The Place of Magic in the Intellectual History of Europe/Chapter 6

by Lynn Thorndike

 

CHAPTER VI

Critics of Magic

The reader will remember how men in the Roman Empire condemned "magic" but understood the word in a restricted and bad sense; how Pliny made pretensions to complete freedom from all belief in magic and how inconsistent was his actual attitude; how Seneca rejected magic only in part, accepting divination in all its ramifications. This partial rejection and partial acceptance of magic by the same individual seem characteristic of the age of the Empire, as one would expect of a time when magic was in a state of decay and science in a process of development. It is true that this rejection of certain varieties of magic often proceeded from the motive of morality rather than of scepticism. Thus in Cicero's De Divinatione, Quintus Cicero is represented as closing his long argument in favor of the truth of divination by solemnly asserting that he does not approve of sorcerers, nor of those who prophesy for sake of gain, nor of the practice of questioning spirits of the dead—which nevertheless, he says, was a custom of his brother's friend Appius.^[1] But there were some men, we may well believe, who would reject even those varieties of magic which found a welcome in the minds of most educated people and in the general mass of the thought and science of the age. Such cases we shall now consider.

I. Opponents of astrology.—Astrology, as we have seen, was very popular. Yet there was some scepticism as to its truth beyond the ridicule of satirists, who perhaps at bottom were themselves believers in the art. Outside of Christian writers the three chief opponents of astrology in the Roman world, judging by the works that have come down to us, were—Cicero who lived before the Empire in the constitutional sense can be said to have begun—in his De Divinatione; Favorinus, a Gaul who resided at Rome in the reigns of Hadrian and Trajan, and was a friend of Plutarch, and whose arguments against astrology have been preserved only in the pages of Aulus Gellius; and Sextus Empiricus, a physician who flourished at about the beginning of the third century of our era.^[2]

When, however, we come to examine both the men and their arguments, we somehow do not find their assault upon astrology especially impressive or satisfactory. First, as to the men. Gellius says that he heard Favorinus make the speech the substance of which he repeats, but that he is unable to state whether the philosopher really meant what he said or argued merely in order to exercise and to display his genius.^[3] There was reason for this perplexity of Gellius, since Favorinus was fond of writing such essays as Eulogies of Thersites and of Quartan Fever. There is no particular reason for doubting Sextus's seriousness, but, besides being a medical man, he was a member of the sceptical school of philosophy, a circumstance which warns one not to attribute too much emphasis to his attack on astrology. Indeed, the attack occurs in a work directed against learning in general, in which he assails grammarians, rhetoricians, geometricians, arithmeticians, students of music, logicians, "physicists," and students of ethics as well as astrologers. Cicero was not prone to such sweeping scepticism or sophistry, but the force of his opposition to astrology is somewhat neutralized by the fact that in his Dream of Scipio he apparently attributes to planets influence over man.

Now as to their arguments. We have spoken of their "attack on astrology," but in reality they can scarcely be said to attack astrology as a whole. Indeed, it is the doctrines of the Chaldeans which Cicero makes the object of his assault; he says nothing about astrology. Favorinus will not even admit that he attacks the "disciplina Chaldaeorum" in any true sense, but affirms that the Chaldeans were not the authors of such theories at all, but that these have originated of late among traveling fakirs who beg their bread by means of such deceits and trickeries.^[4] Some of the arguments of our sceptics are really directed merely against the methods of interpreting the decrees of the stars which they give us to understand that the astrologers employ. Such objections might suffice to pierce the presumption of the ordinary popular astrologer but they fall back blunted from the system of Ptolemy.^[5] If our sceptics thought that they were overthrowing the astrology of the man of learning by such arguments, they labored under a misapprehension, and in the eyes of one who really understood the art must have cut the figure of ignoramuses making false charges against a science of which they knew next to nothing.

As some of the arguments of our sceptics apply solely to defects in method of which the best astrologers were not guilty, so others do not deny the existence of sidereal influence over the life of man, but contend that it is impossible to determine with essential accuracy what will be the effects of that influence. Sextus, for example, seems to lay most stress upon such points as the difficulty of exactly determining the date of birth or of conception, or the precise moment when a star passes into a new sign of the zodiac. He calls attention to the fact that observers at varying altitudes, as well as in different localities, would arrive at different conclusions, that differences in eyesight would also affect results, and that it is hard to tell just when the sun sets owing to refraction.^[6] He almost becomes scholastic in the minuteness of his objections, leaving us somewhat in doubt whether they are to be taken as indicative of a spirit of captious criticism towards an art the fundamental principles of which he tacitly recognized as well-nigh incontestible, or whether he is simply trying to make his case doubly sure by showing astrology to be impracticable as well as unreasonable.

The main thing to be noted about Cicero, Favorinus and Sextus is that they pay almost no attention to the general problem of sidereal influence on terrestrial matter and life. It is to the denial of an absolute, complete and immutable rule of the heavenly bodies over man that they devote their energies. The premises of astrology they leave pretty much alone. One might accept almost all their statements and still believe in a large influence of the stars over our physical characteristics and mental traits. The question of sidereal influence upon lower animal life, vegetation and inert matter they avoid with a sneer.^[7]

II. Cicero's attack upon divination.—A more satisfactory example of scepticism may be found in other chapters of the De Divinatione than those which assail the art of the Chaldeans. Moreover, although the discussion is limited to the specific theme of divination, still that is a subject which admits of very broad interpretation, and Cicero employs some arguments which are capable of an even wider application and oppose the hypotheses on which magic in general rests. He rejects divination as unscientific. It is to such arguments that we shall confine our attention. "Natural divination," that is, predictions made under direct divine inspiration without interposition of signs and portents, is not magic and so the discussion of it will not concern us. Much less shall we waste any time over such trite contentions against divination in general as that there is no use of knowing predetermined events since you cannot avoid them,^[8] and that even if we can learn the future we shall be happier not to do it.

De Divinatione takes the form of a suppositious conversation, or better, informal debate, between the author and his brother Quintus. In the first book Quintus, in a rather rambling and leisurely fashion, and with occasional repetition of ideas, upholds divination to the best of his ability, citing many reported instances of successful recourse to it in antiquity. In the second book Tully proceeds, with an air of somewhat patronizing superiority, to pull entirely to pieces the arguments of his brother, who assents with cheerful readiness to their demolition.

It is interesting to note that as Pliny's magic was not his own, so Cicero's scepticism did not originate wholly with himself. As his other philosophical writings draw their material largely from Greek philosophy, so the second book of the De Divinatione is supposed to have been under considerable obligations to Clitomachus and Panætius.^[9] As for the future, the De Divinatione was known in the Middle Ages but its influence seems to have often been scarcely that intended by its author.

One of the main points in the argument of Quintus had been his appeal to the past. What race or state, he asked, has not believed in some form of divination?

 

For before the revelation of philosophy, which was discovered recently, public opinion had no doubt of the truth of this art; and after philosophy came forth no philosopher of authority thought otherwise. I have mentioned Pythagoras, Democritus, Socrates. I have left out no one of the ancients save Xenophanes. I have added the Old Academy, the Peripatetics, the Stoics. Epicurus alone dissented.^[10] When Tully's turn to speak came, he rudely disturbed his brother's reliance upon tradition. "I think it not the part of a philosopher to employ witnesses, who are only haply true, often purposely false and deceiving. He ought to show why a thing is so by arguments and reasons, not by events, especially those I cannot credit."^[11] "Antiquity," Cicero declared later, "has erred in many respects."^[12] The existence of the art of divination in every age and nation had little effect upon him. There is nothing, he asserted, so widespread as ignorance.^[13]

Both brothers distinguished divination from the natural sciences and assigned it a place by itself.^[14] Quintus said that medical men, pilots and farmers foresee many things, yet their arts are not divination. "Not even Pherecydes, that famous Pythagorean master, who prophesied an earthquake when he saw there was no water in a well usually full, should be regarded as a diviner rather than a physicist."^[15] In like manner Tully pointed out that the sick seek a doctor, not a soothsayer, that diviners cannot instruct us in astronomy, that no one consults them concerning philosophic problems or ethical questions, that they can give us no light on the problems of the natural universe, and that they are of no service in logic, dialectic or political science.^[16] Such would be the ideal condition, but in practice, as we have seen much reason to believe, divination, at least in the broad sense, was confused with science and with other subjects to no small extent both under the Empire and in the Middle Ages. A doctor might be something of a diviner as well: the astrologer was skilled in astronomy; "mathematicus" came within a short time after Cicero's own day to be the word regularly used to denote a soothsayer;^[17] Pierre du Bois and Bodin found astrology an aid to political science.

Cicero, however, went further than the assertion that divination had no connection with science and declared that it was contrary to science. Such a figment, he scornfully affirmed, as that the heart will vanish from a corpse for one man's benefit and remain in the body to suit the future of another, was not believed even by old wives now-a-days.^[18] Nay more, he asked, how can the heart vanish from the body? Surely it must be there while life lasts, and can it disappear in an instant?

Believe me, you are abandoning the citadel of philosophy while you defend its outposts. For in your effort to prove soothsaying true you utterly pervert physiology. . . . For there will be something which either springs from nothing or suddenly vanishes into nothingness. What scientist ever said that? The soothsayers say so? Are they then, do you think, to be trusted rather than scientists?^[19]

Cicero does not think they are.

Also he shows that the methods of divination are not scientific. He asks: Why did Calchas deduce from the devoured sparrow that the Trojan war would last ten years rather than ten weeks or ten months?^[20] He points out that the art is conducted in different places according to quite different rules of procedure, even to the extent that a favorable omen in one locality is a sinister warning elsewhere.^[21] In short, whether he got his idea from the Greeks or not, he has come, long before most men had reached that point, to have a clear idea of the essential contradiction between science and magic. "Quid igitur," he asks, "minus a physicis dici debet quam quidquam certi significari rebus incertis?"^[22]

Besides this sharp separation of divination from science and besides his rejection of tradition, a third creditable feature of Cicero's book is his question: What intimate connection, what bond of natural causality can there be between the liver or heart or lung of a fat bull and the divine eternal cause of things which rules the world?^[23] He refuses to believe in any extraordinary bonds of sympathy between things which, in so far as our daily experience and our knowledge of nature's workings can inform us, have absolutely no connection. He appeals to the canons of common sense. In fact, it is generally true throughout his treatise that where he cannot disprove, he pooh-poohs superstition.

On the whole Cicero's attitude probably represents the most enlightened scepticism to be found in the ancient world. Though some of his arguments seem weak, he deserves credit for having argued at all. Against what they were pleased to call magic, men, especially during the Middle Ages, were apt to rant rather than reason.

But, alas, unless we assume that the famous Dream of Scipio is a purely imaginative production, that the fantastic beliefs there set forth (borrowed, no doubt, from Greek thought) are presented for dramatic purposes alone and do not represent Cicero's actual views, we must grant that our sceptical Cicero believed in some magic after all. For the Dream, despite its author's animadversions against Chaldæan astrology, speaks of Jupiter as a star wholesome and favorable to the human race, of Mars as most unfavorable.^[24] Also it calls the numbers seven and eight perfect and speaks of their product as signifying the fatal year in Scipio's career.^[25]

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1. De Divinatione, bk. i, ch. 58. "Haec habui, inquit, de divinatione quae dicerem. Nunc ilia testabor non me sortileges neque eos qui quaestus causa hariolentur, ne psychomantia quidem quibus Appius amicus tuus uti solebat, agnoscere."
2. For the arguments of Favorinus, see Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, bk. xiv; ch. 1. (Delphin & Variorum Classics [1824] ex editione Jacob! Gronovii.) Fragments of Favorinus's writings are also to be found in Stobæus.
   
   The edition of the Opera of Sextus Empiricus which I used was that by Johannes Albertus Fabricus, (Lipsiae, 1718), giving the Greek text and a Latin translation.
   
   For Cicero's arguments, see De Divinatione, bk. ii, chs. 42-47.
3. "Adversum istos qui sese chaldseos seu genethliacos appellant, ac de motu deque positu stellarum dicere posse, quae futura sunt, profitentur, audivimus quondam Favorinum philosophum Romae Graece disserentem egregia atque illustri oratione; exercendine autem, anne ostentandi gratia ingenii, an quod ita serio judicatoque existamaret, non habeo dicere. Noctes Atticae, bk. xiv, ch. 1, sect. 1. A foot-note in the Delphin edition expresses preference in place of the words "exercendine autem, anne ostentendi" for the shorter reading "exercendi autem, non ostentandi"—which reading is adopted by Hertz in his edition of the year, 1885.
4. "Disciplinam istam Chaldaeorum tantae vetustatis non esse, quantae videri volunt; neque eos principes eius auctoresque esse, quos ipsi ferant: sed id praestigiarum atque offuciarum genus commentos esse homines aeruscatores, et cibum quaestumque ex mendaciis captantes." Noctes Atticae, bk. xiv, ch. 1, sect. 2.
5. For instance, the charge that astrologers disregard the differing aspects of the heavens in different regions does not hold true in the case of Ptolemy. Also the objection to the doctrine of nativities, that men born at different times often suffer a common fate in battle or some such general disaster, is a weak argument at best, for the fact that you and I are born under different stars does not necessitate that our careers have absolutely nothing in common, and it was nullified by Ptolemy's explanation that great general events like earthquakes, wars, floods and plagues overrule any contradictory destiny which the constellations may seem to portend for the individual. See Bouché-Leclerq, Rev. Hist., vol. lxv, p. 268.
6. Similarly Favorinus declared that, if the different fate of twins was to be explained by the fact that after all they are not born at precisely the same moment, then to determine one's destiny the time of his birth and the position of the stars at the same instant must be measured with an exactness practically impossible. "Atque id velimetiam, inquit, ut respondeant: si tam parvum atque rapidum est momentum temporis, in quo homo nascens fatum accipit, ut in eodem illo puncto, sub eodem circulo coeli, plures simul ad eamdem competentiam nasci non queant; et si idcirco gemini quoque non eadem vitae sorte sunt, quoniam non eodem temporis puncto editi sunt; peto, inquit, respondeant, cursum ilium temporis transvolantis, qui vix cogitatione animi comprehendi potest, quonam pacto aut consulto assequi queant, aut ipsi perspicere et deprehendere; quum in tam praecipiti dierum noctiumque vertigine minima momenta ingentes facere dicant mutationes." Noctes Atticae, bk. xiv, ch. 1, sect. 10.
7. Favorinus declares that the astrologers may congratulate themselves that he does not propose such a question to them as that of astral influence on minute animals; Cicero says that if all animals are to be subjected to the stars, then inanimate things must be too, than which nothing could be more absurd.
   
   "Illud autem condonare se iis dicebat, quod non id quoque requireret, si vitae mortisque hominima rerumque humanarum omnium tempus et ratio et causa in coelo et apud Stellas foret, quid de muscis aut vermiculis aut echinis, multisque aliis minutissimis terra marique animantibus, di Cerent? An ista quoque isdem, quibus homines, legibus nascerentur, isdemque itidem epcstinguerentur." Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, bk. xiv, ch. 1, sect. 12.
   
   "Et si ad rem pertinet, quo modo coelo affecto compositisque sideribus quodque animal oriatur; valeat id necesse est etiam in rebus inanimis. Quo quid dici potest absurdius?" De Divin., bk. ii, ch. 47.
   
   Favorinus, however, does hint in one place that the sole evidence that we possess of any influence of the stars upon us is a few such causal connections as that between the phases of the moon and the tides of the ocean.
8. Ptolemy made a fair retort to this argument by holding that foreknowledge, even if it could not enable us to avoid the coming event, at least served the purpose of breaking the news gently and saving us the more vivid shock which the actual event, if unexpected, would cause by its raw reality.
9. See T. Schiche, De Fontibus Lihrorum Ciceronis qui sunt de Divinatione, (Jena, 1875) and K. Hartfelder, Die Quellen von Ciceros zwei Büchern de Divinatione (Freiburg, 1878).
10. Bk. i, ch. 39. "Neque ante philosophiam patefactam, quae nuper inventa est, hac de re communis vita dubitavit; et postea, quam philosophia processit, nemo aliter philosophus sensit, in quo modo esset auctoritas. Dixi de Pythagora, de Democrite, de Socrate; excepi de antiquis praeter Xenophanem neminem; adiunxi veterem academiam, peripateticos, stoicos. Unus dissentit Epicurus." This trust in tradition, it may be here observed, formed one of the chief grounds for mediæval belief in magic as well.
11. Bk. ii, ch. 11. "Hoc ego philosophi non arbitror, testibus uti, qui aut casu veri aut malitia falsi fictique esse possunt. Argumentis et rationibus oportet quare quidque ita sit docere, non eventis, iis praesertim quibus mihi liceat non credere."
12. Bk. ii, ch. 33. "Errabat enim multis in rebus antiquitas."
13. Bk. ii, ch. 36.
14. As Tully (bk. ii, ch. 5) puts it, "Quae enim praesentiri aut arte aut ratione aut usu aut conjectura possunt, ea non divinis tribuenda putas sed peritis."
15. Bk, i, ch. 50.
16. Bk. ii, chs. 3, 4.
17. We saw Pliny use "mathematicae artes" as an equivalent of divination or astrology.
18. Bk. ii, ch. 15.
19. Bk. ii, ch. 16. "Urbem philosophiae, mihi crede, proditis dum castella defenditis. Nam dum aruspicinam veram esse vultis, physiologiam totam pervertitis. Caput est in jecore, cor in extis: iam abscedet, simul ac molam et vinum insperseris; deus id eripiet, vis aliqua conficiet, aut exedet. Non ergo omnium interitus atque obitus natura conficiet; et erit aliquid quod aut ex nihilo oriatur, aut in nihilum subito occidat. Quis hoc physicus dixit unquam? Aruspices dicunt? His igitur quam physicis potius credendum existimas?"
20. Bk. ii, ch. 28.
21. Bk. ii ch. 12.
22. Bk. ii, ch. 19.
23. Bk. ii, ch. 12. "Atqui divina cum rerum natura tanta tamque praeclara in omnes partes motusque diffusa, quid habere potest commune, non dicam gallinacum fel (sunt enim qui vel argutissima haec exta esse dicant) sed tauri opimi jecur aut cor aut pulmo, quid habet naturale, quo declarari possit quid futurum sit?"
24. "Deinde est hominum generi prosperus et salutaris ille fulgor qui dicitur Jovis. Turn rutilus horribilisque terris, quern Martium dicitis. Deinde subter mediam fere regionem Sol obtmet, dux et princeps et moderator luminum reliquorum, mens mundi et temperatio," etc.
25. "Nam cum aetas tua septenos octies solis anfractus reditusque converterit, duoque hi numeri, quorum uterque plenus, alter altera de causa habetur, circuitu naturali summam tibi fatalem confecerint, etc."