In the circle of Lorenzo the Magnificent, among his most distinguished
Platonists, opinions were divided on this question. Marsilio Ficino
defended astrology, and drew the horoscope of the children of the
house, promising the little Giovanni, afterwards Leo X, that he would
one day be Pope. Pico della Mirandola, on the other hand, made an epoch
in the subject by his famous refutation. He detects in this belief the
root of all impiety and immorality. If the astrologer, he maintains,
believes in anything at all, he must worship not God, but the planets,
from which all good and evil are derived. All other superstitions find
a ready instrument in astrology, which serves as handmaid to geomancy,
chiromancy, and magic of every kind. As to morality, he maintains that
nothing can more foster evil than the opinion that heaven itself is the
cause of it, in which case the faith in eternal happiness and
punishment must also disappear. Pico even took the trouble to check off
the astrologers inductively, and found that in the course of a month
three-fourths of their weather prophecies turned out false. But his
main achievement was to set forth, in the Fourth Book, a positive
Christian doctrine of the freedom of the will and the government of the
universe, which seems to have made a greater impression on the educated
classes throughout Italy than all the revivalist preachers put
together.
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