On the Origin, Idea, Scope, and History of Ancient and Modern Magic

relationship to the magic-belief of the peoples is sufficient. At the same time, this makes clear, besides the origin, the manifold development of magic itself, no matter how different the forms and endeavors in the Greek or Roman magic of the past may be, down to the magic of the Lapps or Siberians, and from there to the magic circles of the highly educated, perhaps intellectually over-educated, European thinker of the present. *) As the limitation of our knowledge, as well as of our natural powers in general, makes it almost equally impossible for both the highly educated and the savage to explain one's own or another's fate from the known laws of nature, and even less so to determine it arbitrarily, while passions and desires drive them toward the sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker endeavor to gain mastery over nature and fate if possible: the attempt is, as it were, forced upon them, along with the assumption of higher powers that rule nature and fate, which is generated and approved by reason, to draw such powers down directly into human affairs and to entangle them there according to the measure of one's own desires and passions.

Thus, as we noted above, that which makes the transition to magic-belief, and is itself already magical and superstition, falls together in its origin with the highest cognition of the human spirit.

*) One should think, in order to understand this, for example, of the witty, highly educated Prince of Ligne, who relates of himself that he had stood in anticipation in mysterious magic circles. See his correspondence with the Countess B. on the spirit of Catholicism, translated by Marheinecke.