was able so to impose upon, if so many examples ancient and modern had not taught us how far ignorance is able to degrade all the powers of the human mind. For why need we suppose this famous leader ever really employed the pretended science of magic, when we know in general that mankind hath been at all times and in all countries the dupes of the first impostor, who thought it worth his while to abuse them; that the people who then inhabited Scandinavia were in particular plunged in the thickest clouds of ignorance; that the historians who have transmitted to us the accounts of all these prodigies were Poets, figurative and hyperbolical in their language, fond of the marvellous by profession, and at that time disposed to believe it by habit. That the resemblance of names makes it very easy for us at this time to confound the descriptions given by ancient authors of their supreme Deity, with those which characterize this Asiatic Prince; and finally, that the latter bringing along with him arts before unknown in the North, a luxury and magnificence thought prodigious in that rude country, together with great subtilty, and perhaps other uncommon talents, might easily pass for a God, at a
