ich elevates
the intellect; secondly, that which preserves the body. But the mere art
(extracted from the juices and simples) which recruits the animal vigour
and arrests the progress of decay, or that more noble secret, which I
will only hint to thee at present, by which HEAT, or CALORIC, as ye
call it, being, as Heraclitus wisely taught, the primordial principle
of life, can be made its perpetual renovater,--these I say, would not
suffice for safety. It is ours also to disarm and elude the wrath of
men, to turn the swords of our foes against each other, to glide (if
not incorporeal) invisible to eyes over which we can throw a mist and
darkness. And this some seers have professed to be the virtue of a stone
of agate. Abaris placed it in his arrow. I will find you an herb in yon
valley that will give a surer charm than the agate and the arrow. In one
word, know this, that the humblest and meanest products of Nature are
those from which the sublimest properties are to be drawn."

"But," said Glyndon, "if possessed of these great secrets, why
so churlish in withholding their diffusion? Does not the false or
charlatanic science differ in this from the true and indisputable,--that
the last communicates to the world the process by which it attains its
discoveries; the first boasts of marvellous results, and refuses to
explain the causes?"

"Well said, O Logician of the Schools; but think again. Suppose we were
to impart all our knowledge to all mankind indiscriminately,--alike to
the vicious and the virtuous,--should we be benefactors or scourges?
Imagine the tyrant, the sensualist, the evil and corrupted being
possessed of these tremendous powers; would he not be a demon let loose
on earth? Grant that the same privilege be accorded also to the good;
and in what state would be society? Engaged in a Titan war,--the good
forever on the defensive, the bad forever in assault. In the present
condition of the earth, evil is a more active principle than good, and
the evil would prevail. It is for these reasons that we are not only
solemnly bound to administer our lore only to those who will not misuse
and pervert it, but that we place our ordeal in tests that purify
the passions and elevate the desires. And Nature in this controls and
assists us: for it places awful guardians and insurmountable barriers
between the ambition of vice and the heaven of the loftier science."

Such made a small part of the numerous conversations Mejno