ix.] OKIGIN OF SORCERY. 223 



late as the Roman Empire, human sacrifices to gods 

 whose original names were forgotten. 



But even the cultus of nymphs would be defiled 

 after awhile by a darker element. However fair, they 

 might be capricious and revengeful, like other women. 

 Why not ? And soon, men going out into the forest 

 would be missed for awhile. They had eaten narcotic 

 berries, got sun-strokes, wandered till they lost their 

 wits. At all events, their wits were gone. Who had 

 done it ? Who but the nymphs ? The men had seen 

 something they should not have seen ; done something 

 they would not have done; and the nymphs had 

 punished the unconscious rudeness by that frenzy. 

 Fear, everywhere fear, of Nature the spotted panther 

 as some one calls her, as fair as cruel, as playful as 

 treacherous. Always fear of Nature, till a Divine light 

 arise, and show men that they are not the puppets of 

 Nature, but her lords ; and that they are to fear God, 

 and fear naught else. 



And so ends my true myth of the wasp-tree. No, 

 it need not end there ; it may develop into a yet 

 darker and more hideous form of superstition, which 

 Europe has often seen ; which is common now among 

 the Negros ;* which we may hope, will soon be exter- 

 minated. 



This might happen. For it, or something like it, 

 has happened too many times already. 



That to the ancient women who still kept up the 

 irrational remnant of the wasp-worship, beneath the 

 sacred tree, other women might resort ; not merely 



* For an account of Sorcery and Fetishism among the African 

 Negros, see Barton's "Lake Regions of Central Africa," vol. ii. 

 pp. 341-60. 



