MODERN MAGIC.
Human nature enjoys nothing better than to wonder--to be mystified; and
it thanks and remembers those who have the skill to gratify this
craving. The magicians of old knew that truth and conducted themselves
accordingly. But our modern wonder-workers fail of their due influence,
because, not content to perform their marvels, they go on to explain
them. Merlin and Roger Bacon were greater public benefactors than Morse
and Edison. Man is--and he always has been and will be--something else
besides a pure intelligence: and science, in order to become really
popular, must contrive to touch man somewhere else besides on the
purely intellectual side: it must remember that man is all heart, all
hope, all fear, and all foolishness, quite as much as he is all brains.
Otherwise, science can never expect to take the place of superstition,
much less of religion, in mankind's affection. In order to be a really
successful man of science, it is first of all indispensable to make
one's self master of everything in nature and in human nature that
science is not.
What must one do, in short, in order to become a magician? I use the
term, here, in its weightiest sense. How to make myself visible and
invisible at will? How to present myself in two or more places at once?
How answer your question before you ask it, and describe to you your
most secret thoughts and actions? How shall I call spirits from the
vasty deep, and make you see and hear and feel them? How paralyze your
strength with a look, heal your wound with a touch, or cause your
bullet to rebound harmless from my unprotected flesh? How shall I walk
on the air, sink through the earth, pass through stone walls, or walk,
dry-shod, on the floor of the ocean? How shall I visit the other side
of the moon, jump through the ring of Saturn, and gather sunflowers in
Sirius? There are persons now living who profess to do no less
remarkable feats, and to regard them as incidental merely to
achievements far more important. A school of hierophants or adepts is
said to exist in Tibet, who, as a matter of daily routine, quite
transcend everything that we have been accustomed to consider natural
possibility. What is the course of study, what are the ways and means
whereby such persons accomplish such results?
The conventional attitude towards such matters is, of course, that of
unconditional scepticism. But it is pleasant, occasionally, to take an
airing beyond the bounds of incredulity. For my own part, it is true, I
must confess my inability to believe in anything positively
supernatural. The supernatural and the illusory are to my mind
convertible terms: they cannot really exist or take place. Let us be
sure, however, that we are agreed as to what supernatural means. If a
magician, before my eyes, transformed an old man into a little girl, I
should call that supernatural; and nothing should convince me that my
senses had not been grossly deceived. But were the magician to leave
the room by passing through the solid wall, or "go out" like an
exploding soap-bubble,--I might think what I please, but I should not
venture to dogmatically pronounce the thing supernatural; because the
phenomenon known as "matter" is scientifically unknown, and therefore
no one can tell what modifications it may not be susceptible of:--no
one, that is to say, except the person who, like the magician of our
illustration, professes to possess, and (for aught I can affirm to the
contrary) may actually possess a knowledge unshared by the bulk of
mankind. The transformation of an old man into a little girl, on the
other hand, would be a transaction involving the immaterial soul as
well as the material body; and if I do not know that that cannot take
place, I am forever incapable of knowing anything. These are extreme
examples, but they serve to emphasize an important distinction.
The whole domain of magic, in short, occupies that anomalous neutral
ground that intervenes between the facts of our senses and the truths
of our intuitions. Fact and truth are not convertible terms; they abide
in two distinct planes, like thought and speech, or soul and body; one
may imply or involve the other, but can never demonstrate it.
Experience and intuition together comprehend the entire realm of actual
and conceivable knowledge. Whatever contradicts both experience and
intuition may, therefore, be pronounced illusion. But this neutral
ground is the home of phenomena which intuition does not deny, and
which experience has not confirmed. It is still a wide zone, though not
so wide as it was a hundred years ago, or fifty, or even ten. It
narrows every day, as science, or the classification of experience,
expands. Are we, then, to look for a time when the zone shall have
dwindled to a mathematical line, and magic confess itself to have been
nothing but the science of an advanced school of investigators? Will
the human intellect acquire a power before which all mysteries shall
become transparent? Let us dwell upon this question a little longer.
A mystery that is a mystery can never, humanly speaking, become
anything else. Instances of such mysteries can readily be adduced. The
universe itself is built upon them and is the greatest of them. They
lie before the threshold and at the basis of all existence. For
example:--here is a lump of compact, whitish, cheese-like substance,
about as much as would go into a thimble. From this I profess to be
able to produce a gigantic, intricate structure, sixty feet in height
and diameter, hard, solid, and enduring, which shall furthermore
possess the power of extending and multiplying itself until it covers
the whole earth, and even all the earths in the universe, if it could
reach them. Is such a profession as this credible? It is entirely
credible, as soon as I paraphrase it by saying that I propose to plant
an acorn. And yet all magic has no mystery which is so wonderful as
this universal mystery of growth: and the only reason we are not lost
in amazement at it is that it goes quietly on all the time, and
perfects itself under uniform conditions. But let me eliminate from the
phenomenon the one element of time--which is logically the least
essential factor in the product, unreal and arbitrary, based on the
revolution of the earth, and conceivably variable to any extent--grant
me this, and the world would come to see me do the miracle. But, with
time or without it, the mystery is just as mysterious.
Natural mysteries, then,--the mysteries of life, death, creation,
growth,--do not fall under our present consideration: they are beyond
the legitimate domain of magic: and no intellectual development to
which we may hereafter attain will bring us a step nearer their
solution. But with the problems proper to magic, the case is different.
Magic is distinctively not Divine, but human: a finite conundrum, not
an Infinite enigma. If there has ever been a magician since the world
began, then all mankind may become magicians, if they will give the
necessary time and trouble. And yet, magic is not simply an advanced
region of the path which science is pursuing. Science is concerned with
results,--with material phenomena; whereas magic is, primarily, the
study of causes, or of spiritual phenomena; or, to use another
definition,--of phenomena which the senses perceive, not in themselves,
but only in their results. So long as we restrict ourselves to results,
our activity is confined to analysis; but when we begin to investigate
causes, we are on the road not only to comprehend results, but (within
limits) to modify or produce them.
Science, however, blocks our advance in this direction by denying, or
at least refusing to admit, the existence of the spiritual world, or
world of causes: because, being spiritual, it is not sensible, or
cognizable in sense. Science admits only material causes, or the
changes wrought in matter by itself. If we ask what is the cause of a
material cause, we are answered that it is a supposed entity called
Force, concerning which there is nothing further to be known.
At this point, then, argument (on the material plane) comes to an end,
and speculation or assumption begins. Science answers its own
questions, but neither can nor will answer any others. And upon what
pretence do we ask any others? We ask them upon two grounds. The first
is that some people,--we might even say, most people,--would be glad to
believe in supersensuous existence, and are always on the alert to
examine any plausible hypothesis pointing in that direction: and
secondly, there exists a vast amount of testimony (we need not call it
evidence) tending to show that the supersensuous world has been
discovered, and that it endows its discoverers with sundry notable
advantages. Of course, we are not obliged to credit this testimony,
unless we want to: and--for some reason, never fully explained--a great
many people who accept natural mysteries quite amiably become indignant
when requested to examine mysteries of a much milder order. But it is
not my intention to discuss the limits of the probable; but to swallow
as much as possible first, and endeavor to account for it afterwards.
There is, as every reader knows, a class of phenomena--such as
hypnotism, trance, animal magnetism, and so forth--the occurrence of
which science has conceded, though failing as yet to offer any
intelligent explanation of them. It is suggested that they are peculiar
states of the brain and nerve-centres, physical in their nature and
origin, though evading our present physical tests. Be that as it may,
they afford a capital introduction to the study of magic; if, indeed,
they, and a few allied phenomena, do not comprise the germs of the
whole matter. Apropos of this subject, a society has lately been
organized in London, with branches on the Continent and in this
country, composed of scientific men, Fellows of the Royal Society,
members of Parliament, professors, and literary men, calling themselves
the "Psychical Research Society," and making it their business to test
and investigate these very marvels, under the most stringent scientific
conditions. But the capacity to be deceived of the bodily senses is
almost unlimited; in fact, we know that they are incapable of telling
us the ultimate truth on any subject; and we are able to get along with
them only because we have found their misinformation to be sufficiently
uniform for most practical purposes. But once admit that the origin of
these phenomena is not on the physical plane, and then, if we are to
give any weight at all to them, it can be only from a spiritual
standpoint. In other words, unless we can approach such questions by an
_a priori_ route, we might as well let them alone. We can reason from
spirit to body--from mind to matter--but we can never reverse that
process, and from matter evolve mind. The reason is that matter is not
found to contain mind, but is only acted upon by it, as inferior by
superior; and we cannot get out of the bag more than has been put into
it. The acorn (to use our former figure) can never explain the oak; but
the oak readily accounts for the acorn. It may be doubted, therefore,
whether the Psychical Research Society can succeed in doing more than
to give a respectable endorsement to a perplexing possibility,--so long
as they adhere to the inductive method. Should they, however, abandon
the inductive method for the deductive, they will forfeit the
allegiance of all consistently scientific minds; and they may, perhaps,
make some curious contributions to philosophy. At present, they appear
to be astride the fence between philosophy and science, as if they
hoped in some way to make the former satisfy the latter's demands. But
the difference between the evidence that demonstrates a fact and the
evidence that confirms a truth is, once more, a difference less of
degree than of kind. We can never obtain sensible verification of a
proposition that transcends sense. We must accept it without material
proof, or not at all. We may believe, for instance, that Creation is
the work of an intelligent Divine Being; or we may disbelieve it; but
we can never prove it. If we do believe it, innumerable confirmations
of it meet us at every turn: but no such confirmations, and no
multiplication of them, can persuade a disbeliever. For belief is ever
incommunicable from without; it can be generated only from within. The
term "belief" cannot be applied to our recognition of a physical fact:
we do not believe in that--we are only sensible of it.
In this connection, a few words will be in order concerning what is
called Spiritism,--a subject which has of late years been exciting a
good deal of remark. Its disciples claim for it the dignity of a new
and positive revelation,--a revelation to sense of spiritual being.
Now, the entire universe may be described as a revelation to sense of
spiritual being--for those who happen to believe _a priori_, or from
spontaneous inward conviction, in spiritual being. We may believe a
man's body, for example, to be the effect of which his soul is the
cause; but no one can reach that conviction by the most refined
dissection of the bodily tissues. How, then, does the spiritists'
Positive Revelation help the matter? Their answer is that the physical
universe is a permanent and orderly phenomenon which (setting aside the
problem of its First Cause) fully accounts for itself; whereas the
phenomena of Spiritism, such as rapping, table-tipping, materializing,
and so forth, are, if not supernatural, at any rate extra-natural. They
occur in consequence of a conscious effort to bring them about; they
cease when that effort is discontinued; they abound in indications of
being produced by independent intelligencies; they are inexplicable
upon any recognized theory of physics; and, therefore, there is nothing
for it but to regard them as spiritual. And what then? Then, of course,
there must be spirits, and a life after the death of the body; and the
great question of Immortality is answered in the affirmative!
Let us, for the sake of argument, concede that the manifestations upon
which the Spiritists found their claims are genuine: that they are or
can be produced without fraud; and let us then enquire in what respect
our means for the conversion of the sceptic are improved. In the first
place we find that all the manifestations--be their cause what it
may--can occur only on the physical plane. However much the origin of
the phenomena may perplex us, the phenomena themselves must be purely
material, in so far as they are perceptible at all. "Raps" are audible
according to the same laws of vibration as other sounds: the tilting
table is simply a material body displaced by an adequate agency; the
materialized hand or face is nothing but physical substance assuming
form. Plainly, therefore, we have as much right to ascribe a spiritual
source to such phenomena as we have to ascribe a spiritual source to
the ordinary phenomena of nature, such as a tree or a man's body,--just
as much right--and no more! Consequently, we are no nearer converting
our sceptic than we were at the outset. He admits the physical
manifestation: there is no intrinsic novelty about that: but when we
proceed to argue that the manifestations are wrought by spirits, he
points out to us that this is sheer assumption on our part. "I have not
seen a spirit," he says: "I have not heard one; I have not felt one;
nor is it possible that my bodily senses should perceive anything that
is not at least as physical as they are. I have witnessed certain
transactions effected by means unknown to me--possibly by the action of
a natural law not yet fully expounded by science. If there was anything
spiritual in the affair, it has not been manifest to my apprehension:
and I must decline to lend my countenance to any such pretensions."
That would be the reply of the sceptic who was equal to the emergency.
But let us suppose that he is not equal to it: that he is a weak-kneed,
impressionable person, with a tendency to jump at conclusions; and that
he is scared or mystified into believing that "spirits" may be at the
bottom of it. What, then, will be the character of the faith which the
Positive Revelation has furnished him? He has discovered that existence
continues, in some fashion, after the death of the body. He has learned
that there may be such a thing as--not immortality exactly,
but--postmortem consciousness. He has been saddled with the conviction
that the other world is full of restless ghosts, who come shuddering
back from their cold emptiness, and try to warm themselves in the
borrowed flesh and blood, and with the purblind selfishness and
curiosity of us who still remain here. "Have faith: be not impatient:
the conditions are unfavorable: but we are working for you!"--such is
the constant burden of the communications. But, if there be a God, why
must our relations with him be complicated by the interference of such
forlorn prevaricators and amateur Paracletes as these? we do not wish
to be "worked for,"--to be carried heavenward on some one else's
shoulders: but to climb thither by God's help and our own will, or to
stay where we are. Moreover, by what touchstone shall we test the
veracity of the self-appointed purveyors of this Positive Revelation?
Are we to believe what they say, because they have lost their bodies?
If life teaches us anything, it is that God does above all things
respect the spiritual freedom of his creatures. He does not terrify and
bully us into acknowledging Him by ghostly juggleries in darkened
rooms, and by vapid exhibitions addressed to our outward senses. He
approaches each man in the innermost sacred audience-chamber of his
heart, and there shows him good and evil, truth and falsehood, and bids
him choose. And that choice, if made aright, becomes a genuine and
undying belief, because it was made in freedom, unbiassed by external
threats and cajoleries.
Such belief is, itself, immortality,--something as distinct from
post-mortem consciousness as wisdom is distinct from mere animal
intelligence. On the whole, therefore, there seems to be little real
worth in Spiritism, even accepting it at its own valuation. The
nourishment it yields the soul is too meagre; and--save on that one
bare point of life beyond the grave, which might just as easily prove
an infinite curse as an infinite blessing--it affords no trustworthy
news whatever.
But these objections do not apply to magic proper. Magic seems to
consist mainly in the control which mind may exceptionally exercise
over matter. In hypnotism, the subject abjectly believes and obeys the
operator. If he be told that he cannot step across a chalk mark on the
floor, he cannot step across it. He dissolves in tears or explodes with
laughter, according as the operator tells him he has cause for
merriment or tears: and if he be assured that the water he drinks is
Madeira wine or Java coffee, he has no misgiving that such is not the
case.
To say that this state of things is brought about by the exercise of
the operator's will, is not to explain the phenomenon, but to put it in
different terms. What is the will, and how does it produce such a
result? Here is a man who believes, at the word of command, that the
thing which all the rest of the world calls a chair is a horse. How is
such misapprehension on his part possible? our senses are our sole
means of knowing external objects: and this man's senses seem to
confirm--at least they by no means correct--his persuasion that a given
object is something very different. Could we solve this puzzle, we
should have done something towards gaining an insight into the
philosophy of magic.
We observe, in the first place, that the _rationale_ of hypnotism, and
of trance in general, is distinct from that of memory and of
imagination, and even from that of dreams. It resembles these only in
so far as it involves a quasi-perception of something not actually
present or existent. But memory and imagination never mislead us into
mistaking their suggestions for realities: while in dreams, the
dreamer's fancy alone is active; the bodily faculties are not in
action. In trance, however, the subject may appear to be, to all
intents and purposes, awake. Yet this state, unlike the others, is
abnormal. The brain seems to be in a passive, or, at any rate, in a
detached condition; it cannot carry out or originate ideas, nor can it
examine an idea as to its truth or falsehood. Furthermore, it cannot
receive or interpret the reports of its own bodily senses. In short,
its relations with the external world are suspended: and since the body
is a part of the external world, the brain can no longer control the
body's movements.
Bodily movements are, however, to some extent, automatic. Given a
certain stimulus in the brain or nerve-centres, and certain
corresponding muscular contractions follow: and this whether or not the
stimulus be applied in a normal manner. Although, therefore, the
entranced brain cannot spontaneously control the body, yet if we can
apply an independent stimulus to it, the body will make a fitting and
apparently intelligent response. The reader has doubtless seen those
ingenious pieces of mechanism which are set in motion by dropping into
an orifice a coin or pellet. Now, could we drop into the passive brain
of an entranced person the idea that a chair is a horse, for
instance,--the person would give every sensible indication of having
adopted that figment as a fact.
But how (since he can no longer communicate with the world by means of
his senses) is this idea to be insinuated? The man is magnetized--that
is to say, insulated; how can we have intercourse with him?
Experiments show that this can be effected only through the magnetizer.
Asleep towards the rest of the world, towards him the entranced person
is awake. Not awake, however, as to the bodily senses; neither the
magnetizer nor any one else can approach by that route. It is true
that, if the magnetizer speaks to him, he knows what is said: but he
does not hear physically; because he perceives the unspoken thought
just as readily. But since whatever does not belong to his body must
belong to his soul (or mind, if that term be preferable), it follows
that the magnetizer must communicate with the magnetized on the mental
or spiritual plane; that is, immediately, or without the intervention
of the body.
Let us review the position we have reached:--We have an entranced or
magnetized person,--a person whose mind, or spirit, has, by a certain
process, been so far withdrawn from conscious communion with his own
bodily senses as to disable him from receiving through them any tidings
from the external world. He is not, however, wholly withdrawn from his
body, for, in that case, the body would be dead; whereas, in fact, its
organic or animal life continues almost unimpaired. He is therefore
neither out of the body nor in it, but in an anomalous region midway
between the two,--a state in which he can receive no sensuous
impressions from the physical world, nor be put in conscious
communication with the spiritual world through any channel--save one.
This one exception is, as we have seen, the person who magnetized him.
The magnetizer is, then, the one and only medium through which the
person magnetized can obtain impressions: and these impressions are
conveyed directly from the mind, or spirit, of the magnetizer to that
of the magnetized. Let us note, further, that the former is not, like
the latter, in a semi-disembodied state, but is in the normal exercise
of his bodily functions and faculties. He possesses, consequently, his
normal ability to originate ideas and to impart them: and whatever
ideas he chooses to impart to the magnetized person, the latter is fain
passively and implicitly to accept. And having so received them, they
descend naturally into the automatic mechanism of the body, and are by
it mechanically interpreted or enacted.
So far, the theory is good: but something seems amiss in the working.
We find that a certain process frequently issues in a certain effect:
but we do not yet know why this should be the case. Some fundamental
link is wanting; and this link is manifestly a knowledge of the true
relations between mind and matter: of the laws to which the mental or
spiritual world is subject: of what nature itself is: and of what
Creation means. Let us cast a glance at these fundamental subjects; for
they are the key without which the secrets of magic must remain locked
and hidden.
In common speech we call the realm of the material universe, Creation;
but philosophy denies its claim to that title. Man alone is Creation:
everything else is appearance. The universe appears, because man
exists: he implies the universe, but is not implied by it. We may
assist our metaphysics, here, by a physical illustration. Take a glass
prism and hold in the sunlight before a white surface. Let the prism
represent man: the sun, man's Creator: and the seven-hued ray cast by
the prism, nature, or the material universe. Now, if we remove the
light, the ray vanishes: it vanishes, also, if we take away the prism:
but so long as the sun and the prism--God and man--remain in their
mutual relation, so long must the rainbow nature appear. Nature, in
short, is not God; neither is it man; but it is the inevitable
concomitant or expression of the creative attitude of God towards man.
It is the shadow of the elements of which humanity or human nature is
composed: or, shall we say, it is the apparition in sense of the
spiritual being of mankind,--not, be it observed, of the being of any
individual or of any aggregation of individuals; but of humanity as a
whole. For this reason, also, is nature orderly, complete, and
permanent,--that it is conditioned not upon our frail and faulty
personalities, but upon our impersonal, universal human nature, in
which is transacted the miracle of God's incarnation, and through which
He forever shines.
Besides Creator and creature, nothing else can be; and whatever else
seems to be, must be only a seeming. Nature, therefore, is the shadow
of a shade, but it serves an indispensable use. For since there can be
no direct communication between finite and Infinite--God and man--a
medium or common ground is needed, where they may meet; and nature, the
shadow which the Infinite causes the finite to project, is just that
medium. Man, looking upon this shadow, mistakes it for real substance,
serving him for foothold and background, and assisting him to attain
self-consciousness. God, on the other hand, finds in nature the means
of revealing Himself to His creature without compromising the
creature's freedom. Man supposes the universe to be a physical
structure made by God in space and time, and in some region of which He
resides, at a safe distance from us His creatures: whereas, in truth,
God is distant from us only so far as we remove ourselves from our own
inmost intuitions of truth and good.
But what is that substance or quality which underlies and gives
homogeneity to the varying forms of nature, so that they seem to us to
own a common origin?--what is that logical abstraction upon which we
have bestowed the name of matter? scientific analysis finds matter only
as forms, never as itself: until, in despair, it invents an atomic
theory, and lets it go at that. But if, discarding the scientific
method, we question matter from the philosophical standpoint, we shall
find it less obdurate.
Man, considered as a mind or spirit, consists of volition and
intelligence; or, what is the same, of emotion or affection, and of the
thoughts which are created by this affection. Nothing can be affirmed
of man as a spirit which does not fall under one or other of these two
parts. Now, a creature consisting solely of affections and thoughts
must, of course, have something to love and to think about. Man's final
destiny is no doubt to love and consider his Creator; but that can only
be after a reactionary or regenerative process has begun in him.
Meanwhile, he must love and consider the only other available
object--that is, himself. Manifestly, however, in order to bestow this
attention upon himself, he must first be made aware of his own
existence. In order to effect this, something must be added to man as
spirit, enabling him to discriminate between the subject thinking and
loving, and the object loved and thought of. This additional something,
again, in order to fulfill its purpose, must be so devised as not to
appear an addition: it must seem even more truly the man than the man
himself. It must, therefore, perfectly represent or correspond to the
spiritual form and constitution; so that the thoughts and affections of
the spirit may enter into it as into their natural home and continent.
This continent or vehicle of the mind is the human body. The body has
two aspects,--substance and form, answering to the two aspects of the
mind,--affection and thought: and affection finds its incarnation or
correspondence in substance; and thought, in form. The mind, in short,
realizes itself in terms of its reflection in the body, much as the
body realizes itself in terms of its reflection in the looking-glass:
but it does more than this, for it identifies itself with this its
image. And how is this identification made possible?
It is brought about by the deception of sense, which is the medium of
communication between the spiritual and the material man. Until this
miraculous medium is put in action, there can be no conscious relation
between these two planes, admirably as they are adapted to each other.
Sense is spiritual on one side and material on the other: but it is
only on the material side that it gathers its reports: on the spiritual
side it only delivers them. Every one of the five messengers whereby we
are apprised of external existence brings us an earthly message only.
And since these messengers act spontaneously, and since the mind's only
other source of knowledge is intuition, which cannot be sensuously
confirmed,--it is little wonder if man has inclined to the persuasion
that what is highest in him is but an attribute of what is lowest, and
that when the body dies, the soul must follow it into nothingness.
Creative energy, being infinite, passes through the world of causes to
the world of effects--through the spiritual to the physical plane.
Matter is therefore the symbol of the ultimate of creative activity; it
is the negative of God. As God is infinite, matter is finite; as He is
life, it is death; as He is real, it is unreal; as He reveals, matter
veils. And as the relation of God to man's spirit is constant and
eternal, so is the physical quality of matter fixed and permanent. Now,
in order to arrive at a comprehension of what matter is in itself, let
us descend from the general to the specific, and investigate the
philosophical elements of a pebble, for instance. A pebble is two
things: it is a mineral: and it is a particular concrete example of
mineral. In its mineral aspect, it is out of space and time, and
is--not a fact, but--a truth; a perception of the mind. In so far as it
is mineral, therefore, it has no relation to sense, but only to
thought: and on the other hand, in so far as it is a particular
concrete pebble, it is cognizable by sense but not by thought; for what
is in sense is out of thought: the one supersedes the other. But if
sense thus absorbs matter, so as to be philosophically
indistinguishable from it, we are constrained to identify matter with
our sensuous perception of it: and if our exemplary pebble had nothing
but its material quality to depend upon, it would cease to exist not
only to thought, but to sense likewise. Its metaphysical aspect, in
short, is the only reality appertaining to it. Matter, then, may be
defined as the impact upon sense of that prismatic ray which we have
called nature.
To apply this discussion to the subject in hand: Magic is a sort of
parody of reality. And when we recognize that Creation proceeds from
within outwards, or endogenously; and that matter is not the objective
but the subjective side of the universe, we are in a position to
perceive that in order magically to control matter, we must apply our
efforts not to matter itself, but to our own minds. The natural world
affects us from without inwards: the magical world affects us from
within outwards: instead of objects suggesting ideas, ideas are made to
suggest objects. And as, in the former case, when the object is removed
the idea vanishes; so in the latter case, when the idea is removed, the
object vanishes. Both objects are illusions; but the illusion in the
first instance is the normal illusion of sense, whereas in the second
instance it is the abnormal illusion of mind.
The above argument can at best serve only as a hint to such as incline
seriously to investigate the subject, and perhaps as a touchstone for
testing the validity of a large and noisy mass of pretensions which
engage the student at the outset of his enquiry. Many of these
pretensions are the result of ignorance; many of deliberate intent to
deceive; some, again, of erroneous philosophical theories. The Tibetan
adepts seem to belong either to the second or to the last of these
categories,--or, perhaps, to an impartial mingling of all three. They
import a cumbrous machinery of auras, astral bodies, and elemental
spirits; they divide man into seven principles, nature into seven
kingdoms; they regard spirit as a refined form of matter, and matter as
the one absolute fact of the universe,--the alpha and omega of all
things. They deny a supreme Deity, but hold out hopes of a practical
deityship for the majority of the human race. In short, their
philosophy appeals to the most evil instincts of the soul, and has the
air of being ex-post-facto; whenever they run foul of a prodigy, they
invent arbitrarily a fanciful explanation of it. But it will be found,
I think, that the various phases of hypnotism, and a systematized use
of spiritism, will amply account for every miracle they actually bring
to pass.
Upon the whole, a certain vulgarity is inseparable from even the most
respectable forms of magic,--an atmosphere of tinsel, of ostentation,
of big cry and little wool. A child might have told us that matter is
not almighty, that minds are sometimes transparent to one another, that
love and faith can work wonders. And we also know that, in this mortal
life, our means are exquisitely adapted to our ends; and that we can
gain no solid comfort or advantage by striving to elbow our way a few
inches further into the region of the occult and abnormal. Magic,
however specious its achievements, is only a mockery of the Creative
power, and exposes its unlikeness to it. "It is the attribute of
natural existence," a profound writer has said, "to be a form of use to
something higher than itself, so that whatever does not, either
potentially or actually, possess within it this soul of use, does not
honestly belong to nature, but is a sensational effect produced upon
the individual intelligence." [Footnote: Henry James, in "Society the
Redeemed Form of Man."]
No one can overstep the order and modesty of general existence without
bringing himself into perilous proximity to subjects more profound and
sacred than the occasion warrants. Life need not be barren of mystery
and miracle to any one of us; but they shall be such tender mysteries
and instructive miracles as the devotion of motherhood, and the
blooming of spring. We are too close to Infinite love and wisdom to
play pranks before it, and provoke comparison between our paltry
juggleries and its omnipotence and majesty.