Bacon discusses or alludes to “magic” in a number of passages scattered through his works, and to it is more particularly devoted the “Letter on the secret works of art and nature and the nullity of magic,” a treatise which faithfully reproduces his point of view whether actually penned by him as it stands or not.[2178] Bacon had evidently read a good deal about magic and gives a rather unusual account of its position in the Roman Empire and early Christian period, but one which is not so very far from the truth. His idea is that there were three great conflicting and contending forces in the early centuries of the Christian era, namely, Christianity, philosophy, and magic, and that each one of these was then in opposition to the other two, although there was no sufficient reason for the permanent hostility of Christianity and philosophy, which have since become allies.[2179] But at the time the result was that the philosophers often accused the Christians of practicing magic, and that the early Christians similarly confused philosophers with magicians, as indeed was often done by uneducated men of the time who were not Christians. Moreover, Bacon complains that this confusion still exists in his own time and that contemporary theologians, Gratian in his work on Canon law, and “many saints” have condemned many useful and splendid sciences along with magic.[2180]
Magicians and their books still prevalent.
Roger himself, however, not only regards magic as rife in antiquity, but as still prevalent in his own time. He often refers to contemporary magicians and witches, old-wives and wizards. He declares that every nation is full of their superstitions.[2181] He is another medieval witness to the currency of a considerable body of occult literature, of which he speaks especially in the second and third chapters of the Epistola de secretis operibus, and again in his commentary on The Secret of Secrets. “Books of the magicians” are in circulation which are falsely attributed to Solomon and the ancient philosophers and which “assume a grand-sounding style,” but which “ought all to be prohibited by law, since they abound in so many lies that one cannot distinguish the true from the false.”[2182] Such works as De officiis spirituum, De morte animae, and De arte notoria embody only “figments of the magicians.” Yet these books of false mathematici and demons, ascribed to Adam, Moses, Solomon, Aristotle, and Hermes, have seduced not only youths but mature and famous men of Bacon’s own time.
Magic a delusion.
Bacon, indeed, despite the prevalence of magic both in antiquity and in his own time, regards it as essentially a delusion. It is “the nullity of magic” that he especially attempts to demonstrate both in the Epistola de secretis operibus and elsewhere in his works. He is medieval Christian enough, it is true, to grant that magic may perform marvels by the aid of demons.[2183] But he also accepts the orthodox belief that magicians cannot coerce the demons by their invocations, sacrifices, and employment of the properties of natural objects, and that the evil spirits in reality respond only with evil intent and as God permits.[2184] But his emphasis is not, like Augustine’s upon the “host of wonders” which magicians work by demon aid. He seems to be sounding, not a religious retreat from magic, but a rational and scientific attack upon it. Nor does he dwell much on the criminal character of magic, although he calls the magicians maledicti—“of evil repute.”[2185] What impresses him most about magic, and the charge which he most often brings against it, is its fraud and futility. Twice he speaks of things as “false and magical”;[2186] he mentions the “figments of the magicians”;[2187] and associates magic and necromancy, not like Albert with astronomy, but with deception.[2188] For him magicians are neither magni nor philosophers and astronomers; in half a dozen passages he classes them with old-wives and witches.[2189] He will not admit that they employ valid natural forces. He represents magic as using sleight-of-hand, ventriloquism, subtle mechanism, darkness and confederates to simulate results which it is unable to perform.[2190] He further represents the magicians as “stupidly trusting in characters and incantations,”[2191] and affirms that “the human voice has not that power which magicians imagine it has.”[2192] When words are employed in magic, “either the magician accomplishes nothing, or the devil is the author of the feat.”[2193] Magical incantations and formulae are made haphazard and at anyone’s pleasure; they therefore possess no natural transforming power, and if they seem to effect anything, this is really the work of demons.[2194] Similarly Bacon regards as worthless the assertion of the magicians and witches that sudden transformations may be produced by any man at any time of day.[2195] He dismisses “fascination by word alone uttered at haphazard” as “a stupid notion characteristic of magic and of old-wives and beneath the notice of philosophers.” Here again nothing is accomplished, “unless the devil because of men’s sins operates unbeknownst.”[2196]
Some truth in magic.
In certain passages, however, Bacon suggests that magic is not utterly worthless and that some truth may be derived from it. The experimental scientist whom he most admired “investigated even the experiments and lot-castings of old women”—note that they too were experimenters—“and their charms and those of all the magicians, and likewise the illusions and devices of all the conjurers”; and he did so not merely that he might be able to expose their deceptions, but also “so that nothing that ought to be known might escape him.”[2197] And his experimental science not merely “considered all the follies of the magicians, not to confirm them but to shun them, just as logic deals with sophistry”; but also “so that all falsity may be removed and the truth of the art alone retained.”[2198] Roger himself in the case of the split hazel rod discovered a natural phenomenon concealed by use of a magic incantation. Bacon also granted that the books of the magicians “may contain some truth.”[2199] It also was apparently very difficult to distinguish them from other writings, since he states that many books are reputed magical which are nothing of the sort but contain sound learning;[2200] since he calls the magicians “corrupters of wisdom’s records,”[2201] and charges them not only with fraudulently ascribing various “enormities” to Solomon, but with misinterpreting and abusing “enigmatical writings” which he believes Solomon really wrote;[2202] and since he tells us that even true philosophers have sometimes made use of meaningless incantations and characters in order to conceal their meaning. He consequently concludes that experience will show which books are good and which are bad, and that “if anyone finds the work of nature and art in one of them, let him receive it; if not, abandon the book as open to suspicion.”[2203]
Magic and science.
Indeed, Bacon seems to think that magic has taken such a hold upon men that it can be uprooted only by scientific exposition of its tricks and by scientific achievement of even greater marvels than it professes to perform. Perhaps he realizes that religious censure or rationalistic argument is not enough to turn men from these alluring arts, but that science must show unto them yet a more excellent way, and afford scope for that laudable curiosity, that inventive and exploring instinct which magic pretends to gratify. He waxes enthusiastic over “the secret works of art and nature,” and contends that the wonders of nature and the possibilities of applied science far outshine the feats of magicians.[2204] One reason why early Christian writers so often confounded philosophy and magic together was, in his opinion, that the philosophers by their marvelous exploitation of the forces of nature equalled both the illusions of magic and the miracles of the Christians.[2205] Science, in short, not merely attacks magic’s front; it can turn its flank and cut it off from its base of supplies.
His belief in marvelous “extraneous virtues.”