Volume 2

Isis revelata: an inquiry into the origin, progress, and present state of animal magnetism / By J.C. Colquhoun.

  • John Campbell Colquhoun
Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Isis revelata: an inquiry into the origin, progress, and present state of animal magnetism / By J.C. Colquhoun. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the Messenger of mercy to mankind. What won- der, then, if the philosophers, both Grecian and Ro- man, if the poets (who may be considered as his- torians of popular notions) concurred in transmit- ting down this accredited opinion ? Cicero, a most accomplished philosopher as well as orator, him- self an augur too, and therefore probably well ac- quainted with the contents of the Sibylline leaves, (for they were committed to the safe custody of the College of Augurs), in his first book on Divi- nation, gives a story of the prediction of the death of Alexander the Great, by an Indian about to die on the funeral-pile. His words are : c There are certainly some traces of presentiment and divina- tion even among barbarous nations; as Calanus, the Indian, proceeding to death, when he ascended the burning pile, exclaimed : O excellent departure from life ! when, as happened to Hercules, the soul shall ascend into light from the ashes of the mor- tal body. And when Alexander asked him whe- ther he wished to say any thing more, he answer- ed : It is well—I shall see you soon In fact, in the course of a few days afterwards, Alexander died at Babylon.’* * A somewhat analogous and very singular story is told by the late Mr M. G. Lewis, in his Journal of a West India Pro- prietor. The story relates to Plato—not the celebrated philoso- pher of that name, but—the runaway negro, and captain of a troop of banditti in Jamaica—a man of daring courage, and a
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