A fine human intelligence cannot be a passive
instrument--it cannot be a mere tube for conveying the words of
inspiration: such an intelligence will intermingle ideas of its own, or
otherwise modify what is given, and pollute what is sacred.
It is also on this principle that the whole practice and doctrine of
Sortilegy rest. Let us confine ourselves to that mode of sortilegy
which is conducted by throwing open privileged books at random, leaving
to chance the page and the particular line on which the oracular
functions are thrown. The books used have varied with the caprice or
the error of ages. Once the Hebrew Scriptures had the preference.
Probably they were laid aside, not because the reverence for their
authority decayed, but because it increased. In later times Virgil has
been the favorite. Considering the very limited range of ideas to which
Virgil was tied by his theme--a colonizing expedition in a barbarous
age, no worse book could have been selected: [Footnote: '_No worse
book could have been selected._'--The probable reason for making so
unhappy a choice seems to have been that Virgil, in the middle ages,
had the character of a necromancer, a diviner, &c. This we all know
from Dante. Now, the original reason for this strange translation of
character and functions we hold to have arisen from the circumstance of
his maternal grandfather having borne the name of _Magus_.
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