Extraordinary Popular Delusions Vol 3 | Page 3

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MEMOIRS OF EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS.
BY CHARLES MACKAY.
AUTHOR OF THE THAMES AND ITS TRIBUTARIES," "THE HOPE OF THE WORLD," ETC.
"Il est bon de connaitre les delires de l'esprit humain. Chaque peuple a ses folies plus ou moins grossieres."
Millot

VOL. III.

CONTENTS OF THE THIRD VOLUME.
BOOK I.
INTRODUCTION
THE ALCHYMISTS; or, Searchers for the Philosopher's Stone and the Water of Life
PART I. -- History of Alchymy from the earliest periods to the Fifteenth Century. -- Pretended Antiquity of the Art. -- Geber. -- Alfarabi. -- Avicenna. -- Albertus Magnus. -- Thomas Aquinas. -- Artephius. -- Alain de Lisle. -- Arnold de Villeneuve. -- Pietro d'Apone. -- Raymond Lulli. -- Roger Bacon. -- Pope John XXII. -- Jean de Meung.-- Nicholas Flamel. -- George Ripley. -- Basil Valentine. -- Bernard of Treves. -- Trithemius. -- The Marechal de Rays. -- Jacques Coeur. -- Inferior Adepts.
PART II.--Progress of the Infatuation during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. -- Augurello. -- Cornelius Agrippa. -- Paracelsus. -- George Agricola. -- Denys Zachaire. -- Dr. Dee and Edward Kelly. -- The Cosmopolite. -- Sendivogius. -- The Rosicrucians. -- Michael Mayer. -- Robert Fludd. -- Jacob Bohmen. -- John Heydn. -- Joseph Francis Borri. -- Alchymical Writers of the Seventeenth Century. -- De Lisle. -- Albert Aluys. -- Count de St. Germains. -- Cagliostro. -- Present State of the Science.
BOOK II. FORTUNE TELLING
BOOK III. THE MAGNETISERS
PHILOSOPHICAL DELUSIONS.
Dissatisfaction with his lot seems to be the characteristic of man in all ages and climates. So far, however, from being an evil, as at first might be supposed, it has been the great civiliser of our race; and has tended, more than anything else, to raise us above the condition of the brutes. But the same discontent which has been the source of all improvement, has been the parent of no small progeny of follies and absurdities; to trace these latter is the object of the present volume. Vast as the subject appears, it is easily reducible within such limits as will make it comprehensive without being wearisome, and render its study both instructive and amusing.
Three causes especially have excited our discontent; and, by impelling us to seek for remedies for the irremediable, have bewildered us in a maze of madness and error. These are death, toil, and ignorance of the future -- the doom of man upon this sphere, and for which he shows his antipathy by his love of life, his longing for abundance, and his craving curiosity to pierce the secrets of the days to come. The first has led many to imagine that they might find means to avoid death, or, failing in this, that they might, nevertheless, so prolong existence as to reckon it by centuries instead of units. From this sprang the search, so long continued and still pursued, for the elixir vitae, or water of life, which has led thousands to pretend to it and millions to believe in it. From the second sprang the absurd search for the philosopher's stone, which was to create plenty by changing all metals into gold; and from the third, the false sciences of astrology, divination, and their divisions of necromancy, chiromancy, augury, with all their train of signs, portents, and omens.
In tracing the career of the erring philosophers, or the wilful cheats, who have encouraged or preyed upon the credulity of mankind, it will simplify and elucidate the subject, if we divide it into three classes: -- the first comprising alchymists, or those in general who have devoted themselves to the discovering of the philosopher's stone and the water of life; the second comprising astrologers, necromancers, sorcerers, geomancers, and all those who pretended to discover futurity; and the third consisting of the dealers in charms, amulets, philters, universal-panacea mongers, touchers for the evil, seventh sons of a seventh son, sympathetic powder compounders, homeopathists, animal magnetizers, and all the motley tribe of quacks, empirics, and charlatans.
But, in narrating the career of such men, it will be found that many of them united several or all of the functions just mentioned; that the alchymist was a fortune-teller, or a necromancer -- that he pretended to cure all maladies by touch or charm, and to work miracles of every kind. In the dark and early ages of European history, this is more especially the case. Even as we advance to more recent periods, we shall find great difficulty in separating the characters. The alchymist seldom confined himself strictly to his pretended science -- the sorcerer and necromancer