Direct not thy mind to the vast measures of the earth; For the plant of truth is not upon ground. Nor measure the measures of the sun, collecting rules, For he is carried by the eternal will of the Father, not for your sake. Dismiss the impetuous course of the moon; for she runs always by work of necessity. The progression of the stars was not generated for your sake. There was a vast difference between the true worship taught to those who showed themselves worthy, and the state religions. The Magians are accused of all kinds of superstition, but this is what the same Chaldæan Oracle says: The wide aerial flight of birds is not true, Nor the dissections of the entrails of victims; they are all mere toys, The basis of mercenary fraud; flee from these If you would open the sacred paradise of piety, Where virtue, wisdom, and equity are assembled.(56) As we say in our former work: Surely it is not those who warn people against “mercenary fraud” who can be accused of it; and if they accomplished acts which seem miraculous, who can with fairness presume to deny that it was done merely because they possessed a knowledge of natural philosophy and psychological science to a degree unknown to our schools?(57) The above quoted stanzas are a rather strange teaching to come from those who are universally believed to have worshipped the sun, and moon, and the starry hosts, as Gods. The sublime profundity of the Magian precepts being beyond the reach of modern materialistic thought, the Chaldæan Philosophers are accused of Sabæanism and Sun‐worship, which was the religion only of the uneducated masses. SECTION III. THE ORIGIN OF MAGIC. Things of late have changed, true enough. The field of investigation has widened; old religions are a little better understood; and since that miserable day when the Committee of the French Academy, headed by Benjamin Franklin, investigated Mesmer’s phenomena only to proclaim them charlatanry and clever knavery, both heathen Philosophy and Mesmerism have acquired certain rights and privileges, and are now viewed from quite a different standpoint. Is full justice rendered them, however, and are they any better appreciated? We are afraid not. Human nature is the same now, as when Pope said of the force of prejudice that: The difference is as great between The optics seeing, as the objects seen. All manners take a tincture from our own, Or some discolour’d through our passions shown, Or fancy’s beam enlarges, multiplies, Contracts, inverts, and gives ten thousand dyes.