igoS.] FOR PLANET IN BABYLONIAN. 145 



one with it and, accordingly, the liver of the animal reflects the mind 

 and will of the god. If one can therefore read the liver correctly, one 

 enters, as it were, into the workshop of the deity. The mind of the 

 animal and the mind of the deity become for this specific occasion 

 like two watches regulated to be in perfect accord. 



The divining of the future through the observation of the phe- 

 nomena in the heavens rests on the identification (or personification) 

 of the gods with the sun, moon, planets and stars. The movements 

 of these bodies, the changes in their aspects and the variations in 

 their relationship to one another represent, as it were, the activity 

 of the gods and since, according to the current theory, all happen- 

 ings on earth are due to the gods or to one god or the other, a knowl- 

 edge of what the activity in the heavens portends furnishes the 

 means of foretelling what is to happen on earth. In time no doubt 

 the theory was perfected, at least in the theological circles of Baby- 

 lonia and Assyria, into a complete correspondence between occur- 

 rences on earth and the decision to bring about these occurrences by 

 the manifested activity of the gods in the heavens ; but even without 

 the perfected theory, the repeated observation of the kind of happen- 

 ings on earth coincident with conditions and phenomena in the 

 heavens would have led to attaching importance to these conditions — 

 both those of a usual order and those of a more or less unusual nature. 



Of these two chief divisions of divination, it is evident that 

 the inspection of the liver, connected as it is with a primitive view 

 of that organ, can be accounted for as the distinct outgrowth of 

 popular beliefs, whereas the divination through the phenomena of 

 the heavens not only makes greater demands on scientific or pseudo- 

 scientific knowledge but presupposes also a conception of world- 

 philosophy which can hardly be termed popular. The personifica- 

 tion of the sun and moon is, of course, an element in all primitive 

 phases of belief, but the extension of such personification to the 

 planets and stars belongs to a higher order of thought, since the 

 bearings of those bodies on the life, happiness and fate of mankind 

 are of a more remote and a more indirect character than in the case 

 of the two luminaries ; and when we come to the projection of prac- 

 tically all the activity of the gods on to the heavens, we have defi- 

 nitely passed beyond the intellectual range of popular fancy and 



