Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/365

 MAGNETISM AND MAGIC. 333

have been equally convinced throughout all ages. The Twelve Tables of the Romans, 1 the Books of Moses, and even Plato's Eleventh Book on Laws, already made its practice punishable by death, and Apuleius' beautiful speech 2 before the court of justice, when defending himself against the charge of practising magic by which his life was menaced, proves how seriously this matter was taken even in the most enlightened Roman period, under the Antonines; since he merely tries to clear himself personally from the charge in question, but by no means contests the possibility of witchcraft and even enters into a host of absurd details such as are wont to figure in all the mediaeval trials for witchcraft. The eighteenth century makes an exception as regards this belief in Magic, and this is mainly because Balthasar Bekker, Thomasius and some others, with the good intention of putting an end once for all to the cruel trials for witchcraft, declared all magic to be impossible. Favoured by the philosophy of the age, this opinion soon gained the upper hand, although only among the learned and educated classes. The common people have never ceased to believe in witchcraft, even in England; though here the educated classes contrive to unite a degrading religious bigotry with the firm incredulity of a Saint Thomas (or of a Thomasius) as to all facts transcending the laws of impact and counter-impact, acids and alkalis, and refuse to lend an ear to their great countryman, when he tells them that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in their philosophy. (Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, 5) One branch of Magic is still notoriously preserved and practised among the lower orders, being tolerated on account of its beneficent purpose. This is curing by charms (sympathetische Kuren, as they are called in German), the reality of which can hardly be doubted. Charming away warts 3 ,

1 Pliny, Historiae Naturalis, L. 30, c. 3. [Add. to 3rd ed.]

2 Apuleius, Oratio de Magia [Speech on magic], p. 104. Biponti ed.

3 The English newspapers (toward the end of August 1845) tell, with great scorn as being an outrageous superstition, that a young man, who suffered for a long time from a recurrent cold [ague] fever and had been treated by physicians in vain, used, on the advice of a wise woman, the following sympathetic means and had recovered. A spider, was locked up in an empty nutshell. These were tied up and worn at the neck: as the spider wastes away, dies and decays, the fever yields. This was mentioned in Most's Sympathy [The sympathetic means and methods of cure, Rostock, 1842]. The following (see Kieser's Archives [for animal magnetism], vol. 5, part 3, p. 106; vol. 8, part 3, pp. 145-148; and vol. 9) sympathetic cure was told to me by Dr. Neef as being implemented and successfully accomplished under his eyes. It concerned a ganglion in the hand. The hand was rubbed with an egg for a long time until the place became somewhat damp. Then this egg was buried in a red–ant hill (of half–inch, large, reddish ants). Directly, in the first night, the female patient felt an intolerable tickling and itching, as of ants, in the ganglion's place on her hand. The ganglion shrank until it wholly disappeared after some time and also did not come back.

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