"Or a few efreets?" added I.
"Whatsoever you likes, gentlemen. You're best judges, to be sure," answered
Farmer Porter, in an awed and helpless voice.
"Aweel--I'm no that disinclined to believe in the occult sciences. I dinna
haud a'thegither wi' Salverte. There was mair in them than Magia naturalis,
I'm thinking. Mesmerism and magic-lanterns, benj and opium, winna explain
all facts, Alton, laddie. Dootless they were an unco' barbaric an' empiric
method o' expressing the gran' truth o' man's mastery ower matter. But the
interpenetration o' the spiritual an' physical worlds is a gran' truth too;
an' aiblins the Deity might ha' allowed witchcraft, just to teach that
to puir barbarous folk--signs and wonders, laddie, to mak them believe
in somewhat mair than the beasts that perish: an' so ghaists an warlocks
might be a necessary element o' the divine education in dark and carnal
times. But I've no read o' a case in which necromancy, nor geomancy, nor
coskinomancy, nor ony other mancy, was applied to sic a purpose as this.
Unco gude they were, may be, for the discovery o' stolen spunes--but no
that o' stolen tailors.
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