ome a really
valuable stimulant of morality.

By divination I mean the various ways and methods by which, in all
stages of his development, man has persuaded himself that what he is
going to do or suffer will turn out well or ill for him. It is probably
judicious, with Dr. Tylor and with the majority of recent
anthropologists, to consider it as belonging to the region of
magic;[595] and it is obvious that it affords excellent examples of that
inadequacy which characterises magical attempts to overcome the
difficulties man meets with in his struggle for existence.[596] It
belongs, like other forms of magic, to a stage in which man's idea of
his relation to the Power manifesting itself in the universe is both
rude and rudimentary. But it shares with magic the power or property of
surviving, in form at least, through the animistic stage into that of
religion, and it is largely practised at the present day even among
highly civilised peoples.

But I must observe, before I go on, that divination as an object of
anthropological inquiry still stands in need of a thorough scientific
examination. At present it seems to puzzle anthropologists;[597] and the
reason probably is that the material for studying it inductively has not
as yet been collected and sifted. Strange to say, it does not appear in
the index to Dr. Westermarck's great work, which I have so often quoted:
it is hardly to be found even in the _Golden Bough_: nor can I find a
thoroughgoing treatment of it in any other books about the early
history of mankind. And any sort of guesswork under these circumstances
only increases our difficulties. Some years ago the great German
philosophical lawyer, von Jhering, in an interesting work called the
_Evolution of the Aryan_, made some most ingenious attempts to explain
the origin of Roman divination. He fancied that the practice of
examining the entrails of a victim, for example, began in the course of
Aryan migration, because when you encamped in a new region you would
catch and kill some of the native cattle in order to see whether they
were wholesome enough to tempt you to stay.[598] Again, the study of the
flight of birds was prompted by the desire to get information about the
mountain passes and the course of great rivers; and this study grew into
an elaborate art as the leader of the host, the prototype of the Roman
augur, gained experience by constant observation from elevated
ground.[599] Such a theory as this last