THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



DECEMBER, 1892. 



NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 



XVIII.— FEOM MAGIC TO CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS. 



By ANDREW DICKSON WHITE, LL.D., L. H. D., 



EX-PRESIDENT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY. 



PART I. 



IN all the earliest developments of human thought we find a 

 tendency to ascribe mysterious powers over Nature to men 

 and women especially gifted or skilled. Survivals of this view 

 are found to this day among savages and barbarians left behind 

 in the evolution of civilization, and especially is this the case 

 among the tribes of Australia, Africa, and the Pacific coast of 

 America ; even in the most enlightened nations still appear, here 

 and there, popular beliefs, observances, or sayings, drawn from 

 this earlier phase of thought. 



Between the prehistoric savage developing this theory, and 

 therefore endeavoring to deal with the powers of Nature by 

 magic, and the modern man who has outgrown it, appears a long 

 line of nations struggling upward through it. As the hiero- 

 glyphs, cuneiform inscriptions, and various other records of an- 

 tiquity are read, the development of this belief can be studied in 

 Egypt, India, Babylonia, Assyria, Persia, and Phoenicia. From 

 these countries it came into the early thought of Greece and 

 Rome, but especially into the Jewish and Christian sacred books ; 

 both in the Old Testament and in the New we find magic, sorcery, 

 and soothsaying constantly referred to as realities.* 



* For magic in prehistoric times and survivals of it since, with abundant citation of 

 authorities, see Tylor, Primitive Culture, chap, iv ; also the Early History of Mankind, by 

 vol. xlii. — 10 



