History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0189/01897.txt

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$Title{History Of The Intellectual Development Of Europe
Chapter IV. Part I.}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Draper, John William M.D., LL.D.,}
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$Subject{time
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constantinople
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$Date{1876}
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Title:       History Of The Intellectual Development Of Europe
Book:        Volume II
Author:      Draper, John William M.D., LL.D.,
Date:        1876

Chapter IV. Part I.

The Age Of Faith In The West - (Concluded), Effect Of The Eastern Or Military
Attack. - General Review Of The Age Of Faith.

The Fall of Constantinople - Its momentary Effect on the Italian System.

General Review Of The Intellectual Condition In The Age Of Faith. -
Supernaturalism and its Logic spread all over Europe. - It is destroyed by the
Jews and Arabians. - Its total Extinction.

The Jewish Physicians. - Their Acquirements and Influence. - Their Collision
with the Imposture-medicine of Europe. - Their Effect on the higher Classes. -
Opposition to them.

Two Impulses, the Intellectual and Moral, operating against the Mediaeval
state of Things. - Downfall of the Italian System through the intellectual
Impulse from the West and the moral from the North. - Action of the former
through Astronomy. - Origin of the moral Impulse. - Their conjoint
irresistible Effect. - Discovery of the state of Affairs in Italy. - The
Writings of Machiavelli. - What the Church had actually done.

Entire Movement of the Italian System determined from a consideration of the
four Revolts against it.

     From the West I have now to return to the East, and to describe the
pressure made by Mohammedanism on that side.  It is illustrated by many great
events, but, above all, by the fall of Constantinople.  The Greek Church, so
long out of sight that it is perhaps almost forgotten by the reader, comes for
a moment before us like a spectre from the dead.

     A wandering tribe of Turks had found its way into Asia Minor, and, under
its leader Ertogrul and his son Othman, consolidated its power and commenced
extending its influence by possessions taken from the sultans of Iconium and
the Byzantine empire.  The third prince of the race instituted the
Janissaries, a remarkable military force, and commenced driving the Greeks out
of Asia Minor.  His son Soliman crossed the Hellespont and captured Gallipoli,
thus securing a foothold in Europe, A.D. 1358.

     This accomplished, the Turkish influence began to extend rapidly. Thrace,
Macedon, and Servia were subdued.  Sigismund, the King of Hungary, was
overthrown at the battle of Nicopolis by Bajazet.  Southern Greece, the
countries along the Danube, submitted, and Constantinople would have fallen
had it not been for the unexpected irruption of Tamerlane, who defeated
Bajazet and took him prisoner.  The reign of Mohammed I., who succeeded, was
occupied in the restoration of Turkish affairs.  Under Amurath II., the
possession of the Euxine shore was obtained, the fortifications across the
Isthmus of Corinth were stormed, and the Peloponesus entered.

     Mohammed II. became the Sultan of the Turks A.D. 1451.  From the moment
of his accession, he turned all his powers to the capture of Constantinople.
Its sovereigns had long foreseen the inevitable event, and had made repeated
attempts to secure military aid from the West.  They were ready to surrender
their religious belief.  On this principle, the monk Barlaam was despatched on
an embassy to Benedict XII. to propose the reunion of the Greek and Latin
Churches, as it was delicately termed, and to obtain, as an equivalent for the
concession, an army of Franks.  As the danger became more urgent, John
Palaeologus I. sought an interview with Urban V., and, having been purified
from his heresies respecting the supremacy of the pope and the double
procession of the Holy Ghost, was presented before the pontiff in the Church
of St. Peter.  The Greek monarch, after three genuflexions, was permitted to
kiss the feet of the holy father and to lead by its bridle his mule.  But,
though they might have the will, the popes had lost the power, and these great
submissions were productive of no good.  Thirty years subsequently, Manuel,
the son and successor of Palaeologus, took what might have seemed a more
certain course.  He travelled to Paris and to London to lay his distress
before the kings of France and England; but he received only pity, not aid. At
the Council of Constance Byzantine ambassadors appeared.  It was however,
reserved for the synods of Ferrara and of Florence to mature, as far as might
be, the negotiation.  The second son of John Palaeologus journeyed again into
Italy, A.D. 1438; and while Eugenius was being deposed in the chamber at
Basle, he was consummating the union of the East and West in the Cathedral of
Florence.  In the pulpit of that edifice, on the sixth of July of that year, a
Roman cardinal and a Greek archbishop embraced each other before the people;
Te Deum was chanted in Greek, mass was celebrated in Latin, and the Creed was
read with the "Filioque." The successor of Constantine the Great had given up
his religion, but he had received no equivalent - no aid.  The state of the
Church, its disorders and schisms, rendered any community of action in the
West impossible.

     The last, the inevitable hour at length struck.  Mohammed II. is said to
have been a learned man, able to express himself in five different languages;
skilful in mathematics, especially in their practical application to
engineering; an admirer of the fine arts; prodigal in his liberality to
Italian painters.  In Asia Minor, as in Spain, there was free thinking among
the disciples of the Prophet.  It was affirmed that the sultan, in his moments
of relaxation, was often heard to deride the religion of his country as an
imposture.  His doubts in that particular were, however, compensated for by
his determination to carry out the intention of so many of his Mohammedan
predecessors - the seizure of Constantinople.

     At this time the venerable city had so greatly declined that it contained
only 100,000 inhabitants - out of them only 4970 able or willing to bear arms.
The besieging force was more than a quarter of a million of men. As Mohammed
pressed forward his works, the despairing emperor in vain looked for the
long-promised effectual Western aid.  In its extremity, the devoted metropolis
was divided by religious feuds; and when a Latin priest officiated in St.
Sophia, there were many who exclaimed that they would rather see the turban of
the sultan than the tiara of the pope.  In several particulars the siege of
Constantinople marked out the end of old ages and the beginning of new.  Its
walls were shaken by the battering rams of the past, and overthrown by cannon,
just then coming into general use.  Upon a plank road, shipping was passed
through the open country, in the darkness of a single night, a distance of ten
miles.  The works were pushed forward toward the walls, on the top of which
the sentinels at length could hear the shouts of the Turks by their nocturnal
fires.  They were sounds such as Constantinople might well listen to.  She had
taught something different for many a long year.  "God is God; there is none
but God." In the streets an image of the Virgin was carried in solemn
procession.  Now or never she must come to the help of those who had done so
much for her, who had made her a queen in heaven and a goddess upon earth.
The cry of her worshippers was in vain.

     On May 29th, 1453, the assault was delivered.  Constantine Palaeologus,
the last of the Roman emperors, putting off his purple, that no man might
recognize and insult his corpse when the catastrophe was over, fell, as became
a Roman emperor, in the breach.  After his death resistance ceased, and the
victorious Turks poured into the town.  To the Church of St. Sophia there
rushed a promiscuous crowd of women and children, priests, monks, religious
virgins, and - men.  Superstitious to the last, in this supreme moment they
expected the fulfilment of a prophecy that, when the Turks should have forced
their way to the square before that church, their progress would be arrested,
for an angel with a sword in his hand would descend from heaven and save the
city of the Lord.  The Turks burst into the square, but the angel never came.

     More than two thirds of the inhabitants of Constantinople were carried
prisoners into the Turkish camp - the men for servitude, the women for a still
more evil fate.  The churches were sacked.  From the dome of St. Sophia its
glories were torn down.  The divine images, for the sake of which Christendom
had been sundered in former days, unresistingly submitted to the pious rage of
the Mohammedans without working a single miracle, and, stripped of their gems
and gold, were brought to their proper value in the vile uses of kitchens and
stables.  On that same day the Muezzin ascended the loftiest turret of St.
Sophia, and over the City of the Trinity proclaimed the Oneness of God.  The
sultan performed his prayers at the great altar, directing the edifice to be
purified from its idolatries and consecrated to the worship of God.  Thence he
repaired to the palace, and, reflecting on the instability of human
prosperity, repeated, as he entered it, the Persian verse: "The spider was
woven his web in the imperial palace; the owl hath sung her watch song on the
towers of Afrasiab."

     This solemn event - the fall of Constantinople - accomplished, there was
no need of any reconciliation of the Greek and Latin Churches.  The sword of
Mohammed had settled their dispute.  Constantinople had submitted to the fate
of Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Carthage.  Christendom was struck with
consternation.  The advance of the Turks in Europe was now very rapid. Corinth
and Athens fell, and the reduction of Greece was completed.  The confines of
Italy were approached A.D. 1461.  The Mohammedan flag confronted that
peninsula along the Adriatic coast.  In twenty years more Italy was invaded.
Otranto was taken; its bishop killed at the door of his church.  At this
period, it was admitted that the Turkish infantry, cavalry, and artillery were
the best in the world.  Soliman the Magnificent took Belgrade A.D. 1520.  Nine
years afterwards the Turks besieged Vienna, but were repulsed.  Soliman now
prepared for the subjugation of Italy, and was only diverted from it by an
accident which turned him upon the Venetians.  It was not until the battle of
Lepanto that the Turkish advance was fairly checked. Even as it was, in the
complicated policy and intrigues of Europe its different sovereigns could not
trust one another; their common faith had ceased to be a common bond: in all
it had been weakened, in some destroyed. Aeneas Sylvius, speaking of
Christendom, says, "It is a body without a head, a republic without laws or
magistrates.  The pope or the emperor may shine as lofty titles, as splendid
images; but they are unable to command, and no one is willing to obey." But,
during this period of Turkish aggression, had not the religious dissensions of
Christendom been decently composed, there was imminent danger that Europe
would have been Mohammedanized.  A bitter experience of past ages, as well as
of the present, had taught it that the Roman Church was utterly powerless
against such attacks.  Safety was to be looked for, not in any celestial aid,
but in physical knowledge and pecuniary resources, carried out in the
organization of armies and fleets.  Had her authority been derived from the
source she pretended, she should have found an all-sufficient protection in
prayer - indeed, not even that should have been required.  Men discovered at
last that her Litanies and her miracles were equally of no use, and that she
must trust, like any other human tyranny, to cannon and the sword.

     The Turkish aggression led to the staying of the democratic outbreak in
the bosom of the Church - the abstaining for a season from any farther sapping
of the papal autocracy.  It was necessary that ecclesiastical disputes, if
they could not be ended, should, at all events, be kept for a time in
abeyance, and so indeed they were, until the pent-up dissensions burst forth
in "the Reformation." And thus, as we have related, by Mohammedan knowledge in
the West, papal Christianity was well-nigh brought to ruin; thus, by a strange
paradox, the Mohammedan sword in the East gave it for a little longer a
renewed lease of political power, though never again of life.

     To Nicolas V., a learned and able pope, the catastrophe of Constantinople
was the death-blow.  He had been the intimate friend of Cosmo deMedici, and
from him had imbibed a taste for letters and art, but, like his patron, he had
no love for liberty.  It was thus through commerce that the papacy first
learned to turn to art.  The ensuing development of Europe was really based on
the commerce of upper Italy, and not upon the Church.  The statesmen of
Florence were the inventors of the balance of power.  A lover of literature,
Nicolas was the founder of the Vatican Library.  He clearly perceived the only
course in which the Roman system could be directed; that it was unfit for,
and, indeed, incompatible with science, but might be brought into unison with
art.  Its influence upon the reason was gone, but the senses yet remained for
it.  In continuing his policy, the succeeding popes acted with wisdom.  They
gratified the genius of their institutions, of their country, and their age.
In the abundant leisure of monasteries, the monks had found occupation in the
illumination of manuscripts.  From the execution of miniatures they gradually
rose to an undertaking of greater works.  In that manner painting had
originated in Italy in the twelfth century.  Sculpture, at first merged in
architecture, had extricated herself from that bondage in the fourteenth.  The
mendicant orders, acquiring wealth, became munificent patrons.  From
caligraphic illustrations to the grand works of Michael Angelo and Raffaelle
is a prodigious advance, yet it took but a short time to accomplish it.

     I have now completed the history of the European Age of Faith as far as
is necessary for the purposes of this book.  It embraces a period of more than
a thousand years, counting from the reign of Constantine.  It remains to
consider the intellectual peculiarity that marks the whole period - to review
briefly the agents that exerted an influence upon it and conducted it to its
close.

     Philosophically, the most remarkable peculiarity is the employment of a
false logic, a total misconception of the nature of evidence.  It is
illustrated by miracle-proofs, trial by battle, ordeal tests, and a universal
belief in supernatural agency even for objectless purposes.  On the principles
of this logic, if the authenticity of a thing or the proof of a statement be
required, it is supposed to be furnished by an astounding illustration of
something else.  If the character of a princess is assailed, she offers a
champion; he proves victorious, and therefore she was not frail. If a national
assembly, after a long discussion, cannot decide "whether children should
inherit the property of their father during the lifetime of their
grandfather," an equal number of equal combatants is chosen for each side;
they fight; the champions of the children prevail, and therefore the law is
fixed in their favour.  A relic of some martyr is bought at a great price; no
one seeks to criticize the channel through which it has come, but every one
asks, Can it work a miracle?  A vast institution demands the implicit
obedience of all men.  It justifies its claim, not by the history of the past,
but by promises and threats of the future.  A decrepit crone is suspected of
witchcraft.  She is stripped naked and thrown into the nearest pond: if she
sinks, she is innocent; if she swims, she is in commerce with the Devil.  In
all such cases the intrinsic peculiarity of the logic is obvious enough; it
shows a complete misconception of the nature of evidence. Yet this
ratiocination governed Europe for a thousand years, giving birth to those
marvellous and supernatural explanations of physical phenomena and events upon
which we now look back with unfeigned surprise, half disbelieving that it was
possible for our ancestors to have credited such things.  Against this
preposterous logic the Mohammedans and Jews struck the first blows.  We have
already heard what Algazzali the Arabian says respecting the enchanter who
would prove that three are more than ten by changing a stick into a serpent.
The circumstances under which the Jewish physicians acted we shall consider
presently.

     It will not be useless to devote a little space to this belief in the
supernatural.  It offers an opportunity of showing how false notions may
become universal, embody themselves in law and practical life, and wonderful
to be said, how they may, without anything being done to destroy them, vanish
from sight of themselves, like nightspectres before the day.  At present we
only encounter them among the lowest peasant grades, or among those who have
been purposely kept in the most abject state of ignorance.  Less than a
century ago the clergy of Spain wished to have the Opera prohibited, because
that ungodly entertainment had given rise to a want of rain; but now, in a
country so intellectually backward as that - a witch was burnt there so lately
as A.D. 1781 - such an attempt would call up sly wit, and make the rabble of
Madrid suspect that the archbishop was smarting under the rivalry of the prima
donna, and that he was furbishing up the rusty ecclesiastical enginery to
sustain his cause.

     In the day of their power the ecclesiastical profession were the
supporters of this delusion.  They found it suitable to their interests, and,
by dint of at first persuading others to believe, they at last, by habit, came
to believe in it themselves.  The Mohammedans and Jews were the first to
assail it philosophically and by sarcasm, but its final ruin was brought about
by the action of the two other professions, the legal and the medical. The
lawyers, whose advent to power is seen in the history of Philip the Fair, and
whose rise from that time was very rapid, were obliged to introduce the true
methods of evidence; the physicians, from their pursuits, were perpetually led
to the material explanation of natural phenomena in contradistinction to the
mystical.  It is to the honour of both these professions that they never
sought for a perpetuation of power by schemes of vast organization, never
attempted to delude mankind by stupendous impostures, never compelled them to
desist from the expression of their thoughts, and even from thinking, by
alliances with civil power.  Far from being the determined antagonists of
human knowledge, they uniformly fostered it, and, in its trials, defended it.
The lawyers were hated because they replaced supernatural logic by
philosophical logic; the physicians, because they broke down the profitable
but mendacious system of miracle-cures.

     Yet the Church is not without excuse.  In all her varied history it was
impossible to disentangle her from the principles which at the beginning had
entered into her political organization.  For good or evil, right or wrong,
her necessity required that she should put herself forth as the possessor of
all knowledge within the reach of human intellect - the infallible arbitress
of every question that should arise among men.  Doubtless it was a splendid
imposture, capable for a time of yielding great results, but sooner or later
certain to be unmasked.  Early discovering the antagonism of science, which
could not fail, in due season, to subject her pretensions to investigation,
she lent herself to a systematic delusion of the illiterate, and thereby tried
to put off that fatal day when creeds engendered in the darkness would have to
be examined in the light, enforcing her attempt with an unsparing, often with
a bloody hand.  It was for this reason that, when the inevitable time of trial
came, no intellectual defence could be made in her behalf, and hence there
only remained a recourse to physical and political compulsion. But such a
compulsion, under such circumstances, is not only a testimony to the intrinsic
weakness of that for which it is invoked, it is also a token that they who
resort to it have lost all faith in any inherent power of the system they are
supporting, and that, in truth, it is fast coming to an end.

     The reader will remark, from the incidents connected with supernatural
delusions now to be related, that they follow a law of continuous variation,
the particular embodiment they assumed changing with the condition of the
human mind at each epoch under examination.  For ages they are implicitly
believed in by all classes; then, to a few, but the number perpetually
increasing, they become an idle story of bare-faced imposture.  At last
humanity wakens from its delusion - its dream.  The final rejection of the
whole, in spite of the wonderful amount of testimony which for ages had
accumulated, occurs spontaneously the moment that pyschical development has
reached a certain point.  There can be no more striking illustration of the
definite advancement of the human mind.  The boy who is terror-stricken in a
dark room insensibly dismisses his idle fears as he grows up to be a man.

     Clemens Romanus and Anastasius Sinaita, speaking of Simon Magus, say that
he could make himself invisible; that he formed a man out of air; that he
could pass bodily through mountains without being obstructed thereby; that he
could fly and sit unharmed in flames; that he constructed animated statues and
self-moving furniture, and not only changed his countenance into the
similitude of many other men, but that his whole body could be transformed
into the shape of a goat, a sheep, a snake; that, as he walked in the street,
he cast many shadows in different directions; that he could make trees
suddenly spring up in desert places; and, on one occasion, compelled an
enchanted sickle to go into a field and reap twice as much in one day as if it
had been used by a man.  Of Apollonius of Tyana we are told that, after an
unbroken silence of five years, he comprehended the languages of all animals
and all men; that, under circumstances very picturesquely related, he detected
the genius of a plague at Ephesus, and dragged him, self-convicted, before the
people; that, at the wedding-dinner of Menippus, he caused all the dishes and
viands to vanish, thereby compelling the bride to acknowledge that she was a
vampire, intending to eat the flesh and lap the blood of her husband in the
night; that he exhibited the prodigy of being in many places at the same time;
raised a young woman from the dead; and, finally, weary of the world, ascended
bodily into heaven.

     As Arabian influence spread, ideas of Oriental aspect appear.  There are
peris who live on perfumes, and divs who are poisoned by them; enchanted
palaces; moving statues; veiled prophets, like Mokanna; brazen flying horses;
charmed arrows; dervises who can project their soul into the body of a dead
animal, giving it temporary life; enchanted rings, to make the wearer
invisible, or give him two different bodies at the same time; ghouls who live
in cemeteries, and at night eat the flesh of dead men.  As the European
counterpart of these Perso-Arabic ideas, there are fairies, and their dancing
by moonlight, their tampering with children, and imposing changelings on
horror-stricken mothers.  Every one believes that rain and wind may be
purchased of wizards, and that fair weather may be obtained and storms abated
by prayer.  Whoever attains to wealth or eminence does so by a compact with
Satan, signed with blood.  The head of the Church, Sylvester II., makes a
brazen head, which speaks to him prophetically.  He finds underground
treasures in a subterranean magic palace beneath a mountain.  The protestator
of the Greek emperor is accused of a conspiracy against his master's life by
making invisible men.  Robert Grostete, the Bishop of Lincoln, makes another
speaking head.  Nay, more, Albertus Magnus constructs a complete brazen man,
so cunningly contrived as to serve him for a domestic.  This was at the time
that Thomas Aquinas was living with him.  The household trouble arising from
the excessive garrulity of this simulacrum grew so intolerable - for it was
incessantly making mischief among the other inmates - that Thomas, unable to
bear it any longer, took a hammer and broke the troublesome android to pieces.
This reverend father, known among his contemporaries as the "seraphic doctor,"
was not without experience in the mysterious craft. Annoyed by the frequent
passing of horses near his dwelling, he constructed a magical horse of brass,
and buried it in the road.  From that moment no animal could be made to pass
his door.  Among brazen heads of great celebrity is that of Friar Bacon and
Friar Bungy.  This oracle announced, "Time is; time was; time is passed;"
perhaps it was some kind of clock.  The alchemist Peter d'Apono had seven
spirits in glass bottles.  He had entrapped them by baiting with distilled
dew, and imprisoned them safely by dexterously putting in the corks.  He is
the same who possessed a secret which it is greatly to be regretted that he
did not divulge for the benefit of chemists who have come after him, that,
whatever money he paid, within the space of one hour's time came back of
itself again into his pocket.  That was better than even the philosopher's
stone.

     These supernatural notions were at different times modified by two
intrusive elements, the first being the Perso-Arabic just alluded to, the
second derived from the north of Europe.  This element was witchcraft; for,
though long before, among Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, decrepit women were
known as witches - as the Thessalian crone who raised a corpse from the dead
for Sextus by lashing it with a snake - it was not until a later period that
this element was fairly developed.  A bull of Pope Innocent VIII., published
A.D. 1484, says, "It has come to our ears that numbers of both sexes do not
avoid to have intercourse with the infernal fiends, and that by their
sorceries they afflict both man and beast.  They blight the marriage-bed;
destroy the births of women and the increase of cattle; they blast the corn on
the ground, the grapes in the vineyard, the fruits of the trees, and the grass
and herbs of the field." At this time, therefore, the head of the Church had
not relinquished a belief in these delusions.  The consequences of the
punishment he ordained were very dreadful.  In the valleys of the Alps many
hundred aged women were committed to the flames under an accusation of denying
Christ, dishonouring the crucifix, and solemnizing a devil's sabbath in
company with the fiend.  Such persecutions, begun by papal authority,
continued among illiterate zealots till late times, and, as is well known,
were practised even in America.  Very masculine minds fell into these
delusions.  Thus Luther, in his work on the abuses attendant on private
masses, says that he had conferences with the Devil on that subject, passing
many bitter nights and much restless and wearisome repose; that once, in
particular, Satan came to him in the dead of the night, when he was just
awakened out of sleep.  "The Devil," says Luther, "knows well enough how to
construct his arguments, and to urge them with the skill of a master.  He
delivers himself with a grave and yet with a shrill voice.  Nor does he use
circumlocutions and beat about the bush, but excels in forcible statements and
quick rejoinders.  I no longer wonder that the persons whom he assails in this
way are occasionally found dead in their beds.  He is able to compress and
throttle, and more than once he has so assaulted me and driven my soul into a
corner that I have felt as if the next moment it must leave my body.  I am of
opinion that Gesner and Oecolampadius came in that manner to their deaths.
The Devil's manner of opening a debate is pleasant enough, but he soon urges
things so peremptorily that the respondent in a short time knows not how to
acquit himself."

     Social eminence is no preservative from social delusion.  When it was
affirmed that Agnes Sampson, with two hundred other Scotch witches, had sailed
in sieves from Leith to North Berwick church to hold a banquet with the Devil,
James I. had the torture applied to the wretched woman, and took pleasure in
putting appropriate questions to her after the racking had been duly
prolonged.  It then came out that the two hundred crones had baptized and
drowned a black cat, thereby raising a dreadful storm in which the ship that
carried the king narrowly escaped being wrecked.  Upon this Agnes was
condemned to the flames.  She died protesting her innocence, and piteously
calling on Jesus to have mercy on her, for Christian men would not.  On the
accession of James to the English throne he procured an act of Parliament
against any one convicted of witchcraft, sorcery, or enchantment, or having
commerce with the Devil.  Under this monstrous statute many persons suffered.
At this time England was intellectually in a very backward state.  The statute
remained until 1736 unrepealed.  The French preceded the English in putting a
stop to these atrocities; for Louis XIV., A.D. 1672, by an order in council,
forbade the tribunals from inflicting penalty in accusations of sorcery.

     Can the reader of the preceding paragraphs here pause without demanding
of himself the value of human testimony?  All these delusions, which occupied
the minds of our forefathers, and from which not even the powerful and learned
were free, have totally passed away.  The moonlight has now no fairies; the
solitude no genius; the darkness no ghost, no goblin.  There is no necromancer
who can raise the dead from their graves - no one who has sold his soul to the
Devil and signed the contract with his blood - no angry apparition to rebuke
the crone who has disquieted him.  Divination, agromancy, pyromancy,
hydromancy, cheiromancy, augury, interpreting of dreams, oracles, sorcery,
astrology, have all gone.  It is 350 years since the last sepulchral lamp was
found, and that was near Rome.  There are no gorgons, hydras, chimaeras; no
familiars; no incubus or succubus.  The housewives of Holland no longer bring
forth sooterkins by sitting over lighted chauffers.  No longer do captains buy
of Lapland witches favourable winds; no longer do our churches resound with
prayers against the baleful influences of comets, though there still linger in
some of our noble old rituals forms of supplication for dry weather and rain,
useless but not unpleasing reminiscences of the past.  The apothecary no
longer says prayers over the mortar in which he is pounding to impart a divine
afflatus to his drugs.  Who is there now that pays fees to a relic or goes to
a saint-shrine to be cured?  These delusions have vanished with the night to
which they appertained, yet they were the delusions of fifteen hundred years.
In their support might be produced a greater mass of human testimony than
probably could be brought to bear on any other matter of belief in the entire
history of man; and yet, in the nineteenth century, we have come to the
conclusion that the whole, from the beginning to the end, was a deception.
Let him, therefore, who is disposed to balance the testimony of past ages
against the dictates of his own reason ponder on this strange history; let him
who relies on the authority of human evidence in the guidance of his opinions
now settle with himself what that evidence is worth.