This faith in the reality of magic was not, moreover, merely the outcome of men’s belief in the existence of evil spirits, in the power of those spirits to work changes in matter or to predict the future, and in man’s power to gain their services. We sometimes speak of magic and necromancy as if they were identical, and mediæval writers often did the same thing, but such is not the case. If we but consider the meaning of the word “magic” when used as an adjective, we perceive that thus to restrict its scope as a noun is incorrect. What is a magic cloak, for instance? It is simply a cloak possessing properties which cloaks in general do not possess and which we are surprised to find in cloaks. Most cloaks keep us warm or improve our personal appearance; this cloak makes us invulnerable and invisible. A demon or a fairy may have endowed the cloak with these extraordinary qualities, but that is a secondary consideration. What makes the garment a magic cloak is the fact that it has such properties, no matter where or how it got them. Or what is a magic change? Is it merely a change wrought by spirits good or evil? By no means. It is any change with characteristics and results which we do not expect nor usually see in changes. In short, magic is præternatural rather than supernatural. Thus we find the existence of magic in the earliest period of human thought generally assumed by anthropologists, but some writers deny that man always has believed in supernatural beings. He first, they tell us, had a vague notion that by propitiating or by coercing nature he might secure for himself happiness; and that if anything external was to have power over the workings of the natural structure, it must be man, for both gods and God were yet unknown. Only gradually, they hold, through his belief in tree-spirits, through his devotion to plants or fetishes made sacred by their supposed efficacy in serving human wishes, perhaps, too, through his attitude toward human beings whose reputation for skill in magic finally led to deification, did man come to a belief in more or less divine beings and turn to them for the power and the happiness which in his savage and untutored impotency he had been unable to win by his own efforts.[51] Then only would the performance of magic by the aid of supernatural beings commence.