NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 439 



Pausanias, one of the most honest of ancient travelers, gives 

 us a striking exhibition of this feeling. Having visited this mon- 

 ument of divine vengeance at Mount Sipylos, he tells us very 

 naively that, though he could discern no human features when 

 standing near it, he thought that he could see them when standing 

 at a distance. There could hardly be a better example of that 

 most common and deceptive of all things belief created by the 

 desire to believe. 



In the pagan mythology of Scandinavia we have such typical 

 examples as Bors slaying the giant Ymir and transforming his 

 bones into bowlders ; also " the giant who had no heart " trans- 

 forming six brothers and their wives into stone ; and, in the old 

 Christian mythology, St. Olaf changing into stone the wicked 

 giants who opposed his preaching. 



So, too, in Celtic countries we have in Ireland such legends as 

 those of the dancers turned into stone ; and in Brittany, the stones 

 at Plesse", which were once hunters and dogs violating the sanctity 

 of Sunday ; and the stones of Carnac, which were once soldiers 

 who sought to kill St. Comely. 



Teutonic mythology inherited from its earlier Eastern days a 

 similar mass of old legends, and developed a still greater mass of 

 new ones. Thus, near the Konigstein, which all visitors to the 

 Saxon Switzerland know so well, is a bowlder which for ages was 

 believed to have once been a maiden transformed into stone for 

 refusing to go to church ; and near Rosenberg in Mecklenburg is 

 another curiously shaped stone of which a similar story is told. 

 Near Spornitz, in the same region, are seven bowlders whose forms 

 and position are accounted for by a long and circumstantial legend 

 that they were once seven impious herdsmen ; near Brahlsdorf is 

 a stone which, according to a similar explanatory myth, was once 

 a blasphemous shepherd ; near Schwerin are three bowlders 

 which were once wasteful servants ; and at Neustadt, down to a 

 recent period, was shown a collection of stones which were once a 

 bride and bridegroom with their horses and wagon all punished 

 for an act of cruelty ; and these stories are but typical of thousands. 



At the other extremity of Europe we may take, out of the 

 multitude of explanatory myths, that which grew about the well- 

 known group of bowlders near Belgrade. In the midst of them 

 stands one larger than the rest : according to the legend which 

 was developed to account for all these, there once lived there a 

 swineherd, who was disrespectful to the consecrated host ; where- 

 upon he was changed into the larger stone, and his swine into the 

 smaller ones. So also at Saloniki we have the pillars of the ruined 

 temple, which are widely believed, especially among the Jews of 

 that region, to have once been human beings, and are therefore 

 known as the " enchanted columns/' 



