360 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



important of all, was the belief that natural phenomena of a 

 hurtful type are the result of the action of evil spirits. As a 

 writer has said : " The phenomena which impress themselves most 

 firmly on the mind of the savage are not those which are mani- 

 festly the operation of natural laws and which are productive of 

 beneficial effects. They are, on the contrary, those results which 

 are disastrous and apparently abnormal. Gratitude is less vivid 

 than fear, and the smallest apparent infraction of a natural law 

 produces a deeper impression than the most sublime of its ordi- 

 nary operations. When, therefore, the more startling and terrible 

 aspects of Nature are presented to his mind, when the more deadly 

 forms of disease or natural convulsion desolate his land, the sav- 

 age derives from these things an intensely realized perception of 

 diabolical presence. In the darkness of the night, amid the 

 yawning chasms and the wild echoes of the mountain gorge, 

 under the blaze of the comet or the solemn gloom of the eclipse, 

 when famine has blasted his land, when the earthquake and the 

 pestilence have slaughtered their thousands, in every form of dis- 

 ease which refracts and distorts the reason, in all that is strange, 

 portentous, and deadly, he feels and cowers before the supernatu- 

 ral. Completely exposed to all the influences of Nature, and com- 

 pletely ignorant of the chain of sequence that unites its various 

 parts, he lives in continual dread of what he deems the direct and 

 isolated acts of evil spirits." 



These three causes, then, combined to produce a belief in witch- 

 craft and Satanic possession. 



Let us now trace its growth as far as Christianity is concerned. 

 But to understand this we must go back for a moment to the 

 classic nations among whom Christianity was planted. Magic 

 or sorcery prevailed among the Greeks and Romans, all sects 

 accepting its existence except one sect, that of the Epicureans. It 

 is true, occasional laws were enacted against its practice ; in some 

 instances magicians were condemned to death ; but the persecution 

 in general was only occasional and was not severe, as magic was 

 regarded as an offense not against God or the gods, but as against 

 the state or the individual. The magician was punished because 

 he injured man, not God. And punishments for injuries to men 

 have always been less severe than punishments for supposed in- 

 juries to God. This is the rule of history : punishments for reli- 

 gious offenses have been much greater than those for civil or 

 criminal offenses, the greatness of the crime being measured by the 

 greatness of the being injured. At times it was found that the 

 prognostications of the soothsayers from the flight of birds, the 

 positions of the stars, and other data, tended to produce conspira- 

 cies against the emperor ; and so punishments were inflicted and 

 repressive laws passed. But, in general, magic and soothsaying 



