The Place of Magic in the Intellectual History of Europe/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
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.[1] 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.[2] 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 formulae. 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.
- ↑ This view is set forth at length in J. G. Frazer's The Golden Bough (3 vols., London, 1900). The book also furnishes many illustrations of the magic of primitive man. Mr. Frazer holds that "religion" supplanted magic and is in turn itself being supplanted by science. His definition of religion would probably not be generally accepted.
- ↑ Alfred Maury, in the introduction to his La Magie et l'astrologie dans l'antiquité et au moyen âge, (Paris, 1860), expresses a practically identical view and has the conception of magic gradually fading away before the advance of science. (See also the article on "Magic" in the Encyclopædia Brittanica, 9th edition.)
Maury's work is not, however, as satisfactory as one is led to think from reading its introduction. Although he has defined magic almost in so many words as the attitude of primitive man towards the universe, he himself interprets magic much more narrowly when he comes to write his book proper, as indeed its title. Magic and Astrology, suggests. In short the thought that science and magic may at one time have mingled does not seem to impress him, and his work is of little aid to one considering our present subject. For instance, he cites Pliny only as an opponent of magic. Maury's work, moreover, comprising in its historical portion but a little over two hundred pages—and these nearly half filled by foot-notes—can hardly be regarded as more than a brief narrative sketch of the subject.
Considerable erudition is displayed in Maury's references, especially those to Greek and Roman writers, and from page 208 to 211. Maury gives a good bibliography of some of the chief secondary works dealing with magic. More was written upon the subject shortly before his time than has been since.