With all the foolish notions which he imbibed from antiquity or into which his mind, over-hospitable to the fantastic and marvelous, led him, Pliny had one good scientific trait. He might believe in magic but he had no liking for the esoteric. His mind might be confused but it was not mystical. He had no desire to hide the “secrets” of science and philosophy from the public gaze, to wrap them up in obscure and allegorical verbiage lest the unworthy comprehend them. On the contrary, he sharply remarked apropos the lack of information about the medicinal properties of plants, that there was a most shameful reason for this scarcity, namely, that even those who knew were unwilling to give forth their knowledge, “as if that would be lost to themselves which they passed on to others.”[112] Such, then, is the _Natural History_. Pliny gives evidence that many of the most intelligent men were coming to doubt a large part of the superstitious beliefs and observances once universally prevalent, and he himself makes a brave effort to assume a critical and judicious attitude. Yet his work contains a great deal of magic and reveals, what this essay in its entirety will make further evident, the error of such a statement as the following from Dr. White’s _Warfare of Science and Theology_: Under the old Empire a real science was coming in and thought progressing. Both the theory and practice of magic were more and more held up to ridicule. Even as early a writer as Ennius ridiculed the idea that magicians, who were generally poor and hungry themselves, could bestow wealth on others; Pliny, in his _Natural Philosophy_, showed at great length their absurdities and cheatery; others followed in the same line of thought, and the whole theory, except among the very lowest classes, seemed dying out.[113] CHAPTER IV SOME ANTECEDENTS OF THE BELIEF IN MAGIC IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE Writers who have discussed the intellectual life under the Roman Empire generally agree that it was not marked by originality and creative power, and owed a perhaps unusually large debt to the past. The cosmopolitan character of the Empire, the mingling at that time of the science, theology, philosophy and superstition of different nations, religions and races, deserve equal emphasis. The lore of the magi of Persia, the occult science of Egypt, perhaps even the doctrines of the gymnosophists of India, may be regarded, together with that belief in divination which played such a rôle in classical religion and government and with other superstitious notions of Greeks and Italians, as contributory to the prominence of magic in the Empire.