Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/134

 more but the one, fiddling, and the other, rhyming; and are indeed very worthy the ignorance of the friar, and the barbarousness of the Goths, that introduced them among us.

What have we remaining of magic, by which the Indians, the Chaldeans, the Egyptians were so renowned, and by which effects so wonderful, and to common men so astonishing, were produced, as made them have recourse to spirits or supernatural powers for some account of their strange operations? By magic I mean some excelling knowledge of nature and the various powers and qualities of its several productions, and the application of certain agents to certain patients, which by force of some peculiar qualities, produce effects very different from what fall under vulgar observation or comprehension. These are by ignorant people called magic, or conjuring, and such like terms, and an account of them, much about as wise, is given by the common learned from Sympathies, Antipathies, Idiosyncrasies, Talismans, and some scraps or terms left us by the Egyptians or Grecians of the ancient magic: but the science seems with several others to be wholly lost.