VII 



AGNOSTICISM 215 



that history. It is the well-known story of the 

 devils who were cast out of a man, and ordered, 

 or permitted, to enter into a herd of swine, to the 

 great loss and damage of the innocent Gerasene, 

 or Gadarene, pig owners. There can be no doubt 

 that the narrator intends to convey to his readers 

 his own conviction that this casting out and 

 entering in were effected by the agency of Jesus 

 of Nazareth; that, by speech and action, Jesus 

 enforced this conviction ; nor does any inkling 

 of the legal and moral difficulties of the case 

 manifest itself. 



On the other hand, everything that I know of 

 physiological and pathological science leads me to 

 entertain a very strong conviction that the pheno- 

 mena ascribed to possession are as purely natural 

 as those which constitute small-pox; everything 

 that I know of anthropology leads me to think 

 that the belief in demons and demoniacal posses- 

 sion is a mere survival of a once universal super- 

 stition, and that its persistence, at the present 

 time, is pretty much in the inverse ratio of the 

 general instruction, intelligence, and sound judg- 

 ment of the population among whom it prevails. 

 Everything that I know of law and justice con- 

 vinces me that the wanton destruction of other 

 people's property is a misdemeanour of evil 

 example. Again, the study of history, and 

 especially of that of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and 

 seventeenth centuries, leaves no shadow of doubt 



