han magic art."

The practice of French writers in the oldest times was, so far as we
have been able to discover, to use the word _prestige_ at first in the
signification above assigned to the Latin "praestigiae" (_prestige_,
_prestigiateur_, _-trice_, _prestigieux_). The use of the word was not
restricted to the prestige of prophets, conjurers, demons, but was
transferred by analogy to delusions the cause of which is not regarded
any longer as supernatural. Diderot actually makes mention of the
prestige of harmony. The word "prestige" became transfigured, ennobled,
and writers and orators refined it so as to make it applicable to
analogies of the remotest character. Rousseau refers to the prestige of
our passions, which dazzles the intellect and deceives wisdom. Prestige
is the name continually given to every kind of spell, the effect of
which reminds us of "prestige" ("cet homme exerce une influence que
rassemble a une prestige"--Littre), and to all magic charms and
attractive power which is capable of dulling the intellect while it
enhances sensation. We may read of the prestige of fame, of the power
which, in default of prestige, is brute force; in 1869 numberless
placards proclaimed through the length and breadth of Paris that
Bourbeau, Minister of Public Instruction, though reputed to be a
splendid lawyer, "lacked prestige"--"Bourbeau manque de prestige." The
English and German languages make use of the word in the latter meaning
as opposed to the imaginary virtue of the conjurer; the same
signification is applied, generally speaking, to the Italian and Spanish
_prestigio_, only that the Italian _prestigiao_ and the Spanish
_prestigiador_, just like the French _prestigiateur_, have, as opposed
to the more recent meaning, kept the older significance; neither of them
means anything more or less than conjurer or juggler.

The market clown, the rope-walker, the sword-swallower, the reciter of
long poems, the clever manipulator who defies imitation--all possess
prestige: but on the other hand, prestige surrounds demoniacal spells,
wizardry, and all effectiveness not comprehensible by logic.

We state something of someone when we say that he possesses prestige;
but our statement is not clear, and the predicate cannot be
distinguished from the subject. Of what is analysable, well-known,
commonplace, or what we succeed in understanding thoroughly, in
attaining or imitating, we do not say that it possesses prestige.

W