How tenacious the idea is that religion is and must be magic, appears from the fact that even Christianity shows traces of it. In fact, the early Christians (who, we must remember, recruited their ranks from the lowly in life) looked upon Christ as a kind of magician, and all his older pictures show him with a magician’s wand in his hand. The resurrection of Lazarus, the change of water into wine, the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the healing of diseases by casting out devils, and kindred miracles, according to the notions of those centuries, are performed after the fashion of sorcerers. [Illustration] The adjoined illustration, one of the oldest representations of Christ, has been reproduced from Rossi’s _Roma Sotterranea_ (II, Table 14). It is a fresco of the catacombs, discovered in the St. Callisto Chapel, and is dated by Franz Xaver Kraus (_Geschichte der christlichen Kunst, I, p. 153_) at the beginning of the third century. Jesus holds in his left hand the scriptures, while his right hand grasps the wand with which he performs the miracle. Lazarus is represented as a mummy, while one of his sisters kneels at the Saviour’s feet. Goethe introduces the belief in magic into the very plot of Faust. In his despair at never finding the key to the world-problem in science, which, as he thinks, does not offer what we need, but useless truisms only, Faust hopes to find the royal road to knowledge by supernatural methods. He says: “Therefore, from Magic I seek assistance, That many a secret perchance I reach Through spirit-power and spirit-speech, And thus the bitter task forego Of saying the things I do not know,— That I may detect the inmost force Which binds the world, and guides its course; Its germs, productive powers explore, And rummage in empty words no more!” {xiii} [Illustration: MOSES AND AARON PERFORMING THE MIRACLE OF THE SERPENTS BEFORE PHARAOH (After Schnorr von Carolsfeld.)] [Illustration: THE EGYPTIAN SNAKE NAJA HAJE MADE MOTIONLESS BY PRESSURE UPON THE NECK (Reproduced from Verworn after Photographs.)] {xiv} Faust follows the will o’ the wisp of pseudo-science, and so finds his efforts to gain useful knowledge balked. He turns agnostic and declares that we cannot know anything worth knowing. He exclaims: “That which we do not know is dearly needed; And what we need we do not know.” And in another place: “I see that nothing can be known.” But, having acquired a rich store of experience, Faust, at the end of his career, found out that the study of nature is not a useless rummage in empty words, and became converted to science. His ideal is a genuinely scientific view of nature. He says: “Not yet have I my liberty made good: So long as I can’t banish magic’s fell creations And totally unlearn the incantations. Stood I, O Nature, as a man in thee, Then were it worth one’s while a man to be. And such was I ere I with the occult conversed, And ere so wickedly the world I cursed.”