Author: Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Occultism
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
The Occult Sciences
Author: The Occult Sciences
Author: Eusèbe SalvertePublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Curiosities and wonders
Languages : en
Pages : 410
Book Description
The Occult Sciences
Author: Eusèbe SalvertePublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Magic
Languages : en
Pages : 430
Book Description
Occult Sciences
Author: Eusèbe SalvertePublisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110804431X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 403
Book Description
A two-volume 1846 translation of an examination of miracles in ancient times by a French polymath, first published in 1829.
The Occult Sciences. the Philosophy of Magic, Prodigies, and Apparent Miracles.
Author: Eusebe SalvertePublisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781535176644
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 316
Book Description
The history of ancient times abounds in accounts of prodigies and manifestations of supernatural power, which the almost unanimous judgment of the modern world has stamped as pure fiction. The question, however, how such accounts found their way into records purporting to be authentic, received as such by the age that produced them, and preserve and handed down as such to our own times, has, perhaps, never been quite satisfactorily answered. These records are all we have to depend on for our knowledge of the times from which they date, or of which they treat. If their authority be disallowed, past ages become a blank to us. It is a point of some interest, therefore, to account for the presence, in them, of so much that seems incredible, and to show how that into which the apparently fabulous enters in so large a proportion, can yet be received, in the main, as true history. It is no solution of this difficulty to say, that antiquity was credulous, that it exercised no judgment upon the stories to which it gave currency, and believed, without inquiry, things the most improbable and absurd. If this be so, of what value is ancient history at all? Who would give anything for the testimony of those who are incapable of discriminating between what is rational and what is absurd, to whom the impossibility of a matter forms no ground for doubting its truth? In our courts of justice, what credit would a witness meet with, half of whose evidence was essentially incredible? Would not the other half go for nothing, merely on the score of its suspicious association, however credible in itself? lf we are to flatter ourselves that we know anything about the early past, we cannot be indifferent to the character of its historians, whether for veracity or for judgment, and if we find in their recitals many things to which we feel that we cannot yield credence, we are the more interested in the inquiry how these things won credence from them. In this inquiry, M. Salverte comes to our aid, and, with much ingenuity, endeavours to show that the great bulk of what ancient writers hand down to us as prodigy or miracle, instead of being mere fable, is capable of explanation on grounds intelligible to the present age, and thus that history, as far as these things are concerned, may be received as true in its narrative of facts, though it be often in error in the view it takes of the nature of the facts narrated. M. Salverte believes that a great mass of scientific knowledge was treasured up from a very early period in the temples of the heathen world, and even ventures on the bold conjecture, that many of the most illustrious discoveries in the domain of physics.... -The University Magazine: A Literary and Philosophic Review
The occult sciences, the philosophy of magic, prodigies and apparent miracles. From the Fr., with notes, by A.T. Thomson
Author: Anne Joseph Eusèbe Baconnière-SalvertePublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 412
Book Description
The Philosophy of Magic, Prodigies and Apparent Miracles
Author: Anne Joseph Eusèbe Bacconière SalvertePublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Magic
Languages : en
Pages : 406
Book Description
Occult Sciences
Author: Eusebe SalvertePublisher:
ISBN: 9780243610235
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
The Occult Sciences
Author: Eusèbe SalvertePublisher:
ISBN: 9781704235561
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 654
Book Description
This examination of the connection between the belief in miracles and religious practices in ancient times was originally written by French politician and polymath Anne-Joseph-Eusèbe Baconnière de Salverte (1771-1839) and published in 1829. In 1846, it was translated into English by a Scottish physician and writer, Anthony Todd Thomson (1778-1849), and published in two volumes. Thomson explains that Salverte's work was an important study of miracles and the power of priests, and he had 'performed a beneficial service in throwing open the gates of ancient sanctuaries'. However, Thomson also states that he differed from Salverte over the idea of the miraculous, and that he had expunged or heavily edited any passages relating to Christianity, even changing 'miracles' in the original subtitle to 'apparent miracles'. Volume 1 begins with a consideration of human credulity before discussing magic in the ancient world, and offering explanations for supernatural phenomena. Volume 2 discusses the role of drugs and poison in magic, as well as the influence of weather on miraculous events.This edition is an exact facsimile of the 1847 edition currently held by The National Library of Medicine.
The Occult Sciences. the Philosophy of Magic, Prodigies, and Apparent Miracles.
Author: Eusebe SalvertePublisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781535175579
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Book Description
From the PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR. Is not the history of civilization, in the most extended sense of this word, the history of mankind in a social state, one of the most important of all our studies? About twenty years ago, consulting less my talents than my zeal, I undertook to retrace this history, and in 1813, I published an introduction, in order to give an idea of the manner in which I thought it should be treated. This essay received some encouragement, which only convinced me of the necessity of examining more profoundly so important a subject. The history and origin of the sciences occupied a large place in those researches, in which I was engaged, and I was soon convinced that it was impossible to have a just idea of the extent to which the sciences had been carried, among the ancients, without examining the kind of knowledge employed by the founders of those sciences, in working the wonders related in their annals. In the course of this inquiry, I discovered that much information was shut up in the temples, and employed there, during many ages, to excite either wonder or fear; but, in the flight of time, decaying and at last fading altogether away, leaving behind only imperfect traditions, which have since been ranked as fables. The attempts to restore life to these ancient intellectual monuments, accomplished a part of my task which, at the same time, filled up a great period in the history of the human mind. My treatise on this object soon became too ample to form merely a part of the principal work for which it was originally intended. It was easy to detach it, although connected with the object which I had proposed to myself to attain; and thus separated, it forms a whole, susceptible of special interest. I shall content myself with bearing in remembrance the principle which has guided me in my various researches : that principle which distinguishes two very strongly marked forms of civilization, the fixed form, which formerly governed almost the whole world, and which still subsists in Asia; and-the perfectible form, which more or less reigns throughout Europe, although it is not there fully developed; nor has it as yet, borne all those fruits which its elements permit us to anticipate in its progress to perfection....