CURIOSITIES OF SUPERSTITION. 345 



So it is plain that the mastodon came into what is now New Jersey 

 ere the ice-sheet began. It receded south before it. It followed 

 the thawing northward, and so again possessed the land. It occupied 

 this part of the country when its shore-line was miles farther out to 

 sea than it is to-day. Here it was confronted by the human savage, 

 in whom it found more than its match ; for, before this autochthonic 

 Nimrod, Behemoth melted away. 



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CURIOSITIES OF SUPERSTITION. 



Br FELIX L. OSWALD, M. D. 



SOME of the higher animals have a peculiar faculty for accustom- 

 ing themselves to various kinds of poison ; and man, especially, 

 often owes his ruin to that unfortunate talent, for the instinct of taste 

 can be so perverted that the vilest and originally most repulsive sub- 

 stances become the most seductive. 



There is a curious analogy between this corruptible sense and the 

 intellectual (rather than moral) constitution of the human mind. It 

 may be doubted if any man ever loved injustice for its own sake, or 

 voluntarily connived at its habitual exercise. History proves that 

 successful tyrants could maintain themselves only by favoring a strong 

 party at the expense of the w T eak. Pisistratus, Hiero, the elder Diony- 

 sius, Vespasian, Mohammed Baber, and Haroun, miscalled Al-Raschid, 

 were the idols of the army and of the poor. Even Mehemet Ali had 

 his redeeming qualities. Men can stand only a limited amount of 

 iniquity. But their intellectual tolerance has no such limits. Per- 

 sistent misrulers come to an evil end, but the founder of a sect, a 

 school, or a new creed, may 



"... reign without dispute 

 In all the realms of nonsense, absolute " 



and it even seems as if in the struggle for supremacy the most insane 

 dogmas had the advantage over moderately absurd ones, just as opium 

 is apt to supersede brandy and tobacco. In China, where the neutral- 

 ity of the government gave all creeds a fair chance, the fate-worship 

 of Confucius was eclipsed by the Buddhistic worship of sorrow. In 

 Greece, the orthodox polytheists held their own against all heresies. 

 The pure theism of Abd-el-Wahab was throttled by the champions of 

 the Sunnitic traditions. In Rome, where the struggle for existence 

 was fought out by fourteen or fifteen different creeds, theists, panthe- 

 ists, Nature-worshipers, agnostics, and all kinds of speculative philos- 

 ophers had to yield to the Asiatic miracle-mongers with their Nature- 

 hating fanaticism and Buddhistic crotchets ; and Buddha himself was 



