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CHAPTER II

MAGIC

Nigromantia sciri libere potest, sed operari sine daemonum familiaritate nullatenus valet.1

the view that the magic art developed as a quasi-science which misapplied the categories of cause and effect is now generally discredited. Mr. Marett in the articles reprinted in The Threshold of Religion, Mr. Hartland implicitly in his earlier work and explicitly in his addresses to the British Association in 1906 and the International Congress for the History of Religions in 1908, MM. Hubert et Mauss in the seventh volume of L’Annde Sociologique, have delivered crushing blows. It is now recognised by the majority of ethnologists that magical action of necessity implies the setting in motion of some non-natural power, and that even in its most formal development it is

1 Quoted in Comparetti, Virgil in the Middle Ages (trans. Benecke), p. 291.