taneous character that they owed absolutely nothing to the formative influence of the writings of their predecessors. Other men, generally spoken of as mystics, have likewise been omitted, because in reality they belong to quite a different side of Neoplatonism. Like Porphyry (233-304), they inherited only the philosophy of Plotinus. Thus it came about that two different views of life are represented by Neoplatonism, views radically different, yet often so similar that they seem to merge, for they often use the same language, instruments, and methods. These two views represent the two great human activities corresponding to the two eternal, elemental passions of the self, the desire for love and the desire for knowledge, the hunger of the heart and the hunger of the intellect for absolute truth.

The hunger of the heart is expressed by mysticism,—not an opinion nor a philosophy, not a pursuit of the occult and the hidden, but first-hand experience and knowledge of the ultimate reality underlying all appearance. “It is the name of that organic process which involves the perfect consummation of the Love of God; the achievement here and now of the immortal heritage of man, the art of establishing his conscious relationship with the Absolute," 1—in other words, the experience of Plotinus, Dionysius, Tauler, and the rest.

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For that other type of character in which the desire for knowledge dominates, the goal of ultimate truth means likewise a knowledge of the supersensible world, but here it is a knowledge that must change into control. To this the early centuries gave the name of magic.2 In this the intense Evelyn Underhill: Mysticism, p. 97.

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One must bear in mind that the word "magic" as now generally used has quite lost its original flavor and connotation; love-philters and conjuring tricks have no relation to the serious and reverent attempts of bygone centuries to come into possession of a part of the power of the Infinite.

human craving for hidden knowledge and for power, the deep interest in the occult, the mysterious, finds a place. It is the intellectual, aggressive, and scientific temperament seeking to extend its field of consciousness until it shall include the supersensual world. It is the quest for a power that may control the whole universe. Under this view, a line of Neoplatonic thought progressed that culminated a few centuries ago in what we now call modern science. Organized religion, in its forms and ceremonies, must always show traces of this magic; modern therapeutic measures demanding faith in a healer or a heightened power of the will are everyday expressions of the same fundamental conception; and all of the sciences owe their birth to this magical way of regarding the relation of man to his universe.

This intellectual interest in Neoplatonism, as opposed to the mystical intuition of it, had also its great exponents. Its period of influence begins with the founding in Florence of a Neoplatonic academy. Under the patronage of Cosimo de Medici (1389-1464), Marsilius Ficinus (1433-1499) made masterly translations of Plato and of Plotinus and various other Neoplatonists. He interpreted Plato entirely according to the spirit of Plotinus and consciously attempted to bring their philosophy into accord with Christian doctrine. Ficinus taught that the divinity of the soul was assured by its immeasurable power to will and to know; fostered and uplifted by religion and philosophy, the soul should ascend the heights of knowledge even to the summit of divinity itself, and part of the way thereto might well be learned from those elements of Plotinus's teachings that were of Egyptian origin, from the writings of Hermes Trismegistos, father of magic. It was in this atmosphere of intellectual progress of the academy that the great artists of the Renaissance lived and worked. Although later the academy fell

under the displeasure of the church, its influence continued increasingly.

Pico de Mirandola (1463-1494) dedicated his life to the dissemination of these principles. Following his belief that they came originally, in part at least, from the Orient, he made a study of oriental languages, and to the teachings of Plotinus and Hermes added the kindred ones of the Kabalah.

This was the first introduction to the Christian world of the cabalistic writings, that collection of supposedly ancient Jewish tradition committed to writing some time in the second century of our era. Here again we meet the doctrines, familiar to us from Neoplatonism, of the emanation of the soul from God, of the essential harmony of all things, of the archetypal world of which our world is a copy,doctrines that lie at the foundation of the belief in magic, the belief in a spiritual alchemy powerful to effect great changes beneficial to the life of man. Significant for the progress of these ideas was the German humanist who came under the influence of the academy at Florence and returned home to carry on in his own country the mission of Pico de Mirandola. This was Johann Reuchlin (1455-1522), with his writings on the Kabalah and the cabalistic art.

In its beginnings, magic appears as the office, or art and science of priests; closely related to the art of healing it was naturally considered the receptacle of hidden wisdom, the knowledge of higher, of supernatural powers, such as spirits sometimes possess and sometimes communicate to the favored of mankind who know how to come into harmony with the forces of the universe. But this borrowing of power might arise from either a good or an evil purpose, just as spirits themselves are either angels or devils, servants of light or servants of darkness. Hence the distinction

between white and black magic that Mirandola felt constrained to make. "One of the chief complaints against me," he says in his Apology,1 "is that I am a magician. But have I not myself differentiated a two-fold magic? One sort which founds itself entirely upon the help and cooperation of evil spirits and most decidedly deserves aversion and punishment, and the other sort, magic in its true sense. The former subjects man to evil spirits, the latter makes him their conqueror; the former should be called neither an art nor a science; the latter embraces the deepest secrets, the investigation and knowledge of all nature and her powers. In assembling and calling forth the powers spread by God throughout the universe, true magic performs no miracles but rather comes to the assistance of Nature in her activities; it investigates the relations or sympathies of all things, it applies to each thing a most powerful attraction and thus draws from the deep and secret treasure chamber of the world wonders usually hid from mortal view, just as if it were of itself the originator of them. Religion teaches us the contemplation of divine wonders; as we learn to know natural magic aright, we are still more compelled to say: full are the heavens, full is the earth of the majesty of Thy Glory!"

But the powers of nature and of man that were the legitimate object of the researches of science, that is, of "white magic," had been throughout the centuries a profound mystery, a matter of faith and foreboding, and whoever sought to learn anything of them, sought also to keep his acquirements secret, or to share them only with the initiated. Some men purposely shrouded their knowledge in obscurity in order to appear the greater and wiser, expressing in

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1 Quoted on p. 85, Carriere: Die philosophische Weltanschauung der Reformationszeit.

symbols that which they themselves understood only partially, hiding what remained hidden from them because their insight and experience of laws and relationships was incomplete. Thus there arose a tradition of knowledge and powers that never existed, and the shady side of magic, charlatanism of every kind, conscious or unconscious, was protected. The philosopher's stone, originally the symbol of that power beneficent to mankind to be achieved through union with the divine world-power, came more and more to mean merely the means of transmutation of baser metals into gold. The belief in astrology, in witchcraft, in every kind of divination and prophecy flourished.

Against this degradation of the Neoplatonic tradition, Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1487-1535) labored, especially in his last and ripest work, De occulta philosophia, which is directed toward establishing the principles of true magic against the superstitions of his time. But like the other learned men of his time, he believed in the possibility of the material philosopher's stone, the goal of the great medieval alchemists, Raimundus Lullus in Spain, Arnoldus Villanovanus in France, Albertus Magnús and Basilius Valentinus in Germany, Bernhard de Trevigo in Italy, and Roger Bacon in England.

The man who gave new impetus and a new direction to these chemical experiments was Theophrastus Paracelsus von Hohenheim (1493-1541). In his life and writings some have seen so much that is wild and fantastic that they reject him as a mad charlatan, while others find so many splendid observations and discoveries by which the science of later times has profited, that they praise him as a purely scientific reformer, much in advance of his age; both forget, however, how thoroughly his own life, adventurous yet heroic, represents the manifold contradictory character of the life