Magic in names and in other things / by Edward Clodd.

  • Clodd, Edward, 1840-1930.
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Magic in names and in other things / by Edward Clodd. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/256 (page 5)
    is not to be confounded with that feeling of the marvellous begotten by the surprising or the unusual in phenomena. Ages were to pass before speculations about spiritual beings shaped them¬ selves in creeds and dogmas whose formulation has brought countless evils on mankind. As Montaigne shrewdly said, “ Nothing is so firmly believed as that which is least known,” and in the degree that the matter in dispute is incapable of proof, the passions of men in defending it have begotten the foul brood of hatred and slaughter 1 which warranted the terrible indict¬ ment of Lucretius : “ Tardum religio potuit suadere malorurn; ” 2 (“ so great the evils to which religion could prompt ”). As to the second question, one school contends that magic precedes, and is antagonistic to, religion; that the sorcerer comes before the priest in the order of thaumaturgists. Armed with mana; in common phrase, with his “ bag o tricks,” the sorcerer works as one who com¬ pels or constrains or manipulates persons and powers, both seen and unseen, to attainment of his ends, whether these be to help or to harm. His apparatus is gross and material : 1 “ Nonsense defended by cruelty,” Gibbon, Decline and Fall, eh. lxiv. p. 4 (Bury’s Edition, 1914). 2 Bk. I. 1. 101. In his Lucretius, Epicurean and Poet, p. 436, Mr. Masson says : “ This line may be rendered : 4 There is nothing so dangerous as the religious conscience.’ ”