Published just a year before his seminal Le Sommeil et les Reves (1861), this book by French scholar L. -F. -Alfred Maury (1817 1892) examines the complex history of occult philosophy. A librarian by profession, Maury was widely published in geography, archaeology, medicine, law, psychology and bibliography as well as history, and was a well-known figure in Parisian intellectual circles. In this 1860 publication Maury considers the relationship between science and magic, purporting to demonstrate how people have been 'elevated' from the darkness of supernatural belief into the light of modern...