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.

    53/350 (page 45)
    of a shower of quicksilver, wlilch fell in the leign of Aurelian.* But the authority of this annalist is weak, and there is reason to believe that he has only disfiguied the account of Dion by an anach- ronisni. The rarity and value of mevcury at Rome, in both reigns, set aside the possibility that the quantity necessary to represent rain could hâve been thrown by any one into the Forum. This Btory is, indeed, too strange to be believed in the présent day. Must it then be absolutely rejected ] Any one may say, it is impossible, it never could occur ; but to vvhom does it belong to détermine the limits of possibility, those limits vvhich science is extending every day under our own eyes 'l Let us examine, let us doubt, but let us not be too hasty in denying the possibility of such an occur^ rence.f If a similar prodigy had been related at different times by different writers ; if it had been renewed in our own times, beneath the eyes of experienced observers, it would no longer be regarded as a fable or an illusion, but as a phenomenon which would bave a place in those recoi'ds to which science con- ut ceciderat, inveni; caque, ita ut si esset ar^entum, oblivi inonet- am exœre, mansilque is color très dies ; quarto vero die quidquid ohlitum fuerat evanuit.—Xiphilinus, in Severo. * Aurélia no imperante ars'enti uttas decidisse sunt qui tra- dont.”—(Glycas., Annal., lib. iii.) Little is knovvn about this au- thor. He wrote a Chronicle of events front the Création to the year A.D. 1118. It bas been valued on account of its Biblical réf- érencés.—Ed. t There are many reasons for disbelieving the account of Dion. In the first place, he did not see the shower fall ; he gives no idea of the quantity of the quicksilver precipitated, and^he collected only some drops ; but, as the métal fell in a shower, and as it would not sink into the ground, nor evaporate like water, the quantity niust hâve been too considérable to require it to be col- lected in drops. In the second place, metallic mercury is rarely found any where in large quantity; and it must hâve been eleva- ted into the atmosphère in the form of vapor, and condensed there, before it could descend in a shower. The story is altogether un- worthy of crédit.—Ed.