The Greeks, by no means a nation of fools, believed implicitly in the Oracles.

Coming down to comparatively later times, the workers of magic burnt their books before St.Paul.It doesn't say, mind you, that those who pretended to work magic did so; but those who worked magic.
"Early travelers in Persia and India have reported things they saw far surpassing any we have witnessed this evening, and there is certainly a sect in India at present, or rather a body of men, and those, as far as I have been able to learn, of an exceptionally intelligent class, who believe that they possess an almost absolute mastery over the powers of nature.

You see, fifty years back, if anyone had talked about traveling at fifty miles an hour, or sending a message five thousand miles in a minute, he would have been regarded as a madman.

There may yet be other discoveries as startling to be made.
"When I was in England I heard something of a set of people in America who called themselves Spiritualists, some of whom--notably a young man named Home--claimed to have the power of raising themselves through the air.

I am far from saying that such a power exists; it is of course contrary to what we know of the laws of nature, but should such a power exist it would account for the disappearance of the girl from the top of the pole.