Upon hearing and believing these things, told by one of such
credibility, all that my resistance gave way; and first I
endeavoured to reclaim Firminus himself from that curiosity, by
telling him that upon inspecting his constellations, I ought if I were
to predict truly, to have seen in them parents eminent among their
neighbours, a noble family in its own city, high birth, good
education, liberal learning. But if that servant had consulted me upon
the same constellations, since they were his also, I ought again (to
tell him too truly) to see in them a lineage the most abject, a
slavish condition, and every thing else utterly at variance with the
former. Whence then, if I spake the truth, I should, from the same
constellations, speak diversely, or if I spake the same, speak
falsely: thence it followed most certainly that whatever, upon
consideration of the constellations, was spoken truly, was spoken
not out of art, but chance; and whatever spoken falsely, was not out
of ignorance in the art, but the failure of the chance.
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