Magic and Witchcraft
by George Moir
1852

Excerpt from Preface:

We have long wished that some English or foreign university would offer a prize for a history of Magic and Witchcraft. The records of human opinion would contain few chapters more instructive than one which should deal competently with the Black Art. For gross and painful as the details of superstitution may be, yet superstitution, by its very etymology, implies a dogma or a system of practice standing upon some basis of fact or truth; and however vain or noxious the superstructure may be, the foundation of it is in some way connected with those deep verities upon which rest also the roots of philosophy and religion. For grand error, and such alone can at any time essentially affect the opinions of mankind in general, is ever the imitation or caricature of some grand truth.