Page:The place of magic in the intellectual history of Europe.djvu/116



survey of the Roman Empire and of the ancient world of thought which it represented is finished. We have found reason to believe that hatred and dread of "magic," the confusion of science or of philosophy with magic, the incurring of reputations as wizards by men of learning, were phenomena not confined to the Middle Ages. We have seen some evidence of the prominence of magic in the intellectual life of the Roman Empire, in the writings and in the conduct of physicians and astronomers, of statesmen and philosophers. Just how prominent magic was one hesitates to estimate, but one may safely affirm that it was sufficiently prominent to merit the attention of the student of those times. It is almost useless to chronicle the events if we do not understand the spirit of an age.

Can the student of that age, we may ask in concluding, rightly interpret and appreciate it, can he make proper use of its extant records, unless he recognizes not merely that men made mistakes then and accepted a mass of false statements concerning nature, but that the best minds were liable to be esoteric and mystical, to incline to the occult and the fantastic, to be befogged by absurd credulity and by great mental confusion, to be fettered by habits of childish and romantic reasoning such as occurs in Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos and in Plato's Timaeus? Have we a right to attribute to the minds of that age our definiteness and clarity of thought, our common sense, our