II. Cicero's attack upon divination.—A more satisfactory example of scepticism may be found in other chapters of the De Divinatione than those which assail the art of the Chaldeans. Moreover, although the discussion is limited to the specific theme of divination, still that is a subject which admits of very broad interpretation, and Cicero employs some arguments which are capable of an even wider application and oppose the hypotheses on which magic in general rests. He rejects divination as unscientific. It is to such arguments that we shall confine our attention. "Natural divination," that is, predictions made under direct divine inspiration without interposition of signs and portents, is not magic and so the discussion of it will not concern us. Much less shall we waste any time over such trite contentions against divination in general as that there is no use of knowing predetermined events since you cannot avoid them,[1] and that even if we can learn the future we shall be happier not to do it.
- ↑ Ptolemy made a fair retort to this argument by holding that foreknowledge, even if it could not enable us to avoid the coming event, at least served the purpose of breaking the news gently and saving us the more vivid shock which the actual event, if unexpected, would cause by its raw reality.
are to be subjected to the stars, then inanimate things must be too, than which nothing could be more absurd.
"Illud autem condonare se iis dicebat, quod non id quoque requireret, si vitae mortisque hominima rerumque humanarum omnium tempus et ratio et causa in coelo et apud Stellas foret, quid de muscis aut vermiculis aut echinis, multisque aliis minutissimis terra marique animantibus, di Cerent? An ista quoque isdem, quibus homines, legibus nascerentur, isdemque itidem epcstinguerentur." Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, bk. xiv, ch. 1, sect. 12.
"Et si ad rem pertinet, quo modo coelo affecto compositisque sideribus quodque animal oriatur; valeat id necesse est etiam in rebus inanimis. Quo quid dici potest absurdius?" De Divin., bk. ii, ch. 47.
Favorinus, however, does hint in one place that the sole evidence that we possess of any influence of the stars upon us is a few such causal connections as that between the phases of the moon and the tides of the ocean.
