They are really announcing the fortunes of parents from the birth of children; the character and career of children are included in the predictions as to the parents — they predict for the yet unborn! — in the lot of one brother they are foretelling the death of another; a girl’s fate includes that of a future husband, a boy’s that of a wife.
Now, can we think that the star-grouping over any particular birth can be the cause of what stands already announced in the facts about the parents? Either the previous star-groupings were the determinants of the child’s future career or, if they were not, then neither is the immediate grouping. And notice further that physical likeness to the parents — the Astrologers hold — is of purely domestic origin: this implies that ugliness and beauty are so caused and not by astral movements.
Again, there must at one and the same time be a widespread coming to birth — men, and the most varied forms of animal life at the same moment — and these should all be under the one destiny since the one pattern rules at the moment; how explain that identical star-groupings give here the human form, there the animal?
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