Volume 1

The occult sciences. The philosophy of magic, prodigies, and apparent miracles / From the French of Eusèbe Salverte, with notes illustrative, explanatory, and critical, by Anthony Todd Thomson.

  • Salverte, Eusèbe, 1771-1839.
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The occult sciences. The philosophy of magic, prodigies, and apparent miracles / From the French of Eusèbe Salverte, with notes illustrative, explanatory, and critical, by Anthony Todd Thomson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    48/350 (page 40)
    incredible they may seem, can not ail be falsehood and illusion. Credulity and invention bave alike their liinits. Let us study man, not from deceitful traditions, but in bis ordinary babits of life, and we sball see tbat it would be difficult for an imposture to become establisbed if, in our feelings and recol- lections, we lind notbing to second its pretensions, notbing to support tbem. We recur again to our inquiry : Man is credulous because be is naturally sincere. A falsebood can more easily deny, dis- guise, and set aside trutb tban imitate it.* Invention, even in trifles, costs some effort of wbicb tbe inventor is not always capable. An in- ventive genius, also, wben exercised for our pleas- ure or for our instruction, yields at every step to tbe desire of approacbing reality ; of mingling trutb with its créations ; convinced tbat witbout tbis ar- tifice falsebood would find little place in tbe bu- man mind. Witb still more reason does tbe man wbo bas some great interest in practicing upon our credulity, rarely revert to a fable wbicb bas not for its foundation some fact, or tbe possibility of wbicb is not at least probable. Tbis skillful attempt ap- pears in referring to distant âges and countries, and to tbose répétitions witb wbicb tbe historiés of prodigies abound, and wbicb so imperfectly dis- guise tbe alteration of some of tbe details. Tbis will be obvions if we can convince our readers tbat tbe greater part of mar\-elous facts may be ex- plained by a small number of causes more or less easy to discern and to develop. An inquiry into tbese causes bas not for its ob- ject merely tbe gratification of idle curiosity. Prod- igies connected witb natural pbenomena, inventions, * It is with difficulty we can imagine any thing fuUof improba- bility; and we say “a fact of this nature is rarely forged.”—St. Croix, Examen Critiq\ic des Histoi-iens d'Alexandre. Paris, 1801, p. 29.