It is the work of ages to wean men and nations from popular illusions,
and the deep-rooted opinions transmitted from sire to son: it cannot
therefore surprise us, that even when the intellectual energy of Greece
was signalizing itself by efforts which have commanded the admiration of
after ages, it should still remain a popular dogma in medicine "that
persons labouring under bodily infirmity, might be thrown into a state
of charmed torpor, in which, though destitute of any previous medical
knowledge, they would be enabled to ascertain the nature of their
malady, as well as of the diseases of others, and devise the means of
their cure." Upon this dogma was founded the mystery of incubations, or
the art of healing by visionary divination.
It is not our object here to discuss whether a man can be capable of
divination: such a power, however, was assigned to him, not only by the
vulgar, but by the greater number of the philosophical sects of
antiquity; and it does appear to savour a little of temerity, that
Epicurus and the cynics should have ventured to reject a belief so
universally and strenuously maintained, and resting on an infinity of
traditions and accounts of prophets, in whom Greece had abounded from
her earliest times, and of whose divine gift of prophecy the firmest
conviction was currently entertained.
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