472 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ranee produces the priests, while in Spain the priests produce igno- 

 rance. 



Henry Thomas Buckle holds that religions are influenced hy the 

 climate and topography of each country, and by the character of the 

 inhabitants. " Barbarous creeds," says he, " are the result rather than 

 the cause of a primitive stage of intellectual development. Supersti- 

 tion is merely the concomitant of the evils it seems to produce." The 

 fallacy of the conclusion arises from the deficient specification of the 

 premises ; the logician overlooks the important difference between nat- 

 ural and factitious creeds ; between local superstitions, produced by a 

 process of natural development, like the customs and the language of a 

 nation, and epidemic superstitions, engendered in the brain of a crazed 

 visionary, and propagated by force and fanaticism. The former bear 

 the marks of various national characteristics, the latter impress their 

 own characteristics on each conquered nation. Natural superstitions re- 

 flected the poetical genius of the ancient Greeks and the warlike spirit 

 of the Spanish Celts, but the national spirit of both Greece and Spain 

 was crushed out by the dogmas of anti-naturalism. There are local 

 superstitions that can not be exported ; the myths of Brahmanism can 

 not be separated from the physical geography of their East Indian 

 habitat, while the sagas of the frost-giants and fur-clad hunter-gods 

 could originate only in a frigid latitude. The Hindoo sticks to his 

 rice, the Icelander to his whale-blubber. But poisons are more cosmo- 

 politan : whisky and pessimism find votaries in every clime. The 

 oldest creeds are the most harmless ones, for the superstitions of a 

 primitive people are founded on natural impressions, which are not apt 

 to mislead us to any dangerous degree. "What harm could there be in 

 the fancy of the Arcadian shepherd who heard a spirit-voice in the 

 answering echo of his mountains, and ascribed the sudden stampede of 

 his flock to the trick of a frolicsome faun ? Bread-and-honey offer- 

 ings to the fairies did not bankrupt the Hibernian peasant. Nearly 

 all children of nature recognized the benevolent purpose in the gifts 

 of the great All-Mother ; the gods of antiquity Avere mostly helpful 

 and beautiful spirits, while the nature-hating creed of the middle 

 ages peopled the world with legions of hideous demons. The first 

 May-night, when Hertha awakens the slumbering wood-spirits, became 

 the Walpurgis Nacht, with its hellish revival-meetings. The satyrs 

 became mountain-devils ; St. Irenseus intimates that Jupiter Olympius 

 was the disguised arch-fiend in person, the chief of evil spirits nay, 

 Ritter Tannhauser does not hesitate to denounce the Goddess of Beauty 

 to her face : "Frau Venus, schone Gattin mein, Ihr seid eine Teufel- 

 inne " (" My lady, ye are a female devil"). The pantheon of the Medi- 

 terranean nations became a pandemonium, and in all Christian coun- 

 tries of mediaeval Europe this devil-mania raged with a uniformity of 

 violence and persistence that completely refutes Buckle's theory. From 

 the fourth to the end of the fifteenth century fanaticism was clearly 



