In his concise study, The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment, Michael Hunter provides a masterful demonstration of the effectiveness of the theory of intellectual change and the approach to the history of ideas that he has so assiduously developed and refined over the years. An eminent historian of early modern science, ideas, and intellectual culture and an accomplished textual scholar, Hunter here turns his attention to the complex subject of the decline of magic in the early Enlightenment (c.1650–c.1750). His title clearly recalls Sir Keith Thomas’ classic study, Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971), and there are a number of affinities between these two works. Both concentrate on Britain, generally forgoing discussion of the subject's broader European developments. They both also adopt a similar definition of “magic,” conceiving it as, in Hunter's succinct formulation, the “supposed intercourse with forces and powers above the course of nature, which it was thought possible for adepts to manipulate and control” (1). And, of course, both contend with the changing religious and intellectual temperaments of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

However, Hunter's study pushes in a number of distinct directions. First, he gives this work a welcome, more inclusively British scope not only by dealing with England, but also by paying sustained attention to Scotland (with several passing references to Wales). Second, unlike so many who examine the decline of magic and other allied beliefs in this period, Hunter eschews discussion of witch-hunting, trials, and persecution, with all its usual emphasis on changing standards of evidence and testimony, in order to trace the influence of a neglected but crucial series of broader religious and intellectual eddies and currents. Similarly, he turns away from the pronounced tendency to discuss these beliefs in relation to popular culture, a social level where they survived until much later. Instead, he focuses on the clear, if uneasy, shift in educated opinion that took place in the key period under discussion. As a result of these choices, The Decline of Magic significantly advances our understanding of this subject. It provides fresh and compelling answers to the elusive questions of precisely how and why suddenly in the late seventeenth century, after over a hundred years of debate, with no new arguments introduced on either side, the opponents of belief in magic and an efficacious spirit world began to increasingly dictate the tone and terms of debate, decisively shifting educated opinion in their favor.

Because these skeptics generally opposed belief in the efficacy of magic by advancing naturalist alternative explanations, post-Enlightenment thinkers and historians have long associated them closely with the rationalism and rise of the new science. The smooth contours of this reading give it an allure that has made it difficult to resist. However, as Hunter demonstrates, it is ultimately the product of artificial reification and, at times, a “disappointingly Whiggish” (172) mode of historical thought. It inclines modern scholars to simply fade key features of the Enlightenment back into the period before 1700, as though history moves seamlessly from one fully formed, all-encompassing worldview to another. In reality, things were not so tidy or straightforward. Rather, this was a fraught period full of concessions and compromises, of complexities, contradictions, and ambivalence, and these—the hallmarks of the history of intellectual and cultural transition—are the central focus of Hunter's attention.

The Decline of Magic continues Hunter's efforts to build a conceptual framework capable of carefully historicizing and tracing the evolution of ideas in this pivotal period. His is an approach in which, as he explains elsewhere, the discussion of general trends and “polarizing imperatives” is combined with close attention to individual responses to them (Michael Hunter, Science and the Shape of Orthodoxy: Studies of Intellectual Change in Late 17th-Century Britain [1995], 13). This deceptively simple shift has profound implications. It makes individuals, with all their puzzling idiosyncrasies and anomalies, the main subject of examination, decidedly reducing abstract, idealized progressive or “modernizing” forces to a secondary concern. By looking carefully at how individuals responded to the polarizing issues of the day and remaining sensitive to the highly disparate and personal ways they did, rather than artificially reading them into reified homogeneous positions (usually achieved by privileging select parts of their thought or outlook), Hunter is able to explore forgotten corners and provide a more rounded, nuanced account of the vexed debates surrounding magic.

The result is a collection of detailed case studies that embrace the Janus-faced character of so many of the religious and philosophical writers and thinkers of this key period. The main cast continues to be a range of sceptics, deists, atheists, and other heterodox thinkers, along with the defenders of orthodoxy. However, Hunter's holistic biographical approach to the history of ideas directs him to reframe the debates over magic around his central characters’ humanist erudition and classical learning, rather than the progressivist, emancipatory narratives of the Enlightenment. While the arguments regarding the core importance of humanism and ancient wisdom in the intellectual culture of the early Enlightenment might not be quite as novel as sometimes seems to be implied, Hunter dexterously handles them to redraw the intellectual map charting the decline of magic.

He identifies the true pioneers of skepticism about magic as humanist freethinkers and deists. Using an important series of distinct, yet overlapping, controversies around skepticism, atheism, deism, and sadducism, he demonstrates how classical erudition and humanist textual scholarship was bent to “serve heterodox ends as easily as orthodox ones” (58). In so doing, the reader is introduced to a series of layered controversies defined not by La Querelle, pitting Ancients versus Moderns and long associated with the decline of magic, but rather by a common humanist intellectual culture shared by heterodox and orthodox thinkers alike. Thus, the temperament, tone, and content of heterodox arguments against the efficacy of magic are shown to have subtly worked on their orthodox opponents until, “gradually and slightly timidly” (62), they came to accept the skepticism they previously rejected as radical and dangerous.

This exciting collection of nuanced, layered, and sophisticated studies exemplifies the extraordinary value of Hunter's gradual, attentive approach to the history of ideas. It provides powerful new insights into why in the late seventeenth century, educated opinion regarding magic suddenly and decisively shifted to skepticism. Moreover, the detailed studies collected here help bridge the current historiographical divide between those who tend to view the Enlightenment as a radical movement that inclined towards deism, pantheism, and atheism and those who see it as a more moderate affair led by those favoring a rationalized Christianity. The latter point is a rich and suggestive one that highlights what is perhaps best of all, and that is the way The Decline of Magic points forward to the fruitful and illuminating work yet to be done.