Note 272 — Chapter VI · THE RELATIONS BETWEEN MAGIC AND ANIMISM

But see the footnote at p. 235 of The Magic Art, I.: “faith in magic is probably older than the belief in spirits.” In the same note, a passage in Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion is referred to as anticipating the doctrine of the priority of Magic to Religion. The passage, as translated in an appendix (pp. 423-6), shows, however, no conception of Magic as akin to natural law, as it is described in several passages of The Golden Bough, but treats it as a belief in any human being “as the ruling power over nature in virtue of his own will.” This is rather an anticipation of Prof. Wundt’s doctrine concerning Sorcery; which Hegel seems not to have distinguished from Magic. I need hardly add that a belief in any human being as the ruling power over nature in virtue of his own will has never been discovered in any part of the world.