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ternal things, and the number and functions of the viscera and members, have been fixed in the same invariable manner; so nature is the source of our propensities, sentiments, and faculties. Their reciprocal influence, and their relations with external objects, have been irrevocably determined by the laws of our organization.

As it does not depend upon ourselves to have or see when objects strikes our ears or our eyes, in the same manner our judgments are necessarily the results of the laws of thought. "Judgment, very rightly," says Mr. Tracy," in this sense is independent of the will; it is not under our controul, when we perceive a real relation betwixt two of our perceptions, not to feel it as it actually is, that is, such as should appear to every being organized as ourselves, if they were precisely in the same situation. It is this necessity which constitutes the certainty and reality of every thing we are acquainted with. For if it only depended upon our fancy to be affected with a great thing as if it were a small one, with a good as if it were a bad one, with one that is true as if it were false, there would no longer exist any thing real in the world, at least for us. There would neither be greatness nor smallness, good nor evil, falsehood nor truth; our fancy alone would be every thing. Such an order of things cannot even be conceived; it implies contradiction.

Since primitive organization, sex, age, constitu tion, education, climate, form of government, religion, prejudices, superstitions, &c. exercise the most decided influence over our sensations and

ideas, our judgments and the determination of our will, the nature and force of our propensities and talents, consequently over the first motives of our actions, it must be confessed that man, in several of the most important moments of his life, is under the empire of a destiny, which sometimes fixes him like the inert shell against a rock; at others, it carries him away in a whirlwind, like the dust.

It is not then surprising that the sages of Greece, of the Indies, China and Japan, the Christians of the east and west, and the Mahomedans, have worked up this species of fatalism with their dif ferent doctrines. In all times our moral and intellectual faculties have been made to take their origin from God; and in all times it has been taught that all the gifts of men came from heaven; that God has, from all eternity, chosen the elect; that man of himself is incapable of any good thought; that every difference between men, relative to their faculties, comes from God; that there are only those to whom it has been given by a superior power who are capable of certain actions; that every one acts after his own innate character, the same as the fig tree does not bear grapes, nor the vine figs, and the same that a salt spring does not run in fresh water; lastly, that all cannot dive into the mysteries of nature, nor the decrees of Providence.

It is this same kind of fatalism, this same inevitable influence of superior powers, that has been taught by the fathers of the church. St. Augustine wished this very same doctrine to be preached, to profess loudly in the belief of the infal

libility of Providence, and our entire dependence upon God. "In the same manner, he says, no one can give himself life, no one can give himself understanding." If some are unacquainted with the truth, it is, according to his doctrine, because they have not received the necessary capacity to know it. He refutes the objections that might be urged against the justice of God: he remarks that neither has the grace of God distributed equally to every one the temporal goods, such as address, strength, health, beauty, wit, and the disposition for the arts and sciences, riches, honors, &c. St. Cyprian at that time had already said, that we ought not to be proud of our qualities, for we possess nothing from ourselves.

If people had not always been convinced of the influence of external and internal conditions relative to the determination of our will, upon our actions, why, in all times and among every people, have civil and religious laws been made to subdue and direct the desires of men? There is no religion that has not ordained abstinence from certain meats and drinks, fasting and mortification of the body. From the time of Solomon the wise down to our own time, we know of no observer of human nature that has not acknowledged that the physical and moral man is entirely dependant on the laws of the creation.

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DIVINATION,

Is the art or act of foretelling future events, and is divided by the ancients into artificial and natural.

ARTIFICIAL DIVINATION,

Is that which proceeds by reasoning upon certain external signs, considered as indications of futurity.

NATURAL DIVINATION,

Is that which presages things from a mere internal sense, and persuasion of the mind, without any assistance of signs; and is of two kinds, the one from nature, and the other by influx. The first is the supposition that the soul, collected within itself, and not diffused, or divided among the organs of the body, has, from its own nature and essence, some foreknowledge of future things: witness what is seen in dreams, ecstasies, the confines of death, &c. The second supposes that the soul, after the manner of a minor, receives some secondary illumination from the presence of God and other spirits.

Artificial divination is also of two kinds; the one argues from natural causes; e. g. the predictions of physicians about the event of diseases, from the pulse, tongue, urine, &c. Such also are those of the politician, O venalem urbem, et mox peuturam, si emptorem inveneris! The second proceeds from experiments and observations arbitrarily instituted, and is mostly superstitious.

The systems of divination reducible under this head, are almost incalculable, e. g. by birds, the entrails of birds, lines of the hand, points marked at random, numbers, names, the motion of a sieve, the air, fire, the Sortes Prænestinæ, Virgilianæ, and Homericæ; with numerous others, the principal species and names of which are as follows:

AXINOMANCY,

Was an ancient species of divination or method of foretelling future events by means of an axe or hatchet. The word is derived from the Greek, ağın, securis; pav ela, divinatio. This art was in considerable repute among the ancients; and was performed, according to some, by laying an agate stone upon a red hot hatchet.

ALECTOROMANTIA,

Is an ancient kind of divination, performed by means of a cock, which was used among the Greeks, in the following manner.-A circle was made on the ground, and divided into 24 equal portions or spaces: in each space was written one of the letters of the alphabet, and upon each of these letters was laid a grain of wheat. This being done, a cock was placed within the circle, and careful observation was made of the grains he picked. The letters corresponding to these grains were afterwards formed into a word, which word was the answer decreed. It was thus that Libanius and Jamblicus sought who should succeed the Emperor Valens; and the cock answering to the

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