Review of The Decline of Magic, by Michael Hunter, pub. Yale University Press 2020
In 1685, John Edwards, a divine, asserted that “the denial of Daemons and Witches” was “an open defiance to unquestionable History”. In 1749, another divine, Conyers Middleton, declared that “the belief in witches is now utterly extinct and quietly buried without involving history in its ruin”. Neither man was particularly out of step with his time, and in just over 60 years this was a very considerable turnaround in educated opinion. This book examines how belief in supernatural phenomena like witches, fairies, second sight, prophecy and ghosts became discredited among intellectuals, if not always, or even at all, in popular culture.
This has often been attributed mainly to the rise in science, and clearly the scientific habits of demanding evidence, extrapolating from known facts and evaluating sources had a lot to do with it. As John Wagstaffe (who was out of step with his time) tartly observed in The Question of Witchcraft Debated (1669), "It is far more easy, and more rational, to believe that witnesses are liars and perjured persons, than it is to believe that an old woman can turn herself or any body else into a cat". Hunter examines the role of the Royal Society in the matter and shows that while some individual members of the Society took stances on both sides of the question, the Society as a corporate body stayed well out of it, hardly ever debating anything with a “magic” tinge, like astrology or “miraculous” cures, even when individual members occasionally suggested they be investigated. Though they never said so, the implication is that the Society considered such matters beneath them and no part of their scientific remit, and this sidelining in itself “helped to relegate such investigations to the realm of pseudo-science”. In 1698 a meeting of the Society had discussed second sight; by the 1740s, a Fellow interested in the phenomenon makes it clear in correspondence that this is a private concern “which could not be brought before us as a Society not coming within the design of our Institution”. It’s interesting to consider that attitudes may change because something is not discussed as much as because it is.
One fascinating line Hunter pursues is the role of manuscript sources, like notebooks and letters, and coffee-house oral culture in spreading ideas for which it was not always easy to find a print publisher, since sceptics on such matters tended to be accused of being atheists. Clearly the coffee-house “scoffers” were widely resented, not just for their unorthodox views but for the caustic wit with which they expressed them. Indeed, reading diatribes like Glanville’s “quibblers and buffoons that have some little scraps of learning matcht with a great proportion of confidence” or the “Town-wit” described in a 1673 pamphlet, “speak of Spirits and he tells you he knows none better than those of wine; name but Immaterial Essence and he shall flout at you as a dull Fop incapable of sense”, one cannot help thinking of the resentment of our own tabloids against “experts” and “woke” intellectuals. It is also interesting to see how, the more “magic” was discredited in the intellectual world, the more of a role it began to play in fiction (Scott, who was happy to use “magical” elements like ghosts and second sight in his writing, had no time at all for such superstitions in real life).
In the written arguments of the two sides, one sees, over and over, contempt on the side of the sceptics and furious resentment on the part of their opponents. This had a predictable effect on debate, as Hunter notes in his conclusions on the debate between Wagstaffe and his opponents Casaubon and “RT”:
“It is almost as if intellectual change does not really occur through argument at all; that the detailed debates that we reconstruct from erudite tomes might as well never have happened. People just made up their minds and then grasped at arguments to substantiate their preconceived ideas, with a new generation simply rejecting out of hand the commonplaces of the old.”
This resonates in a modern context, for the gap between scepticism and credulity is surely still as wide as ever in the popular consciousness, however much credulity has been discredited in the intellectual community. Not many, at least in the West, now believe in witches and demons, but plenty still credit ghosts, astrology, alien invasions by little green men (or lizards), injections in the arm that somehow deliver microchips to the brain, and much else that makes mediaeval witchfinders look positively rational. And you can’t argue them out of it; try it and see how far you get. I still recall the response of a woman on Twitter to someone who had proved, beyond all possibility of argument, that she was wrong about something: “Stop trying to bully me with facts; I’ll stick to my own opinion”. John Wagstaffe must have met someone like her, when he wrote: "This is palpable enough, that when the best of our understanding is inclined to any party by the strong biases of education and interest, we straightway greedily embrace all shows and appearances of reason, which seem to make for our side, and with abundance of self-applause, improve a mere sneaking hint of an opinion into a demonstrative confidence."
One thing I certainly hadn’t appreciated, before reading this, was how closely, to a 17th-century mind, belief in “magic” of various kinds was bound up with religion, and how sure they were that disbelief in witchcraft, ghosts etc would lead to atheism. Edwards asserted in 1695 that “it is plain the rejecting of the commerce of Daemons or Infernal Spirits opens a door to the denial of the Deity, of which we can no otherwise conceive than that it is an Eternal Spirit”. He was right, of course, denial of the Deity is indeed the logical conclusion of scepticism about the spirit world, but being of his time, he could not allow himself to wonder if that might be a good idea.
This is a proper history, with all the necessary apparatus of notes and index, but very readable. The first, introductory, chapter, in which he is surveying previous authors in the field and setting out his stall, is the densest read, but necessary and well worth it to get to the rest.
