THE BOOK OF THE LANTERN. . So 



reality the legions of devils which so impressed the super- 

 stitious mind of the Florentine goldsmith and sculptor. 

 With far more reason might we suspect the use of the 

 lantern in those manifestations which are said to take 

 place among the so-called spiritualists and their mediums- 

 of to-day. 



We are certainly on much firmer ground when we 

 ascribe the first conception of the instrument to Athanasius 

 Kircher, the learned Jesuit of the seventeenth century, 

 who has left so many volumes to testify to the great gifts 

 which he possessed. For in one of these books, Ars Magna 

 Lucis et Umbrce, we not only find descriptions and dia- 

 grams of numerous optical contrivances (I may note in 

 passing that many of these drawings, redressed and 

 elaborated, appear in modern text-books as new ideas), 

 but several which show that Kircher quite understood the 

 main principle upon which the optical lantern depends. 

 A tracing of one of these rude cuts is given at fig. 1, 

 from which it will be seen that the design to be projected 

 by the lens is illuminated by three candles the brightest 

 form of artificial light then known and an inverted 

 image is thrown upon a screen at a distance. 



Here we have practically the germ of the aphengescope, 

 or opaque form of lantern. But modern writers on the 

 subject, in referring to Kircher, have curiously overlooked 

 this most suggestive drawing, and have given another one 

 from his book, which they erroneously describe as the first 1 

 form of magic lantern. This I also reproduce (see fig. 2). 

 The description appended to the cut certainly does not 

 bear out that view, but points rather to a means of . in - 



B2 



