Also he shows that the methods of divination are not scientific. He asks: Why did Calchas deduce from the devoured sparrow that the Trojan war would last ten years rather than ten weeks or ten months?[1] He points out that the art is conducted in different places according to quite different rules of procedure, even to the extent that a favorable omen in one locality is a sinister warning elsewhere.[2] In short, whether he got his idea from the Greeks or not, he has come, long before most men had reached that point, to have a clear idea of the essential contradiction between science and magic. "Quid igitur," he asks, "minus a physicis dici debet quam quidquam certi significari rebus incertis?"[3]
Besides this sharp separation of divination from science and besides his rejection of tradition, a third creditable feature of Cicero's book is his question: What intimate connection, what bond of natural causality can there be between the liver or heart or lung of a fat bull and the divine eternal cause of things which rules the world?[4] He refuses to believe in any extraordinary bonds of sympathy between things which, in so far as our daily experience and
- ↑ Bk. ii, ch. 28.
- ↑ Bk. ii ch. 12.
- ↑ Bk. ii, ch. 19.
- ↑ Bk. ii, ch. 12. "Atqui divina cum rerum natura tanta tamque praeclara in omnes partes motusque diffusa, quid habere potest commune, non dicam gallinacum fel (sunt enim qui vel argutissima haec exta esse dicant) sed tauri opimi jecur aut cor aut pulmo, quid habet naturale, quo declarari possit quid futurum sit?"
castella defenditis. Nam dum aruspicinam veram esse vultis, physiologiam totam pervertitis. Caput est in jecore, cor in extis: iam abscedet, simul ac molam et vinum insperseris; deus id eripiet, vis aliqua conficiet, aut exedet. Non ergo omnium interitus atque obitus natura conficiet; et erit aliquid quod aut ex nihilo oriatur, aut in nihilum subito occidat. Quis hoc physicus dixit unquam? Aruspices dicunt? His igitur quam physicis potius credendum existimas?"
