Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? I do not know by what mighty
magic the planets roll in their fluid paths, confined to circles as
unchanging as if they were rings of steel, nor why the great wave of
ocean follows in a sleepless round upon the skirts of moonlight; nor cam
I say from any certain knowledge that the phases of the heavenly bodies,
or even the falling of the leaves of the forest, or the manner in which
the sands lie upon the sea-shore, may not be knit up by invisible threads
with the web of human destiny. There is a class of minds much more ready
to believe that which is at first sight incredible, and because it is
incredible, than what is generally thought reasonable. Credo quia
impossibile est,--"I believe, because it is impossible,"--is an old
paradoxical expression which might be literally applied to this tribe of
persons. And they always succeed in finding something marvellous, to call
out the exercise of their robust faith. The old Cabalistic teachers
maintained that there was not a verse, line, word, or even letter in the
Bible which had not a special efficacy either to defend the person who
rightly employed it, or to injure his enemies; always provided the
original Hebrew was made use of. In the hands of modern Cabalists every
substance, no matter how inert, acquires wonderful medicinal virtues,
provided it be used in a proper state of purity and subdivision.

I have already mentioned the motives attributed by the Perkinists to the
Medical Profession, as preventing its members from receiving the new but
unwelcome truths. This accusation is repeated in different forms and
places, as, for instance, in the following passage: "Will the medical man
who has spent much money and labor in the pursuit of the arcana of
Physic, and on the exercise of which depends his support in life,
proclaim the inefficacy of his art, and recommend a remedy to his patient
which the most unlettered in society can employ as advantageously as
himself? and a remedy, too, which, unlike the drops, the pills, the