X.1
The Contrast between Positive Science and Magic
Positions and Solutions
One of our correspondents has asked us to address the problem of the relationship between natural science and magic, posed in the following terms:
There exists today a positive science of nature, which produces results. Its predictions are fulfilled. It shows that natural phenomena do in fact obey regular laws, enabling them to be predicted or activated with mathematical exactness. Uniformity, constancy, necessity—same causes, same effects—this is the law of nature, whose reality is attested by the fact that modern positive science is possible, that it progresses, and that it produces results.
In contrast, magic affirms the possibility of an experience that is real, but different from that on which natural science is based: an experience in the light of which that complex of phenomena ruled by constant and necessary laws, as nature is understood today, is only an appearance. Behind “dead” nature, magic posits a world of living beings, “spirits,” gods and psychic forces.
However, one cannot speak of life and spirit without thinking of a principle of spontaneity and free movement. A spiritual world, a “psychic” world of gods would be a world of spontaneity and free movement, entailing the possibility of extra-normal phenomena and magical action; yet that would at the same time render any science in the modern sense impossible or precarious.
Our correspondent, who signs himself “Bruto,” continues: “There is therefore a contradiction between the certainty of the positive sciences and that of the spiritual sciences, which seems impossible to resolve. And if it is not resolved, either positive science goes up in smoke, or else spiritual science is revealed as an illusion. And just as positive science, strong in its experimental method and the undeniable success of its results, does not feel the need of further demonstrations and simply denies the affirmations of spiritual science—even when conceding the good faith of its believers—it is up to the latter to demonstrate that despite appearances there is no insoluble contradiction between the two opposing parties, but only a difference that is perfectly explicable.”
This, then, is the problem. Bruto himself mentions some points of view that he thinks could resolve it; other points of view have been put forward by other collaborators, whom we will call “Nir” and “Val.” We will take due note of them.
At first glance it is easy to see what ways are open to resolve the difficulties in question:
1. Bruto and Val take the first of these options. Bruto begins by saying that “while the natural laws in the world of physicochemical forces seem to have an indisputable certainty and rigor, when physicochemical forces are joined by vital forces, psychic forces, moral, historical and social forces, such certainty may appear disputable and leave a wide margin of indeterminacy.” And he concludes, therefore, that the problem can only be posed “in the ambitus of physical nature in the strict sense.”
Secondly, Bruto says that in science “necessity” does not have a logical and normative sense, nor a sense of “inconceivability of the contrary,” but only that of “constancy” deduced from a very large but finite number of observations. “Nothing outside our criterion of generalization authorizes us to consider that the constancy of a phenomenon that repeats many but not infinite times must persist to infinity. In fact, cases have often been reported in which the laws of natural forces appear to have been broken. Many of these cases, when examined by positive science, have turned out to be nonexistent; but most of them have never been made the object of investigation, either because they were observed in historic times or were denied a priori through simple incredulity. There are finally some cases for which positive science, while confirming their reality, has not been able to find an explanation. It then either entrenches itself behind the possibility that other laws exist, not yet known and determined, whose intervention would legitimately alter the otherwise constant conduct of phenomena. With reference to these other laws, the extra-normal of today would reappear within a broader order as normal, subject to laws and therefore assimilable to the scientific system of necessity, or at least constancy.” However, no such assumption can be made a priori. In fact (we add) until science attains such knowledge and determination that it can explain the complete system of causes necessary and sufficient for any phenomenon, it is not in any position to say that a new law (unknown at the present time) and not a liberty, is the true cause of these extra-normal phenomena, whose reality positive observation has not been able to deny.
The considerations of “Val” aspire to be even more radical. He takes the point of view of Leibniz, Émile Boutroux, and Kant himself, according to whom natural laws have an exterior and regulatory character, not a determinative one. They would no more deny the existence of a substratum of spiritual liberty behind natural necessity than “the laws of musical harmony or grammar deny the creative liberty of a composer or a writer, who, while respecting them, expresses himself through them.” “Natural determinism is indifferent to the qualitative and intentional aspects of phenomena, in which we find the domain of freedom. . . . For example, the determinations may be identical when I switch on an electrical circuit to set a factory in motion, or to cause a terrible catastrophe. Physical determinism cannot explain this initial act: it only explains everything that follows as a chain of consequences, and only applies to that field. . . . The world of technical applications of science (machines, instruments, inventions, etc.) shows fateful laws operating in obedience to man’s will and free choices. From this analogy, as I see it, one must understand what happens in the much wider world, in the endless richness and variety of phenomena that manifest through the same laws.”
Even aside from the domain of historical and social events (e.g., revolutions, epidemics, currents of ideas, etc.) a large zone undeniably exists, including such things as seismic and meteorological phenomena, in which physical science will always be quick to explain the how, or the general laws these phenomena follow once they have occurred; but as for why they occur, it is incapable of predicting them or determining them through laws. The scientist, as we know, will insist that this would be possible if he knew all the causes influencing the events. We repeat that until this knowledge is complete, he has no right to say that those causes are laws, and not, or not also, freedoms or intentions. In philosophical terms, final causes are not material causes. For the time being, we will say that even if science has reached a system of unification and global deduction of physical laws, it is still forced to admit at the base of everything certain primordial facts before which all explanation and posterior deduction has to stop. In Einstein it is the parameters of curved space; in Planck’s theory, the discontinuity of numbers expressing quanta; in the interpretation of thermodynamics and the relevant law of entropy via the law of large numbers, it is the presupposition of an intial “state of improbablity.” In more recent subatomic physics there has even been talk of indeterminism.
With these considerations, the difficulty is still only half resolved. We may well ask what the difference is between a magical operation and what happens when one uses some machine—an automobile, a telephone, and so forth—to bend a certain group of natural determinisms to one’s own ends.
Clearly there is no noteworthy difference if “magic” is simply understood as a will that is believed to respect certain laws, not widely known but all the same existing (using rituals, ceremonies, formulae, etc.), for its purposes. On the basis of what Val has explained, showing the void behind natural determinism, the contrast between the magical and the positivist vision of the world no longer exists.1
Thus one can understand how active magic of this kind can exist without affecting the “explanations” of those who do not know how to look behind the wings.
However, if by magic one understands an unconditioned realization, it would contradict every practical application of science, in which the necessity of given laws is not only recognized but presupposed. A realization of this kind would be seen as a direct and devastating irruption in the scheme of natural laws, without passing through those laws. And if the whole supersensible realm was conceived of in this way and one could generalize about it, the contradiction would stand: a magical world in this absolute sense would not allow the scheme of natural determinism to exist, even as an exterior aspect of things and as a working system. Every law, every consistent relation between cause and effect would have to be contingent—a mere moment of stasis in the dynamism of the aeonic forces of men and gods.
That is why there are some who, on the one hand, recognize that a coherent magic must logically postulate an unconditioned realization, but, on the other hand, consider this as practically impossible. As a compromise, in a situation analogous to that accepted by scientific technology, they have recognized the impassable limits of any magic.2
Even setting aside this “impassable” aspect, one can say that such a possibility is confined to some of those cases mentioned by Bruto, in which science hopes for an explanation even though not yet able to provide one. Instead, in the case of a “conditioned magic” there is no real incompatiblity with the existence of a natural determinism, which could be the medium through which magic manifests.
2–3. While Bruto and Val argue to loosen the chains of physical determinism, or to reinterpret them so as to remove the contradiction with a coexistent spiritual freedom, Nir instead seeks to resolve this contradiction by limiting the direction and reach of freedom in favor of determinism. His opinion is that the concept of “pure freedom” is an “abstract invention of modern philosophers” which has nothing to do with reality, or (as he says) with the “teachings of traditional esotericism.”
He begins by saying that the success of the “laws of large numbers” applied to social and moral phenomena by probabilistic calculation shows “how relative the domain of freedom is, even in this field.” He then finds the transition from the concept of “life” to that of “liberty,” made by the person posing the problem, “sophistic and specious.” “It is not true that life is distinguished from ‘dead matter’ by an arbitrary absence of laws—if anything, it is by a different quality of laws: and to speak of living forces and of free forces is not the same thing.” And as life, in all the forms known to us, is subject to determined laws “even if finalistic rather than mechanical, immanent rather than external,” we must assume the same of the life that, according to esotericism, is behind all natural things. And if it is thus (Nir goes on), the terms of the contradiction vanish: science can find deterministic laws in the external world, by the very fact that they reflect inner and spiritual laws. Knowing them until one grasps the unity of the universal law (still according to Nir) should be “the true goal of the esoteric path.”
As a supplementary argument, Nir mentions the phenomena of supra-normal precognition, which prove the absolute predetermination of future situations and acts, supposed to be the realm of man’s free initiative, or at least of “chance.” He concludes with a speculative consideration: To grant importance to the “problem” of freedom (he says) means to take time as a reality, thus absolutizing what is only a mode of human consciousness. “Where change no longer has a place, freedom loses its meaning. But change refers exclusively to what is temporal.” “Metaphysical reality,” which by hypothesis transcends the temporal condition, allows no change, so that one cannot apply the concept of freedom to it, nor the correlative one of necessity. The opposition between these two concepts only has significance for humans, and none from the higher point of view that the esotericist should hold.
This argument of Nir’s offers many contestable points. In an earlier essay (Introduction to Magic, vol. I, 310–14) we addressed the problem of the phenomena of precognition and the relativity of time, and indicated the reasons that positively convinced us that to draw an absolutely deterministic conclusion from such phenomena is hasty and one-sided.
Secondly, from the point of view of the Absolute, the distinction between freedom and necessity—and therefore the problem that follows it—can also have no reason for being. However, we are not concerned here with a “philosophy of God,” but considering the question as presented to one who knows “the eagle that soars above” in metaphysical space, but is not thereby led to ignore the “toad crawling on the ground.” Therefore, putting aside assumptions of the Vedantic type, we seek a point of view that includes both the human and that which is superior to the human. Nir cannot be unaware of how many texts and traditions that are surely esoteric do not think it “profane” to introduce the concept of freedom into the metaphysical world. Plotinus says of Being itself: ὠς ἄρα ἐβούλετο, οὕτω καὶ ἔστιν (“as he willed to be so he is”) and asserted the full freedom (τὸ αὐτεξούσιον) of the gods.3 In the East there is a well-known saying: “Nature is the law (dharma) of the living (jīva); that of the Gods is play (līlā).” Another set of references is found in two works of H. Gomperz, Die indische Theosophie and Die Lebensauffassung der griechischen Philosophen (Jena: Diederichs, 1924 and 1927).
On the other hand, if one can concede that the form of time depends on the human mode of consciousness, it is possible to conceive of something intermediate between this form and the plane of absolute immobility (maybe what Hinduism calls “subtle time”—sūkshma-kāla), which while not being the time of common human experience can still allow for change and a certain freedom. Lacking that—and we must stress the fact—the continual references not only to the “action” but also to the “passion” of the gods, and consequently to affecting the course of things that depend on them through magic, sacrifice, invocation, etc.—references found everywhere in the texts of ancient traditions—lose all meaning.
Where Nir is correct is in saying that to speak of life and to speak of free life are not the same thing, and we will use this point to explain an aspect of the necessity of nature which Bruto’s and Val’s arguments have not been able to resolve. Laws of uniformity effectively exist both in vital and moral affairs—but here we must avoid making the same leap as the positivist scientist when he substitutes the idea of necessity for that of simple constancy. Psychological and social laws, like those of physics, rest on a calculation of probabilities, on statistics whose generalizations are justified by the “law of large numbers.” But behind this uniformity from what we could call an “aggregative” point of view, there hides a host of particular elements whose variation and individuality are not considered, either because they cancel each other out or because the calculation of averages levels them, or because there are no experimental means or methodological interest in noticing them, just as someone trying to track the direction of a moving crowd ignores the separate and spontaneous movements of the individuals who comprise it. The statistical—that is, empirical-inductive—character of not only social laws but physical ones, too, according to recent developments in physics, even when they do not presuppose the idea of active spontaneity at the basis of the great currents of phenomena, do not contain anything prejudicial to it.
To use Boutroux’s apt and well-known image, laws are like a riverbed: the mass of water follows it, but it was the water itself that carved it out. From the point of view of positivist science, every prediction, however rigorous, does not indicate fixed structures but a field of probability. In physiochemical phenomena the range of this field is minimal and practically negligible, but outside those phenomena it increases, and a factor of improbability and contingency appears alongside that of probability and constancy. For all its statistical uniformity, we are not authorized to deduce, as Nir does, that there is an internal necessity, an inner law binding the various elements. On the contrary, it is their reciprocal and collective action that constructs the path that they then follow, which will seem to be their “law.”
Bruto observes correctly that “When one begins to observe the manifestations of life, first in plants, then in animals, and lastly in man where it acquires self-awareness, one notices an increasing and intelligent autonomy of action, which contrasts with the determinism of the material world. One sees an intelligence, at first collective, guiding the life of beings in the form of instinct, then rising, step-by-step, one sees this intelligence individuating and becoming reason, and finally will. This should be enough to make one suspect, beside the cosmic process revealed in the material world, the existence of another cosmic process of liberation and release. The contrast between the two worlds begins with vital phenomena [properly so-called], and since it is even evident to the senses, positivist science takes it into consideration—without recognizing it for what it is—and studies it especially in its sensible manifestations [i.e., limiting itself to that aspect, in which it is still possible to find fairly uniform laws]. But the positivist natural sciences can go no further: they cannot follow the pure spirit, the pure will, the processes of the pure I. They cannot do so, because in the spiritual sphere the concept of science cannot be the same as is valid to sensible observation,” i.e., constructed on the basis of external sense-data.
In this way Bruto believes that one can arrive at the idea of “a process in which divinity, already manifested in the world of necessity, is released from necessity in man and reaffirms itself as free and re-creative.”4 He continues:
“Two consequences follow: the first is that the actualization of the science of the spirit [in the sense of initiatic science] incurs a suspension of precisely those natural laws that positivist science holds to be necessarily immutable.
“The second is this: it is in man that the two worlds of necessity and freedom attain the point of equilibrium; in him, either necessity or liberty may prevail, according to the degree of will and spirituality that he has been able to develop in himself.”
In one case, man is a being who continues to confirm “nature” and to belong to it. In the other, a real dominator of nature would be born.
Bruto brings up another fundamental point: the prejudice that holds natural things to be as they are, and that man’s attitude toward them counts for nothing. On the contrary, he holds that this attitude influences the result of knowledge and in some sense determines it. If man stands before nature (says Bruto) with the attitude of simply regarding it, as positivist science demands, it is only natural that “he will discover only necessity, which the success of his innumerable experiments will never fail to confirm, and thus be continually reassured that the teachings of positivist natural science are true.” He will be able to find freedom in nature in exactly the measure that he himself introduces and adds to it, but that cannot happen while he reduces himself to a mere observing eye.
In other words, every scientific observation of necessity entails a vicious circle, because the very fact of “scientific observation” would prevent one from being able to find anything but necessity. “It is this inner attitude of the positivist scientist that explains and necessitates the ‘success’ of science. But it is precisely man’s ‘human’ nature that allows him to demonstrate that natural laws are as they are for the simple reason that he wants them to be thus and not otherwise.” The transition to a different attitude to nature would begin to enliven it by a different truth from the former one, which was the only truth that science could observe.5
This means that the contradiction can be resolved, not by making freedom and necessity coexist but by relating them to two distinct realms or degrees. One must still acknowledge a necessity sui generis (of its own kind) in broad zones of the “psychic,” supersensible world. Nir is right in saying that “life” and “free life” are two distinct things. The physical world itself certainly conceals a life—that of “entities,” “genii,” “daimons,” elementary “intelligences”—but we must think of this life as focused in a single direction, lost in a given idea, goal, or function. Think of what it means to us to have some all-absorbing passion or intention; think of our innate character, our blind tendencies, our instinct; of whatever in us is “habitual”: there we have the approximate experience of a form of psychic life ruled by a law of necessity (the “law of the Waters,” according to our terminology). Taking this experience to the limit, we can understand what sort of life constitutes the “spirits” existing behind natural laws. The “spirit” of water thinks water, lives water, wills water, there is nothing outside that meaning and that act, which appears to outer physical perception as water and the laws of water. On the basis of the fixity of that single idea, such laws are constant. A free spontaneity may have carved the channel in which the current of facts now flows uniformly: but this spontaneity can only be found in a state of identification with what willed it, a state that virtually excludes the power of carving a different channel—unless the power of the magus is led to reawaken it.
Such views can also be found in some magical instructions. Kremmerz, for example, defines the “elementals” as fluidic condensations whose determination of life is fixed, whose intelligence is limited to their function, whose will is an inexorable tendency toward their goal. They are infinite, he adds (in Book D of Myriam), in their desire for immortality. “Made from fire, they thirst” and envelop in a “mighty throng” one who has awakened to magical or Hermetic power, because “he has the water that quenches them,” the power that liberates them and “immortalizes them, creating gods of them by infusing them with volitive and negative freedom, which take a more precise and a freer form than “what is possible in one who is still incarnate” (ibid.).
This agrees with the Buddhist teaching, according to which if a “god” wants to “be liberated,” he must pass through the human state of existence. The supernatural dignity of man is thus not only able to rise above any other visible and invisible force of nature: when it is initiatically realized, it can make him not only liberated, but a liberator and a fashioner of gods.6
As a corollary, this confirms what was said on another occasion (Introduction to Magic, vol. I, 240): that compared to a fully initiatic direction of development, the substratum of the occult psychism of things represents a mode of being from which one must increasingly keep one’s distance, if one does not want to be swept into the maelstrom of the “lower Waters” and betray one’s own supernatural destiny.