21. The Science Of The Prophetsa

THIS chapter is consecrated to divination, which, in its broadest sense, and following the grammatical significance of the word, is the exercise of divine power, and the realization of divine knowledge. It is the priesthood of the Magus. But divination, in general opinion, is concerned more closely with the knowledge of hidden things. To know the most secret thoughts of men; to penetrate the mysteries of past and future; to evoke age by age the exact revelation of effects by the precise knowledge of causes: this is what is universally called divination. Now, of all mysteries of Nature, the most profound is the heart of man; but at the same time Nature forbids its depth to be inaccessible. In spite of deepest dissimulation, despite the most skilful policy, she herself outlines and makes plain in the bodily form, in the light of glances, in movements, in carriage, in voice, a thousand telltale indices. The perfect initiate has no need of these; he reads the truth in the light; he senses an impression which makes known the whole man; his glance penetrates hearts, though he may feign ignorance to disarm the fear or hatred of the wicked whom he knows too well. A man of bad conscience thinks always that he is being accused or suspected; he recognizes himself in a touch of collective satire; he applies it in toto to himself, and cries loudly that he is traduced. Ever suspicious, but as curious as he is apprehensive, in the presence of the Magus he is like Satan of the parable, or like those scribes who questioned tempting. Ever stubborn and ever feeble, what he fears above all is the recognition that he is in the wrong. The past disquiets him, the future alarms him; he seeks to compound with himself and to believe that he is a good and well-disposed man. His life is a perpetual struggle between amiable aspirations and evil habits; he thinks himself a philosopher after the manner of Aristippus or Horace when accepting all the corruption of his time as a necessity which he must suffer; he distracts himself with some philosophical pastime and assumes the protecting smile of Mecaenas, to persuade himself that he is not simply a battener on famine like Verres or a parasite of Trimalcion. Such men are always mercenaries, even in their good works. They decide on making a gift to some public charity, and they postpone it to secure the discount. The type which I am describing is not an individual but a class of men with which the Magus is liable to come frequently in contact, especially in our own century. Let him follow their example by mistrusting them, for they will be invariably his most compromising friends and most dangerous enemies. The public exercise of divination is derogatory at the present period to a veritable adept, for he would be frequently driven to jugglery and sleight of hand in order to keep his clients and impress his public. Accredited diviners, both male and female, have always secret spies, who instruct them as to the private life or habits of those who consult them. A code of signals is established between cabinet and antechamber; an unknown applicant receives a number at his first visit; a day is arranged, and he is followed; door-keepers, neighbours, servants are engaged in gossip, and details are thus arrived at which overwhelm simple minds, leading them to invest an impostor with the reverence which should be reserved for true science and genuine divination. The divination of events to come is possible only in the case of those the realization of which is in some sense contained in their cause.