IN LITERATURE
That Milton, himself pre-eminently a thinker and a student, should have represented the powers of good as opposed to enquiry, has greatly puzzled his admirers. We should like to find an argument on the other side in Adam's reply to the angel,
"To know
That which before us lies in daily life
Is the prime wisdom."
We should like to translate this speech into a praise of practical science, of enquiry which has for object the control of one's destiny. But there is nothing in the context to aid this interpretation.
If the philosophers have not lured us to a reasonable view of life, the satirists have not driven us to it. Wherever satire has dealt with man's ignorance, it has attacked magic in some form. Even magic-lovers themselves, as to some ex-
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