a soul like his own. He therefore cannot help
supposing that the varied phenomena which pass
before him are acts of arbitrary and capricious
volition. Like the potentates of his tribe or
nation, these Unseen Agencies require to be
flattered, or intimidated. Incense, sacrifices,
ceremonies of homage, prayers and supplications,
may captivate their favour. Failing this, there
is the resource of incantation, exorcism, amulets,
and charms; the aid of some more powerful
spirit is invoked, or the secret of some weakness
is surprised. Sometimes the malignity of a
spirit may be thwarted by the mere invocation
of the name of a mightier spirit; and sometimes
by the mere employment of a disagreeable
object—holy water, or a strong smell—before
which the demon flies. This is the condition of
the mind in all half-civilised peoples, and this is
the condition which determines Magic.

In the slow travail of thought, and by the
accumulation of experience, another condition is
brought about, and Science emerges. Before it
can emerge, the most important of all changes
must have taken place: the phenomena of
Nature, at least all the most ordinary phenomena,
must have been disengaged from this
conception of an arbitrary and capricious power,
similar to human will, and must have been
recognised as constant, always succeeding each
other with fatal regularity. This once recognised,
Science can begin slowly to ascertain the
order of Nature—the laws of succession and co-
existence; and having in any case ascertained
this order, it can predict with certainty the
results which will arrive. If I know that the
order of Nature is such that air which has
once been breathed becomes imperfectly adapted
for a second breathing, and becomes poisonous
after a repetition of the process, I do not, when
I see my fellow-creatures perishing because
they breathe this vitiated air, attempt to propitiate
the noxious spirit by supplications, or to
intimidate by charms and exorcisms. I simply
let in the fresh air, knowing that the fresh air
will restore the drooping sufferers, because
such is the order of Nature. I have learned,
O Thaumaturgus! that your Unseen Agencies,
mighty as you deem them, are not free, but are
fatally subject to inexorable law; they cannot
act capriciously, they must act inexorably. If,
therefore, I can detect these laws—if I can
ascertain what is the inevitable order of succession
—it will be quite needless to trouble myself
about your Unseen Agencies. You promise by
your art to give me power over these Agencies,
by which I shall be able to bend Nature to my
purpose, to harness her to my triumphant
chariot. But if I can once discover the
inexorable laws, I can do what you only delusively
pretend. With each discovery of the actual
order of Nature, it has been found that man's
power over Nature has become greater. He
cannot alter that order, but he can adapt himself
to it. He cannot change the Unchangeable,
but he can predict the Inexorable. And Science
thus fulfils the pretensions of Magic; it is
Magic grown modest.

In proportion as regularity in the succession
of phenomena became ascertained, the domain
of superstition and magic became restricted.
When it was seen that the seed sprouted and
the rain fell in spite of all incantations, and
that the direction of the wind was a surer
indication than the medicine-man's formula,
credulity sought refuge in phenomena less
understood. Long after the course of Nature was
felt to be beyond the influence of magicians,
there was profound belief in their influence over
life and death. The phenomena of Disease
seemed wholly capricious. An invisible enemy
seemed to have struck down the young and
healthy warrior; an enraged deity seemed to be
destroying tribes. When the epidemic breaks
out in the Grecian camp, Homer attributes it
solely to the rage of Apollo, whose priest has
been offended. Down from Olympus the far-
darter comes, "like night," sits apart from the
camp, and for nine days keeps pouring in his
dreadful arrows. The soldiers are struck by
this invisible, but too fatal, enemy. The only
rescue is by appeasing Apollo's wrath. Even
in our own day, men who would smile at this
childish fable, found no difficulty in attributing
the Irish famine to a cause no less childish: they
averred it was a punishment for the "Maynooth
grant." In both cases the cause or order
of Nature was unsuspected; and ignorant
imagination was free to invent the explanation
which best pleased it.

The early priests were necessarily magicians.
All early religions had a strong bias towards
sorcery; because their priests, believing that all
the forces of Nature were good and evil demons,
necessarily arrogate to themselves a power
over these demons, either by propitiation or
intimidation. These men never attempted to make
mankind better, nor to make them wiser; their
object was rather to inspire terror, and to
propagate the superstitions of which they
themselves were dupes. Some secrets they learned,
especially the effects of certain herbs in stimulating
and stupifying the nervous system, so as
to produce visions and hallucinations. They
learned, also, how the imagination may be
impressed by ceremonies, darkness, lugubrious
music, and perfumes, so that the semi-delirious
devotee saw whatever he was told to see.

Hecate, for example, was the personification
of the mysterious rays which the moon projects
into the darkness of night, and only appeared
when the moon veiled her disc. To Hecate
were attributed the spectres and phantoms of
darkness, and all over Greece the rites were
celebrated by many practices common to
sorcery. Thus everything was brought together
to appal the imagination, deceive the senses,
and foster sombre conceptions: exorcisms and
weird formulas, disgusting philtres, hell-broth
made of loathsome objects, such as Shakespeare
describes in Macbeth:

        Fillet of a fenny snake,
        In the cauldron boil and bake:
        Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
        Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,