Magic, or the Secret System

XI

Preface.

visionaries Completing the thought from the previous page: "gullible visionaries." The original German Phantasten refers to people prone to delusions or wild imaginings., who allow themselves to be easily persuaded of the strangest and most absurd things and wish to persuade others.

...needs to be read in order to find them not guilty of any dangerous ambush in this sense. In another sense, however, they are just as much wronged when they are held to be secret Jesuits, who only — — etc. This is something that the reviewer of the German translation of Of Errors Original: Des Err., referring to Des Erreurs et de la Vérité (Of Errors and Truth), the 1775 foundational work by Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin. in the G. D. Lib. Original: A. D. Bibl. (Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek), the most influential literary review journal of the German Enlightenment, edited by Friedrich Nicolai, who was known for his anti-mystical stance. would also like to insinuate; but he certainly has it from a false source, for the entire suspicion is based solely and uniquely on an arbitrary assumption by such people who see Jesuits everywhere, wish for them, and would like to have Jesuits everywhere. When the author of Of Errors says that he "keeps more in mind than he says," and "here and there means something quite different than he seems to say," these words surely have quite a different meaning than that they intended to present themselves as Jesuits, who only speak of certain things for appearance's sake without being in earnest about them. If ever a man was in earnest