Divination was divided by the ancients into artificial and natural. The first is conducted by reasoning upon certain external signs, considered as indications of futurity; the other consists in that which presages things from a mere internal sense, and persuasion of the mind, without any assistance of signs; and is of two kinds, the one from nature, and the other by influx. The first supposes that the soul, collected within itself, and not diffused or divided among the organs of the body, has from its own nature and essence, some fore-knowledge of future things; witness, for instance, what is seen in dreams, ecstasies, and on the confines of death. The second supposes the soul after the manner of a mirror to receive some secondary illumination from the presence of God and other spirits. Artificial divination is also of two kinds: the one argues from natural causes, as in the predictions of physicians relative to the event of diseases, from the tongue, pulse, etc. The second the consequence of experiments and observations arbitrarily instituted, and is mostly superstitious. The systems of divination reduceable under these heads are almost incalculable. Among these were the Augurs or those who drew their knowledge of futurity from the flight, and various other actions of birds; the Aruspices, from the entrails of beasts; palmestry or the lines of the hands; points marked at random; numbers, names, the motions of a scene, the air, fire, the Praenestine, Homerian, and Virgilian lots, dreams, etc.
Whoever reads the Roman historians[14] must be surprised at the number of prodigies which are constantly recorded, and which frequently filled the people with the most dreadful apprehensions. It must be confessed, that some of these seem altogether supernatural; while much the greater part only consist of some of the uncommon productions of nature, which superstition always attributed to a superior cause, and represented as the prognostication of some impending misfortunes. Of this class may be reckoned the appearance of two suns, the nights illuminated by rays of light, the views of fighting armies, swords, and spears, darting through the air; showers of milk, of blood, of stones, of ashes, of frogs, beasts with two heads, or infants who had some feature resembling those of the brute creation. These were all dreadful prodigies, which filled the people with inexpressible astonishment, and the Roman Empire with an extreme perplexity; and whatever unhappy circumstance followed upon these, was sure to be either caused or predicted by them.[15]
FOOTNOTES:
[9] Homer gives the same account of those ceremonies, when Ulysses raised the soul of Tiresias; and the same usages are found in the poem of Silius Italicus. And to these ceremonies the scriptures frequently allude, when the Israelites are forbid to assemble upon high places.
[10] The magical slumbers produced in the cave of Trophonius are justly ascribed to medicated beverages. Here, the votary if he escaped with life, had his health irreparably injured, and the whole class of artificial dreams and visions, the effect of some powerful narcotic acting upon the body after the mind had been predisposed for a certain train of ideas.
[11] The sortes praenestinae were famous among the Greeks. The method by which these lots were conducted was to put so many letters or even whole words, into an urn; to shake them together, and throw them out; and whatever should chance to be made out in the arrangement of these letters or words, composed the answer of the oracle. The ancients also made use of dice, drawing tickets, etc., in casting or deciding results. In the Old Testament we meet with many standing and perpetual laws, and a number of particular commands, prescribing and regulating the use of them. We are informed by the Scripture that when a successor to Judas in the apostolate was to be chosen, the lot fell on St. Mathias. And the garment or coat without a seam of our Saviour was lotted for by the Jews. In Cicero's time this mode of divination was at a very low ebb. The sortes Homericae and sortes Virgilianae which succeeded the sortes Praenestinae, gave rise to the same means used among christians of casually opening the sacred books for directions in important circumstances; to learn the consequence of events and what they had to fear among their rulers.
[12] Kennet's Roman Antiquities, Lib. XI, C. 4.
[13] Romulus, who founded the institution of the Aruspices, borrowed it from the Tuscans, to whom the Senate afterwards sent twelve of the sons of the principal nobility to be instructed in these mysteries, and the other ceremonies of their religion. The origin of this act among the people of Tuscany, is related by Cicero in the following manner: "A peasant," says he, "ploughing in the field, his ploughshare running pretty deep in the earth, turned up a clod, from whence sprung a child, who taught him and the other Tuscans the art of divination." (Cicero, De Divinat. l. 2.) This fable, undoubtedly means no more, than that this child, said to spring from the clod of earth, was a youth of a very mean and obscure birth, but it is not known whether he was the author of it, or whether he learnt it of the Greeks or any other nations.
[14] Particularly Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Pliny, and Valerius Maximus.
[15] Nothing is more easy than to account for these productions, which have no relation to any events that may happen to follow them. The appearance of two suns has frequently happened in England, as well as in other places, and is only caused by the clouds being placed in such a situation, as to reflect the image of that luminary; nocturnal fires, enflamed spears, fighting armies, were no more than what we call the Aurora Borealis or northern lights, or ignited vapours floating in the air; showers of stones, of ashes, or of fire, were no other than the effects of the eruptions of some volcano at a considerable distance; showers of milk were caused by some quality in the air, condensing, and giving a whitish colour to the water; and those of blood are now well known to be only the red spots left upon the earth, on stones and leaves of trees, by the butterflies which hatch in hot and stormy weather.