they solemnly dip the relics of Saint Gulderic in
the waters of the Têt, confident by this ceremony
that they shall secure rain. Rain falls,
sure enough; and if it sometimes falls too
scantily, or too tardily, this is only attributed to
meteoric influences by infidels and materialists.

Many are the traces of the past which scholars
find in the present. The Lupercalian festivals
have become our Lenten carnival—rather a
dreary festival, it must be owned! The January
offerings have become our New Year's gifts—
pleasant enough, when they do not assume the
shape of dreadfully good "gift-books." The
salutation of "God bless you," when you sneeze,
is thoroughly classical. No doubt the ingenious
device of securing "luck" to a newly-married
couple, by throwing an old shoe after the
departing post-chaise, is equally ancient, and
impresses the philosophic mind with a lively sense
of how men imagine the course of Nature to
be determined. The evil eye is not only very
ancient, but seems to be universal. The ancients
believed that when any one's ears tingled it was
because somebody was talking of him; they
believed, also, that it was unlucky to spill the salt.

We have already said that the Church, although
appropriating many of the rites and ceremonies
of Polytheism, energetically repudiated many
others; but in vain. The demons which could
not be invoked at the altar, were invoked in
secret. Magic was called upon to perform what
religion refused. The Church fulminated, and
assured men that they perilled their souls by
commerce with demons; but it did not discredit
the agency of the demons, and its menaces were
futile. In vain also was the secular arm
employed against those whom the fear of hell could
not restrain: the superstition was ineradicable,
irresistible. Curiosity, the desire of vengeance,
the passion for some secret means of superiority
—these motives were stronger than fear, and
these motives could only cease to impel men
when men ceased to believe in supernatural
agency. But against this belief the Church
raised no voice. The wisest of men devoutly
accepted it. Gregory the Third, in his edict
against the use of Magic, especially addresses
himself to the clergy as well as to the laity;
but his edict is against the use of Magic, not
against the belief in Magic.

Magic, no less than Science, rests on the
explanation of phenomena. The only difference is
that Magic seeks its explanation in some analogy
drawn from human nature, and Science seeks its
explanation in some analogy drawn from other
phenomena. No preliminary knowledge is
required for the former; man instinctively dramatises
the events, and interprets them by such
motives as sway his own conduct. For the
latter explanation it is necessary that a vast
amount of knowledge shall have been accumulated;
man must know a great deal about many
phenomena before he can detect their laws.
Let us see this illustrated in the views held
about Dreams.

In Egypt, Assyria, Judæa, and Greece, there
was a regular class of dream-interpreters, men
who undertook to explain what was prefigured
by dreams. No one doubted that the phenomena
were supernatural. Dreams came to a
man; they were not suspected to be the action
of his brain. We see this belief naïvely
exhibited in Homer, who makes Jupiter summon a
dream (oneiros) to his presence as he would
summon any other personage. He bids the
dream descend to the camp of Agamemnon,
and appear before that King of Men, to whom
he must deliver a most delusive message. The
dream departs, and repeats the very words of
Jove. Nor is this conception wonderful. If
you consider dreams, you will notice as one
peculiarity that in them the mind is, as it were,
separated into two distinct entities which hold
converse with each other. We are often
astonished at the statements and repartees of our
double; we are puzzled by his questions; we
are angered or flattered by his remarks—and yet
these have been our own creation. It is natural
to suppose that we have actually been visited
during sleep by one of the spirit world; and until
the science of psychology had learned to interpret
the phenomena of dreams by the phenomena
of waking thought, especially of reverie, this
supernatural explanation would prevail.

The same may be said of insanity. It was
necessarily regarded as supernatural, until science
had shown it to be a disease of the nervous
system. The dreadful aspect, the incoherent
language and conduct of madmen, seemed only
referable to an evil demon having got
"possession" of the man; and this belief was of
course strengthened by the general tendency of
madmen to attribute their actions to some one
urging or forcing them. They fancied themselves
pursued by fiends, whom they saw in the
lurid light of their own distempered imaginations.
But before science could have ascertained
even the simplest laws of insanity, what
an immense accumulation of knowledge on
particular points was necessary! Instead of
believing that a madman is "possessed," we say
he is "diseased;" instead of a demon within
him to be exorcised, we say there is a functional
disturbance in his nervous system which must
be reduced to healthy activity once more. We
know as certainly that a disease of this nervous
system will produce the phenomena of insanity,
as that an inflammation of the mucous
membrane will produce a catarrh, or that disease of
the lungs will produce consumption. But what
vast labours of many generations before it could
have been ascertained that the nervous system
was specially engaged in all mental phenomena,
and that insanity was a disease of this system!
It was so much readier an explanation to
suppose that a demon had entered the unhappy
victim; and this once suggested, it became a
question how best to get rid of the demon.
Incantation was an easy resort. Among the means
of purification many nations seem to have
fancied that " fumigation" must hold a high rank,
demons decidedly objecting to stinks. To this
day the Samoyedes and Ostiaks burn a bit of
reindeer-skin under the nose of the maniac.