Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions Volume 3.doc Review
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Dissatisfaction with his lot seems to be the characteristic of man
in all ages and climates. So far, however, from being an evil, as at
first might be supposed, it has been the great civiliser of our race;
and has tended, more than anything else, to raise us above the
condition of the brutes. But the same discontent which has been the
source of all improvement, has been the parent of no small progeny of
follies and absurdities; to trace these latter is the object of the
present volume. Vast as the subject appears, it is easily reducible
within such limits as will make it comprehensive without being
wearisome, and render its study both instructive and amusing.
Three causes especially have excited our discontent; and, by
impelling us to seek for remedies for the irremediable, have
bewildered us in a maze of madness and error. These are death, toil,
and ignorance of the future — the doom of man upon this sphere, and
for which he shows his antipathy by his love of life, his longing for
abundance, and his craving curiosity to pierce the secrets of the days
to come. The first has led many to imagine that they might find means
to avoid death, or, failing in this, that they might, nevertheless, so
prolong existence as to reckon it by centuries instead of units. From
this sprang the search, so long continued and still pursued, for the
elixir vitae, or water of life, which has led thousands to pretend to
it and millions to believe in it. From the second sprang the absurd
search for the philosopher’s stone, which was to create plenty by
changing all metals into gold; and from the third, the false sciences
of astrology, divination, and their divisions of necromancy,
chiromancy, augury, with all their train of signs, portents, and
omens.
In tracing the career of the erring philosophers, or the wilful
cheats, who have encouraged or preyed upon the credulity of mankind,
it will simplify and elucidate the subject, if we divide it into three
classes: — the first comprising alchymists, or those in general who
have devoted themselves to the discovering of the philosopher’s stone
and the water of life; the second comprising astrologers,
necromancers, sorcerers, geomancers, and all those who pretended to
discover futurity; and the third consisting of the dealers in charms,
amulets, philters, universal-panacea mongers, touchers for the evil,
seventh sons of a seventh son, sympathetic powder compounders,
homeopathists, animal magnetizers, and all the motley tribe of quacks,
empirics, and charlatans.
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