DIVINATION

(Lat.) The art of foretelling future events. A singular and ever-active feeling of curiosity has in all ages induced mankind to cast an anxious look towards futurity in the desire of penetrating its mysteries, originally either by serious reflections on the past, by a comparison of the past with the present, or by inferences more or le satisfactorily deduced from the probable occurrence of events. But mankind did not rest here: since the remotest period of antiquity, divination formed a regular science, intimately allied to religion, and furnished with peculiar rules and regulations, more or le skilful and ingenious in proportion to the state of civilization of the people by whom it was practised. But of all the nations of antiquity there were none who, notwithstanding their great learning and refinement, cultivated the science of divination with such enthusiasm as the Greeks and Romans. Independently of their credulity with regard to auguries and oracles, which may be termed the higher cla of divination, the most trifling incidents supplied them with the occasion to indulge in this propensity; and there was nothing in the wide range of human affairs from which they did not derive tokens of futurity. To enumerate all, or even the chief objects of divination among the aiicients, would far exceed our prescribed limits. Under the difierent heads, as Belomancy, Necromancy, ., the reader will find a notice of the principal of them; and for the rest he may consult with advantage Cicero, De Div in at i one. See Oracle. DIVINE RIGHT, THE, [s. 368]