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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



THE DECLINE OF TUE GHOST. 



ALONDOIST correspondent of the 

 "Boston Herald" makes the sig- 

 nificant and, from our point of view, 

 encouraging statement that, in all the 

 Christmas annuals — and their name is 

 legion — published this season, there is 

 hardly to be found a single ghost-story. 

 Formerly ghost-stories were of all the 

 most attractive ; and somehow they 

 were thought to be particularly suited 

 to Christmas-time. Nowadays the ghost 

 is left out in the cold. In this festive 

 season no one invites liim in to so much 

 as " warm his toes," to quote the ex- 

 pression of a prominent Democratic 

 politician. Why is this ? What has 

 made the change? 



The change is due to several causes. 

 If asked to name the most general of 

 these, "we should say the growing intel- 

 ligence of the age. If people don't care 

 to talk or read about ghosts as they 

 once did, it is because they no longer 

 believe or even half believe in them. 

 The world of the living is encroaching 

 more and more upon the world of the 

 dead. In very primitive thnes men not 

 only believed in ghosts with all their 

 heart and soul, but they attributed to 

 them the same range of activities for 

 good and evil as they attributed to liv- 

 ing men. The powers of living men 

 in those days were so limited that it 

 was not paying the ghosts a very inor- 

 dinate couipliment to suppose that they 

 could do as much. But steadily, as the 

 powers of living man increased, as he 

 acquired a more extended control over 

 Nature, the prestige of the ghost, who 

 became more and more conspicuously 

 unable to imitate him, diminished. To- 

 day we leave the ghost out of our reck- 

 onings entirely; we neither ask his aid 

 nor strive to avert his malice. Wlien 

 a man is once duly certified as dead, we 



do not look for any continuance of his 

 personal activity, however great the in- 

 fluence of his character may stUl be in 

 the world. 



The ghost, we fear, has also suffered 

 in popular esteem through being in- 

 vestigated. Modern philosophers have 

 not been afraid of the investigation ; 

 they have pushed the ghost hard from 

 age to age, from race to race, from 

 country to country ; and their verdict 

 is that, while the ghost-idea has been 

 very potent in the world in past times, 

 and still flourishes in the dark places 

 of the earth, the ghost himself has no 

 estate or effects that it would be worth 

 anybody's while to try to levy upon. 

 The return to the warrant is the disap- 

 pointing one, nulla hona. The ghost, in 

 all his alleged travels through the cent- 

 uries, has left no monument. There is 

 not one solid piece of work anywhere 

 extant that can be credited to a ghostly 

 origin. If he ever " materialized," he 

 was careful to " dematerialize " again 

 before any one could get a sample of his 

 beautiful work. But, although the ghost 

 himself does not stand out as a vera 

 causa of anything, the belief in ghosts 

 has affected in the most important man- 

 ner the whole course of civilization. 

 This fact the philosophers have brought 

 very prominently forward, and in doing 

 so they have presented for examination 

 such an infinite and grotesque variety 

 of ghost-beliefs, and of usages and cere- 

 monies connected therewith, that the 

 very name of ghost, instead of awaken- 

 ing, as formerly, a host of superstitious 

 terrors, is, to-day, far more suggestive 

 of some methodical and not over-excit- 

 ing treatise on primitive man. In short, 

 the ghost nowadays is more apt to 

 make us yawn than to make us shud- 

 der. What wonder, then, that he no 

 longer rides as of yore in Cliristmas 



