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.