far superior results which, through their Theurgic disciplines, the ancients aspired after, different too, as they

were superior to any that we are accustomed to imagine even at the present day. The ordinary effects of Animal Magnetism, or Mesmerism, or Vital Magnetism, or by whatever other term the unknown agency is better expressed, are now so familiarly known in practice that it will be unnecessary to describe them; they have attracted the attention of the best and leading minds of the present age, who have hailed with admiration a discovery which enables man to alleviate pain and maladies insurmountable by other means, and by benevolent disposition of is proper vitality, acting in accord, to restore health and equilibriate repose to his suffering fellow creatures. And thus it is true we can lull the senses, cure the sick, sometimes to restore the blind and deaf to hearing, sight and utterance; and it is a glorious step in progress, cheering and hopeful, a blessing on our mortal suffering state (10). But are we to halt here always, or how long? The ordinary phenomena of lucidity, prevision, community of sense, will, and thought, have long been familiar and might have instigated to more important discovery; but years have passed, and the science has not grown, but retrograded rather in interest and power, since De Mainaduc, Puysegur, Colquhoun, Elliotson, Townshend, Dupotet and the rest, faithful spirits, first set their fellow men on the road of inquiry. But the best effects of Mesmerism, if we connect it with the ancients Sacred Art, appear as trifles in comparison; the Supreme Wisdom they investigated, the Self-Knowledge and perfection of life and immortality promised and said to be bestowed on those initiated in the higher Mysteries! What has mesmerism t do with these things? What wisdom does it unfold? What is its philosophy, or has it yet made an attempt even to investigate the subject-being, the cause of its own effects? In common arts, the ingenuity is set to work how it may advance and adapt them to the best advantage; now capabilities are discovered which, put in action, often prove the fruitful source of more; whereas Mesmerism, dwelling together altogether in the practice (the same which, from the first, unfolded nature as far as it was able), continues to run on with her in the same commonplace round. Our sleepwalkers are little better than dreamers, for the most part, or resemble children born into a new world, without a guide, unable of themselves to educate their latent talents, or discriminate truth from falsehood in their revelations. And, as respects the Universal Medium, they even, who believe in such a thing, take it as it presents itself naturally, having no knowledge of the capabilities or means of improvement, whither it is able to ascend or descend, or what is its right determination. The few experimental tests that have been instituted hitherto prove nothing but to identify the same Imponderable through all; and if we make trial of the Spirits instincts, asking for revelations of prophecy and distant scenes or journeyings through the air --- and they follow us, those patients of our will, we then go out from them to philosophize, or wonder, or to think no more about it, as the case may be; repeating the same mechanical operations, and witnessing similar effects continually over and over again, until at length the enthusiasm which early characterized the novelty and raised expectation about it, has very generally and naturally died away. Now this, according to our gatherings, was not the sort of investigation that the ancients followed in their Mysteries; although working in the same material and with similar instruments, on the same ground, yet their practice was different; for it was conducted upon established principles and with a truly philosophic as well as benevolent aim. Theurgists, indeed, condemn the Spirit of the natural life as degraded and incapable of true intelligence, nor did they therefore value the revelations of its first included sphere; but proceeded at once, passing these, as it appears, in the Lesser Mysteries, to dissolve the medium more entirely; and, as they knew how, to segregate the Vital Spirit away from those defilements and imaginative impressures which, by the birth into sense, had become implanted there, obscuring the intelligence and that divine eye which, as Plato says, is better worth than 10,000 corporeal eyes; for by looking through this alone, when it is purified and strengthened by appropriate aids, the truth pertaining to all beings is perceived. The Neoplatonists wrote largely of the Theurgical art; many books are quoted by St Augustine and is contemporaries which are not transmitted, but were destroyed probably through the sectarian malice and shortsighted policy of the later Roman government, which tolerated nothing but luxury and arms.