“They take a cup of water, which they shelter from the wind; they then take a needle, which they fix in a peg of wood (reed), or a straw, so as to form a cross. They then take the _magnes_ and turn round for some time above the cup, moving from left to right, the needle following. They then withdraw the _magnes_, after which the needle stands still and points north and south.”[150] This description, confirmed by the authorities cited below, can leave no doubt that we have arrived at the same end as the Chinese by a different road. The invention of Flavio di Gioja may have consisted in giving to the needle permanent polarity: the next step would be of course to fix it on a pivot, which again differs from the Chinese. I beg particular attention to this manner of using the instrument by the Arabs, as by it we shall be subsequently enabled to interpret the Greek myths. Here we have the compass consisting of a _needle_, a _cup_, and a _stone_, carried separately, and brought together when consulted. The Arabs shut themselves out as the inventors--we have shut out the Chinese. The distribution of the circle must have come to the Arabs, together with the magnet and needle: it could only come from ancient augury. The officer and priest, whose title has been given to the science, marked out all bounds for consecration, building, or other purposes, and commenced by drawing, on the spot where he stood, the line of the axis of the globe, the _cardo_ crossing it by the synatorial or decumonus. In the augurial operations the terrestrial and celestial globes were made the counterparts of each other, and the heavens were distributed into _sixteen parts_.[151] Divination was rather _ars Etrusca_, and we are in the habit of referring its source to that people; but the Etruscans had no compass. Divination was no more original in Etruria than in Rome. It was, indeed, the key-stone of their state, the link of science and government, of astronomy and priesthood; but they came to Italy a perfect state, and Tarchon’s genius, symbolized by the head of a man and the body of a child, replaced the matured science of Canaan on the young soil of Ausonia. As in the West, those ceremonies in which religion was united with science, and which therefore marked, not as they would with us, ignorance and superstition, but learning and enlightenment, are traced home to one particular people, and received their name, so also was it in the East. Though dim the echoes (σκοτειναὶ ἀχοαὶ) that have been handed down to us, we still recognise the voice and name of the masters of whom Abraham was the disciple. In Europe, letters were Phœnician; in the East, the learned were Sabeans. Rome got her ceremonies from Cere. The Cerethims were Sabeans. From the Sabeans the Mussulman had his Rekaat; the Polytheist his Incense; the Jew his Teraphim. Therefore the Ars Etrusca was derived from the early seats of the Phœnicians.