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This is no small service rendered to humanity.
And when we remember further that in another direction magic has
paved the way for science, we are forced to admit that if the black
art has done much evil, it has also been the source of much good;
that if it is the child of error, it has yet been the mother of
freedom and truth.


IV. Magic and Religion
THE examples collected in the last chapter may suffice to illustrate
the general principles of sympathetic magic in its two branches, to
which we have given the names of Homoeopathic and Contagious
respectively. In some cases of magic which have come before us we
have seen that the operation of spirits is assumed, and that an
attempt is made to win their favour by prayer and sacrifice. But
these cases are on the whole exceptional; they exhibit magic tinged
and alloyed with religion. Wherever sympathetic magic occurs in its
pure unadulterated form, it assumes that in nature one event follows
another necessarily and invariably without the intervention of any
spiritual or personal agency.


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