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Lucretius - "Of The Nature of Things"

Burroughs - "The Chessmen of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs"

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Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions

C >> Charles Mackay >> Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions




In the course of time the forgery of the Queen's signature was
discovered. Boehmer the jeweller immediately named the Cardinal de
Rohan and Madame de la Motte as the persons with whom he had
negotiated, and they were both arrested and thrown into the Bastille.
La Motte was subjected to a rigorous examination, and the disclosures
she made implicating Cagliostro, he was seized, along with his wife,
and also sent to the Bastille, A story involving so much scandal
necessarily excited great curiosity. Nothing was to be heard of in
Paris but the Queen's necklace, with surmises of the guilt or
innocence of the several parties implicated. The husband of Madame de
la Motte escaped to England, and in the opinion of many took the
necklace with him, and there disposed of it to different jewellers in
small quantities at a time. But Madame de la Motte insisted that she
had entrusted it to Cagliostro, who had seized and taken it to pieces,
to "swell the treasures of his immense unequalled fortune." She spoke
of him as "an empiric, a mean alchymist, a dreamer on the
philosopher's stone, a false prophet, a profaner of the true worship,
the self-dubbed Count Cagliostro!" She further said that he originally
conceived the project of ruining the Cardinal de Rohan; that he
persuaded her, by the exercise of some magic influence over her mind,
to aid and abet the scheme; and that he was a robber, a swindler, and
a sorcerer!

After all the accused parties had remained for upwards of six
months in the Bastille, the trial commenced. The depositions of the
witnesses having been heard, Cagliostro, as the principal culprit, was
first called upon for his defence. He was listened to with the most
breathless attention. He put himself into a theatrical attitude, and
thus began:-- "I am oppressed! -- I am accused! -- I am calumniated!
Have I deserved this fate? I descend into my conscience, and I there
find the peace that men refuse me! I have travelled a great deal -- I
am known over all Europe, and a great part of Asia and Africa. I have
everywhere shown myself the friend of my fellow-creatures. My
knowledge, my time, my fortune have ever been employed in the relief
of distress! I have studied and practised medicine, but I have never
degraded that most noble and most consoling of arts by mercenary
speculations of any kind. Though always giving, and never receiving, I
have preserved my independence. I have even carried my delicacy so far
as to refuse the favours of kings. I have given gratuitously my
remedies and my advice to the rich: the poor have received from me
both remedies and money. I have never contracted any debts, and my
manners are pure and uncorrupted." After much more self-laudation of
the same kind, he went on to complain of the great hardships he had
endured in being separated for so many months from his innocent and
loving wife, who, as he was given to understand, had been detained in
the Bastille, and perhaps chained in an unwholesome dungeon. He denied
unequivocally that he had the necklace, or that he had ever seen it;
and to silence the rumours and accusations against him, which his own
secrecy with regard to the events of his life had perhaps originated,
he expressed himself ready to satisfy the curiosity of the public, and
to give a plain and full account of his career. He then told a
romantic and incredible tale, which imposed upon no one. He said he
neither knew the place of his birth nor the name of his parents, but
that he spent his infancy in Medina in Arabia, and was brought up
under the name of Acharat. He lived in the palace of the Great Muphti
in that city, and always had three servants to wait upon him, besides
his preceptor, named Althotas. This Althotas was very fond of him, and
told him that his father and mother, who were Christians and nobles,
died when he was three months old, and left him in the care of the
Muphti. He could never, he said, ascertain their names, for whenever
he asked Althotas the question, he was told that it would be dangerous
for him to know. Some incautious expressions dropped by his preceptor
gave him reason to think they were from Malta. At the age of twelve he
began his travels, and learned the various languages of the East. He
remained three years in Mecca, where the Cherif, or governor, showed
him so much kindness, and spoke to him so tenderly and affectionately,
that he sometimes thought that personage was his father. He quitted
this good man with tears in his eyes, and never saw him afterwards;
but he was convinced that he was, even at that moment, indebted to his
care for all the advantages he enjoyed. Whenever he arrived in any
city, either of Europe or Asia, he found an account opened for him at
the principal bankers' or merchants'. He could draw upon them to the
amount of thousands and hundreds of thousands; and no questions were
ever asked beyond his name. He had only to mention the word Acharat,
and all his wants were supplied. He firmly believed that the Cherif of
Mecca was the friend to whom all was owing. This was the secret of his
wealth, and he had no occasion to resort to swindling for a
livelihood. It was not worth his while to steal a diamond necklace
when he had wealth enough to purchase as many as he pleased, and more
magnificent ones than had ever been worn by a Queen of France. As to
the other charges brought against him by Madame de la Motte, he had
but a short answer to give. She had called him an empiric. He was not
unfamiliar with the word. If it meant a man who, without being a
physician, had some knowledge of medicine, and took no fees -- who
cured both rich and poor, and took no money from either, he confessed
that he was such a man, that he was an empiric. She had also called
him a mean alchymist. Whether he were an alchymist or not, the epithet
mean could only be applied to those who begged and cringed, and he had
never done either. As regarded his being a dreamer about the
philosopher's stone, whatever his opinions upon that subject might be,
he had been silent, and had never troubled the public with his dreams.
Then, as to his being a false prophet, he had not always been so; for
he had prophesied to the Cardinal de Rohan that Madame de la Motte
would prove a dangerous woman, and the result had verified the
prediction. He denied that he was a profaner of the true worship, or
that he had ever striven to bring religion into contempt; on the
contrary, he respected every man's religion, and never meddled with
it. He also denied that he was a Rosicrucian, or that he had ever
pretended to be three hundred years of age, or to have had one man in
his service for a hundred and fifty years. In conclusion, he said
every statement that Madame de la Motte had made regarding him was
false, and that she was mentiris impudentissime, which two words he
begged her counsel to translate for her, as it was not polite to tell
her so in French.

Such was the substance of his extraordinary answer to the charges
against him; an answer which convinced those who were before doubtful
that he was one of the most impudent impostors that had ever run the
career of deception. Counsel were then heard on behalf of the Cardinal
de Rohan and Madame de la Motte. It appearing clearly that the
Cardinal was himself the dupe of a vile conspiracy; and there being no
evidence against Cagliostro, they were both acquitted. Madame de la
Motte was found guilty, and sentenced to be publicly whipped, and
branded with a hot iron on the back.

Cagliostro and his wife were then discharged from custody. On
applying to the officers of the Bastille for the papers and effects
which had been seized at his lodgings, he found that many of them had
been abstracted. He thereupon brought an action against them for the
recovery of his MSS. and a small portion of the powder of
transmutation. Before the affair could be decided, he received orders
to quit Paris within four-and-twenty hours. Fearing that if he were
once more inclosed in the dungeons of the Bastille he should never see
daylight again, he took his departure immediately and proceeded to
England. On his arrival in London he made the acquaintance of the
notorious Lord George Gordon, who espoused his cause warmly, and
inserted a letter in the public papers, animadverting upon the conduct
of the Queen of France in the affair of the necklace, and asserting
that she was really the guilty party. For this letter Lord George was
exposed to a prosecution at the instance of the French Ambassador -
found guilty of libel, and sentenced to fine and a long imprisonment.

Cagliostro and the Countess afterwards travelled in Italy, where
they were arrested by the Papal Government in 1789, and condemned to
death. The charges against him were, that he was a freemason, a
heretic, and a sorcerer. This unjustifiable sentence was afterwards
commuted into one of perpetual imprisonment in the Castle of St.
Angelo. His wife was allowed to escape severer punishment by immuring
herself in a nunnery. Cagliostro did not long survive. The loss of
liberty preyed upon his mind -- accumulated misfortunes had injured
his health and broken his spirit, and he died early in 1790. His fate
may have been no better than he deserved, but it is impossible not to
feel that his sentence for the crimes assigned was utterly disgraceful
to the government that pronounced it.

PRESENT STATE OF ALCHYMY.

We have now finished the list of the persons who have most
distinguished themselves in this foolish and unprofitable pursuit.
Among them are men of all ranks, characters, and conditions; the
truthseeking, but erring philosopher; the ambitious prince and the
needy noble, who have believed in it; as well as the designing
charlatan, who has not believed in it, but has merely made the
pretension to it the means of cheating his fellows, and living upon
their credulity. One or more of all these classes will be found in the
foregoing pages. It will be seen, from the record of their lives, that
the delusion, humiliating as it was to human intellect, was not
altogether without its uses. Men, in striving to gain too much, do not
always overreach themselves: if they cannot arrive at the inaccessible
mountain-top, they may, perhaps, get half way towards it, and pick up
some scraps of wisdom and knowledge on the road. The useful science of
chemistry is not a little indebted to its spurious brother of alchymy.
Many valuable discoveries have been made in that search for the
impossible, which might otherwise have been hidden for centuries yet
to come. Roger Bacon, in searching for the philosopher's stone,
discovered gunpowder, a still more extraordinary substance. Van
Helmont, in the same pursuit, discovered the properties of gas; Geber
made discoveries in chemistry which were equally important; and
Paracelsus, amidst his perpetual visions of the transmutation of
metals, found that mercury was a remedy for one of the most odious and
excruciating of all the diseases that afflict humanity.

In our day, no mention is made in Europe of any new devotees of
the science. The belief in witchcraft, which is scarcely more absurd,
still lingers in the popular mind: but none are so credulous as to
believe that any elixir could make man live for centuries, or turn all
our iron and pewter into gold. Alchymy, in Europe, may be said to be
wholly exploded; but in the East it still flourishes in as great
repute as ever. Recent travellers make constant mention of it,
especially in China, Hindostan, Persia, Tartary, Egypt, and Arabia.


BOOK II.

FORTUNE TELLING.

And men still grope t' anticipate
The cabinet designs of Fate;
Apply to wizards to foresee
What shall and what shall never be.
Hudibras, part iii. canto 3.

In accordance with the plan laid down in the introduction to this
volume, we proceed to the consideration of the follies into which men
have been led by their eager desire to pierce the thick darkness of
futurity. God himself, for his own wise purposes, has more than once
undrawn the impenetrable veil which shrouds those awful secrets; and,
for purposes just as wise, he has decreed that, except in these
instances, ignorance shall be our lot for ever. It is happy for man
that he does not know what the morrow is to bring forth; but, unaware
of this great blessing, he has, in all ages of the world,
presumptuously endeavoured to trace the events of unborn centuries,
and anticipate the march of time. He has reduced this presumption into
a study. He has divided it into sciences and systems without number,
employing his whole life in the vain pursuit. Upon no subject has it
been so easy to deceive the world as upon this. In every breast the
curiosity exists in a greater or less degree, and can only be
conquered by a long course of self-examination, and a firm reliance
that the future would not be hidden from our sight, if it were right
that we should be acquainted with it.

An undue opinion of our own importance in the scale of creation is
at the bottom of all our unwarrantable notions in this respect. How
flattering to the pride of man to think that the stars in their
courses watch over him, and typify, by their movements and aspects,
the joys or the sorrows that await him! He, less in proportion to the
universe than the all but invisible insects that feed in myriads on a
summer's leaf, are to this great globe itself, fondly imagines that
eternal worlds were chiefly created to prognosticate his fate. How we
should pity the arrogance of the worm that crawls at our feet, if we
knew that it also desired to know the secrets of futurity, and
imagined that meteors shot athwart the sky to warn it that a tom-tit
was hovering near to gobble it up; that storms and earthquakes, the
revolutions of empires, or the fall of mighty monarchs, only happened
to, predict its birth, its progress, and its decay! Not a whit less
presuming has man shown himself; not a whit less arrogant are the
sciences, so called, of astrology, augury, necromancy, geomancy,
palmistry, and divination of every kind.

Leaving out of view the oracles of pagan antiquity and religious
predictions in general, and confining ourselves solely to the persons
who, in modern times, have made themselves most conspicuous in
foretelling the future, we shall find that the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries were the golden age of these impostors. Many of
them have been already mentioned in their character of alchymists. The
union of the two pretensions is not at all surprising. It was to be
expected that those who assumed a power so preposterous as that of
prolonging the life of man for several centuries, should pretend, at
the same time, to foretell the events which were to mark that
preternatural span of existence. The world would as readily believe
that they had discovered all secrets, as that they had only discovered
one. The most celebrated astrologers of Europe, three centuries ago,
were alchymists. Agrippa, Paracelsus, Dr. Dee, and the Rosicrucians,
all laid as much stress upon their knowledge of the days to come, as
upon their pretended possession of the philosopher's stone and the
elixir of life. In their time, ideas of the wonderful, the diabolical,
and the supernatural, were rifer than ever they were before. The devil
or the stars were universally believed to meddle constantly in the
affairs of men; and both were to be consulted with proper ceremonies.
Those who were of a melancholy and gloomy temperament betook
themselves to necromancy and sorcery; those more cheerful and
aspiring, devoted themselves to astrology. The latter science was
encouraged by all the monarchs and governments of that age. In
England, from the time of Elizabeth to that of William and Mary,
judicial astrology was in high repute. During that period flourished
Drs. Dee, Lamb, and Forman; with Lilly, Booker, Gadbury, Evans, and
scores of nameless impostors in every considerable town and village in
the country, who made it their business to cast nativities, aid in the
recovery of stolen goods, prognosticate happy or unhappy marriages,
predict whether journeys would be prosperous, and note lucky moments
for the commencement of any enterprise, from the setting up of a
cobler's shop to the marching of an army. Men who, to use the words of
Butler, did

"Deal in Destiny's dark counsel,
And sage opinion of the moon sell;
To whom all people far and near
On deep importance did repair,
When brass and pewter pots did stray,
And linen slunk out of the way."

In Lilly's Memoirs of his Life and Times, there are many notices
of the inferior quacks who then abounded, and upon whom he pretended
to look down with supreme contempt; not because they were astrologers,
but because they debased that noble art by taking fees for the
recovery of stolen property. From Butler's Hudibras and its curious
notes, we may learn what immense numbers of these fellows lived upon
the credulity of mankind in that age of witchcraft and diablerie. Even
in our day how great is the reputation enjoyed by the almanac-makers,
who assume the name of Francis Moore. But in the time of Charles I.
and the Commonwealth, the most learned, the most noble, and the most
conspicuous characters did not hesitate to consult astrologers in the
most open manner. Lilly, whom Butler has immortalized under the name
of Sydrophel, relates, that he proposed to write a work called "An
Introduction to Astrology," in which he would satisfy the whole
kingdom of the lawfulness of that art. Many of the soldiers were for
it, he says, and many of the Independent party, and abundance of
worthy men in the House of Commons, his assured friends, and able to
take his part against the Presbyterians, who would have silenced his
predictions if they could. He afterwards carried his plan into
execution, and when his book was published, went with another
astrologer named Booker to the headquarters of the parliamentary army
at Windsor, where they were welcomed and feasted in the garden where
General Fairfax lodged. They were afterwards introduced to the
general, who received them very kindly, and made allusion to some of
their predictions. He hoped their art was lawful and agreeable to
God's word; but he did not understand it himself. He did not doubt,
however, that the two astrologers feared God, and therefore he had a
good opinion of them. Lilly assured him that the art of astrology was
quite consonant to the Scriptures; and confidently predicted from his
knowledge of the stars, that the parliamentary army would overthrow
all its enemies. In Oliver's Protectorate, this quack informs us that
he wrote freely enough. He became an Independent, and all the soldiery
were his friends. When he went to Scotland, he saw a soldier standing
in front of the army, with a book of prophecies in his hand,
exclaiming to the several companies as they passed by him, "Lo! hear
what Lilly saith: you are in this month promised victory! Fight it
out, brave boys! and then read that month's prediction!"

After the great fire of London, which Lilly said he had foretold,
he was sent for by the committee of the House of Commons appointed to
inquire into the causes of the calamity. In his "Monarchy or no
Monarchy," published in 1651, he had inserted an hieroglyphical plate,
representing on one side persons in winding sheets digging graves; and
on the other a large city in flames. After the great fire some sapient
member of the legislature bethought him of Lilly's book, and having
mentioned it in the house, it was agreed that the astrologer should be
summoned. Lilly attended accordingly, when Sir Robert Brooke told him
the reason of his summons, and called upon him to declare what he
knew. This was a rare opportunity for the vain-glorious Lilly to vaunt
his abilities; and he began a long speech in praise of himself and his
pretended science. He said, that after the execution of Charles I, he
was extremely desirous to know what might from that time forth happen
to the parliament and to the nation in general. He, therefore,
consulted the stars and satisfied himself. The result of his judgment
he put into emblems and hieroglyphics, without any commentary, so that
the true meaning might be concealed from the vulgar, and made manifest
only to the wise; imitating in this the example of many wise
philosophers who had done the like.

"Did you foresee the year of the fire?" said a member. "No!" quoth
Lilly, "nor was I desirous: of that I made no scrutiny." After some
further parley the house found they could make nothing of the
astrologer, and dismissed him with great civility.

One specimen of the explanation of a prophecy given by Lilly, and
related by him with much complacency, will be sufficient to show the
sort of trash by which he imposed upon the million. "In the year
1588," says he, "there was a prophecy printed in Greek characters,
exactly deciphering the long troubles of the English nation from 1641
to 1660;" and it ended thus:-- "And after him shall come a dreadful
dead man, and with him a royal G, of the best blood in the world, and
he shall have the crown, and shall set England on the right way, and
put out all heresies." The following is the explanation of this
oracular absurdity:--

"Monkery being extinguished above eighty or ninety years, and the
Lord General's name being Monk, is the dead man. The royal G. or C,
[it is gamma in the Greek, intending C. in the Latin, being the third
letter in the Alphabet] is Charles II, who for his extraction may be
said to be of the best blood of the world."

In France and Germany astrologers met even more encouragement than
they received in England. In very early ages, Charlemagne and his
successors fulminated their wrath against them in common with
sorcerers. Louis XI, that most superstitious of men, entertained great
numbers of them at his court; and Catherine de Medicis, that most
superstitious of women, hardly ever took any affair of importance
without consulting them. She chiefly favoured her own countrymen; and
during the time she governed France, the land was overrun by Italian
conjurors, necromancers, and fortune-tellers of every kind. But the
chief astrologer of that day, beyond all doubt, was the celebrated
Nostradamus, physician to her husband, King Henry II. He was born in
1503, at the town of St. Remi, in Provence, where his father was a
notary. He did not acquire much fame till he was past his fiftieth
year, when his famous "Centuries," a collection of verses, written in
obscure and almost unintelligible language, began to excite attention.
They were so much spoken of in 1556, that Henry II. resolved to attach
so skilful a man to his service, and appointed him his physician. In a
biographical notice of him prefixed to the edition of his "Vraies
Centuries," published at Amsterdam in 1668, we are informed that he
often discoursed with his royal master on the secrets of futurity, and
received many great presents as his reward, besides his usual
allowance for medical attendance. After the death of Henry, he retired
to his native place, where Charles IX. paid him a visit in 1564, and
was so impressed with veneration for his wondrous knowledge of the
things that were to be, not in France only, but in the whole world for
hundreds of years to come, that he made him a counsellor of state, and
his own physician, besides treating him in other matters with a royal
liberality. "In fine," continues his biographer, "I should be too
prolix were I to tell all the honours conferred upon him, and all the
great nobles and learned men that arrived at his house, from the very
ends of the earth, to see and converse with him as if he had been an
oracle. Many strangers, in fact, came to France for no other purpose
than to consult him."

The prophecies of Nostradamus consist of upwards of a thousand
stanzas, each of four lines, and are to the full as obscure as the
oracles of They take so great a latitude, both as to time and space,
that they are almost sure to be fulfilled somewhere or other in the
course of a few centuries; A little ingenuity like that evinced by
Lilly, in his explanation about General Monk and the dreadful dead
man, might easily make events to fit some of them.

Let us try. In his second century, prediction 66, he says,-- '

"From great dangers the captive is escaped.
A little time, great fortune changed.
In the palace the people are caught.
By good augury the city is besieged."

"What is this," a believer might exclaim, "but the escape of Napoleon
from Elba -- his changed fortune, and the occupation of Paris by the
allied armies?" -- Let us try again. In his third century, prediction
98, he says,--

"Two royal brothers will make fierce war on each other;
So mortal shall be the strife between them,
That each one shall occupy a fort against the other;
For their reign and life shall be the quarrel."

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