THEIR MYSTICISM. 325 



the Creation to the present Age." The list of per- 

 sons whom he thus thinks it necessary to protect, 

 are of various classes and ages. Alkindi, Geber, 

 Artephius, Thebit, Raymund Lully, Arnold de Villa 

 Nova, Peter of Apono, and Paracelsus, had in- 

 curred the black suspicion as physicians or alche- 

 mists. Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Michael 

 Scot, Picus of Mirandula, and Trithemius, had not 

 escaped it, though ministers of religion. Even 

 dignitaries, such as Robert Grosteste, bishop of Lin- 

 coln, Albertus Magnus, bishop of Ratisbon, Popes 

 Sylvester the Second, and Gregory the Seventh, 

 had been involved in the wide calumny. In the 

 same way in which the vulgar confounded the 

 eminent learning and knowledge which had ap- 

 peared in recent times, with skill in dark and 

 supernatural arts, they converted into wizards all 

 the best-known names in the rolls of fame ; as 

 Aristotle, Solomon, Joseph, Pythagoras; and, finally, 

 the poet Virgil was a powerful and skilful necro- 

 mancer, and this fancy was exemplified by many 

 strange stories of his achievements and prac- 

 tices. 



The various results of the tendency of the human 

 mind to mysticism, which we have here noticed, 

 form prominent features in the intellectual charac- 

 ter of the world, for a long course of centuries. 

 The theosophy and theurgy of the Neoplatonists, 

 the mystical arithmetic of the Pythagoreans and 



