204 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



the soul is seized with a kind of rapture, and as it were im 

 patience of the Deity s presence, which the ancients called 

 by the name of sacred fury, whereas in native divination the 

 soul is rather at its ease and free. 



Fascination is the power and intense act of the imagina 

 tion upon the body of another. And here the school of 

 Paracelsus, and the pretenders to natural magic, abusively 

 so called, have almost made the force and apprehension of 

 the imagination equal to the power of faith, and capable 

 of working miracles; others keeping nearer to truth, and 

 attentively considering the secret energies and impressions 

 of things, the irradiations of the senses, the transmissions 

 of thought from one to another, and the conveyances of 

 magnetic virtues, are of opinion that impressions, convey 

 ances, and communications, might be made from spirit to 

 spirit, because spirit is of all things the most powerful in 

 operation and easiest to work on; whence many opinions 

 have spread abroad of master spirits, of men ominous and 

 unlucky, of the strokes of love, envy, and the like. And 

 this is attended with the inquiry, how the imagination 

 may be heightened and fortified; for if a strong imagina 

 tion has such power, it is worth knowing by what means 

 to exalt and raise it. 6 



But here a palliative or defence of a great part of cere 

 monial magic would slily and indirectly insinuate itself, 

 under a specious pretence that ceremonies, characters, 

 charms, gesticulations, amulets, and the like, have not 

 their power from any tacit or binding contract with evil 

 spirits, but that these serve only to strengthen and raise 

 the imagination of such as use them, in the same manner 

 as images have prevailed in religion for fixing men s minds 

 in the contemplation of things and raising the devotion in 

 prayer. But allowing the force of imagination to be great, 



6 The ways of working upon or with the imagination, are touched by the 

 author, in his &quot;Sylva Sylvarum,&quot; under the article Imagination. See more to 

 this purpose in &quot;Descartes upon the Passions,&quot; &quot;Casaubon upon Enthusiasm,&quot; 

 Father Malebranche s &quot;Eecherche de la Verite,&quot; and Lord Shaftesbury s &quot;Let 

 ter upon Enthusiasm.&quot; Shaw. 



