M. Tullius Cicero, Divination
William Armistead Falconer, Ed.

[33] 14. "Such signs, as I have shown before, certainly could not come within your classification of the kinds of divination 'dependent on observation.' Therefore they are not the result of immemorial usage, but they are the inventions of art— if there can be any art in the occult. But what relationship have they with the laws of nature? [p. 407] Assuming that all the works of nature are firmly bound together in a harmonious whole (which, I observe, is the view of the natural philosophers and especially of those men¹ who maintain that the universe is a unit), what connexion can there be between the universe and the finding of a treasure? For instance, if the entrails foretell an increase in my fortune and they do so in accordance with some law of nature, then, in the first place, there is some relationship between them and the universe, and in the second place, my financial gain is regulated by the laws of nature. Are not the natural philosophers ashamed to utter such nonsense? And yet a certain contact between the different parts of nature may be admitted and I concede it. The Stoics have collected much evidence to prove it. They claim, for example, that the livers of mice become larger in winter; that the dry pennyroyal² blooms the very day of the winter solstice, and that its seed-pods become inflated and burst and the seeds enclosed therein are sent in various directions; that at times when certain strings of the lyre are struck others sound; that it is the habit of oysters and of all shell-fish to grow with the growth of the moon and to become smaller as it wanes; and that trees are considered easiest to cut down in winter and in the dark of the moon, because they are then free from sap.