THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. 169 



submit to oppression, whilst the elderly men enjoy all the good 

 things in this world ; as in the ancestor worship, transmigration 

 of souls, and hell-punishment of Buddhists and Hindoos. They 

 are all invented to keep the bulk of the people in order whilst 

 under oppression. Amongst the more savage races the rulers 

 use witchcraft and sorcery for a similar object. Working on 

 the fears of the people through tradition is also employed for 

 good purposes. The Moslem Arabs of the present day people 

 the desert with jinn and genii, the fear of which tends to keep 

 order and honesty and a code of honour where no law and order 

 exists. The Israelites in their wanderings seem to have had 

 the same idea of the jinn as the Bedouin have of the present 

 day. Where the fear of God is feeble in a race, in the interests 

 of law and order some belief in and fear of supernatural 

 agencies is a necessity ; and so long as it is not perverted to the 

 means of injustice by the rulers, it acts well. Although the 

 Bedouin are keen for murder and theft at all times, yet we may 

 rely on their lionour and honesty provided certain ceremonies 

 are performed. 



I found that my knowledge of jinn and demons, from reading 

 Arabian stories, enabled me to get a good deal of honest work 

 out of the Bedouin and other primitive tribes. 



Even civilized races must rely upon the supernatural for 

 keeping law and order amongst those who have no fear of 

 God's Law ; and it seems to me that we have in our own 

 country been taking great risks during the last sixty years in 

 sweeping out all tradition without adequately putting the fear 

 and love of God in their place in the minds of the children. 



We have done it so thoroughly and eftectually that there has 

 been made a clean sweep from the minds of the children of all 

 tradition and local history and folk-lore, and at the same time 

 we have managed to get rid of all the country fairs and 

 meetings, all the games and fun, that used to go on in the 

 country-side, together with all the interesting stories, historical 

 and mythical ; so that the children's minds are absolute blanks 

 in regard to anything but the four walls of the school-room. 

 No wonder that when they leave school they wish to get away 

 from the country which had been made so uninteresting to 

 them, and gather together in the towns. Life is much more 

 interesting when every locality has its local tradition, weird or 

 otherwise, and when by means of fairy tales and local traditions 

 the whole world is peopled with sprites and elves ; and I may 

 state my conviction that children who are accustomed to such 

 lore are far more likely to do well in the world, as all fairy 



