GENERAL 



ing able to claim priority; and the survival of 

 the title of exorcist as a stage towards the priest- 

 hood of the Roman Church admirably illustrates 

 the Spencerian contention. 



The primitive belief in the causation of disease 

 by supernatural beings was impressed upon all of 

 us when, as children, we made acquaintance with 

 the New Testament, wherein the etiology of many 

 neuroses is thus assumed. Now one of the first 

 divisions of labor to use a phrase and an idea 

 which Spencer applied to sociology, borrowing it 

 from Henri Milne-Edwards, the French physiologist 

 in primitive society consists in the setting apart 

 of men, whom we may guess to have been chosen 

 on account of superior intelligence and subtlety, 

 to deal with those supernatural beings which ex- 

 ercised so potent an influence upon the health, 

 and therefore the happiness, of the community. 

 There are obviously two ways of dealing with a 

 spirit. On the one hand, you may attempt to 

 pacify and placate it. Show it sufficient respect 

 and appreciation, try to see its point of view, and 

 it may leave you alone, if indeed it does not go out 

 of its way to do you a good turn instead of an ill 

 one. This may be called the sympathetic or con- 

 ciliatory method. Or, per contra, taking your 

 courage in both hands, you may stand up to the 

 infernal creature and endeavor to compass its 

 destruction, or, at any rate, to make its host or 

 hostel too hot to hold it or too unpleasant, as 

 by the exhibition of asafcetida, which must doubt- 

 229 



