THE ROSICRUCIANS. 371 



(i We have our philosophical persons to make modern and 

 familiar things supernatural and causeless." 1 



If the study of the magnet in England had continued 

 nothing more than a mere amusement, the conditions for 

 the advancement and increase of both magnetic and elec- 

 trical knowledge would have been vastly better than those 

 which prevailed before half of the seventeenth century had 

 ended. All physical science was under the domination of 

 the theologians, and the rising Puritanism was scarcely 

 more tolerant of it than was the Church itself. The 

 divines, says Robert Burton, are u too severe and rigid, 

 ignorant and peevish, in not admitting the true demon- 

 strations and certain observations of the mathematicians," 

 tyrannizing "over art, science and all true philosophy in 

 suppressing their labors . . . forbidding them to write, to 

 speak a truth, all to maintain their superstition and for 

 profit's sake." 2 Nor does he bear any better testimony 

 concerning the physicians, the only scientific body in the 

 community; for the country, he says, is indeed overrun 

 with mountebanks, quacksalvers, empirics in every street 

 almost and in every village, calling themselves physicians, 

 who serve to "make this noble and profitable art to be 

 evil spoken of and contemned by reason of these base and 

 illiterate artificers." 3 Obviously such an environment was 

 the worst possible for the promotion of the truths of natu- 

 ral philosophy, or, what is the same thing, the very best 

 possible for the cultivation of every item of popular super- 

 stition and ignorance. 



Meanwhile there had arisen in Germany* a sect of fanat- 

 ics calling themselves Rosicrucians or brethren of the 



1 All's Well that Ends Well. Act II., Sc. 3. 



2 Burton: Anatomy of Melancholy, Part 2, 2, Mem. 3. 

 8 Ibid., Part 2, \ 3, Mem. i. 



*Mackay: Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions. London, 

 1852, i. 262. 



