Extraordinary Popular Delusions Vol 3 | Page 3

fee to the Project of 20% of the net profits
you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate
your applicable taxes. If you don't derive profits, no royalty is due.
Royalties are payable to "Project Gutenberg Association / Benedictine
University" within the 60 days following each date you prepare (or
were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic)
tax return.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU
DON'T HAVE TO?
The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning
machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright
licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. Money
should be paid to "Project Gutenberg Association / Benedictine
University".
*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN
ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*

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