If people had not always been convinced of the influence of external and internal conditions relative to the determination of our will, upon our actions, why, in all times and among every people, have civil and religious laws been made to subdue and direct the desires of men? There is no religion that has not ordained abstinence from certain meats and drinks, fasting and mortification of the body. From the time of Solomon the wise down to our own time, we know of no observer of human nature that has not acknowledged that the physical and moral man is entirely dependant on the laws of the creation. DIVINATION, Is the art or act of foretelling future events, and is divided by the ancients into artificial and natural. ARTIFICIAL DIVINATION, Is that which proceeds by reasoning upon certain external signs, considered as indications of futurity. _Natural Divination_, Is that which presages things from a mere internal sense, and persuasion of the mind, without any assistance of signs; and is of two kinds, the one from nature, and the other by influx. The first is the supposition that the soul, collected within itself, and not diffused, or divided among the organs of the body, has, from its own nature and essence, some foreknowledge of future things: witness what is seen in dreams, ecstasies, the confines of death, &c. The second supposes that the soul, after the manner of a minor, receives some secondary illumination from the presence of God and other spirits. Artificial divination is also of two kinds; the one argues from natural causes; _e. g._ the predictions of physicians about the event of diseases, from the pulse, tongue, urine, &c. Such also are those of the politician, _O venalem urbem, et mox peuturam, si emptorem inveneris!_ The second proceeds from experiments and observations arbitrarily instituted, and is mostly superstitious. The systems of divination reducible under this head, are almost incalculable, _e. g._ by birds, the entrails of birds, lines of the hand, points marked at random, numbers, names, the motion of a sieve, the air, fire, the Sortes Prænestinæ, Virgilianæ, and Homericæ; with numerous others, the principal species and names of which are as follows:— AXINOMANCY, Was an ancient species of divination or method of foretelling future events by means of an axe or hatchet. The word is derived from the Greek, αξινη, _securis_; μαντεια, _divinatio_. This art was in considerable repute among the ancients; and was performed, according to some, by laying an agate stone upon a red hot hatchet. ALECTOROMANTIA,