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fears. That thing “magic,” that superstition “miracle,” is now banished wholly from the beliefs of this clear-seeing, educated age. “Miracle,” we are told, never had a place in the world—only in men’s delusions. It is nothing more than a fancy. It never was anything more than a superstition arising from ignorance.
What is fear? It is a shrinking from possible harm, either to be body, or to that thing which we denominate the mind that is in us. The body shrinks with instinctive nervous alarm, like the sensitive leaf, when its easy, comfortable exercise or sensations are disturbed.
Our book, inasmuch as it deals—or professes to deal— seriously with strange things and with deep mysteries, needs the means of interpretation in the full attention of the reader: otherwise, little will be made, or can come, of it. It is, in brief, a history of the alchemical philosophers, written with a serious explanatory purpose, and for the first time impartially stated since the days of James the First and Charles the First. This is really what the book pretends to be—and nothing more. It should be mentioned that the peculiar views and deductions to be found herein were hinted at as demonstrable for the first time by the same Author in the year 1858, when a work entitled Curious Things of the Outside World was produced.
Let it be understood, however, that the Author distinctly excepts against being in any manner identified with all the opinions, religious or otherwise, which are to be found in this book. Some of them are, indeed, most extraordinary; but, in order to do full justice to the speculations of the Hermetic Brethren, he has put forward their ideas with as much of their original force as he was able; and, in some parts of this book, he believes he has urged them with such apparent warmth, that they will very likely seem to have
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狗仔卡
发表于 2009-4-10 09:47:26
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搶沙發
发表于 2009-4-10 19:33:39
