The agreement of all these writers, not only among themselves, but with the convictions to which Animal Magnetism has led in latter years, and finally even with what might be concluded from my speculative doctrine on this point, is surely a most remarkable phenomenon. This much is at any rate certain, that at the bottom of all the experiments, successful or unsuccessful, which have ever been made in Magic, there lies an anticipation of my Metaphysic. For in them is expressed the consciousness, that the causal law only connects phenomena, while the inner nature of things remains independent of it; and also, that if any _direct_ influence on Nature be possible from within, it can only take place through the _will_ itself. But even if Magic were to be ranked as practical Metaphysic, according to Bacon's classification, it is certain that no other theoretical Metaphysic would stand in the right relation to it but mine, by which the world is resolved into Will and Representation. The zealous cruelty with which Magic has always been persecuted by the Church and to which the papal _malleus maleficarum_ bears terrible evidence, seems not to have for its sole basis the criminal purposes often associated with the practice of Magic or the part assumed to be played by the Devil, but rather to proceed partly from a vague foreboding and fear lest Magic should trace back its original power to its true source; whereas the Church has assigned to it a place outside Nature.[323] The detestation shown by the cautious clergy of England towards Animal Magnetism [324] tends to confirm this supposition, and also the active zeal with which they oppose table-turning, which at any rate is harmless, yet which, for the same reason, has been violently assailed by the anathemas of the French, and even of the German, clergy.[325] [323] They scent something of the "Nos habitat, non tartara sed nec sidera cœli: Spiritus in nobis qui viget, illa facit." (Not in the heavens it lives, nor yet in hell; The spirit that does it all, doth in us dwell.) Compare Johann Beaumont, "Historisch-Physiologisch-und Theologischer Tractat von Geistern, Erscheinungen, Hexereyen und andern Zauber-Händeln, Halle im Magdeburgischen, 1721," p. 281. [Add. to 3rd ed.] [324] Compare Parerga, vol. i. p. 257 (2nd ed. vol. i. p. 286).