Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/337

 *formance of the rite, the presages drawn therefrom are the more valued because they are less readily to be obtained.

And the value attached to them is by no means diminished because the method pursued is less intelligent than the taking of auspices. In the latter case, as we have seen, the common-folk have a reasonable basis for their actions in the universal belief that birds are by nature qualified to act as messengers between gods and men; in the former the peasants are more blindly and mechanically repeating the practices of their forefathers. They would be hard put to it to say how it comes to pass that divine counsels should be found figured in the recesses of a sheep's anatomy. But in their very inability to answer this question, no less than in their acceptance of the means of communion, they resemble their ancestors; for, with all their love of enquiry, they too practised the art without answering conclusively or unanimously the questionings of their own hearts concerning it. One theory advanced was that the anatomical construction of the victim was directly affected by the prayers and religious rites to which it was subjected. Another held the internal symptoms to be inexorable and immutable, and saw divine agency only in the promptings of the sacrificer's mind and his choice of an animal whose entrails were suitably inscribed by nature. A third view, advocated by Plato, was that the liver was as a mirror in which divine thought was reflected; during life this divine thought might remain hidden as tacit intuition or be manifested in prophetic utterance; after death the divine visions contemplated by the soul were left recorded in imagery upon the liver, and faded only by degrees. The obvious objection to this theory was its too practical corollary, that human entrails would be the most interesting to consult. Less barbarous therefore in consequences, if also less exquisite in idea, was the fourth doctrine, propounded by Philostratus, that the liver had no power of presage unless it were completely emancipated from the passions and surrendered wholly to divine influence—a condition best fulfilled by animals of peaceful and apathetic temperament.

But while these theories were built up and knocked down, the practices which they were meant to explain continued firm and