________________
196 DIVINATION & AUGURY IN A MODERN LIGHT
and being drugged. In the fifth-class we may place the records of omens, taken from the great operation of Nature-such as the movements of clouds, the weather, lightning and thunder, earthquakes, darkness, plagues or divine appearances, divine voices, necromancy and ghostly apparitions, fairies and elementaries. As a last class, there will remain the auguries which depend on the assumption that there is a fixed destîny, and that this destiny can be interpreted by certain signs, such as the marks of the hand and forehead, and the movements of the plants as in Palmistry, Natural and Political Astrology. In the domain of the unknown, the abnormal, the miraculous, the divine, the transcendental the mystical, the supernatural, the psychical, spiritual, various groups of the modern students are now hard at work investigating, and we must note the special standpoints of these various groups.
To begin with-there is the school of Modern Mental Science, as recognized by European Universities and Learned Socities, of which school, Carpenter, Bain and Ferrier are examples. Of these, there two divisions, these getting at limits of consciousness by anatomy of the brain and experiments on bodies of animals, by the severing of nerves and the changing of conditions of light, heat, food, environment; and the less material school who admit, as facts to be considered, the introspection of trains of thought, states of feeling and even dreams and presentiments.
Persons of this school have thrown very little light on any part of the classes of practices specified above.
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
