ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 203 



conducted by blind authority. The latter is generally su 

 perstitious. Such were the heathen doctrines about the in 

 spection of entrails, the flight of birds, etc. ; and the formal 

 astrology of the Chaldeans was little better. Both kinds of 

 artificial divination spread themselves into various sciences. 

 The astrologer has his predictions from the aspect of the 

 stars; the physician, too, has his, as to death, recovery, 

 and the subsequent symptoms of diseases, from the urine, 

 pulse, aspect of the patient, etc. ; the politician also is not 

 without his predictions &quot;O urbern venalem, et cito peri- 

 turam si emptorem invenerit!&quot; 5 the event of which proph 

 ecy happened soon after, and was first accomplished in 

 Sylla and again in Caesar. But the predictions of this kind 

 being not to our present purpose, we refer them to their 

 proper arts, and shall here only treat of natural divination, 

 proceeding from the internal power of the soul. 



This also is of two kinds the one native, the other by 

 influx. The native rests upon this supposition, that the 

 mind abstracted or collected in itself, and not diffused in 

 the organs of the body, has from the natural power of its 

 own essence some foreknowledge of future things; and this 

 appears chiefly in sleep, ecstasies, and the near approach of 

 death ; but more rarely in waking, or when the body is in 

 health and strength. And this state of the mind is com 

 monly procured or promoted by abstinence, and principally 

 such things as withdraw the mind from exercising the func 

 tions of the body, that it may thus enjoy its own nature with 

 out any external interruption. But divination by influx is 

 grounded upon another supposition, viz., that the mind, as 

 a mirror, may receive a secondary illumination from the 

 foreknowledge of God and spirits, whereto likewise the 

 above-mentioned state and regimen of the body are con 

 ducive. For the same abstraction of the mind causes it 

 more powerfully to use its own nature, and renders it more 

 susceptive of divine influxes, only in divinations by influx 



6 &quot;0 city set to sale, whose destruction is at hand, if it find a purchaser 1&quot; 

 uttered by Jugurtha, on leaving Rome. Sallust s Jugurtha, 36. 



