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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 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 powers (1834) was the final book written by English journalist, political philosopher and novelist William Godwin. The book concerns paranormal legends from western and middle eastern history. In 1835 it was reviewed by Edgar Allan Poe of the Southern Literary Messenger. 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 laborious, and causes us to shrink from no difficulty, and to be confounded and overwhelmed with no obstacle that can be interposed in our path. Nothing can be more striking than the contrast between man and the inferior animals. The latter live only for the day, and see for the most part only what is immediately before them. But man lives in the past and the future. He reasons upon and improves by the past; he records the acts of a long series of generations: and he looks into future time, lays down plans which he shall be months and years in bringing to maturity, and contrives machines and delineates systems of education and government, which may gradually add to the accommodations of all, and raise the species generally into a nobler and more honourable character than our ancestors were capable of sustaining

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