The Pattern of Phaenomena 367-385

Abstract

I print the passage without a full stop until the last line, to avoid interrupting the unity of its structure:‘The stars of slight magnitude and slight brilliance between the Rudder and the Sea-monster, lying beneath the flanks of the grey Hare, are nameless in their course; they are not cast in a resemblance to the structure of any specific figure, like the numerous constellations that pass in ordered ranks along the same paths year after year, constellations that someone in a past generation observed and thought of calling all by names, after giving them definite shapes; he could not, of course, have named or identified all the stars taken individually, because they are too numerous all over the sky, many of them are alike in magnitude and in colour, and all of them have a circling movement; therefore it seemed best to him to make the stars into groups, so that different stars arranged in conjunction with each other could represent figures; and that is how the named constellations came into being, and no star-rising is a surprise nowadays; but while the stars in general are fixed in clear-cut figures when they appear, those beneath the hunted Hare are all very dim and nameless in their course.’