Preface

Preface.Vorrede.

The belief in magic is as old as mankind. In the religious and profane history of all centuries and all peoples men appear who distinguished themselves from their contemporaries by insights of an incomprehensible kind, by mastery over nature and over their fellow men. According to the morally very different use they made of their capacities, they were called wonder-workers, saints, prophets, sorcerers, witches and so on. Taken together, we can call them magi. The exceedingly great number of such reports, and in many cases the reliability of the witnesses, forbid us to hold all these stories to be fables. If modern times have nevertheless withdrawn further and further from the belief in magic, this lies precisely in the growth of the sciences, which have developed more and more into closed systems. But a system always breeds the inclination to reject a priori those facts that will not fit into it.

On the other hand, it already lies in the very idea of scientific development that in time we must necessarily come upon magic again. For to the scientifically thinking inquirer it is clear from the outset, indeed, by virtue of the universal validity of the law of causality, certain a priori, that the word magic is only a provisional name for the human capacities not yet explored, and that magical phenomena can rest only on unknown natural science. From this, however, it follows with logical necessity that our science, by virtue of its spontaneous development, must at last flow into magic, indeed must itself become magic, in the measure in which it advances from the investigation of the visible, tangible, ponderable to that of the invisible, intangible, imponderable; for the more refined matter shows itself, as radiant matter for example, the more remarkable the powers it betrays. One easily convinces oneself that this process has already begun for physics as for psychology, and hypnotism especially teaches that the points of contact between science and magic, that is, between known and unknown natural science, are multiplying. But precisely because magic can lie only on the line of science’s prolongation, an accelerated progress would have to set in if inquirers recognized that their systems need completing, and therefore took up the study of magic, in whose field the laws still unknown to them lie; for whoever takes into account only the phenomena explicable from the known laws produces only a progress in breadth; but whoever makes the hitherto inexplicable phenomena explicable leads progress into depth and compels the widening and reshaping of the systems. Those inquirers, then, who exclude magic from their investigations remain stuck in the provisional system and hinder progress. It is therefore much to be regretted that science and magic still count as opposites today, since they only complete each other. This, to be sure, can be seen only if one inquires in both directions, and recognizes on the one side the lawfulness of magical phenomena, on the other the gradual magical deepening of the natural sciences.

I can therefore take full account of the misgivings of readers who stand on the ground of modern natural science, without compromising myself and without making too great demands of them. I do not ascribe magical capacities to men in the sense of the Middle Ages, which explained all wonders and sorceries, all legitimate and illegitimate magic, from supernatural help of a heavenly or demonic kind. There is no need for such a loan; the magical capacities are our own natural possession, as Agrippa of Nettesheim already saw: Spiritus in nobis, qui viget, illa facit (the spirit that thrives in us does these things). But the magical capacities also all have their physical basis, which is accordingly not supernatural but only supersensible, and whose investigation must be our chief endeavour.

To remove every doubt that the magical capacities lie within us, and must therefore appear even before their discovery and scientific investigation, I have stressed practical magic less (which would in any case be a premature undertaking) than its natural patterns, which occur spontaneously and unintentionally, and reveal their lawfulness by always occurring under the same conditions. I hope, then, to have laid down at least the ground-lines of magic once and for all: magnetism is the key to magical physics; mono-ideism, the sharpened thought and will, is the key to magical psychology.

There is no other way of coming to an insight into magical practice than to study the natural patterns of magic, to investigate the conditions under which they occur, and then to undertake the artificial copy of them. Superstition, to be sure, has badly disfigured practical magic, because it did not see its naturalness and lawfulness; but its kernel of truth and its scientific lawfulness can be recognized if, in comparison with nature (cum mundi codice primario, originali et autographo, “with the primary, original and autograph codex of the world”, as Campanella says), we recognize the agreement of the artificial performance with the natural, spontaneous appearances.

When the reader sees that numerous natural patterns of magic are given in experience, and that on the other hand natural science itself has already reached, on some points, that deepening by which magical phenomena become explicable (clairvoyance, for example, through the Röntgen rays, telepathy through telegraphy without wires, fascination through suggestion, witchcraft through the exteriorization of sensibility), the reader’s first misgivings will dwindle more and more; but at last he will say to himself that if our science were once completed there would be no magic any more, but that we reach this goal fastest if we study those facts which contradict our theories and are therefore at present still called magical.

Only one single concession, for this very reason, the reader must not expect from me: if he should believe that the last word has already been spoken in our system of nature, if he would use the system like the strickle of the corn measurers, who strike off everything that rises above the bushel, then he may as well lay my book aside at once; for in my view, despite all discoveries and inventions, we stand only at the beginnings of science, and as nature has hitherto been found the more wonderful the more deeply it was explored, so it will be in future too. We must also at last learn to see that the powers of nature and of man still unknown at present are by no means latent powers that never express themselves, but rather active powers that express themselves constantly under definite conditions. The apples fell from the trees before Newton discovered the law of gravitation, and in the same way, even in times when no one believes in magic, at least its natural patterns must still occur. There must therefore constantly be phenomena present which contradict the known laws, although, because they correspond to unknown laws, they too are subject to the law of causality. This insight will reconcile medieval superstition, which erred only in the explanation of the facts, with modern science, which still today, as always, errs in the a priori rejection of facts that it must at last acknowledge after all, when it has itself, without meaning to, found their explanation.

Partenkirchen.

Carl du Prel.