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BOOK I, CHAPTER XXVII
239

returning, or of prognostications of future things, of enchantments, or sorceries, or tell some other tale of which I could make nothing,[1] —

 Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas,
Nocturnos lemures portentaque Thessala,[2] —

I felt compassion for the poor people deceived by such follies. And now I think that I was at least as much to be pitied myself; not that experience has since then shown me any thing beyond my former beliefs, and not certainly from lack of interest; but reason has taught me that to condemn a thing so positively as false and impossible is to assume the advantage of knowing the boundaries and limits of the will of God and of the power of our mother Nature; and that there is no more notable foolishness in the world than to measure these by our capacity and intelligence. If we call contrary to reason, or miraculous, those things which our reason can not grasp, how many are constantly offered to our sight! When we consider through what mists and how gropingly we are brought to acquaintance with most things that are in our hands, surely we shall find that it is rather familiarity than knowledge which takes away their strangeness, —

(b) Jam nemo, fessus satiate videndi,
Suspicere in coeli dignatur lucida templa,[3] —

(a) and that these same things, if they were presented to us newly, we should find as incredible as any others, or more so.

Si nunc primum mortalibus adsint
Ex improviso, ceu sint objecta repente,
Nil magis his rebus poterat mirabile dici,
Aut minus ante quod auderent fore credere gentes?[4]

  1. ↑ Où je ne peusse pas mordre.
  2. ↑ Dreams, the terrors of magic, miracles, witches, spectres of the night, and Thessalian prodigies. — Horace, Epistles, II, 2.208.
  3. ↑ Now no man, weary and sated with seeing, deigns to lift his eyes to the luminous spaces of the sky. — Lucretius, II, 1038.
  4. ↑ If these things were for the first time unexpectedly presented to mortals, or were suddenly thrown before them, what more wonderful could be thought of, what that previously the world would have less dared to believe possible? — Ibid., 1033.
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