THE ARREST OF INQUIRY. 69 



have probably an old form of averting the evil eye; 

 in the act of breathing on a bishop at the service of 

 consecration there was the survival of belief in trans- 

 ference of spiritual qualities, the soul being, as lan- 

 guage evidences, well-nigh universally identified with 

 breath. The modern spiritualist who describes ap- 

 paritions as having the " consistency of cigar-smoke," 

 is one with the Congo negroes who leave the house 

 of the dead unswept for a time lest the dust should 

 injure the delicate substance of the ghost. The in- 

 haling of the last breath of the dying Roman by his 

 nearest kinsman has parallel in the breathing of the 

 risen Jesus on his disciples that they might receive the 

 Holy Ghost (John xx, 22). In the offering of prayers 

 for the dead; in the canonization and intercession of 

 saints; in the prayers and offerings at the shrines of 

 the Virgin and saints, and at the graves of martyrs; 

 there are the manifold forms of that great cult of the 

 departed which is found throughout the world. To 

 this may be linked the belief in angels, whether good 

 or bad, or guardian, because the element common 

 to the whole is animistic, the peopling of the heavens 

 above, as well as the earth beneath, with an innumer- 

 able company of spiritual beings influencing the des- 

 tinies of men. Well might Jews and Moslems re- 

 proach the Christians, as they did down to the eighth 

 century, with having filled the world with more gods 

 than they had overthrown in the pagan temples; 

 while we have Erasmus, in his Encomium Moriae, 

 when reciting the names and functions of saints, add- 



