MEDITATIONS AND CRITICISMS 207 



an entirely different condition of mind, from that 

 whioli prevails to-day ; a state of mind whieli viewed 

 all things externally, in an arbitrary and artificial 

 light, which looked upon nature as the theatre of 

 strife between beneficent and malignant spirits, 

 which saw satanic agencies everywhere active, which 

 saw all forces as supernatural forces, which begat a 

 belief in magic, divination, alchemy, astrology, witch- 

 craft, which believed an old woman could turn her- 

 self into a wolf and devour flocks of sheep, which 

 looked upon an eclipse ,or a comet, not as a natural 

 event, but as a supernatural. Nearly all these dark 

 superstitions have perished ; the condition of mind 

 that begat them has passed away, but the supersti- 

 tion of the magic of Christ's blood and all those 

 pagan notions of heaven and hell have survived ; 

 though the intense realization of them of the old 

 days of witchcraft is fast fading out. They are 

 coolly held as intellectual propositions, and that is 

 about all. The light of science, where it is fully ad- 

 mitted, is as fatal to them as sun to mildew. Science 

 begets a habit of mind in which these artificial notions 

 cannot live, just as the study of medicine begets 

 quite a difierent theory of disease from that of the 

 Indian practitioner. 



The study of nature kills all belief in miraculous 

 or supernatural agents, not because it proves to us 

 that these things do not exist, but because it fosters 

 a habit of mind that is unfavorable to them, because 

 it puts us in possession of a point of view from 

 which they disappear. The opposite of the natural 



