as their gift: only when belief in the gods has arisen can the person possessing power be regarded as having derived his power from them, or believe himself so to have derived it. It may well be that his power confirms his belief and strengthens it; it may perhaps even be that his power is the first thing to awaken him to belief in gods and to the possibility of communing with them in his heart. But the belief that there are superior beings, with whom it is possible to commune in one’s heart, is not the same thing as the extraordinary personal power which some men exert over others. Such belief and such power may indeed go together, but they do not by any means always go together; and accordingly the power cannot be regarded as the cause of the belief. Again, it is not until men come to believe that there are gods, who have the interests of their worshippers at heart, that the man who possesses this power and uses it for evil purposes can be condemned by the opinion of the community as one who works against the community, and therefore against the god who protects the community. In other words, we may say that this extraordinary personal power does not come to be regarded as magic--indeed, that magic does not come into existence--until religion has come into existence. When exercised by ‘a man of God’, it is religious; when exerted by any one else it is magical. The magician may use, and more often than not, does use his power in a way injurious to other members of the community, and therefore offensive to the god under whose protection they are. From this point of view, therefore, we may justifiably speak of a fundamental opposition between magic and religion. On the other hand, though the magician ordinarily uses his power to injure people, he is not restricted to this use of it. His power may be used to recall an errant lover, as it is by the lady in the Hadrumetan tablet already quoted, or for the recovery of lost or stolen property. One of the ‘defixion’ tablets is directed to the recovery of τὸ ἱμάτιον τὸ πελλόν, τὸ ἔλαβεν ὁ δεῖνα καὶ οὐκ ἀποδίδωτι καὶ ἀρνεῖται καὶ χρῆται (_I. G. S. I._ 644), another seeks to recover τὰ ὑπ’ ἐμοῦ καταλίφθεντα ἱμάτια καὶ ἔνδυμα (Bechtel, 3537) or τὴν σπατάλην ἢν ἀπώλεσα ἐν τοῖς κήποις τοῖε Ῥοδοκλεῦς (Bechtel, 3541). The magician, that is to say, may use his power for innocent and even laudable purposes. Hence it is that magic is not wholly condemned by any community in which it flourishes; and hence it is that we find magic reinforced by religion not only in the _defixionum tabellae_, as has already been pointed out, but in numerous rites of uncultured peoples, and from time to time, as survivals, in the religious ceremonies of civilized nations. If we dwell upon this set of facts exclusively, we shall be in danger of inferring, not a fundamental opposition but a fundamental identity between magic and religion. Yet, as we have seen, the opposition is