I2 g BACON 



when the body is in health and strength. And this state of the 

 mind is commonly procured or promoted by abstinence, and 

 principally such things as withdraw the mind from exercising 

 the functions of the body, that it may thus enjoy its own nature 

 without any external interruption. But divination by influx is 

 grounded upon another supposition, viz., that the mind, as a 

 mirror, may receive a secondary illumination from the fore- 

 knowledge of God and spirits, whereto likewise the above-men- 

 tioned state and regimen of the body are conducive. For the 

 same abstraction of the mind causes it more powerfully to use 

 its own nature, and renders it more susceptive of divine influxes, 

 only in divinations by influx the soul is seized with a kind of 

 rapture, and as it were impatience 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 imagination 

 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 the 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 impres- 

 sions, conveyances, 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 un- 

 lucky, of the strokes of love, envy, and the like. And this is 

 attended with the inquiry, how the imagination may be height- 

 ened and fortified ; for if a strong imagination has such power, 

 it is worth knowing by what means to exalt and raise it. 



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

 magic would slyly and indirectly insinuate itself, under a spe- 

 cious pretence that ceremonies, characters, charms, gesticula- 

 tions, 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 de- 

 votion in prayer. But, allowing the force of imagination to be 



