SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 



441 



thropological history of religions, and of 

 certain of the moral conceptions and 

 the aids to their realization which these 

 religions embody. The scope of the 

 work is more various than the title 

 would suggest, for it includes the 

 consideration of the outlying topics 

 that are indirectly but not in- 

 herently connected with the idea of 

 evil and its personal embodiment. It 

 thus loses in its systematic character, 

 but gains somewhat in its acceptability 

 as a popular presentation. The author 

 has made good use of the extensive liter- 

 ature of his special topic and of the 

 themes with which it is associated; 

 but the compilation can not and pre- 

 sumably does not lay claim to any 

 marked originality of contribution or 

 presentation. In one aspect the volume 

 shows commendable industry, namely, 

 in the collection of illustrations, which 

 give an unusually realistic account of 

 the vagaries of the human mind, and es- 

 pecially the human imagination, in deal- 

 ing with the mystery of good and evil. 

 In five hundred pages of text we have 

 three hundred illustrations, ranging from 

 savage and Assyrian and Chaldean and 

 Egyptian and Classic and Medieval 

 and modern pictures of the incarnation 

 of evil, to the acts of sacrifice and wor- 

 ship instituted in his honor, to Faust 

 legends and the fate of the damned, to 

 demon-possession and exorcism, to the 

 scenes at the stake and the persecu- 

 tion of witches, to the portrayal of the 

 devil in art and literature, in folk-lore, 

 and finally his degradation in the cari- 

 cature and drama of the day. This 

 panoramic unfoldment of the changes of 

 attitude towards the monarch of evil 

 affords an interesting corollary to the 

 conquests of culture over the terrifying 

 realms of the imagination. The flight 

 to evil that we know not of has in all 

 ages been made by the fancy of the 

 religious devotee, the ascetic, the church- 

 man, and through them as well as by 



reason of the inherent necessity for a 

 fear of consequences as an incentive 

 to moral action, has the devil continued 

 to live and exert his influence over the 

 affairs of men. "The Devil of the 

 Salvation Army," says Dr. Carus, 

 "proves that there is still need of rep- 

 resenting spiritual ideas in drastic al- 

 legories; but though Satan is still paint- 

 ed in glaring colors, he has become 

 harmless and will inaugurate no more 

 witch-persecutions. He is curbed and 

 caged so that he can do no more 

 mischief. We smile at him as we do 

 at a tiger behind the bars in a zoologi- 

 cal garden." 



The scope of the work may be brief- 

 ly indicated. An introductory considera- 

 tion of the nature of good and evil as 

 religious ideas leads to a general account 

 of demonolatry; this cult and its vari- 

 ous expressions in ancient Egypt, in 

 Persia, among the Jews, in Brahmamsm 

 and Buddhism, are then described; the 

 new era introduced by the spread of 

 Christian conceptions is portrayed, and 

 its combination with the conceptions 

 of Greece and Rome, its later encounter 

 with the traditions of Northern mythol- 

 ogy are further characterized; the suc- 

 cessive periods of inquisition, witch- 

 persecutions, reformation, constitute 

 the zenith of the diabolical epoch; the 

 reconstruction of the notions in regard 

 to Satan is well illustrated in the litera- 

 ture, while the philosophical problem 

 of good and evil still remains for dis- 

 cussion, even after science and the prog- 

 ress of civilization have crowded the 

 personal devil out of his occupation. 



The main value of this volume i8 

 the service which it is capable of per- 

 forming as a work of reference, and 

 again as an interesting presentation 

 of a range of ideas with which many 

 scholars with various purposes have to 

 deal, and which forms a significant chap- 

 ter in the history of culture. 



