POPULAR PHILOSOPHICAL BELIEF. 633 



Universe," with destroying more than fifteen millions of natives during 

 his time. " The acrimony of his style was complained of, but the fact 

 was never denied." No nation can practice such atrocities with impu- 

 nity. The day of reckoning may be a little postponed, but it brings its 

 inexorable verdict in the end. The broad hand of an overruling Provi- 

 dence is at last plainly discovered, imposing with an unerring justice the 

 penalty of national crime. There is no need for God to hasten, he has 

 the centuries and eternity to work in. Even now, is not the Spaniard in 

 the hands of an avenger for the Indian blood that cries for retribution 

 from the silver mines of Mexico ? For the failings of the individual 

 there is mercy, but in the ways of eternal justice no mediator is provided 

 for the crimes of society. There is an inflexible recompense of good for 

 good and evil for evil. 



The step which the intellect of the white man has made since the Ref- 

 ormation is very strikingly discerned by comparing the nat- T helatermen _ 

 ural philosophy of the fifteenth with that of the nineteenth cen- tai changes in 

 tury. Its passage to its present condition has been mark- 

 ed by a continual casting away of the marvelous. It is almost impossi- 

 ble for us now to realize the fictions which occupied the minds of our 

 predecessors. To pejietrate "the secrets of nature" is with us a meta- 

 phorical expression ; with them, a portentous and solemn reality, most 

 readily accomplished by the help of familiars and imps, whose services 

 might be secured by forbidden enchantments. The laboratory of an al- 

 chemist was ill furnished which did not possess in the shape of an un- 

 gainly and deformed dwarf such an aid, and who, if not the incarnation 

 of a devil, was at least possessed by one. Operations for the discovery 

 of the philosopher's stone, the powder of projection, and elixir of life, 

 were necessarily commenced by exorcism, invocations, and a favorable 

 aspect of astrological combinations. There were seven planets, and also 

 seven metals, and the guiding spirits which resided in the former exer- 

 cised their influence over the latter, communicating to them their specific 

 virtues. The expressions have lost their significance, though they have 

 descended to' our times, when we call a certain metal mercury, and a salt 

 lunar caustic. 



As Mr. D'Israeli, in bis " Curiosities of Literature," remarks, whoever 

 had been a witness of the miracles of these philosophers might well be 

 prepared to believe any of their declarations. He who had visited the 

 dark chamber of Baptista Porta, and seen with his own eyes its fairy 

 but inverted landscapes, its fields, and rocks, and rivers, and the moving 

 forms of men and animals in their proper colors and indescribable charm 

 of light and shade, the clouds and sky, the magical spectres of things 

 which the fingers could not grasp, a perfect but artificial day-dream, might 

 surely feel justified in also believing in the enchanted mirror upon which, 



