chance could produce, advances the hypothesis that some persons (like the professional dowsers) possess “a genuine super-normal perceptive faculty,” and that the mind of a good dowser, possessing the idiosyncrasy of motor-automatism, becomes a blank or tabula rasa, so that “the faintest impression made by the object searched for creates an involuntary or automatic motion of the indicator, whatever it may be.” Like the “homing instinct” of certain birds and animals, the dowser’s power lies beneath the level of any conscious perception; and the function of the forked twig is to act as an index of some material or other mental disturbance within him, which otherwise he could not interpret.
It should be added that dowsers do not always use any rod. Some again use a willow rod, or withy, others a hazel-twig (the traditional material), others a beech or holly twig, or one from any other tree; others even a piece of wire or watch-spring. The best dowsers are said to have been generally more or less illiterate men, usually engaged in some humble vocation.
Sir W. H. Preece (The Times, January 16, 1905), repudiating as an electrician the theory that any electric force is involved, has recorded his opinion that water-finding by a dowser is due to “mechanical vibration, set up by the friction of moving water, acting upon the sensitive ventral diaphragm of certain exceptionally delicately framed persons.” Another theory is that water-finders are “exceptionally sensitive to hygrometric influences.” In any case, modern science approaches the problem as one concerning which the facts have to be accepted, and explained by some natural, though obscure, cause.
See for further details Professor Barrett’s longer discussion in parts 32 (1897) and 38 (1900) of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research.
DIVISION (from Lat. dividere, to break up into parts, separate), a general term for the action of breaking up a whole into parts. Thus, in political economy, the phrase “division of labour” implies the assignment to particular workmen of the various portions of a whole piece of work; in mathematics division is the process of finding how many times one number or quantity, the “divisor,” is contained in another, the “dividend” (see Arithmetic and Algebra); in the musical terminology of the 17th and 18th centuries, the term was used for rapid passages consisting of a few slow notes amplified into a florid passage, i.e. into a larger number of quick ones. The word is used also in concrete senses for the parts into which a thing is divided, e.g. a division of an army, an administrative or electoral division; similarly, a “division” is taken in a legislative body when votes are recorded for and against a proposed measure.
In logic, division is a technical term for the process by which a genus is broken up into its species. Thus the genus “animal” may be divided, according to the habitat of the various kinds, into animals which live on land, those which live in water, those which live in the air. Each of these may be subdivided according to whether their constituent members do or do not possess certain other qualities. The basis of each of these divisions is called the fundamentum divisionis. It is clear that there can be no division in respect of those qualities which make the genus what it is. The various species are all alike in the possession of the generic attributes, but differ in other respects; they are “variations on the same theme” (Joseph, Introduction to Logic, 1906); each one has the generic, and also certain peculiar, qualities (differentiae), which latter distinguish them from other species of the same genus. The process of division is thus the obverse of classification (q.v.); it proceeds from genus to species, whereas classification begins with the particulars and rises through species to genus. In the exact sciences, and indeed in all argument both practical and theoretical, accurate division is of great importance. It is governed by the following rules. (1) Division must be exhaustive; all the members of the genus must find a place in one or other of the species; a captain who selects for his team skilful batsmen and bowlers only is guilty of an incomplete division of the whole function of a cricket team by omitting to provide himself with good fielders. Rectilinear figures cannot be divided into triangles and quadrilaterals because there are rectilinear figures which have more than four sides. On the other hand, triangles can be divided into equilateral, isosceles and scalene, since no other kind of triangle can exist. (2) Division must be exclusive, that is, each species must be complete in itself and not contain members of another species. No member of a genus must be included in more than one of the species. (3) In every division there must be but one principle (fundamentum divisionis). The members of a genus may differ from one another in many respects, e.g. books may be divided according to external form into quarto, octavo, &c., or according to binding into calf, cloth, paper-backed and so on. They cannot, however, be divided logically into quarto, paper-backed, novels and remainders. When more than one principle is used in a division it is called “cross division.” (4) Division must proceed gradually (“Divisio non facit saltum”), i.e. the genus must be resolved into the next highest (“proximate”) species. To go straight from a summum genus to very small species is of no scientific value.
It is to be observed that logical division is concerned exclusively with universals or concepts; division is of genus and species, not of particulars. Two other kinds of division are recognized:—metaphysical division, the separation in thought of the various qualities possessed by an individual thing (a piece of lead has weight, colour, &c), and physical division or partition, the breaking up of an object into its parts (a watch is thought of as being composed of case, dial, works, &c.). Logical division is closely allied with logical definition (q.v.).
DIVORCE (Lat. divortium, derived from dis-, apart, and vertere, to turn), the dissolution, in whole or in part, of the tie of marriage. It includes both the complete abrogation of the marriage relation known as a divorce a vinculo matrimonii, which carries with it a power on the part of both parties to the marriage to remarry other persons or each other, and also that incomplete severance not involving powers to remarry, which was formerly known as divorce a mensa et thoro, and has in England been termed “judicial separation.” Less strictly, divorce is commonly understood to include judicial declarations of nullity of marriage, which, while practically terminating the marriage relation, proceed in law on the basis of the marriage never having been legally established.
The conditions under which, in different communities, divorce has at different times been permitted, vary with the aspects in which the relation of marriage (q.v.) has been regarded. When marriage has been deemed to be the acquisition by the husband of property in the wife, or when it has been regarded as a mere agreement between persons capable both to form and to dissolve that contract, we find that marriage has been dissoluble at the will of the husband, or by agreement of the husband and wife. Yet even in these cases the interest of the whole community in the purity of marriage relations, in the pecuniary bearings of this particular contract, and the condition of children, has led to the imposition of restrictions on, and the attachment of conditions to, the termination of the obligations consequent on a marriage legally contracted. But the main restrictions on liberty of divorce have arisen from the conception of marriage entertained by religions, and especially by one religion. Christianity has had no greater practical effect on the life of mankind than in its belief that marriage is no mere civil contract, but a vow in the sight of God binding the parties by obligations of conscience above and beyond those of civil law. Translating this conception into practice, Christianity not only profoundly modified the legal conditions of divorce as formulated in the Roman civil law, but in its own canon law defined its own rule of divorce, going so far as in the Western (at least in its unreformed condition), though not the Eastern, branch of Christendom to forbid all complete divorces, that is to say, all dissolutions of marriage carrying with them the right to remarry.
History
The Roman Law of Divorce before Justinian.—The history of divorce, therefore, practically begins with the law of Rome. It took its earliest colour from that conception of the patria potestas, or the power of the head of the family over its members, which enters so deeply into the jurisprudence of ancient Rome. The
