hemselves. Physical science, in a word, was cumbered by a
number of fanciful and incorrect opinions, chiefly of a mystical
character. If, for instance, it was observed that a flag and a fern
never grew near each other, the circumstance was imputed to some
antipathy between these vegetables; nor was it for some time resolved by
the natural rule, that the flag has its nourishment in marshy ground,
whereas the fern loves a deep dryish soil. The attributes of the
divining-rod were fully credited; the discovery of the philosopher's
stone was daily hoped for; and electricity, magnetism, and other
remarkable and misconceived phenomena were appealed to as proof of the
reasonableness of their expectations. Until such phenomena were traced
to their sources, imaginary and often mystical causes were assigned to
them, for the same reason that, in the wilds of a partially discovered
country, according to the satirist,

"Geographers on pathless downs
Place elephants for want of towns."

This substitution of mystical fancies for experimental reasoning gave,
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a doubtful and twilight
appearance to the various branches of physical philosophy. The learned
and sensible Dr. Webster, for instance, writing in detection of supposed
witchcraft, assumes, as a string of undeniable facts, opinions which our
more experienced age would reject as frivolous fancies; "for example,
the effects of healing by the weapon-salve, the sympathetic powder, the
curing of various diseases by apprehensions, amulets, or by
transplantation." All of which undoubted wonders he accuses the age of
desiring to throw on the devil's back--an unnecessary load certainly,
since such things do not exist, and it is therefore in vain to seek to
account for them. It followed that, while the opposers of the ordinary
theory might have struck the deepest blows at the witch hypothesis by an
appeal to common sense, they were themselves hampered by articles of
philosophical belief which they must have been sensible contained nearly
as deep draughts upon human credulity as were made by the Demonologists,
against whose doctrine they protested. This error had a doubly bad
effect, both as degrading the immediate department in which it occurred,
and as affording a protection for falsehood in other branches of
science. The champions who, in their own province, were obliged by the
imperfect knowledge of the times to admit much that was mystical and