ng political action (and, doubtless, calling for ingenuity and
tact in interpretations), assumed great importance in Babylonia and
Assyria; and it was hardly less important among the Etruscans, the
Greeks, and the Romans.[1637] It is held by some scholars that Babylonia
was the original home of the developed science, whence it passed into
Greece and Italy.[1638] It may be recognized in Babylonia in the third
millennium B.C., and there is no improbability in the supposition that
Babylonian influence was felt in Asia Minor and Eastern Europe; but, in
view of the number of possibly independent centers of culture in this
region in ancient times and the paucity of data, the question may be
left open.

+920+. Other parts of the animal bodies also were employed in
divination. Tylor[1639] mentions the examination of the bones of the
porcupine among North American Indians, the color giving indications as
to the success of hunting expeditions. The shoulder blade, when put into
the fire, showed by splits in it various kinds of fortune. The heart was
of less significance in ancient thought than the liver, it being of less
size, and its function in the circulation of the blood not being known.
The brain also did not come, until a comparatively late period, to be
regarded as the seat of the intellect.[1640]

+921+. From these external signs we may now pass to consider divinatory
facts derived from men's inward experience.

_Dreams._ The importance attached all over the world to dreams as
presages is a familiar fact. It would appear that among savage peoples a
dream is regarded as representing an historical fact, the actual
perception of an occurrence or a situation. It is believed that the
mysterious inward thing, the soul, endowed with peculiar power, is
capable, during sleep, of leaving the body and wandering to and
fro;[1641] why, then, in its journeys, should it not be able to see the
plans of friends and enemies, and in general to observe the course of
events? We do not know the nature of savage logic in dealing with these
visions of the night, but some such line of reasoning as this, it seems
probable, is in their minds. The soul, they hold, is an entity,
possessing intellectual powers like those of the ordinary living man--it
sees certain things, and its knowledge becomes the possession of the man
when he awakes. Thus the soul in dreams is a watchman, on the lookout
for what may help or harm the man. Perhaps there is, even i