ster 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 assumed a
different character when the world of the gods, 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 assumed 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
superstition.

* * * * *

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
superstition 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 ter