part controls itself and exercises as it were a private juris-

diction, in part is subject to the laws of the universe just as any citizen is amenable to public jurisdiction. Therefore magicians perform their marvels by private contracts with demons; good Christians perform theirs by public justice; bad Christians perform theirs by the appearance or signs of public justice.^ This view would seem to indicate that God, like the demons, regards the signs alone and not the character and purpose of the performer, so that Christian miracles, if they can be duplicated by heretics, would appear to be largely a matter of procedure and art, like magic.
For his theory of demons and their characteristics Au- gustine seems largely indebted to Apuleius, whom he cites in several chapters of the eighth and ninth books of The City of God. In his separate treatise, The Divination of Demons,^ he explains their ability to predict the future and to perform marvels by the keenness of their sense, their rapidity of movement, their long experience of nature and life, and the subtlety of their aerial bodies. This last quality enables them to penetrate human bodies or affect the thoughts of men without men being aware of their presence. Augustine, however, of course does not believe that the world of nature is completely under the control of the demons. God alone created it and He still governs it, and the demons are able to do only as much as He permits.^
There were, for example, some things which Pharaoh's magicians could not do and in which Moses clearly ex- celled them. They were able to change their rods into snakes but his snake devoured theirs. How the magicians got their rods back, if at all, neither Augustine nor the Book of Exodus informs us. But whether with or without their magic wands, they were still able to duplicate one or two of the plagues sent upon Egypt. Augustine explains that neither they nor the demons who helped them really created snakes and frogs, but that there are certain seeds of life
^De divcrsis quaestionibus, cap. 79; De doctrina Christiana, II, 20, in Migne, PL 34, 50. 875.
Migne, PL 40, 581-92.
De trinitate, III, 8; PL, ^
XXII
AUGUSTINE
509
hidden away In the elemental bodies of this world of which they made use. But their magic failed them when it came to the reproduction of minute insects. ■*• Augustine further- more has some hesitation about accepting the stories of magic transformations of men into animals, which he repre- sents as current in his own day as well as in times past, so that certain female inn-keepers in Italy are said to transform travelers into beasts of burden by a magic potion admin- istered in the cheese, just as Circe transformed the copi- panions of Ulysses and as Apuleius says happened to him- self in the book that he wrote under the title, The Golden Ass. These stories, in Augustine's opinion, "are either false or such uncommon occurrences that they are justly discredited," ^ He does not believe that demons can truly transform the human body into the limbs and lineaments of beasts, but the strange personal experiences of reliable persons have convinced him that men are deceived by dreams, hallucinations, and fantastic images.
Thus, as we have already seen over and over again, the Its fan- fantastic and deceptive character of magic is dimly realized, character Usually, however, when Augustine represents "the powers of the air" as deceiving men by magic, the deceit consists merely in the magicians' imagining that they are working the marvels which are really performed by demons, or in men being lured into subjection to Satan and to their ulti- mate and eternal damnation through the attractions of the magic art.^
Augustine twice responded to questions concerning the Samuel witch of Endor's apparent invocation of the spirit of Sam-
* De trinttate, III, 7-8. It seems strange to me that they should have failed on minute insects who in ancient and medieval science are often represented as produced by spontaneous generation. The Talmudists also, however, state that the Egyptians were unable to duplicate the plague of lice, as their art did not extend to things smaller than a barleycorn.
'De civitate Dei, XVIII, 22. In commenting on Genesis (PL 34, 445) he speaks even more harshly of "that absurd and harm- ful notion of the changing of souls and of men into beasts, or of beasts into men" ; but perhaps he has reference to the doctrine of transmigration of souls rather than to magic transformations.
* Confessions, X, 42, in PL vol. Z2.
and the witch of Endor.
Sio MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
uel, repeating in his De octo Dulcitii quaestionibus "^ what he had already said in De diversis quaestionibus ad Sim- plicianum.^ In certain respects Augustine's treatment of the problem differs from those which we have previously ex- amined. What, he asks, if the impure spirit which possessed the pythonissa was able to raise the very soul of Samuel from the dead? Is it not much more strange that Satan was allowed to converse personally with God concerning the tempting of Job, and to raise the very Christ aloft upon a pinnacle of the temple? Why then may not the soul of Samuel have appeared to Saul, not unwillingly and coerced by magic power but voluntarily under some hidden divine dispensation? Augustine, however, also thinks it possible that the soul of Samuel did not appear but was impersonated by some phantasm and imaginary illusion made by diabolical machinations. He can see no deceit in the Scripture's call- ing such a phantom Samuel, since we are accustomed to call paintings, statues, and images seen in dreams by the names of the actual persons whom they represent. Nor does it trouble him that the spirit of Samuel or pretended spirit predicted truly to Saul, for demons have a limited power of that sort. Thus they recognized Christ when the Jews knew Him not, and the damsel possessed of a spirit of divination in The Acts testified to Paul's divine mission. Augustine leaves, however, as beyond the limits of his time and strength the further problem whether the human soul after death can be so evoked by magic incantations that it is not only seen but recognized by the living. In his answer to Dulcitius he further calls attention to the passage in Ecclesiasticus (xlvi, 23) where Samuel is praised as prophesying from the dead. And if this passage be rejected because the book is not in the Hebrew canon, what shall we say of Moses who ap- peared to the living long after his death?
Augustine had some acquaintance with ancient natural science and in one passage rehearses a number of natural marvels which are found in the pages of Pliny and Solinus *Qaaest. VI; PL 40, 162-5. *II, 3; PL 40, 142-4.
XXII
AUGUSTINE
5"
in order to show pagans their inconsistency in accepting such wonders and yet remaining incredulous in regard to analogous phenomena mentioned in the Bible. So Augustine rehearses the strange properties of the magnet; asserts that adamant can be broken neither by steel nor fire but only by application of the blood of a goat; tells of Cappadocian mares who conceive from the wind ; and hails the ability of the salamander to live in the midst of flames as a token that the bodies of sinners can subsist in hell fire. Augustine also admits "the virtue of stones and other objects and the craft of men who employ these in marvelous ways." ■"■ He denies, however, that the Marsi who charm snakes by their incantations are really understood by the serpents. There is some diabolical force behind their magic, as when Satan spoke to Eve through the serpent.^
Once at least, however, Augustine associates science and magic. In his Confessions, after speaking of sensual pleas- ure he also censures "the vain and curious desire of investi- gation" through the senses, which is "palliated under the name of knowledge and science." This is apt to lead one not only into scrutinizing secrets of nature which are beyond one and which it does one no good to know and which men want to know just for the sake of knowledge, but also "into searching through magic arts into the confines of perverse science." ^
Of this dangerous borderland between magic and science Augustine has more to say in some chapters of his Christian Doctrine.'^ After mentioning as prime instances of human superstition idolatry, other false religions, and the magic arts, he next lists the books of soothsayers (aruspices) and augurs as of the same class, "though seemingly a more permissible vanity." In his Confessions,^ however, he tells of a soothsayer who offered not only to consult the future for him, but to insure him success in a poetical contest in
^De civitate Dei, XXI, 4-6; PL
41, 712-6.
'De Genesi ad Utteram, XI, 28- 9; PL 34, 444-5.
• Confessions, X, 35 ; in PL vol. 32. *II, 20 and 29. •IV. 2-3.
Relation between magic and science.
Super- stitions akin to magic.
512
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Curvival of pagan super- stition among the laity.
which he was to engage in the theater. The incident is a good illustration of the fact that prediction of the future and attempting to influence events go naturally together, and that arts of divination cannot be separated either in theory or practice from magic arts. In the Christian Doc- trine Augustine is inclined further to put in the same class all use of invocations, incantations, and characters, which he regards as signs implying pacts with evil spirits, and the use of which in working cures he asserts is condemned by the medical profession. He is also suspicious of ligatures and suspensions, and states that it is one thing to say, "If you drink the juice of this herb, your stomach will not ache," and is another thing to say, "If you suspend this herb from the neck, your stomach will not ache. For in one case a healing application is worthy of approval, in the other a superstitious signification is to be censured." Augustine recognizes, however, that such ligatures and sus- pensions are called "by the milder name of natural remedies (physica)" ; and if they are applied without incantations or characters, possibly they may heal the body naturally by mere attachment, in which case it is lawful to employ them. But they may involve some signal to demons, in which case the more efficacious they are, the more a Christian should avoid them.
The same attitude toward superstitious medicine is shown in a sermon attributed to Augustine but probably spurious.^ Here a tempter is represented as coming to the sick man and saying, "If you had only employed that enchanter, you would be well now; if you would attach these characters to your body, you could recover your health." Or another comes and says, "Send your girdle to that diviner ; he will measure and scrutinize it and tell you what to do and whether you can recover. Or a third visitor may recommend someone who is skilled in fumigation. The preacher warns his hearers not to succumb to such advice or they will be sacrificing to the devil; whereas if they refuse ' PL 39, 2268-72.
XXII
AUGUSTINE
513
such treatment and die, it will be a glorious martyr's death. The preacher, however, is not over-sanguine that his advice will be heeded, as he has often before admonished his hearers against pagan superstitions, and yet reports keep coming to him that some are continuing such practices. He therefore "warns them again and again" to forsake all diviners, aruspices, enchanters, phylacteries, augury, and observance of days, or they will lose all benefit of the sacrament of baptism and will be eternally damned unless they perform a vast amount of penance. The observance of days other than the Lord's Day is here condemned on the ground that God made the other six days without distinction. In another supposititious sermon ^ the practice of diligently observing on which day of the week to set out on a journey is censured as equivalent to worshiping the planets, or rather the pagan gods whose names they bear and who are said here to have originally been bad men and women who lived at the time that the Children of Israel were in Egypt. The preacher is even opposed to naming the days of the week after such persons or planets and exhorts his hearers to speak simply of the first day, second day, and so on.
Nor will Augustine, to return to his remarks in the Augus- Christian Doctrine,^ exempt "from this genus of pernicious {^"k^upon superstition those who are called genethliaci from their con- astrology. sideration of natal days and now are also popularly termed mathematici." He holds that they enslave human free will by predicting a man's character and life from the stars, and that their art is a presumptuous and fallacious human inven- tion, and that if their predictions come true, this is due either to chance or to demons who wish to confirm mankind in its error.^ In his youth, when a follower of the Manichean sect, Augustine had been a believer in astrology and thereby "sacrificed himself to demons" at the same time that, owing to his Manichean scruples against animal sacrifice, he re- fused to employ a haruspex.^ Perhaps on this account he
^ Scrmo CXXX, PL 39, 2004-5. '11, 21-3; PL 34, S1-3.
* De civitate Dei, V, 7.
* Confessions, VII, 6.
SH
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Fate and free will.
felt the more bound to warn his readers against astrology in his old age. He often attacks the casters of horoscopes in his works and especially in the opening chapters of the fifth book of The City of God, on which we may center our attention as being a rather more elaborate discussion than the other passages and including almost all the arguments which he advances elsewhere. These arguments are not original with him, but his presentation of them was perhaps better known in the middle ages than any other.^
The objection to astrology as fatalistic does not come with the best grace from Augustine, the great advocate of divine prescience and of predestination, and in his discussion in The City of God he is forced to recognize this fact. He holds that the world is not governed by chance or by fate, a word which for most men means the force of the con- stellations, but by divine providence. He starts to accuse the astrologers of attributing to the spotless stars, or to the God whose orders the stars obediently execute, the causing of human sin and evil ; but then recognizes that the astrolo- gers will answer that the stars simply signify and in no way cause evil, just as God foresees but does not compel human sinfulness.
Thus thwarted in his attempt to show that the astrologers enslave the human will, although in other passages he still gives us to understand that they do,^ Augustine adopts an- other line of argument, that from twins, an old favorite, which he twists first one way and then another, proposing to the astrologers a series of dilemmas as he finds them likely to escape from each preceding one. He seems to have been much impressed by the thought that at the same instant and hence with the same horoscope persons were born whose subsequent lives and characters were different. He brings forward Esau and Jacob as examples, and states that he himself has known of twins of dissimilar sex and
* Unless otherwise noted, the ensuing arguments are found in The City of God, V, 1-7.
'De Genesi ad litteram, II, 17;
PL 34, 278. De diversis quaes- tionibus, cap. 45 ; PL 40, 28-9. Epistola 246; PL 2)Z mo 109; PL 38, 1027.
XXII AUGUSTINE 515
life. Moreover, he tells us in his Confessions that he was finally induced to abandon his study of the books of the astrologers, from which the arguments of "Vindicianus, a keen old man, and of Nebridius, a youth of remarkable in- tellect," had failed to win him, by hearing from another youth that his father, a man of wealth and rank, had been born at precisely the same moment as a certain wretched slave on the estate.-^
But the astrologers reply that even twins are not bom Defense at precisely the same instant and do not have the same astrolo- horoscope, but are born under different constellations, so gers. rapidly do the heavens revolve, as the astrologer Nigidius Figulus neatly illustrated by striking a rapidly revolving potter's wheel two successive blows as quickly as he could in what appeared to be the same spot. But when the wheel was stopped and examined, the two marks were found to be far apart. Augustine's counter argument is that if astrologers must take into account such small intervals of time, their observations and predictions can never attain sufficient accuracy to insure correct prediction; and that if so brief an instant of time is sufficient to alter the horo- scope totally, then twins should not be as much alike as they are nor have as much in common as they do, — for instance, falling ill and recovering simultaneously. To this the astrologers are likely to respond that twins are alike because conceived at the same instant, but somewhat dissimilar in their life because of the difference in their times of birth. Augustine retorts that if two persons conceived simultane- ously in the same womb may be born at different times and have different fates after birth, he sees no reason why per- sons who are born of different mothers at the same instant with the same horoscope may not die at different dates and lead different lives. But he does not recognize that very likely the astrologers would agree with him in this, since they often held that the influence of the stars was received variously by matter. He also asks why a certain sage is ^Confessions, IV, 2-3.
Si6
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
said to have selected a certain hour for intercourse with his wife in order to beget a marvelous son — possibly an in- accurate allusion to the story of Nectanebus ^ — unless the hour of conception controls the hour of birth, and conse- quently twins conceived together must have the same horo- scope. He also objects that if twins fall sick at the same time because of their simultaneous conception, they should not be of opposite sex as sometimes happens. Elections. With this Augustine turns from the case of twins to
urge the inconsistency of the astrological doctrine of elec- tions, suggested by the story of the sage who chose the favorable moment for intercourse with his wife. He holds that this practice of choosing favorable times is inconsistent with the belief in nativities which are supposed to have de- termined and predicted the individual's fate already. He also inquires why men choose certain days for setting out trees and shrubs or breeding animals, if men alone are sub- ject to the constellations.
This last clause indicates how exclusively Augustine's attacks are directed against the prediction of man's life from the stars, and how little he has to say regarding the stars' control of the world of nature in general. He now goes on to consider this latter possibility, but interprets it too in the narrow sense of horoscope-casting, and as implying that every herb and beast must have its fate absolutely deter- mined by the constellations at its moment of birth. This appears, however, to have been a widespread belief then, since he tells us that men are accustomed to test the skill of astrologers by submitting to them the horoscopes of dumb animals, and that the best astrologers are able not only to recognize that the reported constellations mark the birth of a beast rather than that of a human being, but also to state whether it was a horse, cow, dog, or sheep. Never- theless, Augustine feels that he has reduced the art of cast- ing horoscopes to an absurdity, as he feels sure that beasts and plants which are so numerous must frequently be born
* See below, chapter 24.
XXII
AUGUSTINE
517
disprove the control of nature by the stars.
at precisely the same instant as human beings. Further- more, it is plain that crops which are sown and ripen simul- taneously meet with very diverse fates in the end. Augus- tine thinks that by this argument he will force the astrologers to say that men alone are subject to the stars, and then he will triumphantly ask how this can be, when God has en- dowed man alone of all creatures with free will. Having thus argued more or less in a circle, Augustine regains the point from which he had started, or rather, retreated,
Augustine cannot then be said to have advanced any Failure to telling arguments against some sort of control of inferior nature by the motions and influence of the heavenly bodies. He leaves the fundamental hypothesis of astrology unre- butted. His attention is concentrated upon genethlialogy, the superstition that the time and place of birth and nothing else determine with mathematical certainty and mechanical rigidity the entirety of one's life. This seems nevertheless to have been a superstition which was very much alive in his time, which he felt he must take pains repeatedly to refute, and to which he himself had once been in bondage. But he could not have studied the books of the astrologers very deeply, as he ascribes views to them which many of them did not hold. Also he seems never to have read the Tetrabihlos of Ptolemy. His attack upon and criticism of astrology was therefore narrow, partial, and inadequate, and did not prevent medieval men from devoting them- selves to that subject, although they might cite his objec- tions against ascribing to the constellations an influence subversive of human free will. But he cannot be said to have admitted the control of the stars over the world of nature. Apparently the most that he was willing to con- cede was that it was not absurd to say that the influence of the stars might produce changes in material things, as in the varying seasons of the year caused by the sun's course and the alternating augmentation and diminution of tides and shell-fish due, as he supposed, to the moon's phases. He concludes his discns?ion of the subject in The Citv of God
5i8
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Natural
divination
and
prophetic
visions.
by saying that, all things considered, if the astrologers make many marvelously true predictions, they do so by the aid and inspiration of the demons and not by the art of noting and inspecting horoscopes, which has no sound basis.
In another work Augustine tells of some young men who, while traveling, as a boyish prank pretended to be astrologers and either by mere chance or by natural and innate power of divination hit upon the truth in the predic- tions which they supposed that they were inventing. In the same context he proceeds to discuss in a credulous way the possibility of marvelous prophetic visions, concerning which he tells one or two other tall tales from his personal experience. He is, however, doubtful how far the human soul itself possesses the power of divination, which he is inclined to attribute rather to spirits, good or bad. But owing to Satan's ability in disguising himself as an angel of light it is often very difficult to tell to which sort of spirit to ascribe the vision in question.^
In Augustine's time there were those who held that Christ Himself had been "born under the decree of the stars," because of the statement in the Gospel according to Matthew that the Magi had seen His star in the east. Of this matter Augustine treats in several of his works. ^ He denies that this would be true even if other men were subject to the fatal influence of the stars, which he denies as usual on the ground of free will. He contends that the star was not one of the planets or constellations but a special crea- tion, since it did not keep to a regular course or orbit, but came to where the child lay. But how did the Magi know that it was the star of Christ when they saw it in the east, unless by astrology? Augustine can only suggest that this was revealed to them by spirits, whether good or bad he does not know.^ Augustine further affirms that the star did not
^De Genesi ad litteram, XII, ' Sermones 199 and 374; PL 38,
22 and 17 and 12; PL 34, 472-3, 1027-8, and 39, 1666. Contra
467-9, 464-5. See also the marvel- Faustum, II, 15 ; PL 42, 212.
ous divinations of Albicerius re- ' In Quaestiones ex Novo Tes-
counted in Contra AcademicoSj 1, tamento, Quaest. 63, PL 35, 2258,
6; PL 32, 914-5. which is probably a spurious
XXII
AUGUSTINE
519
cause Christ to live a marvelous life, but Christ caused the star to make its marvelous appearance. "For, when born of a mother, He showed earth a new star in the sky, Who, when born of the Father, formed both heaven and earth." And, "when He is bom, new light is revealed in a star; when He dies, old light is veiled in the sun." But these rhetorical flourishes and antitheses seem to attest rather than dispute the significance of celestial phenomena, so that Augustine cannot be said to have answered the astrological contention anent Christ's birth very satisfac- torily.
The problem of the nature of the stars is one which Nature of Augustine prefers to leave unsolved, although it comes up ^^^^^' several times in his writings.^ Whether they are simply lucid bodies without sense or intelligence, as some think; or have happy intellectual souls of their own, as Plato taught; whether they are to be classed with the Seats, Dominions, Principalities, and Powers of whom the apostle speaks; and whether they are ruled and animated by spirits : all these are questions which Augustine puts, but concerning whose answers he feels uncertain. His fullest discussion of the matter is in a letter against the Priscillian- ists to which we now come.
An interchange of letters between Augustine and his Orosius Spanish disciple Orosius deals with the error of the Pris- p".*^^ cillianists and Origenists.^ Nothing is said to convict them lianists of magic, which was, however, the charge on which Pris- genists.~
work but was cited as Augustine's by Thomas Aquinas {Sunima, III, 36, v), Balaam is said to have warned the Magi to watch for the star. It is also asserted, however, that "these Chaldean Magi watched the course of the stars, not from malevolence, but curiosity concerning nature" (Hi Magi chaldaei non malevolentia astrorum cursum sed rerum curi- ositate speculabantur).
^Enchiridion, sive de fide, spe, et charitate, I, 58; PL 40, 259-60. De civitate Dei, XIII, 16; PL 41,
388. De Gene si ad litteram, II, 18; PL 34, 279-80.
' Orosii ad Augustinum Consul- tatio sive C ommonitorium de errore Priscillianistarutn et Ori- genistarum, PL 31, 1211-22; also in G. Schepss (1889), in CSEL