of the absolute, causeless, and unknowable all,--differs from the mortal
clay--the human body.

In our highly civilized West, where modern languages have been formed,
and words coined, in the wake of ideas and thoughts--as happened with
every tongue--the more the latter became materialized in the cold
atmosphere of Western selfishness and its incessant chase after the
goods of this world, the less was there any need felt for the production
of new terms to express that which was tacitly regarded as obsolete and
exploded "superstition." Such words could answer only to ideas which a
cultured man was scarcely supposed to harbor in his mind. "Magic," a
synonym for jugglery; "Sorcery," an equivalent for crass ignorance; and
"Occultism," the sorry relic of crack-brained, medieval
Fire-philosophers, of the Jacob Boehmes and the St. Martins, are
expressions believed more than amply sufficient to cover the whole field
of "thimble-rigging." They are terms of contempt, and used generally
only in reference to the dross and residues of the Dark Ages and its
preceding aeons of paganism. Therefore have we no terms in the English
tongue to define and shade the difference between such abnormal powers,
or the sciences that lead to the acquisition of them, with the nicety
possible in the Eastern languages--pre-eminently the Sanskrit. What do
the words "miracle" and "enchantment" (words identical in meaning after
all, as both express the idea of producing wonderful things by _breaking
the laws of nature_ [!!] as explained by the accepted authorities)
convey to the minds of those who hear, or who pronounce them? A
Christian--_breaking_ "of the laws of nature," notwithstanding--while
believing firmly in the _miracles_, because said to have been produced
by God through Moses, will either scout the enchantments performed by
Pharoah's magicians, or attribute them to the devil. It is the latter
whom our pious enemies connect with Occultism, while their impious foes,