examined in the
light, enforcing her attempt with an unsparing, often with a bloody
hand. [Sidenote: She could not extricate herself from her false
position.] It was for this reason that, when the inevitable time of
trial came, no intellectual defence could be made in her behalf, and
hence there only remained a recourse to physical and political
compulsion. But such a compulsion, under such circumstances, is not only
a testimony to the intrinsic weakness of that for which it is invoked,
it is also a token that they who resort to it have lost all faith in any
inherent power of the system they are supporting, and that, in truth, it
is fast coming to an end.

[Sidenote: Successive order in supernatural ideas.] The reader will
remark, from the incidents connected with supernatural delusions now to
be related, that they follow a law of continuous variation, the
particular embodiment they assumed changing with the condition of the
human mind at each epoch under examination. For ages they are implicitly
believed in by all classes; then, to a few, but the number perpetually
increasing, they become an idle story of bare-faced imposture. At last
humanity wakens from its delusion--its dream. The final rejection of the
whole, in spite of the wonderful amount of testimony which for ages had
accumulated, occurs spontaneously the moment that pyschical development
has reached a certain point. There can be no more striking illustration
of the definite advancement of the human mind. The boy who is
terror-stricken in a dark room insensibly dismisses his idle fears as he
grows up to be a man.

[Sidenote: Oriental magicians--Simon Magus.] Clemens Romanus and
Anastasius Sinaita, speaking of Simon Magus, say that he could make
himself invisible; that he formed a man out of air; that he could pass
bodily through mountains without being obstructed thereby; that he could
fly and sit unharmed in flames; that he constructed animated statues and
self-moving furniture, and not only changed his countenance into the
similitude of many other men, but that his whole body could be
transformed into the shape of a goat, a sheep, a snake; that, as he
walked in the street, he cast many shadows in different directions; that
he could make trees suddenly spring up in desert places; and, on one
occasion, compelled an enchanted sickle to go into a field and reap
twice as much in one day as if it had been used by a man. [Sidenote:
Greek thaumaturgists.] Of Apol