412 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



according to the president of the sec- 

 tion, seems more and more to confirm 

 the theory adopted by Fustel de Cou- 

 langes in France and Spencer in 

 England, that the belief in spirits lies 

 at the basis of all religious systems. 

 We thus see, to use his words, " that 

 the group of theories and practices 

 which constitute the great province 

 of man's emotions and mental oper- 

 ations expressed in the term 'reli- 

 gion' has passed through the same 

 stages, and produced itself in the 

 same way, from rude early begin- 

 nings, as every other mental exer- 

 tion." Mr. Brabrook mentions a 

 work lately published by " a dis- 

 tinguished missionary of the Evan- 

 gelical Society of Paris," the Rev. 

 Mr. Coillard, in which an account 

 is given of the superstitions prevail- 

 ing among the natives of the upper 

 Zambesi. The reverend gentleman 

 tells of their belief in witchcraft, and 

 gives a story of a young woman who 

 was condemned to penal labor on 

 suspicion of having bewitched, or 

 tried to bewitch, another young 

 woman who had taken her husband 

 from her; the evidence of the crime 

 being found in a dead mouse, which 

 had been discovered in the second 

 young woman's chamber. The mis- 

 sionary says: " She was made a con- 

 vict. A few years ago she would 

 have been burned alive. Ah, my 

 friends, paganism is an odious and a 

 cruel thing ! " On which the presi- 

 dent of the Anthropological Section 

 observes: "Ah, Mr. Coillard, is it 

 many years ago that she would have 

 been burned alive or drowned in 

 Christian England or Christian 

 America ? Surely the odiousness 

 and the cruelty are not special to 

 paganism any more than to Chris- 

 tianity." This is much to the point. 

 If witchcraft is no longer a recog- 

 nized crime in England or America, 

 it is not because these lands are 

 Christian, but because science is 



mixed with their Christianity. Even 

 missionaries ought to know this. 



A great many different sciences 

 are grouped under the name "anthro- 

 pology," but they all have their rally- 

 ing point in man, whose nature and 

 history they seek to explore. The 

 fact is that all sciences should have 

 the same rallying point ; and we 

 trust that the greater interest which 

 is visibly being taken year by year 

 in anthropological studies will tend 

 to humanize in a beneficial degree 

 the whole circle of human knowl- 

 edge. 



AN EXAMPLE OF SOCIAL DECADENCE. 



That the incessant encroachment 

 of the Government upon the rights 

 of the individual will produce social 

 decadence is a truth that most Amer- 

 icans have yet to learn. With a 

 light heart they are constantly ap- 

 proving scheme after scheme for so- 

 cial regeneration that involves some 

 restriction upon freedom, or an in- 

 crease of taxation, or both. It is not 

 perhaps singular that the history of 

 similar schemes in the past should 

 possess no lesson for them. When 

 President Eliot, of Harvard Univer- 

 sity, says that the experience of the 

 Italian republics has no value for 

 us, it is not to be expected that per- 

 sons with less capacity to interpret 

 the records of other times should at- 

 tach little or no importance to them. 

 But they ought not most certainly to 

 maintain the same attitude toward 

 the experience of the nations of to- 

 day. It is to blind their eyes to what 

 does not rest upon hearsay or upon 

 dubious documents — to what admits 

 of the clearest demonstration at the 

 hands of living witnesses. 



For this reason we urge upon all 

 students of social science the study 

 of the condition of the inhabitants of 

 the black-earth region of Russia. In 

 that field, one of the largest and most 

 fruitful in the world for investiga- 



