y alone, to whom all ages are present, can impart
a certain knowledge of the future to him: that no other being has power to
facilitate the success of his enterprises; and that it is reasonable to
believe he will enlighten and protect those, who adore him with the purest
affection, who invoke him at all times with greatest constancy and
fidelity, and consult him with most sincerity and integrity.

Of Auguries.

What a reproach is it to human reason, that so luminous a principle should
have given birth to the absurd reasonings, and wretched notions, in favour
of the science of augurs and soothsayers, and been the occasion of
espousing, with blind devotion, the most ridiculous puerilities: should
have made the most important affairs of state depend upon a bird's
happening to sing upon the right or left hand; upon the greediness of
chickens in pecking their grain; the inspection of the entrails of beasts;
the liver's being entire and in good condition, which, according to them,
did sometimes entirely disappear, without leaving any trace or mark of its
having ever subsisted! To these superstitious observances may be added,
accidental rencounters, words spoken by chance, and afterwards turned into
good or bad presages; forebodings, prodigies, monsters, eclipses, comets;
every extraordinary phenomenon, every unforeseen accident, with an
infinity of chimeras of the like nature.

Whence could it happen, that so many great men, illustrious generals, able
politicians, and even learned philosophers, have actually given into such
absurd imaginations? Plutarch, in particular, so estimable in other
respects, is to be pitied for his servile observance of the senseless
customs of the Pagan idolatry, and his ridiculous credulity in dreams,
signs, and prodigies. He tells us in his works, that he abstained a great
while from eating eggs, upon account of a dream, with which he has not
thought fit to make us further acquainted.(80)

The wisest of the Pagans knew well how to appreciate the art of
divination, and often spoke of it to each other, and even in public, with
the utmost contempt, and in a manner best adapted to expose its absurdity.
The grave censor Cato was of opinion, that one soothsayer could not look
at another without laughing. Hannibal was amazed at the simplicity of
Prusias, whom he had advised to give battle, upon his being diverted from
it by the inspection of the entrails of a victim. "What," said he, "have
you mor