The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism Part 9

Astrology also modified theology, by introducing into this pantheon a great number of new G.o.ds, some of whom were singularly abstract. Thereafter man worshiped the constellations of the firmament, particularly the twelve signs of the zodiac, every one of which had its mythologic legend; the sky (_Caelus_) itself, because it was considered the first cause, and was sometimes confused with the supreme being; the four elements, the ant.i.thesis and perpetual trans.m.u.tations of which produced all tangible phenomena, and which were often symbolized by a group of animals ready to devour each other;[34] finally, time and its subdivisions.[35]

The calendars were religious before they were secular; their purpose was not, primarily, to record fleeting {176} time, but to observe the recurrence of propitious or inauspicious dates separated by periodic intervals. It is a matter of experience that the return of certain moments is a.s.sociated with the appearance of certain phenomena; they have, therefore, a special efficacy, and are endowed with a sacred character. By determining periods with mathematical exactness, astrology continued to see in them "a divine power,"[36] to use Zeno's term. Time, that regulates the course of the stars and the transubstantiation of the elements, was conceived of as the master of the G.o.ds and the primordial principle, and was likened to destiny. Each part of its infinite duration brought with it some propitious or evil movement of the sky that was anxiously observed, and transformed the ever modified universe. The centuries, the years and the seasons, placed into relation with the four winds and the four cardinal points, the twelve months connected with the zodiac, the day and the night, the twelve hours, all were personified and deified, as the authors of every change in the universe. The allegorical figures contrived for these abstractions by astrological paganism did not even perish with it.[37] The symbolism it had disseminated outlived it, and until the Middle Ages these pictures of fallen G.o.ds were reproduced indefinitely in sculpture, mosaics, and in Christian miniatures.[38]

Thus astrology entered into all religious ideas, and the doctrines of the destiny of the world and of man harmonized with its teachings. According to Berosus, who is the interpreter of ancient Chaldean theories, the existence of the universe consisted of a series of "big years," each having its summer and its winter. Their summer took place when all the planets were in {177} conjunction at the same point of Cancer, and brought with it a general conflagration. On the other hand, their winter came when all the planets were joined in Capricorn, and its result was a universal flood.

Each of these cosmic cycles, the duration of which was fixed at 432,000 years according to the most probable estimate, was an exact reproduction of those that had preceded it. In fact, when the stars resumed exactly the same position, they were forced to act in identically the same manner as before. This Babylonian theory, an antic.i.p.ation of that of the "eternal return of things," which Nietzsche boasts of having discovered, enjoyed lasting popularity during antiquity, and in various forms came down to the Renaissance.[39] The belief that the world would be destroyed by fire, a theory also spread abroad by the Stoics, found a new support in these cosmic speculations.

Astrology, however, revealed the future not only of the universe, but also of man. According to a Chaldeo-Persian doctrine, accepted by the pagan mystics and previously pointed out by us,[40] a bitter necessity compelled the souls that dwell in great numbers on the celestial heights, to descend upon this earth and to animate certain bodies that are to hold them in captivity. In descending to the earth they travel through the spheres of the planets and receive some quality from each of these wandering stars, according to its positions. Contrariwise, when death releases them from their carnal prison, they return to their first habitation, providing they have led a pious life, and if as they pa.s.s through the doors of the superposed heavens they divest themselves of the pa.s.sions and inclinations acquired during their first journey, {178} to ascend finally, as pure essence to the radiant abode of the G.o.ds. There they live forever among the eternal stars, freed from the tyranny of destiny and even from the limitations of time.

This alliance of the theorems of astronomy with their old beliefs supplied the Chaldeans with answers to all the questions that men asked concerning the relation of heaven and earth, the nature of G.o.d, the existence of the world, and their own destiny. Astrology was really the first scientific theology. h.e.l.lenistic logic arranged the Oriental doctrines properly, combined them with the Stoic philosophy and built them up into a system of indisputable grandeur, an ideal reconstruction of the universe, the powerful a.s.surance of which inspired Manilius to sublime language when he was not exhausted by his efforts to master an ill-adapted theme.[41] The vague and irrational notion of "sympathy" is transformed into a deep sense of the relationship between the human soul, an igneous substance, and the divine stars, and this feeling is strengthened by thought.[42] The contemplation of the sky has become a communion. During the splendor of night the mind of man became intoxicated with the light streaming from above; born on the wings of enthusiasm, he ascended into the sacred choir of the stars and took part in their harmonious movements. "He partic.i.p.ates in their immortality, and, before his appointed hour, converses with the G.o.ds."[43] In spite of the subtle precision the Greeks always maintained in their speculations, the feeling that permeated astrology down to the end of paganism never belied its Oriental and religious origin. {179}

The most essential principle of astrology was that of fatalism. As the poet says:[44]

_"Fata regunt orbem, certa stant omnia lege."_

The Chaldeans were the first to conceive the idea of an inflexible necessity ruling the universe, instead of G.o.ds acting in the world according to their pa.s.sions, like men in society. They noticed that an immutable law regulated the movements of the celestial bodies, and, in the first enthusiasm of their discovery they extended its effects to all moral and social phenomena. The postulates of astrology imply an absolute determinism. Tyche, or deified fortune, became the irresistible mistress of mortals and immortals alike, and was even worshiped exclusively by some under the empire. Our deliberate will never plays more than a very limited part in our happiness and success, but, among the p.r.o.nunciamentos and in the anarchy of the third century, blind chance seemed to play with the life of every one according to its fancy, and it can easily be understood that the ephemeral rulers of that period, like the ma.s.ses, saw in chance the sovereign disposer of their fates.[45]

The power of this fatalist conception during antiquity may be measured by its long persistence, at least in the Orient, where it originated. Starting from Babylonia,[46] it spread over the entire h.e.l.lenic world, as early as the Alexandrian period, and towards the end of paganism a considerable part of the efforts of the Christian apologists was directed against it.[47] But it was destined to outlast all attacks, and to impose itself even on Islam.[48] In Latin Europe, in spite of the anathemas of the church, the belief remained confusedly {180} alive all through the Middle Ages that on this earth everything happens somewhat

"Per ovra delle rote magne, Che drizzan ciascun seme ad alcun fine Secondo che le stella son campagne."[49]

The weapons used by the ecclesiastic writers in contending against this sidereal fatalism were taken from the a.r.s.enal of the old Greek dialectics.

In general, they were those that all defenders of free will had used for centuries: determinism destroys responsibility; rewards and punishments are absurd if man acts under a necessity that compels him, if he is born a hero or a criminal. We shall not dwell on these metaphysical discussions,[50]

but there is one argument that is more closely connected with our subject, and therefore should be mentioned. If we live under an immutable fate, no supplication can change its decisions; religion is unavailing, it is useless to ask the oracles to reveal the secrets of a future which nothing can change, and prayers, to use one of Seneca's expressions, are nothing but "the solace of diseased minds."[51]

And, doubtless, some adepts of astrology, like the Emperor Tiberius,[52]

neglected the practice of religion, because they were convinced that fate governed all things. Following the example set by the Stoics, they made absolute submission to an almighty fate and joyful acceptance of the inevitable a moral duty, and were satisfied to worship the superior power that ruled the universe, without demanding anything in return. They considered themselves at the mercy of even the most capricious fate, and were like the intelligent slave who guesses the desires of his master to satisfy them, and {181} knows how to make the hardest servitude tolerable.[53] The ma.s.ses, however, never reached that height of resignation. They looked at astrology far more from a religious than from a logical standpoint.[54] The planets and constellations were not only cosmic forces, whose favorable or inauspicious action grew weaker or stronger according to the turnings of a course established for eternity; they were deities who saw and heard, who were glad or sad, who had a voice and s.e.x, who were prolific or sterile, gentle or savage, obsequious or arrogant.[55]

Their anger could therefore be soothed and their favor obtained through rites and offerings; even the adverse stars were not unrelenting and could be persuaded through sacrifices and supplications. The narrow and pedantic Firmicus Maternus strongly a.s.serts the omnipotence of fate, but at the same time he invokes the G.o.ds and asks for their aid against the influence of the stars. As late as the fourth century the pagans of Rome who were about to marry, or to make a purchase, or to solicit a public office, went to the diviner for his prognostics, at the same time praying to Fate for prosperity in their undertaking.[56] Thus a fundamental antinomy manifested itself all through the development of astrology, which pretended to be an exact science, but always remained a sacerdotal theology.

Of course, the more the idea of fatalism imposed itself and spread, the more the weight of this hopeless theory oppressed the consciousness. Man felt himself dominated and crushed by blind forces that dragged him on as irresistibly as they kept the celestial spheres in motion. His soul tried to escape the oppression of this cosmic mechanism, and to leave the slavery of {182} Ananke. But he no longer had confidence in the ceremonies of his old religion. The new powers that had taken possession of heaven had to be propitiated by new means. The Oriental religions themselves offered a remedy against the evils they had created, and taught powerful and mysterious processes for conjuring fate.[57] And side by side with astrology we see magic, a more pernicious aberration, gaining ground.[58]

If, from the reading of Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos, we pa.s.s on to read a magic papyrus, our first impression is that we have stepped from one end of the intellectual world to the other. Here we find no trace of the systematic order or severe method that distinguish the work of the scholar of Alexandria. Of course, the doctrines of astrology are just as chimerical as those of magic, but they are deduced with an amount of logic, entirely wanting in works of sorcery, that compels reasoning intellects to accept them. Recipes borrowed from medicine and popular superst.i.tion, primitive practices rejected or abandoned by the sacerdotal rituals, beliefs repudiated by a progressive moral religion, plagiarisms and forgeries of literary or liturgic texts, incantations in which the G.o.ds of all barbarous nations are invoked in unintelligible gibberish, odd and disconcerting ceremonies--all these form a chaos in which the imagination loses itself, a potpourri in which an arbitrary syncretism seems to have attempted to create an inextricable confusion.

However, if we observe more closely how magic operates, we find that it starts out from the same principles and acts along the same line of reasoning {183} as astrology. Born during the same period in the primitive civilizations of the Orient, both were based on a number of common ideas.[59] Magic, like astrology, proceeded from the principle of universal sympathy, yet it did not consider the relation existing between the stars traversing the heavens, and physical or moral phenomena, but the relation between whatever bodies there are. It started out from the preconceived idea that an obscure but constant relation exists between certain things, certain words, certain persons. This connection was established without hesitation between dead material things and living beings, because the primitive races ascribed a soul and existence similar to those of man, to everything surrounding them. The distinction between the three kingdoms of nature was unknown to them; they were "animists." The life of a person might, therefore, be linked to that of a thing, a tree, or an animal, in such a manner that one died if the other did, and that any damage suffered by one was also sustained by its inseparable a.s.sociate. Sometimes the relation was founded on clearly intelligible grounds, like a resemblance between the thing and the being, as where, to kill an enemy, one pierced a waxen figure supposed to represent him. Or a contact, even merely pa.s.sing by, was believed to have created indestructible affinities, for instance where the garments of an absent person were operated upon. Often, also, these imaginary relations were founded on reasons that escape us: like the qualities attributed by astrology to the stars, they may have been derived from old beliefs the memory of which is lost.

Like astrology, then, magic was a science in some respects. First, like the predictions of its sister, it {184} was partly based on observation--observation frequently rudimentary, superficial, hasty, and erroneous, but nevertheless important. It was an experimental discipline.

Among the great number of facts noted by the curiosity of the magicians, there were many that received scientific indors.e.m.e.nt later on. The attraction of the magnet for iron was utilized by the thaumaturgi before it was interpreted by the natural philosophers. In the vast compilations that circulated under the venerable names of Zoroaster or Hostanes, many fertile remarks were scattered among puerile ideas and absurd teachings, just as in the Greek treatises on alchemy that have come down to us. The idea that knowledge of the power of certain agents enables one to stimulate the hidden forces of the universe into action and to obtain extraordinary results, inspires the researches of physics to-day, just as it inspired the claims of magic. And if astrology was a perverted astronomy, magic was physics gone astray.

Moreover, and again like astrology, magic was a science, because it started from the fundamental conception that order and law exist in nature, and that the same cause always produces the same effect. An occult ceremony, performed with the same care as an experiment in the chemical laboratory, will always have the expected result. To know the mysterious affinities that connect all things is sufficient to set the mechanism of the universe into motion. But the error of the magicians consisted in establishing a connection between phenomena that do not depend on each other at all. The act of exposing to the light for an instant a sensitive plate in a camera, then immersing it, according to given recipes, in appropriate liquids, and of making {185} the picture of a relative or friend appear thereon, is a magical operation, but based on real actions and reactions, instead of on arbitrarily a.s.sumed sympathies and antipathies. Magic, therefore, was a science groping in the dark, and later became "a b.a.s.t.a.r.d sister of science," as Frazer puts it.

But, like astrology, magic was religious in origin, and always remained a b.a.s.t.a.r.d sister of religion. Both grew up together in the temples of the barbarian Orient. Their practices were, at first, part of the dubious knowledge of fetichists who claimed to have control over the spirits that peopled nature and animated everything, and who claimed that they communicated with these spirits by means of rites known to themselves alone. Magic has been cleverly defined as "the strategy of animism."[60]

But, just as the growing power ascribed by the Chaldeans to the sidereal deities transformed the original astrology, so primitive sorcery a.s.sumed a different character when the world of the G.o.ds, conceived after the image of man, separated itself more and more from the realm of physical forces and became a realm of its own. This gave the mystic element which always entered the ceremonies, a new precision and development. By means of his charms, talismans, and exorcisms, the magician now communicated with the celestial or infernal "demons" and compelled them to obey him. But these spirits no longer opposed him with the blind resistance of matter animated by an uncertain kind of life; they were active and subtle beings having intelligence and will-power. Sometimes they took revenge for the slavery the magician attempted to impose on them and punished the audacious operator, who feared them, although {186} invoking their aid. Thus the incantation often a.s.sumed the shape of a prayer addressed to a power stronger than man, and magic became a religion. Its rites developed side by side with the canonical liturgies, and frequently encroached on them.[61]

The only barrier between them was the vague and constantly shifting borderline that limits the neighboring domains of religion and superst.i.tion.

This half scientific, half religious magic, with its books and its professional adepts, is of Oriental origin. The old Grecian and Italian sorcery appears to have been rather mild. Conjurations to avert hail-storms, or formulas to draw rain, evil charms to render fields barren or to kill cattle, love philters and rejuvenating salves, old women's remedies, talismans against the evil eye,--all are based on popular superst.i.tion and kept in existence by folk-lore and charlatanism. Even the witches of Thessaly, whom people credited with the power of making the moon descend from the sky, were botanists more than anything else, acquainted with the marvelous virtues of medicinal plants. The terror that the necromancers inspired was due, to a considerable extent, to the use they made of the old belief in ghosts. They exploited the superst.i.tious belief in ghost-power and slipped metal tablets covered with execrations into graves, to bring misfortune or death to some enemy. But neither in Greece nor in Italy is there any trace of a coherent system of doctrines, of an occult and learned discipline, nor of any sacerdotal instruction.

Originally the adepts in this dubious art were {187} despised. As late as the period of Augustus they were generally equivocal beggar-women who plied their miserable trade in the lowest quarters of the slums. But with the invasion of the Oriental religions the magician began to receive more consideration, and his condition improved.[62] He was honored, and feared even more. During the second century scarcely anybody would have doubted his power to call up divine apparitions, converse with the superior spirits and even translate himself bodily into the heavens.[63]

Here the victorious progress of the Oriental religions shows itself. The Egyptian ritual[64] originally was nothing but a collection of magical practices, properly speaking. The religious community imposed its will upon the G.o.ds by means of prayers or even threats. The G.o.ds were compelled to obey the officiating priest, if the liturgy was correctly performed, and if the incantations and the magic words were p.r.o.nounced with the right intonation. The well-informed priest had an almost unlimited power over all supernatural beings on land, in the water, in the air, in heaven and in h.e.l.l. Nowhere was the gulf between things human and things divine smaller, nowhere was the increasing differentiation that separated magic from religion less advanced. Until the end of paganism they remained so closely a.s.sociated that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the texts of one from those of the other.

The Chaldeans[65] also were past masters of sorcery, well versed in the knowledge of presages and experts in conjuring the evils which the presages foretold. In Mesopotamia, where they were confidential advisers of the kings, the magicians belonged to the official {188} clergy; they invoked the aid of the state G.o.ds in their incantations, and their sacred science was as highly esteemed as haruspicy in Etruria. The immense prestige that continued to surround it, a.s.sured its persistence after the fall of Nineveh and Babylon. Its tradition was still alive under the Caesars, and a number of enchanters rightly or wrongly claimed to possess the ancient wisdom of Chaldea.[66]

And the thaumaturgus, who was supposed to be the heir of the archaic priests, a.s.sumed a wholly sacerdotal appearance at Rome. Being an inspired sage who received confidential communications from heavenly spirits, he gave to his life and to his appearance a dignity almost equal to that of the philosopher. The common people soon confused the two,[67] and the Orientalizing philosophy of the last period of paganism actually accepted and justified all the superst.i.tions of magic. Neo-Platonism, which concerned itself to a large extent with demonology, leaned more and more towards theurgy, and was finally completely absorbed by it.

But the ancients expressly distinguished, "magic," which was always under suspicion and disapproved of, from the legitimate and honorable art for which the name "theurgy"[68] was invented. The term "magician," ([Greek: magos]) which applied to all performers of miracles, properly means the priests of Mazdaism, and a well attested tradition makes the Persians[69]

the authors of the real magic, that called "black magic" by the Middle Ages. If they did not invent it--because it is as old as humanity--they were at least the first to place it upon a doctrinal foundation and to a.s.sign to it a place {189} in a clearly formulated theological system. The Mazdean dualism gave a new power to this pernicious knowledge by conferring upon it the character that will distinguish it henceforth.

Under what influences did the Persian magic come into existence? When and how did it spread? These are questions that are not well elucidated yet.

The intimate fusion of the religious doctrines of the Iranian conquerors with those of the native clergy, which took place at Babylon, occurred in this era of belief,[70] and the magicians that were established in Mesopotamia combined their secret traditions with the rites and formulas codified by the Chaldean sorcerers. The universal curiosity of the Greeks soon took note of this marvelous science. Naturalist philosophers like Democritus,[71] the great traveler, seem to have helped themselves more than once from the treasure of observations collected by the Oriental priests. Without a doubt they drew from these incongruous compilations, in which truth was mingled with the absurd and reality with the fantastical, the knowledge of some properties of plants and minerals, or of some experiments of physics. However, the limpid h.e.l.lenic genius always turned away from the misty speculations of magic, giving them but slight consideration. But towards the end of the Alexandrine period the books ascribed to the half-mythical masters of the Persian science, Zoroaster, Hostanes and Hystaspes, were translated into Greek, and until the end of paganism those names enjoyed a prodigious authority. At the same time the Jews, who were acquainted with the arcana of the Irano-Chaldean doctrines and proceedings, made some of the recipes known wherever the dispersion brought {190} them.[72] Later, a more immediate influence was exercised upon the Roman world by the Persian colonies of Asia Minor,[73] who retained an obstinate faith in their ancient national beliefs.

The particular importance attributed to magic by the Mazdeans is a necessary consequence of their dualist system, which has been treated by us before.[74] Ormuzd, residing in the heavens of light, is opposed by his irreconcilable adversary, Ahriman, ruler of the underworld. The one stands for light, truth, and goodness, the other for darkness, falsehood, and perversity. The one commands the kind spirits which protect the pious believer, the other is master over demons whose malice causes all the evils that afflict humanity. These opposite principles fight for the domination of the earth, and each creates favorable or noxious animals and plants.

Everything on earth is either heavenly or infernal. Ahriman and his demons, who surround man to tempt or hurt him,[75] are evil G.o.ds and entirely different from those of which Ormuzd's host consists. The magician sacrifices to them, either to avert evils they threaten, or to direct their ire against enemies of true belief, and the impure spirits rejoice in b.l.o.o.d.y immolations and delight in the fumes of flesh burning on the altars.[76] Terrible acts and words attended all immolations. Plutarch[77]

mentions an example of the dark sacrifices of the Mazdeans. "In a mortar,"

he says, "they pound a certain herb called wild garlic, at the same time invoking Hades (Ahriman), and the powers of darkness, then stirring this herb in the blood of a slaughtered wolf, they take it away and drop it on a spot never reached by the rays of the sun." A necromantic performance indeed. {191}

We can imagine the new strength which such a conception of the universe must have given to magic. It was no longer an incongruous collection of popular superst.i.tions and scientific observations. It became a reversed religion: its nocturnal rites were the dreadful liturgy of the infernal powers. There was no miracle the experienced magician might not expect to perform with the aid of the demons, providing he know how to master them; he would invent any atrocity in his desire to gain the favor of the evil divinities whom crime gratified and suffering pleased. Hence the number of impious practices performed in the dark, practices the horror of which is equaled only by their absurdity: preparing beverages that disturbed the senses and impaired the intellect; mixing subtle poisons extracted from demoniac plants and corpses already in a state of putridity;[78] immolating children in order to read the future in their quivering entrails or to conjure up ghosts. All the satanic refinement that a perverted imagination in a state of insanity could conceive[79] pleased the malicious evil spirits; the more odious the monstrosity, the more a.s.sured was its efficacy. These abominable practices were sternly suppressed by the Roman government. Whereas, in the case of an astrologer who had committed an open transgression, the law was satisfied with expelling him from Rome--whither he generally soon returned,--the magician was put in the same cla.s.s with murderers and poisoners, and was subjected to the very severest punishment.

He was nailed to the cross or thrown to the wild beasts. Not only the practice of the profession, but even the simple fact of possessing works of sorcery made any one subject to prosecution.[80] {192}

However, there are ways of reaching an agreement with the police, and in this case custom was stronger than law. The intermittent rigor of imperial edicts had no more power to destroy an inveterate superst.i.tion than the Christian polemics had to cure it. It was a recognition of its strength when state and church united to fight it. Neither reached the root of the evil, for they did not deny the reality of the power wielded by the sorcerers. As long as it was admitted that malicious spirits constantly interfered in human affairs, and that there were secret means enabling the operator to dominate those spirits or to share in their power, magic was indestructible. It appealed to too many human pa.s.sions to remain unheard.

If, on the one hand, the desire of penetrating the mysteries of the future, the fear of unknown misfortunes, and hope, always reviving, led the anxious ma.s.ses to seek a chimerical certainty in astrology, on the other hand, in the case of magic, the blinding charm of the marvelous, the entreaties of love and ambition, the bitter desire for revenge, the fascination of crime, and the intoxication of bloodshed,--all the instincts that are not avowable and that are satisfied in the dark, took turns in practising their seductions. During the entire life of the Roman empire its existence continued, and the very mystery that it was compelled to hide in increased its prestige and almost gave it the authority of a revelation.

A curious occurrence that took place towards the end of the fifth century at Beirut, in Syria, shows how deeply even the strongest intellects of that period believed in the most atrocious practices of magic. One night some students of the famous law-school of that {193} city attempted to kill a slave in the circus, to aid the master in obtaining the favor of a woman who scorned him. Being reported, they had to deliver up their hidden volumes, of which those of Zoroaster and of Hostanes were found, together with those written by the astrologer Manetho. The whole city was agitated, and searches proved that many young men preferred the study of the illicit science to that of Roman law. By order of the bishop a solemn auto-da-fe was made of all this literature, in the presence of the city officials and the clergy, and the most revolting pa.s.sages were read in public, "in order to acquaint everybody with the conceited and vain promises of the demons,"

as the pious writer of the story says.[81]

Thus the ancient traditions of magic continued to live in the Christian Orient after the fall of paganism. They even outlived the domination of the church. The rigorous principles of its monotheism notwithstanding, Islam became infected with those Persian superst.i.tions. In the Occident the evil art resisted persecution and anathemas with the same obstinacy as in the Orient. It remained alive in Rome all through the fifth century,[82] and when scientific astrology in Europe went down with science itself, the old Mazdean dualism continued to manifest itself, during the entire Middle Ages in the ceremonies of the black ma.s.s and the worshiping of Satan, until the dawn of the modern era.

Twin sisters, born of the superst.i.tions of the learned Orient, magic and astrology always remained the hybrid daughters of sacerdotal culture. Their existence {194} was governed by two contrary principles, reason and faith, and they never ceased to fluctuate between these two poles of thought. Both were inspired by a belief in universal sympathy, according to which occult and powerful relations exist between human beings and dead objects, all possessing a mysterious life. The doctrine of sidereal influences, combined with a knowledge of the immutability of the celestial revolutions, caused astrology to formulate the first theory of absolute fatalism, whose decrees might be known beforehand. But, besides this rigorous determinism, it retained its childhood faith in the divine stars, whose favor could be secured and malignity avoided through worship. In astrology the experimental method was reduced to the completing of prognostics based on the supposed character of the stellar G.o.ds.

Magic also remained half empirical and half religious. Like our physics, it was based on observation, it proclaimed the constancy of the laws of nature, and sought to conquer the latent energies of the material world in order to bring them under the dominion of man's will. But at the same time it recognized, in the powers that it claimed to conquer, spirits or demons whose protection might be obtained, whose ill-will might be appeased, or whose savage hostility might be unchained by means of immolations and incantations.

All their aberrations notwithstanding, astrology and magic were not entirely fruitless. Their counterfeit learning has been a genuine help to the progress of human knowledge. Because they awakened chimerical hopes and fallacious ambitions in the minds of their adepts, researches were undertaken which undoubtedly {195} would never have been started or persisted in for the sake of a disinterested love of truth. The observations, collected with untiring patience by the Oriental priests, caused the first physical and astronomical discoveries, and, as in the time of the scholastics, the occult sciences led to the exact ones. But when these understood the vanity of the astounding illusions on which astrology and magic had subsisted, they broke up the foundation of the arts to which they owed their birth.

{196}

THE TRANSFORMATION OF ROMAN PAGANISM.

About the time of the Severi the religion of Europe must have presented an aspect of surprising variety. Although dethroned, the old native Italian, Celtic and Iberian divinities were still alive. Though eclipsed by foreign rivals, they lived on in the devotion of the lower cla.s.ses and in the traditions of the rural districts. For a long time the Roman G.o.ds had been established in every town and had received the homage of an official clergy according to pontifical rites. Beside them, however, were installed the representatives of all the Asiatic pantheons, and these received the most fervent adoration from the ma.s.ses. New powers had arrived from Asia Minor, Egypt, Syria, and the dazzling Oriental sun outshone the stars of Italy's temperate sky. All forms of paganism were simultaneously received and retained while the exclusive monotheism of the Jews kept its adherents, and Christianity strengthened its churches and fortified its orthodoxy, at the same time giving birth to the baffling vagaries of gnosticism. A hundred different currents carried away hesitating and undecided minds, a hundred contrasting sermons made appeals to the conscience of the people.

Let us suppose that in modern Europe the faithful {197} had deserted the Christian churches to worship Allah or Brahma, to follow the precepts of Confucius or Buddha, or to adopt the maxims of the Shinto; let us imagine a great confusion of all the races of the world in which Arabian mullahs, Chinese scholars, j.a.panese bonzes, Tibetan lamas and Hindu pundits would be preaching fatalism and predestination, ancestor-worship and devotion to a deified sovereign, pessimism and deliverance through annihilation--a confusion in which all those priests would erect temples of exotic architecture in our cities and celebrate their disparate rites therein.

Such a dream, which the future may perhaps realize, would offer a pretty accurate picture of the religious chaos in which the ancient world was struggling before the reign of Constantine.