Page:The place of magic in the intellectual history of Europe.djvu/23

15] Bede expressed similar views in his scientific treatises. Also, if we may regard as his two little essays about the authenticity of which there is some question, he ascribed such extraordinary influence to the moon as to maintain that the practice of bleeding should be regulated by its phases, and wrote—with some hesitation lest he should be accused of magic—an explanation of how to predict coming disasters by observing the time and direction of peals of thunder.

Passing over several centuries during which judicial astrology is very conspicuous in the mathematical treatises which formed the greater part of the scientific literature of the times, we come at the close of the twelfth century to the De Naturis Rerum of Alexander Neckam (1157-1217). We find him ecstatically musing over the consonance of celestial harmony and associating the seven planets with the seven liberal arts and the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, as if believing that there is some occult virtue in that number or some potent sympathy between these material bodies and such abstractions as branches of learning and generic virtues. Descending from the skies to things earthly—the transition is easy since he believes in the influence, saving human free will, of the planets on our lower creation —he