258 NATURE AND MAN. 



inquiry, carried on at the prompting of a hostile ecclesiastical 

 party, seem to me fully explicable on the like principle of the 

 action of strongly excited "faith "in producing bodily change, 

 whether beneficial or injurious \ and nothing but the fact that this 

 strong excitement was called forth by religious influences, which 

 in all ages have been more potent in arousing it than influences 

 of any oiher kind, gives the least colour to the assumption of their 

 supernatural character. 



I might draw many other illustrations from the lives of the 

 Saints of various periods of the Roman C:.tholic Church, as chro- 

 nicled by their contemporaries, many of whom speak of themselves 

 as eye-witnesses of the marvels they relate ; thus, the " levitation 

 of the human body " — i.e., the rising from the ground, and the 

 remaining unsupported in the air for a considerable length of time 

 ■ — is one of the miracles attributed to St. Francis d'Assisi. But it 

 will be enough for me to refer to the fact that some of the ablest 

 ecclesiastical historians in the English Church have confessed their 

 inability to see on what grounds — so far as external evidence is 

 concerned — we are to reject these, if the testimony of th-e Biblical 

 narratives is to be accepted as valid evidence of the supernatural 

 occurrences they relate. 



But the most remarkable example I have met with in recent 

 times of the " survival " in a whole community of ancient modes 

 of thought on these subjects (the etymological meaning of the 

 term "superstition"), has been very recently made public by a 

 German writer, who has given an account of the population of a 

 corner of Eastern Austria, termed the Bukowina, a large propor- 

 tion of which are Jews, mostly belonging to the sect of the 

 Chassidim, who are ruled by "Saints " or "Just Ones." "These 

 " saints," says their delineator, " are sly impostors, who take ad- 

 " vantage of the fanaticism, superstition, and blind ignorance of 

 " the Cliassidim in the most barefaced manner. They heal the 

 " sick by pronouncing magic words, drive out devils, gain lawsuits, 

 " and their curse is supposed to kill whole families, or at least to 

 " reduce them to beggary. Between the ' saint ' and ' God ' there 

 " is no mediator, for he holds personal intercourse with the Father 

 " of all, and his words are oracles. Woe to those who should 

 " venture to dispute these miracles in the presence of these un- 



