330 
not knowing exactly which they were, they thought the best way was to put 
up all they had. (Laughter.) There was allusion made to dancing in 
connexion with the cure of diseases. Those who have been in India must 
be aware of the ceremonies performed to Sitala, the goddess of small- 
pox, to ward off the small-pox. I recently had an opportunity of seeing 
dances performed to the goddess of cholera, whose name is remarkable— 
Maree Ama, “Maree” being the Hindustani for “ great sickness.” 
The meeting was then adjourned. 
REMARKS ON THE FOREGOING PAPER. 
By the Reverend R. Cottins, M.A., late Principal of Cottayam College. 
Orthodox Christians are not unfrequently accused of coming to the study 
of such subjects as this with preconceived notions, towards which they make 
all evidence to bend. It may, perhaps, have been so in some instances ; 
and the disease may sometimes have affected even those who do not belong 
to that class of persons. But this is, therefore, all the more reason for 
approaching the religious history of man with the strictest guard over any 
tendency to prejudice.—Do such facts as those, so interestingly brought 
together in Mr. Eells’s paper, candidly and honestly considered, make for 
the truth of the theories either of Mr. Herbert Spencer or Mr. Frederic 
Harrison ? 
One subject touched upon in this paper is instinct or intuition. Is there 
not a good deal of confusion of mind amongst writers on the subject of 
religion as to these instincts? Man has no instinct, surely, towards the 
objective, towards definite and complex ideas of the mind and the resulting 
acts. Whatever be the analogy, or want of analogy, between what has been. 
called instinct in animals,—that which leads a bird to the complex act of 
building a certain kind of nest, or a bee to construct a definite form of cell,— 
and that which leads a man to construct the definite form, arising from a 
complex idea, of a chair or a steam-engine, it is certain that such ideas 
of man are not innate in any true sense, but are the result of powers of 
reason and memory, which alone are the innate. And yet we find some 
Christian apologists treating of the idea of a God, omnipotent, omniscient, 
omnipresent, the centre of justice, the Creator, the method of worship due 
to Him, and even the very complex idea of sacrifice, as though these were 
