1
THE PLACE OF MAGIC IN THE INTELLECTUAL HISTORY OF EUROPE
STUDIES IN HISTORY, ECONOMICS AND PUBLIC LAW
EDITED BY THE FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
Volume XXIV] [Number 1
THE PLACE OF MAGIC
IN THE
INTELLECTUAL HISTORY OF EUROPE
BY
LYNN THORNDIKE, Ph.D.,
_Sometime University Fellow in European History_
[Illustration]
New York
THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, AGENTS
LONDON: P. S. KING & SON
1905
COPYRIGHT, 1905,
BY
LYNN THORNDIKE
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
ILLUSTRATIONS OF BELIEF IN MAGIC IN MEDIÆVAL AND IN EARLY MODERN TIMES
PAGE
General belief in witchcraft, in astrology, and in the existence
of magicians 11
Even the most educated men believed in astrology 12
Further illustration of such beliefs among men of learning, and
even among scientists 13
Isidore and Bede 14
Alexander of Neckam 15
Michael Scot 16
Roger Bacon 18
Bacon’s acceptance of astrology 18
Bacon’s belief in occult influence 19
Vincent de Beauvais, Bernard Gordon, Albertus Magnus, Arnald of
Villanova 19
Cabalistic doctrines of Renaissance scholars 20
Jerome Cardan 22
Paracelsus and Tycho Brahe 22
Francis Bacon 23
Summary of these beliefs 23
Question whether they are all closely connected 24
Question whether they were regarded by their authors as magic 25
Importance of magic 26
CHAPTER II
MAGIC; ITS ORIGINS, AND RELATIONS TO SCIENCE
Magic once regarded as a reality 27
Magic præternatural rather than supernatural 27
Belief in magic perhaps older than belief in divine beings 28
Magic not originally a secret art 28
Attitude of primitive man towards nature 29
His effort to explain strange phenomena 30
His belief in lucky things 31
His desire to know the future 31
Hence the probable origin of belief in magic 31
Chief characteristics of magic 32
Difficulty in defining magic 33
Gradual disappearance of magic before science 34
Possible union of magic and science 34
Importance of union of magic and science 35
Method of treating that theme in this essay 36
CHAPTER III
PLINY’S NATURAL HISTORY
A fitting starting-point for our discussion 37
I. _The Character of the Work_:
Its extensive treatment of both science and magic 37
Objections to regarding it as a true picture of ancient
science 38
Reasons for so regarding it 39
Pliny the Boswell of ancient science 40
Pliny’s relation to mediæval science 41
II. _Pliny’s Discussion of Magic_:
Its significance 41
Pliny’s remarks concerning the history of magic 42
“Magic” false, according to Pliny 42
“Magic” an obscene and criminal art, according to Pliny 44
III. _Illustrations of Pliny’s Fundamental Belief in Magic_:
Inconsistency of his declared scepticism 44
His belief that animals possess magic properties 45
His belief that plants have similar occult virtues 45
Strange qualities of minerals 46
Magical powers of man 47
Efficacy of magical ceremonial 48
Pliny’s belief unmistakable 49
Though probably limited 49
Question as to extent of his belief in astrology 50
His account of the heavenly bodies 50
Influence of the stars upon our planet 51
Influence of the stars upon man 52
Belief of Pliny in portents 53
Attitude of Pliny towards various popular superstitious
observances 53
Pliny not esoteric 54
Conclusions to be drawn from the _Natural History_ 54
CHAPTER IV
SOME ANTECEDENTS OF THE BELIEF IN MAGIC IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Derivative and cosmopolitan character of intellectual life during
the imperial period 56
Extent of our discussion of its antecedents 56
Question as to freedom of Greek thought from magic 57
Some evidence to the contrary 57
Doctrines of the Stoics favorable to magic 59
Pythagorean theory of numbers 59
Attitude of Plato towards “magic,” as he understood the word 60
Plato’s fantastic view of nature 60
Aristotle’s acceptance of astrology 61
Aristotle’s _History of Animals_ 62
Cato’s _De Re Rustica_ 63
CHAPTER V
BELIEF IN MAGIC IN THE EMPIRE
Outline of contents of this chapter 65
I. _General Attitude_:
Prejudice against “magic” and condemnation of Magi 65
Views of Apuleius and of Philostratus 66
In reality a widespread belief in magic 67
Explanation of apparent opposition to astrology 68
Galen 69
Neo-Platonism 70
Philosophy confounded with magic 71
II. _Philo of Alexandria and Allegorical Interpretation_:
Question as to connection of allegorical interpretation
with magic 72
Historical importance of allegorical interpretation and of
Philo 73
Nature of Philo’s allegorical interpretation 73
His influence in the Middle Ages 75
III. _Seneca’s Problems of Nature and Divination_:
Scientific traits of Seneca 75
His tendency to be esoteric and mystical 76
Ground covered by his book 77
His partial rejection of magic 77
His acceptance of divination 78
His discussion of divination from thunder 79
IV. _Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos and Astrology_:
An illustration of the astrology of the scientist 80
Ptolemy and his influence 80
Scientific tone of the preliminary remarks in the
_Tetrabiblos_ 81
An attempt to base astrology upon natural law 82
Ptolemy’s explanation of the influence of the planets 82
Summary of remaining contents of his first book 83
Contents of the other three books 83
V. _The Hermetic Books and Occultism_:
Their nature and history, legendary and actual 84
Their contents 86
Their importance 87
CHAPTER VI
CRITICS OF MAGIC
Review of the usual attitude towards magic in the Roman Empire 88
I. _Opponents of Astrology_:
Cicero, Favorinus and Sextus Empiricus 89
Considerations which discount their scepticism 89
Inadequacy of their arguments 90
Astrology attacked as being impracticable 91
General problem of sidereal influence left untouched 92
II. _Cicero’s Attack upon Divination_:
In a way an attack upon magic as a whole 93
Form and arrangement of _De Divinatione_ 94
Its relations to the past and to the future 94
Appeal of Quintus to antiquity and to tradition 94
Cicero’s reply; condemnation of reliance on tradition 95
Divination declared quite distinct from science 95
Divination declared quite contrary to the laws of science 96
Idea of magical sympathy rejected 97
Cicero’s attitude very unusual for his time 98
Question as to his consistency 98
CHAPTER VII
THE LAST CENTURY OF THE EMPIRE
Intellectual characteristics of the period 99
Marcellus of Bordeaux 99
Ammianus Marcellinus 99
His description of the state of learning at Alexandria 100
His justification of divination as a science 101
His extraordinary misquoting of Cicero 102
Synesius 103
His belief that all parts of the universe are in magic sympathy 103
Further instances of his trust in magic 104
Macrobius 106
CHAPTER VIII
CONCLUSION 108
ERRATA
Page 21, line 19, instead of _verbe_ read _verbo_.
Page 49, lines 9 and 10, instead of _marvelour_ read _marvelous_.
Page 58, at close of first foot-note, instead of 66 read 67.
Page 71, line 10 of foot-note, instead of άλλὰ read ἀλλὰ.
Page 101, line 8 of foot-note, instead of _factorum_ read _fatorum_.
Page 105, line 2 of second foot-note, instead of εἷναι read εἶναι.
CHAPTER I
ILLUSTRATIONS OF BELIEF IN MAGIC IN MEDIÆVAL AND IN EARLY MODERN TIMES
Even a slight acquaintance with European history reveals the existence
of a number of curious and apparently unreasonable beliefs prevalent
throughout a period extending from early mediæval to comparatively
recent times. There is the belief in witchcraft, for instance. From the
canons of synods in the early Middle Ages down to the pitiless
executions during the witchcraft delusion, there is abundant evidence of
its prominence. It played its part not only in humble life, but in court
intrigues and in the accusations brought at state trials.
The belief that one’s future could be learned by observing the stars was
equally widespread. Astrologers throve at the courts of kings, and
sometimes their advice was taken even by him whose every act was held to
be under special divine direction. It would be a great mistake to think
that the astrologer was maintained merely for the amusement of king and
court, like the jester. His utterances were taken most seriously, and
the principles of his art were so generally accepted as to become the
commonplaces of the thought and the conversation of daily life. In 1305,
for instance, when certain cardinals urged Pope Clement V to return to
Rome, they reminded him that every planet was most powerful in its own
house.[1] Indeed, even in our speech to-day numerous vestiges of the
astrological art survive.[2]
Moreover, a grander and more imposing witchcraft displayed itself in the
stories of the wizard Merlin and in the persons of the wicked magicians
with whom knights contended in the pages of mediæval romance. So strong
was the tendency to believe in the marvelous, that men of learning were
often pictured by subsequent tradition, if not by contemporary gossip,
as mighty necromancers. Even Gerbert, who seems to have done nothing
more shocking than to write a treatise on the abacus and build a
pipe-organ, was pictured as running off with a magician’s book and
daughter, hanging under bridges between earth and water to escape
noxious spells, and making compacts with Satan.[3]
The attitude of the average mind as it has just been illustrated was to
a large extent characteristic of the best instructed and most widely
read men. The erudite poet Dante accepted the influence of the
constellations upon human destiny. Bodin maintained in his
_Republic_—perhaps the greatest book on political science written during
the sixteenth century—that astrology was very useful in tracing the
development of society.[4] Aquinas, chief of the mediæval theologians,
accepted astrological theory, except as limited by human free will, and
further admitted that most men make little use of their liberty of
action but blindly follow their passions, which are governed by the
stars.[5] Among other great mediæval churchmen and canonists, d’Ailly
and Gerson both believed that God signified important events in advance
through the stars, and d’Ailly made some astrological predictions
himself. Astrology was much taught in the mediæval universities,[6] and
was regarded as the climax of mathematics and as an essential part of
medicine.
It is with such beliefs, accepted by educated men and forming a part of
the learning and science of the times, that we are concerned in this
essay. First, it is necessary to give some further evidence of the
nature and of the general acceptance of these beliefs. This object will
be most quickly and effectively secured by a résumé of the views of a
few of the men most prominent in the intellectual history of the past.
These men should offer fair, if not flattering, illustrations of the
learning and culture of their times. In especial we shall notice the
curious notions of those who wrote on scientific subjects or showed even
a considerable approach towards the modern scientific spirit. This we
shall do partly because their writings seem at first thought the place
where we should least expect to find such notions, and hence furnish
striking illustration of the almost universal acceptance of these
beliefs; partly because, as we shall soon find reason to conclude, there
is really some connection between such beliefs and science.
The early Middle Ages are not distinguished for the prevalence of
education and of culture in Latin Christendom, to say nothing of
profound knowledge or original thought in any particular branch of
learning. But in such learning and science as there was may be found
examples of the beliefs which we wish to consider. We see them in
Isidore of Seville, whose _Etymologies_, we may well believe,
constituted an oft-consulted encyclopedia in many a monastic library for
several centuries after the seventh, when it appeared. This saint, like
almost all good Christians of his day, believed that marvels could be
effected through magic by the aid of demons, although such resort to
evil spirits he could not condemn too strongly.[7] But he saw no harm in
holding that certain stones possess astonishing powers,[8] that the
dog-star afflicts bodies with disease, and that the appearance of a
comet signifies pestilence, famine or war.[9] He maintained that it was
no waste of time to look into the meaning of the numbers which occur in
the Bible. He thought that they might reveal many sacred mysteries.[10]
Bede expressed similar views in his scientific treatises.[11] Also, if
we may regard as his two little essays about the authenticity of which
there is some question, he ascribed such extraordinary influence to the
moon as to maintain that the practice of bleeding should be regulated by
its phases, and wrote—with some hesitation lest he should be accused of
magic—an explanation of how to predict coming disasters by observing the
time and direction of peals of thunder.[12]
Passing over several centuries during which judicial astrology is very
conspicuous in the mathematical treatises which formed the greater part
of the scientific literature of the times,[13] we come at the close of
the twelfth century to the _De Naturis Rerum_ of Alexander Neckam
(1157–1217). We find him ecstatically musing over the consonance of
celestial harmony and associating the seven planets with the seven
liberal arts and the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit,[14] as if believing
that there is some occult virtue in that number or some potent sympathy
between these material bodies and such abstractions as branches of
learning and generic virtues. Descending from the skies to things
earthly—the transition is easy since he believes in the influence,
saving human free will, of the planets on our lower creation[15]—he
tells us that mug-wort prevents the traveler from feeling fatigue,[16]
and that the Egyptian fig makes the wrinkles of old age vanish and can
tame the fiercest bulls once they are gathered beneath its branches.[17]
He describes fountains with properties as marvelous as those of the herb
or of the tree.[18] He tells of stones which, placed on the head of the
sleeping wife, provoke confession of marital infidelity,[19] or which,
extracted from the crop of a rooster and carried in one’s mouth, give
victory in war.[20] What is more, words as well as plants and stones are
found by the careful and industrious investigator of nature to have
great virtue, as experiment shows beyond doubt.[21]
Neckam, despite the fact that according to his editor, Thomas Wright, he
“not infrequently displays a taste for experimental science,”[22] was,
after all, more of a moralizing compiler than anything else. But greater
men than Neckam, men who were interested in learning and science for
their own sake, men who knew more and wrote more, still cherished
beliefs of the same sort. There was Michael Scot in the early years of
the thirteenth century, the wonder of the cultured court of Frederick
II, perhaps that monarch’s tutor, the “Supreme Master” of Paris, the man
who helped much to make the treasures of learning amassed by the Arabs
in Spain the common property of Latin Christendom, the introducer to
Western Europe of a Latin version of Averroes and of an enlarged
Aristotle.[23] Scot composed a primer of astrology for young scholars.
His writings on alchemy show that he experimented in it not a little.
His _Physionomia_ accepts the doctrine of signatures, tells us that
these signs on the outward body of the soul’s inner state are often
discovered through dreams, and contains a chapter giving an extended
description of the rules of augury—an art on which the author, though a
Christian, apparently bestowed his sanction. Prophetic verses
foretelling the fate of several Italian cities have come down to us
under his name. A poem of Henri d’Avranches, written in 1235–6, recalls
to mind the fact that certain prophecies concerning the emperor had been
made by the then deceased Michael Scot, whom the poet proceeds to call a
scrutinizer of the stars, an augur, a soothsayer, a _veridicus vates_,
and a second Apollo.[24] A most interesting recipe for invoking demons
to instruct one in liberal arts is attributed to Michael Scot in a
manuscript collection of _Occulta_ in the Laurentian library.[25]
Later in the same century stands forth the famous figure of Roger Bacon,
the stout defender of mathematics and physics against scholasticism.
Some have ascribed to him numerous important innovations in the realm of
natural science and of the mechanical arts, and have regarded his
promulgation of the experimental method, guided by the mathematical
method, as the first herald note of that modern science which was not
destined really to appear for yet several centuries. Yet he held that
the alchemist, if given sufficient time and money, could discover a way
not only to meet the state’s expenses by converting baser metals into
gold, but also to prolong human existence beyond that limit to which it
can be drawn out by nature.[26] Indeed these objects constituted two of
the three examples he gave of the great advantages to be gained from the
pursuit of that experimental science which was to disprove and blot out
all magical nonsense.[27]
How far Bacon let the principles of astrology carry him a citation or
two will show. That a woman had succeeded in living twenty years without
eating was, he explained, no miracle, but due to the fact that during
that period some constellation was able to reduce the concourse of the
four elements in her body to a greater degree of harmony than they
usually attain.[28] Nor is it health alone that the stars control; they
affect human character.[29] They implant in the babe at birth good or
evil dispositions, great or small talents. Human free will may either
better these innate tendencies through God’s grace or modify them for
the worse by yielding to Satan’s temptings; but in general the stars so
far prevail that there are different laws and customs and national
traits under different quarters of the heavens.[30] Nay more, astrology
offers proof of the superiority of Christianity to other religions and
gives insight into the nature of Antichrist.[31]
As one might surmise from Bacon’s belief in the potent effect of
sidereal emanations, he makes much of the theory that every agent sends
forth its own virtue and species into external matter. This leads him to
accept fascination as a fact. Just as Aristotle tells that in some
localities mares become pregnant by the mere odor of the stallions, and
as Pliny relates that the basilisk kills by a glance, so the witch by
the vapor from her bleary eye draws her victims on to destruction. In
short, “Man can project virtue and species outside himself, the more
since he is nobler than all corporeal things, and especially because of
the virtue of the rational soul.”[32] Hence the great effects possible
from spoken words or written characters; although one must beware of
falling into the absurdities and abominations of the magicians. Bacon,
moreover, was like Scot a believer in the doctrine of signatures.[33]
Other men of the same period prominent in science who held similar
beliefs we can scarcely stop to mention. There was Vincent de Beauvais,
the great encyclopedist, and Bernard Gordon, a physician of Montpellier
and a medical writer of considerable note, who nevertheless recommended
the use of a magic formula for the treatment of epilepsy.[34] There was
Albertus Magnus with his trust in such wonderful powers of stones as to
cure ulcers, counteract potions, conciliate human hearts, and win
battles; and his theory that ligatures and suspensions, and gems carved
with proper images possess similar strange virtues.[35] There was Arnald
of Villanova who propounded such admirable doctrines as that a physician
ought first of all to understand the chief functions of life and chief
organs of the body and that the science of particular things is the
foundation of all knowledge, and yet who believed in astrological
medicine, wrote on oneiromancy and interpreted dreams, translated
treatises on incantations, ligatures and other magic devices, and
composed a book on the _Tetragrammaton_ or ineffable name of
Jehovah.[36]
That marvelous power of words—especially of the divine names of angels
and of the Supreme Deity—which we may suppose Arnald to have touched
upon in his _Tetragrammaton_, was discussed at length by a series of
scholars at the close of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth
century whose names are most familiar to the student of those times.
These men pushed the practice of allegorical interpretation of sacred
writings, which had been in constant vogue among religious and
theological writers from the days of the early Christian Fathers, to the
extreme of discovering sublime secrets not only by regarding every
incident and object in Scripture as a parable, but by treating the text
itself as a cryptogram. Not only, like Isidore, did they see in every
numerical measurement in the Bible mystic meaning, but in the very
letters they doubted not there was hidden that knowledge by which one
might gain control of all the processes of the universe; nay, penetrate
through the ten sephiroth to the unspeakable and infinite source of all.
For our visible universe is but the reflected image of an invisible, and
each has subtle and practically unlimited power over the other. The key
to that power is words. Such were the doctrines held by Pico Della
Mirandola (1463–1494) who asserted that no science gave surer proof of
Christ’s divinity than magical and cabalistic science;[37] such were the
doctrines of the renowned humanist, John Reuchlin, who connected letters
in the sacred text with individual angels;[38] of Henry Cornelius
Agrippa (1486–1535) who, inspired by Reuchlin’s _De verbo mirifico_ and
_De arte cabalistica_, declared that whoever knew the true pronunciation
of the name Jehovah had “the world in his mouth;”[39] of Trithemius from
whom Paracelsus is said to have acquired the “Cabala of the spiritual,
astral and material worlds.”[40]
Moreover, the writings of men primarily devoted to science continued
through the sixteenth and on into the seventeenth century to contain
much the same occult theories that Michael Scot, Roger Bacon and
Albertus Magnus had accepted and discussed. Jerome Cardan, one of the
most prominent men of his time in mathematics and medicine—indeed, the
discoverer of new processes in the former science—nevertheless believed
in a strong attraction and sympathy between the heavenly bodies and our
own, cast horoscopes and wrote on judicial astrology. In his
_Arithmetic_ he treated of the marvelous properties of certain numbers;
in other writings he credulously discussed demons, ghosts, incantations,
divination and chiromancy. His thirteen books on metoposcopy explain how
to tell a person’s character, ability and destiny by a minute
examination of the lines on different portions of the body and by warts.
He owned a selenite which he believed prevented sleep and a jacinth to
which he attributed an opposite influence.[41]
The vagaries of Paracelsus are notorious, and yet he was far more than a
mere quack. Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) was a faithful follower of
experimental method. He saw that the science of the stars could amount
to little unless based on a mass of correct observations, and was one of
the first to devote his life to that foundation of patient and
systematic drudgery on which the great structure of modern science is
being reared. His painstaking endeavor to have accurate instruments and
his care to make allowance for possible error were the marks, rare
enough in those days, of the true scientist. Yet he made many an
astrological prognostication, and was, as his biographer puts it, “a
perfect son of the sixteenth century, believing the universe to be woven
together by mysterious connecting threads which the contemplation of the
stars or of the elements of nature might unravel, and thereby lift the
veil of the future.”[42] He also dabbled in alchemy, believed in
relations of occult sympathy between “the ethereal and elementary
worlds,” and filled his mind with the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus,
Geber, Arnald of Villanova, Raymond Lullius, Roger Bacon, Albertus
Magnus, and Paracelsus.
Finally, even Francis Bacon, famed as the draughtsman of the chart which
henceforth guided explorers in the domain of science, thought that there
was considerable value in physiognomy and the interpretation of natural
dreams, though the superstition and phantasies of later ages had debased
those subjects;[43] and in divination if not “conducted by blind
authority.”[44] He said that by a reformed astrology one might predict
plagues, famines, wars, seditions, sects, great human migrations and
“all great disturbances or innovations in both natural and civil
affairs.”[45]
Such are the beliefs which for a long time pervaded the thought and
learning of Europe; beliefs of the widespread acceptance of which we
have noted but a few striking illustrations. They constitute a varied
and formidable class of convictions. There was the notion that from such
things as the marks upon one’s body, or from one’s dreams, or from peals
of thunder, flight of birds, entrails of sacrificial victims and the
movements of the stars, we can foretell the future. There was the
assumption that certain precious stones, certain plants and trees and
fountains, certain animals or parts of animals have strange and
wonderful virtues. There was the idea that man, too, possesses marvelous
powers to the extent that he can fascinate and bewitch his fellows. Nor
should we forget the attribution to the heavenly bodies of an enormous
influence over minerals and vegetation, over human health and character,
over national constitutions and customs, even over religious movements.
We find this notion of occult virtue extended to things without physical
reality: to words, to numbers, to written characters and formulæ. It is
applied to certain actions and ways of doing things: to “ligatures and
suspensions,” for instance. Then there was the belief that wonders may
be wrought by the aid of demons, and that incantations, suffumigations,
and the like are of great value in invoking spirits. Finally, there was
a vague general notion that not only are the ethereal and elementary
worlds joined by occult sympathy, but that all parts of the universe are
somehow mystically connected, and that perhaps a single magic key may be
discovered by which we may become masters of the entire universe.
How shall we classify these beliefs? What shall we call them? What is
their meaning, what their origin and cause? As for classification, it is
easy to suggest names which partially apply to some of these notions, or
adequately characterize them individually. The art of signatures,
oneiromancy, augury, divination, astrology, alchemy, the Cabala,
sorcery, and necromancy are some designations which at once come to
mind. But no one of them is at all adequate as a class name for all
these beliefs and the practices which they involve, taken together. Are
not these notions, nevertheless, closely allied; is there not an
intimate relation between them all? And is not “magic” a term which will
include them all and denote the general subject, the philosophy and the
art, of which they all are branches?
True, many of the holders of the beliefs above enumerated declaimed
against “magic.”[46] But sometimes fear of being accused of magic was
their very reason for so doing. Bede had such a fear when he treated
of divination by thunder. Roger Bacon took suspicious care to insist
that his theories had nothing to do with magic, which he declared was
for the most part a mere pretense and could bring marvels to pass only
by diabolical assistance.[47] The writer of the _Speculum
Astronomiae_—probably Albertus Magnus—found it necessary to write a
treatise to distinguish books of necromancy from works on “astronomy,”
_i. e._, astrology.[48] Coming to a later age, we find Agrippa frankly
owning his trust in magic, and including under it, in his three books
of _Occult Philosophy_, practically all the beliefs that we have
mentioned. For him magic embraced the fields of nature, mathematics
and theology. Indeed, men of his day and of the century following
displayed a tendency to stretch the term to include true science. He
himself called magic “the acme of all philosophy.” Giovanni Battista
della Porta (1540–1615), not it is true without considerable
justification, called his encyclopedic work on nature _Natural
Magic_.[49] Lord Bacon chose to understand magic “in its ancient and
honorable significance” among the Persians as “a sublimer wisdom or a
knowledge of universal nature.” He said that as physics, investigating
efficient and material causes, produced mechanics, so metaphysics,
studying into forms, produced magic.[50]
Apparently, then, magic has a broad significance and a long history. The
word itself takes us back to the Magi of ancient Persia; the thing it
represents is older yet. It will form the theme of our next chapter,
where we shall discuss its history and its meaning, and then the
particular significance of those beliefs accepted by men of learning
which have been enumerated in the present chapter.