MAGIC: ITS ORIGINS AND RELATIONS TO SCIENCE
To men of the past—how long ago does not at present matter—magic meant
far more than the performance for their amusement of clever tricks,
which however puzzling they knew well enough were based upon illusion
and deception. There was a real magic for them.
This faith in the reality of magic was not, moreover, merely the outcome
of men’s belief in the existence of evil spirits, in the power of those
spirits to work changes in matter or to predict the future, and in man’s
power to gain their services. We sometimes speak of magic and necromancy
as if they were identical, and mediæval writers often did the same
thing, but such is not the case. If we but consider the meaning of the
word “magic” when used as an adjective, we perceive that thus to
restrict its scope as a noun is incorrect. What is a magic cloak, for
instance? It is simply a cloak possessing properties which cloaks in
general do not possess and which we are surprised to find in cloaks.
Most cloaks keep us warm or improve our personal appearance; this cloak
makes us invulnerable and invisible. A demon or a fairy may have endowed
the cloak with these extraordinary qualities, but that is a secondary
consideration. What makes the garment a magic cloak is the fact that it
has such properties, no matter where or how it got them. Or what is a
magic change? Is it merely a change wrought by spirits good or evil? By
no means. It is any change with characteristics and results which we do
not expect nor usually see in changes. In short, magic is præternatural
rather than supernatural.
Thus we find the existence of magic in the earliest period of human
thought generally assumed by anthropologists, but some writers deny that
man always has believed in supernatural beings. He first, they tell us,
had a vague notion that by propitiating or by coercing nature he might
secure for himself happiness; and that if anything external was to have
power over the workings of the natural structure, it must be man, for
both gods and God were yet unknown. Only gradually, they hold, through
his belief in tree-spirits, through his devotion to plants or fetishes
made sacred by their supposed efficacy in serving human wishes, perhaps,
too, through his attitude toward human beings whose reputation for skill
in magic finally led to deification, did man come to a belief in more or
less divine beings and turn to them for the power and the happiness
which in his savage and untutored impotency he had been unable to win by
his own efforts.[51] Then only would the performance of magic by the aid
of supernatural beings commence.
There is another misleading idea which we should avoid. Fairy tales and
romances picture magicians to us as few in number, adepts in a secret
art. Instinctively, moreover, looking as we do upon magic as a mere
delusion, we are prone to regard it as the creation of the popular
imagination, and to believe that what magicians there were outside of
the ordinary man’s imagination were a few imposters who took advantage
of his fancies, or a few self-deceived dreamers whose minds such fancies
had led astray. This is a superficial view. It does not explain how the
ordinary man came to imagine the existence of magic. Magicians in the
true sense were no mere imaginary order existent only in the minds of
men, nor a profession of dreamers and imposters. Magic was not the
outright invention of imagination; it was primitive man’s philosophy, it
was his attitude toward nature. It was originally not the exercise of
supposed innate, marvelous powers by a favored few nor a group of secret
doctrines or practices known to but a few; it was a body of ideas held
by men universally and which, during their savage state at least, they
were forever trying to put into practice. Everybody was a magician.
To understand magic, then, we should consider this attitude of primitive
man—I use the word primitive in no narrow sense—and should try to
picture to ourselves what his attitude would be. It is a safe assumption
that he would interpret the world about him according to his own
sensations, feelings and motives. Whether he looked upon nature at large
or in detail, he would in all probability regard it not as an inexorable
machine run in accordance with universal and immutable laws, but as a
being or world of beings much like himself—fickle, changing, capable of
being influenced by inducements or deterred by threats, beneficent or
hostile according as satisfied or offended by treatment received. To
make life go as he wished, he must be able to please and propitiate or
to coerce these forces outside himself.[52] In this endeavor his faculty
of association probably led him to conclude that things resembling each
other or having any seeming connection must be related by strong bonds
of sympathy and have power over each other. Since he had already
attributed human characteristics to matter, he naturally now observed no
distinction between the animate and the inanimate, the material and the
spiritual. A wooden image might be used to affect the fate of a human
being, or the utterance of alluring and terrifying sounds to produce
change in unfeeling and unresponsive matter.
Moreover, as man observed the world about him, he would note many a
phenomenon in nature which he could explain only by assuming strange and
subtle influences. There was, for instance, the magnet, so different
from other stones; the hot spring, so different from other waters; the
action of electricity—still a mystery. Such things, too, as a calf with
five legs, a dream, a sneeze, appealed to him as peculiar and striking,
and perplexed him. He thought that they must have some important
significance. His attempt to explain all such phenomena generally led
him into magic.
Man often had to decide between two or more courses of action,
apparently equally pleasing and advantageous or displeasing and
disadvantageous. Should he turn to the right or to the left; should he
begin his journey to-day or to-morrow? The thought probably came to him
that one of these directions, one of these days, would in the end prove
more advantageous than the other, though at present he could see no
difference between them. One must be lucky, the other unlucky. This
belief in lucky times, places and actions was magic. For such times,
places and actions were magical as truly as the cloak that is unlike
other cloaks or the change that differs from other changes.
Akin to man’s desire to discover what course of action would bring him
good luck was the longing he doubtless had to know the future; a
knowledge which would be as interesting as those tales of his ancestor’s
doings in which he delighted, and of more practical use. As he had no
difficulty in granting to matter spiritual qualities or in subjecting to
trivial material influences mind and soul without power of resistance,
so now he sought in the present sure signs of his own future. Such
indications seemed to him to be found not only in dreams, which indeed
had some connection with his personality, but also in such things as the
flight of birds or the movements of the stars. He often did more than
assign magic powers to the heavenly bodies; often he worshiped them as
gods. His effort thus to learn the future from inadequate and irrelevant
present phenomena was divination or magic.
These notions of primitive man do not exhaust the field of magic. As he
became educated, he would extend the attribution of magic properties to
such things as numbers and written characters or formulæ. His original
ideas might be elaborated or refined. But already he accepted the
principles upon which a belief in magic founds itself. These principles
were evidently common property. Of course some men would come to surpass
others in their knowledge of the supposed bonds of sympathy between
different things, or of lucky objects, seasons and methods, of ways to
coax and control natural forces, of the meaning of portents and of means
to predict the future. In the progress of time the finer mysteries of
the art might become the monopoly of a priesthood. But everybody
believed in magic; everybody understood something about it.
To attempt to define magic further than has been done in our description
of the notions of primitive man is like trying to embrace a phantom.
Magic rested upon man’s conjecture of the characteristics and processes
of nature, not on a knowledge of nature correctly deduced from
observation and experiment. As one would expect, there went with these
mistaken notions a fantasticalness both in reasoning and in practical
procedure. The follower of magic is apt to be on the watch not for facts
or laws, but for hidden mysteries; he is fond of ceremonial and symbols;
he enjoins upon himself and his fellows the necessity of secrecy in
their operations and mysticism in their writings. Again, magic is, as
has been said, præternatural; its outcome is to be marvelous. It assumes
the existence of wonderful properties in various objects and of
wonderful bonds of sympathy between different things. Finally, we should
remember that man always is a factor in magic. His knowledge, skill or
power is always essential to the performance of a feat of magic. Even
when demons do the deed, they must be invoked. A miracle may be contrary
to natural law but it is not magic, for man is not the cause of it. Even
if wrought in answer to his prayer, the miracle is not magic, for the
gods answer only if they choose. But the magic formula compels the
desired marvel; by it man coerces nature or even deity.
Such are some of the chief characteristics of magic. Yet with these
granted, it remains, like superstition or religion, a vague term at
best. The reader may disagree with me as to exactly what beliefs and
practices should be included under it, and it is indeed a nice question
just where magic begins and ends. Much of alchemy, for example, was
nothing but chemistry of a rude sort, and perhaps even its theories that
metals may be transmuted and life greatly prolonged will some day prove
to have had much truth in them. On the other hand, alchemy was based to
a considerable extent on a belief that plants, animals and minerals have
properties and powers which they cannot have: and if we ever do succeed
in making gold or putting off old age, it is quite certain that such a
consummation will never be accomplished by the fantastic methods which
alchemists usually employed. Similarly we shall see that the practice of
allegorical interpretation of past writings and the Pythagorean doctrine
of numbers, which perhaps at first thought one would not regard as magic
at all, nevertheless bear at least some resemblance to it. But after all
our thesis is not to establish a certain definition for the word
“magic,” or to prove that such and such ideas and acts are magical. A
name signifies little, and the word magic has had too many different
meanings in different periods and for different men to allow any one to
assert with confidence that he has found an absolutely correct
definition. I employ the word simply because it seems the most
convenient, most intelligible and most justifiable term for denoting a
number of beliefs which I believe are all intimately related and which
are the marks of a certain attitude towards the world.
So much for the definition of magic and for the nature of its origin.
But the discussion of these two points does not fully explain the
meaning of the beliefs which were illustrated in our first chapter. We
have yet to bring out the full significance of the presence of such
notions in the minds of mediæval thinkers and scientists.
It was stated above that the outcome of magic is præternatural,
marvelous; but this statement, while in one sense perfectly true,
requires some qualification. Perhaps to inexperienced primitive man the
results which he wished to accomplish or the crude theories on which he
based his operations seemed nothing remarkable. Perhaps incantation
seemed to him the natural way to bring rain, and sorcery the sole cause
of disease. But as time went on and observation taught men, it must have
been impressed upon their minds that either the events they sought to
produce, or the methods by which they sought to produce them, were a
little out of the ordinary, although of the possibility of the events
and of the validity of the methods they still remained convinced. If we
wish to sum up the whole history of magic in a sentence, we may say that
men first regarded magic as natural, then as marvelous, then as
impossible and absurd. Evidently then magic is subjective, as anything
false must be. To-day in the thought of educated and sensible people it
is limited in actual significance to stage illusions; once it was a
universal attitude towards the universe. As one false hypothesis after
another was superseded by true notions, the content of magic narrowed in
men’s minds until at last it became an acknowledged deception. Meanwhile
its mistaken premises and strange proceedings first mingled with and
then vanished into science and scientific methods.
This, then, is the significance of the beliefs of which we were speaking
in the first chapter. They are phenomena in that union—or struggle—of
magic and science which marked the decay of the former and the
development of the latter. As such, they warn us not to picture a
magician to ourselves as armed with a wand, clad in solemn robes, and
attended by a black cat. They warn us, on the other hand, not to regard
the learned students of nature, mathematics and medicine in ages past as
modern scientists in mind and spirit, who were merely handicapped by
such obstacles as crude instruments and want of data. We perceive the
anachronism involved in explaining away as mere passing fancies,
personal eccentricities or anomalous beliefs the superstitious or
bizarre notions of those to whom tradition has accorded great fame. We
are warned to consider carefully whether such notions were not ingrained
in the very being of those men and characteristic of their whole mental
attitude.
Science and magic are very unlike, but even the distinction between East
and West varies according to where the speaker takes his stand. We have
come to regard science as abstract truth, scientific investigation as
necessarily correct and sensible; we forget that science has a past. In
their actual history science and magic were not unassociated. Scientists
might accept magical doctrines and magic might endeavor to classify its
fancies and to account for them by natural causes. Roger Bacon could
regard the attainment of magical results as the great end of
experimental science. Francis Bacon could place magic in the same
category with metaphysics and physics.
It is with this mingling of magic and science—or more broadly of magic
with learning in general—in the history of our Western world that this
essay has to do. It is a theme of no narrow interest. Such ideas as have
been cited, not only held by the most learned men of the times but
incorporated in their scientific and philosophical systems—in so far as
they had any—deserve consideration in the history of science and
philosophy as well as in that of magic, or in an investigation of the
mental make-up of the men of the past.
While, however, the place of magic in the intellectual history of Europe
is our general subject, the present essay is far from being an attempt
at a complete treatment of it. The aim is rather to illustrate that
theme by a survey of learning during the period of the Roman Empire,
when the divers threads of the thought and knowledge of the ancient
world were to some extent united. The prominence of magic in mediæval
science is perhaps better known and more generally admitted. Accordingly
this essay will take for granted, except in so far as it has been
illustrated in our first chapter, the presence of magic in mediæval
learning, and will try to show that magical doctrines, credulity,
mysticism, and love of the marvelous were not traits peculiar to
mediæval thought, but that in this respect (as in others) there was
close resemblance, probably strict continuity between the Roman world
and later times. It was largely in order to bring out this resemblance,
continuity and influence that the beliefs of various writers in the
Middle Ages and early modern times were given in the first chapter. Let
the reader compare them with those notions of men in the Roman Empire
which will presently be set forth. If we are justified in thus regarding
the Roman world as summarizing ancient science and helping to explain
mediæval thought, we evidently, in taking our stand in that period
secure a broad prospect and ought to obtain a fair idea of the place of
magic in the intellectual history of Europe. In defining the field which
we are to cover, it should be further said that Christian thought will
not come into our discussion, since it did not greatly influence science
and other secular learning until the close of the Roman Empire. Lastly,
it should be clearly understood that we are here concerned with magic
only as connected with science and with learning—only as accepted by
educated men.