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BF 1597 G59

LIVES

OF THE

NECROMANCERS:

OR,

AN ACCOUNT OF THE MOST EMINENT PERSONS IN
SUCCESSIVE AGES, WHO HAVE CLAIMED FOR
THEMSELVES, OR TO WHOM HAS

BEEN IMPUTED BY OTHERS,

THE

EXERCISE OF MAGICAL POWER.

BY WILLIAM GODWIN.

LONDON:

FREDERICK J. MASON, 444, WEST STRAND.

1834.

PREFACE.

THE main purpose of this book is to exhibit a fair delineation of the credulity of the human mind. Such an exhibition cannot fail to be productive of the most salutary lessons.

One view of the subject will teach us a useful pride in the abundance of our faculties. Without pride man is in reality of little value. It is pride that stimulates us to all our great undertakings. Without pride, and the secret persuasion of extraordinary talents, what man would take up the pen with a view to produce an important work, whether of imagination and poetry, or of profound science, or of acute and subtle reasoning and intellectual anatomy? It is pride in this sense that makes the great general and the consummate legislator, that animates us to tasks the most la

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