a philosopher." It would be useless to collect in this
place an infinity of passages from the ancients, which all prove the
same thing; we can only __________ the book written by Hippocrates on
Caducity, which usually passed for the effect of the vengeance of the
gods, and which for that reason was called the "sacred malady." We
shall there see how he laughs "at magicians and charlatans," who
boasted of being able to cure it by their enchantments and expiations.
He shows there that by the profession which they made of being able to
darken the sun, bring down the moon to the earth, give fine or bad
weather, procure abundance or sterility, they seemed to wish to
attribute to man more power than to the Divinity itself, showing
therein much less religion than "impiety, and proving that they did
not believe in the gods." I do not speak of the fables and tales
invented by Philostrates on the subject of Apollonius of Thyana, they
have been sufficiently refuted by the best pens: but I must not omit
to warn you that the name of magic has been used in a good sense for
any uncommon science, and a sublimer sort of philosophy. It is in this
sense that it must be understood where Pliny says,[674] although
rather obscurely, "that Pythagoras, Empedocles, Democritus, and Plato,
traveled a great deal to acquire instruction in it." For the rest,
people are naturally led to attribute to sorcery everything that
appears new and marvelous. Have not we ourselves, with M. Leguier,
passed for magicians in the minds of some persons, because in our
experiments on electricity they have seen us easily extinguish lights
by putting them near cold water, which then appeared an unheard-of
thing, and which many still firmly maintain even now cannot be done
without a tacit compact? It is true that in the effects of electricity
there is something so extraordinary and so wonderful, that we should
be more disposed to excuse those persons who could not easily believe
them to be natural than those who have fancied tacit compacts for
things which it would be much more easy to explain naturally.

V. From what has just been said, it evidently results that it is folly
to believe that by means of study and knowledge one can ever attain
any of those marvelous effects attributed to magic; and it is
profaning the name of science to give it an imposture so grossly
imagined; it remains then that these effects might be produced by a
diabolical power. In fact, we read in