The defence of Omens is mere rationalisation. They took possession of men’s minds not in an age of reason, but when beliefs were freely born of hope and fear, were entirely practical, were never thought out and never verified. Whether the connection of Omen with event was conceived of magically or animistically, it was always mysterious, and on that account was the more impressive and acceptable. The uniformity of such connexions was, indeed, assumed—otherwise they were useless; the same bird’s call on this hand or on that had always the same significance; but each case at first stood by itself; it was what we call “a miracle.” Even such assumption of causation in ordinary cases as common sense implies did not compel the reflection that each cause must itself be an effect of other causes, and so again, and so on for ever. Nor did the assumption that spirits could foresee the future require that they should foresee the whole future, so as to imply an inviolable order of the world. Such considerations were left to amuse or perplex a later age. A great advance is marked by the saying of the Bechuana prince to Casalis, that “one event is the son of another, and we must never forget the genealogy.”[388] But quite recently amongst ourselves causation was so feebly appreciated, even by the most educated, that testimony concerning miracles could still be appealed to as a ground for believing something further. One reviews all these wonderful fossils of the soul which are dead and yet alive, not without sympathy. For myself, I am free to confess, as they used to say in Parliament, that Omens and presentiments still haunt the shadowy precincts of imagination with vague shapes and mutterings of evils to come; which when they approach will be (I suppose) as hard and definite as daylight. FOOTNOTES: [339] VI. c. 27 (Rawlinson’s Translation). [340] Williams, _Fiji and the Fijians_, p. 152. [341] De Acosta, _History of the Indies_, VII. c. 23 (translated by C. R. Markham). [342] Spencer and Gillen, _Across Australia_, p. 220. [343] Book I. cc. 7-10. [344] _Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_, VI. p. 260. [345] W. R. Halliday, _Greek Divination_, p. 15. [346] _Historia Naturalis_, XXVII. p. 4. [347] Suetonius: _Julius_, c. 59. [348] Hose and McDougall, _Pagan Tribes of Borneo_, II. pp. 56-64. [349] _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 266. [350] _Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_, V. p. 361; VI. p. 259. [351] Seligman, _Mel. of B. N. G._, p. 309. [352] _De Divinatione_, I. c. 19.