existed as to its efficacy, particularly in guiding the dead, who
were said to be glorious by reason of mouths equipped with the charms,
prayers and ritual of the Pyramid Texts, armed with which alone could
the soul escape the innumerable dangers and ordeals of the passage
through another world. Man has never lost his belief in the efficacy
of magic, in the widest sense of the term. Only a very few of the most
intellectual nations have escaped from its shackles. Nobody else has
so clearly expressed the origins and relations of magic as Pliny in
his "Natural History."(10) "Now, if a man consider the thing well,
no marvaile it is that it hath continued thus in so great request and
authoritie; for it is the onely Science which seemeth to comprise in
itselfe three possessions besides, which have the command and rule
of mans mind above any other whatsoever. For to begin withall, no man
doubteth but that Magicke tooke root first, and proceeded from Physicke,
under the presence of maintaining health, curing, and preventing
diseases: things plausible to the world, crept and insinuated farther
into the heart of man, with a deepe conceit of some high and divine
matter therein more than ordinarie, and in comparison whereof, all
other Physicke was but basely accounted. And having thus made way and
entrance, the better to fortifie it selfe, and to give a goodly colour
and lustre to those fair and flattering promises of things, which our
nature is most given to hearken after, on goeth the habite also and
cloake of religion: a point, I may tell you, that even in these daies
holdeth captivate the spirit of man, and draweth away with it a greater
part of the world, and nothing so much. But not content with this
successe and good proceeding, to gather more strength and win a
greater name, shee entermingled with medicinable receipts and religious
ceremonies, the skill of Astrologie and arts Mathematicall; presuming
upon this, That all men by nature are very curious and desirous to know
their future fortunes, and what shall betide them hereafter, persuading