"Is it quite certain that, when consciousness seems to affirm that 'I can choose so and so,' it means more than 'it is possible such and such a choice will take place in my mind'? If it does not mean more than this, its affirmation is not against Determinism" (_Mind_, April, 1898, p. 191). Even if the faculty of choice is granted, it is limited in the sense that choice does not always produce the effect chosen. "Locke and Hume say 'Liberty is a power to act as _we_ choose.' But can _we_ choose? Are _we_ the original causes of our choice? And what is the power to which action is subjected? Must it not be subject to some other power, and, therefore, not free, unless it is a self-existent power?" Enough has been said, perhaps, on this subject to explain the author's position in assuming that both Jesus and Gotama must have been, by necessity of their omniscience, well aware of the truth of Determinism. Yet, having to deal with phenomenal beings, they were constrained to treat them as such, and address them in phenomenal terms, and to lower themselves to the level of those sensations from which the illusive and unconquerable feeling of responsibility arises. The fact of occult powers having been attributed to Jesus and Gotama makes it necessary to include in this chapter a brief reference to the subject of magic,[M] and to consider in what light we should regard this art in connection with these two characters. [M] Magic I define as the art of visualizing and utilizing those aspects and qualities of matter that are not familiar to the normal senses. It has been remarked that the opposition to magic has seldom been connected with sceptical doubts as to its reality, and that the distinction drawn between white and black magic was due to the assumption by the priestly class of the sole right to the exercise of magic in their rites, and "hence magicians who were outside the pale of priesthood were called sorcerers, or dealers in black magic." The pages of the Christian Bible are aflame with magic, and, on opening the Old Testament, one seems to stand on the threshold of an unmeasurable cavern, where dreams the Great Magician that inhabiteth Eternity. No one who has not made of magic, in its several branches, a close study--who has not literally soaked in mysticism (that "powerful solvent of definite dogma")--or who is not gnomic, intuitionally "in the know" without study, can possibly pose as an authoritative interpreter of God's Holy Word.