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 gods.

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 n