Brinton.] ^O [Jan. 5, 



general, and can be recognized in most religions and many phil- 

 osophies. In ancient Greece both the Platonicians and later the 

 Neo-Platonicians thought that each individual has a particular 

 spirit, or daimon^ in whom is enshrined his or her moral person- 

 ality. To this daimon he should address his praj-ers, and should 

 listen heedfully to those interior promptings which seem to arise 

 in the mind from some unseen silent monitor.* 



Many a member of the Church of Rome substitutes for the 

 daimon of the Platonists the patron saint after whom he is 

 named, or whom he has chosen from the calendar, the hagiolog^', 

 of his Church. This analog}^ did not fail to strike the early 

 missionaries, and thej' saw in the Indian priest selecting the 

 nagual of the child a hideous and diabolical caricature of the 

 holy rites. 



But what was their horror when they found that the similaritj' 

 proceeded so far that the pagan priest also performed a kind of 

 baptismal sacrament with water ; and that in the Mexican picture- 

 writing the sign which represents the natal da^^ the tonal, b^'^ 

 which the individual demon is denoted, was none other than the 

 sign of the cross, as we have seen. This left no doubt as to the 

 devilish origiu of the whole business, which was further sup- 

 poi'ted by the wondrous thaumaturgic powers of its professors. 



41. How are we to explain these marvelous statements? It 

 will not do to take the short and easy road of saying they are all 

 lies and frauds. The evidence is too abundant for us to doubt 

 that there was skillful jugglery among the proficients in the 

 occult arts among those nations. They could rival their col- 

 leagues in the East Indies and Europe, if not surpass them. 



Moreover, is there anything incredible in the reports of the 

 spectators ? Are we not familiar with the hypnotic or mesmeric 

 conditions in which the subject sees, heai'S and feels just what 

 the master tells him to feel and see? The tricks of cutting one- 

 self or others, of swallowing broken glass, of handling venom- 

 ous reptiles, are well-known performances of the sect of the 

 Aissaoua in northern Africa, and nowadays one does not have 

 to go oft' the boulevards of Paris to see them repeated. The 

 phenomena of thought transference, of telepathy, of clairvoy- 



* See Alfred Maury, La Mwjie et V Astrologic, pp. 88, 89, 267, etc. 



