430 



were accessories to a fraud, or victims of it ; and the knowledge 

 one has of them, whether as regards their probity or their 

 acuteness, does not lend itself to either supposition. 



But there are some who, while admitting that diviners 

 frequently fulfil what they undertake, deny the existence of any 

 special power confined to certain individuals. They have several 

 ways of accounting for a diviner's success, and the following is a 

 summary of them. They contend : — 



1. — That he makes a guess at the position of what he has to 

 discover, and the fact that he is sometimes right is a mere 

 coincidence. The adoption of this theory would lead to the 

 conclusion that luck favoured the diviners to a much greater 

 extent than the rest of mankind, and stood by them even when 

 they were blindfolded. 



2. — That a knowledge, on the part of the diviners, of the 

 locality and of its geology sufficiently accounts for their 

 discoveries. Western diviners, however, are frequently sent for, 

 on very short notice, to distant parts of the kingdom where 

 they have never been before, and with successful results. But 

 even admitting their possession of a knowledge of locality and 

 geology combined, this would not help them much when they 

 were blindfolded, or were passing over artificial water courses 

 and drains. 



3. — That the so-called power is merely due to an involuntary 

 muscular action resulting from a fixedness of idea. But there 

 must be something behind the idea which determines its 

 adoption, and the correctness of the results indicates the working 

 of a guiding principle. 



Lastly, there is the irrefutable sledge-hammer argument — that 

 there can be no such power as is claimed, because there is no 

 accounting for it within the lines which science, as represented by 

 man (an essential point), has laid down. This is almost equivalent 

 to saying that man has adopted certain principles to which 

 Nature is expected to adhere, and that any departure from them 



