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HUXLEY 



surroundings, and by careful comparison with existing 

 forms of theology to make the dead world which they 

 record live again. In other words, our problem is 

 palaeontological, and the method pursued must be the 

 same that is employed in dealing with other fossil 



remains. l 



From these rich deposits of ancient life-forms Hux- 

 ley chose that which occurs in the twenty-eighth chap- 

 ter of the first book of Samuel, and which tells the 

 story of Saul's visit to the witch of Endor. 



On the eve of a decisive battle between the Israel- 

 ites and the Philistines, Saul, in despair because 

 Jahveh had " answered him not, neither by dreams, 

 nor by Urim, nor by prophets," sought counsel (despite 

 his having banished wizards and their kin) of a woman 

 "that had a familiar spirit," literally, "a woman mis- 

 tress of Ob" which word means primitively a leather 

 bottle, such as a wine-skin, and is applied alike to the 

 necromancer and to the spirit evoked. It may be 

 compared with the sacred snake-skin bags or the 

 magic drums which form part of the apparatus of the 

 Red Indian medicine-men or sorcerers, the use of Ob 

 being probably suggested " by the likeness of the hol- 

 low sound emitted by a half-empty skin when struck 

 to the sepulchral tones in which the oracles of the 



evoked spirits were uttered by the medium." 2 Dis- 



1 Coll. Essays, iv. pp. 288, 289. 



2 Coll. Essays, iv. p. 295. For various meanings of Ob see Art. 

 " Divination " in Encyclopedia Biblica. 



