Many of these pretensions are
the result of ignorance; many of deliberate intent to deceive; some,
again, of erroneous philosophical theories. The Tibetan adepts seem to
belong either to the second or to the last of these categories,--or,
perhaps, to an impartial mingling of all three. They import a cumbrous
machinery of auras, astral bodies, and elemental spirits; they divide man
into seven principles, nature into seven kingdoms; they regard spirit as a
refined form of matter, and matter as the one absolute fact of the
universe,--the alpha and omega of all things. They deny a supreme Deity,
but hold out hopes of a practical deityship for the majority of the human
race. In short, their philosophy appeals to the most evil instincts of the
soul, and has the air of being ex-post-facto; whenever they run foul of a
prodigy, they invent arbitrarily a fanciful explanation of it. But it will
be found, I think, that the various phases of hypnotism, and a
systematized use of spiritism, will amply account for every miracle they
actually bring to pass.
Upon the whole, a certain vulgarity is inseparable from even the most
respectable forms of magic,--an atmosphere of tinsel, of ostentation, of
big cry and little wool.
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