CHAPTER X
MAGIC AND SCIENCE
§ 1. Their Common Ground
It is not infrequently said that Science is derived from Magic, and the tenet is strengthened by eminent names; nor is it displeasing to some bystanders whose attitude toward Science is one of imperfect sympathy; but it seems to me to involve a misunderstanding of the matter. Magic and Science have, indeed, some common ground; for both are products of our poor human mind, which is sorely pestered in explaining its experiences by the notion of “forces” that somehow bring about events, and which cannot get on at all without assuming uniformities of relation. Magic supposes constant connexions of events due to the agency, force, influence or virtue of charms, rites and spells; which connexions, however, are found only to be tendencies of some events to excite others, inasmuch as they may be frustrated by counteracting charms, rites or spells. This reads like a caricature of scientific ideas. Not long ago, too, “forces” had a considerable vogue amongst scientists; and such mysteries as “vital force” and “psychic force” are still to be met with. But it is plain that we never know more than that under certain conditions a change takes place; and when we try to explain the change by analysing the conditions, we never find any “force” distinct from the collocation and motion of bodies or particles. “Force” may be technically and formally used in various propositions, but the idea never contributes anything to the explanation of events; whilst the fact that with many people it seems to do so, often makes it a nuisance. That it seems to carry some explanation with it is due to the continuous influence of Magic which, though always the antithesis of Science, was yet for very many ages associated with Science. Magic is entirely constituted by notions of force, sometimes violent, as in the discharge of an enchanted spear; sometimes subtle, like the efficacy of an opal; intangible, invisible, and operating at a distance through space and time, like a witch’s spells that eclipse the sun or moon. These forces have only a one-sided relation to the workaday world; they meet with no resistance from what we take to be the “properties of matter,” such as weight and impenetrability; but are themselves entirely exempt from natural law: what we call the “real world” has no hold upon them; they live in a world of their own. They are absolutely immeasurable; and hence the causation, which is certainly implied in the notion of their operation, is indefinite, and becomes vaguer and vaguer as the magical system develops; and all this is the opposite of what happens in the history of Science. In spite of having a necessary common ground in the human mind, Magic and Science are contrasted from the first, in their development grow wider and wider apart, in their methods and ideas more and more opposed. If either can be said to precede the other, it is Science (at least, in its earliest and crudest form) that precedes Magic.
We had better begin, however, by considering a third something which is earlier than either of them, and which I have called Common-sense: I mean the accumulation of particular items of positive knowledge (which, as such, is the first form of Science) acquired by primitive man, and in less measure by the higher brutes: facts about cold and heat, sunshine and rain, the powers of water and fire, the life of trees and animals, the properties of wood and stone, and so forth, which are unfailingly confirmed by further experience. Examination of the life of savages discovers that this positive knowledge of theirs amounts to a great deal, and that they are able to use it “and reason not contemptibly.” From this Common-sense Science and a good deal of Magic are differentiated, and they expand at very unequal rates in opposite directions. Each of them starts from it; but whilst Magic rapidly distorts, perverts and mystifies it out of recognition in innumerable imaginations, Science slowly connects its fragments together, corrects, defines and extends it, without ever altering its original positive character. The difference between Magic and Science lies (as we have seen) in the causes that establish belief in them; in the character of their ideas—respectively, incoherent and vague, coherent and definite; and, as a consequence, in their respective falsity and truth.
§ 2. The Differentiation
Whilst Magic, amongst savage and barbarous people, is practised more or less by almost everybody, it is especially developed by the professional wizard, and in his art and tradition it is most conveniently studied. The wizard, or (at least) a leader amongst wizards, is a man of superior ability, penetration and enterprise; liable to be misled by a sanguine and ambitious temperament into extravagant imaginations and impostures, but with much more real knowledge than the rest of the tribe. He often takes pains to increase his knowledge, for it is the true basis of his power: “the power of the Angoqok,” says Mr. Turner, writing of the Esquimo,[560] “has some basis in experienced weather-lore, and knowledge of the habits of animals, by which he advises hunters.” But this knowledge is often the starting-point of his delusions, not altogether by any fault of his own, but as a result of his attempts to apply knowledge to new cases without any appreciation of the need of caution or of the conditions of sound inference and of proof and disproof. He never knows why he is right or why he is wrong. Hence, beside the modest edifice of his real knowledge, he builds out in one direction a few genuine additions warranted by sound inference and observation; whilst in the other direction he raises, largely by analogy, with the help of “sympathy” and spiritual powers, a towering structure of imaginations, which throws his little hut of Common-sense quite into the shade.
(a) For example, the wizard is often literally a medicine-man or physician, and knows the use of certain drugs; and he may discover other drugs and more uses for them, and in that direction lies Pharmacology. But in the other direction he adopts on altogether fanciful occasions a great many other recipes that serve no purpose but charlatanry and mystification. Pliny, much of whose Natural History is a handbook of ancient medicine, describes hundreds of remedies derived from animals, vegetables and minerals; and Burton[561] cites Galeottus as having enumerated 800 medicinal herbs and other drugs. Some of these were good and are still in use, but most were useless or worse than useless. The difference between these two classes of drugs depended on a difference of method in determining their uses: a difference that existed but was not yet understood (namely), on the one hand, proof by experience, giving in the smaller class the rudiments of medical science; and, on the other hand, acceptance on the strength of superficial likeness, or of the doctrine of qualities, virtues and signatures, which made the larger class essentially magical.
Thus all sorts of precious stones and metals were believed to be medicinal, not because they had been known to cure any disease, but because it seemed obvious in those days that precious things must have all sorts of desirable effects by some occult virtue. Gold, the most perfect of all substances (according to the alchemists), must in particular be a propitious and powerful restorative. So Chaucer says of his Doctour of Phisik:
“For gold in phisik is a cordial,
Therefore he lovede gold in special.”
And throughout India at the present day gold is a trusty item in any prescription. Belief in the virtue of precious stones probably goes back to very early times; since we find that in Australia crystals are not only magically powerful but the great primary sources of Magic, by having which inside him the wizard acquires and maintains his power.