to fix the hour happens to be standing outside the women's quarters? For the one who intends to study horoscopes must record the hour with precision, whether it is by day or by night. What a swarm of sixtieths passes by again in that time! For it is necessary, they say, to determine not only in which twelfth-part the star that marks the hour is, but also in which degree of that twelfth-part, and in which sixtieth—into which we said the degree is divided—or, to find the exact point, in which sixtieth of the subdivisions of the first sixtieths. And they say it is necessary to make this extremely fine and incomprehensible determination of time for each of the planets, so as to find what relation they had to the fixed stars, and what configuration they had toward one another at the moment of the child's birth. So if it is impossible to hit upon the hour exactly, and the variation of the very briefest moment causes one to miss everything, then both those who have devoted themselves to this non-existent art are ridiculous, and so are those who gape at them as though they could know what concerns them. 6.6 And what are the results like? 'So-and-so,' he says, 'is curly-haired and bright-eyed, for he has the Ram as his ascendant; for the animal is seen somewhat like that.' But he is also high-minded, because the Ram is a leader; and open-handed, and again resourceful, because this animal both sheds its wool without pain and is easily clothed again by nature. 'But the one born under the Bull,' he says, 'is hardy and servile, because the bull is under the yoke.' And the one born under the Scorpion is a striker, because of his likeness to the beast. The one born under the Scales is just, because of the equality of scales among us. What could be more ridiculous than these things? The Ram, from which you take the birth of a human being, is a twelfth part of heaven, in which the sun comes to touch the signs of spring. And the Scales and the Bull likewise—each of these is a twelfth-part of the circle called the zodiac. How then, when you say that the primary causes for human lives exist, do you characterize the characters of people born from our domestic animals? For the one born under the Ram is open-handed, not because that part of heaven produces such a character, but because the sheep has such a nature. Why then do you try to overawe us with the authority of the stars, while attempting to persuade us through bleatings? For if heaven received such peculiarities of character from the animals, then heaven itself is subject to alien principles, having its causes derived from cattle. But if it is ridiculous to say this, it is far more ridiculous to try to bring into the argument plausibilities drawn from things that have nothing in common with it.