SOURCE: "The Science of the Counter-Renaissance," in The Counter-Renaissance, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950, pp. 176-276.

[In this excerpt, Haydn provides an overview of the three realms of magic and discusses the characteristics of the "magician-scientist" of the Counter-Renaissance.]

The dissatisfaction of men like Agrippa and Montaigne with Scholastic science led them to positions of extreme skepticism about the existence of any ascertainable natural laws. But this is not to say that they denied the existence of these laws. They maintained rather that the knowledge of them was proper to God but not to man—that man could not, with his reason, attain to any considerable understanding of them.

This distinction is not simply a formal or dialectical one. The scientific and philosophical skepticism of the Counter-Renaissance was profoundly anti-intellectualistic. But it did not mean the complete loss of "that faith in the ultimate rationality of the universe" upon which "the very possibility of science is dependent…." Even Montaigne, the arch-heretic, makes the distinction between reason and human reason, in his version of Tertullian's credo quia impossible. For he hopes

to induce Christians to believe, when they chance to meet with any incredible thing, that it is so much the more according to reason, by how much more it is against human reason.

Hence it is the impotence of man's intellect to find out the truths of nature which the leaders of the Counter-Renaissance proclaim, rather than the absence of any such truths. Hypothesis, logic, the syllogism, deductive reasoning—all the favorite instruments of Scholastic science—lead only to the invention of an imaginary nature. As a result, the "scientists" of the Counter-Renaissance seek other methods to the understanding of nature—methods for which the Scholastic tools are useless.

Two methods emerge as basic—those of magic and of "pure" empiricism. The first adopts a passive theory of knowledge in the interests of an aggressively individualistic motive; the second employs an aggressively active empiricism in the service of a humanitarian ideal. For the magicians seek to learn the secrets of nature largely through illumination, revelation and initiation into a body of ancient esoteric knowledge—while the radical empiricists of the Counter-Renaissance concentrate upon the investigation of the particular facts of nature. The first group, holding that nature is full of the symbols of God, believes that it may be understood only through esoteric lore and experiment, the formulas and equations and hieroglyphs of the Pythagoreans and the Cabala, alchemy and astrology—through the correct interpretation of a body of longestablished secret knowledge. The second, holding equally that a synthetic knowledge of the laws of nature is impossible, is concerned with discovering particular natural facts which may be of practical utility.

Again, while both have power as their goal, they do not interpret "power" in the same way. The magicians, believing nature to be full of miracles and mysteries, hope to be able to learn how to control these by a proper manipulation of natural sympathies and antipathies, and thus to exercise an almost godlike individualistic power. The empiricists, believing nature to be full of things useful to the practical living of life, desire to make these available to mankind, for its greater comfort, health and prosperity. Both attitudes, it is obvious, are remote from the goal of medieval scientists—a knowledge of the truths of God—and from that of the orthodox Renaissance humanists, who (showing a greater interest in the arts and humanities than in natural science) found the value of all learning in its contribution to the virtuous life.

At first glance, the methods and goals of the magicians and the empiricists seem extremely different. Yet curiously enough, many of those practicing primarily in the tradition of one of these two groups also dabble in the other—or occupy an ambiguous position, partaking of each attitude, midway between the two. Paracelsus, Jerome Cardan and John Dee illustrate this ambiguity beautifully. Each seems half bombastic charlatan, half genuine scientist—at least to a twentieth-century observer.

However, the close relationship of the magic and the empiricism of the Counter-Renaissance is not so paradoxical as it superficially seems. In the first place, medieval empiricists like Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus had never distinguished clearly between empirical science and the practical natural magic they endorsed, and one or another kind of experimentation is integral to various occult traditions. Moreover, Lynn Thorndike's assertion that "the sixteenth century in general was not an age of scientific specialization but marked by a somewhat amateurish literary interest," [A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Vol. V, 1941], is in general true, and particularly of many of the Counter-Renaissance scientists. Hence one should expect to find superstition and real scientific insight in the same men.

Moreover, the magicians and empiricists are at one on many points. Both groups are in revolt against the logician-physicists of Scholasticism; both are seeking antiintellectualistic approaches to nature. Each endorses a "return to nature"—to use Francis Bacon's words, an "Interpretation" rather than an "Anticipation" of nature. Each, in a different sense, advocates a return to first principles—the one to an ancient body of revealed knowledge, the other to the direct observation of nature. Each is attempting a simplification of approach—the one in its reduction of the acquisition of knowledge to the learning of an established lore, the other in its reliance upon observation and the storing away of facts. Each takes part in the endorsement of the value of the humble peculiar to the Counter-Renaissance: the magicians in their protestations of humility as being merely God's chosen vessels of truth; the empiricists in their insistence upon the significance of the brute fact and their encouragement (and reception into their own number) of unlearned artisans; both in their refusal to consider matter as essentially undignified or bad. Finally, each group, interestingly enough, has certain affinities with the Reformation: the magicians in their emphasis upon faith and revelation, the empiricists in theirs upon a practical science, with utility as its goal.

Yet all these similarities of purpose point to an alliance, rather than to a complete identification; and it is possible in many individual cases to distinguish sharply between the practitioners of experimental magic and those of empirical science. The former, on the whole, live in a world which may best be called that of theosophy, since "theosophy shares theology's belief in the supernatural and philosophy's faith in nature"; the latter in the material world of a "neutralized" nature.

Again, both groups contribute to the decentralization process of the Counter-Renaissance: to its rejection of law and reason, and its nominalistic espousal of the particular rather than the universal—but in different ways. For the magician-scientists believe that science "rests upon an inner revelation, which is superior to sensible experience and reasoning"—thus at least roughly approximating that part of Ockham's epistemology which affirms the power of intuitive supra-sensible knowledge to make direct contact with a particular reality. On the other hand, the empiricist-scientists rest their knowledge solely upon observation and experiment, thereby endorsing Ockham's insistence upon the validity of intuitive sensible knowledge—"for experience brings us into contact with the singular…."

Hence each of these two groups, denying the validity of the abstract intellectual concept, and thus the place of reason in science, makes impossible the study of the universal, and so the understanding of the laws of nature. It is this common attitude which at once denies to both the status of true science, as we understand it today, and makes of them two further and allied phenomena in the decentralizing course of the Counter-Renaissance. But a clear understanding of the differences, similarities, and even overlappings of the two groups will be facilitated by an examination of their particular representatives….

The occult traditions of the Counter-Renaissance are highly eclectic. Mystical Pythagoreanism, astrology, alchemy, and Neoplatonic, Cabalistic and Hermetic love meet and mingle in the doctrines of many individual figures. Yet there is a surprising unity in the outlooks, the methods, the definitions and the avowed purposes of these various esoteric factions, and for the purposes of this [essay] their detailed doctrinal differences may be largely ignored.

At any rate, this unity of outlook and method results in a general conviction that magic which, according to Agrippa, constitutes "the whole knowledge of nature, the perfection of all true philosophy," is composed of three realms: Divine Magic; dealing with "the mysteries of God," which is the chief domain of the Cabala; Celestial Magic, dealing with the celestial bodies and their influence upon the sublunary world, hence the concern of astrology and the Pythagorean science of numbers; and Natural Magic, dealing with the hidden virtues of natural objects, which is therefore the province of alchemy, magical medicine, and that "philosophy of nature" which treats the symbolic significances of sublunary phenomena.

1. INTELLECTUAL or THEOLOGICAL WORLD or DIVINE MAGIC deals with "the mysteries of God." Includes: Ceremonial matters, necromancy, divination, sacred names, the "spiritual" lore: heroes, demons, demi-gods.

Chief sources:

The higher mysteries of the Cabala and the Orphic-Pythagorean-Neoplatonic line of "a certain devout philosophy," including the Hermetic corpus.

2. CELESTIAL or MATHEMATICAL WORLD deals with "the quantity of bodies in their three dimensions and the motion of celestial bodies," and the "influences of the stars into these lower elements." Includes: Some kinds of astrology; the science of numbers and letters; "astronomy"; arithmetic.

Chief sources:

The Pythagorean-Neoplatonic mathematics and some branches of the Cabala and eclectic astrology (including Hermes).

3. NATURAL or ELEMENTAL WORLD or NATURAL MAGIC deals with "the occult virtues in natural objects" and "the transmutation of metals." Includes: Natural magic, or "the philosophy of nature"; alchemy.

Chief sources:

The "ancient wisdom" of Zoroaster, etc. and the Hermetic corpus and Albertus, Bacon, Lully and the alchemical tradition.

If this diagram is compared with one which a student of Pico has recently made of the Florentine's cosmology, as exemplified in the Heptaplus, it becomes evident to what extent esoteric dogma could penetrate—or, at least, did parallel—Renaissance "Christian" expositions of Genesis.

pico, heptaplus

god
intelligence
heavens………..
elements………..

man, as microcosm, is
parallel to whole
macrocosm.
A favorite esoteric concept.

the eclectic initiate traditions

intellectual or theological world—divine magic
celestial or mathematical world
natural or elemental world—natural magic

There are, to be sure, quite definite medieval influences perceptible in the occultism and magic of the Counter-Renaissance. Cusanus' Pythagorizing interests, Lully's "Ars Magna," and the more practical and empirical natural magic of Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus were all familiar to the sixteenth-century magicians. Yet Denis Saurat points out that, to the Renaissance, occultism meant chiefly the Cabala and Hermetic books; and unquestionably the publication of the Zohar (1559–60), with the research Pico and Reuchlin expended upon it, and Ficino's new Latin translation of Hermes' Asclepius (1469) and Pimander (1471), accelerated a general interest in these esoteric traditions [Denis Saurat, Literature and Occult Tradition, 1930]. Moreover, the Neoplatonic revival centering in the Florentine Academy had an extensive influence upon the course of sixteenth-century occultism.

For Neoplatonism had frequently tended to esotericism and eclecticism. The Syrian Neoplatonism of Iamblichus and Proclus (fourth and fifth centuries A.D.) was strongly mystical, drawing its inspiration from Pythagoras, the religious mysteries of the Orient and Egypt, and other initiate traditions, as well as from Plato and Plotinus. Indeed, to Proclus the practice of magic was the essence of religion. And these tendencies had marked the marked the course of Neoplatonism ever since. To mention only a few of the barnacles which adhered to it through the centuries (some almost from its inception)—it had come to have definite associations with Orphic theology, with Neopythagoreanism, and with the Cabala.

Many of these interests are apparent in Ficino's "certain devout philosophy," although they do not dominate his thought. But with Pico, we come to a veritable renascence of magic and esotericism. We have already observed how, in his office of reconciler of theology and philosophy, he contributed to the effort of the Renaissance Christian humanists to balance reason and faith. But Pico is not to be confined to a single tradition—or, rather, in his conviction that there is but a single tradition of truth, he necessarily will appear in a study of various, even (to others) conflicting traditions. And his attitude toward philosophic truth establishes that of succeeding Renaissance magician-scientists:

For Pico, the criterion of philosophic truth consists in its constancy, in its uniformity and sameness. He understands philosophy as philosophia perennis—as the revelation of an enduring Truth, in its main features immutable…. He is convinced that what is true requires no "discovery," no finding out through any personal inquiry of the individual; rather has it existed from time immemorial. What is characteristic for Pico is hence not the way in which he increased the store of philosophic truth, but the way in which he made it manifest.

Ernest Cassirer not long ago advanced the thesis that Pico's most distinctive category of thought is that of symbolic thought. He saw Pico, although primarily a speculative thinker, as coming more and more—under the growing influence of mysticism—to believe "that our thinking and conceiving, in so far as it is directed toward the Divine, can never be an adequate expression, but only an image and metaphor." Thus Pico affirms that "the deepest secrets of Being can be treated in the language of numbers and figures—" which amounts to an endorsement of the Cabalistic approach to Divine and to Celestial Magic.

For by "numbers" he does not mean scientific mathematics and astronomy; he does not believe that there is any road leading "to a scientific mathematics and to an exact knowledge of nature." On the contrary, he asserts outright, "Nihil magis nocivum theologo quam frequens et assidua in mathematicis Euclidis exercitatio." The only kind of mathematics which he recognizes with approval is the sort also to be found in Reuchlin's De arte cabalistica and De verbo mirifico—magical mathematics.

Pico displays a similar enthusiasm for Natural Magic—not, to be sure, the alchemical version of Paracelsus, but a "natural philosophy" which treats of the hidden virtues of natural objects as the symbols of God. Thus he tends to deviate from the most usual Neoplatonic solutions, from Plotinus down, of the problem of "the Many and the One"—of the emanating God and the transcendent God. Professor Cassirer explains,

Pico is no longer trying to exhibit the Many as the effect of the One, or to deduce them as such from their cause, with the aid of rational concepts. He sees the Many rather as expressions, as images, as symbols of the One.

In Pico's own highly figurative language:

Then Bacchus, leader of the Muses, showing forth to us philosophers in his mysteries, that is in the visible symbols of nature, the invisible things of God, shall satisfy us from the abundance of the house of God, in all of which we shall, like Moses, be found faithful.

Clearly, then, Pico desires to compass the secrets and mysteries of nature. Magic abounds, he declares in his oration Of the Dignity of Man,

in the loftiest mysteries, embraces the deepest contemplation of the most secret things, and at last the affinity of all nature.

The glory is God's and nature's; the magician does not exhibit the power of his own mind so much as he reveals the miracles which God has sown in nature. For magic,

in calling forth into the light as if from their hiding-places the powers scattered and sown in the world by the loving kindness of God, does not so much work wonders as diligently serve a wonder-working nature…. [It,] making use of the suitable and peculiar inducements … for each single thing [my italics], brings forth into the open the miracles concealed in the recesses of the world, in the depths of nature, and in the storehouses and mysteries of God, just as if nature herself were their maker; and, as the farmer weds his elms to vines, even so does the magus wed earth and heaven, that is, he weds lower things to the endowments of higher things.

Pico is here referring to the Neoplatonic principle of magic

that the world is a hierarchy of divine forces, a system of agencies forming an ascending and descending scale, in which the higher agencies command and the lower ones obey.

Pico, to be sure, does not inform us why the magus should want to "wed earth to heaven," except with the safe and pious explanation that

nothing moves one to religion and to the worship of God more than the diligent contemplation of the wonders of God; if we thoroughly examine them by this natural magic which is my subject, we shall be compelled to sing, more ardently inspired to the worship and love of the Creator: "The heaven and all the earth are full of the majesty of thy glory."

Yet he hastens to add, "And this is enough about magic"—quite appropriately, for surely the desire of the magician to be united with the "higher agencies" whom "the lower ones obey" is motivated by his hope "to govern nature and to change it according to his wishes."

There was no doubt in Pico's nephew's mind that his uncle's motive was not simply "The worship and love of the Creator":

Ful of pryde & desirous of glorie and mannes praise (for yet was he not kindled in the love of god) he went to Rome, and there (covetinge to make a show of his conning, and litel considering how great envie he should raise against himself) ix.C. questions he purposed, of diverse and sondry maters: as well in logike and Philosophie as divinitee, with great studie piked and sought out, as wel of the Laten auctours as the grekes: and partly set out of the secret misteries of the Hebrewes, Caldees & Arables: and many things drawen out of the olde obscure Philosophie of Pythagoras, Trismegistus, and Orpheus, & many other thynges strange: and to all folks (except right few speciall excellent men) before that day: not unknowen only: but also unherd.

Nor did his propositions meet with much favor from the Church….

Finally, Pico, with his overt statement that his Magica Theoremata include an interpretation of the "mysterious poems of Orpheus," and his contention that Pythagoras had founded his secret doctrine of numbers upon the model of Orphic theology, could hardly have been unaware that "the aim of Orphism and the mysteries [was] to make gods" of men.

Thus we find illustrated in Pico all the basic characteristics of the magician-scientist of the Counter-Renaissance: his concern with the secrets or mysteries of nature; his emphasis upon the roles of revelation and initiation and interpretation in the process, rather than upon "personal inquiry"; and despite his denial of the importance of his own intellectual contribution (Pico explains, "I have wished to give assurance by this contest of mine, not so much that I know a great deal, as that I know things of which many are ignorant"), the individualistic goal of power and glory.

To be sure, this last question is wrapped up in the larger one of the distinction between "lawful" and "black" magic. Pico makes a particular and redundant point of emphasizing this difference, declaring that

Magic has two forms, one of which depends entirely on the work and authority of devils, a thing to be abhorred, so help me the God of truth, and a monstrous thing. The other, when it is rightly pursued, is nothing else than the utter perfection of natural philosophy…. The former is the most deceitful of arts, the latter is a higher and more holy philosophy. The former is vain and empty, the latter, sure, trustworthy, and sound.

And we have no reason, on the face of his performance, to doubt his sincerity. Yet similar protestations are forthcoming from Paracelsus, Agrippa, John Dee, and all those other fascinating figures of the sixteenth century who are constantly embroiled in controversies over their practice of the "black art," often fleeing from the authorities and an outraged population, frequently accused of being in league with Satan—and consistently protesting their innocence.

The whole somewhat complicated problem narrows down to these alternatives: the practitioner of "lawful" magic is celebrating the majesty of God through "the diligent contemplation of the wonders of God"; while the "black" magician, sold "to the enemies of God," turns his back on God and exercises his art in pursuit of personal power. Yet for individual cases, the problem remains unresolved. Who is to judge of the legality of the practices of a particular magician? Everyone, and therefore no one.

Consider Paracelsus. He rejects the "philosophical wisdom of the Greeks as being a mere speculation [my italics], utterly distinct and separate from other true arts and sciences." He attacks Thomas Aquinas—with charges of blasphemy (sic) against the "secret fire of the philosophers"—and all the rest who ignore the inner light "that is much superior to bestial reason."

For man is assuredly born in ignorance, so that he cannot know or understand anything of himself, but only that which he receives from God, and understands from nature.

But he himself has been chosen by God for a vessel of revelation:

From the middle of this age the Monarchy of all the Arts has been at length derived and conferred on me, Theophrastus Paracelsus, Prince of Philosophy and of Medicine. For this purpose I have been chosen by God to extinguish and blot out all the phantasies of elaborate and false works, of delusive and presumptuous words, be they the words of Aristotle, Galen, Avicenna, Mesva, or the dogmas of any among their followers.

"Not," he goes on shortly thereafter, with the "humility" of the magical tradition,

that I praise myself: Nature praises me. Of her I am born; her I follow. She knows me, and I know her. The light which is in her I have beheld in her.

Yet this man, this self-acknowledged chosen of God and of Nature, is the "devil's disciple" to the majority of his age. And whomever he worships, he is obviously drunk with the sense of power.

However, from Raymond Lully down, the occult philosophers and magical scientists had all cherished the legend of the "Philosopher's Stone"—had envisioned the discovery of a single formula which would "reduce man's search for knowledge to a principle of unity leading to mastery of Nature" [D. B. Durand, "Nicole Oresme and the Medieval Origins of Modern Science," Speculum, Vol. XVI, No. 2, 1941]. It is thus unquestionably a dream of power which motivates them. And this dream finds frequent expression like the following words of Trithemius, Agrippa's teacher and friend:

Study generates knowledge; knowledge bears love; love, likeness; likeness, communion; communion, virtue; virtue, dignity; dignity, power; and power performs the miracle. This is the unique path to the goal of magic perception, divine as well as natural.

Beyond this we cannot go. For it is only in a play or a story that a man permits the naïve lay world to see with what forces he is trafficking. Yet it is certainly pertinent that Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, who dips his pen into his own blood to assure us that he is really in league with Lucifer, and who travels the world with Mephistopheles, is a true son of the magician-scientists of the Counter-Renaissance. He endorses and utilizes their methods and their materials, and his imagination is fired by the same vision of godlike power. Finally, if one may believe current rumor that Marlowe's association with Ralegh, Northumberland and Hariot would give him an opportunity to watch magic and occult practices at first hand, here is important testimony to the uniformity of the magic and occultism practiced by the "seers" of the Counter-Renaissance, with that of black magic.

Faustus reveals the new spirit of the Counter-Renaissance at the outset of Marlowe's play, in his rejection of each of the Scholastic studies. He pins upon "Logicke" the definition given it by Peter Ramus, in defiance of Aristotle: "Bene disserere est finis logices." He associates medicine with alchemy. He employs the new belittling techniques of the scientific and legalistic skeptics to

… the institute
And universall body of the law.

And he sardonically applies the Reformation's doctrine of original sin and predestination to the medieval "the wages of sin is death," to argue a fatalistic necessity for universal sin and everlasting death.

Thus, he depreciates the major disciplines of the Scholastic learning through the agency of those new forces of the Counter-Renaissance which were weakening and disrupting each: Aristotle's logic, through Ramus'; Galen's medicine, through Paracelsus'; Justinian's Institutes through arguments like those of Agrippa; theology ("Divinitie" and "Jerome's Bible") through Calvinism. In other words, Faustus establishes himself as a child of the Counter-Renaissance before he ever mentions the word "magic."

But "'tis Magicke, Magicke that hath ravisht" him; he has already made it clear that he has the magician's itch. After reviewing "Logicke," he demands

Affoords this Art no greater myracle? [my italics]

He turns to medicine with the exultant injunction to himself,

Be a physitian Faustus, heape up golde,
And be eternizde for some wondrous cure [my italics]

And after professing contempt for the traditional "end of physicke" as "our bodies health," he asks,

Wouldst thou make man to live eternally?
Or being dead, raise them to life againe?

(both dreams of the alchemical physicians in connection with their search for the Philosopher's Stone), and concludes

Then this profession were to be esteemed [my italics].

The law he finds "too servile and illiberall for me"; divinity he rejects because of its denial of free will.

What he wants is a knowledge of the mysteries, secrets and miracles of "nature's treasury," and he wants it for the power it will give him. "Yet art thou still but Faustus, and a man," he cries after reviewing his past exploits as a physician. It is magic alone that can provide this godlike power, and he finds that

These Metaphysickes of Magicians,
And Negromanticke bookes are heavenly:
Lines, circles, sceanes, letters and characters….

He exclaims,

O what a world of profit and delight,
Of power, of honor, of omnipotence
Is promised to the studious Artizan?

and is jubilantly convinced that

his dominion that exceedes in this,
Stretcheth as farre as doth the minde of man.
A sound Magician is a mighty god:
Heere Faustus trie thy braines to gain a deitie.

These last lines do not imply that he expects to master the "science" of magic through his own intellectual efforts. Instead (and observe the use of "sound magician") they refer to the work involved in learning the revealed body of knowledge. Moreover, the very next lines indicate that he is aware of the need of an interpreter to guide him to an understanding of this body of revealed truth. Sending Wagner for Valdes and Cornelius, he tells himself,

Their conference will be a greater help to me,
Than all my labours, plodde I nere so fast.

With the arrival of Valdes and Cornelius, he announces that he

Will be as cunning as Agrippa was,
Whose shadows made all Europe honor him.

And the ensuing conversation follows the traditional lines of the magic of the Counter-Renaissance. Valdes declares,

Faustus,
These bookes, thy wit and our experience
Shall make all nations to canonize us,
As Indian Moores obey their Spanish lords,
So shall the subjects of every element
Be alwaies serviceable to us three.

Cornelius outlines the needs of the magician:

He that is grounded in Astrologie,
Inricht with tongues, well seene in minerals,
Hath all the principles Magicke doth require,

and these three requirements—astrology; the use of languages, to read the Cabalistic and other occult literature, and to understand and pronounce "sacred names"; and alchemy—correspond very neatly to the generally approved three realms of magic: the Celestial, Divine and Natural, respectively.

But Faustus himself later gives an even more exact rendition of the three worlds of the Cabala, or the three divisions of magic, when he asks Mephistopheles for three books: first, one

Wherein I might beholde al spels and incantations, that I
might raise up spirits when I please;

secondly, one containing

al characters and planets of the heavens, that I might know
their motions and dispositions;

and thirdly, one

wherin I might see al plants, hearbes and trees that grow
upon the earth.

These three correspond with scholarly exactitude to the three worlds of the Cabala and the three kinds of magic….

The conversation with Valdes and Cornelius contains other references and allusions which are related to a consideration of the magical science of the Counter-Renaissance. Faustus is eager to behold "some demonstrations magicall," and Valdes requests him to bring

wise Bacons and Albanus workes,
The Hebrew Psalter, and new Testament.

This combination of the Jewish and Christian Cabala with the practical natural magic of Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus, as requisites for the practice of what we soon discover to be black magic, suggest that, to Marlowe, there is no real distinction between "legitimate" and "illegitimate" magic.

Finally, Cornelius states,

Valdes, first let him know the words of art,
And then all other ceremonies learnd,
Faustus may trie his cunning by himselfe,

thereby asserting plainly once more the dependence of the "cunning" of the magician upon the set procedure of a revealed body of knowledge.

There are other passages in the play which suggest further similarities between Faustus' experience with magic and the professional accounts of the sixteenth century, but those quoted should suffice to establish the relation beyond doubt. Like the magician-scientists of the Counter-Renaissance, Faustus seeks to investigate the secrets and mysteries of nature, which are contained in the threefold world of the Cabala; like them, he practices a magic which is a revealed body of knowledge, and to which he is introduced by "masters" or initiate interpreter-guides; like them, he seeks to control Nature and plans to change its course through a union with its "higher agencies."

And so, like them, his dream is one of unlimited power. The discrepancy between his aspirations and the actual use he makes of his magical skill has often been noted. That a man with the intoxicating vision of extending his sway "as farre" as "the minde of man" might reach, and even to the condition of a "deitie," should entertain himself with the horseplay of the scenes with the Pope, the antlered Knight, and the Horse-courser, and with the stage manipulator's tricks of producing Alexander and his paramour, or a "dish of ripe grapes" in winter, is indeed ridiculous. But even a casual student of Marlowe knows that these incongruities run every-where through the ore of his rich and extravagant but often naïve genius. Faustus is no exception; here, as elsewhere, most of the meaty passages which show his awareness of the intellectual currents of his time are packed into the early part of the play; it is as though he wearies of the ideas he is treating after an enthusiastic beginning, and usually he regains his intellectual and aesthetic interest and power only near the end of the play. In Doctor Faustus the serious interest in magic drops off sharply after the first six hundred lines; indeed, most of it is crowded into the first two hundred. But as long as Marlowe is actually concerned with this aspect of his subject, the play provides the most vivid imaginative treatment of the whole field in the literature of the sixteenth century—a treatment, moreover, as authentically faithful as it is lively.