The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment by Michael Hunter (review)

The title of Michael Hunter's new book nods to Keith Thomas's classic Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971), a vast study that turned serious scholarly attention to popular magic in sixteenth and seventeenth century England. In early modern society, Thomas showed us, beliefs in astrology, fairies, omens, and witchcraft were ubiquitous. Despite the book's title, however, Thomas' account of the eventual decline of magical beliefs was (to quote Hunter) "surprisingly perfunctory" (2), a chapter of 42 pages out of a book of 800. Thomas pointed to several factors in magic's decline but placed special emphasis on scientific revolutions and technological innovations.

Hunter re-examines the decline of magic in Britain, 50 years on. He challenges the view that seventeenth-century scientists and the new experimental philosophers of the Royal Society, in particular, were responsible for its demise. While some prominent members of the Society were skeptics, others held not only that magic and science were compatible, but also that empirical study could prove the existence of a spiritual realm. In his Saducismus Triumphatus (1681), Joseph Glanvill catalogued "supernatural phenomena" that included ghosts, poltergeists, and instances of witchcraft. Glanvill's approach was in keeping with the Royal Society's methodology, which held that "matters of fact" could be empirically demonstrated, even when they could not be explained. In light of the division of opinion within its membership, the Society as a corporate body remained agnostic on the reality of magic.

While the Royal Society sat on the fence, Hunter argues, humanist freethinkers were pioneering anti-magical skepticism. He begins with a detailed study of John Wagstaffe's Question of Witchcraft Debated (1669). Wagstaffe offered a bold critique of witchcraft beliefs, claiming (among other things) that they were not grounded in Scripture but rather fabricated for the purposes of political manipulation. While Wagstaffe's arguments were radical, they drew even greater ire from their orthodox critics than they warranted. Hunter suggests that his critics were reminded of more extreme arguments that were circulating in the fashionable and influential oral culture of the urban coffee houses.

Anti-magical skepticism was tainted by association with the freethinkers' reputation for religious heterodoxy, but it spread gradually in the early to mid eighteenth century. The deists dismissed magic as worthless superstition, and eventually moderate clerics and medical men came on board with skeptical views. While emphasizing the influence of classical sources, Hunter allows that the eighteenth-century skeptics also drew support from the new science. The Newtonian worldview, which invoked universal, indisputable laws of nature, allowed phenomena inconsistent with those laws to be dismissed, even if ostensibly empirically proven. Hunter suggests, however, that the "fashionable trappings" (vi) of Newtonianism were as likely to provide a scientific veneer for skepticism that had its basis elsewhere.

This is in keeping with Hunter's more general claim that when skepticism became more widely accepted in the eighteenth century "it did so through a kind of cultural osmosis" (vi). Rather than shifting their opinions under the influence of reasoned debate, "[p]eople just made up their minds and then grasped at arguments to substantiate their preconceived ideas, with a new generation simply rejecting out of hand the commonplaces of the old" (46). While contentious, Hunter's reading captures the tenor of debates over the reality of magic and witchcraft, where opinions rarely changed based on what might appear (at least in retrospect) to be powerful arguments or decisive pieces of evidence.

Hunter's analysis draws on his deep expertise in the history of magic, atheism, and science (he has written extensively on the Royal Society and edited Robert Boyle's Works). The result is both scholarly and readable. While various chapters include material first published or presented elsewhere, they work together to form a coherent argument, which Hunter helpfully sets out in bullet points in the preface.

In contrast to Thomas's broad and exhaustive survey...