man should not be able, by its higher powers, to perceive and to consort with souls detached from mortal bodies, although this intercourse must needs be limited and imperfect because of the vast difference between a free soul and one bound to an earthly, sinful body. For man, when he dies, leaves behind in this world the body, dead and powerless, a corpse. He continues, however, to live, a soul, with all the peculiar powers which make up our spiritual organism; that is to say, the true man, in the higher sense of the word, exists still, though he dwell in another world. This soul has now no longer earthly organs of sense to do its bidding, but it still controls nature which was made subject to its will; it has, moreover, a new set of powers which represent in the higher world its higher body, and the character of its new active life will be all the more elevated, as these organs are more spiritual. Man cannot but continue to develop, to grow, and to ripen, in the next world as he did in this; his nature and his destiny are alike incompatible with sudden transitions and with absolute rest. The soul must become purer and more useful; its organs more subtle and more powerful, and it is of this life of gradual improvement and purification that we may occasionally obtain glimpses by that communion which no doubt still exists between earth-bound souls and souls freed from such bondage.
There are, it is well known, many theologians who sternly deny any such further development of man's spiritual part, and insist upon looking at this life as the only time of probation accorded to him, at the end of which immediate and eternal judgment is rendered. Their views are entitled to the utmost consideration and respect. But different opinions are entertained by some of their brethren, not less eminent in piety, profound learning, and critical acumen, and hence at least equally deserving of being attentively listened to and carefully regarded. So it is also with the belief in the possibility of holding intercourse with disembodied spirits. Superficial observers are ready to doubt or to deny, to sneer haughtily, or to scoff contemptuously. But men of great eminence have, from time immemorial, treated the question with great attention and deep interest. Melanchthon wrote: "I have myself seen ghosts, and know many trustworthy people who affirm that they have not only seen them, but even carried on conversations with them" (De Anima Recogn.: Wittemb. 1595, p. 317), and Luther said nearly the same; Calvin and Knox also expressed similar convictions. A faith which has lasted through all ages of man's history, and has such supporters, cannot but have some foundation, and deserves full investigation. Alchemy, with its visionary hopes, contained, nevertheless, the germ of modern chemistry, and astrology taught already much that constitutes the astronomy of our day. The same is, no doubt, the case with Modern Magic, and here, also, we may safely expect to find that "out of darkness cometh light."
Modern Magic.
I.
WITCHCRAFT.
"Witchcraft is an illegitimate miracle; a miracle is legitimate witchcraft."—Jacob Boehme.
Perhaps in no direction has the human mind ever shown greater weakness than in the opinions entertained of witchcraft. If Hecate, the oldest patroness of witches, wandered about at night with a gruesome following, and frightened lovers at their stealthy meeting, or lonely wanderers on open heaths and in dark forests, her appearance was at least in keeping with the whole system of Greek mythology. Tacitus does not frighten us by telling us that witches used to meet at salt springs (Ann. xiii. 57), nor the Edda when speaking of the "bearers of witches' kettles," against whom even the Salic Law warns all good Christians. But when the Council of Ancyra, in the fifth century, fulminates its edicts against women riding at night upon weird animals in company with Diana and Herodias, the strange combination of names and the dread penalties threatened, make us almost think of witches as of real and most marvelous beings. And when wise councillors of French Parliaments and gray dignitaries of the Holy German Empire sit in judgment over a handful of poor old women, when great English bishops and zealous New England divines condemn little children to death, because they have made pacts with the Devil, attended his sabbaths, and bewitched their peaceful neighbors—then we stand amazed at the delusions, to which the wisest and best among us are liable.
Christianity, it is true, shed for a time such a bright light over the earth, that the works of darkness were abhorred and the power of the Evil One seemed to be broken, according to the sacred promises that the seed of woman should bruise the serpent's head. Thus Charlemagne, in his fierce edict issued after the defeat of the Saxons, ordered that death should be inflicted on all who after pagan manner gave way to devilish delusions, and believed that men or women could be witches, persecuted and killed them; or, even went so far as to consume their flesh and give it to others for like purposes! But almost at the same time the belief in the Devil, distinctly maintained in Holy Writ, spread far and wide, and as early as the fourth century diseases were ascribed not to organic causes, but to demoniac influences, and the Devil was once more seen bodily walking to and fro on the earth, accompanied by a host of smaller demons. It was but rarely that a truly enlightened man dared to combat the universal superstition. Thus Agobard, archbishop of Lyons, shines like a bright star on the dark sky of the ninth century by his open denunciation of all belief in possession, in the control of the weather or the decision of difficulties by ordeal. For like reasons we ought to revere the memory of John of Salisbury, who in the twelfth century declared the stories of nightly assemblies of witches, with all their attending circumstances, to be mere delusions of poor women and simple men, who fancied they saw bodily what existed only in their imagination. The Church hesitated, now requiring her children to believe in a Devil and demons, and now denouncing all faith in supernatural beings. The thirteenth century, by Leibnitz called the darkest of all, developed the worship of the Evil One to its fullest perfection; the writings of St. Augustine were quoted as confirming the fact that demons and men could and did intermarry, and the Djinns of the East were mentioned as spirits who "sought the daughters of men for wives." The first trace of a witches' dance is found in the records of a fearful Auto-da-fè held in Toulouse in the year 1353, and about a century later the Dominican monk, Jaquier, published the first complete work on witches and witchcraft. He represented them as organised—after the prevailing fashion of the day—in a regular guild, with apprentices, companions, and masters, who practised a special art for a definite purpose. It is certainly most remarkable that the same opinion, in all its details, has been entertained in this century even, and by one of the most famous German philosophers, Eschenmayer. While the zeal and madness of devil-worshippers were growing on one side, persecution became more violent and cruel on the other side, till the trials of witches assumed gigantic proportions and the proceedings were carried on according to a regular method. These trials originated, invariably, with theologians, and although the system was not begun by the Papal government it obtained soon the Pope's legal sanction by the famous bull of Innocent VIII., Summis desiderantes, dated December 4, 1484, and decreeing the relentless persecution of all heretical witches. The far-famed Malleus maleficatum (Cologne, 1489), written by the two celebrated judges of witches, Sprenger and Gremper, and full of the most extraordinary views and statements, reduced the whole to a regular method, and obtained a vast influence over the minds of that age. The rules and forms it prescribed were not only observed in almost all parts of Christendom, but actually retained their force and legality till the end of the seventeenth century. Nor were these views and practices confined to Catholic countries; a hundred and fifty years after the Reformation, a great German jurist and a Protestant, Carpzon, published his Praxis Criminalis, in which precisely the same opinions were taught and the same measures were prescribed. The Puritans, it is well-known, pursued a similar plan, and the New World has not been more fortunate in avoiding these errors than the Old World. A curious feature in the above-mentioned works is the fact that both abound in expressions of hatred against the female sex, and still more curious, though disgraceful in the extreme, that the special animosity shown by judges of witchcraft against women is solely based upon the weight which they attached to the purport of the Mosaic inhibition: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (Exodus xii. 18).
These are dark pages in the history of Christendom, blackened by the smoke of funeral piles and stained with the blood of countless victims of cruel superstition. For here the peculiarity was that in the majority of cases not the humble sufferers whose lives were sacrificed, but the haughty judges