No sooner has man reached to this degree of improvement, than now, if
not indeed earlier, he is induced to remark the extreme limitedness of
his faculties in respect to the future; and he is led, first earnestly
to desire a clearer insight into the future, and next a power of
commanding those external causes upon which the events of the future
depend. The first of these desires is the parent of divination, augury,
chiromancy, astrology, and the consultation of oracles; and the second
has been the prolific source of enchantment, witchcraft, sorcery,
magic, necromancy, and alchemy, in its two branches, the unlimited
prolongation of human life, and the art of converting less precious
metals into gold.


HIS DESIRE TO PENETRATE INTO FUTURITY.

Nothing can suggest to us a more striking and stupendous idea of the
faculties of the human mind, than the consideration of the various
arts by which men have endeavoured to penetrate into the future, and
to command the events of the future, in ways that in sobriety and
truth are entirely out of our competence. We spurn impatiently against
the narrow limits which the constitution of things has fixed to our
aspirings, and endeavour by a multiplicity of ways to accomplish that
which it is totally beyond the power of man to effect.


DIVINATION.

Divination has been principally employed in inspecting the entrails of
beasts offered for sacrifice, and from their appearance drawing omens