2 S EVOLUTION AND NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



celibacy.* The conditions under which these 

 phenomena could be manifested at all, became 

 rapidly rarer and rarer, and at last the pheno- 

 mena themselves disappeared, being very nearly 

 stamped out. Eeligious persecution spreads a 

 belief, hut constitutional peculiarities must 

 necessarily be destroyed by such persecutions. 

 Simultaneously with this disappearance of 

 supposed supernatural phenomena came the 

 vast revelations of modern science. Can we 

 wonder that men whose immediate predecessors 

 had almost succeeded in blotting out so-called 

 supernatural phenomena, which they them- 

 selves had consequently no opportunity of 

 personally investigating, should refer every 

 story of the supernatural handed down from 

 former times, to delusion, imposture, or to 

 ill-understood philosophical experiments ? 



This idea would be increased by the great 

 number of cases of alleged witchcraft which 

 were recognised as based on nothing but 

 imposture or suspicion, especially towards 

 the close of the persecution On the principles 

 of Darwinism, the witch-mania and the con- 



* This subject will be further discussed in Chapter xiv. 



