A PICTURE OF SUPERSTITION. 500 



to Sir John Ross, among the Eskimos ; while the Australians, 

 according to Latham, have not even succeeded in formulating the 

 rudest elements of a mythology ; and the negroes of Equatorial 

 Africa indulge in horrible superstitions which are a hundredfold worse 

 than the absence of all belief. 



The individuals, therefore, who act as priests among these ignorant 

 and stupid savages are, in reality, only miserable sorcerers, to whom 

 they attribute the power of predicting the future, of controlling wind 

 and rain, the sun and the moon, of curing disease, either by magic 

 potions, incantations, or amulets ; but they fear without respecting 

 them, and never hesitate to put them to death when the effect of 

 their juggleries or their prophecies does not respond to the hopes 

 cherished by the worshippers. 



Among these credulous and cruel peoples we find the realization 

 of all those terrible dreams embodied by the poet in his picture of 

 the influences and consequences of superstition. For a vivid com- 

 mentary on the following lines of Pope, the reader should turn to 

 the pages of Livingstone, Burton, Speke, Du Chaillu, William Ellis, 

 John Williams, or Admiral Wilkes. Of superstition, the poet says :* 



" She taught the weak to bend, the proud to pray 

 To powers unseen, and mightier far than they: 

 She, from the rending earth and bursting skies, 

 Saw gods descend, and fiends infernal rise ; 

 Here fixed the dreadful, there the blessed abodes ; 

 Fear made her devils, and weak hope her gods : 

 Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust, 

 Whose attributes were rage, revenge, or lust ; 

 Such as the souls of cowards might conceive, 

 And, formed like tyrants, tyrants would believe. 

 Zeal, then, not charity, became the guide ; 

 And hell was built on spite, and heaven on pride. 

 Then sacred seemed the ethereal vault no more ; 

 Altars grew marble then, and reeked with gore ; 

 Then first the flamen tasted living food ; 

 Next his grim idol smeared with human blood ; 

 With heaven's own thunders shook the world below, 

 And played the god an engine on his foe." 



* Pope, " Poetical Works" Essay on Man. 



