dly
exceed that of a large number of educated people, who in our
own generation detect in the miracles of animal magnetism,
or the legerdemain of jugglers, an infernal or supernatural
agency.

That witchcraft, or whatever term expresses the criminal
practice, prevailed among the worshippers of Jehovah, is evident
from the repeated anathemas both in their own and the Christian
scriptures, not to speak of traditional legends; but the Hebrew
and Greek expressions seem both to include at least the use of
drugs and perhaps of poison.[14] The Jewish creed, as exposed in
their scriptures, has deserved a fame it would not otherwise
have, because upon it have been founded by theologians, Catholic
and Protestant, the arguments and apology for the reality of
witchcraft, derived from the sacred writings, with an ingenuity
only too common and successful in supporting peculiar prejudices
and interests even of the most monstrous kind.[15]

[14] _Chashaph_ and _Pharmakeia._ Biblical critics are
inclined, however, to accept in its strict sense the
translation of the Jacobian divines. 'Since in the LXX.,'
says Parkhurst, the lexicographer of the N.T., 'this noun
[pharmakeia] and its relatives always answer to some Hebrew
word that denotes some kind of their magical or conjuring
tricks; and since it is too notorious to be insisted upon,
that such infernal practices have always prevailed, and do
still prevail in idolatrous countries, I prefer the other
sense of incantation.'

[15] A sort of ingenuity much exercised of late by 'sober
brows approving with a text' the institution of slavery:
_divine_, according to them; _the greatest evil that afflicts
mankind_, according to Alexander von Humboldt. See _Personal
Narrative_.

In examining the phenomenon as it existed among the Greeks and
Romans, it will be remarked that, while the Greeks seem to have
mainly adopted the ideas of the East, the Roman superstition was
of Italian origin. Their respective expressions for the
predictive or presentient faculty (_manteia_ and _divinatio_), as
Cicero is careful to explain, appear to indicate its different
character with those two peoples: the one being the product of a
sort of madness, the other an elaborate and divine skill. Greek
traditions made them believe that the magic science was brought
from Egypt or Asia by their old philosophic and legislating
sages. Some of the most eminent of the founders of phi