middle, holding in his hand a scythe, and tossing about his hair as
the priests of Cybele; then getting on the top of a high altar, he said
that the place was happy to be honoured by the birth of a god.
Afterwards running down to the place where he had hid the goose egg, and
going into the water, he began to sing the praises of Apollo and
Aesculapius, and to invite the latter to come and shew himself to men;
with these words he dips a bowl into the water and takes out a
mysterious egg, which had a god enclosed in it, and when he held it in
his hand, he began to say that he held Aesculapius, whilst all were
eager to have a sight of this fine mystery, he broke the egg, and the
little serpent starting out, twisted itself about his fingers.

These examples shew clearly, that both Christians and pagans were so
far agreed as to treat the greater number of oracles as purely human
impostures.

From the very nature of things, much that now serves for amusement must
formerly have been appropriated to a higher destination. Ventriloquism
may be quoted as a case in point, affording a ready and plausible
solution of the oracular stones and oaks, of the reply which the seer
Nessus addressed to Pythagoras, (Jamblichus, Vit. Pyth. xxxiii.) and of
the tree which at the command of the Gymnosophists, of upper Egypt,
spoke to Apollonius, "The voice," says Philostratus (Vit. Ap. xi. 5)
"was distinct but weak, and similar to the voice of a woman." But the
oracles, at least if we ascend to their origin, were not altogether
impostures. The pretended interpreters of the decrees of destiny were
frequently plunged into a sort of delirium, and when inhaling the fumes
of some intoxicating drug or powerful gas or vapour, or drinking some
beverage which produced a temporary suspension of the reason, the mind
of the enquirer was predisposed to feverish dreams:[21] if priestcraft
were concerned in the interpretation of such dreams, or eliciting senses
from the wild effusions of the disordered brain of the Pythoness,
Science presided over the investigation of the causes of this phrenzy,
and the advantages which the Thaumaturgists might derive from it.
Jamblicus states (de Mysterius C. xxix) that for obtaining a revelation
from the Deity in a dream, the youngest and most simple creatures were
the most proper for succeeding: they were prepared for it by magical
invocations and fumigations of particular perfumes. Porphyry declares
that these proceedings h