XXXIV
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People are convinced that lightning possesses sovereign power, because its occurrence destroys the force of other portents. On the other hand, whatever it portends is regarded as unalterable, and the appearance of no other omen lessens its import. Anything threatened by unfavourable entrails or inauspicious birds will be cancelled by favourable lightning. But any warning given by lightning cannot be defeated by opposing entrail or omen. Now this belief seems to me mistaken. My reason? Simply that nothing can be truer than the truth. If birds have truly foretold the future, the omen cannot be nullified by lightning: if it can, then it was not a true prophecy the birds uttered. It is not bird and lightning whose force I am here comparing, but two revelations of truth, which must be equal in authority if they are equally intimations of truth. Therefore, if the occurrence of lightning destroys the indications given by priests or augurs, there must have been a flaw in the inspection of the entrails or the observation of the auguries. It is not a question of which of the two kinds of omen possesses the more exalted or powerful character: if both have furnished indications of truth, they are so far equal. You would be quite justified in asserting that the power of flame was greater than that of smoke; but flame has just the same power as smoke, and no more, in giving indication of the existence of fire. So if the statement is confined to the assertion of the greater authority of lightning on occasions when the entrails give one indication and lightning a different one, I shall perhaps agree. But if the statement go on to affirm that although other signs have foretold the truth, yet the lightning stroke has destroyed all that went before and claims credit only for itself, then the statement is untrue. And for this reason: the mere number of the auspices makes no difference. Fate is but one. If it was rightly understood through the first auspice, it is not destroyed through the second; it remains just the same. And so I say again it does not matter whether the means of our inquiry (= auspice) is the same or different, since the object of the inquiry remains the same.