Page:The place of magic in the intellectual history of Europe.djvu/113

105] bonds of occult sympathy to the gods who are within the universe and who form a part of it, that plants and stones have magic power over these gods, and that one may by means of such material substances attract those deities. He evidently believed that it was quite legitimate to control the processes of nature by invoking demons. His devotion to divination has been already implied. He regarded it as among the noblest of human pursuits. Dreams he viewed as significant and very useful events. They aided him, he wrote, in his every-day life, and had upon one occasion saved him from magic devices against his life. Of course, he had faith in astrology. The stars were well-nigh ever present in his thought. In his Praise of Baldness he characterized comets as fatal omens, as harbingers of the worst public disasters. In On Providence he explained the supposed fact that history repeats itself by the periodical return to their former positions of the stars which govern our life. In On the Gift of an Astrolabe he declared that "astronomy" besides being itself a noble science, prepared men for the diviner mysteries of theology. Finally, he held the view common among students of magic that knowledge should be esoteric; that its mysteries and marvels should be confined to the few fitted to receive them and that they should be expressed in language incomprehensible to the vulgar crowd.