inscrutable powers would do what he might
ask of them. Hence, presently, a knowledge of certain natural processes
which could be turned to account for spectacular effect, together with
some sleight of hand, came to be an integral part of priestly lore.
Knowledge of this kind passes for knowledge of the "unknowable", and
it owes its serviceability for the sacerdotal purpose to its recondite
character. It appears to have been from this source that learning, as an
institution, arose, and its differentiation from this its parent stock
of magic ritual and shamanistic fraud has been slow and tedious, and is
scarcely yet complete even in the most advanced of the higher seminaries
of learning.

The recondite element in learning is still, as it has been in all ages,
a very attractive and effective element for the purpose of impressing,
or even imposing upon, the unlearned; and the standing of the savant in
the mind of the altogether unlettered is in great measure rated in terms
of intimacy with the occult forces. So, for instance, as a typical case,
even so late as the middle of this century, the Norwegian peasants have
instinctively formulated their sense of the superior erudition of such
doctors of divinity as Luther, Malanchthon, Peder Dass, and even so late
a scholar in divinity as Grundtvig, in terms of the Black Art. These,
together with a very comprehensive list of minor celebrities, both
living and dead, have been reputed masters in all magical arts; and a
high position in the ecclesiastical personnel has carried with it,
in the apprehension of these good people, an implication of profound
familiarity with magical practice and the occult sciences. There is
a parallel fact nearer home, similarly going to show the close
relationship, in popular apprehension, between erudition and the
unknowable; and it will at the same time serve to illustrate, in
somewhat coarse outline, the bent which leisure-class life gives to
the cognitive interest. While the belief is by no means confined to the
leisure class, that class today comprises a disproportionately large
number of believers in occult sciences of all kinds and shades. By those
whose habits of thought are not shaped by contact with modern industry,
the knowledge of the unknowable is still felt to the ultimate if not the
only true knowledge.

Learning, then, set out by being in some sense a by-product of the
priestly vicarious leisure class; and, at least until a recent date,