POPULAR ERRORS. 



MONSTERS AND SUPERSTITIONS. 



I purpose to terminate this sketch of the glories of na- 

 ture by giving as a contrast a short account of the ridicu- 

 lous fictions which our forefathers were too often pleased 

 to substitute for them. We shall then have completed the 

 picture of the march of science. 



The people of antiquity had their superstitions and their 

 fabulous legends, but those were never so widely diffused 

 as they became in the Middle Ages, a period of simple igno- 

 rance and ardent faith. " At that time," as M. Figuier says 

 in his excellent work on this epoch, " all classes of the peo- 

 ple, and even a great part of the nobility, the magistracy, 

 and the clergy, believed in magic." 



The Renaissance itself did not throw off this weakness of 

 the human mind ; on the contrary, learned men vied with 

 each other in collecting all the fables of their forefathers 

 and recording them in their works. They found monsters 

 in every kingdom of nature, and equally in the depths of 

 the sea, as in the heavens. Ambrose Pare even devoted a 

 chapter to " Celestial Monsters," in which he describes the 

 fabulous comets we have spoken of. 



All that a fantastic imagination could beget, all that dis- 



