I. — The ancients, until an epoch which we have

* " Accepimus Democritum Abderitem, ostentatione scrupuli hujus (catochitis lapidis) frequenter usum, ad probandam occultam natures potentiam, in certaminibus quœ contra magos habuit." (Solin. cap. ix.)
f Lucian. Philopseud.
% Diogen. Laert. in Democrit. vit.
268 CONCLUSION.
not presumed to trace back, were so much occupied with particular facts, that they did not seek to arrange and connect them. The moderns, perhaps, fall into the opposite excess. Do they not neglect too much to take advantage of isolated facts deposited in books, and re- produced even in the laboratories, but which, otherwise, do not direct our researches to any immediate applica- tion, nor display either any affinity or any opposition to the existing theories ?
We have seen that much may be gained to natural his- tory by the examination and the discussion of the prodigies related by the ancients : and we contend that the study of their apparent miracles and their magical operations would not be without advantage to physics and to che- mistry. In attempting to arrive at the same results as the Thaumaturgists ; and at which they have allowed us to glance, or that can be supposed to have emanated from them, curious, even useful discoveries, in application to the arts, would be obtained ; and a great service thus rendered to the history of the human mind, as the important sciences lost sight of would be recovered. The loss of these among the Romans, and the Greeks, was owing to, or at least was accelerated by, the absolute defect of method and of theory.