Although it may be a general principle that savages are more impressed by external than by internal experiences, yet the suggestion of the foregoing paragraphs, that the finding of Omens in one’s own sensations is secondary to, and dependent on, the growth of a belief in Omens presented by physical events, is not one upon which I much rely. Possibly sensations and moods are a distinct and primitive source of this superstition: for it has been noticed in Australia, where the lore of Omens in general has made but little progress. Whilst performing tribal ceremonies under strong emotion, the aborigines think that their entrails sometimes acquire “sight”; so that they know whether their wives have been unfaithful, or they feel the approach of danger.[349] In the Western Isles of Torres Straits shivering and uneasy feelings are presentiments; and in the Eastern Isles, a dryness of one’s skin or sneezing:[350] in New Guinea, if the right shoulder ache, expect good news; if the left, bad.[351] And these simplest of all whims are the longest lived; for amongst ourselves many a woman suddenly has a presentiment, “as if some one were walking over her grave.”
(b) As a mood of elation or depression is itself ominous, so is whatever excites such a mood. Depressing objects are cripples, old women, sick people, timid hares, loathsome toads, a snake coming to meet a war-party, discouraging words, ugly dreams; whereas pleasant dreams, encouraging words, a snake going before us as against the enemy, hawks, wolves and blooming youth are all exhilarating: the list varies from tribe to tribe. Many ominous things promise good or evil according as they appear on the right hand or on the left: the left being generally held inauspicious, because (it is said) the left hand is the clumsier and weaker; and this may be true. But we have seen that in Borneo the left is preferred; and whereas the Greeks followed the general rule, assigning evil to the left hand, the Romans thought the right hand was the direction of danger. And this contrariety has been explained as due to a difference of orientation in the formal taking of Omens; for the Greek then faced northward, and had the place of sunrise upon his right hand; whilst the Roman faced southward and had on his right hand the place of sunset: so that it was not anything to do with his own body, but the direction whence the sun appeared and advanced with growing power and splendour which each of them judged of good hope, in contrast with that whither the sun declined and weakened to his death. To illustrate these fancies would be an endless task, and a superfluous labour, since nothing is better known.
(c) Coincidence, the occurrence near together of two interesting events, is sure to make people think there must be some connexion between them; and the earlier event will be classed, according to circumstances, as either a cause or a sign of the later; and if the connexion is mysterious, it must be either a magical power like that of a talisman, or that special kind of Magic which is an Omen. What circumstances determine this distinction, I will presently try to show. Possibly all Omens that are not derived from subjective moods and sensations, or from things or events that excite such moods, were originally founded upon coincidence. Upon this, apparently, the Egyptians relied in the records they kept (according to Herodotus) of Omens and their fulfilment; and Quintus Cicero is represented[352] as believing that the Babylonians kept such records for 470,000 years: so that it was, in their view, an inductive science; but we never hear of their having kept a record of failures and disappointments.
Some Omens having been established by subjective prognostication or by coincidence, many more may be added by analogy, or by a sort of reasoning. An analogy with the contrast of right and left hand may be noticed in all opposites: the woodpecker in Borneo, for example, having two cries, and one of them a warning, must not the other be an encouragement? The belief in Omens having taken hold of the public mind, everybody is on the look-out for signs and wonders; and anything unusual seen, or heard, or rumoured, becomes a possible Omen of anything else, and men ask one another what it portends. The superstitious imagination is greedy of its accustomed food. Under such conditions, too, Omens are discovered by retrospection: a public calamity, such as the death of a king, the defeat of an army, or a pestilence (or in private life some private misfortune), makes us remember some foregoing event or events, which must have forewarned us, had we had the skill to interpret the significance of Time’s progression.
§ 4. Differentiation of Omens from General Magic
The savage mind, sensitive to the resemblance of relations, cannot overlook the analogy between signs and warning cries; many Omens are cries; and with the spread of animistic explanation, they came to be considered as the sendings of spirits or gods. But, at first, by mere magical thinking, under the stress of anxiety to know the future, and the helplessness of common sense to predict anything outside the everyday routine, Omens are gradually separated from ordinary probable signs (such as the tracks of game) as necessary infallible signs (or tendencies) if cunning can find them out, connected by some supernatural law with the unknown future that certainly awaits us, and as a kind of Magic. The magical habit of mind may be supposed to have resulted from the coalescence of beliefs concerning several imaginary operations—by charms, spells, rites—each class of beliefs having its own occasions, causes, or fallacious grounds. Those operations had in common the marks of being connexions of events due to imagined forces of a mysterious kind, and therefore grouped themselves together in men’s minds as the Magic apperception-mass. Omens had these marks and, therefore, were assimilated to Magic. An Omen is an event regarded as a magical sign of the good or ill success of some undertaking, or of the approach of good fortune, or of calamity. And on the principle that ideas are differentiated from a confused matrix, it is probable that Omens, having at first been confused with other magical antecedents of events, were only gradually again distinguished from them. But an important distinction existed and at last came to light: charms, rites and spells are causes of events; whereas Omens are signs only, not causes. The difference is that whereas charms, rites and spells directly exert their powers upon the course of things, Omens themselves exert no power, but show only that there is some power at work, which will have such or such results.[353]
Comparing Omens with other modes of Magic, several peculiarities may be noticed: (a) Omens themselves (apart from the preparation of victims, etc.) imply no human intervention, whereas rites and spells must be performed or recited by some one, and even charms are carried about one, or used in rites, or solemnly affixed to doors, animals or other possessions. (b) Partly as a consequence of this, Omens, considered in themselves, generally (as I have said) convey no suggestion of force. This cannot, indeed, be said of eclipses and thunderstorms; but the note of a bird, the appearance of entrails, a mere shivering or other change of feeling, though ominous, suggests no energetic operation; whilst rites and spells are often carried out with much expenditure of energy, and even charms, though not obviously active, are necessarily believed to be powerful in some obscure way of their own. (c) Omens are often so remote in time, as well as in place, from the events indicated that any quasi-mechanical determination of the issue by them can hardly be thought of; but with rites and spells, though they may not operate openly in the hour of their setting to work, yet the delay is not expected to be great, and (as said) their impulsion or nisus is often very impressive; and charms are incessantly and immediately active. (d) Omens in general do not foretell precisely what is to happen, but only the success or failure of some enterprise (not the “how” of it), happiness or misfortune; whereas rites and spells have some definite object, and most charms inflict, or guard against, some one kind of evil, disease or shipwreck; though others (it is true) bring luck or loss at large. Thus Omens are very different from other magical conditions; and although it is not likely that the ordinary savage or even the wizard ever consciously draws these distinctions or sums them up, still they have an effect upon his mind, and the observation of Omens and the reading of them becomes at last a special branch of the Magic Art—Divination.
§ 5. Omens Interpreted by Animism
Omens, then, being only signs and not causes of future events, having no power in themselves, must be connected with some efficient power, or else the events prognosticated could not happen. How is that power to be understood? For a long time, probably, there is no clear conception of it: the connexion is mysterious. But there are two ways in which it may be interpreted: (a) Following the impersonal magical way of thinking, we are led to the idea of currents of force in which both Omen and event are borne along; and, at last, to the conception of a fatal order of the world in which all events have their necessary places. There A is always followed by B; so that, although A exerts no power over B, yet (if we know the law of the sequence) when the former appears it is an infallible portent of the latter. The power at work is Fate; and to this idea I must return; for in its full development it comes late in history.