1909), chap. ii.

Animism, "the Conception of Spirit everywhere" as Mr EDWARD CLODD(2)
neatly calls it, and perhaps man's earliest view of natural phenomena,
persisted in a modified form, as I have pointed out in "Some
Characteristics of Mediaeval Thought," throughout the Middle Ages.
A belief in magic persisted likewise. In the writings of the Greek
philosophers of the Neo-Platonic school, in that curious body of
esoteric Jewish lore known as the Kabala, and in the works of later
occult philosophers such as AGRIPPA and PARACELSUS, we find magic, or
rather the theory upon which magic as an art was based, presented in
its most philosophical form. If there is anything of value for modern
thought in the theory of magic, here is it to be found; and it is, I
think, indeed to be found, absurd and fantastic though the practices
based upon this philosophy, or which this philosophy was thought to
substantiate, most certainly are. I shall here endeavour to give a
sketch of certain of the outstanding doctrines of magical philosophy,
some details concerning the art of magic, more especially as practiced
in the Middle Ages in Europe, and, finally, an attempt to extract from
the former what I consider to be of real worth. We have already wandered
down many of the byways of magical belief, and, indeed, the word "magic"
may be made to cover almost every superstition of the past: To what we
have already gained on previous excursions the present, I hope, will add
what we need in order to take a synthetic view of the whole subject.

(2) EDWARD CLODD: _Animism the Seed of Religion_ (1905), p. 26.

In the first place, something must be said concerning what is called the
Doctrine of Emanations, a theory of prime importance in Neo-Platonic
and Kabalistic ontology. According to this theory, everything in the
universe owes its existence and virtue to an emanation from God, which
divine emanation is supposed to descend, step by step (so to speak),
through the hierarchies of angels and the stars, down to the things of
earth, that which is nearer to the Source containing more of the divine
nature than that which is relatively distant. As CORNELIUS AGRIPPA
expresses it: "For God, in the first place is the end and beginning
of all Virtues; he gives the seal of #the _Ideas_ to his servants, the
Intelligences; who as faithful officers, sign all things intrusted
to them with an Ideal Virtue; the Heavens and Stars, as instruments,
disposing the