70 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. 



ing that " as many things as we wish, so many gods 

 have we made." Closely related to this group of 

 beliefs is the adoration of relics, the vitality of which 

 has springs too deep in human nature to be wholly 

 abolished, whether we carry about us a lock from 

 the hair of some dead loved one, or read of the frag- 

 ments of saints or martyrs which lie beneath every 

 Catholic altar, or of the skull-bones of his ancestor 

 which the savage carries about with him as a charm. 

 Then there is the long list of church festivals, the 

 reference of which to pagan prototypes is but one 

 step toward their ultimate explanation in nature- 

 worship; there are the processions which are the suc- 

 cessors of Corybantic frenzies, and, more remotely, 

 of savage dances and other forms of excitation; 

 there is that now somewhat casual belief in the 

 Second Advent which is a member of the widespread 

 group wherein human hopes fix eyes on the return- 

 of long-sleeping heroes ; of Arthur and Olger Dansk, 

 of Vainamdinen and Quetzalcoatl, of Charlemagne 

 and Barbarossa, of. the lost Marko of Servia and the 

 lost King Sebastian. We speak of it as " casual," 

 because among the two hundred and eighty-odd sects 

 scheduled in Whitaker's Almanack the curious in 

 such inquiries will note only three distinctive bodies 

 of Adventists. 



All changes in popular belief have been, and, 

 practically, remain superficial; the old animism per- 

 vades the higher creeds. In our own island, for ex- 

 ample, the Celtic and pre-Celtic paganism remained 



