CHAPTER LXXII
CONCLUSION
The end of our period—Science not stagnant during it—Nor a mere handmaid of religion—The belief in occult virtue—Dominance of astrology—Definition of magic—Difficulty of reducing magic to one principle—Human fondness for the fallacious—Utility is not magic’s strongest appeal—The spirit of magic is not the scientific spirit—Magic and experimental science—Science is a gradual evolution, not a modern creation—Its medieval stage of development—Does magic survive in modern learning?—Or in other sides of present life?—Importance of the history of experimental science—Prominence of magic in the history of science—How the human mind works—Indestructibility of thought.
The end of our period.
Our survey of some thirteen centuries of thought draws to a close. As has been said in discussing Peter of Abano, the period of the medieval revival of learning, as of other phases of civilization, seems to have spent its force by the close of the first quarter of the fourteenth century. On the other hand, the works which we have studied were reproduced again and again in manuscript form in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and then in printed form in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as has been pointed out in many instances. Some topics, like that of experimental books, we have traced on as late as into the seventeenth century. In short, the conceptions whose prevalence we have depicted in some detail for thirteen centuries of thought continued to have weight for a long time thereafter. On the occult and magical side, moreover, later writers like Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Trithemius, or Cardan were to add little or nothing to what had been often repeated before. In the field of experimental science, on the other hand, a period of greater progress came later. Gradually, too,—very gradually it would seem until almost our own time—scepticism was to come to prevail among scientists as to the possibility of magic in any of its forms in the world of nature. A great task still awaits him who shall trace the slow rise of effective scepticism through such writings against astrology as those of Nicholas Oresme in the fourteenth, and Pico della Mirandola, who at the same time believed in magic, in the fifteenth century, and in such criticisms of pseudo-science in general as Sir Thomas Browne’s History of Vulgar Errors in the seventeenth century;[3011] and likewise the gradual dislodgment of the conception of occult virtue and influence by that of natural law through the disclosure of many of nature’s former secrets by scientific instruments and research.
Science not stagnant during it.
However, the disclosure of such secrets had already begun when the period of our investigation opened and it continued during our period of thirteen centuries, which was no such age of retrogression or stagnation as it has formerly been depicted. The ideas and discoveries of Hellenic, not to say oriental, science persisted and were preserved by medieval men to a greater extent than has been generally recognized; and to them the medieval men added questions, observations, and even discoveries of their own. Not only did curiosity concerning nature’s secrets continue, but the authority of the ancients was often received with scepticism; and a marked tendency runs through our period to rely upon rationalism and experimental method. I have exposed the Physiologus myth, the Florilegia myth, the legend of Roger Bacon as a lone herald of modern experimental science, the notion that Vincent of Beauvais adequately sums up all medieval science, and a number of other modern “vulgar errors” concerning medieval learning. I have shown that medieval men were wider readers than has often been thought, that the scholastics presented their material in a more systematic way than classical writers, that the Latin of the thirteenth century has a clearer style and shows more direct thinking than the vernaculars of the fifteenth century. Should we, moreover, go on to examine in detail the writings of the early modern centuries, I suspect that we would find them repeating the medieval authors just as these had repeated the classical authorities. Gesner, for instance, in his History of Animals, 1551-1587, copied Albertus Magnus as well as Aristotle. And of the scientific notions with which the men of the sixteenth century have been credited by their admirers many might be found on closer scrutiny and comparison to date back to classical or medieval authors.
Nor a mere handmaid of religion.
Nor can I agree that natural science in the middle ages, as has been said of medieval philosophy, was a mere handmaid of religion. Friar Bacon pointed out, it is true, how experimental science might serve the Church, but he also wished the Church to advance the study of science. And in many ways the Church did so, while its opposition to scientific research at that time has been grossly exaggerated. It is true that the Biblical and Christian conception of a created universe was generally accepted, but the Aristotelian and astrological conception of the heavenly bodies as eternal and incorruptible was scarcely less influential, and many writers held both conceptions, however inconsistent this may seem to us. We have met with some extreme instances of the religious point of view affecting the attitude toward nature, notably the idea that human sin affects or even upsets the course of nature; but we have also seen that the moralizing and allegorizing supposed to characterize medieval nature-study have been greatly over-estimated. For ancient pagans like Pliny and Seneca the study of nature seems to have taken the place of religion in large measure, but the introduction of Christianity did not result in the discontinuance or estoppal of the study of nature, nor in its reduction to a state of servitude. Medieval science was somewhat under the wing of the Church, as were so many other activities now purely secular, but science even in the middle ages was learning to use its own wings. Both in Mohammedan and Christian society profane learning in general and science in particular made progress, and the remains of Arabic science would be much scantier than they are, were it not for the fact that many works are preserved solely in Latin translations.
The belief in occult virtue.
But many secrets of nature still remained undiscovered in our period, and hence it is not surprising that the conception of occult virtue in nature, of occult influence exerted by animals, herbs, and gems, or by stars and spirits, still prevailed to such an extent among men of the highest scientific attainments then possible. How potent this conception was, has been shown by the continued use of amulets, of ligatures and suspensions, by the general belief in fascination, physiognomy, number mysticism, and divination from dreams. Some still countenanced the occult force of words, figures, characters, and images, or of this and that rite, ceremonial, and form. Especially surprising is the prevalence of lot-casting under the pseudo-scientific form of geomancy. But others had begun to doubt the efficacy of some or most of these things. Animism had pretty much had its day; necromancy and the notory art received relatively little attention, although the Church appears to have rather encouraged them by insisting upon the existence and power of evil spirits. But even the fathers and theologians made the point that demons work their marvels largely through their superior knowledge of natural forces. Much more in science and medicine have we seen the notion of spiritual force displaced by that of occult natural virtue, and use made of natural substances rather than of incantations. Some of our authors would explain the results achieved by incantations entirely by the force of suggestion. Of the later witchcraft delusion which overpowered the learned as well as the populace we have found relatively few harbingers. The discussion of sorcery and witchcraft has been less in our medieval than in our ancient authors, and less among our scientists than among our theologians. The subject has been broached chiefly in connection with formal definitions of magic arts or the practical problem of impotency after marriage.
Dominance of astrology.
We have also repeatedly seen magic itself becoming more scientific or pseudo-scientific in method and appearance. This is well illustrated by the fact that in our authors of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries astrology is the most widespread, as it is the most pseudo-scientific of any variety of the magic arts. Indeed, it has ceased to be merely one method of divination and claims to study and disclose the universal law of nature in the rule of the stars, by which every fact in nature and every occult influence in magic may be explained. If this doctrine were true, all other sciences and magic arts would be reduced to branches of the supreme science and art of astronomy or astrology. But it is not true, and hence I prefer to classify astrology as a magic art along with other arts of divination. And this brings us back to the question of the definition of magic.
Definition of magic.
The results of this investigation seem to me to have justified the selection of the word, “magic,” as a generic term to include all superstitious arts and occult sciences, and to designate a great primary division or phase of human thought and activity. Magic is subordinate to no other superstition or occult art; they are more often regarded as subdivisions of it. The attempts of some of our authors to distinguish between magic and astrology, or magic and divination, or good and bad magic, or natural magic and sorcery, or witchcraft and counter-magic, have all been exceedingly illogical and unconvincing. Magic appears, in our period at least, as a way of looking at the world which is reflected in a human art or group of arts employing varied materials in varied rites, often fantastic, to work a great variety of marvelous results, which offer man a release from his physical, social, and intellectual limitations, not by the imaginative and sentimental methods of music, melodrama, fiction, and romance, or by religious experience or asceticism, but by operations supposed to be efficacious here in the world of external reality. Some writers, chiefly theologians, lay great stress on resort to spirits in magic, some upon the influence of the heavens, some on both these forces, which yet others almost identify; but, except as theological dogma insists upon the demoniacal character of magic, or as astrological doctrine insists on the rule of the stars, it cannot be said that spirits or stars are thought of as always necessary in magic. The sine qua non seems to be a human operator, materials, rites, and an aim that borders on the impossible, either in itself, such as predicting the future or curing incurable diseases or becoming invisible, or in relation to the apparently inadequate means employed.
Difficulty of reducing magic to one principle.
In our authors it has been difficult to account for the particular occult properties attributed to things and acts, or to detect any one underlying principle, such as sympathy, symbolism, imitation, contagion, resemblance, or association, guiding the selection of materials and rites for magic. This is either because there never was such a principle, and magic from the start was empirical and complex, or because we deal with a late stage in its development, when the superstitions of different peoples have coalesced, when the peculiar customs of folk-lore have become confused with those of science and religion, after the primitive methods of magic have been artificially over-elaborated, and after many usages have become gradually corrupted and their original meaning has been forgotten. Whether magic is good or evil, true or false, is with our authors a matter of opinion, in which the majority hold it to be true but evil. Every shade of opinion is represented, however; but furthermore few can avoid a wholesome feeling that there is something false about magic somewhere. This sounds the signal, as it were, for magic’s doom.
Human fondness for the fallacious.
However, I suspect that it is not so much that magic has been shown to be false, as it is that men have come to set a greater value upon truth, that accounts for magic’s decline. As I survey the practice and “beliefs” of primitive and savage tribes or the columns of modern newspapers and much of modern literature, I become convinced that men have a natural tendency to assert, and craving to hear the sensational, exaggerated, and impossible, and to fly in the face both of reason and experience. People take pleasure in affirming the extravagant and in believing the incredible, in saying that they have seen or done what no one else has seen or done. Cows, for instance, seldom or never burst, as everyone knows perfectly well, primitive man probably better than civilized; that is what makes it interesting to mention circumstances under which they will burst. “Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief,” is a good picture of the mental attitude supporting much of magic, which may be not so much a matter of belief as of make-believe.
Utility is not magic’s strongest appeal.
To turn from “belief” to practice, I suspect that much magic is done from want of anything better or else to do, rather than from complete conviction of its efficacy. When Pamphile in the pages of Apuleius anointed herself from top to toe in order to turn into an owl, it was because this was the best way of which she could think to enable herself to fly far, far away. But had an airplane been at hand, I fancy she would have had more confidence in it for purposes of flight. Inventions in artificial lighting have probably done more than sermons, arguments, and laws to dispel the works of darkness with which magicians whiled away the night-time. Had electric light been invented in Pamphile’s age, she would probably have spent her evenings in jazz or at a movie. It was probably not during the hunting season that cave-men drew their magic pictures of wild boars and bulls. The telepathy practiced by savages in war and hunting[3012] is perhaps less from firm faith in its potency than because the women left at home want to do something and to share somehow in the crucial operations, and furthermore are expected “to do their bit” by the men in the field. Perhaps such telepathic magic had almost as great actual efficacy toward its end as some of the desperate expedients, prompted more by patriotic emotion than discreet calculation, which were adopted to help “win the war” or to “maintain morale” by those who stayed at home during the recent great conflict. I should doubt if most men ever believed that rain falls only as a result of magic. It seems more likely that they are aware that the rain will come some time, and hence are ready to do almost anything which may hurry it up or relieve their own feelings and inaction in the meantime. As no modern scientist has brought to their attention any more efficacious method of altering the weather, they continue their time-honored rite regardless of our jeers. It does as well as any. But where some prehistoric genius introduced artificial irrigation, rainmaking magic probably promptly declined in popularity.
The spirit of magic is not the scientific spirit.
In the case of rain-making there is evidently much truth in Sir James Frazer’s statement that “the fallacy of magic is not easy to detect, because nature herself generally produces sooner or later the effects which the magician fancies he produces by his art.”[3013] But the dictum cannot be stretched to cover magic in general. In some cases the fallacy of magic is all too evident, but men love it, or there is as yet no truth discovered to take its place. Rational scepticism is needed to dispel the former; repeated experiment, to arrive at the latter. Believers in and practitioners of magic probably at no time in its history either even flattered themselves on so sound a basis of theory, or were so severely practical in their aims and methods, as not to delight in the marvelous and incredible and impossible for their own sake. Rather in providing or attempting to provide for practical wants and emergencies, considerations of credibility and possibility often were apt to be cast to the winds. Thus the spirit of magic is different from the scientific spirit.
Magic and experimental science.
Yet our material has conclusively shown that the history of magic is bound up with the history of science as well as with folk-lore, primitive culture, and the history of religion. Sometimes our authors have spoken of natural magic, but I rather wonder whether there could well be any other kind, since man must always reckon with his natural environment. It is not without reason that the Magi stand out in Pliny’s pages not as mere sorcerers or enchanters but as those who have gone farthest and in most detail—too curiously, in his opinion—into the study of nature. It is not without reason that we have found experimentation and magic so constantly associated throughout our period. After all it is not surprising that magic, which was both curious and tried to accomplish things, should investigate nature and should experiment. It is even possible that magicians were the first to experiment, or shared that province with the first inventors and the useful arts, and that natural science, originally philosophical and speculative, took over experimental method in a crude form, as well as the conception of occult virtue, from magic. As Sir James Frazer has said, “Here is a body of men relieved, at least in the higher stages of savagery, from the need of earning their livelihood by hard manual toil, and allowed, nay, expected and encouraged, to prosecute researches into the secret ways of nature.”[3014] It is therefore perhaps not surprising that men like Galen, Apuleius, Apollonius, and Dunstan were accused of magic by their contemporaries; that men like Gerbert, Michael Scot, and Albertus Magnus were represented as magicians in later, if not contemporary legend; that Lithica and Roger Bacon tell us of the danger of sages being accused of magic; that the Book of Enoch, Cyprian, Firmicus, and Picatrix confuse magic with other arts and sciences; and that no one of our authors, try as he may, succeeds in keeping magic entirely out of science or science entirely out of magic.
Science is a gradual evolution, not a modern creation.
Be that as it may, if the anthropologists are correct in asserting that magic forms a great part of the life and thought of early man and of all primitive peoples, it is evident that only gradually would the science and thought of civilized peoples free themselves from the old habits and instincts. Modern science cannot exempt itself from its own theory of evolution as Julius Firmicus exempted the Roman emperor from the rule of the stars. Science did not come down from above nor invade from without. It grew up in the very midst of superstition and mental anarchy, just as the states of modern Europe had their beginnings in feudal society. As the kings in the middle ages had to govern under feudal limitations and even by feudal means, so science for a long time not merely was opposed by the unscientific attitude, but was itself tinged by fantastic theories and false data. It is scarcely a paradox to say that during our Roman and medieval period the laws of magic were better defined and understood than those of science. Yet the scientific attitude, like the spirit of nationality, was at work in the seeming chaos; gradually it shook itself free from error, and, by the increasing application of truly scientific methods, won a similar triumph to that which the sovereign political power gained by its gradual development of governmental institutions.
Its medieval stage of development.
This was the process going on in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. When men still believed in demons and witches and divination from dreams, it is not surprising that they believed also in natural magic. Only a small part of nature’s secrets were revealed to them; of the rest they felt that almost anything might turn out to be true. It was a time when “one vast realm of wonder spreads around.” They had to struggle against a huge burden of error and superstition which Greece and Rome and the Arabs handed down to them; yet they must try to assimilate what was of value in Aristotle, Galen, Pliny, Ptolemy, and the rest. Crude naïve beginners they were in many respects. Yet they show an interest in nature and its problems; they are drawing the line between science and religion; they make some progress in mathematics, geography, physics and chemistry; they not only talk about experimental method, they actually make some inventions and discoveries of use in the future advance of science. Moreover, they themselves feel that they are making progress. They do not hesitate to disagree with their ancient authorities, when they know something better. Roger Bacon affirms that many scientific facts and truths are known in his time of which Plato and Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen, were ignorant. The ancients, says Peter of Spain in effect, were philosophers, but we are experimenters. Magic still lingers but the march of modern science has begun.
Does magic survive in modern learning?
Are there other sides of our life and thought to-day where magic still lingers and no such march as that of modern natural and experimental science has been begun or progressed so far? We fear that there are. One can well imagine that a future age may regard much of the learning even of our time as almost as futile, superstitious, fantastic in method, and irrelevant to the ends sought, as were primitive man’s methods of producing rain, Egyptian amulets to cure disease, or medieval blood-letting according to the phases of the moon. Ptolemy believed in astrology, but how many archaeologists and philologists and students of early religion and mythology and folk-lore there are who fail to observe his great law that one should always adopt the simplest possible hypothesis consistent with the observed facts! How some ransack the latest and remotest sources for some one brief annotation by a scholiast that may support some ingenious theory concerning the earliest origins of a language, a cult, or a deity,—which theory too often has only this to recommend it, that no one has ever thought of it before! How to prove a point concerning some single country and restricted period they bring together word-forms, coins, fragments of vases, customs, and folk-tales from the most outlandish regions and widely separated eras, and pile up a huge collection of most erudite looking footnotes, full of abbreviated formulae denoting German periodicals which have all the appearance of the unintelligible jargon of some ancient incantation! As one reflects upon the respect and admiration with which such “scholarship” and “research” is regarded by many in our own time, can one wonder that in the middle ages and antiquity the pharmacist who added to his compound herb after herb from India and other romantic lands, or part after part from the carcasses of fabulous animals, in a frantic effort to improve upon a remedy that was wrong to start with,—can one wonder if he was hailed in his day as a discoverer and public benefactor, if his compound was copied in book after book and century after century, and, while he perhaps had devised it against some one ailment, if it came in time to be regarded as a panacea for all ills? How many historical generalizations, which originated in superficial association of ideas on no sounder a basis than that supposed by some to lie behind magic, are not only still current, but are glibly and unquestioningly assumed as themselves a basis for what might otherwise be considered truly scientific investigation of more detailed and less important points!
Or in other sides of present life?
We might carry our comparison from the world of scholarship, which at least displays industry and ingenuity in its superstitions, to the cruder and lazier conceptions and assumptions of social and civil life. Often enough has the connection of religion with magic been pointed out, but what side of life is there that is free from it? If not sheer intolerance, what else than survivals or revivals of ritual are all those conventions of dress and etiquette which are supposed to distinguish ladies and gentlemen from their fellow human beings? “Good form” is one of the last lines of trenches by which stupidity endeavors to hold its conquest or inheritance or—shall we say?—native soil of respectability. And how much we are forced to hear of literary or of social charm! Is such charm any less fleeting and fallacious than the magic charm from which it takes its name? Does it advance truth or retard civilization? Is not the man without it, who has to be twice as efficient in order to secure the same position as the man with it, the true builder? Does such personal charm add any more to its possessor’s real value to society than the incantation of the ancient artisan did to his industrial process? We believe that it does, but so did he. Or who can marvel at past belief in the magic power of words, who hears statesmen speak and millions shout of Militarism, Unconditional Surrender, Nationality, Democracy, Prohibition, Socialism, and Bolsheviki? What fears, what hopes, what passions, what prejudices, what sacrifices these words elicit! And how little agreement there is as to their meaning! If our illustrations are somewhat frivolous and superficial, let us measure the amount of magic in present civilization by Plotinus’ standard. He who yields to the charms of love and family affection or seeks political power or aught else than Truth and true beauty, or even he who searches for beauty in inferior things; he who is deceived by appearances, he who follows irrational inclinations, is as truly bewitched as if he were the victim of magic and goetia so-called. The life of reason is alone free from magic. Measuring our age by such a standard, we shall be tempted to cry out, Magic of magics, all is magic! What else is there to write about?
Importance of the history of experimental science.
At least one thing, and that is experimental science. “It always is making acquisitions and never grows less; it ever elevates and never degenerates; it is always clear and never conceals itself.” Of its relations to magic through some thirteen centuries of thought I have deemed it worth while to attempt a somewhat detailed picture in the foregoing pages, presenting not only a survey of occult science but of the lives and writings of some pioneers, now too forgotten, in science’s earlier and less successful days. Originally magic alone was the object of my investigation, and experimental science an unexpected by-product which forced its importance during our period increasingly upon the attention. For this reason, while the magic of the learned has perhaps been treated here about as fully as it deserves, a complete and thorough history of experimental science through these thirteen centuries has not been attempted, and much new material in all probability still awaits discovery in the period of which we have treated. And while I have not yet had time to do much reading in works of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, I suspect that while the writers on occult subjects have little or nothing new to say, experimentation probably continued its evolution and that there may even be disclosed in obscure writers of that time germs of some of the discoveries usually ascribed to later and greater names.
Prominence of magic in the history of science.
On the other hand, I have found little to suggest that medieval men themselves purposely concealed scientific discoveries which they had made, although it is true that some of them believed that the ancients had done this, and although some of them pretended to do so themselves. Above all I have demonstrated that when ancient or medieval authors are apparently superstitious, they are really so, and that it is far-fetched to attempt to explain such passages as cryptograms or allegories or flights of poetical imagination or interpolations or signs of spurious authorship. Our authors do not intentionally employ occult science to hide truths of natural science or inventions in applied science. Rather it is characteristic of magic and occult science to make a pretense of hidden truth and of marvel-working which they cannot substantiate. And the fact concerning our authors has been that they cannot yet consistently discriminate between occult science and natural science, between magic and applied science.
How the human mind works.
If this investigation has shed some light on the biographies and bibliography of past scholars and scientists, on the textual history and criticism of particular works or the general condition of the manuscript material, perhaps it has also supplied data that may prove of value to philosophers and psychologists in determining the laws of human thought and our intellectual processes. Instead, say, of giving a so-called intelligence test to some hundreds of immature school children to discover which ones are well-nigh imbecile or idiotic, I have set forth for comparison the mature, carefully considered thoughts on certain topics of a number of the world’s intellectual leaders through centuries. We have seen the same old ideas continually recurring,[3015] new ideas appearing with exceeding slowness, men of the same given period holding a common stock of notions and being for the most part in remarkable agreement. Even the most intellectual men seem to have a limited number of ideas, just as humanity has a limited number of domesticated animals. Not only is man unable by taking thought to add one cubit to his stature, he usually equally fails to add one new idea to humanity’s small collection. Often men seem to be repeating the ideas like parrots. And this is not merely patristic, or scholastic; it is everlastingly human. Yet it has been evident that some of our authors were more original, resourceful, ingenious, inquisitive than others. There is curiosity, occasionally a new question is asked, an old thought put in a novel way, or a new experiment tried.
Indestructibility of thought.
As I have pursued this investigation, my wonder has grown at the number of learned men of whom memory has been preserved from a distant past even to our day, at the voluminousness of their extant writings, at the many small details of their daily life which are known to us. Sometimes their respective lives and thoughts intertwine and cross and coincide so that a learned world and society seems to stand out entire. Moreover, what might be found out concerning them by exhausting the manuscript material would doubtless be much greater than scholars have as yet established. At any rate the records are abundant, more so than for any other phase of human life except perhaps art; they permit of detailed examination; no severed fragments or dead bones, they throb with life. Some species may lay more eggs, or multiply more rapidly, but manuscripts survive. Neckam’s book has withstood the worms better than its master, but he, too, still lives in and through it and his other books. If matter is indestructible and energy is conserved, may we not paraphrase Adelard of Bath and say in closing: “And certainly in my judgment nothing in this world of thought ever perishes utterly, or is less to-day than when it was created. If any concept is dissolved from one union, it does not perish but is joined to some other group.” Magic and experiment yesterday; science and experiment to-day. Long live Thought! and may it some day regroup itself into Truth!
[3011] On Nicolas Oresme, Bishop of Lisieux, see Francis Meunier, Essai sur la vie et les ouvrages de Nicole Oresme, Paris, 1857, where many treatises by him against astrology are listed, and Charles Jourdain (1888), pp. 559-587, Nicholas Oresme et les astrologues de la cour de Charles V.
In Sloane 2156, 15th century, fols. 209v-224, I have read a treatise by Oresme which Jourdain does not mention, namely, Contra conjunctionistas de futurorum eventibus, copied in 1430. In BN 10271, fols. 63-153, is a defense of astrology against Oresme’s criticisms by John Lauratius de Fundis, writing at Bologna in 1451.
For Pico’s twelve books against astrology, his twenty-six conclusions concerning magic, and his Apology, in which he again defends natural magic, see his works as published at Venice in 1519 or 1557. He accepts the church’s condemnation of magic as usually practiced, but upholds natural magic. A preliminary paragraph of praise in these printed editions credits Pico with having destroyed astrology root and branch, whereas after previous attacks it had sprung up again, but this is exaggerated praise in view of the later favorable attitude toward astrology of such distinguished astronomers as Kepler and Tycho Brahe, or rather, it shows that the “astrology” attacked by Pico did not comprise everything that we should classify under that head. Pico’s attack, such as it was, was countered by Lucius Bellantius in a defense of astrology published in 1502: Defensio astrologiae contra Ioannem Picum Mirandulam Lucii Bellantii Senensis Mathematici ac Physici Liber de Astrologica Veritate et in Disputationes Ioannis Pici Adversus Astrologos Responsiones.... Venetiis per Bernardinum Venetum de Vitalibus Anno a natali Christiano Mcccccii.
I have read Browne’s Pseudodoxia Epidemica, which was finished in 1646, in an edition of 1650.
[3012] J. G. Frazer (1911), I, 119-26.
[3013] J. G. Frazer (1911), I, 242.
[3014] J. G. Frazer (1911), I, 246-7.
[3015] Sometimes I have called attention to such parallel passages in the text, but an examination of the index will reveal others.