Chapter X — Magic and Science
§ 1 Their Common Ground
It is not infrequently said that Science is derived from Magic, and the tenet is strengthened by eminent names; nor is it displeasing to some bystanders whose attitude toward Science is one of imperfect sympathy; but it seems to me to involve a misunderstanding of the matter. Magic and Science have, indeed, some common ground; for both are products of our poor human mind, which is sorely pestered in explaining its experiences by the notion of “forces” that somehow bring about events, and which cannot get on at all without assuming uniformities of relation. Magic supposes constant connexions of events due to the agency, force, influence or virtue of charms, rites and spells; which connexions, however, are found only to be tendencies of some events to excite others, inasmuch as they may be frustrated by counteracting charms, rites or spells. This reads like a caricature of scientific ideas. Not long ago, too, “forces” had a considerable vogue amongst scientists; and such mysteries as “vital force” and “psychic force” are still to be met with. But it is plain that we never know more than that under certain conditions a change takes place; and when we try to explain the change by analysing the conditions, we never find any “force” distinct from the collocation and motion of bodies or particles. “Force” may be technically and formally used in various propositions, but the idea never contributes anything to the explanation of events; whilst the fact that with many people it seems to do so, often makes it a nuisance. That it seems to carry some explanation with it is due to the continuous influence of Magic which, though always the antithesis of Science, was yet for very many ages associated with Science. Magic is entirely constituted by notions of force, sometimes violent, as in the discharge of an enchanted spear; sometimes subtle, like the efficacy of an opal; intangible, invisible, and operating at a distance through space and time, like a witch’s spells that eclipse the sun or moon. These forces have only a one-sided relation to the workaday world; they meet with no resistance from what we take to be the “properties of matter,” such as weight and impenetrability; but are themselves entirely exempt from natural law: what we call the “real world” has no hold upon them; they live in a world of their own. They are absolutely immeasurable; and hence the causation, which is certainly implied in the notion of their operation, is indefinite, and becomes vaguer and vaguer as the magical system develops; and all this is the opposite of what happens in the history of Science. In spite of having a necessary common ground in the human mind, Magic and Science are contrasted from the first, in their development grow wider and wider apart, in their methods and ideas more and more opposed. If either can be said to precede the other, it is Science (at least, in its earliest and crudest form) that precedes Magic.
We had better begin, however, by considering a third something which is earlier than either of them, and which I have called Common-sense: I mean the accumulation of particular items of positive knowledge (which, as such, is the first form of Science) acquired by primitive man, and in less measure by the higher brutes: facts about cold and heat, sunshine and rain, the powers of water and fire, the life of trees and animals, the properties of wood and stone, and so forth, which are unfailingly confirmed by further experience. Examination of the life of savages discovers that this positive knowledge of theirs amounts to a great deal, and that they are able to use it “and reason not contemptibly.” From this Common-sense Science and a good deal of Magic are differentiated, and they expand at very unequal rates in opposite directions. Each of them starts from it; but whilst Magic rapidly distorts, perverts and mystifies it out of recognition in innumerable imaginations, Science slowly connects its fragments together, corrects, defines and extends it, without ever altering its original positive character. The difference between Magic and Science lies (as we have seen) in the causes that establish belief in them; in the character of their ideas—respectively, incoherent and vague, coherent and definite; and, as a consequence, in their respective falsity and truth.