celsus', and what not?

His books were forbidden to be printed. He himself was refused a
hearing, and it was not till after ten years of wandering that he found
rest and protection in a little village of Carinthia.

Three years afterwards he died in the hospital of St. Sebastian at
Salzburg, in the Tyrol. His death was the signal for empirics and
visionaries to foist on the public book after book on occult philosophy,
written in his name--of which you may see ten folios--not more than a
quarter, I believe, genuine. And these foolish books, as much as
anything, have helped to keep up the popular prejudice against one who,
in spite of all his faults was a true pioneer of science. {15} I believe
(with those moderns who have tried to do him justice) that under all his
verbiage and confusion there was a vein of sound scientific, experimental
common sense.

When he talks of astronomy as necessary to be known by a physician, it
seems to me that he laughs at astrology, properly so called; that is,
that the stars influence the character and destiny of man. Mars, he
says, did not make Nero cruel. There would have been long-lived men in
the world if Saturn had never ascended the skies; and Helen would have
been a wanton, though Venus had never been created. But he does believe
that the heavenly bodies, and the whole skies, have a physical influence
on climate, and on the health of men.

He talks of alchemy, but he means by it, I think, only that sound science
which we call chemistry, and at which he worked, wandering, he says,
among mines and forges, as a practical metallurgist.

He tells us--what sounds startling enough--that magic is the only
preceptor which can teach the art of healing; but he means, it seems to
me, only an understanding of the invisible processes of nature, in which
sense an electrician or a biologist, a Faraday or a Darwin, would be a
magician; and when he compares medical magic to the Cabalistic science,
of which I spoke just now (and in which he seems to have believed), he
only means, I think, that as the Cabala discovers hidden meaning and
virtues in the text of Scripture, so ought the man of science to find
them in the book of nature. But this kind of talk, wrapt up too in the
most confused style, or rather no style at all, is quite enough to
account for ignorant and envious people accusing him of magic, saying
that he had discovered the philosopher's stone, and the secret of Hermes
Trismegis