Aug. 8, 1884.] 



KNOWLEDGE 



107 



There is a dispute between tradition and history as to 

 the period when the genuine cocoon was brought from 

 China to Europe. How was the vigilance of Celestials 

 thwarted, since exportation of the silkworm from the 

 Flowery Kingdom was forbidden under the severest penal- 

 ties 1 One accouut states that in a.d. 5.32, two monks sent 

 to Kothan by Justiuian, succeeded in bearing away their 

 booty concealed in a stalk of bamboo. The legend says 

 that once upon a time, when Kothan did not yet possess 

 the precious bombyx, the King of one of the provinces 

 sought and obtaiDed a daughter of the Chinese Emperor in 

 marriage. Before quitting her native land she hid seeds 

 of the mulberry and silkworms' eggs Ln her hair, where it 

 would escape the vigilance of the Customs officers on the 

 frontier. When she reached her new home she planted the 

 seeds of the mulbeiry in order that suitable nourishment 

 might be provided in the leaf for the worms. — The Dyer 

 and Calico Printer. 



DREAMS: 



THEIR PLACE IN THE GROWTH OF PRIMITITE 

 BELIEFS 



By Edward Clodd. 



VI. 



TO the savage mind no other explanation of illness is 

 possible than that it is due to the exit of one's own 

 spirit or to the iiitrusiou of a stronger one, whether of re- 

 vengeful man or animal. An old Dacotah, whose son had 

 sore eyes, said that nearly thirty years before, when the 

 latter was a boy, he fastened a pin to a stick and speared 

 a minnow with it, and it was strange that after so long 

 a time the tish should come to seek revenge. When an 

 Indian is attacked by any wild beast, he believes that the 

 avenging Kenaima has transferred his spirit to the animal 

 which seizes him, and if he has even a toothache, of which 

 more presently, then the Kenaima has insinuated himself in 

 the shape of a worm. The tribal chief among the Brazilian 

 natives acts as doctor, and ■when he visits the sick, he 

 asks what animal the patient has offended, and if no cure 

 is effected, the convenient explanation is at hand that the 

 right animal has not been found. At the death of Iron 

 Arms, a noted North Americaa Indian warrior, it was 

 said that he died because the doctor had made a mistake, 

 thinking that a prairie-dog had entered him when it was 

 a mud-hen. The more abnormal and striking phases of 

 disease manifest when a man is writhing under intense 

 agony, as if torn and twisted by some fiendish living thing, 

 or when in delirium he raves and starts, or when thrown 

 down in epilepsy he struggles convulsively, or when 

 he shivers in an ague, or when in more violent forms 

 of madness he seems endowed with superhuman strength ; 

 the various symptoms attending hysteria ; each and 

 all support that theory of spint-influence which sur- 

 vives among advanced races in referring disease to 

 supernatural causes. For the ancient theories of a 

 Divine government under which disease is the expres- 

 sion of the anger of the gods, and medicine the token of 

 their healing mercy ; and the current notions that any 

 epidemic or pestilence is a visitation of God, are identical 

 in character, however improved in feature, with the bar- 

 baric belief illustrated above ; and in the ages when belief 

 in the devil as one walking to and fro upon the earth was 

 rampant, he especially was regarded as bringer of both bane 

 and antidote. " He may," says an old writer, "inflict 

 diseases, which is an effect he may occasion apjilicando 

 activa passivis (by apjjlying actives to passives), and by 



the same means he may likewise cure .... and not only 

 may he cure diseases laid on by himself, as Wierus observes, 

 but even natural diseases, since he knows the natural 

 causes and the origin of even those better than the 

 physicians can, who are not present when diseases 

 are contracted, and who, bein^ younger than he, must 

 have less experience." In Lancashire folk-lore " casting 

 out the ague " was but another name for " casting out 

 the devil " ; in the Arabic language the words for 

 epilepsy and possession by demons are the same; and in such 

 phrases as a man being " beside himself," " transported," 

 " out cf his mind," or in the convei-se, as when it is said in 

 the parable of the prodigal son, " he came to himse'f "; in 

 the words ecstasy, which means a displacement or removal 

 of the soul, and catalepsy, a seizing of the body by some 

 external power, we have language preserving the primitive 

 ideas of an intruding or departing spirit Such minor 

 actions as gaping and SLcezing confirm the belief. The 

 philosophy of the latter, as Mr. Gill remarks in his '• Myths 

 and Songs of the South Pacific," is that the spirit having 

 gene travelling about, its return to the body is naturally 

 attended with some difficulty and excitement, occasioning 

 a tingling and enlivening sensation all over the body. And 

 the like explanation lies at the root of the mass of customs 

 attendant on snetzing, and of the superstitions generated 

 by it, which extend through the world. 



Williams tells us that among the Fijians, when any one 

 faints or dies, their spirit, it is said, may sometimes be 

 brought back by calling after it, and occasionally the 

 ludicrous scene is witnessed of a stout man lying at full 

 length and bawling out lustily for the return of his soul. 

 So in China, when a child is lying dangerously ill, its 

 mother wOl go outside into the garden and call its name, 

 in the hope of bringing back the wandering spirit But 

 for all the ills that flesh is heir to — from hiccupping to 

 madness, from toothache to broken limbs — the patient 

 seldom dares to doctor himself ; neither the etiquette 

 of the ordained medicine-man nor the orthodox thera- 

 peutics favour that show of independence. The methods 

 adopted by the faculty vary in detail, but they are 

 ruled by a single assumption. When a Chinaman is dying, 

 and the soul is believed to be already out of the body, a 

 relative holds up his coat on a bamboo stick, and a Taoist 

 priest seeks by incantations to bring back the truant soul 

 so that it may re-enter the sick man. Among the Six 

 Nations the Indians sought to discover the intruder by 

 gathering a quantity of ashes and scattering them in the 

 cabin where the sick person was Ijiug. A similar recipe 

 for tracking demons is given in the Talmud ; but, as more 

 nearly bearing on the Indian practice, a Polish custom 

 mentioned by Grimm^ may be quoted. When the white 

 folk torment a sick man, a friend walks rovmd him carrying 

 a sieveful of ashes on his back, and lets the ashes run out 

 till the floor round the bed is covered with them. The 

 next morning all the lines in the ashes are counted, and 

 the result told to a wise woman, who prescribes accordingly. 

 A favourite mode of treatment is blowing upon or sucking 

 the diseased organ, and deception is no infrequent resort 

 when the sorcerer secretes thorns or fishbones, beetles or 

 worms, in his n.outh, and then pretends that he has ex- 

 tracted them. Cranz says that the Eskimaux old women 

 appear to suck from a swollen leg scraps of leather or a 

 parcel of hair which they have previously crammed into 

 their mouths, and in Australia the same dodge is practised, 

 when the sorcerer makes believe that he has drawn out a 

 piece of bone from the affected part. That toothache is 

 due to a worm, is a belief which exists throughout Europe 



* " Tent. Mythol.," 1165. 



