IN LITERATURE
only an enlightened bystander? The magician at least wanted control of experience—and so do we! Magic sought to engage the help of alien forces, foreign gods, in the problems of this world; we, believing that no gods are alien to our universe, ought logically to make the remotest force effective in our daily aspirations; we cannot stop with a passive wonder. Or if we do, our sympathies, and the sympathy of our fellows, will return to magic, which with all its defects dreamt of power.
When we consider how many noble intellects have tried in vain to take from the race its love of magic, and to teach it instead the habit of wonder, the long failure can be explained, I think, by the fact that the ideal of wonder has rarely included the ideal of control, without which we refuse to be fascinated. This is true of the philosophers, who though
[157]
