718 



DEMOIVRE 



DEMONOLOGY 



colour of its plumage is gray, but the sides of the 

 head are adorned with two elegant white tufts, and 

 the breast bears long blackish feathers. The 

 demoiselle is an African and Asiatic bird, but 

 visits Greece and other parts of the south of 

 Europe. To the same genus belongs the beautiful 

 Stanley Crane (A. paradisceus), a larger and- taller 

 bird found in the East Indies. 



Demoivre, ABRAHAM, a distinguished mathe- 

 matician, was born at Vitry, in Champagne, 26th 

 May 1667. A Protestant, he fled to England in 

 1688, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 

 and there long supported himself by private tuition 

 and public lecturing. The appearance of New- 

 ton's Principia incited him to increased devotion to 

 mathematical studies, and at last he ranked among 

 the leading mathematicians of his time. He was 

 a member of the Royal Society of London, and of 

 the Academies of Berlin and Paris. The Philo- 

 sophical Transactions of London are enriched by 

 many contributions from his pen ; and he was so 

 esteemed by the Royal Society that they judged 

 him a fit person to assist in the decision of the 

 famous contest between Newton and Leibnitz for 

 the merit of the invention of fluxions. He died in 

 London, 27th November 1754. Among his published 

 works are Annuities upon Lives (1725), miscellanea 

 Analytica de Seriebus et Quadraturis (1730); and 

 The Doctrine of Chances ( 1718 and 1738), dedicated 

 to Sir Isaac Newton. Demoivre's name is well 

 known from its association with a useful trigono- 

 metrical formula viz. that, where k is any real 

 quantity, cos kO + t sin kO is always one value of 

 (cos0 + tsin0)*. 



Demonetisation. See BIMETALLISM. 



Demonology, the doctrine that relates to 

 demons, a body of spiritual beings inferior in rank 

 to deities proper, but yet capable of influencing 

 human affairs. The earlier and more widely- 

 spread conception of the demon was merely that 

 of a more or less powerful and intermediate agent 

 between gods and men, at one time resolving 

 himself into a kind of special guardian or patron- 

 spirit, at another acting as the minister of the 

 divine displeasure. The gradual differentiation 

 between the beneficent and the malignant qualities 

 of demons resulted in the division into good spirits 

 or guardian-angels and evil spirits or devils ; and 

 Christian theology, developing earlier Jewish ideas 

 - themselves powerfully modified by the influ- 

 ence of Persian dualism worked up the one class 

 into an elaborate hierarchy of angels and arch- 

 angels, the other into a formidable host of fallen 

 angels or devils, considered as continually employed 

 in frustrating the good purposes of God, and mar- 

 shalled under one master-spirit, the devil proper or 

 Satan, the supreme impersonation of the spirit of 

 evil. The guardian-angel corresponds closely to 

 such conceptions as the Roman genius and even the 

 famous daimon of Socrates. To primitive man the 

 demon was but one of the thousand spiritual beings 

 who controlled every one of the causes of nature, 

 and whose favour must be purchased by constant 

 tributes of respect and worship. It was perfectly 

 consistent with primitive philosophy that the manes 

 or ghosts of the dead should continue after death 

 the influence they enjoyed in life, and thus should 

 pass into the higher class of deities. The essential 

 distinctions between the divine and the human 

 that seem so fundamental to modern minds did not 

 occur to those whose notions of the visible and 

 invisible universe alike were entirely animistic ; 

 and thus we find that the savage makes no clear 

 distinction between ghosts and demons, and that 

 his conception of the demon is constructed on the 

 model of the human soul, of course with any 

 number of terrible and superhuman qualities 



superinduced. It is not merely family affection, 

 but actual fear and considerations ot prudence, 

 that lead to the worship of ancestors and of 

 the dead ; and the good or bad fortune of living 

 men is attributed to the direct interference of the 

 invisible spirits with which the whole air around 

 is swarming. These spirits may not only affect 

 the fortune of the individual, but may even enter 

 into his body, and cause internal diseases and 

 such other inexplicable phenomena as frenzy, wild 

 ravings, hysterical epilepsy, and the like. The very 

 etymology of such words as catalepsy and ecstasy 

 points plainly to a time when there was no meta- 

 phor in their meaning. Such is the explanation 

 of disease ottered at the present day by savage 

 man all over the world, and such was also 

 the belief of the semi-civilised ancient Egyptians 

 and Babylonians. Indeed, it disappeared but 

 slowly before the progress of scientilic medicine, 

 and continued to reappear in survivals strangely 

 perplexing on any other explanation. Hence 

 the function of the exorcist arises naturally 

 as a means of effecting a cure by expelling the 

 demon, and we find him daily exercising his skill 

 in Africa, and even in China and India. A care- 

 ful distinction is made by sorcerers as to whether 

 the infesting demon possesses or obsesses his 

 victim i.e. controls him from the inside or the 

 outside. In early Christian times those demoniac- 

 ally possessed, or energtimens, were grouped into 

 a class under the care of a special order of clerical 

 exorcists, and after the time of St Augustine the 

 rite of exorcism came to be applied to all infants 

 before baptism. Indeed, exorcists still form one of 

 the ' minor orders ' of the Catholic Church. 



Reverting to the animistic theory of demonology, 

 we find how well it harmonises with widely-spread 

 notions in folklore of phantom-dreams night- 

 mare (A.S. mara, 'a crusher') ; the Slavonic vam- 

 pires, or witch-ghosts, who suck the blood of 

 living victims ; incubi and succubi, like Adam's 

 wife Lilith in the rabbinical story (Assyrian lilit, 

 'a succubus'), demons who consort with women 

 and men in their sleep and by whose means children 

 may be engendered between demons and women ; 

 the' Hindu rakshas, malignant and gigantic demo- 

 niacal ogres who can at will assume any shape ; and 

 witches, who have confessed a thousand times to 

 being possessed with a familiar spirit, and who 

 own allegiance in particular to the master-demon, 

 Satan. Other embodiments of the spirit of evil are 

 the Celtic and Teutonic Giants, and the Ogres of 

 southern romance, who destroy men and devour 

 their flesh ; the Norse Trolls, one-eyed, malignant 

 but stupid monsters ; the Drakos and Lamias of 

 modern Greece ; the Lithuanian Laume ; the Rus- 

 sian fiery and flying snakes, Koshchei the Death- 

 less, Baba Yaga, a hideous old hag who flies 

 through the air in a fiery mortar, propelled with 

 a pestle, and the Morskoi Tsar, or king of the 

 waters, with his daughters, the ubiquitous swan- 

 maidens of romance. No mythology is richer than 

 the Slavonic in malignant male and female demons 

 and fiends (chorti, 'devils'), gloomy shadows of 

 old nature myths and degraded forms of the 

 great deities of an earlier religion, a combina- 

 tion of the most heterogeneous elements flung 

 together in the most perplexing confusion. Traces 

 remain of an original dualism between a great 

 black and a white god (Byelun); but besides this 

 and those fiendish forms already mentioned, Mr 

 Ralston enumerates the karliki, or fiendish dwarfs ; 

 lyeshuie, silvan demons resembling the fauns and 

 satyrs of Greek mythology ; vodyanuie, or water- 

 sprites ; vozdushnuie, demons who ride the whirl- 

 winds ; domovute, or domestic spirits like the 

 Scotch brownies and the Lithuanian kaiikas ; and 

 the rusalka, a kind of Naiad or Undine. 



