MODERN MAGIC.
Human nature enjoys nothing better than to wonder—to be mystified; and it thanks and remembers those who have the skill to gratify this craving. The magicians of old knew that truth and conducted themselves accordingly. But our modern wonder-workers fail of their due influence, because, not content to perform their marvels, they go on to explain them. Merlin and Roger Bacon were greater public benefactors than Morse and Edison. Man is—and he always has been and will be—something else besides a pure intelligence: and science, in order to become really popular, must contrive to touch man somewhere else besides on the purely intellectual side: it must remember that man is all heart, all hope, all fear, and all foolishness, quite as much as he is all brains. Otherwise, science can never expect to take the place of superstition, much less of religion, in mankind's affection. In order to be a really successful man of science, it is first of all indispensable to make one's self master of everything in nature and in human nature that science is not.
What must one do, in short, in order to become a magician? I use the term, here, in its weightiest sense. How to make myself visible and invisible at will? How to present myself in two or more places at once? How answer your question before you ask it, and describe to you your most secret thoughts and actions? How shall I call spirits from the vasty deep, and make you see and hear and feel them? How paralyze your strength with a look, heal your wound with a touch, or cause your bullet to rebound harmless from my unprotected flesh? How shall I walk on the air, sink through the earth, pass through stone walls, or walk, dry-shod, on the floor of the ocean? How shall I visit the other side of the moon, jump through the ring of Saturn, and gather sunflowers in Sirius? There are persons now living who profess to do no less remarkable feats, and to regard them as incidental merely to achievements far more important. A school of hierophants or adepts is said to exist in Tibet, who, as a matter of daily routine, quite transcend everything that we have been accustomed to consider natural possibility. What is the course of study, what are the ways and means whereby such persons accomplish such results?
The conventional attitude towards such matters is, of course, that of unconditional scepticism. But it is pleasant, occasionally, to take an airing beyond the bounds of incredulity. For my own part, it is true, I must confess my inability to believe in anything positively supernatural. The supernatural and the illusory are to my mind convertible terms: they cannot really exist or take place. Let us be sure, however, that we are agreed as to what supernatural means. If a magician, before my eyes, transformed an old man into a little girl, I should call that supernatural; and nothing should convince me that my senses had not been grossly deceived. But were the magician to leave the room by passing through the solid wall, or "go out" like an exploding soap-bubble,—I might think what I please, but I should not venture to dogmatically pronounce the thing supernatural; because the phenomenon known as "matter" is scientifically unknown, and therefore no one can tell what modifications it may not be susceptible of:—no one, that is to say, except the person who, like the magician of our illustration, professes to possess, and (for aught I can affirm to the contrary) may actually possess a knowledge unshared by the bulk of mankind. The transformation of an old man into a little girl, on the other hand, would be a transaction involving the immaterial soul as well as the material body; and if I do not know that that cannot take place, I am forever incapable of knowing anything. These are extreme examples, but they serve to emphasize an important distinction.
The whole domain of magic, in short, occupies that anomalous neutral ground that intervenes between the facts of our senses and the truths of our intuitions. Fact and truth are not convertible terms; they abide in two distinct planes, like thought and speech, or soul and body; one may imply or involve the other, but can never demonstrate it. Experience and intuition together comprehend the entire realm of actual and conceivable knowledge. Whatever contradicts both experience and intuition may, therefore, be pronounced illusion. But this neutral ground is the home of phenomena which intuition does not deny, and which experience has not confirmed. It is still a wide zone, though not so wide as it was a hundred years ago, or fifty, or even ten. It narrows every day, as science, or the classification of experience, expands. Are we, then, to look for a time when the zone shall have dwindled to a mathematical line, and magic confess itself to have been nothing but the science of an advanced school of investigators? Will the human intellect acquire a power before which all mysteries shall become transparent? Let us dwell upon this question a little longer.
A mystery that is a mystery can never, humanly speaking, become anything else. Instances of such mysteries can readily be adduced. The universe itself is built upon them and is the greatest of them. They lie before the threshold and at the basis of all existence. For example:—here is a lump of compact, whitish, cheese-like substance, about as much as would go into a thimble. From this I profess to be able to produce a gigantic, intricate structure, sixty feet in height and diameter, hard, solid, and enduring, which shall furthermore possess the power of extending and multiplying itself until it covers the whole earth, and even all the earths in the universe, if it could reach them. Is such a profession as this credible? It is entirely credible, as soon as I paraphrase it by saying that I propose to plant an acorn. And yet all magic has no mystery which is so wonderful as this universal mystery of growth: and the only reason we are not lost in amazement at it is that it goes quietly on all the time, and perfects itself under uniform conditions. But let me eliminate from the phenomenon the one element of time—which is logically the least essential factor in the product, unreal and arbitrary, based on the revolution of the earth, and conceivably variable to any extent—grant me this, and the world would come to see me do the miracle. But, with time or without it, the mystery is just as mysterious.
Natural mysteries, then,—the mysteries of life, death, creation, growth,—do not fall under our present consideration: they are beyond the legitimate domain of magic: and no intellectual development to which we may hereafter attain will bring us a step nearer their solution. But with the problems proper to magic, the case is different. Magic is distinctively not Divine, but human: a finite conundrum, not an Infinite enigma. If there has ever been a magician since the world began, then all mankind may become magicians, if they will give the necessary time and trouble. And yet, magic is not simply an advanced region of the path which science is pursuing. Science is concerned with results,—with material phenomena; whereas magic is, primarily, the study of causes, or of spiritual phenomena; or, to use another definition,—of phenomena which the senses perceive, not in themselves, but only in their results. So long as we restrict ourselves to results, our activity is confined to analysis; but when we begin to investigate causes, we are on the road not only to comprehend results, but (within limits) to modify or produce them.
Science, however, blocks our advance in this direction by denying, or at least refusing to admit, the existence of the spiritual world, or world of causes: because, being spiritual, it is not sensible, or cognizable in sense. Science admits only material causes, or the changes wrought in matter by itself. If we ask what is the cause of a material cause, we are answered that it is a supposed entity called Force, concerning which there is nothing further to be known.
At this point, then, argument (on the material plane) comes to an end, and speculation or assumption begins. Science answers its own questions, but neither can nor will answer any others. And upon what pretence do we ask any others? We ask them upon two grounds. The first is that some people,—we might even say, most people,—would be glad to believe in supersensuous existence, and are always on the alert to examine any plausible hypothesis pointing in that direction: and secondly, there exists a vast amount of testimony (we need not call it evidence) tending to show that the supersensuous world has been discovered, and that it endows its discoverers with sundry notable advantages. Of course, we are not obliged to credit this testimony, unless we want to: and—for some reason, never fully explained—a great many people who accept natural mysteries quite amiably become indignant when requested to examine mysteries of a much milder order. But it is not my intention to discuss the limits of the probable; but to swallow as much as possible first, and endeavor to account for it afterwards.
There is, as every reader knows, a class of phenomena—such as hypnotism, trance, animal magnetism, and so forth—the occurrence of which science has conceded, though failing as yet to offer any intelligent explanation of them. It is suggested that they are peculiar states of the brain and nerve-centres, physical in their nature and origin, though evading our present physical tests. Be that as it may, they afford a capital introduction to the study of magic; if, indeed, they, and a few allied phenomena, do not comprise the germs of the whole matter. Apropos of this subject, a society has lately been organized in London, with branches on the Continent and in this country, composed of scientific men, Fellows of the Royal Society, members of Parliament, professors, and literary men, calling themselves the "Psychical Research Society," and making it their business to test and investigate these very marvels, under the most stringent scientific conditions. But the capacity to be deceived of the bodily senses is almost unlimited; in fact, we know that they are incapable of telling us the ultimate truth on any subject; and we are able to get along with them only because we have found their misinformation to be sufficiently uniform for most practical purposes. But once admit that the origin of these phenomena is not on the physical plane, and then, if we are to give any weight at all to them, it can be only from a spiritual standpoint. In other words, unless we can approach such questions by an a priori route, we might as well let them alone. We can reason from spirit to body—from mind to matter—but we can never reverse that process, and from matter evolve mind. The reason is that matter is not found to contain mind, but is only acted upon by it, as inferior by superior; and we cannot get out of the bag more than has been put into it. The acorn (to use our former figure) can never explain the oak; but the oak readily accounts for the acorn. It may be doubted, therefore, whether the Psychical Research Society can succeed in doing more than to give a respectable endorsement to a perplexing possibility,—so long as they adhere to the inductive method. Should they, however, abandon the inductive method for the deductive, they will forfeit the allegiance of all consistently scientific minds; and they may, perhaps, make some curious contributions to philosophy. At present, they appear to be astride the fence between philosophy and science, as if they hoped in some way to make the former satisfy the latter's demands. But the difference between the evidence that demonstrates a fact and the evidence that confirms a truth is, once more, a difference less of degree than of kind. We can never obtain sensible verification of a proposition that transcends sense. We must accept it without material proof, or not at all. We may believe, for instance, that Creation is the work of an intelligent Divine Being; or we may disbelieve it; but we can never prove it. If we do believe it, innumerable confirmations of it meet us at every turn: but no such confirmations, and no multiplication of them, can persuade a disbeliever. For belief is ever incommunicable from without; it can be generated only from within. The term "belief" cannot be applied to our recognition of a physical fact: we do not believe in that—we are only sensible of it.