Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/242

 234 that case they have to be made to tell; and primitive man wrestles (in the case of Proteus literally) with them. Thus, the modern savant's two assumptions may be reduced to one, viz., that the gods are able to communicate information; and is not that superfluous? In many or most of the methods of divination common in modern folk-lore there is no suggestion that the desired information is obtained from supernatural beings. Nor is it relevant to rejoin that the modern methods are survivals from modes which were in the first instance interrogations addressed to supernatural beings. Be this true or not, the fact remains that the folk believes in the possibility of divining the future without supernatural aid. You can tell from the state of the moon what the weather is going to be, and you can also tell of what sex your next child will be. But the many educated persons who still divine changes in the weather, and the uneducated few who practise the other form of divination, are both innocent of any attempt to obtain their information from supernatural beings. In fine, primitive man has other modes than the supernatural of forecasting coming events, just as much as scientific man; and if there ever was a stage in human evolution when man had not yet attained to the idea of the supernatural, divination may well have been practised in that stage. Doubtless, the inference that beings who are supernatural have knowledge of the future is a conclusion which naturally follows from the premises. But we do not find that all the gods in the same pantheon have alike the power of prophecy; and if some gods have it not, it is evidently not a necessary attribute of supernatural beings. In this connection it may be interesting to point out that even Apollo did not always forecast the future by the exercise of an inherent power of supernatural foresight. Like Pythagoras, he (or the workers of his oracle) put his faith in folk-lore. At any rate, this is the inference which I draw from the answer given by the god of Delphi (and preserved in Euseb.,