Magic, like Science, believes in uniformities of nature, and seeks by a knowledge of them to control events; but Magic is so eager to control events that it cannot wait to learn the true uniformities; it is not moved, like Science, by curiosity as to the truth, but by blind desire for present results. The cult of spirits seeks to control events not by knowledge of their natural causes, but by appealing to hyperphysical causes, and it resembles the belief in Free Will, by which men hope, through the influx of some unknown energy, to escape the bondage of their own vices: for Kant rightly treated “Freedom” as a cosmological problem, the supposed intervention of a cause that is transcendent and not in the course of nature. The intervention of Free Will (whether divine or human) is sought in order to avert injurious fortune, to realise our personal or social schemes more quickly and cheaply than our own efforts can, to avoid the consequences of our own actions, amongst which is bondage to our own vices: for all these, give us variability, miracle, caprice. But to foresee and control events physical or social, including the conduct of others, to be confident in the effects of our own actions according to our purposes, and in the stability of our own character: for all these, there must be uniformity. In the long run the latter considerations determine our thoughts; and the necessity of uniformity to a rational life may be one cause of our belief (so far out-running the evidence) in uniformities of causation and of space-relations and of all that we mean by natural law. FOOTNOTES: [261] _Mythus und Religion_, pp. 78, 79. [262] _Op. cit._, p. 125 _et seq._ [263] _Op. cit._, p. 202 _et seq._ [264] This was also Spencer’s opinion, _op. cit._, § 133. [265] _Op. cit._, p. 263. [266] _Op. cit._, p. 267. [267] See above, pp. 100 and 119-24. [268] Hume, _Inquiry_, § vii. [269] A. H. Sayce, _Religion of the Ancient Babylonians_, p. 398. [270] Book II. p. 82; Rawlinson’s Translation. [271] Vol. I. ch. iv. [272] But see the footnote at p. 235 of _The Magic Art_, I.: “faith in magic is probably older than the belief in spirits.” In the same note, a passage in Hegel’s _Philosophy of Religion_ is referred to as anticipating the doctrine of the priority of Magic to Religion. The passage, as translated in an appendix (pp. 423-6), shows, however, no conception of Magic as akin to natural law, as it is described in several passages of _The Golden Bough_, but treats it as a belief in any human being “as the ruling power over nature in virtue of his own will.” This is rather an anticipation of Prof. Wundt’s doctrine concerning Sorcery; which Hegel seems not to have distinguished from Magic. I need hardly add that a belief in any human being as the ruling power over nature in virtue of his own will has never been discovered in any part of the world. [273] _Op. cit._, pp. 237-9. [274] _Primitive Culture_, I. 116.