372 DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST 



of the entrails of animals freshly killed (haruspication), and 

 the study of footprints; (14) augury by omens, such as 

 the behaviour and cry of birds, and the meeting with 

 ominous animals ; and lastly (i 5 and 16), the two highly 

 elaborated and pretentious systems of astrology (divina- 

 tion by the stars) and geomancy (divination by the lie 

 of hills and rivers). In the case of astrology the stars 

 are believed not merely to prognosticate the future, but 

 also to influence it, and the latter is the special feature 

 of geomancy, practised in China, where no house or 

 other building can be erected without a certificate as to 

 its favourable position in regard to " magic " by the 

 professional " geomancer," who has to be paid his fee, 

 and thus takes the place of the local government surveyor 

 and sanitary officer of Western Europe. 



In the exercise of these arts of divination there is no 

 doubt that, owing to the concentration of his attention 

 on the thing to be inspected the operator is, in many 

 kinds of divination, " self-hypnotized," or brought into 

 that well-known mental condition in which the uncon- 

 scious memory and other special mental processes are 

 active, whilst an exaggerated acuteness of the senses is 

 produced. In other cases the person who consults the 

 " operator " may be so influenced. Hallucination of one 

 kind and another is therefore likely to occur, and thus 

 mystery and apparently marvellous results are not in- 

 consistent with the good faith of the operator. But 

 there is no reason to doubt that the modern sorcerers 

 who make money by their pretended divinations are 

 rogues and impostors of a particularly dangerous and 

 injurious variety. 



Palmistry or chiromancy is one of the oldest of the 

 large family of systems for foretelling the future. It 

 existed in China 4000 years ago, and is treated in the 



