Clifton College Scientific Society. 57 



let us remember that the belief in witches and demons, 

 spells, conjurations, philtres, and raisings of the devil was 

 as firm then amongst all classes of society, as it is now in 

 many a lone hamlet in Cornwall, and many a green Tillage 

 of Galway, or of Wales. But is there not much superstition 

 of one kind or other elsewhere? Ay, let us each think of 

 our own pet superstitions, and of those of the age, before we 

 cry shame on the astrology of Robert Fludd. 



And now one word in conclusion as to the general cha- 

 racter of the philosophy of Fludd. Eminently a syncretist, 

 he endeavoured to unite the dominant tenets of many and 

 diverse philosophies by means of a cement furnished by his 

 own active and comprehensive intellect. I suppose that his 

 philosophy is tinctured with somewhat of almost every sys- 

 tem which had gone before. The base of his system is sunk 

 deep in Eastern soil, the summit is obscured by mists of 

 Middle Age origin. Chaldaic astrology and divination, 

 Arabic geomancy and magic, the theurgy and theosophy of 

 the Neo-Platonists, the aphorisms and tenets of the supposed 

 Hermes Trismegistus with the paraphrases of Cornelius 

 Agrippa, the traditions and the dreams of the Kabbalists 

 and Talmudists, Alchemical and Paracelsian visions and 

 dogmas, aud a spice of the learning of the Ancient Greeks — 

 let all these be united with much show of relevancy by an 

 indubitably fertile and astute intellect, aud let the whole be 

 pervaded by a strong underciu-rent of Christian tenets, and 

 you have the philosophy of Eobert Eludd. A philosophy, I 

 need not say, utterly undefinable : a wondroiis blending of 

 the ancient thought of the Eastern world with the modern 

 thought of the Western world ; a union of Christian with 

 barbaric lore, of the wisdom of the Ancients and the reveries 

 of the East with the unfledged crudities of the Renaissance. 

 A mixtm-e of infinitely grand ideas with the wildest vagaries 

 ever conceited by the mind of man ; reverential here, almost 

 blasphemous there ; pantheistic and materialistic ; sublime 

 in one place, ridiculous in another. A philosophy in which 

 wisdom and folly are seated at the same table, while Ekidd 

 acts as their host and endeavours to reconcile them : a philo- 

 sophy based on supermundane influence ; all symbolical, all 

 theosophical, all occult ; in which an assumed influence 

 becomes the arbiter of destinies, and the philosopher him- 

 self a thaumaturgus. 



The philosophy of Eludd could not exist m the face of the 

 great intellectual movement which, in regard to all matters 

 of philosophy and science, glorified the seventeenth century. 



