ct the name of Cagliostro
(Balsamo) and others who in the eighteenth century could
successfully speculate upon the credulity of people of rank
and education, to moderate our wonder at the success of
earlier empirics.

Among the eminent names of self-styled or reputed masters of the
nobler or white magic, some, like the celebrated Paracelsus, were
men of extraordinary attainments and largely acquainted with the
secrets of natural science. A necessarily imperfect knowledge, a
natural desire to impose upon the ignorant wonder of the vulgar,
and the vanity of a learning which was ambitious of exhibiting,
in the most imposing if less intelligible way, their superior
knowledge, were probably the mixed causes which led such
distinguished scholars as Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, Cardan,
and Campanella to oppress themselves and their readers with a
mass of unintelligible rubbish and cabalistic mysticism.[112]
Slow and gradual as are the successive advances in the knowledge
and improvement of mankind, it would not be reasonable to be
surprised that preceding generations could not at once attain to
the knowledge of a maturer age; and the teachers of mankind
groped their dark and uncertain way in ages destitute of the
illumination of modern times.'[113]

[112]

'Cardan believed great states depend
Upon the tip o' th'
Bear's tail's end,'

correctly enough expresses both the persuasion of the public
and that of many of the soi-disant philosophers of the
intimate dependence of the fates of both states and
individuals of this globe upon other globes in the universe.

[113] It was not so much a want of sufficient observation of
known facts, as the want of a true method and of
verification, which rendered the investigations of the
earlier philosophers so vague and uncertain. And the same
causes which necessarily prevented Aristotle, the greatest
intellect perhaps that has ever illuminated the world, from
attaining to the greater perfection of the modern philosophy,
are applicable, in a greater degree, to the case of the
mediaeval and later discoverers. The causes of the failure of
the pre-scientific world are well stated by a living writer.
'Men cannot, or at least they will not, await the tardy
results of discovery; they will not sit down in avowed
ignorance. Imagination supplies the deficiencies of
observation. A theoretic arch is thrown across the chasm,