212 SUPERSTITION. [ix. 



Was it not as well to be civil to such messengers from 

 above ? to testify by homage to them due awe of the 

 being who had thrown them at men, and who though 

 he had missed his shot that time might not miss it the 

 next ? I think if we, knowing nothing of either gun- 

 powder, astronomy, or Christianity, saw an Armstrong 

 bolt fall within five miles of London, we should be 

 inclined to be very respectful to it indeed. So the 

 aerolites, or glacial boulders, or polished stone 

 weapons of an extinct race, which looked like 

 aerolites, were the children of Ouranos the heaven, 

 and had souls in them. One, by one of those strange 

 transformations in which the logic of unreason in- 

 dulges, the image of Diana of the Ephesi-ans, which 

 fell down from Jupiter ; another was the Ancile, the 

 holy shield which fell from the same place in the days 

 of Numa Pompilius, and was the guardian genius of 

 Rome ; and several more became notable for ages. 



Why not ? The uneducated man of genius, un- 

 acquainted alike with metaphysics and with biology, 

 sees, like a child, a personality in every strange and 

 sharply-defined object. A cloud like an angel may be 

 an angel ; a bit of crooked root like a man may be a 

 man turned into wood perhaps to be turned back 

 again at its own will. An erratic block has arrived 

 where it is by strange unknown means. Is not that an 

 evidence of its personality ? Either it has flown hither 

 itself, or some one has thrown it. In the former case, 

 it has life, and is proportionally formidable ; in the 

 latter, he who had thrown it is formidable. 



I know two erratic blocks of porphyry I believe 

 there are three in Cornwall, lying one on serpentine, 

 one, I think, on slate, which so I was always informed 



