Difference between revisions of "The Infernal Dictionary"

Many articles written in the ''Dictionnaire Infernal'' illustrate the author's vacillation between rationalism, faith, and willingness to believe without evidence. For example, he admits the possible effectiveness of chiromancy, while rejecting [[cartomancy]]: "It is certain that chiromancy, and especially physiognomy, have at least some plausibility: they draw their predictions from signs which relate to features which distinguish and characterize people; of lines which the subjects carry with themselves, which are the work of nature, and that someone can believe significant, since they are unique to each individual. But the cards, merely human artifacts, not knowing either the future, nor the present, nor the past, have nothing of the individuality of the person consulting them. For a thousand different people they will have the same result; and consulted twenty times about the same subject, they will produce twenty contradictory productions."