He foresees them, and foreseeing them mistakes the desired
recurrence for an effect of his own will, and the dreaded recurrence
for an effect of the will of his enemies. Thus the springs which set
the vast machine in motion, though they lie far beyond our ken,
shrouded in a mystery which we can never hope to penetrate, appear
to ignorant man to lie within his reach: he fancies he can touch
them and so work by magic art all manner of good to himself and evil
to his foes. In time the fallacy of this belief becomes apparent to
him: he discovers that there are things he cannot do, pleasures
which he is unable of himself to procure, pains which even the most
potent magician is powerless to avoid. The unattainable good, the
inevitable ill, are now ascribed by him to the action of invisible
powers, whose favour is joy and life, whose anger is misery and
death. Thus magic tends to be displaced by religion, and the
sorcerer by the priest. At this stage of thought the ultimate causes
of things are conceived to be personal beings, many in number and
often discordant in character, who partake of the nature and even of
the frailty of man, though their might is greater than his, and
their life far exceeds the span of his ephemeral existence.
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