The anatomy of tobacco, or, smoking methodised, divided, and considered after a new fashion / by Leolinus Siluriensis.
- Arthur Machen
- Date:
- 1884
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The anatomy of tobacco, or, smoking methodised, divided, and considered after a new fashion / by Leolinus Siluriensis. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![And they for whom this exposition is chiefly intended are those who deem themselves to have already gone through all human erudition, and to have nothing more to learn. For, unless I mistake, before they have digested many pages they will perceive themselves to have been woefully in the wrong, and that here is laid open a new land of science, set far beyond the limits of Ultima Thule. Nay, more, they will read of men and books before un- known ; and some perchance in their pride and stiffnecked- ness will go so far as to dispute the existence thereof. And at once to put an end for ever to all objections on the matter, I will demonstrate how it has come to pass that such weighty and erudite doctors as Gulielmus Septem- horologiensis, Johannes de Grotibus, Margites Dummer- kopfius, and others have been hitherto unknown to man- kind. Know, then, that when it is said of Pythagoras, “ With an elementary work on arithmetic in his pocket he visited the East for the acquirement of knowledge,” only a part is told, and that a small one. For the truth is that after journeying through Persia and Arabia, and paying a short but lively visit to the land of the Anthropophagi,* he proceeded still further East, until he came to the Seres or Chinese, whom he describeth as yeros iraudapicoSearaTov Kal evTpaTreXuTaTov—a most childlike and bland race, f at which blandness being pleased, he thought to remain there some while. Now it appeareth that he had already formed his mysterious notions concerning the Divine Essence residing in numbers and sounds; and it was these same ideas that * Iamblichus, however, sayetk that his sojourn was a long one, and that he enjoyed the patronage of Helluo XV., King of the Cannibal Isles, who at that period gathered round him the most illustrious poets and philosophers of the age. [See Life and Times of Helluo XV., but lately imprinted for Ivegan Saul at the sign of the Pig and Whistle in Paternoster-row.] f For confirmation of this read llsrte (Cervus Californieus).](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28081559_0014.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
