These examples shew clearly, that both Christians and pagans were so
far agreed as to treat the greater number of oracles as purely human
impostures.
From the very nature of things, much that now serves for amusement must
formerly have been appropriated to a higher destination. Ventriloquism
may be quoted as a case in point, affording a ready and plausible
solution of the oracular stones and oaks, of the reply which the seer
Nessus addressed to Pythagoras, (Jamblichus, Vit. Pyth. xxxiii.) and of
the tree which at the command of the Gymnosophists, of upper Egypt,
spoke to Apollonius, "The voice," says Philostratus (Vit. Ap. xi. 5)
"was distinct but weak, and similar to the voice of a woman." But the
oracles, at least if we ascend to their origin, were not altogether
impostures. The pretended interpreters of the decrees of destiny were
frequently plunged into a sort of delirium, and when inhaling the fumes
of some intoxicating drug or powerful gas or vapour, or drinking some
beverage which produced a temporary suspension of the reason, the mind
of the enquirer was predisposed to feverish dreams:[21] if priestcraft
were concerned in the interpretation of such dreams, or eliciting senses
from the wild effusions of the disordered brain of the Pythoness,
Science presided over the investigation of the causes of this phrenzy,
and the advantages which the Thaumaturgists might derive from it.
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