Section 4. The Magician's Progress.
WE have now concluded our examination of the general principles of sympathetic magic. The examples by which I have illustrated them have been drawn for the
most part from what may be called private magic, that is from magical rites and incantations practised for the benefit or the injury of individuals. But in savage
society there is commonly to be found in addition what we may call public magic, that is, sorcery practised for the benefit of the whole community. Wherever
ceremonies of this sort are observed for the common good, it is obvious that the magician ceases to be merely a private practitioner and becomes to some
extent a public functionary. The development of such a class of functionaries is of great importance for the political as well as the religious evolution of society.
For when the welfare of the tribe is supposed to depend on the performance of these magical rites, the magician rises into a position of much influence and
repute, and may readily acquire the rank and authority of a chief or king. The profession accordingly draws into its ranks some of the ablest and most ambitious
men of the tribe, because it holds out to them a prospect of honour, wealth, and power such as hardly any other career could offer. The acuter minds perceive
how easy it is to dupe their weaker brother and to play on his superstition for their own advantage. Not that the sorcerer is always a knave and impostor; he is
often sincerely convinced that he really possesses those wonderful powers which the credulity of his fellows ascribes to him. But the more sagacious he is, the
more likely he is to see through the fallacies which impose on duller wits. Thus the ablest members of the profession must tend to be more or less conscious
deceivers; and it is just these men who in virtue of their superior ability will generally come to the top and win for themselves positions of the highest dignity
and the most commanding authority. The pitfalls which beset the path of the professional sorcerer are many, and as a rule only the man of coolest head and
sharpest wit will be able to steer his way through them safely. For it must always be remembered that every single profession and claim put forward by the
magician as such is false; not one of them can be maintained without deception, conscious or unconscious. Accordingly the sorcerer who sincerely believes in his
own extravagant pretensions is in far greater peril and is much more likely to be cut short in his career than the deliberate impostor. The honest wizard always
expects that his charms and incantations will produce their supposed effect; and when they fail, not only really, as they always do, but conspicuously and
disastrously, as they often do, he is taken aback: he is not, like his knavish colleague, ready with a plausible excuse to account for the failure, and before he can
find one he may be knocked on the head by his disappointed and angry employers. 1
The general result is that at this stage of social evolution the supreme power tends to fall into the hands of men of the keenest intelligence and the most
unscrupulous character. If we could balance the harm they do by their knavery against the benefits they confer by their superior sagacity, it might well be found
that the good greatly outweighed the evil. For more mischief has probably been wrought in the world by honest fools in high places than by intelligent rascals.
Once your shrewd rogue has attained the height of his ambition, and has no longer any selfish end to further, he may, and often does, turn his talents, his
experience, his resources, to the service of the public. Many men who have been least scrupulous in the acquisition of power have been most beneficent in the
use of it, whether the power they aimed at and won was that of wealth, political authority, or what not. In the field of politics the wily intriguer, the ruthless
victor, may end by being a wise and magnanimous ruler, blessed in his lifetime, lamented at his death, admired and applauded by posterity. Such men, to take
two of the most conspicuous instances, were Julius Caesar and Augustus. But once a fool always a fool, and the greater the power in his hands the more
disastrous is likely to be the use he makes of it. The heaviest calamity in English history, the breach with America, might never have occurred if George the Third
had not been an honest dullard. 2
Thus, so far as the public profession of magic affected the constitution of savage society, it tended to place the control of affairs in the hands of the ablest
man: it shifted the balance of power from the many to the one: it substituted a monarchy for a democracy, or rather for an oligarchy of old men; for in general
the savage community is ruled, not by the whole body of adult males, but by a council of elders. The change, by whatever causes produced, and whatever the
character of the early rulers, was on the whole very beneficial. For the rise of monarchy appears to be an essential condition of the emergence of mankind from
savagery. No human being is so hide-bound by custom and tradition as your democratic savage; in no state of society consequently is progress so slow and
difficult. The old notion that the savage is the freest of mankind is the reverse of the truth. He is a slave, not indeed to a visible master, but to the past, to the
spirits of his dead forefathers, who haunt his steps from birth to death, and rule him with a rod of iron. What they did is the pattern of right, the unwritten law
to which he yields a blind unquestioning obedience. The least possible scope is thus afforded to superior talent to change old customs for the better. The ablest
man is dragged down by the weakest and dullest, who necessarily sets the standard, since he cannot rise, while the other can fall. The surface of such a society
presents a uniform dead level, so far as it is humanly possible to reduce the natural inequalities, the immeasurable real differences of inborn capacity and temper,
to a false superficial appearance of equality. From this low and stagnant condition of affairs, which demagogues and dreamers in later times have lauded as the
ideal state, the Golden Age, of humanity, everything that helps to raise society by opening a career to talent and proportioning the degrees of authority to
men's natural abilities, deserves to be welcomed by all who have the real good of their fellows at heart. Once these elevating influences have begun to
operate-and they cannot be for ever suppressed-the progress of civilisation becomes comparatively rapid. The rise of one man to supreme power enables him
to carry through changes in a single lifetime which previously many generations might not have sufficed to effect; and if, as will often happen, he is a man of
intellect and energy above the common, he will readily avail himself of the opportunity. Even the whims and caprices of a tyrant may be of service in breaking
the chain of custom which lies so heavy on the savage. And as soon as the tribe ceases to be swayed by the timid and divided counsels of the elders, and yields
to the direction of a single strong and resolute mind, it becomes formidable to its neighbours and enters on a career of aggrandisement, which at an early stage
of history is often highly favourable to social, industrial, and intellectual progress. For extending its sway, partly by force of arms, partly by the voluntary
submission of weaker tribes, the community soon acquires wealth and slaves, both of which, by relieving some classes from the perpetual struggle for a bare
subsistence, afford them an opportunity of devoting themselves to that disinterested pursuit of knowledge which is the noblest and most powerful instrument
to ameliorate the lot of man. 3
Intellectual progress, which reveals itself in the growth of art and science and the spread of more liberal views, cannot be dissociated from industrial or
economic progress, and that in its turn receives an immense impulse from conquest and empire. It is no mere accident that the most vehement outbursts of
activity of the human mind have followed close on the heels of victory, and that the great conquering races of the world have commonly done most to advance
and spread civilisation, thus healing in peace the wounds they inflicted in war. The Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs are our witnesses in the
past: we may yet live to see a similar outburst in Japan. Nor, to remount the stream of history to its sources, is it an accident that all the first great strides
towards civilisation have been made under despotic and theocratic governments, like those of Egypt, Babylon, and Peru, where the supreme ruler claimed and
received the servile allegiance of his subjects in the double character of a king and a god. It is hardly too much to say that at this early epoch despotism is the
best friend of humanity and, paradoxical as it may sound, of liberty. For after all there is more liberty in the best sense-liberty to think our own thoughts and to
fashion our own destinies-under the most absolute despotism, the most grinding tyranny, than under the apparent freedom of savage life, where the
individual's lot is cast from the cradle to the grave in the iron mould of hereditary custom. 4
So far, therefore, as the public profession of magic has been one of the roads by which the ablest men have passed to supreme power, it has contributed to
emancipate mankind from the thraldom of tradition and to elevate them into a larger, freer life, with a broader outlook on the world. 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. 5