APRIL 153 



exist composed of educated men who devote themselves to the 

 practice of a black art of the mediaeval * Ingoldsby Legends ' pattern, 

 such as aims at calling injury and doom upon obnoxious persons 

 by the fashioning of images of wax into which the instructed 

 thrust pins fortified with appropriate curses and invocations. 



Indeed, if one may judge from the records of coroners' inquests 

 which appear in the papers, all this mischievous mystery-mongering 

 is on the increase. Thus I have a paper before me, from which it 

 seems that the victim, a middle-aged woman, was frightened 

 into committing suicide by a fortune-teller who prophesied 

 troubles to her. I remember also seeing a report a while ago 

 which stated that the deceased, a young girl, killed herself because 

 she had been told by some seer that she was under the influence 

 of the planet Saturn, a malevolent orb, which would certainly bring 

 evil upon her. In this instance also the prophecy achieved its own 

 fulfilment, and some astrologer or palmist walks the world to-day 

 with that woman's blood upon his head. In short, in such matters, 

 humanity, its vast advances notwithstanding, reverts continually to 

 the primitive type, and the myths of ancient Chaldaea and 

 mediaeval Europe still find votaries in modern London and New 

 York. It would almost appear as though man, civilised or savage, 

 must cling to something beyond the natural or at least as though 

 those of the strongest mental fibre only can stand quite alone and 

 self-reliant. Take away the convictions of religion from the 

 average human being, and no fetish seems too gross for him to 

 welcome none so degraded that he cannot build to it an altar. 

 Thus the individual whose mind rejects the conception of a 

 patient and purposeful God as mere childish vapouring may be quite 

 ready to believe that his fate and future are plotted out for him 

 by planets whereof the attributes and influences are fabled from 

 names bestowed upon them by the fancy of the ancients ; or even, 

 like some poor savage, be prepared to find the promise of pro- 

 sperity or sorrow in the appearance of a magpie, and, with a faith as 

 full as it is piteous, to augur death among its inmates from the bloom- 

 ing in the house of a flower that has been announced ill-omened. 



