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.

    49/350 (page 41)
    impostures, the sorcery of thaumaturgy* can, for the most part, be explainecl by physical science. Viewed in tliis ligbt, the history of science, its prog- ress, and its variations, may furnish valuable ideas respecting the antiquity, the changes, and vicissi- tudes of civilization ; and we may thence draw some curions evidence regarding the sources of part of our knowledge hitherto unsuspected. Finally, another advantage vvill reward our re- searches : history vvill be presented to us in a new light. We shall restore to it facts ; give back to historians a character for veracity, without which the vvhole of the past would be lost to the annals of civilized man ; for, convicted of falsehood and ignorance in their narrations, and of a constant rép- étition of marvelous events, what crédit would they merit in their accounts even of the most probable occurrences 1 Justly denounced as an amalgama- tion of truth and error, and devoid of interest mor- al or political. History would be regarded onlv as an adrnitted fiction : and lias it not been so des- ignated by the learned ] But a man who lias de- scribed and studied the manners of his species is not reduced to the dégradation of preserving only the fables in those records whicli are supposed to give an insight into past aores. Far from present- ing merely a collection of falsehoods and folly, the most marvelous or incredible pages of history open to us the archiv’es of a learned and mysterious pol- icy, which some wise men in every âge hâve em- ployed to govern the human race ; to lead it to mis- fortune or to happiness ; to greatness or to dégra- dation ; to slavei’y or to freedom. * From two Greek words, signifying a worker of wouders.