It is no part of my province in the present connection to debate his views either on the fact of a secret tradition or on the alleged modes of its perpetuation: my standpoint is known otherwise and has been expressed fully elsewhere. But in the explanation just given I feel that I have saved the sincerity of one who has many titles to consideration, who is still respected by many, and for whom my own discriminating sympathy has been expressed frequently in no uncertain way: I have saved it so far at least as can be expected. One does not anticipate that a Frenchman, an occultist and a magus is going to retract distinctly under the eye of his disciples, more especially when he has testified so much. I feel further that I have justified the fact of the present translation of a work which is memorable in several respects, but chiefly as the history of a magic which is not Magic, as a testimony which destroys indeed the whole imputed basis of its subject. It does not follow that Lévi’s explanation of physical phenomena, especially of the modern kind, is always or generally correct; but some of it is workable in its way, and my purpose is more than served if those who are drawn toward the science of the mystics may be led hereby to take warning as to some of the dangers and false-seemings which fringe that science. A few things remain to be said. Readers of his History must be prepared for manifold inaccuracies, which are to be expected in a writer like Éliphas Lévi. Those who know anything of Egypt—the antiquities of its religion and literature—will have a bad experience with the chapter on Hermetic Magic; those who know eastern religion on its deeper side will regard the discourse on Magic in India as title-deeds of all incompetence; while in respect of later Jewish theosophy I have had occasion in certain annotations to indicate that Lévi had no extensive knowledge of those Kabalistic texts on the importance of which he dwells so much and about which he claims to speak with full understanding. He presents, however, some of their lesser aspects.