In Point Of Fact Magicians Appear To

The Advance Of Knowledge Is An Infinite Progression Towards A Goal That Ever Recedes.

With The Advance Of Knowledge, Therefore, Prayer And Sacrifice Assume The Leading Place In Religious Ritual; And Magic; Which Once Ranked With Them As A Legitimate Equal, Is Gradually Relegated To The Background And Sinks To The Level Of A Black Art.

For Extending Its Sway, Partly By Force Of Arms, Partly By The Voluntary Submission Of Weaker Tribes, The Community Soon Acquires Wealth And Slaves, Both Of Which, By Relieving Some Classes From The Perpetual Struggle For A Bare Subsistence, Afford Them An Opportunity Of Devoting Themselves To That Disinterested Pursuit Of Knowledge Which Is The Noblest And Most Powerful Instrument To Ameliorate The Lot Of Man.

But Once A Fool Always A Fool, And The Greater The Power In His Hands The More Disastrous Is Likely To Be The Use He Makes Of It. The Heaviest Calamity In English History, The Breach With America, Might Never Have Occurred If George The Third Had Not Been An Honest Dullard.

From The Earliest Times Man Has Been Engaged In A Search For General Rules Whereby To Turn The Order Of Natural Phenomena To His Own Advantage, And In The Long Search He Has Scraped Together A Great Hoard Of Such Maxims, Some Of Them Golden And Some Of Them Mere Dross. The True Or Golden Rules Constitute The Body Of Applied Science Which We Call The Arts; The False Are Magic.