The case of the divining-rod is almost the
only one in which it lends us any regular assistance, this being
a sort of game, of no great importance, in which it appears to
take pleasure. Sometimes, to say all that can be said, it
consents to cure certain ailments, cleanses an ulcer, closes a
wound, heals a lung, strengthens or makes supple an arm or leg,
or even sets bones, but always as it were by accident, without
reason, method or object, in a deceitful, illogical and
preposterous fashion. One would set it down as a spoilt child
that has been allowed to lay hands on the most tremendous secrets
of heaven and earth; it has no suspicion of their power, jumbles
them all up together and turns them into paltry, inoffensive
toys. It knows everything, perhaps, but is ignorant of the uses
of its knowledge, It has its arms laden with treasures which it
scatters in the wrong manner and at the wrong time, giving bread
to the thirsty and water to the hungry, overloading those who
refuse and stripping the suppliant bare, pursuing those who flee
from it and fleeing from those who pursue it. Lastly, even at its
best moments, it behaves as though the fate of the being in whose
depths it dwells interested it hardly at all, as though it had
but an insignificant share in his misfortunes, feeling assured,
one might almost think, of an independent and endless existence.
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