650 JASTROW— HEPATOSCOPY AND ASTROLOGY [December 4, 



The two agree as two watches regulated to be in perfect unison. 

 If, therefore, one can read the soul of the animal, one enters at the 

 same time into the inner being of the god. Now according to a 

 view widespread still among people living in a state of primitive 

 culture, the seat of life is in the liver, which is not only the organ 

 of emotional activity but of intellectual functions as well, the source 

 of all emotions high and low, of thought, will and all manifestations 

 of what we ordinarily call soul life.^ From this point of view the 

 liver is the seat of life and of the soul, as the ancients conceived 

 vitality and its inward and outward phenomena. 



The combination of these two conceptions (i) of the liver as the 

 seat of the soul and (2) of the assimilation of the soul of the sacri- 

 ficial animal to the soul of the deity to whom it is offered and who 

 accepts it, leads to the conclusion that if one is able to read the soul 

 of the animal as revealed in the condition of the liver and of the 

 signs thereon, the soul including, therefore, the will and intention of 

 the deity is revealed. Through the liver of the sacrificial animal one 

 enters as it were into the workshop of the gods. The mind of the 

 god is reflected in the liver of the sacrificial animal like an image in 

 a mirror — to use the figure introduced by Plato in an interesting 

 passage of the Timaeus^° bearing on divination through the liver. 



As for the system of interpretation of the signs noted it revolves 

 largely around a more or less natural association of ideas. The 

 chief parts of the liver to which attention was directed being the 

 right and left lower lobes, the upper lobe with its two appendices, 

 the larger one known as the processus pyramid alls and the smaller 



° For further details regarding this view of the liver which also under- 

 lies hepatoscopy among the Etruscans, Greeks and Romans see Jastrow, " Re- 

 ligion Babyloniens und Assyrians, " II., pp. 213 seq. In a special article 

 (shortly to be published) on "The Liver as the Seat of the Soul" I have set 

 forth the historical development of the location of the soul in the liver, in 

 the heart and in the head successively. The second stage, though reached by 

 the Babylonians and Assyrians, never found expression in Hepatoscopy, 

 w-hereas among the Romans from a certain period on, the heart and occa- 

 sionally the lungs and even the milt were also examined. The third stage 

 was reached too late for incorporation into the divination rites, but in phre- 

 nology as an extra-official pseudo-scientific form of divination we have the 

 outward expression of the belief which placed the soul in the brain. 



"§710. 



