232 THE RITUAL OF BARROWS AND CIRCLES. 



Pomponius, Avho, together with Strabo, speak of the Druids' 

 belief in the immortality of the soul ; while Pomponius relates 

 that the Gauls along with their dead burn and then bury things 

 which belonged to them when living, because they believe that 

 there is another life after death. * 



And Cicero, who, on the whole, justified divination and 

 declared that nearly everyone had recourse to the entrails of 

 animals — " extis enim omnes fere utuntur " — f observed that 

 " the Druids in Gaul are diviners, among whom I myself have 

 been acquainted with Divitiacus ^duus, your own host and 

 panegyrist "^hospitem tuum, laudatoremque cognovit qui et 

 naturae rationem, quam physiologiam Graeci appellant, notam esse 

 sibi profitebatur, et partim auguriis, partim conjectura quae essent 

 futura dicebat. J 



A Druid who was the companion and fellow-guest of Cicero, 

 in the house of Cicero's friend, can have been no dabbler in 

 human blood. 



It was hard for early races to believe that a gallant and 

 sagacious chieftain perished at the moment of his death. They 

 sorely missed him by day, and at night he appeared to them in 

 dreams. 



The Cult of the Dead was the beginning of the hope of a life 

 to come. But inseparable from this hope was the persuasion that 

 by all means, at whatever cost, some portion of the dead body 

 must be preserved from utter decay ; and, it may be that not yet 

 are the minds of men free from the subconscious influence of 

 similar opinions. 



We must possess relics of our saints. Have we lost a child, 

 then it is the face of a little one that we remember ; or a mother, 

 then we long to see again the lineaments of a woman perhaps 

 well stricken in years. It does not cheer a sorrowful heart to be 

 told about forms of energy ; it is not encouraging to learn that a 



* De Situ Orbis, III, 2. 

 t De Divin. I. 10. 

 t Ibid. I., 41. 



