NATURE 



29 



THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1879 



DEMONOLOGY AND DEVIL-LORE 

 Demonology and Devil-Lore. By Moncure Daniel 

 Conway, M.A., B.D., of Divinity College, Harvard 

 University, Cambridge, U.S.A. Member of the 

 Anthropological Institute, London. With numerous 

 Illustrations. 2 vols. Svo. (London: Chatto and 

 Windus, Piccadilly, 1879.) 



THESE two volumes carry us back to the period when 

 existing creeds were embryonic, and when primitive 

 man was creating his religion from his environment. 

 The lights of heaven, animal and vegetable life, the 

 elements and natural phenomena supplied the raw 

 material of mythology, and received embodiment as 

 anthropomorphic deities. Mr. Conway premises the 

 inexactness of speaking of the worship of stock and stone, 

 of insect and reptile as primitive. He expresses his belief 

 that these only acquired intrinsic sanctity when the origin 

 of their imputed sacredness was lost— the progress of ideas 

 being from the far to the near, and not from the near to the 

 far. Macaulay has attributed a monotheistic faith to the 

 first inhabitants of Greece. Chalmers has done as much 

 for China, and Mr. Brown, in his great Dionisiak Myth, 

 has stated his conviction that "there is no gradual evolution 

 in human thought, and that the earliest stages of religion 

 and worship were infinitely superior to those which 

 succeeded them." But whilst he endorses these opinions, 

 Mr. Conway must remember that they are not shared by 

 other competent authorities. Dr. Goldziher, for instance, 

 stoutly maintains that religion was painfully evolved from 

 mythology, and that polytheism has been the invariable 

 precursor of faith in a single God. In this conflict of 

 opinion we are as unprepared to decide whether worship 

 rose from the idol to the Deity, or sank from the pure 

 religion of a golden age into the vagaries of a degraded 

 mythology, as we are to determine whether an adoration 

 of the generative powers preceded or grew out of that of 

 the sun. In the present state of our knowledge we must 

 be content to suspend our judgment ; but in examining 

 Mr. Conway's work we must remember that it rests upon 

 a theory which at least is not proven. 



The undefined pantheism of primitive awe, says Mr. 

 Conway, gradually melted into dualism, and the varying 

 aspects of the Almighty as distributor of good and evil 

 caused his separation into distinct embodiments of these 

 principles. This is doubtless, in a sen >e, peifectly true : 

 " theism is found side by side with unconscious pantheism, 

 of which it is only an expression," and the Jew had in 

 Jehovah a distributor of the evil as well as of the good 

 before he evolved, or inherited, the conception of Satan. 

 We are, however, inclined to believe that the first super- 

 natural power which forces a conviction of its existence 

 upon the mind of the savage is that of evil, and that the 

 idea of a beneficent being is both subsidiary and of later 

 occurrence. First, the embodiment of evil is feared and 

 propitiated; next, vvhen invoked successfully for the de- 

 struction of the worshipper's enemies, he begins to exhibit 

 (to his worshipper at least), an amiable phase of his cha- 

 racter, and the conflicting elements which thus come into 

 play form the germs of the rival entities of God and 

 Devil. 



Vol. xxi. — No. 524 



The first volume of the work, which is in two sections, 

 deals with the Demon and its development into the Dragon, 

 whilst the second volume is devoted to the Devil. This 

 latter volume is filled with the theological conceptions 

 which originated and developed the personification of 

 abstract evil. These are scarcely suited for discussion in 

 our pages, and for an account of their subtle gradations 

 we must refer our readers to the book itself. The demon, 

 however, is not theological but natural ; it is a being 

 the harmfulness of which is not gratuitous, but incidental 

 to the gratification of its desires. It is the embodied 

 expression of the natural obstacles with which savage 

 man found himself obliged to contend, and hunger, 

 heat, cold, wild beasts, the warring elements, darkness, 

 disease, and death were the causes to which it 

 owed its birth. It was to propitiate the hungry demon 

 that sacrifices were instituted : in the hope that such 

 offerings might satisfy the insatiate appetite of the 

 monster to which not only human hunger and privation, 

 but also eclipses were held to be due. Here we may 

 offer an explanation, omitted by Mr. Conway, which 

 throws light upon the character of this devourer of the 

 sun and moon. From the most remote antiquity the two 

 points at which the ecliptic and the moon's orbit intersect 

 each other were called the head and tail of the dragon. 

 As these are the points at which eclipses happen we see 

 at once why astronomers fabled the existence of a monster 

 which devoured the sun and moon. Once started the 

 progress of the myth was easy, and after many varying 

 phases the hunger fiend found its later developments in 

 the form of the ogre and the vampire. Mr. Conway says 

 that the visible consumption of sacrifice by fire in part 

 originated the belief that it was the element of fiends, but 

 it appears — on his theory that the progress of thought 

 was from the far to the near — more probable that the sun 

 having been the primary object of worship lent its cha- 

 racteristic of heat to some of the abstractions to which it 

 gave rise. This class of demon was modified as the 

 painful action of intense heat, in the desert sand, in 

 sunstroke, and in drought, was observed by man. The 

 worship of the sun in heaven would pass easily into the 

 worship of his natural representative of fire on earth. In 

 opposition to light and heat we find darkness and cold 

 personified, and trace in such tales as the descent of 

 Ishtar to Hades and the deaths of Baldur and Adonis the 

 grief of man for the loss of the sun. 



A propos of cold Mr. Conway reminds us that hell, 

 which we are accustomed to regard as unpleasantly warm, 

 really means a place of tireless darkness — lire being far 

 too agreeable in northern latitudes to be regarded with 

 disfavour, and he traces the superstitious desire for burial 

 to the south side of a church to a wish for proximity to 

 the happy abodes of Brimir and Sindri — fire and cinders ! 

 This passage is instructive, apart from its humour, for it 

 teaches us how in the constant revolution of opinion the 

 god of to-day is the fiend of the morrow, and how, as 

 Mr. Fiskc has pointed out, the German Abgott sums up 

 in a single etymology the history of the havoc wrought 

 by the monotheistic idea amongst the ancient symbols of 

 Deity. To this degradation certain later forms of demon 

 were due, and it is thus that the gipsy language retains as 

 the word for God that which we employ as the appella 

 tion of the devil. 



