HISTORY OF MAGIC.

said Tertullian An early Christian author from Carthage., and this saying, so paradoxical in appearance, is of the highest reason. Indeed, beyond everything that we can reasonably suppose, there is an infinite for which we long with a desperate thirst, and which escapes even our dreams. But for a finite assessment, is not the infinite the absurd? We feel, however, that it is. The infinite invades us; it overflows us; it gives us vertigo with its abysses; it crushes us with all its height. All scientifically probable hypotheses are the last twilights or the last shadows of science. Faith begins where reason falls exhausted... Beyond human reason, there is divine reason, the great absurd for my weakness, the infinite absurd that confounds me and that I believe!

But only good is infinite; evil is not. This is why if God is the eternal object of faith, the devil belongs to science. In which Catholic creed, indeed, is there any question of the devil? Would it not be blasphemy to say: "We believe in him"? He is named but not defined in Holy Scripture. Genesis nowhere speaks of a supposed fall of the angels; it attributes the sin of the first man to the serpent, the most cunning and dangerous of living beings. We know what the Christian tradition is on this subject; but if this tradition is explained by one of the greatest and most universal allegories of science, what will this solution matter to the faith that aspires to God alone and despises the pomps and works of Lucifer?

Lucifer! The Light-bearer! What a strange name given to the spirit of darkness. What, is it he who carries the light and who blinds weak souls? Yes, do not doubt it,

INTRODUCTION.

for traditions are full of divine revelations and inspirations.

"The devil carries the light, and often even," says Saint Paul, "he transfigures himself into an angel of splendor." — "I have seen," said the Savior of the world, "I have seen Satan fall from heaven like lightning." — "How have you fallen from heaven," cries the prophet Isaiah, "shining star, you who rose in the morning?"

Lucifer is therefore a fallen star; he is a meteor that always burns and that sets fire when he no longer enlightens.

But this Lucifer, is he a person or a force? Is he an angel or a stray thunderbolt? Tradition supposes that he is an angel; but does not the Psalmist say in Psalm 103:

"You make your angels of the tempests and your ministers of the swift fires?"

The word angel is given in the Bible to all messengers of God: new messengers or creations, revealers or scourges, radiant spirits or brilliant things. The arrows of fire that the Most High darts into the clouds are the angels of his wrath, and this figurative language is familiar to all readers of Oriental poetry.

After having been the terror of the world during the Middle Ages, the devil has become its laughingstock. Inheritor of the monstrous forms of all the false gods successively overthrown, the grotesque scarecrow has been made ridiculous by dint of deformity and ugliness.

Let us observe one thing, however: it is that only those dare to laugh at the devil who do not fear God. Could the devil, for many sick imaginations, have been the shadow of God himself? Or rather, is he not often the idol of low souls, who do not understand the