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274 TRAVELS
which they at firft are unwilling to believe, renders it familiar to ~
their thoughts, and in the end commands the belief of the cre-
dulous. The whole aggregate of fociety is made up of wife men
and fools. ‘The wife men proudly reje@ a doctrine which cannot
furnifh reafons for pretended facts ; a doétrine, the reality of which
can be referred to no known caufe, and fenfible to what a pitch
of refinement impofture may be carried, they are prone to doubt
every thing, and are for ever. afraid of being duped. The half-
wife are in many cafes more fceptical than even the wife;
* a little knowledge is a dangerous thing :” they will never talk or
seafon on their belief: it is a maxim with them to believe as little
as poffible, and thus they fet afide from levity what the former
difapproved from depth of underftanding. The fools, however,
are actually the moft dangerous to all founders of new doétrines,
fuch as we have had under our confideration: they fondly embrace
whatever addreffes itfelf more to the imagination than to the powers
of réafon ; they have a greater relith for what is fupernatural than
for what is philofophical: but fhould they take it into their heads
to afcribe the phenomena that refult from the experiments before
them, to the agency of the devi/, the naturalift, whether he be a
magnetifer or philofopher, will be judged worthy of damnation,
and pafs all the reft of his life for a magician. It is probable the
Baron Silfverkielm was not difpleafed at the arrival of a number
of ftrangers, who furnifhed him with a pretext for reviving his doc-
trinés, as well as for repeating his experiments on different inha-
ditants, who, but to oblige us, would not have fubmitted to his
difcipline.
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