THE CONTROVERSIALIST 207 



certain stage, the date of which is a hotly debated 

 question among ecclesiastics, has no force if they were 

 wrought as signs and wonders to remove unbelief, 

 since if that was their purpose the need of them is 

 greater than ever. As was his wont, Huxley went 

 straight to the point. 



I am not more certain about anything than I am 

 that the evidence tendered in favour of the demon- 

 ology of which the Gadarene story is a typical ex- 

 ample is utterly valueless. 1 



Everything that I know of physiological and patho- 

 logical science leads me to entertain a very strong 

 conviction that the phenomena ascribed to possession 

 are as purely natural as those which constitute small- 

 pox ; everything that I know of anthropology leads 

 me to think that the belief in demons and demoniacal 

 possession is a mere survival of a once universal 

 superstition, and that its persistence at the present 

 time is pretty much in the inverse ratio of the general 

 instruction, intelligence, and sound judgment of the 

 population among whom it prevails. Everything that 

 I know of law and justice convinces me that the 

 wanton destruction of other people's property is a 

 misdemeanour of evil example. Again, the study of 

 history, and especially of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and 

 seventeenth centuries, leaves no shadow of doubt on my 

 mind that the belief in the reality of possession and 

 of witchcraft, justly based, alike by Catholics and 

 Protestants, upon this and innumerable other passages 

 in both the Old and New Testaments, gave rise, 

 through the special influence of Christian ecclesiastics, 

 to the most horrible persecutions and judicial murders 

 of thousands upon thousands of innocent men, women, 



1 Coll. Essays, v. p. 206. 



