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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40686 ***
+
+ DEMONOLOGY AND DEVIL-LORE
+
+ By
+
+ MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY, M.A.
+
+ B. D. of Divinity College, Harvard University
+ Member of the Anthropological Institute, London
+
+
+
+ With numerous illustrations
+
+
+
+ New York
+ Henry Holt and Company
+
+ 1879
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+Three Friars, says a legend, hid themselves near the Witch Sabbath
+orgies that they might count the devils; but the Chief of these,
+discovering the friars, said--'Reverend Brothers, our army is such
+that if all the Alps, their rocks and glaciers, were equally divided
+among us, none would have a pound's weight.' This was in one Alpine
+valley. Any one who has caught but a glimpse of the world's Walpurgis
+Night, as revealed in Mythology and Folklore, must agree that this
+courteous devil did not overstate the case. Any attempt to catalogue
+the evil spectres which have haunted mankind were like trying to count
+the shadows cast upon the earth by the rising sun. This conviction
+has grown upon the author of this work at every step in his studies
+of the subject.
+
+In 1859 I contributed, as one of the American 'Tracts for the Times,'
+a pamphlet entitled 'The Natural History of the Devil.' Probably
+the chief value of that essay was to myself, and this in that
+its preparation had revealed to me how pregnant with interest and
+importance was the subject selected. Subsequent researches in the
+same direction, after I had come to reside in Europe, revealed how
+slight had been my conception of the vastness of the domain upon which
+that early venture was made. In 1872, while preparing a series of
+lectures for the Royal Institution on Demonology, it appeared to me
+that the best I could do was to print those lectures with some notes
+and additions; but after they were delivered there still remained with
+me unused the greater part of materials collected in many countries,
+and the phantasmal creatures which I had evoked would not permit me
+to rest from my labours until I had dealt with them more thoroughly.
+
+The fable of Thor's attempt to drink up a small spring, and his
+failure because it was fed by the ocean, seems aimed at such efforts
+as mine. But there is another aspect of the case which has yielded
+me more encouragement. These phantom hosts, however unmanageable as
+to number, when closely examined, present comparatively few types;
+they coalesce by hundreds; from being at first overwhelmed by their
+multiplicity, the classifier finds himself at length beating bushes to
+start a new variety. Around some single form--the physiognomy, it may
+be, of Hunger or Disease, of Lust or Cruelty--ignorant imagination
+has broken up nature into innumerable bits which, like mirrors of
+various surface, reflect the same in endless sizes and distortions;
+but they vanish if that central fact be withdrawn.
+
+In trying to conquer, as it were, these imaginary monsters, they
+have sometimes swarmed and gibbered around me in a mad comedy
+which travestied their tragic sway over those who believed in their
+reality. Gargoyles extended their grin over the finest architecture,
+cornices coiled to serpents, the very words of speakers started out of
+their conventional sense into images that tripped my attention. Only
+as what I believed right solutions were given to their problems were
+my sphinxes laid; but through this psychological experience it appeared
+that when one was so laid his or her legion disappeared also. Long ago
+such phantasms ceased to haunt my nerves, because I discovered their
+unreality; I am now venturing to believe that their mythologic forms
+cease to haunt my studies, because I have found out their reality.
+
+Why slay the slain? Such may be the question that will arise in the
+minds of many who see this book. A Scotch song says, 'The Devil is
+dead, and buried at Kirkcaldy;' if so, he did not die until he had
+created a world in his image. The natural world is overlaid by an
+unnatural religion, breeding bitterness around simplest thoughts,
+obstructions to science, estrangements not more reasonable than if
+they resulted from varying notions of lunar figures,--all derived from
+the Devil-bequeathed dogma that certain beliefs and disbeliefs are of
+infernal instigation. Dogmas moulded in a fossil demonology make the
+foundation of institutions which divert wealth, learning, enterprise,
+to fictitious ends. It has not, therefore, been mere intellectual
+curiosity which has kept me working at this subject these many years,
+but an increasing conviction that the sequelæ of such superstitions are
+exercising a still formidable influence. When Father Delaporte lately
+published his book on the Devil, his Bishop wrote--'Reverend Father, if
+every one busied himself with the Devil as you do, the kingdom of God
+would gain by it.' Identifying the kingdom here spoken of as that of
+Truth, it has been with a certain concurrence in the Bishop's sentiment
+that I have busied myself with the work now given to the public.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+Part I.
+
+
+Chapter I.
+
+Dualism.
+
+ Origin of Deism--Evolution from the far to the near--Illustrations
+ from Witchcraft--The primitive Pantheism--The dawn of Dualism
+
+Chapter II.
+
+The Genesis of Demons.
+
+ Their good names euphemistic--Their mixed character--Illustrations:
+ Beelzebub, Loki--Demon-germs--The knowledge of good and
+ evil--Distinction between Demon and Devil
+
+
+Chapter III.
+
+Degradation.
+
+ The degradation of Deities--Indicated in names--Legends of
+ their fall--Incidental signs of the divine origin of Demons and
+ Devils
+
+
+Chapter IV.
+
+The Abgott.
+
+ The ex-god--Deities demonised by conquest--Theological animosity--
+ Illustration from the Avesta--Devil-worship an arrested Deism--
+ Sheik Adi--Why Demons were painted ugly--Survivals of their beauty
+
+
+Chapter V.
+
+Classification.
+
+ The obstructions of man--The twelve chief classes--Modifications of
+ particular forms for various functions--Theological Demons
+
+
+Part II.
+
+
+Chapter I.
+
+Hunger.
+
+ Hunger-demons--Kephn--Miru--Kagura--Ráhu the Hindu sun-devourer--
+ The earth monster at Pelsall--A Franconian custom--Sheitan as
+ moon-devourer--Hindu offerings to the dead--Ghoul--Goblin--
+ Vampyres--Leanness of demons--Old Scotch custom--The origin of
+ sacrifices
+
+
+Chapter II.
+
+Heat.
+
+ Demons of fire--Agni--Asmodeus--Prometheus--Feast of fire--Moloch
+ --Tophet--Genii of the lamp--Bel-fires--Hallowe'en--Negro
+ superstitions--Chinese fire-god--Volcanic and incendiary demons--
+ Mangaian fire-demon--Demons' fear of water
+
+
+Chapter III.
+
+Cold.
+
+ Descent of Ishtar into Hades--Bardism--Baldur--Herakles--Christ--
+ Survivals of the Frost Giant in Slavonic and other countries--
+ The Clavie--The Frozen Hell--The Northern abode of Demons--North
+ side of churches
+
+
+Chapter IV.
+
+Elements.
+
+ A Scottish Munasa--Rudra--Siva's lightning eye--The flaming
+ sword--Limping Demons--Demons of the storm--Helios, Elias,
+ Perun--Thor arrows--The Bob-tailed Dragon--Whirlwind--Japanese
+ Thunder God--Christian survivals--Jinni--Inundations--Noah--Nik,
+ Nicholas, Old Nick--Nixies--Hydras--Demons of the Danube--Tides
+ --Survivals in Russia and England
+
+
+Chapter V.
+
+Animals.
+
+ Animal demons distinguished--Trivial sources of Mythology--
+ Hedgehog--Fox--Transmigrations in Japan--Horses bewitched--
+ Rats--Lions--Cats--The Dog--Goethe's horror of dogs--Superstitions
+ of the Parsees, people of Travancore, and American Negroes, Red
+ Indians, &c.--Cynocephaloi--The Wolf--Traditions of the Nez Perces
+ --Fenris--Fables--The Boar--The Bear--Serpent--Every animal power
+ to harm demonised--Horns
+
+
+Chapter VI.
+
+Enemies.
+
+ Aryas, Dasyus,
+ Nagas--Yakkhos--Lycians--Ethiopians--Hirpini--Polites--Sosipolis--
+ Were-wolves--Goths and Scythians--Giants and Dwarfs--Berserkers--
+ Britons--Iceland--Mimacs--Gog and Magog
+
+
+Chapter VII.
+
+Barrenness.
+
+ Indian Famine and Sun-spots--Sun-worship--Demon of the Desert--The
+ Sphinx--Egyptian Plagues described by Lepsius: Locusts, Hurricane,
+ Flood, Mice, Flies--The Sheikh's ride--Abaddon--Set--Typhon--The
+ Cain wind--Seth--Mirage--The Desert Eden--Azazel--Tawiscara and
+ the Wild-rose
+
+
+Chapter VIII.
+
+Obstacles.
+
+ Mephistopheles on crags--Emerson on Monadnoc--Ruskin on Alpine
+ peasants--Holy and unholy mountains--The Devil's Pulpit--
+ Montagnards--Tarns--Tenjo--T'ai-shan--Apocatequil--Tyrolese
+ legends--Rock ordeal--Scylla and Charybdis--Scottish giants--
+ Pontifex--Devil's bridges--Le géant Yéous
+
+
+Chapter IX.
+
+Illusion.
+
+ Maya--Natural Treacheries--Misleaders--Glamour--Lorelei--Chinese
+ Mermaid--Transformations--Swan Maidens--Pigeon Maidens--The
+ Seal-skin--Nudity--Teufelsee--Gohlitsee--Japanese Siren--Dropping
+ Cave--Venusberg--Godiva--Will-o'-Wisp--Holy Fräulein--The Forsaken
+ Merman--The Water-Man--Sea Phantom--Sunken Treasures--Suicide
+
+
+Chapter X.
+
+Darkness.
+
+ Shadows--Night Deities--Kobolds--Walpurgisnacht--Night as
+ Abettor of Evil-doers--Nightmare--Dreams--Invisible Foes--Jacob
+ and his Phantom--Nott--The Prince of Darkness--The Brood of
+ Midnight--Second-Sight--Spectres of Souter Fell--The Moonshine
+ Vampyre--Glamour--Glam and Grettir--A-Story of Dartmoor
+
+
+Chapter XI.
+
+Disease.
+
+ The Plague Phantom--Devil-dances--Destroying Angels--Ahriman in
+ Astrology--Saturn--Satan and Job--Set--The Fatal Seven--Yakseyo--
+ The Singhalese Pretraya--Reeri--Maha Sohon--Morotoo--Luther on
+ Disease-demons--Gopolu--Madan--Cattle-demon in Russia--Bihlweisen
+ --The Plough
+
+
+Chapter XII.
+
+Death.
+
+ The Vendetta of Death--Teoyaomiqui--Demon of Serpents--Death on
+ the Pale Horse--Kali--War-gods--Satan as Death--Death-beds--
+ Thanatos--Yama--Yimi--Towers of Silence--Alcestis--Herakles,
+ Christ, and Death--Hell--Salt--Azraël--Death and the Cobbler--
+ Dance of Death--Death as Foe and as Friend
+
+
+
+Part III.
+
+
+Chapter I.
+
+Decline of Demons.
+
+ The Holy Tree of Travancore--The growth of Demons in India,
+ and their decline--The Nepaul Iconoclast--Moral Man and unmoral
+ Nature--Man's physical and mental migrations--Heine's 'Gods in
+ Exile'--The Goban Saor--Master Smith--A Greek caricature of
+ the Gods--The Carpenter v. Deity and Devil--Extermination of
+ the Were-wolf--Refuges of Demons--The Giants reduced to Little
+ People--Deities and Demons returning to nature
+
+
+Chapter II.
+
+Generalisation of Demons.
+
+ The Demons' bequest to their
+ conquerors--Nondescripts--Exaggerations of Tradition--Saurian
+ Theory of Dragons--The Dragon not primitive in Mythology--Monsters
+ of Egyptian, Iranian, Vedic, and Jewish Mythologies--Turner's
+ Dragon--Della Bella--The Conventional Dragon
+
+
+Chapter III.
+
+The Serpent.
+
+ The beauty of the Serpent--Emerson on ideal forms--Michelet's
+ thoughts on the viper's head--Unique characters of the
+ Serpent--The Monkey's horror of Snakes--The Serpent protected
+ by superstition--Human defencelessness against its subtle
+ powers--Dubufe's picture of the Fall of Man
+
+
+Chapter IV.
+
+The Worm.
+
+ An African Serpent-drama in America--The Veiled Serpent--The
+ Ark of the Covenant--Aaron's Rod--The Worm--An Episode on the Dii
+ Involuti--The Serapes--The Bambino at Rome--Serpent-transformations
+
+
+Chapter V.
+
+Apophis.
+
+ The Naturalistic Theory of Apophis--The Serpent of Time--Epic of
+ the Worm--The Asp of Melite--Vanquishers of Time--Nachash-Beriach
+ --The Serpent-Spy--Treading on Serpents
+
+
+Chapter VI.
+
+The Serpent in India.
+
+ The Kankato na--The Vedic Serpents not worshipful--Ananta and
+ Sesha--The Healing Serpent--The guardian of treasures--Miss
+ Buckland's theory--Primitive rationalism--Underworld
+ plutocracy--Rain and lightning--Vritra--History of the word
+ 'Ahi'--The Adder--Zohak--A Teutonic Laokoon
+
+
+Chapter VII.
+
+The Basilisk.
+
+ The Serpent's gem--The Basilisk's eye--Basiliscus
+ mitratus--House-snakes in Russia and Germany--King-snakes--Heraldic
+ Dragon--Henry III.--Melusina--The Laidley Worm--Victorious
+ Dragons--Pendragon--Merlin and Vortigern--Medicinal dragons
+ 361
+
+
+Chapter VIII.
+
+The Dragon's Eye.
+
+ The Eye of Evil--Turner's Dragons--Cloud-phantoms--Paradise and
+ the Snake--Prometheus and Jove--Art and Nature--Dragon forms:
+ Anglo-Saxon, Italian, Egyptian, Greek, German--The modern
+ conventional Dragon
+
+
+Chapter IX.
+
+The Combat.
+
+ The pre-Munchausenite world--The Colonial Dragon--Io's
+ journey--Medusa--British Dragons--The Communal Dragon--Savage
+ Saviours--A Mimac helper--The Brutal Dragon--Woman protected--The
+ Saint of the Mikados
+
+
+Chapter X.
+
+The Dragon-slayer.
+
+ Demi-gods--Alcestis--Herakles--The Ghilghit Fiend--Incarnate
+ deliverer of Ghilghit--A Dardistan Madonna--The religion
+ of Atheism--Resuscitation of Dragons--St. George and his
+ Dragon--Emerson and Ruskin on George--Saintly allies of the
+ Dragon
+
+
+Chapter XI.
+
+The Dragon's Breath.
+
+ Medusa--Phenomena of recurrence--The Brood of Echidna and their
+ survival--Behemoth and Leviathan--The Mouth of Hell--The Lambton
+ Worm--Ragnar--The Lambton Doom--The Worm's Orthodoxy--The Serpent,
+ Superstition, and Science
+
+
+Chapter XII.
+
+Fate.
+
+ Doré's 'Love and Fate'--Moira and Moiræ--The 'Fates'
+ of Æschylus--Divine absolutism surrendered--Jove
+ and Typhon--Commutation of the Demon's share--Popular
+ fatalism--Theological fatalism--Fate and Necessity--Deification
+ of Will--Metaphysics, past and present
+
+
+
+Part IV.
+
+
+Chapter I.
+
+Diabolism.
+
+ Dragon and Devil distinguished--Dragons' wings--War in Heaven--
+ Expulsion of Serpents--Dissolution of the Dragon--Theological
+ origin of the Devil--Ideal and Actual--Devil Dogma--Debasement
+ of ideal persons--Transmigration of phantoms
+
+
+Chapter II.
+
+The Second Best.
+
+ Respect for the Devil--Primitive Atheism--Idealisation--Birth of
+ new gods--New gods diabolised--Compromise between new gods and
+ old--Foreign deities degraded--Their utilisation
+
+
+Chapter III.
+
+Ahriman, the Divine Devil.
+
+ Mr. Irving's impersonation of Superstition--Revolution against
+ pious privilege--Doctrine of 'Merits'--Saintly immorality in
+ India--A Pantheon turned Inferno--Zendavesta on Good and Evil--
+ Parsî Mythology--The Combat of Ahriman with Ormuzd--Optimism--
+ Parsî Eschatology--Final Restoration of Ahriman
+
+
+Chapter IV.
+
+Viswámitra, the Theocratic Devil.
+
+ Priestcraft and Pessimism--An Aryan Tetzel and his Luther--Brahman
+ Frogs--Evolution of the Sacerdotal Saint--Viswámitra the Accuser
+ of Virtue--The Tamil Passion-Play 'Harischandra'--Ordeal of
+ Goblins--The Martyr of Truth--Virtue triumphant over ceremonial
+ 'Merits'--Harischandra and Job
+
+
+Chapter V.
+
+Elohim and Jehovah.
+
+ Deified power--Giants and Jehovah--Jehovah's manifesto--The various
+ Elohim--Two Jehovahs and two Tables--Contradictions--Detachment
+ of the Elohim from Jehovah
+
+
+Chapter VI.
+
+The Consuming Fire.
+
+ The Shekinah--Jewish idols--Attributes of the fiery and
+ cruel Elohim compared with those of the Devil--The powers of
+ evil combined under a head--Continuity--The consuming fire
+ spiritualised
+
+
+Chapter VII.
+
+Paradise and the Serpent.
+
+ Herakles and Athena in a holy picture--Human significance of
+ Eden--The legend in Genesis puzzling--Silence of later books
+ concerning it--Its Vedic elements--Its explanation--Episode of
+ the Mahábhárata--Scandinavian variant--The name of Adam--The
+ story re-read--Rabbinical interpretations
+
+
+Chapter VIII.
+
+Eve.
+
+ The Fall of Man--Fall of gods--Giants--Prajápati and Ráhu--Woman
+ and Star-Serpent in Persia--Meschia and Meschiane--Bráhman
+ legends of the creation of Man--The strength of Woman--Elohist
+ and Jehovist creations of Man--The Forbidden Fruit--Eve reappears
+ as Sara--Abraham surrenders his wife to Jehovah--The idea not
+ sensual--Abraham's circumcision--The evil name of Woman--Noah's
+ wife--The temptation of Abraham--Rabbinical legends concerning
+ Eve--Pandora--Sentiment of the Myth of Eve
+
+
+Chapter IX.
+
+Lilith.
+
+ Madonnas--Adam's first wife--Her flight and doom--Creation of
+ Devils--Lilith marries Samaël--Tree of Life--Lilith's part
+ in the Temptation--Her locks--Lamia--Bodeima--Meschia and
+ Meschiane--Amazons--Maternity--Rib-theory of Woman--Káli and
+ Durga--Captivity of Woman
+
+
+Chapter X.
+
+War in Heaven.
+
+ The 'Other'--Tiamat, Bohu, 'the Deep'--Ra and Apophis--Hathors
+ --Bel's combat--Revolt in Heaven--Lilith--Myth of the Devil at
+ the creation of Light
+
+
+Chapter XI.
+
+War on Earth.
+
+ The Abode of Devils--Ketef--Disorder--Talmudic legends--The
+ restless Spirit--The Fall of Lucifer--Asteria, Hecate, Lilith--The
+ Dragon's triumph--A Gipsy legend--Cædmon's Poem of the Rebellious
+ Angels--Milton's version--The Puritans and Prince Rupert--Bel
+ as ally of the Dragon--A 'Mystery' in Marionettes--European
+ Hells
+
+
+Chapter XII.
+
+Strife.
+
+ Hebrew God of War--Samaël--The father's blessing and curse--
+ Esau--Edom--Jacob and the Phantom--The planet Mars--Tradesman
+ and Huntsman--'The Devil's Dream'
+
+
+Chapter XIII.
+
+Barbaric Aristocracy.
+
+ Jacob, the 'Impostor'--The Barterer--Esau, the 'Warrior'--Barbarian
+ Dukes--Trade and War--Reconciliation of Jacob and Esau--Their
+ Ghosts--Legend of Iblis--Pagan Warriors of Europe--Russian
+ Hierarchy of Hell
+
+
+Chapter XIV.
+
+Job and the Divider.
+
+ Hebrew Polytheism--Problem of Evil--Job's disbelief in a
+ future life--The Divider's realm--Salted sacrifices--Theory
+ of Orthodoxy--Job's reasoning--His humour--Impartiality of
+ Fortune between the evil and good--Agnosticism of Job--Elihu's
+ Eclecticism--Jehovah of the Whirlwind--Heresies of Job--Rabbinical
+ legend of Job--Universality of the legend
+
+
+Chapter XV.
+
+Satan.
+
+ Public Prosecutors--Satan as Accuser--English Devil-Worshipper
+ --Conversion by Terror--Satan in the Old Testament--The trial of
+ Joshua--Sender of Plagues--Satan and Serpent--Portrait of Satan
+ --Scapegoat of Christendom--Catholic 'Sight of Hell'--The ally
+ of Priesthoods
+
+
+Chapter XVI.
+
+Religious Despotism.
+
+ Pharaoh and Herod--Zoroaster's mother--Ahriman's emissaries--Kansa
+ and Krishna--Emissaries of Kansa--Astyages and Cyrus--Zohák--Bel
+ and the Christian
+
+
+Chapter XVII.
+
+The Prince of this World.
+
+ Temptations--Birth of Buddha--Mara--Temptation of Power--Asceticism
+ and Luxury--Mara's menaces--Appearance of the Buddha's
+ Vindicator--Ahriman tempts Zoroaster--Satan and Christ--Criticism
+ of Strauss--Jewish traditions--Hunger--Variants
+
+
+Chapter XVIII.
+
+Trial of the Great.
+
+ A 'Morality' at Tours--The 'St. Anthony' of Spagnoletto--Bunyan's
+ Pilgrim--Milton on Christ's Temptation--An Edinburgh saint and
+ Unitarian fiend--A haunted Jewess--Conversion by fever--Limit of
+ courage--Woman and sorcery--Luther and the Devil--The ink-spot at
+ Wartburg--Carlyle's interpretation--The cowled Devil--Carlyle's
+ trial--In Rue St. Thomas d'Enfer--The Everlasting No--Devil of
+ Vauvert--The latter-day conflict--New conditions--The Victory of
+ Man--The Scholar and the World
+
+
+Chapter XIX.
+
+The Man of Sin.
+
+ Hindu myth--Gnostic theories--Ophite scheme of redemption--
+ Rabbinical traditions of Primitive Man--Pauline Pessimism--Law
+ of death--Satan's ownership of Man--Redemption of the Elect--
+ Contemporary statements--Baptism--Exorcism--The 'new man's'
+ food--Eucharist--Herbert Spencer's explanation--Primitive
+ ideas--Legends of Adam and Seth--Adamites--A Mormon 'Mystery'
+ of initiation
+
+
+Chapter XX.
+
+The Holy Ghost.
+
+ A Hanover relic--Mr. Atkinson on the Dove--The Dove in the Old
+ Testament--Ecclesiastical symbol--Judicial symbol--A vision of
+ St. Dunstan's--The witness of chastity--Dove and Serpent--The
+ unpardonable sin--Inexpiable sin among the Jews--Destructive
+ power of Jehovah--Potency of the breath--Third persons of
+ Trinities--Pentecost--Christian superstitions--Mr. Moody on the sin
+ against the Holy Ghost--Mysterious fear--Idols of the cave
+
+
+Chapter XXI.
+
+Antichrist.
+
+ The Kali Age--Satan sifting Simon--Satan as Angel of Light--
+ Epithets of Antichrist--The Cæsars--Nero--Sacraments imitated
+ by Pagans--Satanic signs and wonders--Jerome on Antichrist--
+ Armillus--Al Dajjail--Luther on Mohammed--'Mawmet'--Satan
+ 'God's ape'--Mediæval notions--Witches' Sabbath--An Infernal
+ Trinity--Serpent of Sins--Antichrist Popes--Luther as Antichrist
+ --Modern notions of Antichrist
+
+
+Chapter XXII.
+
+The Pride of Life.
+
+ The curse of Iblis--Samaël as Democrat--His vindication by
+ Christ and Paul--Asmodäus--History of the name--Aschmedai of the
+ Jews--Book of Tobit--Doré's 'Triumph of Christianity'--Aucassin
+ and Nicolette--Asmodeus in the convent--The Asmodeus of Le
+ Sage--Mephistopheles--Blake's 'Marriage of Heaven and Hell'--The
+ Devil and the artists--Sádi's Vision of Satan--Arts of the
+ Devil--Suspicion of beauty--Earthly and heavenly mansions--Deacon
+ versus Devil
+
+
+Chapter XXIII.
+
+The Curse on Knowledge.
+
+ A Bishop on intellect--The Bible on learning--The Serpent and
+ Seth--A Hebrew Renaissance--Spells--Shelley at Oxford--
+ Book-burning--Japanese ink-devil--Book of Cyprianus--Devil's
+ Bible--Red Letters--Dread of Science--Roger Bacon--Luther's
+ Devil--Lutherans and Science
+
+
+Chapter XXIV.
+
+Witchcraft.
+
+ Minor gods--Saint and Satyr--Tutelaries--Spells--Early Christianity
+ and the poor--Its doctrine as to pagan deities--Mediæval
+ Devils--Devils on the stage--An Abbot's revelations--The fairer
+ deities--Oriental dreams and spirits--Calls for Nemesis--Lilith
+ and her children--Neoplatonicism--Astrology and Alchemy--Devil's
+ College--Shem-hammphorásch--Apollonius of Tyana--Faustus--Black Art
+ Schools--Compacts with the Devil--Blood covenant--Spirit-seances in
+ old times--The Fairfax delusion--Origin of its devil--Witch, goat,
+ and cat--Confessions of Witches--Witchcraft in New England--Witch
+ trials--Salem demonology--Testing witches--Witch trials in
+ Sweden--Witch Sabbath--Mythological elements--Carriers--Scotch
+ Witches--The cauldron--Vervain--Rue--Invocation of Hecaté--Factors
+ of Witch persecution--Three centuries of massacre--Würzburg
+ horrors--Last victims--Modern Spiritualism
+
+
+Chapter XXV.
+
+Faust and Mephistopheles.
+
+ Mephisto and Mephitis--The Raven Book--Papal sorcery--Magic
+ seals--Mephistopheles as dog--George Sabellicus alias Faustus--The
+ Faust myth--Marlowe's 'Faust'--Good and evil angels--'El Magico
+ Prodigioso'--Cyprian and Justina--Klinger's 'Faust'--Satan's
+ sermon--Goethe's Mephistopheles--His German characters--Moral
+ scepticism--Devil's gifts--Helena--Redemption through Art--Defeat
+ of Mephistopheles
+
+
+Chapter XXVI.
+
+The Wild Huntsman.
+
+ The Wild Hunt--Euphemisms--Schimmelreiter--Odinwald--Pied Piper
+ --Lyeshy--Waldemar's Hunt--Palne Hunter--King Abel's Hunt--Lords
+ of Glorup--Le Grand Veneur--Robert le Diable--Arthur--Hugo--Herne
+ --Tregeagle--Der Freischütz--Elijah's chariot--Mahan Bali--Déhak
+ --Nimrod--Nimrod's defiance of Jehovah--His Tower--Robber Knights
+ --The Devil in Leipzig--Olaf hunting pagans--Hunting-horns--Raven
+ --Boar--Hounds--Horse--Dapplegrimm--Sleipnir--Horse-flesh--The
+ mare Chetiya--Stags--St. Hubert--The White Lady--Myths of Mother
+ Rose--Wodan hunting St. Walpurga--Friar Eckhardt
+
+
+Chapter XXVII.
+
+Le Bon Diable.
+
+ The Devil repainted--Satan a divine agent--St. Orain's
+ heresy--Primitive universalism--Father Sinistrari--Salvation of
+ demons--Mediæval sects--Aquinas--His prayer for Satan--Popular
+ antipathies--The Devil's gratitude--Devil defending
+ innocence--Devil against idle lords--The wicked ale-wife--Pious
+ offenders punished--Anachronistic Devils--Devils turn to
+ poems--Devil's good advice--Devil sticks to his word--His love
+ of justice--Charlemagne and the Serpent--Merlin--His prison of
+ Air--Mephistopheles in Heaven
+
+
+Chapter XXVIII.
+
+Animalism.
+
+ Celsus on Satan--Ferocities of inward nature--The Devil
+ of Lust--Celibacy--Blue Beards--Shudendozi--A lady in
+ distress--Bahirawa--The Black Prince--Madana Yaksenyo--Fair
+ fascinators--Devil of Jealousy--Eve's jealousy--Noah's wife--How
+ Satan entered the Ark--Shipwright's Dirge--The Second Fall--The
+ Drunken curse--Solomon's Fall--Cellar Devils--Gluttony--The Vatican
+ haunted--Avarice--Animalised Devils--Man-shaped Animals
+
+
+Chapter XXIX.
+
+Thoughts and Interpretations 421
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+DEMONOLATRY.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+DUALISM.
+
+ Origin of Deism--Evolution from the far to the near--Illustrations
+ from witchcraft--The primitive Pantheism--The dawn of Dualism.
+
+
+A college in the State of Ohio has adopted for its motto the words
+'Orient thyself.' This significant admonition to Western youth
+represents one condition of attaining truth in the science of
+mythology. Through neglect of it the glowing personifications and
+metaphors of the East have too generally migrated to the West only to
+find it a Medusa turning them to stone. Our prosaic literalism changes
+their ideals to idols. The time has come when we must learn rather to
+see ourselves in them: out of an age and civilisation where we live in
+habitual recognition of natural forces we may transport ourselves to a
+period and region where no sophisticated eye looks upon nature. The sun
+is a chariot drawn by shining steeds and driven by a refulgent deity;
+the stars ascend and move by arbitrary power or command; the tree is
+the bower of a spirit; the fountain leaps from the urn of a naiad. In
+such gay costumes did the laws of nature hold their carnival until
+Science struck the hour for unmasking. The costumes and masks have
+with us become materials for studying the history of the human mind,
+but to know them we must translate our senses back into that phase
+of our own early existence, so far as is consistent with carrying
+our culture with us.
+
+Without conceding too much to Solar mythology, it may be pronounced
+tolerably clear that the earliest emotion of worship was born out
+of the wonder with which man looked up to the heavens above him. The
+splendours of the morning and evening; the azure vault, painted with
+frescoes of cloud or blackened by the storm; the night, crowned with
+constellations: these awakened imagination, inspired awe, kindled
+admiration, and at length adoration, in the being who had reached
+intervals in which his eye was lifted above the earth. Amid the rapture
+of Vedic hymns to these sublimities we meet sharp questionings whether
+there be any such gods as the priests say, and suspicion is sometimes
+cast on sacrifices. The forms that peopled the celestial spaces may
+have been those of ancestors, kings, and great men, but anterior to
+all forms was the poetic enthusiasm which built heavenly mansions for
+them; and the crude cosmogonies of primitive science were probably
+caught up by this spirit, and consecrated as slowly as scientific
+generalisations now are.
+
+Our modern ideas of evolution might suggest the reverse of this--that
+human worship began with things low and gradually ascended to high
+objects; that from rude ages, in which adoration was directed to
+stock and stone, tree and reptile, the human mind climbed by degrees
+to the contemplation and reverence of celestial grandeurs. But the
+accord of this view with our ideas of evolution is apparent only. The
+real progress seems here to have been from the far to the near, from
+the great to the small. It is, indeed, probably inexact to speak of
+the worship of stock and stone, weed and wort, insect and reptile,
+as primitive. There are many indications that such things were by no
+race considered intrinsically sacred, nor were they really worshipped
+until the origin of their sanctity was lost; and even now, ages
+after their oracular or symbolical character has been forgotten, the
+superstitions that have survived in connection with such insignificant
+objects point to an original association with the phenomena of the
+heavens. No religions could, at first glance, seem wider apart than
+the worship of the serpent and that of the glorious sun; yet many
+ancient temples are covered with symbols combining sun and snake,
+and no form is more familiar in Egypt than the solar serpent standing
+erect upon its tail, with rays around its head.
+
+Nor is this high relationship of the adored reptile found only in
+regions where it might have been raised up by ethnical combinations as
+the mere survival of a savage symbol. William Craft, an African who
+resided for some time in the kingdom of Dahomey, informed me of the
+following incident which he had witnessed there. The sacred serpents
+are kept in a grand house, which they sometimes leave to crawl in
+their neighbouring grounds. One day a negro from some distant region
+encountered one of these animals and killed it. The people learning
+that one of their gods had been slain, seized the stranger, and having
+surrounded him with a circle of brushwood, set it on fire. The poor
+wretch broke through the circle of fire and ran, pursued by the crowd,
+who struck him with heavy sticks. Smarting from the flames and blows,
+he rushed into a river; but no sooner had he entered there than the
+pursuit ceased, and he was told that, having gone through fire and
+water, he was purified, and might emerge with safety. Thus, even in
+that distant and savage region, serpent-worship was associated with
+fire-worship and river-worship, which have a wide representation in
+both Aryan and Semitic symbolism. To this day the orthodox Israelites
+set beside their dead, before burial, the lighted candle and a basin
+of pure water. These have been associated in rabbinical mythology with
+the angels Michael (genius of Water) and Gabriel (genius of Fire);
+but they refer both to the phenomenal glories and the purifying
+effects of the two elements as reverenced by the Africans in one
+direction and the Parsees in another.
+
+Not less significant are the facts which were attested at the
+witch-trials. It was shown that for their pretended divinations they
+used plants--as rue and vervain--well known in the ancient Northern
+religions, and often recognised as examples of tree-worship; but it
+also appeared that around the cauldron a mock zodiacal circle was
+drawn, and that every herb employed was alleged to have derived its
+potency from having been gathered at a certain hour of the night or
+day, a particular quarter of the moon, or from some spot where sun or
+moon did or did not shine upon it. Ancient planet-worship is, indeed,
+still reflected in the habit of village herbalists, who gather their
+simples at certain phases of the moon, or at certain of those holy
+periods of the year which conform more or less to the pre-christian
+festivals.
+
+These are a few out of many indications that the small and senseless
+things which have become almost or quite fetishes were by no means such
+at first, but were mystically connected with the heavenly elements
+and splendours, like the animal forms in the zodiac. In one of the
+earliest hymns of the Rig-Veda it is said--'This earth belongs to
+Varuna (Ouranos) the king, and the wide sky: he is contained also in
+this drop of water.' As the sky was seen reflected in the shining curve
+of a dew-drop, even so in the shape or colour of a leaf or flower,
+the transformation of a chrysalis, or the burial and resurrection
+of a scarabæus' egg, some sign could be detected making it answer in
+place of the typical image which could not yet be painted or carved.
+
+The necessities of expression would, of course, operate to invest
+the primitive conceptions and interpretations of celestial phenomena
+with those pictorial images drawn from earthly objects of which the
+early languages are chiefly composed. In many cases that are met
+in the most ancient hymns, the designations of exalted objects are
+so little descriptive of them, that we may refer them to a period
+anterior to the formation of that refined and complex symbolism by
+which primitive religions have acquired a representation in definite
+characters. The Vedic comparisons of the various colours of the dawn
+to horses, or the rain-clouds to cows, denotes a much less mature
+development of thought than the fine observation implied in the
+connection of the forked lightning with the forked serpent-tongue and
+forked mistletoe, or symbolisation of the universe in the concentric
+folds of an onion. It is the presence of these more mystical and
+complex ideas in religions which indicate a progress of the human
+mind from the large and obvious to the more delicate and occult, and
+the growth of the higher vision which can see small things in their
+large relationships. Although the exaltation in the Vedas of Varuna
+as king of heaven, and as contained also in a drop of water, is in
+one verse, we may well recognise an immense distance in time between
+the two ideas there embodied. The first represents that primitive
+pantheism which is the counterpart of ignorance. An unclassified
+outward universe is the reflection of a mind without form and void:
+it is while all within is as yet undiscriminating wonder that the
+religious vesture of nature will be this undefined pantheism. The
+fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil has not yet been
+tasted. In some of the earlier hymns of the Rig-Veda, the Maruts,
+the storm-deities, are praised along with Indra, the sun; Yama,
+king of Death, is equally adored with the goddess of Dawn. 'No real
+foe of yours is known in heaven, nor in earth.' 'The storms are thy
+allies.' Such is the high optimism of sentences found even in sacred
+books which elsewhere mask the dawn of the Dualism which ultimately
+superseded the harmony of the elemental Powers. 'I create light
+and I create darkness, I create good and I create evil.' 'Look unto
+Yezdan, who causeth the shadow to fall.' But it is easy to see what
+must be the result when this happy family of sun-god and storm-god
+and fire-god, and their innumerable co-ordinate divinities, shall
+be divided by discord. When each shall have become associated with
+some earthly object or fact, he or she will appear as friend or foe,
+and their connection with the sources of human pleasure and pain will
+be reflected in collisions and wars in the heavens. The rebel clouds
+will be transformed to Titans and Dragons. The adored Maruts will be
+no longer storm-heroes with unsheathed swords of lightning, marching
+as the retinue of Indra, but fire-breathing monsters--Vritras and
+Ahis,--and the morning and evening shadows from faithful watch-dogs
+become the treacherous hell-hounds, like Orthros and Cerberus. The
+vehement antagonisms between animals and men and of tribe against
+tribe, will be expressed in the conception of struggles among gods,
+who will thus be classified as good or evil deities.
+
+This was precisely what did occur. The primitive pantheism was broken
+up: in its place the later ages beheld the universe as the arena of
+a tremendous conflict between good and evil Powers, who severally,
+in the process of time, marshalled each and everything, from a world
+to a worm, under their flaming banners.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE GENESIS OF DEMONS.
+
+ Their good names euphemistic--Their mixed character--Illustrations:
+ Beelzebub, Loki--Demon-germs--The knowledge of good and
+ evil--Distinction between Demon and Devil.
+
+
+The first pantheon of each race was built of intellectual
+speculations. In a moral sense, each form in it might be described
+as more or less demonic; and, indeed, it may almost be affirmed that
+religion, considered as a service rendered to superhuman beings,
+began with the propitiation of demons, albeit they might be called
+gods. Man found that in the earth good things came with difficulty,
+while thorns and weeds sprang up everywhere. The evil powers seemed to
+be the strongest. The best deity had a touch of the demon in him. The
+sun is the most beneficent, yet he bears the sunstroke along with
+the sunbeam, and withers the blooms he calls forth. The splendour,
+the might, the majesty, the menace, the grandeur and wrath of the
+heavens and the elements were blended in these personifications,
+and reflected in the trembling adoration paid to them. The flattering
+names given to these powers by their worshippers must be interpreted
+by the costly sacrifices with which men sought to propitiate them. No
+sacrifice would have been offered originally to a purely benevolent
+power. The Furies were called the Eumenides, 'the well-meaning,'
+and there arises a temptation to regard the name as preserving the
+primitive meaning of the Sanskrit original of Erinyes, namely, Saranyu,
+which signifies the morning light stealing over the sky. But the
+descriptions of the Erinyes by the Greek poets--especially of Æschylus,
+who pictures them as black, serpent-locked, with eyes dropping blood,
+and calls them hounds--show that Saranyu as morning light, and thus
+the revealer of deeds of darkness, had gradually been degraded into
+a personification of the Curse. And yet, while recognising the name
+Eumenides as euphemistic, we may admire none the less the growth of
+that rationalism which ultimately found in the epithet a suggestion of
+the soul of good in things evil, and almost restored the beneficent
+sense of Saranyu. 'I have settled in this place,' says Athene in the
+'Eumenides' of Æschylus, 'these mighty deities, hard to be appeased;
+they have obtained by lot to administer all things concerning men. But
+he who has not found them gentle knows not whence come the ills of
+life.' But before the dread Erinyes of Homer's age had become the
+'venerable goddesses' (semnai theai) of popular phrase in Athens,
+or the Eumenides of the later poet's high insight, piercing their
+Gorgon form as portrayed by himself, they had passed through all the
+phases of human terror. Cowering generations had tried to soothe the
+remorseless avengers by complimentary phrases. The worship of the
+serpent, originating in the same fear, similarly raised that animal
+into the region where poets could invest it with many profound and
+beautiful significances. But these more distinctly terrible deities
+are found in the shadowy border-land of mythology, from which we may
+look back into ages when the fear in which worship is born had not yet
+been separated into its elements of awe and admiration, nor the heaven
+of supreme forces divided into ranks of benevolent and malevolent
+beings; and, on the other hand, we may look forward to the ages in
+which the moral consciousness of man begins to form the distinctions
+between good and evil, right and wrong, which changes cosmogony into
+religion, and impresses every deity of the mind's creation to do his
+or her part in reflecting the physical and moral struggles of mankind.
+
+The intermediate processes by which the good and evil were detached,
+and advanced to separate personification, cannot always be traced, but
+the indications of their work are in most cases sufficiently clear. The
+relationship, for instance, between Baal and Baal-zebub cannot be
+doubted. The one represents the Sun in his glory as quickener of
+Nature and painter of its beauty, the other the insect-breeding power
+of the Sun. Baal-zebub is the Fly-god. Only at a comparatively recent
+period did the deity of the Philistines, whose oracle was consulted
+by Ahaziah (2 Kings i.), suffer under the reputation of being 'the
+Prince of Devils,' his name being changed by a mere pun to Beelzebul
+(dung-god). It is not impossible that the modern Egyptian mother's
+hesitation to disturb flies settling on her sleeping child, and the
+sanctity attributed to various insects, originated in the awe felt
+for him. The title Fly-god is parallelled by the reverent epithet
+apomuios, applied to Zeus as worshipped at Elis, [1] the Myiagrus
+deus of the Romans, [2] and the Myiodes mentioned by Pliny. [3] Our
+picture is probably from a protecting charm, and evidently by the god's
+believers. There is a story of a peasant woman in a French church who
+was found kneeling before a marble group, and was warned by a priest
+that she was worshipping the wrong figure--namely, Beelzebub. 'Never
+mind,' she replied, 'it is well enough to have friends on both
+sides.' The story, though now only ben trovato, would represent the
+actual state of mind in many a Babylonian invoking the protection of
+the Fly-god against formidable swarms of his venomous subjects.
+
+Not less clear is the illustration supplied by Scandinavian
+mythology. In Sæmund's Edda the evil-minded Loki says:--
+
+
+ Odin! dost thou remember
+ When we in early days
+ Blended our blood together?
+
+
+The two became detached very slowly; for their separation implied
+the crumbling away of a great religion, and its distribution into
+new forms; and a religion requires, relatively, as long to decay
+as it does to grow, as we who live under a crumbling religion have
+good reason to know. Protap Chunder Mozoomdar, of the Brahmo-Somaj,
+in an address in London, said, 'The Indian Pantheon has many millions
+of deities, and no space is left for the Devil.' He might have added
+that these deities have distributed between them all the work that
+the Devil could perform if he were admitted. His remark recalled to
+me the Eddaic story of Loki's entrance into the assembly of gods in
+the halls of Oegir. Loki--destined in a later age to be identified
+with Satan--is angrily received by the deities, but he goes round
+and mentions incidents in the life of each one which show them to be
+little if any better than himself. The gods and goddesses, unable to
+reply, confirm the cynic's criticisms in theologic fashion by tying
+him up with a serpent for cord.
+
+The late Theodore Parker is said to have replied to a Calvinist who
+sought to convert him--'The difference between us is simple: your god
+is my devil.' There can be little question that the Hebrews, from whom
+the Calvinist inherited his deity, had no devil in their mythology,
+because the jealous and vindictive Jehovah was quite equal to any
+work of that kind,--as the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, bringing
+plagues upon the land, or deceiving a prophet and then destroying him
+for his false prophecies. [4] The same accommodating relation of the
+primitive deities to all natural phenomena will account for the absence
+of distinct representatives of evil of the most primitive religions.
+
+The earliest exceptions to this primeval harmony of the gods,
+implying moral chaos in man, were trifling enough: the occasional
+monster seems worthy of mention only to display the valour of the god
+who slew him. But such were demon-germs, born out of the structural
+action of the human mind so soon as it began to form some philosophy
+concerning a universe upon which it had at first looked with simple
+wonder, and destined to an evolution of vast import when the work of
+moralising upon them should follow.
+
+Let us take our stand beside our barbarian, but no longer savage,
+ancestor in the far past. We have watched the rosy morning as it
+waxed to a blazing noon: then swiftly the sun is blotted out, the
+tempest rages, it is a sudden night lit only by the forked lightning
+that strikes tree, house, man, with angry thunder-peal. From an
+instructed age man can look upon the storm blackening the sky not as
+an enemy of the sun, but one of its own superlative effects; but some
+thousands of years ago, when we were all living in Eastern barbarism,
+we could not conceive that a luminary whose very business it was to
+give light, could be a party to his own obscuration. We then looked
+with pity upon the ignorance of our ancestors, who had sung hymns to
+the storm-dragons, hoping to flatter them into quietness; and we came
+by irresistible logic to that Dualism which long divided the visible,
+and still divides the moral, universe into two hostile camps.
+
+This is the mother-principle out of which demons (in the ordinary
+sense of the term) proceeded. At first few, as distinguished from the
+host of deities by exceptional harmfulness, they were multiplied with
+man's growth in the classification of his world. Their principle of
+existence is capable of indefinite expansion, until it shall include
+all the realms of darkness, fear, and pain. In the names of demons,
+and in the fables concerning them, the struggles of man in his ages of
+weakness with peril, want, and death, are recorded more fully than in
+any inscriptions on stone. Dualism is a creed which all superficial
+appearances attest. Side by side the desert and the fruitful land,
+the sunshine and the frost, sorrow and joy, life and death, sit
+weaving around every life its vesture of bright and sombre threads,
+and Science alone can detect how each of these casts the shuttle
+to the other. Enemies to each other they will appear in every realm
+which knowledge has not mastered. There is a refrain, gathered from
+many ages, in William Blake's apostrophe to the tiger:--
+
+
+
+Tiger! tiger! burning bright
+In the forests of the night;
+What immortal hand or eye
+Framed thy fearful symmetry?
+
+
+
+In what distant deeps or skies
+Burned that fire within thine eyes?
+On what wings dared he aspire?
+What the hand dared seize the fire?
+
+
+
+When the stars threw down their spears
+And water heaven with their tears,
+Did he smile his work to see?
+Did he who made the lamb make thee?
+
+
+
+That which one of the devoutest men of genius whom England has produced
+thus asked was silently answered in India by the serpent-worshipper
+kneeling with his tongue held in his hand; in Egypt, by Osiris seated
+on a throne of chequer. [5]
+
+It is necessary to distinguish clearly between the Demon and the Devil,
+though, for some purposes, they must be mentioned together. The world
+was haunted with demons for many ages before there was any embodiment
+of their spirit in any central form, much less any conception of
+a Principle of Evil in the universe. The early demons had no moral
+character, not any more than the man-eating tiger. There is no outburst
+of moral indignation mingling with the shout of victory when Indra
+slays Vritra, and Apollo's face is serene when his dart pierces the
+Python. It required a much higher development of the moral sentiment
+to give rise to the conception of a devil. Only that intensest light
+could cast so black a shadow athwart the world as the belief in a
+purely malignant spirit. To such a conception--love of evil for its
+own sake--the word Devil is limited in this work; Demon is applied to
+beings whose harmfulness is not gratuitous, but incidental to their
+own satisfactions.
+
+Deity and Demon are from words once interchangeable, and the latter has
+simply suffered degradation by the conventional use of it to designate
+the less beneficent powers and qualities, which originally inhered
+in every deity, after they were detached from these and separately
+personified. Every bright god had his shadow, so to say; and under
+the influence of Dualism this shadow attained a distinct existence
+and personality in the popular imagination. The principle having
+once been established, that what seemed beneficent and what seemed
+the reverse must be ascribed to different powers, it is obvious that
+the evolution of demons must be continuous, and their distribution
+co-extensive with the ills that flesh is heir to.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+DEGRADATION.
+
+ The degradation of deities--Indicated in names--Legends of their
+ fall--Incidental signs of the divine origin of demons and devils.
+
+
+The atmospheric conditions having been prepared in the human mind for
+the production of demons, the particular shapes or names they would
+assume would be determined by a variety of circumstances, ethnical,
+climatic, political, or even accidental. They would, indeed, be rarely
+accidental; but Professor Max Müller, in his notes to the Rig-Veda,
+has called attention to a remarkable instance in which the formation of
+an imposing mythological figure of this kind had its name determined
+by what, in all probability, was an accident. There appears in the
+earliest Vedic hymns the name of Aditi, as the holy Mother of many
+gods, and thrice there is mentioned the female name Diti. But there
+is reason to believe that Diti is a mere reflex of Aditi, the a being
+dropped originally by a reciter's license. The later reciters, however,
+regarding every letter in so sacred a book, or even the omission of a
+letter, as of eternal significance, Diti--this decapitated Aditi--was
+evolved into a separate and powerful being, and, every niche of
+beneficence being occupied by its god or goddess, the new form was at
+once relegated to the newly-defined realm of evil, where she remained
+as the mother of the enemies of the gods, the Daityas. Unhappily this
+accident followed the ancient tendency by which the Furies and Vices
+have, with scandalous constancy, been described in the feminine gender.
+
+The close resemblance between these two names of Hindu mythology,
+severally representing the best and the worst, may be thus accidental,
+and only serve to show how the demon-forming tendency, after it began,
+was able to press even the most trivial incidents into its service. But
+generally the names of demons, and for whole races of demons, report
+far more than this; and in no inquiry more than that before us is it
+necessary to remember that names are things. The philological facts
+supply a remarkable confirmation of the statements already made
+as to the original identity of demon and deity. The word 'demon'
+itself, as we have said, originally bore a good instead of an evil
+meaning. The Sanskrit deva, 'the shining one,' Zend daêva, correspond
+with the Greek theos, Latin deus, Anglo-Saxon Tiw; and remain in
+'deity,' 'deuce' (probably; it exists in Armorican, teuz, a phantom),
+'devel' (the gipsy name for God), and Persian div, demon. The Demon
+of Socrates represents the personification of a being still good, but
+no doubt on the path of decline from pure divinity. Plato declares
+that good men when they die become 'demons,' and he says 'demons
+are reporters and carriers between gods and men.' Our familiar word
+bogey, a sort of nickname for an evil spirit, comes from the Slavonic
+word for God--bog. Appearing here in the West as bogey (Welsh bwg,
+a goblin), this word bog began, probably, as the 'Baga' of cuneiform
+inscriptions, a name of the Supreme Being, or possibly the Hindu
+'Bhaga,' Lord of Life. In the 'Bishop's Bible' the passage occurs,
+'Thou shalt not be afraid of any bugs by night:' the word has been
+altered to 'terror.' When we come to the particular names of demons,
+we find many of them bearing traces of the splendours from which they
+have declined. 'Siva,' the Hindu god of destruction, has a meaning
+('auspicious') derived from Svi, 'thrive'--thus related ideally to
+Pluto, 'wealth'--and, indeed, in later ages, appears to have gained
+the greatest elevation. In a story of the Persian poem Masnavi,
+Ahriman is mentioned with Bahman as a fire-fiend, of which class are
+the Magian demons and the Jinns generally; which, the sanctity of
+fire being considered, is an evidence of their high origin. Avicenna
+says that the genii are ethereal animals. Lucifer--light-bearing--is
+the fallen angel of the morning star. Loki--the nearest to an evil
+power of the Scandinavian personifications--is the German leucht,
+or light. Azazel--a word inaccurately rendered 'scape-goat' in the
+Bible--appears to have been originally a deity, as the Israelites
+were originally required to offer up one goat to Jehovah and
+another to Azazel, a name which appears to signify the 'strength
+of God.' Gesenius and Ewald regard Azazel as a demon belonging
+to the pre-Mosaic religion, but it can hardly be doubted that the
+four arch-demons mentioned by the Rabbins--Samaël, Azazel, Asaël,
+and Maccathiel--are personifications of the elements as energies
+of the deity. Samaël would appear to mean the 'left hand of God;'
+Azazel, his strength; Asaël, his reproductive force; and Maccathiel,
+his retributive power, but the origin of these names is doubtful..
+
+Although Azazel is now one of the Mussulman names for a devil,
+it would appear to be nearly related to Al Uzza of the Koran,
+one of the goddesses of whom the significant tradition exists,
+that once when Mohammed had read, from the Sura called 'The Star,'
+the question, 'What think ye of Allat, Al Uzza, and Manah, that
+other third goddess?' he himself added, 'These are the most high
+and beauteous damsels, whose intercession is to be hoped for,' the
+response being afterwards attributed to a suggestion of Satan. [6]
+Belial is merely a word for godlessness; it has become personified
+through the misunderstanding of the phrase in the Old Testament by
+the translators of the Septuagint, and thus passed into christian
+use, as in 2 Cor. vi. 15, 'What concord hath Christ with Belial?' The
+word is not used as a proper name in the Old Testament, and the late
+creation of a demon out of it may be set down to accident.
+
+Even where the names of demons and devils bear no such traces of
+their degradation from the state of deities, there are apt to be
+characteristics attributed to them, or myths connected with them,
+which point in the direction indicated. Such is the case with Satan,
+of whom much must be said hereafter, whose Hebrew name signifies
+the adversary, but who, in the Book of Job, appears among the sons
+of God. The name given to the devil in the Koran--Eblis--is almost
+certainly diabolos Arabicised; and while this Greek word is found
+in Pindar [7] (5th century B.C.), meaning a slanderer, the fables
+in the Koran concerning Eblis describe him as a fallen angel of the
+highest rank.
+
+One of the most striking indications of the fall of demons from heaven
+is the wide-spread belief that they are lame. Mr. Tylor has pointed
+out the curious persistence of this idea in various ethnical lines of
+development. [8] Hephaistos was lamed by his fall when hurled by Zeus
+from Olympos; and it is not a little singular that in the English
+travesty of limping Vulcan, represented in Wayland the Smith, [9]
+there should appear the suggestion, remarked by Mr. Cox, of the name
+'Vala' (coverer), one of the designations of the dragon destroyed by
+Indra. 'In Sir Walter Scott's romance,' says Mr. Cox, 'Wayland is a
+mere impostor, who avails himself of a popular superstition to keep
+up an air of mystery about himself and his work, but the character to
+which he makes pretence belongs to the genuine Teutonic legend.' [10]
+The Persian demon Aeshma--the Asmodeus of the Book of Tobit--appears
+with the same characteristic of lameness in the 'Diable Boiteux'
+of Le Sage. The christian devil's clubbed or cloven foot is notorious.
+
+Even the horns popularly attributed to the devil may possibly have
+originated with the aureole which indicates the glory of his 'first
+estate.' Satan is depicted in various relics of early art wearing the
+aureole, as in a miniature of the tenth century (from Bible No. 6,
+Bib. Roy.), given by M. Didron. [11] The same author has shown that
+Pan and the Satyrs, who had so much to do with the shaping of our
+horned and hoofed devil, originally got their horns from the same
+high source as Moses in the old Bibles, [12] and in the great statue
+of him at Rome by Michel Angelo.
+
+It is through this mythologic history that the most powerful
+demons have been associated in the popular imagination with stars,
+planets,--Ketu in India, Saturn and Mercury the 'Infortunes,'--comets,
+and other celestial phenomena. The examples of this are so numerous
+that it is impossible to deal with them here, where I can only hope
+to offer a few illustrations of the principles affirmed; and in this
+case it is of less importance for the English reader, because of the
+interesting volume in which the subject has been specially dealt
+with. [13] Incidentally, too, the astrological demons and devils
+must recur from time to time in the process of our inquiry. But it
+will probably be within the knowledge of some of my readers that the
+dread of comets and of meteoric showers yet lingers in many parts
+of Christendom, and that fear of unlucky stars has not passed away
+with astrologers. There is a Scottish legend told by Hugh Miller
+of an avenging meteoric demon. A shipmaster who had moored his
+vessel near Morial's Den, amused himself by watching the lights
+of the scattered farmhouses. After all the rest had gone out one
+light lingered for some time. When that light too had disappeared,
+the shipmaster beheld a large meteor, which, with a hissing noise,
+moved towards the cottage. A dog howled, an owl whooped; but when
+the fire-ball had almost reached the roof, a cock crew from within
+the cottage, and the meteor rose again. Thrice this was repeated,
+the meteor at the third cock-crow ascending among the stars. On the
+following day the shipmaster went on shore, purchased the cock, and
+took it away with him. Returned from his voyage, he looked for the
+cottage, and found nothing but a few blackened stones. Nearly sixty
+years ago a human skeleton was found near the spot, doubled up as
+if the body had been huddled into a hole: this revived the legend,
+and probably added some of those traits which make it a true bit of
+mosaic in the mythology of Astræa. [14]
+
+The fabled 'fall of Lucifer' really signifies a process similar to
+that which has been noticed in the case of Saranyu. The morning star,
+like the morning light, as revealer of the deeds of darkness, becomes
+an avenger, and by evolution an instigator of the evil it originally
+disclosed and punished. It may be remarked also that though we have
+inherited the phrase 'Demons of Darkness,' it was an ancient rabbinical
+belief that the demons went abroad in darkness not only because it
+facilitated their attacks on man, but because being of luminous forms,
+they could recognise each other better with a background of darkness.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE ABGOTT.
+
+ The ex-god--Deities demonised by conquest--Theological animosity
+ --Illustration from the Avesta--Devil-worship an arrested Deism--
+ Sheik Adi--Why demons were painted ugly--Survivals of their beauty.
+
+
+The phenomena of the transformation of deities into demons meet the
+student of Demonology at every step. We shall have to consider many
+examples of a kind similar to those which have been mentioned in the
+preceding chapter; but it is necessary to present at this stage of our
+inquiry a sufficient number of examples to establish the fact that in
+every country forces have been at work to degrade the primitive gods
+into types of evil, as preliminary to a consideration of the nature
+of those forces.
+
+We find the history of the phenomena suggested in the German word for
+idol, Abgott--ex-god. Then we have 'pagan,' villager, and 'heathen,' of
+the heath, denoting those who stood by their old gods after others had
+transferred their faith to the new. These words bring us to consider
+the influence upon religious conceptions of the struggles which have
+occurred between races and nations, and consequently between their
+religions. It must be borne in mind that by the time any tribes had
+gathered to the consistency of a nation, one of the strongest forces of
+its coherence would be its priesthood. So soon as it became a general
+belief that there were in the universe good and evil Powers, there
+must arise a popular demand for the means of obtaining their favour;
+and this demand has never failed to obtain a supply of priesthoods
+claiming to bind or influence the præternatural beings. These
+priesthoods represent the strongest motives and fears of a people,
+and they were gradually intrenched in great institutions involving
+powerful interests. Every invasion or collision or mingling of races
+thus brought their respective religions into contact and rivalry;
+and as no priesthood has been known to consent peaceably to its own
+downfall and the degradation of its own deities, we need not wonder
+that there have been perpetual wars for religious ascendency. It
+is not unusual to hear sects among ourselves accusing each other
+of idolatry. In earlier times the rule was for each religion to
+denounce its opponent's gods as devils. Gregory the Great wrote
+to his missionary in Britain, the Abbot Mellitus, second Bishop of
+Canterbury, that 'whereas the people were accustomed to sacrifice
+many oxen in honour of demons, let them celebrate a religious and
+solemn festival, and not slay the animals to the devil (diabolo),
+but to be eaten by themselves to the glory of God.' Thus the devotion
+of meats to those deities of our ancestors which the Pope pronounces
+demons, which took place chiefly at Yule-tide, has survived in our
+more comfortable Christmas banquets. This was the fate of all the
+deities which Christianity undertook to suppress. But it had been the
+habit of religions for many ages before. They never denied the actual
+existence of the deities they were engaged in suppressing. That would
+have been too great an outrage upon popular beliefs, and might have
+caused a reaction; and, besides, each new religion had an interest
+of its own in preserving the basis of belief in these invisible
+beings. Disbelief in the very existence of the old gods might be
+followed by a sceptical spirit that might endanger the new. So the
+propagandists maintained the existence of native gods, but called
+them devils. Sometimes wars or intercourse between tribes led to their
+fusion; the battle between opposing religions was drawn, in which case
+there would be a compromise by which several deities of different
+origin might continue together in the same race and receive equal
+homage. The differing degrees of importance ascribed to the separate
+persons of the Hindu triad in various localities of India, suggest
+it as quite probable that Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva signalled in their
+union the political unity of certain districts in that country. [15]
+The blending of the names of Confucius and Buddha, in many Chinese
+and Japanese temples, may show us an analogous process now going on,
+and, indeed, the various ethnical ideas combined in the christian
+Trinity render the fact stated one of easy interpretation. But the
+religious difficulty was sometimes not susceptible of compromise. The
+most powerful priesthood carried the day, and they used every ingenuity
+to degrade the gods of their opponents. Agathodemons were turned into
+kakodemons. The serpent, worshipped in many lands, might be adopted
+as the support of sleeping Vishnu in India, might be associated with
+the rainbow ('the heavenly serpent') in Persia, but elsewhere was
+cursed as the very genius of evil.
+
+The operation of this force in the degradation of deities, is
+particularly revealed in the Sacred Books of Persia. In that country
+the great religions of the East would appear to have contended
+against each other with especial fury, and their struggles were
+probably instrumental in causing one or more of the early migrations
+into Western Europe. The great celestial war between Ormuzd and
+Ahriman--Light and Darkness--corresponded with a violent theological
+conflict, one result of which is that the word deva, meaning 'deity'
+to Brahmans, means 'devil' to Parsees. The following extract from
+the Zend-Avesta will serve as an example of the spirit in which the
+war was waged:--
+
+'All your devas are only manifold children of the Evil Mind--and the
+great one who worships the Saoma of lies and deceits; besides the
+treacherous acts for which you are notorious throughout the seven
+regions of the earth.
+
+'You have invented all the evil which men speak and do, which is
+indeed pleasant to the Devas, but is devoid of all goodness, and
+therefore perishes before the insight of the truth of the wise.
+
+'Thus you defraud men of their good minds and of their immortality
+by your evil minds--as well through those of the Devas as that of the
+Evil Spirit--through evil deeds and evil words, whereby the power of
+liars grows.' [16]
+
+That is to say--Ours is the true god: your god is a devil.
+
+The Zoroastrian conversion of deva (deus) into devil does not
+alone represent the work of this odium theologicum. In the early
+hymns of India the appellation asuras is given to the gods. Asura
+means a spirit. But in the process of time asura, like dæmon, came
+to have a sinister meaning: the gods were called suras, the demons
+asuras, and these were said to contend together. But in Persia the
+asuras--demonised in India--retained their divinity, and gave the name
+ahura to the supreme deity, Ormuzd (Ahura-mazda). On the other hand,
+as Mr. Muir supposes, Varenya, applied to evil spirits of darkness in
+the Zendavesta, is cognate with Varuna (Heaven); and the Vedic Indra,
+king of the gods--the Sun--is named in the Zoroastrian religion as
+one of the chief councillors of that Prince of Darkness.
+
+But in every country conquered by a new religion, there will always be
+found some, as we have seen, who will hold on to the old deity under
+all his changed fortunes. These will be called 'bigots,' but still they
+will adhere to the ancient belief and practise the old rites. Sometimes
+even after they have had to yield to the popular terminology, and call
+the old god a devil, they will find some reason for continuing the
+transmitted forms. It is probable that to this cause was originally
+due the religions which have been developed into what is now termed
+Devil-worship. The distinct and avowed worship of the evil Power in
+preference to the good is a rather startling phenomenon when presented
+baldly; as, for example, in a prayer of the Madagascans to Nyang,
+author of evil, quoted by Dr. Réville:--'O Zamhor! to thee we offer no
+prayers. The good god needs no asking. But we must pray to Nyang. Nyang
+must be appeased. O Nyang, bad and strong spirit, let not the thunder
+roar over our heads! Tell the sea to keep within its bounds! Spare,
+O Nyang, the ripening fruit, and dry not up the blossoming rice! Let
+not our women bring forth children on the accursed days. Thou reignest,
+and this thou knowest, over the wicked; and great is their number,
+O Nyang. Torment not, then, any longer the good folk!' [17]
+
+This is natural, and suggestive of the criminal under sentence of
+death, who, when asked if he was not afraid to meet his God, replied,
+'Not in the least; it's that other party I'm afraid of.' Yet it
+is hardly doubtful that the worship of Nyang began in an era when
+he was by no means considered morally baser than Zamhor. How the
+theory of Dualism, when attained, might produce the phenomenon
+called Devil-worship, is illustrated in the case of the Yezedis, now
+so notorious for that species of religion. Their theory is usually
+supposed to be entirely represented by the expression uttered by one
+of them, 'Will not Satan, then, reward the poor Izedis, who alone have
+never spoken ill of him, and have suffered so much for him?' [18]
+But these words are significant, no doubt, of the underlying fact:
+they 'have never spoken ill of' the Satan they worship. The Mussulman
+calls the Yezedi a Satan-worshipper only as the early Zoroastrian held
+the worshipper of a deva to be the same. The chief object of worship
+among the Yezedis is the figure of the bird Taous, a half-mythical
+peacock. Professor King of Cambridge traces the Taous of this Assyrian
+sect to the "sacred bird called a phoenix," whose picture, as seen
+by Herodotus (ii. 73) in Egypt, is described by him as 'very like an
+eagle in outline and in size, but with plumage partly gold-coloured,
+partly crimson,' and which was said to return to Heliopolis every
+five hundred years, there to burn itself on the altar of the Sun,
+that another might rise from its ashes. [19] Now the name Yezedis
+is simply Izeds, genii; and we are thus pointed to Arabia, where we
+find the belief in genii is strongest, and also associated with the
+mythical bird Rokh of its folklore. There we find Mohammed rebuking
+the popular belief in a certain bird called Hamâh, which was said to
+take form from the blood near the brain of a dead person and fly away,
+to return, however, at the end of every hundred years to visit that
+person's sepulchre. But this is by no means Devil-worship, nor can we
+find any trace of that in the most sacred scripture of the Yezedis,
+the 'Eulogy of Sheikh Adi.' This Sheikh inherited from his father,
+Moosafir, the sanctity of an incarnation of the divine essence,
+of which he (Adi) speaks as 'the All-merciful.'
+
+
+ By his light he hath lighted the lamp of the morning.
+ I am he that placed Adam in my Paradise.
+ I am he that made Nimrod a hot burning fire.
+ I am he that guided Ahmet mine elect,
+ I gifted him with my way and guidance.
+ Mine are all existences together,
+ They are my gift and under my direction.
+ I am he that possesseth all majesty,
+ And beneficence and charity are from my grace,
+ I am he that entereth the heart in my zeal;
+ And I shine through the power of my awfulness and majesty.
+ I am he to whom the lion of the desert came:
+ I rebuked him and he became like stone.
+ I am he to whom the serpent came,
+ And by my will I made him like dust.
+ I am he that shook the rock and made it tremble,
+ And sweet water flowed therefrom from every side. [20]
+
+
+The reverence shown in these sacred sentences for Hebrew names and
+traditions--as of Adam in Paradise, Marah, and the smitten rock--and
+for Ahmet (Mohammed), appears to have had its only requital in the
+odious designation of the worshippers of Taous as Devil-worshippers,
+a label which the Yezedis perhaps accepted as the Wesleyans and
+Friends accepted such names as 'Methodist' and 'Quaker.'
+
+Mohammed has expiated the many deities he degraded to devils by being
+himself turned to an idol (mawmet), a term of contempt all the more
+popular for its resemblance to 'mummery.' Despite his denunciations
+of idolatry, it is certain that this earlier religion represented
+by the Yezedis has never been entirely suppressed even among his own
+followers. In Dr. Leitner's interesting collection there is a lamp,
+which he obtained from a mosque, made in the shape of a peacock,
+and this is but one of many similar relics of primitive or alien
+symbolism found among the Mussulman tribes.
+
+The evolution of demons and devils out of deities was made real to
+the popular imagination in every country where the new religion found
+art existing, and by alliance with it was enabled to shape the ideas
+of the people. The theoretical degradation of deities of previously
+fair association could only be completed where they were presented to
+the eye in repulsive forms. It will readily occur to every one that a
+rationally conceived demon or devil would not be repulsive. If it were
+a demon that man wished to represent, mere euphemism would prevent its
+being rendered odious. The main characteristic of a demon--that which
+distinguishes it from a devil--is, as we have seen, that it has a real
+and human-like motive for whatever evil it causes. If it afflict or
+consume man, it is not from mere malignancy, but because impelled by
+the pangs of hunger, lust, or other suffering, like the famished wolf
+or shark. And if sacrifices of food were offered to satisfy its need,
+equally we might expect that no unnecessary insult would be offered in
+the attempt to portray it. But if it were a devil--a being actuated
+by simple malevolence--one of its essential functions, temptation,
+would be destroyed by hideousness. For the work of seduction we might
+expect a devil to wear the form of an angel of light, but by no means
+to approach his intended victim in any horrible shape, such as would
+repel every mortal. The great representations of evil, whether imagined
+by the speculative or the religious sense, have never been, originally,
+ugly. The gods might be described as falling swiftly like lightning
+out of heaven, but in the popular imagination they retained for a long
+time much of their splendour. The very ingenuity with which they were
+afterwards invested with ugliness in religious art, attests that there
+were certain popular sentiments about them which had to be distinctly
+reversed. It was because they were thought beautiful that they must be
+painted ugly; it was because they were--even among converts to the new
+religion--still secretly believed to be kind and helpful, that there
+was employed such elaboration of hideous designs to deform them. The
+pictorial representations of demons and devils will come under a more
+detailed examination hereafter: it is for the present sufficient to
+point out that the traditional blackness or ugliness of demons and
+devils, as now thought of, by no means militates against the fact
+that they were once the popular deities. The contrast, for instance,
+between the horrible physiognomy given to Satan in ordinary christian
+art, and the theological representation of him as the Tempter, is
+obvious. Had the design of Art been to represent the theological
+theory, Satan would have been portrayed in a fascinating form. But
+the design was not that; it was to arouse horror and antipathy for
+the native deities to which the ignorant clung tenaciously. It was
+to train children to think of the still secretly-worshipped idols
+as frightful and bestial beings. It is important, therefore, that we
+should guard against confusing the speculative or moral attempts of
+mankind to personify pain and evil with the ugly and brutal demons and
+devils of artificial superstition, oftenest pictured on church walls.
+Sometimes they are set to support water-spouts, often the brackets
+that hold their foes, the saints. It is a very ancient device. Our
+figure 2 is from the handle of a chalice in possession of Sir James
+Hooker, meant probably to hold the holy water of Ganges. These are
+not genuine demons or devils, but carefully caricatured deities. Who
+that looks upon the grinning bestial forms carved about the roof of any
+old church--as those on Melrose Abbey and York Cathedral [21]--which,
+there is reason to believe, represent the primitive deities driven from
+the interior by potency of holy water, and chained to the uncongenial
+service of supporting the roof-gutter--can see in these gargoyles
+(Fr. gargouille, dragon), anything but carved imprecations? Was it
+to such ugly beings, guardians of their streams, hills, and forests,
+that our ancestors consecrated the holly and mistletoe, or with such
+that they associated their flowers, fruits, and homes? They were
+caricatures inspired by missionaries, made to repel and disgust, as
+the images of saints beside them were carved in beauty to attract. If
+the pagans had been the artists, the good looks would have been on
+the other side. And indeed there was an art of which those pagans
+were the unconscious possessors, through which the true characters of
+the imaginary beings they adored have been transmitted to us. In the
+fables of their folklore we find the Fairies that represent the spirit
+of the gods and goddesses to which they are easily traceable. That
+goddess who in christian times was pictured as a hag riding on a
+broom-stick was Frigga, the Earth-mother, associated with the first
+sacred affections clustering around the hearth; or Freya, whose very
+name was consecrated in frau, woman and wife. The mantle of Bertha did
+not cover more tenderness when it fell to the shoulders of Mary. The
+German child's name for the pre-christian Madonna was Mother Rose:
+distaff in hand, she watched over the industrious at their household
+work: she hovered near the cottage, perhaps to find there some weeping
+Cinderella and give her beauty for ashes.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+CLASSIFICATION.
+
+ The obstructions of man--The twelve chief classes--Modifications
+ of particular forms for various functions--Theological demons.
+
+
+The statements made concerning the fair names of the chief demons
+and devils which have haunted the imagination of mankind, heighten
+the contrast between their celestial origin and the functions
+attributed to them in their degraded forms. The theory of Dualism,
+representing a necessary stage in the mental development of every
+race, called for a supply of demons, and the supply came from the
+innumerable dethroned, outlawed, and fallen deities and angels which
+had followed the subjugation of races and their religions. But though
+their celestial origin might linger around them in some slight legend
+or characteristic as well as in their names, the evil phenomenon to
+which each was attached as an explanation assigned the real form and
+work with which he or she was associated in popular superstition. We
+therefore find in the demons in which men have believed a complete
+catalogue of the obstacles with which they have had to contend in the
+long struggle for existence. In the devils we discover equally the
+history of the moral and religious struggles through which priesthoods
+and churches have had to pass. And the relative extent of this or
+that particular class of demons or devils, and the intensity of
+belief in any class as shown in the number of survivals from it,
+will be found to reflect pretty faithfully the degree to which the
+special evil represented by it afflicted primitive man, as attested
+by other branches of pre-historic investigation.
+
+As to function, the demons we shall have to consider are those
+representing--1. Hunger; 2. Excessive Heat; 3. Excessive Cold;
+4. Destructive elements and physical convulsions; 5. Destructive
+animals; 6. Human enemies; 7. The Barrenness of the Earth, as rock and
+desert; 8. Obstacles, as the river or mountain; 9. Illusion, seductive,
+invisible, and mysterious agents, causing delusions; 10. Darkness
+(especially when unusual), Dreams, Nightmare; 11. Disease; 12. Death.
+
+These classes are selected, in obedience to necessary limitations,
+as representing the twelve chief labours of man which have given
+shape to the majority of his haunting demons, as distinguished from
+his devils. Of course all classifications of this character must be
+understood as made for convenience, and the divisions are not to be
+too sharply taken. What Plotinus said of the gods, that each contained
+all the rest, is equally true of both demons and devils. The demons
+of Hunger are closely related to the demons of Fire: Agni devoured
+his parents (two sticks consumed by the flame they produce); and
+from them we pass easily to elemental demons, like the lightning,
+or demons of fever. And similarly we find a relationship between
+other destructive forces. Nevertheless, the distinctions drawn are
+not fanciful, but exist in clear and unmistakable beliefs as to the
+special dispositions and employments of demons; and as we are not
+engaged in dealing with natural phenomena, but with superstitions
+concerning them, the only necessity of this classification is that
+it shall not be arbitrary, but shall really simplify the immense mass
+of facts which the student of Demonology has to encounter.
+
+But there are several points which require especial attention as
+preliminary to a consideration of these various classes of demons.
+
+First, it is to be borne in mind that a single demonic form will often
+appear in various functions, and that these must not be confused. The
+serpent may represent the lightning, or the coil of the whirlwind, or
+fatal venom; the earthquake may represent a swallowing Hunger-demon,
+or the rage of a chained giant. The separate functions must not be
+lost sight of because sometimes traceable to a single form, nor their
+practical character suffer disguise through their fair euphemistic
+or mythological names.
+
+Secondly, the same form appears repeatedly in a diabolic as well as
+a demonic function, and here a clear distinction must be maintained
+in the reader's mind. The distinction already taken between a demon
+and a devil is not arbitrary: the word demon is related to deity;
+the word devil, though sometimes connected with the Sanskrit deva,
+has really no relation to it, but has a bad sense as 'calumniator:'
+but even if there were no such etymological identity and difference,
+it would be necessary to distinguish such widely separate offices as
+those representing the afflictive forces of nature where attributed
+to humanly appreciable motives on the one hand, and evils ascribed to
+pure malignancy or a principle of evil on the other. The Devil may,
+indeed, represent a further evolution in the line on which the Demon
+has appeared; Ahriman the Bad in conflict with Ormuzd the Good may
+be a spiritualisation of the conflict between Light and Darkness, Sun
+and Cloud, as represented in the Vedic Indra and Vritra; but the two
+phases represent different classes of ideas, indeed different worlds,
+and the apprehension of both requires that they shall be carefully
+distinguished even when associated with the same forms and names.
+
+Thirdly, there is an important class of demons which the reader
+may expect to find fully treated of in the part of my work more
+particularly devoted to Demonology, which must be deferred, or further
+traced in that portion relating to the Devil; they are forms which in
+their original conception were largely beneficent, and have become of
+evil repute mainly through the anathema of theology. The chequer-board
+on which Osiris sat had its development in hosts of primitive shapes of
+light opposing shapes of darkness. The evil of some of these is ideal;
+others are morally amphibious: Teraphim, Lares, genii, were ancestors
+of the guardian angels and patron saints of the present day; they were
+oftenest in the shapes of dogs and cats and aged human ancestors,
+supposed to keep watch and ward about the house, like the friendly
+Domovoi respected in Russia; the evil disposition and harmfulness
+ascribed to them are partly natural but partly also theological,
+and due to the difficulty of superseding them with patron saints and
+angels. The degradation of beneficent beings, already described in
+relation to large demonic and diabolic forms, must be understood as
+constantly acting in the smallest details of household superstition,
+with what strange reaction and momentous result will appear when we
+come to consider the phenomena of Witchcraft.
+
+Finally, it must be remarked that the nature of our inquiry renders
+the consideration of the origin of myths--whether 'solar' or other--of
+secondary importance. Such origin it will be necessary to point out
+and discuss incidentally, but our main point will always be the forms
+in which the myths have become incarnate, and their modifications
+in various places and times, these being the result of those actual
+experiences with which Demonology is chiefly concerned. A myth, as
+many able writers have pointed out, is, in its origin, an explanation
+by the uncivilised mind of some natural phenomenon--not an allegory,
+not an esoteric conceit. For this reason it possesses fluidity, and
+takes on manifold shapes. The apparent sleep of the sun in winter
+may be represented in a vast range of myths, from the Seven Sleepers
+to the Man in the Moon of our nursery rhyme; but the variations all
+have relation to facts and circumstances. Comparative Mythology is
+mainly concerned with the one thread running through them, and binding
+them all to the original myth; the task of Demonology is rather to
+discover the agencies which have given their several shapes. If it be
+shown that Orthros and Cerberus were primarily the morning and evening
+twilight or howling winds, either interpretation is here secondary to
+their personification as dogs. Demonology would ask, Why dogs? why
+not bulls? Its answer in each case detaches from the anterior myth
+its mode, and shows this as the determining force of further myths.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+THE DEMON.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+HUNGER.
+
+ Hunger-demons--Kephn--Miru--Kagura--Ráhu the Hindu
+ sun-devourer--The earth monster at Pelsall--A Franconian
+ custom--Sheitan as moon-devourer--Hindu offerings to the
+ dead--Ghoul--Goblin--Vampyres--Leanness of demons--Old Scotch
+ custom.--The origin of sacrifices.
+
+
+In every part of the earth man's first struggle was for his daily
+food. With only a rude implement of stone or bone he had to get fish
+from the sea, bird from the air, beast from the forest. For ages,
+with such poor equipment, he had to wring a precarious livelihood from
+nature. He saw, too, every living form around him similarly trying to
+satisfy its hunger. There seemed to be a Spirit of Hunger abroad. And,
+at the same time, there was such a resistance to man's satisfaction
+of his need--the bird and fish so hard to get, the stingy earth so
+ready to give him a stone when he asked for bread--that he came to the
+conclusion that there must be invisible voracious beings who wanted all
+good things for themselves. So the ancient world was haunted by a vast
+brood of Hunger-demons. There is an African tribe, the Karens, whose
+representation of the Devil (Kephn) is a huge stomach floating through
+the air; and this repulsive image may be regarded as the type of nearly
+half the demons which have haunted the human imagination. This, too,
+is the terrible Miru, with her daughters and slave, haunting the South
+Sea Islander. 'The esoteric doctrine of the priests was, that souls
+leave the body ere breath has quite gone, and travel to the edge of
+a cliff facing the setting sun (Ra). A large wave now approaches the
+base of the cliff, and a gigantic bua tree, covered with fragrant
+blossoms, springs up from Avaiki (nether world) to receive on its
+far-reaching branches human spirits, who are mysteriously impelled to
+cluster on its limbs. When at length the mystic tree is covered with
+human spirits, it goes down with its living freight to the nether
+world. Akaanga, the slave of fearful Miru, mistress of the invisible
+world, infallibly catches all these unhappy spirits in his net and
+laves them to and fro in a lake. In these waters the captive ghosts
+exhaust themselves by wriggling about like fishes, in the vain hope of
+escape. The net is pulled up, and the half-drowned spirits enter into
+the presence of dread Miru, who is ugliness personified. The secret
+of Miru's power over her intended victims is the 'kava' root (Piper
+mythisticum). A bowl of this drink is prepared for each visitor to the
+shades by her four lovely daughters. Stupefied with the draught, the
+unresisting victims are borne off to a mighty oven and cooked. Miru,
+her peerless daughters, her dance-loving son, and the attendants,
+subsist exclusively on human spirits decoyed to the nether world
+and then cooked. The drinking-cups of Miru are the skulls of her
+victims. She is called in song 'Miru-the-ruddy,' because her cheeks
+ever glow with the heat of the oven where her captives are cooked. As
+the surest way to Miru's oven is to die a natural death, one need not
+marvel that the Rev. Mr. Gill, who made these statements before the
+Anthropological Institute in London (February 8, 1876), had heard
+'many anecdotes of aged warriors, scarcely able to hold a spear,
+insisting on being led to the field of battle in the hope of gaining
+the house of the brave.' As the South Sea paradise seems to consist
+in an eternal war-dance, or, in one island, in an eternal chewing
+of sugar-cane, it is not unlikely that the aged seek violent death
+chiefly to avoid the oven. We have here a remarkable illustration of
+the distinguishing characteristic of the demon. Fearful as Miru is,
+it may be noted that there is not one gratuitous element of cruelty
+in her procedure. On the contrary, she even provides her victims
+with an anæsthetic draught. Her prey is simply netted, washed, and
+cooked, as for man are his animal inferiors. In one of the islands
+(Aitutaki), Miru is believed to resort to a device which is certainly
+terrible--namely, the contrivance that each soul entering the nether
+world shall drink a bowl of living centipedes; but this is simply
+with the one end in view of appeasing her own pangs of hunger, for
+the object and effect of the draught is to cause the souls to drown
+themselves, it being apparently only after entire death that they
+can be cooked and devoured by Miru and her household.
+
+Fortunately for the islanders, Miru is limited in her tortures to
+a transmundane sphere, and room is left for many a slip between
+her dreadful cup and the human lip. The floating stomach Kephn is,
+however, not other-worldly. We see, however, a softened form of him
+in some other tribes. The Greenlanders, Finns, Laps, conceived the
+idea that there is a large paunch-demon which people could invoke to
+go and suck the cows or consume the herds of their enemies; and the
+Icelanders have a superstition that some people can construct such a
+demon out of bones and skins, and send him forth to transmute the milk
+or flesh of cattle into a supply of flesh and blood. A form of this
+kind is represented in the Japanese Kagura (figure 3), the favourite
+mask of January dancers and drum-beaters seeking money. The Kagura
+is in precise contrast with the Pretas (Siam), which, though twelve
+miles in height, are too thin to be seen, their mouths being so small
+as to render it impossible to satisfy their fearful hunger.
+
+The pot-bellies given to demons in Travancore and other districts
+of India, and the blood-sacrifices by which the natives propitiate
+them--concerning which a missionary naively remarks, that even these
+heathen recognise, though in corrupted form, 'the great truth that
+without shedding of blood there is no remission of sins' [22]--refer
+to the Hunger-demon. They are the brood of Kali, girt round with
+human skulls.
+
+The expedition which went out to India to observe the last solar
+eclipse was incidentally the means of calling attention to a
+remarkable survival of the Hunger-demon in connection with astronomic
+phenomena. While the English observers were arranging their apparatus,
+the natives prepared a pile of brushwood, and, so soon as the eclipse
+began, they set fire to this pile and began to shout and yell as they
+danced around it. Not less significant were the popular observances
+generally. There was a semi-holiday in honour of the eclipse. The
+ghauts were crowded with pious worshippers. No Hindu, it is thought,
+ought to do any work whatever during an eclipse, and there was a
+general tendency to prolong the holiday a little beyond the exact
+time when the shadow disappears, and indeed to prolong it throughout
+the day. All earthenware vessels used for cooking were broken, and all
+cooked food in the houses at the time of the eclipse was thrown out. It
+is regarded as a time of peculiar blessings if taken in the right way,
+and of dread consequences to persons inclined to heterodoxy or neglect
+of the proper observances. Between nine and ten in the evening two
+shocks of an earthquake occurred, the latter a rather unpleasant one,
+shaking the tables and doors in an uncomfortable fashion for several
+seconds. To the natives it was no surprise--they believe firmly in
+the connection of eclipses and earthquakes. [23]
+
+Especially notable is the breaking of their culinary utensils by
+the Hindus during an eclipse. In Copenhagen there is a collection
+of the votive weapons of ancient Norsemen, every one broken as it
+was offered up to the god of their victory in token of good faith,
+lest they should be suspected of any intention to use again what they
+had given away. For the same reason the cup was offered--broken--with
+the libation. The Northman felt himself in the presence of the Jötunn
+(giants), whose name Grimm identifies as the Eaters. For the Hindu of
+to-day the ceremonies appropriate at an eclipse, however important,
+have probably as little rational meaning as the occasional Belfire
+that lights up certain dark corners of Europe has for those who build
+it. But the traditional observances have come up from the childhood
+of the world, when the eclipse represented a demon devouring the sun,
+who was to have his attention called by outcries and prayers to the
+fact that if it was fire he needed there was plenty on earth; and if
+food, he might have all in their houses, provided he would consent
+to satisfy his appetite with articles of food less important than
+the luminaries of heaven.
+
+Such is the shape now taken in India of the ancient myth of the
+eclipse. When at the churning of the ocean to find the nectar of
+immortality, a demon with dragon-tail was tasting that nectar, the sun
+and moon told on him, but not until his head had become immortal; and
+it is this head of Ráhu which seeks now to devour the informers--the
+Sun and Moon. [24] Mythologically, too, this Ráhu has been divided;
+for we shall hereafter trace the dragon-tail of him to the garden of
+Eden and in the christian devil, whereas in India he has been improved
+from a vindictive to a merely voracious demon.
+
+The fires kindled by the Hindus to frighten Ráhu on his latest
+appearance might have defeated the purpose of the expedition by the
+smoke it was sending up, had not two officers leaped upon the fire
+and scattered its fuel; but just about the time when these courageous
+gentlemen were trampling out the fires of superstition whose smoke
+would obscure the vision of science, an event occurred in England
+which must be traced to the same ancient belief--the belief, namely,
+that when anything is apparently swallowed up, as the sun and moon
+by an eclipse, or a village by earthquake or flood, it is the work
+of a hungry dragon, earthworm, or other monster. The Pelsall mine
+was flooded, and a large number of miners drowned. When the accident
+became known in the village, the women went out with the families of
+the unfortunate men, and sat beside the mouth of the flooded pit,
+at the bottom of which the dead bodies yet remained. These women
+then yelled down the pit with voices very different from ordinary
+lamentation. They also refused unanimously to taste food of any kind,
+saying, when pressed to do so, that so long as they could refrain from
+eating, their husbands might still be spared to them. When, finally,
+one poor woman, driven by the pangs of hunger, was observed to eat a
+crust of bread, the cries ceased, and the women, renouncing all hope,
+proceeded in silent procession to their homes in Pelsall.
+
+The Hindu people casting their food out of the window during
+an eclipse, the Pelsall wives refusing to eat when the mine is
+flooded, are acting by force of immemorial tradition, and so are
+doing unconsciously what the African woman does consciously when she
+surrounds the bed of her sick husband with rice and meat, and beseeches
+the demon to devour them instead of the man. To the same class of
+notions belong the old custom of trying to discover the body of one
+drowned by means of a loaf of bread with a candle stuck in it, which
+it was said would pause above the body, and the body might be made to
+appear by firing a gun over it--that is, the demon holding it would be
+frightened off. A variant, too, is the Persian custom of protecting a
+woman in parturition by spreading a table, with a lamp at each corner,
+with seven kinds of fruits and seven different aromatic seeds upon it.
+
+In 1769, when Pennant made his 'Scottish Tour,' he found fully
+observed in the Highlands the ceremony of making the Beltane Cake on
+the first of May, and dedicating its distributed fragments to birds
+and beasts of prey, with invocation to the dread being of whom they
+were the supposed agents to spare the herds. Demons especially love
+milk: the Lambton Worm required nine cows' milk daily; and Jerome
+mentions a diabolical baby which exhausted six nurses.
+
+The Devil nominally inherits, among the peasantry of Christendom, the
+attributes of the demons which preceded him; but it must be understood
+that in every case where mere voracity is ascribed to the Devil, a
+primitive demon is meant, and of this fact the superstitious peasant
+is dimly conscious. In Franconia, when a baker is about to put dough
+biscuits into an oven to be baked, he will first throw half-a-dozen of
+them into the fire, saying, 'There, poor devil! those are for you.' If
+pressed for an explanation, he will admit his fear that but for this
+offering his biscuits are in danger of coming out burnt; but that the
+'poor devil' is not bad-hearted, only driven by his hunger to make
+mischief. The being he fears is, therefore, clearly not the Devil at
+all--whose distinction is a love of wickedness for its own sake--but
+the half-starved gobbling ghosts of whom, in Christian countries,
+'Devil' has become the generic name. Of their sacrifices, Grace before
+meat is a remnant. In Moslem countries, however, 'Sheitan' combines the
+demonic and the malignant voracities. During the late lunar eclipse,
+the inhabitants of Pera and Constantinople fired guns over their houses
+to drive 'Sheitan' (Satan) away from the moon, for, whoever the foe,
+the Turk trusts in gunpowder. But superstitions representing Satan
+as a devourer are becoming rare. In the church of Nôtre Dame at Hal,
+Belgium, the lectern shows a dragon attempting to swallow the Bible,
+which is supported on the back of an eagle.
+
+There is another and much more formidable form in which the
+Hunger-demon appears in Demonology. The fondness for blood, so
+characteristic of supreme gods, was distributed as a special thirst
+through a large class of demons. In the legend of Ishtar descending
+to Hades [25] to seek some beloved one, she threatens if the door be
+not opened--
+
+
+
+I will raise the dead to be devourers of the living!
+Upon the living shall the dead prey!
+
+
+
+This menace shows that the Chaldæan and Babylonian belief in the
+vampyre, called Akhkharu in Assyrian, was fully developed at a very
+early date. Although the Hunger-demon was very fully developed in
+India, it does not appear to have been at any time so cannibalistic,
+possibly because the natives were not great flesh-eaters. In some
+cases, indeed, we meet with the vampyre superstition; as in the story
+of Vikram and the Vampyre, and in the Tamil drama of Harichándra,
+where the frenzied Sandramáti says to the king, 'I belong to the
+race of elves, and I have killed thy child in order that I might
+feed on its delicate flesh.' Such expressions are rare enough to
+warrant suspicion of their being importations. The Vetala's appetite
+is chiefly for corpses. The poor hungry demons of India--such as the
+Bhút, a dismal, ravenous ghost, dreaded at the moon-wane of the month
+Katik (Oct.-Nov.)--was not supposed to devour man, but only man's
+food. The Hindu demons of this class may be explained by reference
+to the sráddha, or oblation to ancestors, concerning which we read
+directions in the Manu Code. 'The ancestors of men are satisfied a
+whole month with tila, rice, &c.; two months with fish, &c. The Manes
+say, Oh, may that man be born in our line who may give us milky food,
+with honey and pure butter, both on the thirteenth of the moon and
+when the shadow of an elephant falls to the east!' The bloodthirsty
+demons of India have pretty generally been caught up like Kali into
+a higher symbolism, and their voracity systematised and satisfied in
+sacrificial commutations. The popular belief in the southern part of
+that country is indicated by Professor Monier Williams, in a letter
+written from Southern India, wherein he remarks that the devils alone
+require propitiation. It is generally a simple procedure, performed
+by offerings of food or other articles supposed to be acceptable
+to disembodied beings. For example, when a certain European, once a
+terror to the district in which he lived, died in the South of India,
+the natives were in the constant habit of depositing brandy and cigars
+on his tomb to propitiate his spirit, supposed to roam about the
+neighbourhood in a restless manner, and with evil proclivities. The
+very same was done to secure the good offices of the philanthropic
+spirit of a great European sportsman, who, when he was alive, delivered
+his district from the ravages of tigers. Indeed all evil spirits
+are thought to be opposed by good ones, who, if duly propitiated,
+make it their business to guard the inhabitants of particular places
+from demonic intruders. Each district, and even every village, has
+its guardian genius, often called its Mother. [26]
+
+Such ideas as these are represented in Europe in some varieties of
+the Kobold and the Goblin (Gk. kobalos). Though the goblin must,
+according to folk-philosophy, be fed with nice food, it is not
+a deadly being; on the contrary, it is said the Gobelin tapestry
+derives its name because the secret of its colours was gained from
+these ghosts. Though St. Taurin expelled one from Evreux, he found
+it so polite that he would not send it to hell, and it still haunts
+the credulous there and at Caen, without being thought very formidable.
+
+The demon that 'lurks in graveyards' is universal, and may have
+suggested cremation. In the East it is represented mainly by such forms
+as the repulsive ghoul, which preys on dead bodies; but it has been
+developed in some strange way to the Slavonic phantom called Vampyre,
+whose peculiar fearfulness is that it represents the form in which
+any deceased person may reappear, not ghoul-like to batten on the
+dead, but to suck the blood of the living. This is perhaps the most
+formidable survival of demonic superstition now existing in the world.
+
+A people who still have in their dictionary such a word as 'miscreant'
+(misbeliever) can hardly wonder that the priests of the Eastern
+Church fostered the popular belief that heretics at death changed
+into drinkers of the blood of the living. The Slavonic vampyres have
+declined in England and America to be the 'Ogres,' who 'smell the blood
+of an Englishman,' but are rarely supposed to enjoy it; but it exposes
+the real ugliness of the pious superstitions sometimes deemed pretty,
+that, in proportion to the intensity of belief in supernaturalism,
+the people live in terror of the demons that go about seeking whom
+they may devour. In Russia the watcher beside a corpse is armed with
+holy charms against attack from it at midnight. A vampyre may be the
+soul of any outcast from the Church, or one over whose corpse, before
+burial, a cat has leaped or a bird flown. It may be discovered in a
+graveyard by leading a black colt through; the animal will refuse to
+tread on the vampyre's grave, and the body is taken out and a stake
+driven through it, always by a single blow. A related class of demons
+are the 'heart-devourers.' They touch their victim with an aspen or
+other magical twig; the heart falls out, and is, perhaps, replaced
+by some baser one. Mr. Ralston mentions a Mazovian story in which a
+hero awakes with the heart of a hare, and remains a coward ever after;
+[27] and in another case a quiet peasant received a cock's heart and
+was always crowing. The Werewolf, in some respects closely related
+to the vampyre, also pursues his ravages among the priest-ridden
+peasantry of the South and East.
+
+In Germany, though the more horrible forms of the superstition are
+rare, the 'Nachzehrer' is much dreaded. Even in various Protestant
+regions it is thought safest that a cross should be set beside every
+grave to impede any demonic propensities that may take possession
+of the person interred; and where food is not still buried with the
+corpse to assuage any pangs of hunger that may arise, a few grains
+of corn or rice are scattered upon it in reminiscence of the old
+custom. In Diesdorf it is believed that if money is not placed in the
+dead person's mouth at burial, or his name not cut from his shirt, he
+is likely to become a Nachzehrer, and that the ghost will come forth
+in the form of a pig. It is considered a sure preventative of such
+a result to break the neck of the dead body. On one occasion, it is
+there related, several persons of one family having died, the suspected
+corpse was exhumed, and found to have eaten up its own grave-clothes.
+
+Dr. Dyer, an eminent physician of Chicago, Illinois, told me (1875)
+that a case occurred in that city within his personal knowledge,
+where the body of a woman who had died of consumption was taken out of
+the grave and the lungs burned, under a belief that she was drawing
+after her into the grave some of her surviving relatives. In 1874,
+according to the Providence Journal, in the village of Peacedale, Rhode
+Island, U.S., Mr. William Rose dug up the body of his own daughter,
+and burned her heart, under the belief that she was wasting away the
+lives of other members of his family.
+
+The characteristics of modern 'Spiritualism' appear to indicate
+that the superstitious have outgrown this ancient fear of ghostly
+malevolence where surrounded by civilisation. It is very rare in the
+ancient world or in barbarous regions to find any invocations for the
+return of the spirits of the dead. Mr. Tylor has quoted a beautiful
+dirge used by the Ho tribe of India, beginning--
+
+
+
+We never scolded you, never wronged you;
+ Come to us back!
+
+
+
+But generally funereal customs are very significant of the fear that
+spirits may return, and their dirges more in the vein of the Bodo
+of North-East India: 'Take and eat: heretofore you have eaten and
+drunk with us, you can do so no more: you were one of us, you can be
+so no longer: we come no more to you, come you not to us.' 'Even,'
+says Mr. Tylor, 'in the lowest culture we find flesh holding its own
+against spirit, and at higher stages the householder rids himself with
+little scruple of an unwelcome inmate. The Greenlanders would carry
+the dead out by the window, not by the door, while an old woman,
+waving a firebrand behind, cried 'Piklerrukpok!' i.e., 'There is
+nothing more to be had here!' the Hottentots removed the dead from the
+hut by an opening broken out on purpose, to prevent him from finding
+the way back; the Siamese, with the same intention, break an opening
+through the house wall to carry the coffin through, and then hurry it
+at full speed thrice round the house; the Siberian Chuwashes fling a
+red-hot stone after the corpse is carried out, for an obstacle to bar
+the soul from coming back; so Brandenburg peasants pour out a pail of
+water at the door after the coffin to prevent the ghost from walking;
+and Pomeranian mourners returning from the churchyard leave behind
+the straw from the hearse, that the wandering soul may rest there,
+and not come back so far as home.' [28]
+
+It may be remarked, in this connection, that in nearly all the pictures
+of demons and devils, they are represented as very lean. The exceptions
+will be found generally in certain Southern and tropical demons which
+represent cloud or storm--Typhon, for instance--and present a swollen
+or bloated appearance. No Northern devil is fat. Shakespeare ascribes
+to Cæsar a suspicion of leanness--
+
+
+ Yond' Cassius hath a lean and hungry look:
+ He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
+
+
+When Antony defends Cassius, Cæsar only replies, 'Would he were
+fatter!' This mistrust of leanness is a reflection from all the
+Hunger-demons; it interprets the old sayings that a devil, however
+fair in front, may be detected by hollowness of the back, and that
+he is usually so thin as to cast no shadow. [29]
+
+Illustrations of the Hunger-demon and its survivals might be greatly
+multiplied, were it necessary. It need only, however, be mentioned that
+it is to this early and most universal conception of præternatural
+danger that the idea of sacrifice as well as of fasting must be
+ascribed. It is, indeed, too obvious to require extended demonstration
+that the notion of offering fruits and meat to an invisible being
+could only have originated in the belief that such being was hungry,
+however much the spiritualisation of such offerings may have attended
+their continuance among enlightened peoples. In the evolution of
+purer deities, Fire--'the devouring element'--was substituted for a
+coarser method of accepting sacrifices, and it became a sign of baser
+beings--such as the Assyrian Akhkharu, and the later Lamia--to consume
+dead bodies with their teeth; and this fire was the spiritual element
+in the idolatries whose objects were visible. But the original accent
+of sacrifice never left it. The Levitical Law says: 'The two kidneys,
+and the fat that is upon them, which is by the flanks, and the caul
+above the liver, with the kidneys, it shall he take away. And the
+priest shall burn them upon the altar: it is the food of the offering
+made by fire for a sweet savour: all the fat is the Lord's. It shall be
+a perpetual statute for your generations throughout all your dwellings,
+that ye eat neither fat nor blood.' [30] We find the Hunger-demon
+shown as well in the wrath of Jehovah against the sons of Eli for
+eating the choice parts of the meats offered on his altar, as in that
+offering of tender infants to Moloch which his priests denounced,
+or in Saturn devouring his children, whom Aryan faith dethroned;
+and they all reappear as phantoms thinly veiled above the spotless
+Lamb offered up on Calvary, the sacrificed Macaria ('Blessed'), the
+pierced heart of Mary. The beautiful boy Menoeceus must be sacrificed
+to save Thebes; the gods will not have aged and tough Creon, though a
+king, in his place. Iphigenia, though herself saved from the refined
+palate of Artemis, through the huntress's fondness for kid's blood,
+becomes the priestess of human sacrifices. The human offering deemed
+half-divine could alone at last satisfy the Deity, gathered in his
+side this sheaf of sacrificial knives, whetted in many lands and
+ages, and in his self-sacrifice the Hunger-demon himself was made
+the victim. Theologians have been glad to rescue the First Person
+of their Trinity from association with the bloodthirsty demons of
+barbarous ages by describing the sacrifice of Jesus as God himself
+becoming the victim of an eternal law. But, whatever may be said of
+this complex device, it is sufficient evidence that man's primitive
+demon which personified his hunger has ended with being consumed on
+his own altar. For though fasting is a survival of the same savage
+notion that man may secure benefits from invisible beings by leaving
+them the food, it is a practice which survives rather through the
+desire of imitating ascetic saints than because of any understood
+principle. The strange yet natural consummation adds depth of meaning
+to the legend of Odin being himself sacrificed in his disguise on
+the Holy Tree at Upsala, where human victims were hung as offerings
+to him; and to his rune in the Havamal--
+
+
+ I know that I hung
+ On a wind-rocked tree
+ Nine whole nights,
+ With a spear wounded,
+ And to Odin offered
+ Myself to myself.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+HEAT.
+
+ Demons of Fire--Agni--Asmodeus--Prometheus--Feast of fire--Moloch
+ --Tophet--Genii of the lamp--Bel-fires--Hallowe'en--Negro
+ superstitions--Chinese fire-god--Volcanic and incendiary demons--
+ Mangaian fire-demon--Demons' fear of water.
+
+
+Fire was of old the element of fiends. No doubt this was in part due to
+the fact that it also was a devouring element. Sacrifices were burnt;
+the demon visibly consumed them. But the great flame-demons represent
+chiefly the destructive and painful action of intense heat. They
+originate in regions of burning desert, of sunstroke, and drouth.
+
+Agni, the Hindu god of fire, was adored in Vedic hymns as the twin
+of Indra.
+
+'Thy appearance is fair to behold, thou bright-faced Agni, when like
+gold thou shinest at hand; thy brightness comes like the lightning
+of heaven; thou showest splendour like the splendour of the bright sun.
+
+'Adorable and excellent Agni, emit the moving and graceful smoke.
+
+'The flames of Agni are luminous, powerful, fearful, and not to
+be trusted.
+
+'I extol the greatness of that showerer of rain, whom men celebrate
+as the slayer of Vritra: the Agni, Vaiswanara, slew the stealer of
+the waters.'
+
+The slaying of Vritra, the monster, being the chief exploit of Indra,
+Agni could only share in it as being the flame that darted with
+Indra's weapon, the disc (of the sun).
+
+'Thou (Agni) art laid hold off with difficulty, like the young of
+tortuously twining snakes, thou who art a consumer of many forests
+as a beast is of fodder.'
+
+Petrifaction awaits all these glowing metaphors of early time. Verbal
+inspiration will make Agni a literally tortuous serpent and consuming
+fire. His smoke, called Kali (black), is now the name of Siva's
+terrible bride.
+
+Much is said in Vedic hymns of the method of producing the sacred
+flame symbolising Agni; namely, the rubbing together of two sticks. 'He
+it is whom the two sticks have engendered, like a new-born babe.' It
+is a curious coincidence that a similar phrase should describe 'the
+devil on two sticks,' who has come by way of Persia into European
+romance. Asmodeus was a lame demon, and his 'two sticks' as 'Diable
+Boiteux' are crutches; but his lameness may be referable to the
+attenuated extremities suggested by spires of flame--'tortuously
+twining snakes,'--rather than to the rabbinical myth that he broke
+his leg on his way to meet Solomon. Benfey identified Asmodeus as
+Zend Aêshma-daêva, demon of lust. His goat-feet and fire-coal eyes
+are described by Le Sage, and the demon says he was lamed by falling
+from the air, like Vulcan, when contending with Pillardoc. It is not
+difficult to imagine how flame engendered by the rubbing of sticks
+might have attained personification as sensual passion, especially
+among Zoroastrians, who would detach from the adorable Fire all
+associations of evil. It would harmonise well with the Persian
+tendency to diabolise Indian gods, that they should note the lustful
+character occasionally ascribed to Agni in the Vedas. 'Him alone,
+the ever-youthful Agni, men groom like a horse in the evening and
+at dawn; they bed him as a stranger in his couch; the light of Agni,
+the worshipped male, is lighted.' Agni was the Indian 'Brulefer' or
+love-charmer, and patron of marriage; the fire-god Hephaistos was the
+husband of Aphrodite; the day of the Norse thunder-and-lightning god
+Thor (Thursday), is in Scandinavian regions considered the luckiest
+for marriages.
+
+The process of obtaining fire by friction is represented by a nobler
+class of myths than that referred to. In the Mahábhárata the gods
+and demons together churn the ocean for the nectar of immortality;
+and they use for their churning-stick the mountain Manthara. This word
+appears in pramantha, which means a fire-drill, and from it comes the
+great name of Prometheus, who stole fire from heaven, and conferred
+on mankind a boon which rendered them so powerful that the jealousy
+and wrath of Zeus were excited. This fable is generally read in its
+highly rationalised and mystical form, and on this account belongs to
+another part of our general subject; but it may be remarked here that
+the Titan so terribly tortured by Zeus could hardly have been regarded,
+originally, as the friend of man. At the time when Zeus was a god
+genuinely worshipped--when he first stood forth as the supplanter of
+the malign devourer Saturn--it could have been no friend of man who
+was seen chained on the rock for ever to be the vulture's prey. It
+was fire in some destructive form which must have been then associated
+with Prometheus, and not that power by which later myths represented
+his animating with a divine spark the man of clay. The Hindu myth
+of churning the ocean for the immortal draught, even if it be proved
+that the ocean is heaven and the draught lightning, does not help us
+much. The traditional association of Prometheus with the Arts might
+almost lead one to imagine that the early use of fire by some primitive
+inventor had brought upon him the wrath of his mates, and that Zeus'
+thunderbolts represented some early 'strike' against machinery.
+
+It is not quite certain that it may not have been through some
+euphemistic process that Fire-worship arose in Persia. Not only does
+fire occupy a prominent place in the tortures inflicted by Ahriman
+in the primitive Parsee Inferno, but it was one of the weapons by
+which he attempted to destroy the heavenly child Zoroaster. The evil
+magicians kindled a fire in the desert and threw the child on it;
+but his mother, Dogdo, found him sleeping tranquilly on the flames,
+which were as a pleasant bath, and his face shining like Zohore and
+Moschteri (Jupiter and Mercury). [31] The Zoroastrians also held
+that the earth would ultimately be destroyed by fire; its metals and
+minerals, ignited by a comet, would form streams which all souls would
+have to pass through: they would be pleasant to the righteous, but
+terrible to the sinful,--who, however, would come through, purified,
+into paradise, the last to arrive being Ahriman himself.
+
+The combustible nature of many minerals under the surface of the
+earth,--which was all the realm of Hades (invisible),--would assist
+the notion of a fiery abode for the infernal gods. Our phrase 'plutonic
+rock' would then have a very prosaic sense. Pliny says that in his time
+sulphur was used to keep off evil spirits, and it is not impossible
+that it first came to be used as a medicine by this route. [32]
+
+Fire-festivals still exist in India, where the ancient raiment of Agni
+has been divided up and distributed among many deities. At the popular
+annual festival in honour of Dharma Rajah, called the Feast of Fire,
+the devotees walk barefoot over a glowing fire extending forty feet. It
+lasts eighteen days, during which time those that make a vow to keep
+it must fast, abstain from women, lie on the bare ground, and walk
+on a brisk fire. The eighteenth day they assemble on the sound of
+instruments, their heads crowned with flowers, their bodies daubed
+with saffron, and follow the figures of Dharma Rajah and Draupadi
+his wife in procession. When they come to the fire, they stir it
+to animate its activity, and take a little of the ashes, with which
+they rub their foreheads; and when the gods have been carried three
+times round it they walk over a hot fire, about forty feet. Some
+carry their children in their arms, and others lances, sabres, and
+standards. After the ceremony the people press to collect the ashes
+to rub their foreheads with, and obtain from devotees the flowers
+with which they were adorned, and which they carefully preserve. [33]
+
+The passion of Agni reappears in Draupadi purified by fire for
+her five husbands, and especially her union with Dharma Rajah,
+son of Yama, is celebrated in this unorthodox passion-feast. It has
+been so much the fashion for travellers to look upon all 'idolatry'
+with biblical eyes, that we cannot feel certain with Sonnerat that
+there was anything more significant in the carrying of children by
+the devotees, than the supposition that what was good for the parent
+was equally beneficial to the child. But the identification of Moloch
+with an Aryan deity is not important; the Indian Feast of Fire and
+the rites of Moloch are derived by a very simple mental process
+from the most obvious aspects of the Sun as the quickening and the
+consuming power in nature. The child offered to Moloch was offered
+to the god by whom he was generated, and as the most precious of all
+the fruits of the earth for which his genial aid was implored and his
+destructive intensity deprecated. Moloch, a word that means 'king,'
+was a name almost synonymous with human sacrifice. It was in all
+probability at first only a local (Ammonite) personification growing
+out of an ancient shrine of Baal. The Midianite Baal accompanied the
+Israelites into the wilderness, and that worship was never thoroughly
+eradicated. In the Egyptian Confession of Faith, which the initiated
+took even into their graves inscribed upon a scroll, the name of
+God is not mentioned, but is expressed only by the words Nuk pu Nuk,
+'I am he who I am.' [34] The flames of the burning bush, from which
+these same words came to Moses, were kindled from Baal, the Sun;
+and we need not wonder that while the more enlightened chiefs of
+Israel preserved the higher ideas and symbols of the countries they
+abandoned, the ignorant would still cling to Apis (the Golden Calf),
+to Ashtaroth, and to Moloch. Amos (v. 26), and after him Stephen the
+martyr (Acts vii. 43), reproach the Hebrews with having carried into
+the wilderness the tabernacle of their god Moloch. And though the
+passing of children through the fire to Moloch was, by the Mosaic Law,
+made a capital crime, the superstition and the corresponding practice
+retained such strength that we find Solomon building a temple to Moloch
+on the Mount of Olives (1 Kings xi. 7), and, long after, Manasseh
+making his son pass through the fire in honour of the same god.
+
+It is certain from the denunciations of the prophets [35] that the
+destruction of children in these flames was actual. From Jeremiah
+xix. 6, as well as other sources, we know that the burnings took
+place in the Valley of Tophet or Hinnom (Gehenna). The idol Moloch
+was of brass, and its throne of brass; its head was that of a calf,
+and wore a royal crown; its stomach was a furnace, and when the
+children were placed in its arms they were consumed by the fierce
+heat,--their cries being drowned by the beating of drums; from which,
+toph meaning a 'drum,' the place was also called Tophet. In the fierce
+war waged against alien superstitions by Josiah, he defiled Gehenna,
+filling it with ordure and dead men's bones to make it odious, 'that
+no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire
+to Moloch' (2 Kings xxiii. 10), and a perpetual fire was kept there
+to consume the filth of Jerusalem.
+
+From this horrible Gehenna, with its perpetual fire, its loathsome
+worm, its cruelties, has been derived the picture of a never-ending
+Hell prepared for the majority of human beings by One who, while they
+live on earth, sends the rain and sunshine alike on the evil and the
+good. Wo Chang, a Chinaman in London, has written to a journal [36]
+his surprise that our religious teachers should be seized with such
+concern for the victims of Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria, while
+they are so calm in view of the millions burning, and destined to
+burn endlessly, in the flames of hell. Our Oriental brothers will
+learn a great deal from our missionaries; among other things, that
+the theological god of Christendom is still Moloch.
+
+The Ammonites, of whom Moloch was the special demon, appear to have
+gradually blended with the Arabians. These received from many sources
+their mongrel superstitions, but among them were always prominent
+the planet-gods and fire-gods, whom their growing monotheism (to use
+the word still in a loose sense) transformed to powerful angels and
+genii. The genii of Arabia are slaves of the lamp; they are evoked
+by burning tufts of hair; they ascend as clouds of smoke. Though, as
+subordinate agents of the Fire-fiend, they may be consumed by flames,
+yet those who so fight them are apt to suffer a like fate, as in the
+case of the Lady of Beauty in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. Many
+stories of this kind preceded the declarations of the Old Testament,
+that Jehovah breathes fire and brimstone, his breath kindling Tophet;
+and also the passages of the Koran, and of the New Testament describing
+Satan as a fiery fiend.
+
+Various superstitions connecting infernal powers with fire survive
+among the Jews of some remote districts of Europe. The Passover
+is kept a week by the Jewish inhabitants in the villages on the
+Vosges mountains and on the banks of the Rhine. The time of omer is
+the interval between the Passover and Pentecost, the seven weeks
+elapsing from the departure from Egypt and the giving of the law,
+marked in former days by the offering of an omer of barley daily at
+the temple. It is considered a fearful time, during which every Jew is
+particularly exposed to the evil influence of evil spirits. There is
+something dangerous and fatal in the air; every one should be on the
+watch, and not tempt the schedim (demons) in any way. Have a strict
+eye upon your cattle, say the Jews, for the sorceress will get into
+your stables, mount your cows and goats, bring diseases upon them,
+and turn their milk sour. In the latter case, try to lay your hand
+upon the suspected person; shut her up in a room with a basin of sour
+milk, and beat the milk with a hazel-wand, pronouncing God's name
+three times. Whilst you are doing this, the sorceress will make great
+lamentation, for the blows are falling upon her. Only stop when you see
+blue flames dancing on the surface of the milk, for then the charm is
+broken. If at nightfall a beggar comes to ask for a little charcoal to
+light his fire, be very careful not to give it, and do not let him go
+without drawing him three times by his coat-tail; and without losing
+time, throw some large handfuls of salt on the fire. In all of which
+we may trace traditions of parched wildernesses and fiery serpents,
+as well as of Abraham's long warfare with the Fire-worshippers, until,
+according to the tradition, he was thrown into the flames he refused
+to worship.
+
+It is probable that in all the popular superstitions which now
+connect devils and future punishments with fire are blended both the
+apotheosis and the degradation of demons. The first and most universal
+of deities being the Sun, whose earthly representative is fire, the
+student of Comparative Mythology has to pick his way very carefully
+in tracing by any ethnological path the innumerable superstitions of
+European folklore in which Fire-worship is apparently reflected. The
+collection of facts and records contained in a work so accessible to
+all who care to pursue the subject as that of Brand and his editors,
+[37] renders it unnecessary that I should go into the curious facts
+to any great extent here. The uniformity of the traditions by which
+the midsummer fires of Northern Europe have been called Baal-fires or
+Bel-fires warrant the belief that they are actually descended from
+the ancient rites of Baal, even apart from the notorious fact that
+they have so generally been accompanied by the superstition that
+it is a benefit to children to leap over or be passed through such
+fires. That this practice still survives in out-of-the way places of
+the British Empire appears from such communications as the following
+(from the Times), which are occasionally addressed to the London
+journals:--'Lerwick (Shetland), July 7, 1871.--Sir,--It may interest
+some of your readers to know that last night (being St. John's Eve,
+old style) I observed, within a mile or so of this town, seven bonfires
+blazing, in accordance with the immemorial custom of celebrating the
+Midsummer solstice. These fires were kindled on various heights around
+the ancient hamlet of Sound, and the children leaped over them, and
+'passed through the fire to Moloch,' just as their ancestors would
+have done a thousand years ago on the same heights, and their still
+remoter progenitors in Eastern lands many thousand years ago. This
+persistent adherence to mystic rites in this scientific epoch seems
+to me worth taking note of.--A. J.'
+
+To this may be added the following recent extract from a Scotch
+journal:--
+
+'Hallowe'en was celebrated at Balmoral Castle with unusual ceremony,
+in the presence of her Majesty, the Princess Beatrice, the ladies
+and gentlemen of the royal household, and a large gathering of the
+tenantry. The leading features of the celebration were a torchlight
+procession, the lighting of large bonfires, and the burning in effigy
+of witches and warlocks. Upwards of 150 torch-bearers assembled at
+the castle as dark set in, and separated into two parties, one band
+proceeding to Invergelder, and the other remaining at Balmoral. The
+torches were lighted at a quarter before six o'clock, and shortly
+after the Queen and Princess Beatrice drove to Invergelder, followed
+by the Balmoral party of torchbearers. The two parties then united
+and returned in procession to the front of Balmoral Castle, where
+refreshments were served to all, and dancing was engaged in round a
+huge bonfire. Suddenly there appeared from the rear of the Castle a
+grotesque apparition representing a witch with a train of followers
+dressed like sprites, who danced and gesticulated in all fashions. Then
+followed a warlock of demoniac shape, who was succeeded by another
+warlock drawing a car, on which was seated the figure of a witch,
+surrounded by other figures in the garb of demons. The unearthly
+visitors having marched several times round the burning pile,
+the principal figure was taken from the car and tossed into the
+flames amid the burning of blue lights and a display of crackers
+and fireworks. The health of her Majesty the Queen was then pledged,
+and drunk with Highland honours by the assembled hundreds. Dancing
+was then resumed, and was carried on till a late hour at night.'
+
+The Sixth Council of Constantinople (an. 680), by its sixty-fifth
+canon, forbids these fires in the following terms:--'Those bonefires
+that are kindled by certain people before their shops and houses,
+over which also they use ridiculously to leap, by a certain ancient
+custom, we command them from henceforth to cease. Whoever, therefore,
+shall do any such thing, if he be a clergyman, let him be deposed;
+if he be a layman, let him be excommunicated. For in the Fourth Book
+of the Kings it is thus written: And Manasseh built an altar to all
+the host of heaven, in the two courts of the Lord's house, and made
+his children to pass through the fire.' There is a charming naïveté
+in this denunciation. It is no longer doubtful that this 'bonefire'
+over which people leaped came from the same source as that Gehenna
+from which the Church derived the orthodox theory of hell, as we have
+already seen. When Shakespeare speaks (Macbeth) of 'the primrose way
+to the everlasting bonfire,' [38] he is, with his wonted felicity,
+assigning the flames of hell and the fires of Moloch and Baal their
+right archæological relation.
+
+In my boyhood I have often leaped over a bonfire in a part of the
+State of Virginia mainly settled by Scotch families, with whom
+probably the custom migrated thither. In the superstitions of the
+negroes of that and other Southern States fire plays a large part,
+but it is hardly possible now to determine whether they have drifted
+there from Africa or England. Sometimes there are queer coincidences
+between their notions and some of the early legends of Britain. Thus,
+the tradition of the shepherd guided by a distant fire to the entrance
+of King Arthur's subterranean hall, where a flame fed by no fuel
+coming through the floor reveals the slumbering monarch and his court,
+resembles somewhat stories I have heard from negroes of their being led
+by distant fires to lucky--others say unlucky--or at any rate enchanted
+spots. A negro belonging to my father told me that once, as he was
+walking on a country road, he saw a great fire in the distance; he
+supposed it must be a house on fire, and hastened towards it, meantime
+much puzzled, since he knew of no house in that direction. As he went
+on his way he turned into a small wood near which the fire seemed to
+be, but when he emerged, all he found was a single fire-coal burning
+in the path. There were no other traces whatever of fire, but just
+then a large dog leaped past him with a loud bark and disappeared.
+
+In a letter on 'Voudouism in Virginia,' which appeared in the New
+York Tribune, dated Richmond, September 17, 1875, occurs an account
+of a class of superstitions generally kept close from the whites,
+as I have always believed because of their purely African origin. As
+will be seen, fire represents an important element in the superstitious
+practices.
+
+'If an ignorant negro is smitten with a disease which he cannot
+comprehend, he often imagines himself the victim of witchcraft,
+and having no faith in 'white folks' physic' for such ailments,
+must apply to one of these quacks. A physician residing near this
+city was invited by such a one to witness his mode of procedure
+with a dropsical patient for whom the physician in question had
+occasionally charitably prescribed. Curiosity led him to attend the
+seance, having previously informed the quack that since the case was
+in such hands he relinquished all connection with it. On the coverlet
+of the bed on which the sick man lay was spread a quantity of bones,
+feathers, and other trash. The charlatan went through with a series of
+so-called conjurations, burned feathers, hair, and tiny fragments of
+wood in a charcoal furnace, and mumbled gibberish past the physician's
+comprehension. He then proceeded to rip open the pillows and bolsters,
+and took from them some queer conglomerations of feathers. These he
+said had caused all the trouble. Sprinkling a whitish powder over them,
+he burnt them in his furnace. A black offensive smoke was produced,
+and he announced triumphantly that the evil influence was destroyed
+and that the patient would surely get well. He died not many days
+later, believing, in common with all his friends and relatives, that
+the conjurations of the 'trick doctor' had failed to save him only
+because resorted to too late.'
+
+The following account of a spell from which his wife was rescued,
+was given me by a negro in Virginia:--
+
+'The wizard,' to quote the exact words of my informant, 'threw a stick
+on a chest; the stick bounded like a trapball three times; then he
+opened the chest, took out something looking like dust or clay, and
+put it into a cup with water over a fire; then he poured it over a
+board (after chopping it three times), which he then put up beneath
+the shingles of the house. Returning to the chest he took a piece of
+old chain, near the length of my hand, took a hoe and buried the chain
+near the sill of the door of my wife's house where she would pass;
+then he went away. I saw my wife coming and called to her not to pass,
+and to go for a hoe and dig up the place. She did this, and I took
+up the chain, which burned the ends of all my fingers clean off. The
+same night the conjuror came back: my wife took two half dollars and
+a quarter in silver and threw them on the ground before him. The man
+seemed as if he was shocked, and then offered her his hand, which
+she refused to take, as I had bid her not to let him touch her. He
+left and never came to the house again. The spell was broken.'
+
+I am convinced that this is a pure Voudou procedure, and it is
+interesting in several regards. The introduction of the chain may have
+been the result of the excitement of the time, for it was during the
+war when negroes were breaking their chains. The fire and water show
+how wide-spread in Africa is that double ordeal which, as we have
+seen, is well known in the kingdom of Dahomey. [39] But the mingling
+of 'something like dust' with the water held in a cup over the fire,
+is strongly suggestive of the Jewish method of preparing holy water,
+'the water of separation.' 'For an unclean person they shall take of
+the dust of the burnt heifer of purification for sin, and running
+water shall be put thereto in a vessel.' [40] The fiery element
+of the mixture was in this case imported with the ashes of the red
+heifer. As for this sacrifice of the red heifer itself [41] it was
+plainly the propitiation of a fiery demon. In Egypt red hair and red
+animals of all kinds were considered infernal, and all the details
+of this sacrifice show that the colour of this selected heifer was
+typical. The heifer was not a usual sacrifice: a red one was obviously
+by its colour marked for the genii of fire--the terrible Seven--and
+not to be denied them. Its blood was sprinkled seven times before the
+tabernacle, and the rest was utterly consumed--including the hide,
+which is particularly mentioned--and the ashes taken to make the
+'water of separation.' Calmet notes, in this connection, that the
+Apis of India was red-coloured.
+
+The following interesting story of the Chinese Fire-god was supplied
+to Mr. Dennys [42] by Mr. Playfair of H.M. Consulate, to whom it was
+related in Peking:--
+
+'The temples of the God of Fire are numerous in Peking, as is natural
+in a city built for the most part of very combustible materials. The
+idols representing the god are, with one exception, decked with red
+beards, typifying by their colour the element under his control. The
+exceptional god has a white beard, and 'thereby hangs a tale.'
+
+'A hundred years ago the Chinese imperial revenue was in much
+better case than it is now. At that time they had not yet come into
+collision with Western Powers, and the word 'indemnity' had not,
+so far, found a place in their vocabulary; internal rebellions were
+checked as soon as they broke out, and, in one word, Kien Lung was in
+less embarrassed circumstances than Kwang Hsu; he had more money to
+spend, and did lay out a good deal in the way of palaces. His favourite
+building, and one on which no expense had been spared, was the 'Hall of
+Contemplation.' This hall was of very large dimensions; the rafters and
+the pillars which supported the roof were of a size such as no trees
+in China furnish now-a-days. They were not improbably originally sent
+as an offering by the tributary monarch of some tropical country, such
+as Burmah or Siam. Two men could barely join hands round the pillars;
+they were cased in lustrous jet-black lacquer, which, while adding to
+the beauty of their appearance, was also supposed to make them less
+liable to combustion. Indeed, every care was taken that no fire should
+approach the building; no lighted lamp was allowed in the precincts,
+and to have smoked a pipe inside those walls would have been punished
+with death. The floor of the hall was of different-coloured marbles,
+in a mosaic of flowers and mystic Chinese characters, always kept
+polished like a mirror. The sides of the room were lined with rare
+books and precious manuscripts. It was, in short, the finest palace
+in the imperial city, and it was the pride of Kien Lung.
+
+'Alas for the vanity of human wishes! In spite of every precaution,
+one night a fire broke out, and the Hall of Contemplation was in
+danger. The Chinese of a century ago were not without fire-engines,
+and though miserably inefficient as compared with those of our London
+fire brigade, they were better than nothing, and a hundred of them
+were soon working round the burning building. The Emperor himself
+came out to superintend their efforts and encourage them to renewed
+exertions. But the hall was doomed; a more than earthly power was
+directing the flames, and mortal efforts were of no avail. For on
+one of the burning rafters Kien Lung saw the figure of a little old
+man, with a long white beard, standing in a triumphant attitude. 'It
+is the God of Fire,' said the Emperor, 'we can do nothing;' so the
+building was allowed to blaze in peace. Next day Kien Lung appointed a
+commission to go the round of the Peking temples in order to discover
+in which of them there was a Fire-god with a white beard, that he
+might worship him, and appease the offended deity. The search was
+fruitless; all the Fire-gods had red beards. But the commission had
+done its work badly; being highly respectable mandarins of genteel
+families, they had confined their search to such temples as were
+in good repair and of creditable exterior. Outside the north gate
+of the imperial city was one old, dilapidated, disreputable shrine
+which they had overlooked. It had been crumbling away for years, and
+even the dread figure of the God of Fire, which sat above the altar,
+had not escaped desecration. 'Time had thinned his flowing locks,'
+and the beard had fallen away altogether. One day some water-carriers
+who frequented the locality thought, either in charity or by way
+of a joke, that the face would look the better for a new beard. So
+they unravelled some cord, and with the frayed-out hemp adorned the
+beardless chin. An official passing the temple one day peeped in out
+of curiosity, and saw the hempen beard. 'Just the thing the Emperor
+was inquiring about,' said he to himself, and he took the news to
+the palace without delay. Next day there was a state visit to the
+dilapidated temple, and Kien Lung made obeisance and vowed a vow.
+
+'O Fire-god,' said he, 'thou hast been wroth with me in that I have
+built me palaces, and left thy shrine unhonoured and in ruins. Here do
+I vow to build thee a temple surpassed by none other of the Fire-gods
+in Peking; but I shall expect thee in future not to meddle with
+my palaces.'
+
+'The Emperor was as good as his word. The new temple is on the site of
+the old one, and the Fire-god has a flowing beard of fine white hair.'
+
+In the San Francisco Bulletin, I recently read a description of the
+celebration by the Chinese in that city of their Feast for the Dead,
+in which there are some significant features. The chief attention
+was paid, says the reporter, to a figure 'representing what answers
+in their theology to our devil, and whom they evidently think it
+necessary to propitiate before proceeding with their worship over
+individual graves.' This figure is on the west side of their temple;
+before and around it candles and joss-sticks were kept burning. On
+the east side was the better-looking figure, to which they paid
+comparatively little attention.
+
+It was of course but natural that the demons of fire should
+gradually be dispelled from that element in its normal aspects, as
+its uses became more important through human invention, and its evil
+possibilities were mastered. Such demons became gradually located in
+the region of especially dangerous fires, as volcanoes and boiling
+springs. The Titan whom the ancients believed struggling beneath
+Ætna remained there as the Devil in the christian age. St. Agatha
+is said to have prevented his vomiting fire for a century by her
+prayers. St. Philip ascended the same mountain, and with book and
+candle pronounced a prayer of exorcism, at which three devils came
+out like fiery flying stones, crying, 'Woe is us! we are still hunted
+by Peter through Philip the Elder!' The volcanoes originated the
+belief that hell is at the earth's centre, and their busy Vulcans of
+classic ages have been easily transformed into sulphurous lords of
+the christian Hell. Such is the mediæval Haborym, demon of arson,
+with his three heads--man, cat, and serpent--who rides through the
+air mounted on a serpent, and bears in his hand a flaming torch. The
+astrologers assigned him command of twenty-six legions of demons in
+hell, and the superstitious often saw him laughing on the roofs of
+burning houses. [43] But still more dignified is Raum, who commands
+thirty legions, and who destroys villages; hence, also, concerned in
+the destructions of war, he became the demon who awards dignities;
+and although this made his usual form of apparition on the right bank
+of the Rhine that of the Odinistic raven, on the left bank he may be
+detected in the little red man who was reported as the familiar of
+Napoleon I. during his career.
+
+Among Mr. Gill's South Pacific myths is one of a Prometheus, Maui, who
+by assistance of a red pigeon gets from the subterranean fire-demon
+the secret of producing fire (by rubbing sticks), the demon (Mauike)
+being then consumed with his realm, and fire being brought to the
+upper world to remain the friend of man. In Vedic legend, when the
+world was enveloped in darkness, the gods prayed to Agni, who suddenly
+burst out as Tvashtri--pure fire, the Vedic Vulcan--to the dismay of
+the universe. In Eddaic sagas, Loki was deemed the most voracious of
+beings until defeated in an eating match with Logi (devouring fire).
+
+Survivals of belief in the fiery nature of demons are very
+numerous. Thus it is a very common belief that the Devil cannot touch
+or cross water, and may therefore be escaped by leaping a stream. This
+has sometimes been supposed to have something to do with the purifying
+character of water; but there are many instances in Christian folklore
+where the Devil is shown quite independent of even holy water if it
+is not sprinkled on him or does not wet his feet. Thus in the Norfolk
+legend concerning St. Godric, the Devil is said to have thrown the
+vessel with its holy water at the saint's head out of anger at his
+singing a canticle which the Virgin taught him. But when the Devil
+attacked him in various ferocious animal shapes, St. Godric escaped
+by running into the Wear, where he sometimes stood all night in water
+up to his neck.
+
+The Kobolds get the red jackets they are said to wear from their fiery
+nature. Originally the lar familiaris of Germany, the Kobold became
+of many varieties; but in one line he has been developed from the
+house-spirit, whose good or evil temper was recognised in the comforts
+or dangers of fire, to a special Stone-demon. The hell-dog in Faust's
+room takes refuge from the spell of 'Solomon's Key' behind the stone,
+and is there transformed to human shape. The German maidens read many
+pretty oracles in the behaviour of the fire, and the like in that of
+its fellow Wahrsager the house-dog. It is indeed a widespread notion
+that imps and witches lurk about the fireside, obviously in cat and
+dog, and ride through the air on implements that usually stand about
+the fire,--shovel, tongs, or broom. In Paris it was formerly the
+custom to throw twenty-four cats into the fire on St. John's night,
+the animals being, according to M. De Plancy, emblems of the devil. So
+was replaced the holocaust of human witches, until at last civilisation
+rang out its curfew for all such fires as that.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+COLD.
+
+ Descent of Ishtar into Hades--Bardism--Baldur--Hercules--Christ
+ --Survivals of the Frost Giant in Slavonic and other countries--
+ The Clavie--The Frozen Hell--The Northern abode of demons--North
+ side of churches.
+
+
+Even across immemorial generations it is impossible to read without
+emotion the legend of the Descent of Ishtar into Hades. [44] Through
+seven gates the goddess of Love passes in search of her beloved,
+and at each some of her ornaments and clothing are removed by the
+dread guardian. Ishtar enters naked into the presence of the Queen
+of Death. But gods, men, and herds languish in her absence, and the
+wonder-working Hea, the Saviour, so charms the Infernal Queen, that
+she bids the Judge of her realm, Annunak, absolve Ishtar from his
+golden throne.
+
+
+
+'He poured out for Ishtar the waters of life and let her go.
+Then the first gate let her forth, and restored to her the first
+garment of her body.
+The second gate let her forth, and restored to her the diamonds of
+her hands and feet.
+The third gate let her forth, and restored to her the central girdle
+of her waist.
+The fourth gate let her forth, and restored to her the small lovely
+gems of her forehead.
+The fifth gate let her forth, and restored to her the precious stones
+of her head.
+The sixth gate let her forth, and restored to her the earrings of
+her ears.
+The seventh gate let her forth, and restored to her the great crown
+on her head.'
+
+
+
+This old miracle-play of Nature--the return of summer flower by
+flower--is deciphered from an ancient Assyrian tablet in a town
+within only a few hours of another, where a circle of worshippers
+repeat the same at every solstice! Myfyr Morganwg, the Arch-Druid,
+adores still Hea by name as his Saviour, and at the winter solstice
+assembles his brethren to celebrate his coming to bruise the head
+of the Serpent of Hades (Annwn, nearly the same as in the tablet),
+that seedtime and harvest shall not fail. [45]
+
+Is this a survival? No doubt; but there is no cult in the world which,
+if 'scratched,' as the proverb says, will not reveal beneath it the
+same conception. However it may be spiritualised, every 'plan of
+salvation' is cast in the mould of Winter conquered by the Sun, the
+Descent of Love to the Under World, the delivery of the imprisoned
+germs of Life.
+
+It is very instructive to compare with the myth of Ishtar that of
+Hermödr, seeking the release of Baldur the Beautiful from Helheim.
+
+The deadly powers of Winter are represented in the Eddaic account
+of the death of Baldur, soft summer Light, the Norse Baal. His blind
+brother Hödr is Darkness; the demon who directed his arrow is Loki,
+subterranean fire; the arrow itself is of mistletoe, which, fostered by
+Winter, owes no duty to Baldur; and the realm to which he is borne is
+that of Hel, the frozen zone. Hermödr, having arrived, assured Hel that
+the gods were in despair for the loss of Baldur. The Queen replied that
+it should now be tried whether Baldur was so beloved. 'If, therefore,
+all things in the world, both living and lifeless, weep for him, he
+shall return to the Æsir.' In the end all wept but the old hag Thokk
+(Darkness), who from her cavern sang--
+
+
+
+Thokk will wail
+With dry eyes
+Baldur's bale-fire.
+Nought quick or dead
+For Carl's son care I.
+Let Hel hold her own.
+
+
+
+So Baldur remained in Helheim. The myth very closely resembles that
+of Ishtar's Descent. In similar accent the messenger of the Southern
+gods weeps and lacerates himself as he relates the grief of the
+upper world, and all men and animals 'since the time that mother
+Ishtar descended into Hades.' But in the latter the messenger is
+successful, in the North he is unsuccessful. In the corresponding
+myths of warm and sunny climes the effort at release is more or
+less successful, in proportion to the extent of winter. In Adonis
+released from Hades for four months every year, and another four if
+he chose to abandon Persephone for Aphrodite, we have a reflection of
+a variable year. That, and the similar myth of Persephone, varied in
+the time specified for their passing in the upper and under worlds,
+probably in accordance with the climatic averages of the regions in
+which they were told. But in the tropics it was easy to believe the
+release complete, as in the myth of Ishtar. In Mangaian myths the hero,
+Maui, escapes from a nether world of fire, aided by a red pigeon.
+
+When this contest between Winter's Death and Spring's Life became
+humanised, it was as Hercules vanquishing Death and completely
+releasing Alcestis. When it became spiritualised it was as Christ
+conquering Death and Hell, and releasing the spirits from prison. The
+wintry desolation had to be artificially imitated in a forty days' fast
+and Lent, closing with a thrust from the spear (the mistletoe arrow)
+amid darkness (blind Hödr). But the myth of a swift resurrection
+had to be artificially preserved in the far North. The legend of a
+full triumph over Death and Hell could never have originated among
+our Norse ancestors. Their only story resembling it, that of Iduna,
+related how her recovery from the Giants brought back health to the
+gods, not men. But it was from the South that men had to hear tidings
+of a rescue for the earth and man.
+
+We cannot realise now what glad tidings were they which told this new
+gospel to peoples sitting in regions of ice and gloom, after it had
+been imposed on them against their reluctant fears. In manifold forms
+the old combat was renewed in their festivals, and peoples who had
+long been prostrate and helpless before the terrible powers of nature
+were never weary of the Southern fables of heroic triumphs over them,
+long interpreted in the simple physical sense.
+
+The great Demon of the Northern World is still Winter, and the
+hereditary hatred of him is such that he is still cursed, scourged,
+killed, and buried or drowned under various names and disguises. In
+every Slavonic country, says Mr. Ralston, there are to be found,
+about carnival time, traces of ancient rites, intended to typify the
+death of Winter and the birth of Spring or Summer. In Poland a puppet
+made of hemp or straw is flung into a pond or swamp with the words,
+'The Devil take thee!' Then the participators in the deed scamper home,
+and if one of them stumbles and falls it is believed he will die within
+the year. In Upper Lausatia a similar figure is fastened on a pole to
+be pelted, then taken to the village boundary and thrown across it or
+cast into the water, its bearers returning with green boughs. Sometimes
+the figure is shrouded in white, representing snow, and bears in its
+hands a broom (the sweeping storm) and a sickle (the fatal reaper). In
+Russia the 'Straw Mujik' is burned, and also in Bulgaria; in the latter
+the bonfire is accompanied by the firing of guns, and by dances and
+songs to Lado, goddess of Spring. This reminiscence of Leto, on whose
+account Apollo slew the Python, is rendered yet more striking by the
+week of archery which accompanies it, recalling the sunbeam darts of
+the god. In Spain and Italy the demon puppet is scourged under the name
+of Judas, as indeed is the case in the annual Good Friday performance
+of Portuguese sailors in the London Docks. Mr. Tylor found in Mexico a
+similar custom, the Judas being a regular horned and hoofed devil. In
+Scotland the pre-christian accessories of a corresponding custom are
+more pronounced both in the time selected (the last day of the year,
+old style) and the place. 'The Clavie,' as the custom of burning the
+puppet of Winter is mysteriously called, occurred on January 12 of
+this year (1878) at Burghead, a fishing village near Forres, where
+stands an old Roman altar locally named the 'Douro.' A tar-barrel
+was set on fire and carried by a fisherman round the town, while the
+people shouted and hallooed. (If the man who carries the barrel falls
+it is an evil omen.) The lighted barrel, having gone round the town,
+was carried to the top of the hill and placed on the Douro. More fuel
+was added. The sparks as they fly upwards are supposed to be witches
+and evil spirits leaving the town; the people therefore shout at and
+curse them as they disappear in vacancy. When the burning tar-barrel
+falls in pieces, the fishwomen rush in and endeavour to get a lighted
+bit of wood from its remains; with this light the fire on the cottage
+hearth is at once kindled, and it is considered lucky to keep this
+flame alive all the rest of the year. The charcoal of the Clavie is
+collected and put in bits up the chimney to prevent the witches and
+evil spirits coming into the house. The Douro is covered with a thick
+layer of tar from the fires that are annually lighted upon it. Close
+to it is a very ancient Roman well.
+
+It is an instance of the irony of etymology that the word 'Hell'
+means a place of fireless darkness. Nor is the fact that the name of
+the Scandinavian demoness Hel, phonetically corresponding with Kali,
+'the Black One' (Goth. Halja), whose abode was an icy hole, has her
+name preserved as a place of fiery torment, without significance. In
+regions where cold was known to an uncomfortable extent as well
+as heat, we usually find it represented in the ideas of future
+punishment. The realm called Hades, meaning just the same as Hell,
+suggests cold. Tertullian and Jerome say that Christ's own phrases
+'outer darkness' and the 'gnashing (chattering) of teeth' suggest a
+place of extreme cold alternating with the excessive heat. Traces of
+similar speculations are found with the Rabbins. Thus Rabbi Joseph
+says Gehenna had both water and fire. Noah saw the angel of death
+approaching and hid from him twelve months. Why twelve? Because
+(explains Rabbi Jehuda) such is the trial of sinners,--six in water,
+six in fire. Dante (following Virgil) has frigid as well as burning
+hells; and the idea was refined by some scholiasts to a statement
+which would seem to make the alternations of future punishment amount
+to a severe ague and fever. Milton (Paradise Lost, ii.) has blended
+the rabbinical notions with those of Virgil (Æn. vi.) in his terrible
+picture of the frozen continent, where
+
+
+
+ The parching air
+Burns frore, and cold performs th' effect of fire:
+Thither by harpy-footed Furies haled
+At certain revolutions all the damn'd
+Are brought; and feel by turns the bitter change
+Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce,
+From beds of raging fire to starve in ice
+Their soft etherial warmth, and there to pine
+Immovable, infix'd, and frozen round.
+
+
+
+With which may be compared Shakespeare's lines in 'Measure for
+Measure'--
+
+
+ The de-lighted spirit
+To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
+In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice.
+
+
+
+In Thibet hell is believed to have sixteen circles, eight burning,
+eight frozen, which M. Delepierre attributes to the rapid changes of
+their climate between the extremes of heat and cold. [46] Plutarch,
+relating the vision of Thespesius in Hades, speaks of the frozen region
+there. Denys le Chartreux (De Poenis Inferni) says the severest of
+infernal torments is freezing. In the 'Kalendar of Shepherds' (1506)
+a legend runs:--'Lazarus sayde, 'I sawe a flode of frosone yce in
+the whiche envyous men and women were plonged unto the navyll, and
+then sodynly came a colde wynde ryght great that blewe and dyd depe
+downe all the envyous into the colde water that nothynge was seen of
+them.' Such, too, is Persian Ardá Viráf's vision.
+
+The Demon of Cold has a habitat, naturally, in every
+Northern region. He is the Ke-mung of China, who--man-shaped,
+dragon-headed--haunts the Chang river, and causes rain-storms. [47] In
+Greenland it is Erleursortok, who suffers perpetual agues, and leaps
+on souls at death to satisfy his hunger. The Chenoos (demons) of the
+Mimacs of Nova Scotia present certain features of the race-demons,
+but are fearfully cold. The Chenoo weapon is a dragon's horn, his
+yell is fatal to the hearer, his heart is a block of ice. This heart
+must be destroyed if the demon is to be slain, but it can only be
+done by melting in the fire: the chief precaution required is that
+one is not drowned in the flood so caused. The icy demon survived
+long in Scotland. Sir James Melville, in his 'Memoirs,' says 'the
+spirit or devil that helped the Scottish witches to raise a storm
+in the sea of Norway was cold as ice and his body hard as iron;
+his face was terrible, his nose like the beak of an eagle, great
+burning eyes, his hands and legs hairy, with claws on his nails like
+a griffin.' Dr. Fian was burnt for raising this demon to oppose James
+I. on his stormy passage from Denmark.
+
+This type of demon haunted people's minds in Scandinavia, where,
+though traditions of a flame demon (Loki) and the end of the world
+by fire were imported, the popular belief seems to have been mainly
+occupied with Frost giants, and the formidable Oegir, god of the
+bleak sea east winds, preserved in our word awe (Anglo-Saxon ege),
+and more directly in the name of our familiar demon, the Ogre,
+so often slain in the child's Gladsheim. Loki (fire) was, indeed,
+speedily relegated by the Æsir (gods) to a hidden subterraneous
+realm, where his existence could only be known by the earthquakes,
+geysers, and Hecla eruptions which he occasioned. Yet he was to come
+forth at Ragnarök, the Twilight of the Gods. We can see a singular
+blending of tropical and frigid zones--the one traditional, the other
+native--in the Prose Edda. Thus:--'What will remain,' said Gangler,
+'after heaven and earth and the whole universe shall be consumed,
+and after all the gods and the homes of Valhalla and all mankind
+shall have perished?' 'There will be many abodes,' replied Thridi,
+'some good, some bad. The best place of all to be in will be Gimil,
+in heaven; and all who delight in quaffing good drink will find a
+great store in the hall called Brimir, which is also in heaven in the
+region Okolni. There is also a fair hall of ruddy gold, (for) Sindri,
+which stands on the mountains of Nida. In those halls righteous and
+well-minded men shall abide. In Ná-strönd there is a vast and direful
+structure with doors that face the north. It is formed entirely of the
+backs of serpents, wattled together like wicker-work. But the serpents'
+heads are turned towards the inside of the hall, and continually vomit
+forth floods of venom, in which wade all those who commit murder or
+who forswear themselves. As it is said in the Völuspá:--
+
+
+
+She saw a hall
+Far from the sun
+In Náströnd standing,
+Northward the doors look,
+And venom-drops
+Fall in through loopholes.
+Formed is that hall
+Of wreathed serpents.
+There saw she wade
+Through heavy streams
+Men forsworn
+And murderers.
+
+
+
+These names for the heavenly regions and their occupants indicate
+sunshine and fire. Gimil means fire (gímr): Brimir (brími, flame),
+the giant, and Sindri (cinder), the dwarf, jeweller of the gods,
+are raised to halls of gold. Nothing is said of a garden, or walking
+therein 'in the cool of the day.' On the other hand, Ná-strönd means
+Strand of the Dead, in that region whose 'doors face the north, far
+from the sun,' we behold an inferno of extreme cold. Christianity
+has not availed to give the Icelanders any demonic name suggestive of
+fire. They speak of 'Skratti' (the roarer, perhaps our Old Scratch),
+and 'Kolski' (the coal black one), but promise nothing so luminous
+and comfortable as fire or fire-fiend to the evil-doer.
+
+In the great Epic of the Nibelungen Lied we have probably the shape
+in which the Northman's dream of Paradise finally cohered,--a
+Rose-garden in the South, guarded by a huge Worm (water-snake,
+or glittering glacial sea intervening), whose glowing charms, with
+Beauty (Chriemhild) for their queen, could be won only by a brave
+dragon-slaying Siegfried. In passing by the pretty lakeside home of
+Richard Wagner, on my way to witness the Ammergau version of another
+dragon-binding and paradise-regaining legend, I noted that the
+old name of the (Starnberg) lake was Wurmsee, from the dragon that
+once haunted it, while from the composer's window might be seen its
+'Isle of Roses,' which the dragon guarded. Since then the myth of
+many forms has had its musical apotheosis at Bayreuth under his wand.
+
+England, partly perhaps on account of its harsh climate, once had the
+reputation of being the chief abode of demons. A demoness leaving her
+lover on the Continent says, 'My mother is calling me in England.' [48]
+But England assigned them still higher latitudes; in christianising
+Ireland, Iona, and other islands far north, it was preliminary to
+expel the demons. 'The Clavie,' the 'Deis-iuil' of Lewis and other
+Hebrides islands--fire carried round cattle to defend them from demons,
+and around mothers not yet churched, to keep the babes from being
+'changed'--show that the expulsion still goes on, though in such
+regions Norse and christian notions have become so jumbled that it is
+'fighting the devil with fire.' So in the Havamal men are warned to
+invoke 'fire for distempers;' and Gudrun sings--
+
+
+
+Raise, ye Jarls, an oaken pile;
+Let it under heaven the lightest be.
+May it burn a breast full of woes!
+The fire round my heart its sorrows melt.
+
+
+
+The last line is in contrast with the Hindu saying, 'the flame of
+her husband's pyre cools the widow's breast.'
+
+The characters of the Northern Heaven and Hell survive in the English
+custom of burying the dead on the southern side of a church. How widely
+this usage prevailed in Brand's time may be seen by reference to his
+chapter on churchyards. The north side of the graveyard was set apart
+for unbaptized infants and executed criminals, and it was permitted
+the people to dance or play tennis in that part. Dr. Lee says that in
+the churchyard at Morwenstow the southern portion only contains graves,
+the north part being untenanted; as the Cornish believe (following old
+traditions) that the north is the region of demons. In some parishes
+of Cornwall when a baptism occurs the north door of the nave opposite
+the font is thrown open, so that the devil cast out may retire to his
+own region, the north. [49] This accords with the saying in Martin's
+'Month's Mind'--ab aquilone omne malum.
+
+Indeed, it is not improbable that the fact noted by White, in his
+'History of Selborne,' that 'the usual approach to most country
+churches is by the south,' indicated a belief that the sacred edifice
+should turn its back on the region of demons. It is a singular instance
+of survival which has brought about the fact that people who listen
+devoutly to sermons describing the fiery character of Satan and his
+abode should surround the very churches in which those sermons are
+heard with evidences of their lingering faith that the devil belongs to
+the region of ice, and that their dead must be buried in the direction
+of the happy abodes of Brimir and Sindri,--Fire and Cinders!
+
+M. François Lenormant has written an extremely instructive chapter
+in comparison of the Accadian and the Finnish mythologies. He there
+shows that they are as one and the same tree, adapted to antagonistic
+climates. [50] With similar triad, runes, charms, and even names in
+some cases, their regard for the fire worshipped by both varies in a
+way that seems at first glance somewhat anomalous. The Accadians in
+their fire-worship exhausted the resources of praise in ascription of
+glory and power to the flames; the Finns in their cold home celebrated
+the fire festival at the winter solstice, uttered invocations over
+the fire, and the mother of the family, with her domestic libation,
+said: 'Always rise so high, O my flame, but burn not larger nor more
+ardent!' This diminution of enthusiasm in the Northern fire-worshipper,
+as compared with the Southern, may only be the result of euphemism in
+the latter; or perhaps while the formidable character of the fire-god
+among the primitive Assyrians is indicated in the utter prostration
+before him characteristic of their litanies and invocations, in the
+case of the Finns the perpetual presence of the more potent cold
+led to the less excessive adoration. These ventured to recognise the
+faults of fire.
+
+The true nature of this anomaly becomes visible when we consider
+that the great demon, dreaded by the two countries drawing their
+cult from a common source, represented the excess of the power most
+dreaded. The demon in each case was a wind; among the Finns the north
+wind, among the Accadians the south-west (the most fiery) wind. The
+Finnish demon was Hiisi, speeding on his pale horse through the air,
+with a terrible train of monster dogs, cats, furies, scattering pain,
+disease, and death. [51] The Accadian demon, of which the bronze image
+is in the Louvre, is the body of a dog, erect on eagle's feet, its arms
+pointed with lion's paws; it has the tail of a scorpion and the head of
+a skeleton, half stripped of flesh, preserving the eyes, and mounted
+with the horns of a goat. It has four outspread wings. On the back
+of this ingeniously horrible image is an inscription in the Accadian
+language, apprising us that it is the demon of the south-west wind,
+made to be placed at the door or window, to avert its hostile action.
+
+As we observe such figures as these on the one hand, and on the other
+the fair beings imagined to be antagonistic to them; as we note in
+runes and incantations how intensely the ancients felt themselves to
+be surrounded by these good and evil powers, and, reading nature so,
+learned to see in the seasons successively conquering and conquered
+by each other, and alternation of longer days and longer nights, the
+changing fortunes of a never-ending battle; we may better realise
+the meaning of solstitial festivals, the customs that gathered
+around Yuletide and New Year, and the manifold survivals from them
+which annually masquerade in Christian costume and names. To our
+sun-worshipping ancestor the new year meant the first faint advantage
+of the warmer time over winter, as nearly as he could fix it. The
+hovering of day between superiority of light and darkness is now named
+after doubting Thomas. At Yuletide the dawning victory of the sun is
+seen as a holy infant in a manger amid beasts of the stall. The old
+nature-worship has bequeathed to christian belief a close-fitting
+mantle. But the old idea of a war between the wintry and the warm
+powers still haunts the period of the New Year; and the twelve days
+and nights, once believed to be the period of a fiercely-contested
+battle between good and evil demons, are still regarded by many
+as a period for especial watchfulness and prayer. New Year's Eve,
+in the north of England still 'Hogmanay,'--probably O. N. höku-nött,
+midwinter-night, when the sacrifices of Thor were prepared,--formerly
+had many observances which reflected the belief that good and evil
+ghosts were contending for every man and woman: the air was believed
+to be swarming with them, and watch must be kept to see that the
+protecting fire did not go out in any household; that no strange man,
+woman, or animal approached,--possibly a demon in disguise. Sacred
+plants were set in doors and windows to prevent the entrance of any
+malevolent being from the multitudes filling the air. John Wesley,
+whose noble heart was allied with a mind strangely open to stories
+of hobgoblins, led the way of churches and sects back into this
+ancient atmosphere. Nevertheless, the rationalism of the age has
+influenced St. Wesley's Feast--Watchnight. It can hardly recognise
+its brother in the Boar's Head Banquet of Queen's College, Oxford,
+which celebrated victory over tusky winter, the decapitated demon
+whose bristles were once icicles fallen beneath the sylvan spirits
+of holly and rosemary. Yet what the Watchnight really signifies in
+the antiquarian sense is just that old culminating combat between the
+powers of fire and frost, once believed to determine human fates. In
+White Russia, on New Year's Day, when the annual elemental battle has
+been decided, the killed and wounded on one hand, and the fortunate
+on the other, are told by carrying from house to house the rich and
+the poor Kolyadas. These are two children, one dressed in fine attire,
+and crowned with a wreath of full ears of grain, the other ragged, and
+wearing a wreath of threshed straw. These having been closely covered,
+each householder is called in, and chooses one. If his choice chances
+upon the 'poor Kolyada,' the attending chorus chant a mournful strain,
+in which he is warned to expect a bad harvest, poverty, and perhaps
+death; if he selects the 'rich Kolyada,' a cheerful song is sung
+promising him harvest, health, and wealth.
+
+The natives of certain districts of Dardistan assign political and
+social significance to their Feast of Fire, which is celebrated in the
+month preceding winter, at new moon, just after their meat provision
+for the season is laid in to dry. Their legend is, that it was then
+their national hero slew their ancient tyrant and introduced good
+government. This legend, related elsewhere, is of a tyrant slain
+through the discovery that his heart was made of snow. He was slain
+by the warmth of torches. In the celebrations all the men of the
+villages go forth with torches, which they swing round their heads,
+and throw in the direction of Ghilgit, where the snow-hearted tyrant
+so long held his castle. When the husbands return home from their
+torch-throwing a little drama is rehearsed. The wives refuse them
+entrance till they have entreated, recounting the benefits they have
+brought them; after admission the husband affects sulkiness, and must
+be brought round with caresses to join in the banquet. The wife leads
+him forward with this song:--'Thou hast made me glad, thou favourite
+of the Rajah! Thou hast rejoiced me, oh bold horseman! I am pleased
+with thee who so well usest the gun and sword! Thou hast delighted
+me, oh thou invested with a mantle of honours! Oh great happiness,
+I will buy it by giving pleasure's price! Oh thou nourishment to us,
+heap of corn, store of ghee--delighted will I buy it all by giving
+pleasure's price!'
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+ELEMENTS.
+
+ A Scottish Munasa--Rudra--Siva's lightning eye--The flaming
+ sword--Limping demons--Demons of the storm--Helios, Elias,
+ Perun--Thor arrows--The Bob-tailed Dragon--Whirlwind--Japanese
+ thunder god--Christian survivals--Jinni--Inundations--Noah--Nik,
+ Nicholas, Old Nick--Nixies--Hydras--Demons of the
+ Danube--Tides--Survivals in Russia and England.
+
+
+During some recent years curious advertisements have appeared in a
+journal of Edinburgh, calling for pious persons to occupy certain
+hours of the night with holy exercises. It would appear that they
+refer to a band of prayerful persons who provide that there shall
+be an unbroken round of prayers during every moment of the day and
+night. Their theory is, that it is the usual cessation of christian
+prayers at night which causes so many disasters. The devils being then
+less restrained, raise storms and all elemental perils. The praying
+circle, which hopes to bind these demons by an uninterrupted chain of
+prayers, originated, as I am informed, in the pious enthusiasm of a
+lady whose kindly solicitude in some pre-existent sister was no doubt
+personified in the Hindu Munasa, who, while all gods slept, sat in the
+shape of a serpent on a branch of Euphorbia to preserve mankind from
+the venom of snakes. It is to be feared, however, that it is hardly
+the wisdom of the serpent which is on prayerful watch at Edinburgh,
+but rather a vigilance of that perilous kind which was exercised by
+'Meggie o' the Shore,' anno 1785, as related by Hugh Miller. [52]
+On a boisterous night, when two young girls had taken refuge in her
+cottage, they all heard about midnight cries of distress mingling
+with the roar of the sea, 'Raise the window curtain and look out,'
+said Meggie. The terrified girls did so, and said, 'There is a bright
+light in the middle of the Bay of Udall. It hangs over the water about
+the height of a ship's mast, and we can see something below it like
+a boat riding at anchor, with the white sea raging around her.' 'Now
+drop the curtain,' said Meggie; 'I am no stranger, my lasses, to
+sights and noises like these--sights and noises of another world;
+but I have been taught that God is nearer to me than any spirit can
+be; and so have learned not to be afraid.' Afterwards it is not
+wonderful that a Cromarty yawl was discovered to have foundered,
+and all on board to have been drowned; though Meggie's neighbours
+seemed to have preserved the legend after her faith, and made the
+scene described a premonition of what actually occurred. It was in
+a region where mariners when becalmed invoke the wind by whistling;
+and both the whistling and the praying, though their prospects in
+the future may be slender, have had a long career in the past.
+
+In the 'Rig-Veda' there is a remarkable hymn to Rudra (the Roarer),
+which may be properly quoted here:--
+
+1. Sire of the storm gods, let thy favour extend to us; shut us not
+out from the sight of the sun; may our hero be successful in the
+onslaught. O Rudra, may we wax mighty in our offspring.
+
+2. Through the assuaging remedies conferred by thee, O Rudra, may
+we reach a hundred winters; drive away far from us hatred, distress,
+and all-pervading diseases.
+
+3. Thou, O Rudra, art the most excellent of beings in glory, the
+strongest of the strong, O wielder of the bolt; bear us safely through
+evil to the further shore; ward off all the assaults of sin.
+
+4. May we not provoke thee to anger, O Rudra, by our adorations,
+neither through faultiness in praises, nor through wantonness in
+invocations; lift up our heroes by thy remedies; thou art, I hear,
+the chief physician among physicians.
+
+5. May I propitiate with hymns this Rudra who is worshipped with
+invocations and oblations; may the tender-hearted, easily-entreated,
+tawny-haired, beautiful-chinned god not deliver us up to the plotter
+of evil [literally, to the mind meditating 'I kill'].
+
+6. The bounteous giver, escorted by the storm-gods, hath gladdened
+me, his suppliant, with most invigorating food; as one distressed by
+heat seeketh the shade, may I, free from harm, find shelter in the
+good-will of Rudra.
+
+7. Where, O Rudra, is that gracious hand of thine, which is healing
+and comforting? Do thou, removing the evil which cometh from the gods,
+O bounteous giver, have mercy upon me.
+
+8. To the tawny, the fair-complexioned dispenser of bounties, I send
+forth a great and beautiful song of praise; adore the radiant god
+with prostrations; we hymn the illustrious name of Rudra.
+
+9. Sturdy-limbed, many-shaped, fierce, tawny, he hath decked himself
+with brilliant ornaments of gold; truly strength is inseparable from
+Rudra, the sovereign of this vast world.
+
+10. Worthy of worship, thou bearest the arrows and the bow; worthy of
+worship, thou wearest a resplendent necklace of many forms; worthy
+of worship, thou rulest over this immense universe; there is none,
+O Rudra, mightier than thou.
+
+11. Celebrate the renowned and ever-youthful god who is seated on a
+chariot, who is, like a wild beast, terrible, fierce, and destructive;
+have mercy upon the singer, O Rudra, when thou art praised; may thy
+hosts strike down another than us.
+
+12. As a boy saluteth his father who approacheth and speaketh to him,
+so, O Rudra, I greet thee, the giver of much, the lord of the good;
+grant us remedies when thou art praised.
+
+13. Your remedies, O storm-gods, which are pure and helping, O
+bounteous givers, which are joy-conferring, which our father Manu
+chose, these and the blessing and succour of Rudra I crave.
+
+14. May the dart of Rudra be turned aside from us, may the great
+malevolence of the flaming-god be averted; unbend thy strong bow
+from those who are liberal with their wealth; O generous god, have
+mercy upon our offspring and our posterity (i.e., our children and
+children's children).
+
+15. Thus, O tawny Rudra, wise giver of gifts, listen to our cry,
+give heed to us here, that thou mayest not be angry with us, O god,
+nor slay us; may we, rich in heroic sons, utter great praise at the
+sacrifice. [53]
+
+In other hymns the malevolent character of Rudra is made still more
+prominent:--
+
+7. Slay not our strong man nor our little child, neither him who
+is growing nor him who is grown, neither our father nor our mother;
+hurt not, O Rudra, our dear selves.
+
+8. Harm us not in our children and children's children, nor in our men,
+nor in our kine, nor in our horses. Smite not our heroes in thy wrath;
+we wait upon thee perpetually with offerings. [54]
+
+In this hymn (verse 1) Rudra is described as 'having braided hair;'
+and in the 'Yajur-veda' and the 'Atharva-veda' other attributes
+of Siva are ascribed to him, such as the epithet nîla-grîva, or
+blue-necked. In the 'Rig-veda' Siva occurs frequently as an epithet,
+and means auspicious. It was used as a euphemistic epithet to appease
+Rudra, the lord of tempests; and finally, the epithet developed into
+a distinct god.
+
+The parentage of Siva is further indicated in the legends that
+his glance destroyed the head of the youthful deity Ganesa,
+who now wears the elephant head, with which it was replaced; and
+that the gods persuaded him to keep his eyes perpetually winking
+(like sheet-lightning), lest his concentrated look (the thunderbolt)
+should reduce the universe to ashes. With the latter legend the gaze
+of the evil eye in India might naturally be associated, though in
+the majority of countries this was rather associated with the malign
+influences ascribed to certain planets, especially Saturn; the charms
+against the evil eye being marked over with zodiacal signs. The very
+myth of Siva's eye survives in the Russian demon Magarko ('Winker')
+and the Servian Vii, whose glance is said to have power to reduce men,
+and even cities, to ashes.
+
+The terrible Rudra is represented in a vast number of beliefs, some
+of them perhaps survivals; in the rough sea and east-wind demon Oegir
+of the northern world, and Typhon in the south; and in Luther's faith
+that 'devils do house in the dense black clouds, and send storms,
+hail, thunder and lightning, and poison the air with their infernal
+stench,' a doctrine which Burton, the Anatomist of Melancholy, too,
+maintained against the meteorologists of his time.
+
+Among the ancient Aryans lightning seems to have been the supreme type
+of divine destructiveness. Rudra's dart, Siva's eye, reappear with
+the Singhalese prince of demons Wessamonny, described as wielding a
+golden sword, which, when he is angry, flies out of his hand, to which
+it spontaneously returns, after cutting off a thousand heads. [55]
+A wonderful spear was borne by Odin, and was possibly the original
+Excalibur. The four-faced Sviatevit of Russia, whose mantle has fallen
+to St. George, whose statue was found at Zbrucz in 1851, bore a horn
+of wine (rain) and a sword (lightning).
+
+In Greece similar swords were wielded by Zeus, and also by the
+god of war. Through Zeus and Ares, the original wielders of the
+lightning--Indra and Siva--became types of many gods and semi-divine
+heroes. The evil eye of Siva glared from the forehead of the Cyclopes,
+forgers of thunderbolts; and the saving disc of Indra flashed in the
+swords and arrows of famous dragon-slayers--Perseus, Pegasus, Hercules,
+and St. George. The same sword defended the Tree of Life in Eden,
+and was borne in the hand of Death on the Pale Horse (a white horse
+was sacrificed to Sviatevit in Russia within christian times). And,
+finally, we have the wonderful sword which obeys the command 'Heads
+off!' delighting all nurseries by the service it does to the King of
+the Golden Mountain.
+
+'I beheld Satan as lightning falling out of heaven.' To the Greeks
+this falling of rebellious deities out of heaven accounted, as we
+have seen explained, for their lameness. But a universal phenomenon
+can alone account for the many demons with crooked or crippled legs
+(like 'Diable Boiteux') [56] all around the world. The Namaquas of
+South Africa have a 'deity' whose occupation it is to cause pain
+and death; his name is Tsui'knap, that is 'wounded knee.' [57]
+Livingstone says of the Bakwains, another people of South Africa,
+'It is curious that in all their pretended dreams or visions of
+their god he has always a crooked leg, like the Egyptian Thau.' [58]
+In Mainas, South America, they believe in a treacherous demon,
+Uchuella-chaqui, or Lame-foot, who in dark forests puts on a friendly
+shape to lure Indians to destruction; but the huntsmen say they can
+never be deceived if they examine this demon's foot-track, because
+of the unequal size of the two feet. [59] The native Australians
+believed in a demon named Biam; he is black and deformed in his lower
+extremities; they attributed to him many of their songs and dances,
+but also a sort of small-pox to which they were liable. [60] We have
+no evidence that these superstitions migrated from a common centre;
+and there can be little doubt that many of these crooked legs are
+traceable to the crooked lightning. [61] At the same time this is by
+no means inconsistent with what has been already said of the fall of
+Titans and angels from heaven as often accounting for their lameness
+in popular myths. But in such details it is hard to reach certainty,
+since so many of the facts bear a suspicious resemblance to each
+other. A wild boar with 'distorted legs' attacked St. Godric, and
+the temptation is strong to generalise on the story, but the legs
+probably mean only to certify that it was the devil.
+
+Dr. Schliemann has unearthed among his other treasures the remarkable
+fact that a temple of Helios (the sun) once stood near the site of
+the present Church of Elias, at Mycenæ, which has from time immemorial
+been the place to which people repair to pray for rain. [62] When the
+storm-breeding Sun was succeeded by the Prophet whose prayer evoked
+the cloud, even the name of the latter did not need to be changed. The
+discovery is the more interesting because it has always been a part
+of the christian folklore of that region that, when a storm with
+lightning occurs, it is 'Elias in his chariot of fire.' A similar
+phrase is used in some part of every Aryan country, with variation
+of the name: it is Woden, or King Waldemar, or the Grand Veneur,
+or sometimes God, who is said to be going forth in his chariot.
+
+These storm-demons in their chariots have their forerunner in Vata
+or Vayu, the subject of one of the most beautiful Vedic hymns. 'I
+celebrate the glory of Vata's chariot; its noise comes rending and
+resounding. Touching the sky he moves onward, making all things ruddy;
+and he comes propelling the dust of the earth.
+
+'Soul of the gods, source of the universe, this deity moves as he
+lists. His sounds have been heard, but his form is not seen; this
+Vata let us worship with an oblation.' [63]
+
+This last verse, as Mr. Muir has pointed out, bears a startling
+resemblance to the passage in John, 'The Wind bloweth where it listeth,
+and thou canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth; so is
+every one that is born of the Wind.' [64]
+
+But an equally striking development of the Vedic idea is represented
+in the Siamese legend of Buddha, and in this case the Vedic Wind-god
+Vayu reappears by name for the Angels of Tempests, or Loka Phayu. The
+first portent which preceded the descent of Buddha from the Tushita
+heavens was 'when the Angels of the Tempest, clothed in red garments,
+and with streaming hair, travel among the abodes of mankind crying,
+'Attend all ye who are near to death; repent and be not heedless! The
+end of the world approaches, but one hundred thousand years more
+and it will be destroyed. Exert yourselves, then, exert yourselves
+to acquire merit. Above all things be charitable; abstain from doing
+evil; meditate with love to all beings, and listen to the teachings of
+holiness. For we are all in the mouth of the king of death. Strive then
+earnestly for meritorious fruits, and seek that which is good.' [65]
+
+Not less remarkable is the Targum of Jonathan Ben Uzziel to 1 Kings
+xix., where around Elias on the mountain gather 'a host of angels of
+the wind, cleaving the mountain and breaking the rocks before the
+Lord;' and after these, 'angels of commotion,' and next 'of fire,'
+and, finally, 'voices singing in silence' preceded the descent of
+Jehovah. It can hardly be wondered that a prophet of whom this story
+was told, and that of the storm evoked from a small cloud, should
+be caught up into that chariot of the Vedic Vayu which has rolled on
+through all the ages of mythology.
+
+Mythologic streams seem to keep their channels almost as steadfastly
+as rivers, but as even these change at last or blend, so do the old
+traditions. Thus we find that while Thor and Odin remain as separate
+in survivals as Vayu and Parjanya in India, in Russia Elias has
+inherited not the mantle of the wind-god or storm-breeding sun,
+but of the Slavonic Thunderer Perun. There is little doubt that
+this is Parjanya, described in the 'Rig-Veda' as 'the thunderer,
+the showerer, the bountiful,' [66] who 'strikes down trees' and 'the
+wicked.' 'The people of Novgorod,' says Herberstein, 'formerly offered
+their chief worship and adoration to a certain idol named Perun. When
+subsequently they received baptism they removed it from its place,
+and threw it into the river Volchov; and the story goes that it swam
+against the stream, and that near the bridge a voice was heard saying,
+'This for you, O inhabitants of Novgorod, in memory of me;' and at
+the same time a certain rope was thrown upon the bridge. Even now
+it happens from time to time on certain days of the year that this
+voice of Perun may be heard, and on these occasions the citizens run
+together and lash each other with ropes, and such a tumult arises
+therefrom that all the efforts of the governor can scarcely assuage
+it.' [67] The statue of Perun in Kief, says Mr. Ralston, had a trunk
+of wood, while the head was of silver, with moustaches of gold, and
+among its weapons was a mace. Afanasief states that in White-Russian
+traditions Perun is tall and well-shaped, with black hair and a long
+golden beard. This beard relates him to Barbarossa, and, perhaps,
+though distantly, with the wood-demon Barbatos, the Wild Archer,
+who divined by the songs of birds. [68] Perun also has a bow which is
+'sometimes identified with the rainbow, an idea which is known also to
+the Finns. From it, according to the White Russians, are shot burning
+arrows, which set on fire all things that they touch. In many parts of
+Russia (as well as of Germany) it is supposed that these bolts sink
+deep into the soil, but that at the end of three or seven years they
+return to the surface in the shape of longish stones of a black or dark
+grey colour--probably belemnites, or masses of fused sand--which are
+called thunderbolts, and considered as excellent preservations against
+lightning and conflagrations. The Finns call them Ukonkiwi--the stone
+of thunder-god Ukko, and in Courland their name is Perkuhnsteine, which
+explains itself. In some cases the flaming dart of Perun became, in the
+imagination of the people, a golden key. With it he unlocked the earth,
+and brought to light its concealed treasures, its restrained waters,
+its captive founts of light. With it also he locked away in safety
+fugitives who wished to be put out of the power of malignant conjurors,
+and performed various other good offices. Appeals to him to exercise
+these functions still exist in the spells used by the peasants,
+but his name has given way to that of some christian personage. In
+one of them, for instance, the Archangel Michael is called upon to
+secure the invoker behind an iron door fastened by twenty-seven locks,
+the keys of which are given to the angels to be carried to heaven. In
+another, John the Baptist is represented as standing upon a stone in
+the Holy Sea [i.e., in heaven], resting upon an iron crook or staff,
+and is called upon to stay the flow of blood from a wound, locking
+the invoker's veins 'with his heavenly key.' In this case the myth has
+passed into a rite. In order to stay a violent bleeding from the nose,
+a locked padlock is brought, and the blood is allowed to drop through
+its aperture, or the sufferer grasps a key in each hand, either plan
+being expected to prove efficacious. As far as the key is concerned,
+the belief seems to be still maintained among ourselves.' [69]
+
+The Key has a holy sense in various religions, and consequently an
+infernal key is its natural counterpart. The Vedic hymns, which say
+so much about the shutting and opening, imprisoning and releasing,
+of heavenly rains and earthly fruits by demons and deities, interpret
+many phenomena of nature, and the same ideas have arisen in many
+lands. We cannot be certain, therefore, that Calmet is right in
+assigning an Indian origin to the subjoined Figure 5, an ancient
+Persian medal. The signs of the zodiac on its body show it to be one
+of those celestial demons believed able to bind the beneficent or
+loose the formidable powers of nature. The Key is of especial import
+in Hebrew faith. It was the high-priest Eliakim's symbol of office,
+as being also prefect in the king's house. 'The key of the house of
+David will I lay upon his shoulder: he shall open and none shall shut;
+he shall shut and none shall open.' [70] The Rabbins had a saying
+that God reserves to himself four keys, which he will intrust not
+even to the angels: the key of rain, the key of the grave, the key of
+fruitfulness, and the key of barrenness. It was the sign of one set
+above angels when Christ was seen with the keys of Hell and Death,
+or when he delivered the keys of heaven to Peter, [71]--still thrust
+down the backs of protestant children to cure nose-bleed.
+
+The ubiquitous superstition which attributes the flint arrows of
+pre-historic races to gods, shot by them as lightning, and, as some
+said, from a rainbow, is too childlike a theory to call for elaborate
+treatment. We need not, ethnographically, connect our 'Thor arrows'
+and 'Elf shots' with the stones hurled at mortals by the Thunder-Duke
+(Lui-tsz) of China. The ancient Parthians, who used to reply to the
+thunderstorm by shooting arrows at it, and the Turks, who attack an
+eclipse with guns, fairly represent the infancy of the human race,
+though perhaps with more than its average pluck. Dr. Macgowan relates,
+concerning the Lei-chau (Thunder District) of China, various myths
+which resemble those which surround the world. After thunderstorms,
+black stones, it is believed, may be found which emit light and
+peculiar sounds on being struck. In a temple consecrated to the
+Thunder Duke the people annually place a drum for that stormy demon
+to beat. The drum was formerly left on a mountain-top with a little
+boy as a sacrifice. [72] Mr. Dennys [73] speaks of the belief in the
+same country that violent winds and typhoons are caused by the passage
+through the air of the 'Bob-tailed Dragon,' and also of the rain-god
+Yü-Shüh. A storm-god connected with the 'Eagre,' or bore of the river
+Tsien-tang, presents a coincidence of name with the Scandinavian
+Oegir, which would be hardly noticeable were it not for the very close
+resemblance between the folklore concerning the 'Bob-tailed Dragon'
+and the storm-dragons of several Aryan races. Generally, in both
+China and Japan the Dragon is regarded with a veneration equal to
+the horror with which the serpent is visited. Of this phenomenon and
+its analogies in Britain I shall have an explanation to submit when
+we come to consider Dragon-myths more particularly. To this general
+rule the 'Bob-tailed Dragon' of China is a partial exception. His
+fidelity as a friend led to the ill return of an attack by which his
+tail was amputated, and ever since his soured temper has shown itself
+in raising storms. When a violent tempest arises the Cantonese say,
+'The Bob-tailed Dragon is passing,' in the same proverbial way as the
+Aryan peasantries attribute the same phenomenon to their storm-gods.
+
+The notion is widely prevalent in some districts of France that
+all whirlwinds, however slight, are caused by wizards or witches,
+who are in them, careering through the air; and it is stated by the
+Melusine that in the department of the Orne storms are attributed
+to the clergy, who are supposed to be circling in them. The same
+excellent journal states that some years ago, in that department, a
+parishioner who saw his crops threatened by a hail-storm fired into
+the cloud. The next day he heard that the parish priest had broken
+his leg by a fall for which he could not account.
+
+The following examples are given by Kuhn. Near Stangenhagen is a
+treasure hid in a mountain which Lord von Thümen tried to seek,
+but was caught up with his horse by a whirlwind and deposited at
+home again. The Devil is believed to be seated at the centre of
+every whirlwind. At Biesenthal it is said a noble lady became the
+Wind's bride. She was in her time a famous rider and huntress, who
+rode recklessly over farmers' fields and gardens; now she is herself
+hunted by snakes and dragons, and may be heard howling in every storm.
+
+I suspect that the bristling hair so frequently portrayed in the
+Japanese Oni, Devils, refers to their frequent residence at the
+centre of a gale of wind. Their demon of the storm is generally
+pictured throned upon a flower of flames, his upraised and extended
+fingers emitting the most terrific lightnings, which fall upon his
+victims and envelop them in flames. Sometimes, however, the Japanese
+artists poke fun at their thunder-god, and show him sprawling on the
+ground from the recoil of his own lightnings. The following extract
+from The Christian Herald (London, April 12, 1877) will show how
+far the dread of this Japanese Oni extends: 'A pious father writes,
+'A few days ago there was a severe thunderstorm, which seemed to
+gather very heavily in the direction where my son lived; and I had
+a feeling that I must go and pray that he might be protected, and
+not be killed by the lightning. The impression seemed to say, 'There
+is no time to be lost.' I obeyed, and went and knelt down and prayed
+that the Lord would spare his life. I believe he heard my prayer. My
+son called on me afterwards, and, speaking of the shower, said,
+'The lightning came downwards and struck the very hoe in my hands,
+and numbed me.' I said, 'Perhaps you would have been killed if some
+one had not been praying for you.' Since then he has been converted,
+and, I trust, will be saved in God's everlasting kingdom.''
+
+Such paragraphs may now strike even many christians as 'survivals.' But
+it is not so very long since some eminent clergymen looked upon
+Benjamin Franklin as the heaven-defying Ajax of Christendom, because
+he undertook to show people how they might divert the lightnings
+from their habitations. In those days Franklin personally visited a
+church at Streatham, whose steeple had been struck by lightning, and,
+after observing the region, gave an opinion that if the steeple were
+again erected without a lightning-rod, it would again be struck. The
+audacious man who 'snatched sceptres from tyrants and lightnings
+from heaven,' as the proverb ran, was not listened to: the steeple
+was rebuilt, and again demolished by lightning.
+
+The supreme god of the Quichuas (American), Viracocha ('sea foam'),
+rises out of Lake Titicaca, and journeys with lightnings for
+all opposers, to disappear in the Western Ocean. The Quichua is
+mentally brother of the Arab camel-driver. 'The sea,' it is said
+in the 'Arabian Nights,'--'the sea became troubled before them, and
+there arose from it a black pillar, ascending towards the sky, and
+approaching the meadow,' and 'behold it was a Jinn [74] of gigantic
+stature.' The Jinn is sometimes helpful as it is formidable; it repays
+the fisherman who unseals it from the casket fished up from the sea,
+as fruitfulness comes out of the cloud no larger than a man's hand
+evoked by Elijah. The perilous Jinn described in the above extract is
+the waterspout. Waterspouts are attributed in China to the battles
+of dragons in the air, and the same country recognises a demon of
+high tides. The newest goddess in China is a canonised protectress
+against the shipwrecking storm-demons of the coast, an exaltation
+recently proclaimed by the Government of the empire in obedience,
+as the edict stated, to the belief prevailing among sailors. In this
+the Chinese are a long way behind the mariners and fishermen of the
+French coast, who have for centuries, by a pious philology, connected
+'Maria' with 'La Marée' and 'La Mer;' and whenever they have been
+saved from storms, bring their votive offerings to sea-side shrines
+of the Star of the Sea.
+
+The old Jewish theology, in its eagerness to claim for Jehovah the
+absolutism which would make him 'Lord of lords,' instituted his
+responsibility for many doubtful performances, the burthen of which
+is now escaped by the device of saying that he 'permitted' them. In
+this way the Elohim who brought on the Deluge have been identified
+with Jehovah. None the less must we see in the biblical account
+of the Flood the action of tempestuous water-demons. What power a
+christian would recognise in such an event were it related in the
+sacred books of another religion may be seen in the vision of the
+Apocalypse--'The Serpent cast out of his mouth a flood of water after
+the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away with the flood;
+and the earth helped the woman and opened its mouth and swallowed up
+the flood.' This Demon of Inundation meets the explorer of Egyptian
+and Accadian inscriptions at every turn. The terrible Seven, whom
+even the God of Fire cannot control, 'break down the banks of the
+Abyss of Waters.' [75] The God of the Tigris, Tourtak (Tartak of the
+Bible), is 'the great destroyer.' [76] Leviathan 'maketh the deep to
+boil like a pot:' 'when he raises up himself the mighty are afraid;
+by reason of breakings they purify themselves.' [77]
+
+In the Astronomical Tablets, which Professor Sayce dates about
+B.C. 1600, we have the continual association of eclipse and flood:
+'On the fifteenth day an eclipse takes place. The king dies; and rains
+in the heaven, floods in the channels are.' 'In the month of Elul
+(August), the fourteenth day, an eclipse takes place.... Northward
+... its shadow is seen; and to the King of Mullias a crown is
+given. To the king the crown is an omen; and over the king the eclipse
+passes. Rains in heaven, floods in the channels flow. A famine is
+in the country. Men their sons for silver sell.' 'After a year the
+Air-god inundates.' [78]
+
+In the Chaldæo-Babylonian cosmogony the three zones of the universe
+were ruled over by a Triad as follows: the Heaven by Anu; the surface
+of the earth, including the atmosphere, by Bel; the under-world by
+Nouah. [79] This same Nouah is the Assyrian Hea or Saviour; and it
+is Noah of the Bible. The name means a rest or residence,--the place
+where man may dwell. When Tiamat the Dragon, or the Leviathan, opens
+'the fountains of the great deep,' and Anu 'the windows of Heaven,'
+it is Hea or Noah who saves the life of man. M. François Lenormant
+has shown this to be the probable sense of one of the most ancient
+Accadian fragments in the British Museum. In it allusion is made
+to 'the serpent of seven heads ... that beats the sea.' [80] Hea,
+however, appears to be more clearly indicated in a fragment which
+Professor Sayce appends to this:--
+
+
+
+Below in the abyss the forceful multitudes may they sacrifice.
+The overwhelming fear of Anu in the midst of Heaven encircles his path.
+The spirits of earth, the mighty gods, withstand him not.
+The king like a lightning-flash opened.
+Adar, the striker of the fortresses of the rebel band, opened.
+Like the streams in the circle of heaven I besprinkled the seed of men.
+His marching in the fealty of Bel to the temple I directed,
+(He is) the hero of the gods, the protector of mankind, far (and)
+near....
+O my lord, life of Nebo (breathe thy inspiration), incline thine ear.
+O Adar, hero, crown of light, (breathe) thy inspiration, (incline)
+thine ear.
+The overwhelming fear of thee may the sea know....
+Thy setting (is) the herald of his rest from marching,
+In thy marching Merodach (is) at rest [81]....
+Thy father on his throne thou dost not smite.
+Bel on his throne thou dost not smite.
+The spirits of earth on their throne may he consume.
+May thy father into the hands of thy valour cause (them) to go forth.
+May Bel into the hands of thy valour cause (them) to go forth.
+(The king, the proclaimed) of Anu, the firstborn of the gods.
+He that stands before Bel, the heart of the life of the House of the
+Beloved. [82]
+The hero of the mountain (for those that) die in multitudes.... the
+one god, he will not urge. [83]
+
+
+
+In this primitive fragment we find the hero of the mountain (Noah),
+invoking both Bel and Nebo, aerial and infernal Intelligences, and Adar
+the Chaldæan Hercules, for their 'inspiration'--that breath which, in
+the biblical story, goes forth in the form of the Dove ('the herald
+of his rest' in the Accadian fragment), and in the 'wind' by which
+the waters were assuaged (in the fragment 'the spirits of the earth'
+which are given into the hand of the violent 'hero of the mountain,'
+whom alone the gods 'will not urge').
+
+The Hydra may be taken as a type of the destructive water-demon in a
+double sense, for its heads remain in many mythical forms. The Syrian
+Dagon and Atergatis, fish-deities, have bequeathed but their element
+to our Undines of romance. Some nymphs have so long been detached
+from aqueous associations as to have made their names puzzling, and
+their place in demonology more so. To the Nixy (nêchô) of Germany,
+now merely mischievous like the British Pixy, many philologists trace
+the common phrase for the Devil,--'Old Nick.' I believe, however,
+that this phrase owes its popularity to St. Nicholas rather than to
+the Norse water-god whose place he was assigned after the christian
+accession. This saintly Poseidon, who, from being the patron of
+fishermen, gradually became associated with that demon whom, Sir
+Walter Scott said, 'the British sailor feared when he feared nothing
+else,' was also of old the patron of pirates; and robbers were called
+'St. Nicholas' clerks.' [84] In Norway and the Netherlands the ancient
+belief in the demon Nikke was strong; he was a kind of Wild Huntsman
+of the Sea, and has left many legends, of which 'The Flying Dutchman'
+is one. But my belief is that, through his legendary relation to boys,
+St. Nicholas gave the name Old Nick its modern moral accent. Because
+of his reputation for having restored to life three murdered children
+St. Nicholas was made their patron, and on his day, December 6, it
+was the old custom to consecrate a Boy-Bishop, who held office until
+the 28th of the month. By this means he became the moral appendage
+of the old Wodan god of the Germanic races, who was believed in
+winter time to find shelter in and shower benefits from evergreens,
+especially firs, on his favourite children who happened to wander
+beneath them. 'Bartel,' 'Klaubauf,' or whatever he might be called, was
+reduced to be the servant of St. Nicholas, whose name is now jumbled
+into 'Santaclaus.' According to the old custom he appeared attended
+by his Knecht Klaubauf--personated by those who knew all about the
+children--bringing a sort of doomsday. The gifts having been bestowed
+on the good children, St. Nicholas then ordered Klaubauf to put the
+naughty ones into his pannier and carry them off for punishment. The
+terror and shrieks thus caused have created vast misery among children,
+and in Munich and some other places the authorities have very properly
+made such tragedies illegal. But for many centuries it was the custom
+of nurses and mothers to threaten refractory children with being
+carried off at the end of the year by Nicholas; and in this way
+each year closed, in the young apprehension, with a Judgment Day,
+a Weighing of Souls, and a Devil or Old Nick as agent of retribution.
+
+Nick has long since lost his aquatic character, and we find his name in
+the Far West (America) turning up as 'The Nick of the Woods,'--the wild
+legend of a settler who, following a vow of vengeance for his wrongs,
+used to kill the red men while they slept, and was supposed to be a
+demon. The Japanese have a water-dragon--Kappa--of a retributive and
+moral kind, whose office it is to swallow bad boys who go to swim
+in disobedience to their parents' commands, or at improper times
+and places. It is not improbable that such dangers to the young
+originated some of the water-demons,--probably such as are thought
+of as diminutive and mischievous,--e.g., Nixies. The Nixa was for a
+long time on the Baltic coast the female 'Old Nick,' and much feared
+by fishermen. Her malign disposition is represented in the Kelpie
+of Scotland,--a water-horse, believed to carry away the unwary by
+sudden floods to devour them. In Germany there was a river-goddess
+whose temple stood at Magdeburg, whence its name. A legend exists of
+her having appeared in the market there in christian costume, but she
+was detected by a continual dripping of water from the corner of her
+apron. In Germany the Nixies generally played the part of the naiads
+of ancient times. [85] In Russia similar beings, called Rusalkas,
+are much more formidable.
+
+In many regions of Christendom it is related that these demons,
+relatives of the Swan-maidens, considered in another chapter, have
+been converted into friendly or even pious creatures, and baptized
+into saintly names. Sometimes there are legends which reveal this
+transition. Thus it is related that in the year 1440, the dikes of
+Holland being broken down by a violent tempest, the sea overflowed
+the meadows; and some maidens of the town of Edam, in West Friesland,
+going in a boat to milk their cows, espied a mermaid embarrassed in
+the mud, the waters being very shallow. They took it into their boat
+and brought it to Edam, and dressed it in women's apparel, and taught
+it to spin. It ate as they did, but could not be brought to speak. It
+was carried to Haarlem, where it lived for some years, though showing
+an inclination to water. Parival, who tells the story, relates that
+they had conveyed to it some notions of the existence of a deity,
+and it made its reverences devoutly whenever it passed a crucifix.
+
+Another creature of the same species was in the year 1531 caught in
+the Baltic, and sent as a present to Sigismund, King of Poland. It
+was seen by all the persons about the court, but only lived three days.
+
+The Hydra--the torrent which, cut off in one direction, makes many
+headways in others--has its survivals in the many diabolical names
+assigned to boiling springs and to torrents that become dangerously
+swollen. In California the boiling springs called 'Devil's Tea-kettle'
+and 'Devil's Mush-pot' repeat the 'Devil's Punch-bowls' of Europe,
+and the innumerable Devil's Dikes and Ditches. St. Gerard's Hill,
+near Pesth, on which the saint suffered martyrdom, is believed to be
+crowded with devils whenever an inundation threatens the city; they
+indulge in fiendish laughter, and play with the telescopes of the
+observatory, so that they who look through them afterwards see only
+devils' and witches' dances! [86] At Buda, across the river from Pesth,
+is the famous 'Devil's Ditch,' which the inhabitants use as a sewer
+while it is dry, making it a Gehenna to poison them with stenches,
+but which often becomes a devastating torrent when thaw comes on the
+Blocksberg. In 1874 the inhabitants vaulted it over to keep away the
+normal stench, but the Hydra-head so lopped off grew again, and in
+July 1875 swallowed up a hundred people. [87]
+
+The once perilous Strudel and Wirbel of the Danube are haunted by
+diabolical legends. From Dr. William Beattie's admirable work on
+'The Danube' I quote the following passages:--'After descending the
+Greinerschwall, or rapids of Grein above mentioned, the river rolls
+on for a considerable space, in a deep and almost tranquil volume,
+which, by contrast with the approaching turmoil, gives increased
+effect to its wild, stormy, and romantic features. At first a hollow,
+subdued roar, like that of distant thunder, strikes the ear and
+rouses the traveller's attention. This increases every second, and
+the stir and activity which now prevail among the hands on board show
+that additional force, vigilance, and caution are to be employed
+in the use of the helm and oars. The water is now changed in its
+colour--chafed into foam, and agitated like a seething cauldron. In
+front, and in the centre of the channel, rises an abrupt, isolated,
+and colossal rock, fringed with wood, and crested with a mouldering
+tower, on the summit of which is planted a lofty cross, to which in
+the moment of danger the ancient boatmen were wont to address their
+prayers for deliverance. The first sight of this used to create
+no little excitement and apprehension on board; the master ordered
+strict silence to be observed, the steersman grasped the helm with a
+firmer hand, the passengers moved aside, so as to leave free space
+for the boatmen, while the women and children were hurried into
+the cabin, there to await, with feelings of no little anxiety, the
+result of the enterprise. Every boatman, with his head uncovered,
+muttered a prayer to his patron saint; and away dashed the barge
+through the tumbling breakers, that seemed as if hurrying it on
+to inevitable destruction. All these preparations, joined by the
+wildness of the adjacent scenery, the terrific aspect of the rocks,
+and the tempestuous state of the water, were sufficient to produce a
+powerful sensation on the minds even of those who had been all their
+lives familiar with dangers; while the shadowy phantoms with which
+superstition had peopled it threw a deeper gloom over the whole scene.'
+
+Concerning the whirlpool called Wirbel, and the surrounding ruins,
+the same author writes: 'Each of these mouldering fortresses was
+the subject of some miraculous tradition, which circulated at every
+hearth. The sombre and mysterious aspect of the place, its wild
+scenery, and the frequent accidents which occurred in the passage,
+invested it with awe and terror; but above all, the superstitions
+of the time, a belief in the marvellous, and the credulity of the
+boatmen, made the navigation of the Strudel and the Wirbel a theme of
+the wildest romance. At night, sounds that were heard far above the
+roar of the Danube issued from every ruin. Magical lights flashed
+through their loopholes and casements, festivals were held in the
+long-deserted halls, maskers glided from room to room, the waltzers
+maddened to the strains of an infernal orchestra, armed sentinels
+paraded the battlements, while at intervals the clash of arms, the
+neighing of steeds, and the shrieks of unearthly combatants smote
+fitfully on the boatmen's ear. But the tower on which these scenes
+were most fearfully enacted was that on the Longstone, commonly
+called the 'Devil's Tower,' as it well deserved to be--for here,
+in close communion with his master, resided the 'Black Monk,' whose
+office it was to exhibit false lights and landmarks along the gulf,
+so as to decoy the vessels into the whirlpool, or dash them against
+the rocks. He was considerably annoyed in his quarters, however,
+on the arrival of the great Soliman in these regions; for to repel
+the turbaned host, or at least to check their triumphant progress to
+the Upper Danube, the inhabitants were summoned to join the national
+standard, and each to defend his own hearth. Fortifications were
+suddenly thrown up, even churches and other religious edifices were
+placed in a state of military defence; women and children, the aged
+and the sick, as already mentioned in our notice of Schaumburg,
+were lodged in fortresses, and thus secured from the violence of
+the approaching Moslem. Among the other points at which the greatest
+efforts were made to check the enemy, the passage of the Strudel and
+Wirbel was rendered as impregnable as the time and circumstances of
+the case would allow. To supply materials for the work, patriotism
+for a time got the better of superstition, and the said Devil's Tower
+was demolished and converted into a strong breastwork. Thus forcibly
+dislodged, the Black Monk is said to have pronounced a malediction
+on the intruders, and to have chosen a new haunt among the recesses
+of the Harz mountains.'
+
+When the glaciers send down their torrents and flood the Rhone,
+it is the immemorial belief that the Devil may be sometimes seen
+swimming in it, with a sword in one hand and a golden globe in the
+other. Since it is contrary to all orthodox folklore that the Devil
+should be so friendly with water, the name must be regarded as a
+modern substitute for the earlier Rhone demon. We probably get closer
+to the original form of the superstition in the Swiss Oberland, which
+interprets the noises of the Furka Glacier, which feeds the Rhone,
+as the groans of wicked souls condemned for ever to labour there
+in directing the river's course; their mistress being a demoness
+who sometimes appears just before the floods, floating on a raft,
+and ordering the river to rise.
+
+There is a tidal demonolatry also. The author of 'Rambles in
+Northumberland' gives a tradition concerning the river Wansbeck:
+'This river discharges itself into the sea at a place called Cambois,
+about nine miles to the eastward, and the tide flows to within five
+miles of Morpeth. Tradition reports that Michael Scott, whose fame as a
+wizard is not confined to Scotland, would have brought the tide to the
+town had not the courage of the person failed upon whom the execution
+of this project depended. This agent of Michael, after his principal
+had performed certain spells, was to run from the neighbourhood of
+Cambois to Morpeth without looking behind, and the tide would follow
+him. After having advanced a certain distance he became alarmed at
+the roaring of the waters behind him, and forgetting the injunction,
+gave a glance over his shoulder to see if the danger was imminent,
+when the advancing tide immediately stopped, and the burgesses of
+Morpeth thus lost the chance of having the Wansbeck navigable between
+their town and the sea. It is also said that Michael intended to
+confer a similar favour on the inhabitants of Durham, by making the
+Wear navigable to their city; but his good intentions, which were to
+be carried into effect in the same manner, were also frustrated by
+the cowardice of the person who had to guide the tide.'
+
+The gentle and just king Æolus, who taught his islanders navigation, in
+his mythologic transfiguration had to share the wayward dispositions of
+the winds he was said to rule; but though he wrecked the Trojan fleet
+and many a ship, his old human heart remained to be trusted on the
+appearance of Halcyon. His unhappy daughter of that name cast herself
+into the sea after the shipwreck of her husband (Ceyx), and the two
+were changed into birds. It was believed that for seven days before and
+seven after the shortest day of the year, when the halcyon is breeding,
+Æolus restrains his winds, and the sea is calm. The accent of this
+fable has been transmitted to some variants of the folklore of swans.
+In Russia the Tsar Morskoi or Water Demon's beautiful daughters (swans)
+may naturally be supposed to influence the tides which the fair bathers
+of our time are reduced to obey. In various regions the tides are
+believed to have some relation to swans, and to respect them. I have
+met with a notion of this kind in England. On the day of Livingstone's
+funeral there was an extraordinary tide in the Thames, which had been
+predicted and provided for. The crowds which had gathered at the Abbey
+on that occasion repaired after the funeral to Westminster Bridge to
+observe the tide, and among them was a venerable disbeliever in
+science, who announced to a group that there would be no high tide,
+'because the swans were nesting.' This sceptic was speedily put to
+confusion by the result, and perhaps one superstition the less remained
+in the circle that seemed to regard him as an oracle.
+
+The Russian peasantry live in much fear of the Rusalkas and Vodyanuie,
+water-spirits who, of course, have for their chief the surly Neptune
+Tsar Morskoi. In deprecation of this tribe, the peasant is careful
+not to bathe without a cross round the neck, nor to ford a stream
+on horseback without signing a cross on the water with a scythe
+or knife. In the Ukrain these water-demons are supposed to be the
+transformed souls of Pharaoh and his host when they were drowned,
+and they are increased by people who drown themselves. In Bohemia
+fishermen are known sometimes to refuse aid to one drowning, for
+fear the Vodyany will be offended and prevent the fish, over which
+he holds rule, from entering their nets. The wrath of such beings is
+indicated by the upheavals of water and foam; and they are supposed
+especially mischievous in the spring, when torrents and floods are
+pouring from melted snow. Those undefined monsters which Beowulf slew,
+Grendel and his mother, are interpreted by Simrock as personifications
+of the untamed sea and stormy floods invading the low flat shores,
+whose devastations so filled Faust with horror (II. iv.), and in
+combating which his own hitherto desolating powers found their task.
+
+
+ The Sea sweeps on in thousand quarters flowing,
+ Itself unfruitful, barrenness bestowing;
+ It breaks, and swells, and rolls, and overwhelms
+ The desert stretch of desolated realms....
+ Let that high joy be mine for evermore,
+ To shut the lordly Ocean from the shore,
+ The watery waste to limit and to bar,
+ And push it back upon itself afar!
+
+
+In such brave work Faust had many forerunners, whose art and courage
+have their monument in the fairer fables of all these elemental powers
+in which fear saw demons. Pavana, in India, messenger of the gods,
+rides upon the winds, and in his forty-nine forms, corresponding with
+the points of the Hindu compass, guards the earth. Solomon, too,
+journeyed on a magic carpet woven of the winds, which still serves
+the purposes of the Wise. From the churned ocean rose Lakshmí (after
+the solar origin was lost to the myth), Hindu goddess of prosperity;
+and from the sea-foam rose Aphrodite, Beauty. These fair forms had
+their true worshipper in the Northman, who left on mastered wind and
+wave his song as Emerson found it--
+
+
+ The gale that wrecked you on the sand,
+ It helped my rowers to row;
+ The storm is my best galley hand,
+ And drives me where I go.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+ANIMALS.
+
+ Animal demons distinguished--Trivial sources of
+ Mythology--Hedgehog--Fox--Transmigrations in Japan--Horses
+ bewitched--Rats--Lions--Cats--The Dog--Goethe's horror of
+ dogs--Superstitions of the Parsees, people of Travancore,
+ and American Negroes, Red Indians, &c.--Cynocephaloi--The
+ Wolf--Traditions of the Nez Perces--Fenris--Fables--The Boar--The
+ Bear--Serpent--Every animal power to harm demonised--Horns.
+
+
+The animal demons--those whose evil repute is the result of
+something in their nature which may be inimical to man--should
+be distinguished from the forms which have been diabolised by
+association with mythological personages or ideas. The lion, tiger,
+and wolf are examples of the one class; the stag, horse, owl, and
+raven of the other. But there are circumstances which render it very
+difficult to observe this distinction. The line has to be drawn, if
+at all, between the measureless forces of degradation on the one side,
+discovering some evil in animals which, but for their bad associations,
+would not have been much thought of; and of euphemism on the other,
+transforming harmful beasts to benignant agents by dwelling upon some
+minor characteristic.
+
+There are a few obviously dangerous animals, such as the serpent,
+where it is easy to pick our way; we can recognise the fear that
+flatters it to an agathodemon and the diminished fear that pronounces
+it accurst. [88] But what shall be said of the Goat? Was there really
+anything in its smell or in its flesh when first eaten, its butting,
+or injury to plants, which originally classed it among the unclean
+animals? or was it merely demonised because of its uncanny and
+shaggy appearance? What explanation can be given of the evil repute
+of our household friend the Cat? Is it derived by inheritance from
+its fierce ancestors of the jungle? Was it first suggested by its
+horrible human-like sleep-murdering caterwaulings at night? or has it
+simply suffered from a theological curse on the cats said to draw the
+chariots of the goddesses of Beauty? The demonic Dog is, if anything,
+a still more complex subject. The student of mythology and folklore
+speedily becomes familiar with the trivial sources from which vast
+streams of superstition often issue. The cock's challenge to the
+all-detecting sun no doubt originated his ominous career from the
+Code of Manu to the cock-headed devils frescoed in the cathedrals of
+Russia. The fleshy, forked roots of a soporific plant issued in that
+vast Mandrake Mythology which has been the subject of many volumes,
+without being even yet fully explored. The Italians have a saying that
+'One knavery of the hedgehog is worth more than many of the fox;' yet
+the nocturnal and hibernating habits and general quaintness of the
+humble hedgehog, rather than his furtive propensity to prey on eggs
+and chickens, must have raised him to the honours of demonhood. In
+various popular fables this little animal proves more than a match
+for the wolf and the serpent. It was in the form of a hedgehog that
+the Devil is said to have made the attempt to let in the sea through
+the Brighton Downs, which was prevented by a light being brought,
+though the seriousness of the scheme is still attested in the Devil's
+Dyke. There is an ancient tradition that when the Devil had smuggled
+himself into Noah's Ark, he tried to sink it by boring a hole; but
+this scheme was defeated, and the human race saved, by the hedgehog
+stuffing himself into the hole. In the Brighton story the Devil would
+appear to have remembered his former failure in drowning people,
+and to have appropriated the form which defeated him.
+
+The Fox, as incarnation of cunning, holds in the primitive belief of
+the Japanese almost the same position as the Serpent in the nations
+that have worshipped, until bold enough to curse it. In many of
+the early pictures of Japanese demons one may generally detect amid
+their human, wolfish, or other characters some traits of the kitsune
+(fox). He is always the soul of the three-eyed demon of Japan
+(fig. 7). He is the sagacious 'Vizier,' as the Persian Desatir
+calls him, and is practically the Japanese scape-goat. If a fox
+has appeared in any neighbourhood, the next trouble is attributed
+to his visit; and on such occasions the sufferers and their friends
+repair to some ancient gnarled tree in which the fox is theoretically
+resident and propitiate him, just as would be done to a serpent in
+other regions. In Japan the fox is not regarded as always harmful,
+but generally so. He is not to be killed on any account. Being thus
+spared through superstition, the foxes increase sufficiently to supply
+abundant material for the continuance of its demonic character. 'Take
+us the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines,' [89] is an
+admonition reversed in Japan. The correspondence between the cunning
+respected in this animal and that of the serpent, reverenced elsewhere,
+is confirmed by Mr. Fitz Cunliffe Owen, who observed, as he informs
+me, that the Japanese will not kill even the poisonous snakes which
+crawl freely amid the decaying Buddhist temples of Nikko, one of the
+most sacred places in Japan, where once as many as eight thousand
+monastic Buddhists were harboured. It is the red fox that abounds
+in Japan, and its human-like cry at night near human habitations is
+such as might easily encourage these superstitions. But, furthermore,
+mythology supplies many illustrations of a creditable tendency among
+rude tribes to mark out for special veneration or fear any force in
+nature finer than mere strength. Emerson says, 'Foxes are so cunning
+because they are not strong.' In our Japanese demon, whose three
+eyes alone connect it with the præternatural vision ascribed by that
+race to the fox, the harelip is very pronounced. That little animal,
+the Hare, is associated with a large mythology, perhaps because
+out of its weakness proceeds its main forces of survival--timidity,
+vigilance, and swiftness. The superstition concerning the hare is found
+in Africa. The same animal is the much-venerated good genius of the
+Calmucs, who call him Sákya-muni (Buddha), and say that on earth he
+submitted himself to be eaten by a starving man, for which gracious
+deed he was raised to dominion over the moon, where they profess to
+see him. The legend is probably traceable back to the Sanskrit word
+sasin, moon, which means literally 'the hare-marked.' Sasa means
+'hare.' Pausanias relates the story of the moon-goddess instructing
+exiles to build their city where they shall see a hare take refuge in
+a myrtle-grove. [90] In the demonic fauna of Japan another cunning
+animal figures--the Weasel. The name of this demon is 'the sickle
+weasel,' and it also seems to occupy the position of a scape-goat. In
+the language of a Japanese report, 'When a person's clogs slip from
+under his feet, and he falls and cuts his face on the gravel, or when
+a person, who is out at night when he ought to have been at home,
+presents himself to his family with a freshly-scarred face, the wound
+is referred to the agency of the malignant invisible weasel and his
+sharp sickle.' In an aboriginal legend of America, also, two sister
+demons commonly take the form of weasels.
+
+The popular feeling which underlay much of the animal-worship in
+ancient times was probably that which is reflected in the Japanese
+notions of to-day, as told in the subjoined sketch from an amusing
+book.
+
+'One of these visitors was an old man, who himself was at the time a
+victim of a popular superstition that the departed revisit the scenes
+of their life in this world in shapes of different animals. We noticed
+that he was not in his usual spirits, and pressed him to unburden his
+mind to us. He said he had lost his little son Chiosin, but that was
+not so much the cause of his grief as the absurd way in which his
+wife, backed up by a whole conclave of old women who had taken up
+their abode in his house to comfort her, was going on. 'What do they
+all do?' we asked sympathetically. 'Why,' he replied, 'every beastly
+animal that comes to my house, there is a cry amongst them all,
+'Chiosin, Chiosin has come back!' and the whole house swarms with
+cats and dogs and bats--for they say they are not quite sure which
+is Chiosin, and that they had better be kind to the lot than run the
+chance of treating him badly; the consequence is, all these brutes are
+fed on my rice and meat, and now I am driven out of doors and called
+an unnatural parent because I killed a mosquito which bit me!' [91]
+
+The strange and inexplicable behaviour of animals in cases of fear,
+panic, or pain has been generally attributed by ignorant races to
+their possession by demons. Of this nature is the story of the devil
+entering the herd of swine and carrying them into the sea, related
+in the New Testament. It is said that even yet in some parts of
+Scotland the milkmaid carries a switch of the magical rowan to expel
+the demon that sometimes enters the cow. Professor Monier Williams
+writes from Southern India--'When my fellow-travellers and myself
+were nearly dashed to pieces over a precipice the other day by some
+restive horses on a ghat near Poona, we were told that the road at
+this particular point was haunted by devils who often caused similar
+accidents, and we were given to understand that we should have done
+well to conciliate Ganesa, son of the god Siva, and all his troops
+of evil spirits, before starting.' The same writer also tells us
+that the guardian spirits or 'mothers' who haunt most regions of
+the Peninsula are believed to ride about on horses, and if they are
+angry, scatter blight and disease. Hence the traveller just arrived
+from Europe is startled and puzzled by apparitions of rudely-formed
+terra-cotta horses, often as large as life, placed by the peasantry
+round shrines in the middle of fields as acceptable propitiatory
+offerings, or in the fulfilment of vows in periods of sickness. [92]
+
+This was the belief of the Corinthians in the Taraxippos, or shade
+of Glaucus, who, having been torn in pieces by the horses with which
+he had been racing, and which he had fed on human flesh to make more
+spirited, remained to haunt the Isthmus and frighten horses during
+the races.
+
+There is a modern legend in the Far West (America) of a horse called
+'The White Devil,' which, in revenge for some harm to its comrades,
+slew men by biting and trampling them, and was itself slain after
+defying many attempts at its capture; but among the many ancient
+legends of demon-horses there are few which suggest anything about
+that animal hostile to man. His occasional evil character is simply
+derived from his association with man, and is therefore postponed. For
+a similar reason the Goat also must be dealt with hereafter, and
+as a symbolical animal. A few myths are met with which relate to
+its unpleasant characteristics. In South Guinea the odour of goats
+is accounted for by the Saga that their ancestor having had the
+presumption to ask a goddess for her aromatic ointment, she angrily
+rubbed him with ointment of a reverse kind. It has also been said that
+it was regarded as a demon by the worshippers of Bacchus, because
+it cropped the vines; and that it thus originated the Trageluphoi,
+or goat-stag monsters mentioned by Plato, [93] and gave us also the
+word tragedy. [94] But such traits of the Goat can have very little
+to do with its important relations to Mythology and Demonology. To
+the list of animals demonised by association must also be added the
+Stag. No doubt the anxious mothers, wives, or sweethearts of rash
+young huntsmen utilised the old fables of beautiful hinds which
+in the deep forests changed to demons and devoured their pursuers,
+[95] for admonition; but the fact that such stags had to transform
+themselves for evil work is a sufficient certificate of character to
+prevent their being included among the animal demons proper, that is,
+such as have in whole or part supplied in their disposition to harm
+man the basis of a demonic representation.
+
+It will not be deemed wonderful that Rats bear a venerable rank in
+Demonology. The shudder which some nervous persons feel at sight
+of even a harmless mouse is a survival from the time when it was
+believed that in this form unshriven souls or unbaptized children
+haunted their former homes; and probably it would be difficult to
+estimate the number of ghost-stories which have originated in their
+nocturnal scamperings. Many legends report the departure of unhallowed
+souls from human mouths in the shape of a Mouse. During the earlier
+Napoleonic wars mice were used in Southern Germany as diviners,
+by being set with inked feet on the map of Europe to show where the
+fatal Frenchmen would march. They gained this sanctity by a series of
+associations with force stretching back to the Hindu fable of a mouse
+delivering the elephant and the lion by gnawing the cords that bound
+them. The battle of the Frogs and Mice is ascribed to Homer. Mice are
+said to have foretold the first civil war in Rome by gnawing the gold
+in the temple. Rats appear in various legends as avengers. The uncles
+of King Popelus II., murdered by him and his wife and thrown into a
+lake, reappear as rats and gnaw the king and queen to death. The same
+fate overtakes Miskilaus of Poland, through the transformed widows and
+orphans he had wronged. Mouse Tower, standing in the middle of the
+Rhine, is the haunted monument of cruel Archbishop Hatto, of Mainz,
+who (anno 970) bade the famine-stricken people repair to his barn,
+wherein he shut them fast and burned them. But next morning an army
+of rats, having eaten all the corn in his granaries, darkened the
+roads to the palace. The prelate sought refuge from them in the Tower,
+but they swam after, gnawed through the walls and devoured him. [96]
+
+St. Gertrude, wearing the funereal mantle of Holda, commands an army
+of mice. In this respect she succeeds to the Pied Piper of Hamelin,
+who also leads off children; and my ingenious friend Mr. John
+Fiske suggests that this may be the reason why Irish servant-maids
+often show such frantic terror at sight of a mouse. [97] The care
+of children is often intrusted to them, and the appearance of mice
+prognosticated of old the appearance of the præternatural rat-catcher
+and psychopomp. Pliny says that in his time it was considered
+fortunate to meet a white rat. The people of Bassorah always bow to
+these revered animals when seen, no doubt to propitiate them.
+
+The Lion is a symbol of majesty and of the sun in his glory (reached
+in the zodiacal Leo), though here and there his original demonic
+character appears,--as in the combats of Indra, Samson, and Herakles
+with terrible lions. Euphemism, in one sense, fulfils the conditions
+of Samson's riddle--Sweetness coming out of the Strong--and has
+brought honey out of the Lion. His cruel character has subtly fallen
+to Sirius the Dog-star, to whom are ascribed the drought and malaria
+of 'dog-days' (when the sun is in Leo); but the primitive fact is
+intimated in several fables like that of Aristæus, who, born after
+his mother had been rescued from the Lybian lion, was worshipped in
+Ceos as a saviour from both droughts and lions. The Lion couching at
+the feet of beautiful Doorga in India, reappears drawing the chariot
+of Aphrodite, and typifies the potency of beauty rather than, as
+Emerson interprets, that beauty depends on strength. The chariot
+of the Norse Venus, Freyja, was drawn by Cats, diminished forms of
+her Southern sister's steeds. It was partly by these routes the Cat
+came to play the sometimes beneficent rôle in Russian, and to some
+extent in German, French, and English folklore,--e.g., Puss in Boots,
+Whittington and his Cat, and Madame D'Aulnoy's La Chatte Blanche. The
+demonic characteristics of the destructive cats have been inherited
+by the black,--or, as in Macbeth, the brindled,--cat. In Germany the
+approach of a cat to a sick-bed announces death; to dream of one is
+an evil omen. In Hungary it is said every black cat becomes a witch
+at the age of seven. It is the witch's favourite riding-horse, but
+may sometimes be saved from such servitude by incision of the sign of
+the cross. A scratch from a black cat is thought to be the beginning
+of a fatal spell.
+
+De Gubernatis [98] has a very curious speculation concerning the origin
+of our familiar fable the Kilkenny Cats, which he traces to the German
+superstition which dreads the combat between cats as presaging death to
+one who witnesses it; and this belief he finds reflected in the Tuscan
+child's 'game of souls,' in which the devil and angel are supposed
+to contend for the soul. The author thinks this may be one outcome
+of the contest between Night and Twilight in Mythology; but, if the
+connection can be traced, it would probably prove to be derived from
+the struggle between the two angels of Death, one variation of which
+is associated with the legend of the strife for the body of Moses. The
+Book of Enoch says that Gabriel was sent, before the Flood, to excite
+the man-devouring giants to destroy one another. In an ancient Persian
+picture in my possession, animal monsters are shown devouring each
+other, while their proffered victim, like Daniel, is unharmed. The
+idea is a natural one, and hardly requires comparative tracing.
+
+Dr. Dennys tells us that in China there exists precisely the same
+superstition as in Scotland as to the evil omen of a cat (or dog)
+passing over a corpse. Brand and Pennant both mention this, the
+latter stating that the cat or dog that has so done is killed without
+mercy. This fact would seem to show that the fear is for the living,
+lest the soul of the deceased should enter the animal and become one
+of the innumerable werewolf or vampyre class of demons. But the origin
+of the superstition is no doubt told in the Slavonic belief that if
+a cat leap over a corpse the deceased person will become a vampyre.
+
+In Russia the cat enjoys a somewhat better reputation than it does
+in most other countries. Several peasants in the neighbourhood of
+Moscow assured me that while they would never be willing to remain in
+a church where a dog had entered, they would esteem it a good sign if
+a cat came to church. One aged woman near Moscow told me that when the
+Devil once tried to creep into Paradise he took the form of a mouse:
+the Dog and Cat were on guard at the gates, and the Dog allowed the
+evil one to pass, but the Cat pounced on him, and so defeated another
+treacherous attempt against human felicity.
+
+The Cat superstition has always been strong in Great Britain. It is,
+indeed, in one sense true, as old Howell wrote (1647)--'We need not
+cross the sea for examples of this kind, we have too many (God wot)
+at home: King James a great while was loath to believe there were
+witches; but that which happened to my Lord Francis of Rutland's
+children convinced him, who were bewitched by an old woman that was
+a servant of Belvoir Castle, but, being displeased, she contracted
+with the Devil, who conversed with her in the form of a Cat, whom she
+called Rutterkin, to make away those children out of mere malignity
+and thirst of revenge.' It is to be feared that many a poor woman
+has been burned as a witch against whom her cherished cat was the
+chief witness. It would be a curious psychological study to trace how
+far the superstition owns a survival in even scientific minds,--as
+in Buffon's vituperation of the cat, and in the astonishing story,
+told by Mr. Wood, of a cat which saw a ghost (anno 1877)!
+
+The Dog, so long the faithful friend of man, and even, possibly,
+because of the degree to which he has caught his master's manners,
+has a large demonic history. In the Semitic stories there are many
+that indicate the path by which 'dog' became the Mussulman synonym
+of infidel; and the one dog Katmir who in Arabic legend was admitted
+to Paradise for his faithful watching three hundred and nine years
+before the cave of the Seven Sleepers, [99] must have drifted among
+the Moslems from India as the Ephesian Sleepers did from the christian
+world. In the beautiful episode of the 'Mahábhárata,' Yudhisthira
+having journeyed to the door of heaven, refuses to enter into that
+happy abode unless his faithful dog is admitted also. He is told
+by Indra, 'My heaven hath no place for dogs; they steal away our
+offerings on earth;' and again, 'If a dog but behold a sacrifice,
+men esteem it unholy and void.' This difficulty was solved by the
+Dog--Yama in disguise--revealing himself and praising his friend's
+fidelity. It is tolerably clear that it is to his connection with Yama,
+god of Death, and under the evolution of that dualism which divided the
+universe into upper and nether, that the Dog was degraded among our
+Aryan ancestors; at the same time his sometimes wolfish disposition
+and some other natural characters supplied the basis of his demonic
+character. He was at once a dangerous and a corruptible guard.
+
+In the early Vedic Mythology it is the abode of the gods that is
+guarded by the two dogs, identified by solar mythologists as the
+morning and evening twilight: a later phase shows them in the
+service of Yama, and they reappear in the guardian of the Greek
+Hades, Cerberus, and Orthros. The first of these has been traced
+to the Vedic Sarvara, the latter to the monster Vritra. 'Orthros'
+is the phonetical equivalent of Vritra. The bitch Sarama, mother
+of the two Vedic dogs, proved a treacherous guard, and was slain by
+Indra. Hence the Russian peasant comes fairly by another version of
+how the Dog, while on guard, admitted the Devil into heaven on being
+thrown a bone. But the two watch-dogs of the Hindu myth do not seem to
+bear an evil character. In a funeral hymn of the 'Rig-Veda' (x. 14),
+addressed to Yama, King of Death, we read:--'By an auspicious path
+do thou hasten past the two four-eyed brindled dogs, the offspring
+of Sarama; then approach the beautiful Pitris who rejoice together
+with Yama. Intrust him, O Yama, to thy two watch-dogs, four-eyed,
+road-guarding, and man-observing. The two brown messengers of Yama,
+broad of nostril and insatiable, wander about among men; may they give
+us again to-day the auspicious breath of life that we may see the sun!'
+
+And now thousands of years after this was said we find the Dog still
+regarded as the seer of ghosts, and watcher at the gates of death, of
+whose opening his howl forewarns. The howling of a dog on the night of
+December 9, 1871, at Sandringham, where the Prince of Wales lay ill,
+was thought important enough for newspapers to report to a shuddering
+country. I read lately of a dog in a German village which was supposed
+to have announced so many deaths that he became an object of general
+terror, and was put to death. In that country belief in the demonic
+character of the dog seems to have been strong enough to transmit an
+influence even to the powerful brain of Goethe.
+
+In Goethe's poem, it was when Faust was walking with the student
+Wagner that the black Dog appeared, rushing around them in spiral
+curves--spreading, as Faust said, 'a magic coil as a snare around
+them;' [100] that after this dog had followed Faust into his study,
+it assumed a monstrous shape, until changed to a mist, from which
+Mephistopheles steps forth--'the kernel of the brute'--in guise of a
+travelling scholar. This is in notable coincidence with the archaic
+symbolism of the Dog as the most frequent form of the 'Lares' (fig. 9),
+or household genii, originally because of its vigilance. The form here
+presented is nearly identical with the Cynocephalus, whom the learned
+author of 'Mankind: their Origin and Destiny,' identifies as the Adamic
+being set as a watch and instructor in Eden (Gen. xvi. 15), an example
+of which, holding pen and tablet (as described by Horapollo), is given
+in that work from Philæ. Chrysippus says that these were afterwards
+represented as young men clothed with dog-skins. Remnants of the
+tutelary character of the dog are scattered through German folklore:
+he is regarded as oracle, ghost-seer, and gifted with second sight;
+in Bohemia he is sometimes made to lick an infant's face that it may
+see well.
+
+The passage in 'Faust' has been traced to Goethe's antipathy to
+dogs, as expressed in his conversation with Falk at the time of
+Wieland's death. 'Annihilation is utterly out of the question; but
+the possibility of being caught on the way by some more powerful
+and yet baser monas, and subordinated to it; this is unquestionably
+a very serious consideration; and I, for my part, have never been
+able entirely to divest myself of the fear of it, in the way of a
+mere observation of nature.' At this moment, says Falk, a dog was
+heard repeatedly barking in the street. Goethe, sprang hastily to the
+window and called to it: 'Take what form you will, vile larva, you
+shall not subjugate me!' After some pause, he resumed with the remark:
+'This rabble of creation is extremely offensive. It is a perfect pack
+of monades with which we are thrown together in this planetary nook;
+their company will do us little honour with the inhabitants of other
+planets, if they happen to hear anything about them.'
+
+In visiting the house where Goethe once resided in Weimar, I
+was startled to find as the chief ornament of the hall a large
+bronze dog, of full size, and very dark, looking proudly forth,
+as if he possessed the Goethean monas after all. However, it is not
+probable that the poet's real dislike of dogs arose solely from that
+speculation about monades. It is more probable that in observing the
+old wall-picture in Auerbach's cellar, wherein a dog stands beside
+Mephistopheles, Goethe was led to consider carefully the causes of
+that intimacy. Unfortunately, and notwithstanding the fables and
+the sentiment which invest that animal, there are some very repulsive
+things about him, such as his tendency to madness and the infliction on
+man of a frightful death. The Greek Mania's 'fleet hounds' (Bacchæ 977)
+have spread terrors far and wide.
+
+Those who carefully peruse the account given by Mr. Lewes of the
+quarrel between Karl August and Goethe, on account of the opposition
+of the latter to the introduction of a performing dog on the Weimar
+stage--an incident which led to his resignation of his position of
+intendant of the theatre--may detect this aversion mingling with
+his disgust as an artist; and it may be also suspected that it was
+not the mere noise which caused the tortures he described himself as
+having once endured at Göttingen from the barking of dogs.
+
+It is, however, not improbable that in the wild notion of Goethe,
+joined with his cynophobia, we find a survival of the belief of the
+Parsees of Surat, who venerate the Dog above all other animals,
+and who, when one is dying, place a dog's muzzle near his mouth,
+and make it bark twice, so that it may catch the departing soul,
+and bear it to the waiting angel.
+
+The devil-worshippers of Travancore to this day declare that the
+evil power approaches them in the form of a Dog, as Mephistopheles
+approached Faust. But before the superstition reached Goethe's poem
+it had undergone many modifications; and especially its keen scent
+had influenced the Norse imagination to ascribe to it præternatural
+wisdom. Thus we read in the Saga of Hakon the Good, that when Eystein
+the Bad had conquered Drontheim, he offered the people choice of
+his slave Thorer or his dog Sauer to be their king. They chose the
+Dog. 'Now the dog was by witchcraft gifted with three men's wisdom;
+and when he barked he spoke one word and barked two.' This Dog wore
+a collar of gold, and sat on a throne, but, for all his wisdom and
+power, seems to have been a dog still; for when some wolves invaded
+the cattle, he attacked and was torn to pieces by them.
+
+Among the negroes of the Southern States in America I have found the
+belief that the most frequent form of a diabolical apparition is that
+of a large Dog with fiery eyes, which may be among them an original
+superstition attributable to their horror of the bloodhound, by which,
+in some regions, they were pursued when attempting to escape. Among
+the whites of the same region I have never been able to find any
+instance of the same belief, though belief in the presage of the
+howling dog is frequent; and it is possible that this is a survival
+from some region in Africa, where the Dog has an evil name of the
+same kind as the scape-goat. Among some tribes in Fazogl there is
+an annual carnival at which every one does as he likes. The king
+is then seated in the open air, a dog tied to the leg of his chair,
+and the animal is then stoned to death.
+
+Mark Twain [101] records the folklore of a village of Missouri,
+where we find lads quaking with fear at the howling of a 'stray dog'
+in the night, but indifferent to the howling of a dog they recognise,
+which may be a form of the common English belief that it is unlucky
+to be followed by a 'strange' dog. From the same book it appears
+also that the dog will always have his head in the direction of the
+person whose doom is signified: the lads are entirely relieved when
+they find the howling animal has his back turned to them.
+
+It is remarkable that these fragments of European superstition should
+meet in the Far West a plentiful crop of their like which has sprung up
+among the aborigines, as the following extract from Mr. Brinton's work,
+'Myths of the New World,' will show: 'Dogs were supposed to stand
+in some peculiar relation to the moon, probably because they howl
+at it and run at night, uncanny practices which have cost them dear
+in reputation. The custom prevailed among tribes so widely asunder
+as Peruvians, Tupis, Creeks, Iroquois, Algonquins, and Greenland
+Eskimos to thrash the curs most soundly during an eclipse. The Creeks
+explained this by saying that the big Dog was swallowing the sun, and
+that by whipping the little ones they could make him desist. What
+the big Dog was they were not prepared to say. We know. It was
+the night goddess, represented by the Dog, who was thus shrouding
+the world at mid-day. In a better sense, they represented the more
+agreeable characteristics of the lunar goddess. Xochiquetzal, most
+fecund of Aztec divinities, patroness of love, of sexual pleasure,
+and of child-birth, was likewise called Itzcuinan, which, literally
+translated, is 'bitch-mother.' This strange and to us so repugnant
+title for a goddess was not without parallel elsewhere. When in his
+wars the Inca Pachacutec carried his arms into the province of Huanca,
+he found its inhabitants had installed in their temples the figure of
+a Dog as their highest deity.... This canine canonisation explains why
+in some parts of Peru a priest was called, by way of honour, allco,
+Dog!... Many tribes on the Pacific coast united in the adoration of
+a wild species, the coyote, the Canis latrans of naturalists.' Of
+the Dog-demon Chantico the legend of the Nahuas was, 'that he made a
+sacrifice to the gods without observing a preparatory fast, for which
+he was punished by being changed into a Dog. He then invoked the god
+of death to deliver him, which attempt to evade a just punishment so
+enraged the divinities that they immersed the world in water.'
+
+The common phrase 'hell-hounds' has come to us by various routes. Diana
+being degraded to Hecate, the dogs of Hades, Orthros and Cerberus,
+multiplied into a pack of hounds for her chase, were degraded with her
+into infernal howlers and hunters. A like degradation of Odin's hunt
+took place at a later date. The Wild Huntsman, being a diabolical
+character, is considered elsewhere. Concerning the Dog, it may be
+further said here, that there are probably various characteristics
+of that animal reflected in his demonic character. His liability
+to become rabid, and to afflict human beings with hydrophobia,
+appears to have had some part in it. Spinoza alludes to the custom
+in his time of destroying persons suffering from this canine rabies
+by suffocation; and his English biographer and editor, Dr. Willis,
+tells me that in his boyhood in Scotland he always heard this spoken
+of as the old custom. That such treatment could have prevailed can
+hardly be ascribed to anything but a belief in the demonic character
+of the rabid dog, cognate with the unconscious superstition which
+still causes rural magistrates to order a dog which has bitten any
+one to be slain. The notion is, that if the dog goes mad thereafter,
+the man will also. Of course it would be rational to preserve the
+dog's life carefully, in order that, if it continues healthy, the
+bitten may feel reassured, as he cannot be if it be dead.
+
+But the degradation of the dog had a cause even in his fidelity
+as a watch. For this, as we have just seen, made him a common form
+among Lares or domestic demons. The teraphim also were often in this
+shape. Christianity had therefore a special reason for ascribing an
+infernal character to these little idols, which interfered with the
+popular dependence on the saints. It will thus be seen that there
+were many causes operating to create that formidable class of demons
+which were called in the Middle Ages Cynocephaloi. The ancient holy
+pictures of Russia especially abound in these dog-headed devils; in
+the sixteenth century they were frequently represented rending souls
+in hell; and sometimes the dragon of the Apocalypse is represented
+with seven horrible canine heads.
+
+M. Toussenel, in his transcendental interpretations, has identified
+the Wolf as the bandit and outlaw. [102] The proverbial mediæval
+phrase for an outlaw--one who wears a teste loeve, caput lupinum,
+wulfesheofod, which the ingenious author perhaps remembered--is
+of good antiquity. The wolf is called robber in the 'Rig-Veda,'
+and he is there also demonised, since we find him fleeing before a
+devotee. (In the Zend 'Vendidad' the souls of the pious fear to meet
+the wolf on the way to heaven.) The god Pushan is invoked against the
+evil wolf, the malignant spirit. [103] Cardano says that to dream of
+a wolf announces a robber. There is in the wolf, at the same time,
+that always attractive love of liberty which, in the well-known fable,
+makes him prefer leanness to the comfort of the collar-wearing dog,
+which makes him among demonic animals sometimes the same as the mighty
+huntsmen Nimrod and shaggy Esau among humanised demons. One is not
+surprised to find occasionally good stories about the wolf. Thus the
+Nez Perces tribe in America trace the origin of the human race to a
+wolf. They say that originally, when there were nothing but animals,
+there was a huge monster which devoured them whole and alive. This
+monster swallowed a wolf, who, when he entered its belly, found
+the animals therein snarling at and biting one another as they had
+done on the earth outside. The wolf exhorted them that their common
+sufferings should teach them friendliness, and finally he induced them
+to a system of co-operation by which they made their way out through
+the side of the monster, which instantly perished. The animals so
+released were at once transformed to men, how and why the advocates
+of co-operation will readily understand, and founded the Nez Perces
+Indians. The myths of Asia and Europe are unhappily antipodal to this
+in spirit and form, telling of human beings transformed to wolves. In
+the Norse Mythology, however, there stands a demon wolf whose story
+bears a touch of feeling, though perhaps it was originally the mere
+expression for physical law. This is the wolf Fenris, which, from being
+at first the pet of the gods and lapdog of the goddesses, became so
+huge and formidable that Asgard itself was endangered. All the skill
+and power of the gods could not forge chains which might chain him;
+he snapped them like straws and toppled over the mountains to which
+he was fastened. But the little Elves working underground made that
+chain so fine that none could see or feel it,--fashioned it out of
+the beards of women, the breath of fish, noise of the cat's footfall,
+spittle of birds, sinews of bears, roots of stones,--by which are meant
+things non-existent. This held him. Fenris is chained till the final
+destruction, when he shall break loose and devour Odin. The fine chain
+that binds ferocity,--is it the love that can tame all creatures? Is
+it the sunbeam that defines to the strongest creature its habitat?
+
+The two monsters formed when Ráhu was cloven in twain, in Hindu
+Mythology, reappear in Eddaic fable as the wolves Sköll and Hati,
+who pursue the sun and moon. As it is said in the Völuspá:--
+
+
+ Eastward in the Iron-wood
+ The old one sitteth,
+ And there bringeth forth
+ Fenrir's fell kindred.
+ Of these one, the mightiest,
+ The moon's devourer,
+ In form most fiend-like,
+ And filled with the life-blood
+ Of the dead and the dying,
+ Reddens with ruddy gore
+ The seats of the high gods.
+
+
+Euphemism attending propitiation of such monsters may partly explain
+the many good things told of wolves in popular legend. The stories of
+the she-wolf nourishing children, as Romulus and Remus, are found in
+many lands. They must, indeed, have had some prestige, to have been
+so largely adopted in saintly tradition. Like the bears that Elisha
+called to devour the children, the wolves do not lose their natural
+ferocity by becoming pious. They devour heretics and sacrilegious
+people. One guarded the head of St. Edmund the Martyr of England;
+another escorted St. Oddo, Abbot of Cluny, as his ancestors did the
+priests of Cluny. The skin of the wolf appears in folklore as a charm
+against hydrophobia; its teeth are best for cutting children's gums,
+and its bite, if survived, is an assurance against any future wound
+or pain.
+
+The tragedy which is so foolishly sprung upon the nerves of children,
+Little Red Riding-Hood, shows the wolf as a crafty animal. There are
+many legends of a like character which have made it a favourite figure
+in which to represent pious impostors. In our figure 10, the wolf
+appears as the 'dangerous confessor;' it was intended, as Mr. Wright
+thought, for Mary of Modena, Queen of James II., and Father Petre. At
+the top of the original are the words 'Converte Angliam' and beneath,
+'It is a foolish sheep that makes the wolf her confessor.' The craft
+of the wolf is represented in a partly political partly social turn
+given by an American fabulist to one of Æsop's fables. The wolf
+having accused the lamb he means to devour of fouling the stream, and
+receiving answer that the lamb was drinking farther down the current,
+alters the charge and says, 'You opposed my candidature at the caucus
+two years ago.' 'I was not then born,' replies the lamb. The wolf then
+says, 'Any one hearing my accusations would testify that I am insane
+and not responsible for my actions,' and thereupon devours the lamb
+with full faith in a jury of his countrymen. M. Toussenel says the wolf
+is a terrible strategist, albeit the less observant have found little
+in his character to warrant this attribute of craft, his physiognomy
+and habits showing him a rather transparent highwayman. It is probable
+that the fables of this character have derived that trait from his
+association with demons and devils supposed to take on his shape.
+
+In a beautiful hymn to the Earth in the 'Atharva Veda' it is said, 'The
+Earth, which endureth the burden of the oppressor, beareth up the abode
+of the lofty and of the lowly, suffereth the hog, and giveth entrance
+to the wild boar.' Boar-hounds in Brittany and some other regions
+are still kept at Government expense. There are many indications of
+this kind that in early times men had to defend themselves vigorously
+against the ravages of the wild boar, and, as De Gubernatis remarks,
+[104] its character is generally demoniacal. The contests of Hercules
+with the Erymanthian, and of Meleager with the Calydonian, Boar,
+are enough to show that it was through its dangerous character that
+he became sacred to the gods of war, Mars and Odin. But it is also
+to be remembered that the third incarnation of Vishnu was as a Wild
+Boar; and as the fearless exterminator of snakes the pig merited
+this association with the Preserver. Provided with a thick coat of
+fat, no venom can harm him unless it be on the lip. It may be this
+ability to defy the snake-ordeal which, after its uncleanliness had
+excepted the hog from human voracity in some regions, assigned it a
+diabolical character. In rabbinical fable the hog and rat were created
+by Noah to clear the Ark of filth; but the rats becoming a nuisance,
+he evoked a cat from the lion's nose.
+
+It is clear that our Asiatic and Norse ancestors never had such a
+ferocious beast to encounter as the Grisly Bear (Ursus horribilis)
+of America, else the appearances of this animal in Demonology could
+never have been so respectable. The comparatively timid Asiatic
+Bear (U. labiatus), the small and almost harmless Thibetan species
+(U. Thibetanus), would appear to have preponderated over the fiercer
+but rarer Bears of the North in giving us the Indo-Germanic fables,
+in which this animal is, on the whole, a favourite. Emerson finds in
+the fondness of the English for their national legend of 'Beauty and
+the Beast' a sign of the Englishman's own nature. 'He is a bear with
+a soft place in his heart; he says No, and helps you.' The old legend
+found place in the heart of a particularly representative American
+also--Theodore Parker, who loved to call his dearest friend 'Bear,' and
+who, on arriving in Europe, went to Berne to see his favourites, from
+which its name is derived. The fondness of the Bear for honey--whence
+its Russian name, medv-jed, 'honey-eater'--had probably something to do
+with its dainty taste for roses and its admiration for female beauty,
+as told in many myths. In his comparative treatment of the mythology
+of the Bear, De Gubernatis [105] mentions the transformation of King
+Trisankus into a bear, and connects this with the constellation of the
+Great Bear; but it may with equal probability be related to the many
+fables of princes who remain under the form of a bear until the spell
+is broken by the kiss of some maiden. It is worthy of note that in the
+Russian legends the Bear is by no means so amiable as in those of our
+Western folklore. In one, the Bear-prince lurking in his fountain holds
+by the beard the king who, while hunting, tries to quench his thirst,
+and releases him only after a promise to deliver up whatever he has
+at home without his knowledge; the twins, Ivan and Maria, born during
+his absence, are thus doomed--are concealed, but discovered by the
+bear, who carries them away. They are saved by help of the bull. When
+escaping the bear Ivan throws down a comb, which becomes a tangled
+forest, which, however, the bear penetrates; but the spread-out
+towel which becomes a lake of fire sends the bear back. [106] It
+is thus the ferocious Arctic Bear which gives the story its sombre
+character. Such also is the Russian tale of the Bear with iron hairs,
+which devastates the kingdom, devouring the inhabitants until Ivan
+and Helena alone remain; after the two in various ways try to escape,
+their success is secured by the Bull, which, more kindly than Elisha,
+blinds the Bear with his horns. [107] (The Bear retires in winter.) In
+Norwegian story the Bear becomes milder,--a beautiful youth by night,
+whose wife loses him because she wishes to see him by lamplight: her
+place is taken by a long-nosed princess, until, by aid of the golden
+apple and the rose, she recovers her husband. In the Pentameron,
+[108] Pretiosa, to escape the persecutions of her father, goes into
+the forest disguised as a she-bear; she nurses and cures the prince,
+who is enamoured of her, and at his kiss becomes a beautiful maid. The
+Bear thus has a twofold development in folklore. He used to be killed
+(13th century) at the end of the Carnival in Rome, as the Devil. [109]
+The Siberians, if they have killed a bear, hang his skin on a tree and
+apologise humbly to it, declaring that they did not forge the metal
+that pierced it, and they meant the arrow for a bird; from which it
+is plain that they rely more on its stupidity than its good heart. In
+Canada, when the hunters kill a bear, one of them approaches it and
+places between his teeth the stem of his pipe, breathes in the bowl,
+and thus, filling with smoke the animal's mouth, conjures its soul not
+to be offended at his death. As the bear's ghost makes no reply, the
+huntsman, in order to know if his prayer is granted, cuts the thread
+under the bear's tongue, and keeps it until the end of the hunt, when
+a large fire is kindled, and all the band solemnly throw in it what
+threads of this kind they have; if these sparkle and vanish, as is
+natural, it is a sign that the bears are appeased. [110] In Greenland
+the great demon, at once feared and invoked, especially by fishermen,
+is Torngarsuk, a huge Bear with a human arm. He is invisible to all
+except his priests, the Anguekkoks, who are the only physicians of
+that people.
+
+The extreme point of demonic power has always been held by the
+Serpent. So much, however, will have to be said of the destructiveness
+and other characteristics of this animal when we come to consider
+at length its unique position in Mythology, that I content myself
+here with a pictorial representation of the Singhalese Demon of
+Serpents. If any one find himself shuddering at sight of a snake,
+even in a country where they are few and comparatively harmless,
+perhaps this figure (11) may suggest the final cause of the shudder.
+
+In conclusion, it may be said that not only every animal ferocity,
+but every force which can be exerted injuriously, has had its
+demonic representations. Every claw, fang, sting, hoof, horn,
+has been as certain to be catalogued and labelled in demonology
+as in physical science. It is remarkable also how superstition
+rationalises. Thus the horn in the animal world, though sometimes
+dangerous to man, was more dangerous to animals, which, as foes of
+the horned animals, were foes to man's interests. The early herdsman
+knew the value of the horn as a defence against dog and wolf, besides
+its other utilities. Consequently, although it was necessary that the
+horn-principle, so to say, in nature must be regarded as one of its
+retractile and cruel features, man never demonised the animals whose
+butt was most dangerous, but for such purpose transferred the horns
+to the head of some nondescript creature. The horn has thus become
+a natural weapon of man-demons. The same evolution has taken place
+in America; for, although among its aboriginal legends we may meet
+with an occasional demon-buffalo, such are rare and of apocryphal
+antiquity. The accompanying American figure (12) is from a photograph
+sent me by the President of Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, who
+found it in an old mound (Red Indian) in the State of Georgia. It is
+probably as ancient as any example of a human head with horns in the
+world; and as it could not have been influenced by European notions,
+it supplies striking evidence that the demonisation of the forces and
+dangers of nature belongs to the structural action of the human mind.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+ENEMIES.
+
+
+ Aryas, Dasyus, Nagas--Yakkhos--Lycians--Ethiopians--Hirpini--
+ Polites--Sosipolis--Were-wolves--Goths and Scythians--Giants and
+ Dwarfs--Berserkers--Britons--Iceland--Mimacs--Gog and Magog.
+
+
+We paint the Devil black, says George Herbert. On the other hand the
+negro paints him white, with reason enough. The name of the Devil
+at Mozambique is Muzungu Maya, or Wicked White Man. Of this demon
+they make little images of extreme hideousness, which are kept by
+people on the coast, and occasionally displayed, in the belief that
+if the White Devil is lurking near them he will vanish out of sheer
+disgust with a glimpse of his own ugliness. The hereditary horror of
+the kidnapper displayed in this droll superstition may possibly have
+been assisted by the familiarity with all things infernal represented
+in the language of the white sailors visiting the coast. Captain
+Basil Hall, on visiting Mozambique about fifty years ago, found
+that the native dignitaries had appropriated the titles of English
+noblemen, and a dumpy little Duke of Devonshire met him with his whole
+vocabulary of English,--'How do you do, sir. Very glad see you. Damn
+your eyes. Johanna man like English very much. God damn. That very
+good? Eh? Devilish hot, sir. What news? Hope your ship stay too long
+while very. Damn my eye. Very fine day.'
+
+In most parts of India Siva also is painted white, which would indicate
+that there too was found reason to associate diabolism with the white
+face. It is said the Thugs spared Englishmen because their white faces
+suggested relationship to Siva. In some of the ancient Indian books
+the monster whom Indra slew, Vritra, is called Dasyu (enemy), a name
+which in the Vedas designates the Aborigines as contrasted with the
+Aryans of the North. 'In the old Sanskrit, in the hymns of the Veda,
+ârya occurs frequently as a national name and as a name of honour,
+comprising the worshippers of the gods of the Brahmans, as opposed to
+their enemies, who are called in the Veda Dasyus. Thus one of the gods,
+Indra, who in some respects answers to the Greek Zeus, is invoked
+in the following words (Rigveda, i. 57, 8):--'Know thou the Aryas,
+O Indra, and those who are Dasyus; punish the lawless, and deliver
+them unto thy servant! Be thou the mighty helper of the worshippers,
+and I will praise all these thy deeds at the festivals.' [111]
+
+Naglok (snakeland) was at an early period a Hindu name for hell. But
+the Nagas were not real snakes,--in that case they might have fared
+better,--but an aboriginal tribe in Ceylon, believed by the Hindus to
+be of serpent origin,--'naga' being an epithet for 'native.' [112] The
+Singhalese, on the other hand, have adapted the popular name for demons
+in India, 'Rakshasa,' in their Rakseyo, a tribe of invisible cannibals
+without supernatural powers (except invisibility), who no doubt merely
+embody the traditions of some early race. The dreaded powers were
+from another tribe designated Yakkhos (demons), and believed to have
+the power of rendering themselves invisible. Buddha's victories over
+these demonic beings are related in the 'Mahawanso.' 'It was known
+(by inspiration) by the vanquishers that in Lanka, filled by yakkhos,
+... would be the place where his religion would be glorified. In
+like manner, knowing that in the centre of Lanka, on the delightful
+bank of a river, ... in the agreeable Mahanaga garden, ... there
+was a great assembly of the principal yakkhos, ... the deity of
+happy advent, approaching that great congregation, ... immediately
+over their heads hovering in the air, ... struck terror into them
+by rains, tempests, and darkness. The yakkhos, overwhelmed with awe,
+supplicated of the vanquisher to be released from their terror.... The
+consoling vanquisher thus replied: 'I will release ye yakkhos from
+this your terror and affliction: give ye unto me here by unanimous
+consent a place for me to alight on.' All these yakkhos replied:
+'Lord, we confer on thee the whole of Lanka, grant thou comfort
+to us.' The vanquisher thereupon dispelling their terror and cold
+shivering, and spreading his carpet of skin on the spot bestowed on
+him, he there seated himself. He then caused the aforesaid carpet,
+refulgent with a fringe of flames, to extend itself on all sides:
+they, scorched by the flames, (receding) stood around on the shores
+(of the island) terrified. The Saviour then caused the delightful isle
+of Giri to approach for them. As soon as they transferred themselves
+thereto (to escape the conflagration), he restored it to its former
+position.' [113]
+
+This legend, which reminds one irresistibly of the expulsion of
+reptiles by saints from Ireland, and other Western regions, is
+the more interesting if it be considered that these Yakkhos are the
+Sanskrit Yakshas, attendants on Kuvera, the god of wealth, employed in
+the care of his garden and treasures. They are regarded as generally
+inoffensive. The transfer by English authorities of the Tasmanians from
+their native island to another, with the result of their extermination,
+may suggest the possible origin of the story of Giri.
+
+Buddha's dealings with the serpent-men or nagas is related as follows
+in the same volume:--
+
+'The vanquisher (i.e., of the five deadly sins), ... in the fifth
+year of his buddhahood, while residing at the garden of (the prince)
+Jeto, observing that, on account of a disputed claim for a gem-set
+throne between the naga Mahodaro and a similar Chalodaro, a maternal
+uncle and nephew, a conflict was at hand, ... taking with him his
+sacred dish and robes, out of compassion to the nagas, visited
+Nagadipo.... These mountain nagas were, moreover, gifted with
+supernatural powers.... The Saviour and dispeller of the darkness
+of sin, poising himself in the air over the centre of the assembly,
+caused a terrifying darkness to these nagas. Attending to the prayer
+of the dismayed nagas, he again called forth the light of day. They,
+overjoyed at having seen the deity of felicitous advent, bowed down
+at the feet of the divine teacher. To them the vanquisher preached
+a sermon of reconciliation. Both parties rejoicing thereat, made an
+offering of the gem-throne to the divine sage. The divine teacher,
+alighting on the earth, seated himself on the throne, and was served
+by the naga kings with celestial food and beverage. The lord of the
+universe procured for eighty kotis of nagas, dwelling on land and in
+the waters, the salvation of the faith and the state of piety.'
+
+At every step in the conversion of the native Singhalese,--the demons
+and serpent-men,--Buddha and his apostles are represented as being
+attended by the devas,--the deities of India,--who are spoken of as
+if glad to become menials of the new religion. But we find Zoroaster
+using this term in a demonic sense, and describing alien worshippers
+as children of the Devas (a Semite would say, Sons of Belial). And
+in the conventional Persian pictures of the Last Judgment (moslem),
+the archfiend has the Hindu complexion. A similar phenomenon may
+be observed in various regions. In the mediæval frescoes of Moscow,
+representing infernal tortures, it is not very difficult to pick out
+devils representing the physical characteristics of most of the races
+with which the Muscovite has struggled in early times. There are also
+black Ethiopians among them, which may be a result of devils being
+considered the brood of Tchernibog, god of Darkness; but may also, not
+impossibly, have come of such apocryphal narratives as that ascribed
+to St. Augustine. 'I was already Bishop of Hippo when I went into
+Ethiopia with some servants of Christ, there to preach the gospel. In
+this country we saw many men and women without heads, who had two
+great eyes in their breasts; and in countries still more southerly
+we saw a people who had but one eye in their foreheads.' [114]
+
+In considering animal demons, the primitive demonisation of the Wolf
+has been discussed. But it is mainly as a transformation of man and
+a type of savage foes that this animal has been a prominent figure
+in Mythology.
+
+Professor Max Müller has made it tolerably clear that Bellerophon
+means Slayer of the Hairy; and that Belleros is the transliteration
+of Sanskrit varvara, a term applied to the dark Aborigines by their
+Aryan invaders, equivalent to barbarians. [115] This points us for the
+origin of the title rather to Bellerophon's conquest of the Lycians,
+or Wolf-men, than to his victory over the Chimæra. The story of
+Lycaon and his sons--barbarians defying the gods and devouring human
+flesh--turned into wolves by Zeus, connects itself with the Lycians
+(hairy, wolfish barbarians), whom Bellerophon conquered.
+
+It was not always, however, the deity that conquered in such
+encounters. In the myth of Soracte, the Wolf is seen able to hold
+his own against the gods. Soranus, worshipped on Mount Soracte,
+was at Rome the god of Light, and is identified with Apollo by
+Virgil. [116] A legend states that he became associated with the
+infernal gods, though called Diespiter, because of the sulphurous
+exhalations from the side of Mount Soracte. It is said that once when
+some shepherds were performing a sacrifice, some wolves seized the
+flesh; the shepherds, following them, were killed by the poisonous
+vapours of the mountain to which the wolves retreated. An oracle gave
+out that this was a punishment for their pursuing the sacred animals;
+and a general pestilence also having followed, it was declared that it
+could only cease if the people were all changed to wolves and lived by
+prey. Hence the Hirpini, from the Sabine 'hirpus,' a wolf. The story
+is a variant of that of the Hirpinian Samnites, who were said to have
+received their name from their ancestors having followed a sacred wolf
+when seeking their new home. The Wolf ceremonies were, like the Roman
+Lupercalia, for purposes of purification. The worshippers ran naked
+through blazing fires. The annual festival, which Strabo describes
+as occurring in the grove of Feronia, goddess of Nature, became at
+last a sort of fair. Its history, however, is very significant of
+the formidable character of the Hirpini, or Wolf-tribe, which could
+alone have given rise to such euphemistic celebrations of the wolf.
+
+It is interesting to note that in some regions this wolf of
+superstition was domesticated into a dog. Pierius says there was a
+temple of Vulcan in Mount Ætna, in whose grove were dogs that fawned
+on the pious, but rent the polluted worshippers. It will be seen by
+the left form of Fig. 13 that the wolf had a diminution, in pictorial
+representation similar to that which the canine Lares underwent
+(p. 135). This picture is referred by John Beaumont [117] to Cartarius'
+work on 'The Images of the Gods of the Ancients;' the form wearing
+a wolf's skin and head is that of the demon Polites, who infested
+Temesa in Italy, according to a story related by Pausanias. Ulysses,
+in his wanderings, having come to this town, one of his companions
+was stoned to death for having ravished a virgin; after which his
+ghost appeared in form of this demon, which had to be appeased, by
+the direction of the oracle of Apollo, by the annual sacrifice to
+him of the most beautiful virgin in the place. Euthymus, enamoured
+of a virgin about to be so offered, gave battle to this demon, and,
+having expelled him from the country, married the virgin. However,
+since the infernal powers cannot be deprived of their rights without
+substitution, this saviour of Temesa disappeared in the river Cæcinus.
+
+The form on the right in Fig. 13 represents the genius of the
+city of Rome, and is found on some of Hadrian's coins; he holds
+the cornucopia and the sacrificial dish. The child and the serpent
+in the same picture represent the origin of the demonic character
+attributed to the Eleans by the Arcadians. This child-and-serpent
+symbol, which bears resemblance to certain variants of Bel and the
+Dragon, no doubt was brought to Elea, or Velia in Italy, by the
+Phocæans, when they abandoned their Ionian homes rather than submit
+to Cyrus, and founded that town, B.C. 544. The two forms were jointly
+worshipped with annual sacrifices in the temple of Lucina, under the
+name Sosipolis. The legend of this title is related by Pausanias. When
+the Arcadians invaded the Eleans, a woman came to the Elean commander
+with an infant at her breast, and said that she had been admonished
+in a dream to place her child in front of the army. This was done;
+as the Arcadians approached the child was changed to a serpent, and,
+astounded at the prodigy, they fled without giving battle. The child
+was represented by the Eleans decorated with stars, and holding the
+cornucopia; by the Arcadians, no doubt, in a less celestial way. It
+is not uncommon in Mythology to find the most dangerous demons
+represented under some guise of weakness, as, for instance, among
+the South Africans, some of whom recently informed English officers
+that the Galeikas were led against them by a terrible sorcerer in
+the form of a hare. The most fearful traditional demon ever slain
+by hero in Japan was Shuden Dozi--the Child-faced Drinker. In Ceylon
+the apparition of a demon is said to be frequently under the form of
+a woman with a child in her arms.
+
+Many animal demons are mere fables for the ferocity of human
+tribes. The Were-wolf superstition, which exists still in Russia, where
+the transformed monster is called volkodlák (volk, a wolf, and dlak,
+hair), might even have originated in the costume of Norse barbarians
+and huntsmen. The belief was always more or less rationalised,
+resembling that held by Verstegan three hundred years ago, and which
+may be regarded as prevalent among both the English and Flemish people
+of his day. 'These Were-wolves,' he says, 'are certain sorcerers,
+who, having anointed their bodies with an ointment they make by the
+instinct of the devil, and putting on a certain enchanted girdle,
+do not only unto the view of others seem as wolves, but to their own
+thinking have both the nature and shape of wolves so long as they
+wear the said girdle; and they do dispose themselves as very wolves,
+in worrying and killing, and waste of human creatures.' During the
+Franco-German war of 1870-71, a family of ladies on the German side
+of the Rhine, sitting up all night in apprehension, related to me
+such stories of the 'Turcos' that I have since found no difficulty
+in understanding the belief in weird and præternatural wolves which
+once filled Europe with horror. The facility with which the old Lycian
+wolf-girdle, so to say, was caught up and worn in so many countries
+where race-wars were chronic for many ages, renders it nearly certain
+that this superstition (Lycanthropy), however it may have originated,
+was continued through the custom of ascribing demonic characteristics
+to hostile and fierce races. It has been, indeed, a general opinion
+that the theoretical belief originated in the Pythagorean doctrine
+of metempsychosis. Thus Shakspere:--
+
+
+ Thou almost makest me waver in my faith,
+ To hold opinion with Pythagoras,
+ That souls of animals infuse themselves
+ Into the trunks of men: thy currish spirit
+ Governed a wolf, who, hanged for human slaughter,
+ Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet,
+ And whilst thou layest in thy unhallowed dam
+ Infused itself in thee; for thy desires
+ Are wolfish, bloody, starved, and ravenous.
+
+
+But the superstition is much older than Pythagoras, who, no doubt,
+tried to turn it into a moral theory of retributions,--as indeed did
+Plato in his story of the Vision of Er the Armenian.
+
+Professor Weber and others have adduced evidence indicating that
+although belief in the transformation of men into beasts was not
+developed in the Vedic age of India, the matrix of it was there. But
+of our main fact--the association of demonic characters with certain
+tribes--India has presented many examples. In the mountains of
+Travancore there are tribes which are still generally believed to
+be on terms of especial familiarity with the devils of that region;
+and the dwellers on the plains relate that on these mountains gigantic
+demons, sixteen or seventeen feet high, may sometimes be seen hurling
+firebrands at each other.
+
+Professor Monier Williams contributes an interesting note concerning
+this general phase of South-Indian demonology. 'Furthermore, it
+must not be forgotten that although a belief in devils and homage
+to bhutas, or spirits, of all kinds is common all over India, yet
+what is called devil-worship is far more systematically practised
+in the South of India and Ceylon than in the North. And the reason
+may be that as the invading Aryans advanced towards Southern India,
+they found portions of it peopled by wild aboriginal savages, whose
+behaviour and aspect appeared to them to resemble that of devils. The
+Aryan mind, therefore, naturally pictured to itself the regions of the
+South as the chief resort and stronghold of the demon race, and the
+dread of demonical agency became more deeply rooted in Southern India
+than in the North. Curiously enough, too, it is commonly believed in
+Southern India that every wicked man contributes by his death to swell
+the ever-increasing ranks of devil legions. His evil passions do not
+die with him; they are intensified, concentrated, and perpetuated in
+the form of a malignant and mischievous spirit.' [118]
+
+It is obvious that this principle may be extended from individuals
+to entire tribes. The Cimmerians were regarded as dwelling in a land
+allied with hell. In the legend of the Alhambra, as told by Washington
+Irving, the astrologer warns the Moorish king that the beautiful
+damsel is no doubt one of those Gothic sorceresses of whom they have
+heard so much. Although, as we have seen, England was regarded on the
+Continent as an island of demons because of its northern latitude,
+probably some of its tribes were of a character dangerous enough to
+prolong the superstition. The nightmare elves were believed to come
+from England, and to hurry away through the keyholes at daybreak,
+saying 'The bells are calling in England.' [119] Visigoth probably
+left us our word bigot; and 'Goths and Vandals' sometimes designate
+English roughs, as 'Turks' those of Constantinople. Herodotus says
+the Scythians of the Black Sea regarded the Neurians as wizards,
+who transformed themselves into wolves for a few days annually; but
+the Scythians themselves are said by Herodotus to have sprung from a
+monster, half-woman half-serpent; and possibly the association of the
+Scotch with the Scythians by the Germans, who called them both Scutten,
+had something to do with the uncanny character ascribed to the British
+Isles. Sir Walter Raleigh described the Red Men of America as gigantic
+monsters. 'Red Devils' is still the pioneer's epithet for them in the
+Far West. The hairy Dukes of Esau were connected with the goat, and
+demonised as Edom; and Ishmael was not believed much better by the
+more peaceful Semitic tribes. Such notions are akin to those which
+many now have of the Thugs and Bashi-Bazouks, and are too uniform
+and natural to tax much the ingenuity of Comparative Mythology.
+
+Underlying many of the legends of giants and dwarfs may be found a
+similar demonologic formation. A principle of natural selection would
+explain the existence of tribes, which, though of small stature,
+are able to hold their own against the larger and more powerful by
+their superior cunning. That such equalisation of apparently unequal
+forces has been known in pre-historic ages may be gathered from many
+fables. Before Bali, the monarch already mentioned, whose power alarmed
+the gods themselves, Vishnu appeared as a dwarf, asking only so much
+land as he could measure with three steps; the apparently ridiculous
+request granted, the god strode over the whole earth with two steps
+and brought his third on the head of Bali. In Scandinavian fable
+we have the young giantess coming to her mother with the plough and
+ploughman in her apron, which she had picked up in the field. To her
+child's inquiry, 'What sort of beetle is this I found wriggling in
+the sand?' the giantess replies, 'Go put it back in the place where
+thou hast found it. We must be gone out of this land, for these
+little people will dwell in it.'
+
+The Sagas contain many stories which, while written in glorification
+of the 'giant' race, relate the destruction of their chiefs by
+the magical powers of the dwarfs. I must limit myself to a few
+notes on the Ynglinga Saga. 'In Swithiod,' we are told, 'are many
+great domains, and many wonderful races of men, and many kinds of
+languages. There are giants, and there are dwarfs, and there are also
+blue men. There are wild beasts, and dreadfully large dragons.' We
+learn that in Asaland was a great chief, Odin, who went out to conquer
+Vanaland. The Vanalanders are declared to have magic arts,--such as
+are ascribed to Finns and Lapps to this day by the more ignorant of
+their neighbours. But that the people of Asaland learned their magic
+charms. 'Odin was the cleverest of them all, and from him all the
+others learned their magic arts.' 'Odin could make his enemies in
+battle blind, or deaf, or terror-struck, and their weapons so blunt
+that they could no more cut than a willow twig; on the other hand, his
+men rushed forward without armour, were as mad as dogs or wolves, bit
+their shields, and were as strong as bears or wild bulls, and killed
+people at a blow, and neither fire nor iron told upon them. These
+were called Berserkers.' (From ber, bear, and serkr, sark or coat;
+the word being probably, as Maurer says, a survival of an earlier
+belief in the transformation of men into bears.) But the successors of
+Odin did not preserve his occult power. Svegdir, for instance, saw a
+large stone and a dwarf at the door entering in it. The dwarf called
+him to come in and he should see Odin. 'Swedger ran into the stone,
+which instantly closed behind him, and Swedger never came back.' The
+witchcraft of the Finn people is said to have led Vanlandi (Svegdir's
+son) to his death by Mara (night-mare). Vanlandi's son too, Visbur,
+fell a victim to sorcery. Such legends as these, and many others which
+may be found in Sturleson's Heimskringla, have influenced our popular
+stories whose interest turns on the skill with which some little Jack
+or Thumbling overcomes his adversary by superior cunning.
+
+Superstitions concerning dwarf-powers are especially rife in
+Northumberland, where they used to be called Duergar, and they were
+thought to abound on the hills between Rothbury and Elsdon. They
+mislead with torches. One story relates that a traveller, beguiled at
+night into a hut where a dwarf prepared a comfortable fire for him,
+found himself when daylight returned sitting upon the edge of a deep
+rugged precipice, where the slightest movement had caused him to be
+dashed to pieces. [120] The Northumbrian stories generally, however,
+do not bear the emphasis of having grown out of aboriginal conditions,
+or even of having been borrowed for such. The legends of Scotland,
+and of the South-West of England, appear to me much more suggestive of
+original struggles between large races and small. They are recalled by
+the superstitions which still linger in Norway concerning the Lapps,
+who are said to carry on unholy dealings with gnomes.
+
+In the last century the 'Brownie' was commonly spoken of in Scotland
+as appearing in shape of 'a tall man,' and the name seems to refer
+to the brown complexion of that bogey, and its long brown hair,
+hardly Scottish. [121] It is generally the case that Second Sight,
+which once attained the dignity of being called 'Deuteroscopia,'
+sees a doomed man or woman shrink to the size of a dwarf. The 'tall
+man' is not far off in such cases. 'In some age of the world more
+remote than even that of Alypos,' says Hugh Miller, 'the whole of
+Britain was peopled by giants--a fact amply supported by early English
+historians and the traditions of the North of Scotland. Diocletian,
+king of Syria, say the historians, had thirty-three daughters, who,
+like the daughters of Danaus, killed their husbands on their wedding
+night. The king, their father, in abhorrence of the crime, crowded
+them all into a ship, which he abandoned to the mercy of the waves,
+and which was drifted by tides and winds till it arrived on the coast
+of Britain, then an uninhabited island. There they lived solitary,
+subsisting on roots and berries, the natural produce of the soil,
+until an order of demons, becoming enamoured of them, took them for
+their wives; and a tribe of giants, who must be regarded as the true
+aborigines of the country, if indeed the demons have not a prior claim,
+were the fruit of these marriages. Less fortunate, however, than even
+their prototypes the Cyclops, the whole tribe was extirpated a few ages
+after by Brutus the parricide, who, with a valour to which mere bulk
+could offer no effectual resistance, overthrew Gog-Magog and Termagol,
+and a whole host of others with names equally terrible. Tradition
+is less explicit than the historians in what relates to the origin
+and extinction of the race, but its narratives of their prowess are
+more minute. There is a large and ponderous stone in the parish
+of Edderston which a giantess of the tribe is said to have flung
+from the point of a spindle across the Dornoch Firth; and another,
+within a few miles of Dingwall, still larger and more ponderous,
+which was thrown by a person of the same family, and which still
+bears the marks of a gigantic finger and thumb.' [122]
+
+Perhaps we may find the mythological descendants of these Titans,
+and also of the Druids, in the so-called 'Great Men' once dreaded
+by Highlanders. The natives of South Uist believed that a valley,
+called Glenslyte, situated between two mountains on the east side
+of the island, was haunted by these Great Men, and that if any one
+entered the valley without formally resigning themselves to the
+conduct of those beings, they would infallibly become mad. Martin,
+having remonstrated with the people against this superstition, was told
+of a woman's having come out of the valley a lunatic because she had
+not uttered the spell of three sentences. They also told him of voices
+heard in the air. The Brownie ('a tall man with very long brown hair'),
+who has cow's milk poured out for him on a hill in the same region,
+probably of this giant tribe, might easily have been demonised at
+the time when the Druids were giving St. Columba so much trouble,
+and trying to retain their influence over the people by professing
+supernatural powers. [123]
+
+The man of the smaller stature, making up for his inferiority by
+invention, perhaps first forged the sword, the coat of mail, and the
+shield, and so confronted the giant with success. The god with the
+Hammer might thus supersede the god of the Flint Spear. Magic art
+seemed to have rendered invulnerable the man from whom the arrow
+rebounded.
+
+It would appear from King Olaf Tryggvason's Saga that nine hundred
+years ago the Icelanders and the Danes reciprocally regarded each
+other as giants and dwarfs. The Icelanders indited lampoons against
+the Danes which allude to their diminutive size:--
+
+
+ The gallant Harald in the field
+ Between his legs lets drop his shield,
+ Into a pony he was changed, &c.
+
+
+On the other hand, the Danes had by no means a contemptuous idea of
+their Icelandic enemies, as the following narrative from Heimskringla
+proves. 'King Harald told a warlock to hie to Iceland in some altered
+shape, and to try what he could learn there to tell him: and he set
+out in the shape of a whale. And when he came near to the land he
+went to the west side of Iceland, north around the land, when he
+saw all the mountains and hills full of land-serpents, some great,
+some small. When he came to Vapnafiord he went in towards the land,
+intending to go on shore; but a huge dragon rushed down the dale
+against him, with a train of serpents, paddocks, and toads, that blew
+poison towards him. Then he turned to go westward around the land as
+far as Eyafiord, and he went into the fiord. Then a bird flew against
+him, which was so great that its wings stretched over the mountains
+on either side of the fiord, and many birds, great and small, with
+it. Then he swam further west, and then south into Breidafiord. When
+he came into the fiord a large grey bull ran against him, wading into
+the sea, and bellowing fearfully, and he was followed by a crowd of
+land-serpents. From thence he went round by Reikaness and wanted to
+land at Vikarsted, but there came down a hill-giant against him with
+an iron staff in his hands. He was a head higher than the mountains,
+and many other giants followed him.' The most seductive Hesperian
+gardens of the South and East do not appear to have been so thoroughly
+guarded or defended as Iceland, and one can hardly call it cowardice
+when (after the wizard-whale brought back the log of its voyage)
+it is recorded: 'Then the Danish king turned about with his fleet
+and sailed back to Denmark.'
+
+It is a sufficiently curious fact that the Mimacs, aborigines of
+Nova Scotia, [124] were found with a whale-story, already referred to
+(p. 46), so much like this. They also have the legend of an ancient
+warrior named Booin, who possessed the præternatural powers especially
+ascribed to Odin, those of raising storms, causing excessive cold,
+increasing or diminishing his size, and assuming any shape. Besides
+the fearful race of gigantic ice-demons dreaded by this tribe, as
+elsewhere stated (p. 84), they dread also a yellow-horned dragon called
+Cheepichealm, (whose form the great Booin sometimes assumes). They
+make offerings to the new moon. They believe in pixies, calling them
+Wigguladum-moochkik, 'very little people.' They anciently believed in
+two great spirits, good and evil, both called Manitoos; since their
+contact with christians only the evil one has been so called.
+
+The entire motif of the Mimac Demonology is, to my mind, that of
+early conflicts with some formidable races. It is to be hoped that
+travellers will pay more attention to this unique race before it
+has ceased to exist. The Chinese theory of genii is almost exactly
+that of the Mimacs. The Chinese genii are now small as a moth, now
+fill the world; can assume any form; they command demons; they never
+die, but, at the end of some centuries, ride to heaven on a dragon's
+back. [125] Ordinarily the Chinese genii use the yellow heron as an
+aerial courser. The Mimacs believe in a large præternatural water-bird,
+Culloo, which devours ordinary people, but bears on its back those
+who can tame it by magic.
+
+Mr. Mayers, in his 'Chinese Reader's Manual,' suggests that the
+designation of Formosa as 'Isles of the Genii' (San Shén Shan) by the
+Chinese, has some reference to their early attempts at colonisation
+in Japan. Su Fuh, a necromancer, who lived B.C. 219, is said to have
+announced their discovery, and at the head of a troop of young men
+and maidens, voyaged with an expedition towards them, but, when within
+sight of the magic islands, were driven back by contrary winds.
+
+Gog and Magog stand in London Guildhall, though much diminished
+in stature, to suit the English muscles that had to bear them in
+processions, monuments of the præternatural size attributed to
+the enemies which the Aryan race encountered in its great westward
+migrations. Even to-day, when the progress of civilisation is harassed
+by untamed Scythian hordes, how strangely fall upon our ears the
+ancient legends and prophecies concerning them!
+
+
+ Thus saith the Lord Jehovah:
+ Behold I am against thee, O Gog,
+ Prince of Rosh, of Meshech, and of Tubul:
+ And I will turn thee back, and leave but the sixth part of thee;
+ And I will cause thee to come up from the north parts,
+ And will bring thee upon the mountains of Israel:
+ And I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand,
+ And will cause thine arrows to fall from thy right hand.
+ Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel,
+ Thou and all thy bands. [126]
+
+
+In the Koran it is related of Dhulkarnein:--'He journeyed from south to
+north until he came between the two mountains, beneath which he found
+a people who could scarce understand what was said. And they said, O
+Dhulkarnein, verily Gog and Magog waste the land; shall we, therefore,
+pay thee tribute, on condition that thou build a rampart between us
+and them? He answered, The power wherewith my Lord hath strengthened
+me is better than your tribute; but assist me strenuously and I will
+set a strong wall between you and them.... Wherefore when this wall
+was finished, Gog and Magog could not scale it, neither could they
+dig through it. And Dhulkarnein said, This is a mercy from my Lord;
+but when the prediction of my Lord shall come to be fulfilled, he
+will reduce the wall to dust.'
+
+The terror inspired by these barbarians is reflected in the prophecies
+of their certain irruption from their supernaturally-built fastnesses;
+as in Ezekiel:--
+
+
+ Thou shalt ascend and come like a storm,
+ Thou shalt be like a cloud to cover the land,
+ Thou and all thy bands,
+ And many people with thee;
+
+
+and in the Koran, 'Gog and Magog shall have a passage open for them,
+and they shall hasten from every high hill;' and in the Apocalypse,
+'Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive
+the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog,
+to gather them in battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the
+sea.' Five centuries ago Sir John Maundeville was telling in England
+the legend he had heard in the East. 'In that same regioun ben the
+mountaynes of Caspye, that men clepen Uber in the contree. Betwene the
+mountaynes the Jews of 10 lynages ben enclosed, that men clepen Gothe
+and Magothe: and they mowe not gon out on no syde. There weren enclosed
+22 kynges, with hire peple, that dwelleden betwene the mountayns
+of Sythe. There King Alisandre chacede hem betwene the mountaynes,
+and there he thought for to enclose hem thorghe work of his men. But
+when he saughe that he might not doon it, ne bringe it to an ende,
+he preyed to God of Nature, that he wolde performe that that he had
+begoune. And all were it so, that he was a Payneme, and not worthi to
+ben herd, zit God of his grace closed the mountaynes to gydre: so that
+thei dwellen there, all fast ylokked and enclosed with highe mountaynes
+all aboute, saf only on o syde; and on that syde is the See of Caspye.'
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+BARRENNESS.
+
+ Indian famine and Sun-spots--Sun-worship--Demon of the Desert--The
+ Sphinx--Egyptian plagues described by Lepsius: Locusts, Hurricane,
+ Flood, Mice, Flies--The Sheikh's ride--Abaddon--Set--Typhon--The
+ Cain wind--Seth--Mirage--The Desert Eden--Azazel--Tawiscara and
+ the Wild Rose.
+
+
+In their adoration of rain-giving Indra as also a solar majesty,
+the ancient Hindus seem to have been fully aware of his inconsistent
+habits. 'Thy inebriety is most intense,' exclaims the eulogist,
+and soothingly adds, 'Thou desirest that both thy inebriety and thy
+beneficence should be the means of destroying enemies and distributing
+riches.' [127] Against famine is invoked the thunderbolt of Indra,
+and it is likened to the terrible Tvashtri, in whose fearful shape
+(pure fire) Agni once appeared to the terror of gods and men. [128]
+This Tvashtri was not an evil being himself, but, as we have seen, an
+artificer for the gods similar to Vulcan; he was, however, father of a
+three-headed monster who has been identified with Vritra. Though these
+early worshippers recognised that their chief trouble was connected
+with 'glaring heat' (which Tvashtri seems to mean in the passage just
+referred to), Indra's celebrants beheld him superseding his father
+Dyaus, and reigning in the day's splendour as well as in the cloud's
+bounty. This monopolist of parts in their theogony anticipated Jupiter
+Pluvius. Vedic mythology is pervaded with stories of the demons that
+arrested the rain and stole the cloud-cows of Indra--shutting them
+away in caves,--and the god is endlessly praised for dealing death
+to such. He slays Vritra, the 'rain-arresting,' and Dribhika, Bala,
+Urana, Arbuda, 'devouring Swasna,' 'unabsorbable Súshna,' Pipru,
+Namuchi, Rudhikrá, Varchin and his hundred thousand descendants; [129]
+the deadly strangling serpent Ahi, especial type of Drouth as it dries
+up rivers; and through all these combats with the alleged authors of
+the recurring Barrenness and Famine, as most of these monsters were,
+the seat of the evil was the Sun-god's adorable self!
+
+Almost pathetic does the long and vast history appear just now,
+when competent men of science are giving us good reason to believe
+that right knowledge of the sun, and the relation of its spots to
+the rainfall, might have covered India with ways and means which
+would have adapted the entire realm to its environment, and wrested
+from Indra his hostile thunderbolt--the sunstroke of famine. The
+Hindus have covered their lands with temples raised to propitiate and
+deprecate the demons, and to invoke the deities against such sources
+of drouth and famine. Had they concluded that famine was the result of
+inexactly quartered sun-dials, the land would have been covered with
+perfect sun-dials; but the famine would have been more destructive,
+because of the increasing withdrawal of mind and energy from the
+true cause, and its implied answer. Even so were conflagrations in
+London attributed to inexact city clocks; the clocks would become
+perfect, the conflagrations more numerous, through misdirection
+of vigilance. But how much wiser are we of Christendom than the
+Hindus? They have adapted their country perfectly for propitiation of
+famine-demons that do not exist, at a cost which would long ago have
+rendered them secure from the famine-forces that do exist. We have
+similarly covered Christendom with a complete system of securities
+against hells and devils and wrathful deities that do not exist, while
+around our churches, chapels, cathedrals, are the actually-existent
+seething hells of pauperism, shame, and crime.
+
+'Nothing can advance art in any district of this accursed
+machine-and-devil-driven England until she changes her mind in many
+things.' So wrote John Ruskin recently. Of course, so long as the
+machine toils and earns wealth and other power which still goes to
+support and further social and ecclesiastical forms, constituted with
+reference to salvation from a devil or demons no longer believed in,
+the phrase 'machine-and-devil-driven' is true. Until the invention
+and enterprise of the nation are administered in the interest of right
+ideas, we may still sigh, like John Sterling, for 'a dozen men to stand
+up for ideas as Cobden and his friends do for machinery.' But it still
+remains as true that all the machinery and wealth of England devoted
+to man might make its every home happy, and educate every inhabitant,
+as that every idolatrous temple in India might be commuted into a
+shield against famine.
+
+Our astronomers and economists have enabled us to see clearly how
+the case is with the country whose temples offer no obstruction
+to christian vision. The facts point to the conclusion that the
+sun-spots reach their maximum and minimum of intensity at intervals of
+eleven years, and that their high activity is attended with frequent
+fluctuations of the magnetic needle, and increased rainfall. In 1811,
+and since then, famines in India have, with one exception, followed
+years of minimum sun-spots. [130] These facts are sufficiently well
+attested to warrant the belief that English science and skill will
+be able to realise in India the provision which Joseph is said to
+have made for the seven lean years of which Pharaoh dreamed.
+
+Until that happy era shall arrive, the poor Hindus will only go
+on alternately adoring and propitiating the sun, as its benign or
+its cruel influences shall fall upon them. The artist Turner said,
+'The sun is God.' The superb effects of light in Turner's pictures
+could hardly have come from any but a sun-worshipper dwelling amid
+fogs. Unfamiliarity often breeds reverence. There are few countries
+in which the sun, when it does shine, is so likely to be greeted with
+enthusiasm, and observed in all its variations of splendour, as one
+in which its appearance is rare. Yet the superstition inherited from
+regions where the sun is equally a desolation was strong enough to
+blot out its glory in the mind of a writer famous in his time, Tobias
+Swinden, M.A., who wrote a work to prove the sun to be the abode of
+the damned. [131] The speculation may now appear only curious, but,
+probably, it is no more curious than a hundred years from now will
+seem to all the vulgar notion of future fiery torments for mankind,
+the scriptural necessity of which led the fanciful rector to his
+grotesque conclusion. These two extremes--the Sun-worship of Turner,
+the Sun-horror of Swinden,--survivals in England, represent the two
+antagonistic aspects of the sun, which were of overwhelming import
+to those who dwelt beneath its greatest potency. His ill-humour, or
+his hunger and thirst, in any year transformed the earth to a desert,
+and dealt death to thousands.
+
+In countries where drouth, barrenness, and consequent famine were
+occasional, as in India, it would be an inevitable result that
+they would represent the varying moods of a powerful will, and
+in such regions we naturally find the most extensive appliances
+for propitiation. The preponderant number of fat years would
+tell powerfully on the popular imagination in favour of priestly
+intercession, and the advantage of sacrifices to the great Hunger-demon
+who sometimes consumed the seeds of the earth. But in countries
+where barrenness was an ever-present, visible, unvarying fact,
+the Demon of the Desert would represent Necessity, a power not to
+be coaxed or changed. People dwelling in distant lands might invent
+theoretical myths to account for the desert. It might be an accident
+resulting from the Sun-god having given up his chariot one day to an
+inexperienced driver who came too close to the earth. But to those
+who lived beside the desert it could only seem an infernal realm,
+quite irrecoverable. The ancient civilisation of Egypt, so full of
+grandeur, might, in good part, have been due to the lesson taught
+them by the desert, that they could not change the conditions around
+them by any entreaties, but must make the best of what was left. If
+such, indeed, was the force that built the ancient civilisation
+whose monuments remain so magnificent in their ruins, its decay
+might be equally accounted for when that primitive faith passed into
+a theological phase. For as Necessity is the mother of invention,
+Fate is fatal to the same. Belief in facts, and laws fixed in the
+organic nature of things, stimulates man to study them and constitute
+his life with reference to them; but belief that things are fixed by
+the arbitrary decree of an individual power is the final sentence
+of enterprise. Fate might thus steadily bring to ruin the grandest
+achievements of Necessity.
+
+Had we only the true history of the Sphinx--the Binder--we
+might find it a landmark between the rise and decline of Egyptian
+civilisation. When the great Limitation surrounding the powers of man
+was first personified with that mystical grandeur, it would stand
+in the desert not as the riddle but its solution. No such monument
+was ever raised by Doubt. But once personified and outwardly shaped,
+the external Binder must bind thought as well; nay, will throttle
+thought if it cannot pierce through the stone and discover the
+meaning of it. 'How true is that old fable of the Sphinx who sat by
+the wayside propounding her riddle to the passengers, which if they
+could not answer she destroyed them! Such a Sphinx is this Life of
+ours to all men and societies of men. Nature, like the Sphinx, is of
+womanly celestial loveliness and tenderness; the face and bosom of
+a goddess, but ending in claws and the body of a lioness. There is
+in her a celestial beauty,--which means celestial order, pliancy
+to wisdom; but there is also a darkness, a ferocity, fatality,
+which are infernal. She is a goddess, but one not yet disimprisoned;
+one still half-imprisoned,--the articulate, lovely still encased in
+the inarticulate, chaotic. How true! And does she not propound her
+riddles to us? Of each man she asks daily, in mild voice, yet with
+a terrible significance, 'Knowest thou the meaning of this Day? What
+thou canst do To-day, wisely attempt to do.' Nature, Universe, Destiny,
+Existence, howsoever we name this grand unnameable Fact, in the midst
+of which we live and struggle, is as a heavenly bride and conquest to
+the wise and brave, to them who can discern her behests and do them; a
+destroying fiend to them who cannot. Answer her riddle, it is well with
+thee. Answer it not, pass on regarding it not, it will answer itself;
+the solution for thee is a thing of teeth and claws; Nature to thee
+is a dumb lioness, deaf to thy pleadings, fiercely devouring. Thou
+art not now her victorious bridegroom; thou art her mangled victim,
+scattered on the precipices, as a slave found treacherous, recreant,
+ought to be, and must.' [132]
+
+On the verge of the Desert, Prime Minister to the Necropolis at
+whose gateway it stands, the Sphinx reposes amid the silence of
+science and the centuries. Who built it? None can answer, so far as
+the human artist, or the king under whom he worked, is concerned. But
+the ideas and natural forces which built the Sphinx surround even now
+the archæologist who tries to discover its history and chronology. As
+fittest appendage to Carlyle's interpretation, let us read some
+passages from Lepsius.
+
+'The Oedipus for this king of the Sphinxes is yet wanting. Whoever
+would drain the immeasurable sand-flood which buries the tombs
+themselves, and lay open the base of the Sphinx, the ancient
+temple-path, and the surrounding hills, could easily decide it. But
+with the enigmas of history there are joined many riddles and wonders
+of nature, which I must not leave quite unnoticed. The newest of all,
+at least, I must describe.
+
+'I had descended with Abeken into a mummy-pit, to open some
+newly discovered sarcophagi, and was not a little astonished, upon
+descending, to find myself in a regular snow-drift of locusts, which,
+almost darkening the heavens, flew over our heads from the south-west
+from the desert in hundreds of thousands to the valley. I took it
+for a single flight, and called my companions from the tombs, where
+they were busy, that they might see this Egyptian wonder ere it was
+over. But the flight continued; indeed the work-people said it had
+begun an hour before. Then we first observed that the whole region,
+near and far, was covered with locusts. I sent an attendant into the
+desert to discover the breadth of the flock. He ran for the distance
+of a quarter of an hour, then returned and told us that, as far as
+he could see, there was no end to them. I rode home in the midst of
+the locust shower. At the edge of the fruitful plain they fell down
+in showers; and so it went on the whole day until the evening, and
+so the next day from morning till evening, and the third; in short to
+the sixth day, indeed in weaker flights much longer. Yesterday it did
+seem that a storm of rain in the desert had knocked down and destroyed
+the last of them. The Arabs are now lighting great smoke-fires in the
+fields, and clattering and making loud noises all day long to preserve
+their crops from the unexpected invasion. It will, however, do little
+good. Like a new animated vegetation, these millions of winged spoilers
+cover even the neighbouring sand-hills, so that scarcely anything
+is to be seen of the ground; and when they rise from one place they
+immediately fall down somewhere in the neighbourhood; they are tired
+with their long journey, and seem to have lost all fear of their
+natural enemies, men, animals, smoke, and noise, in their furious
+wish to fill their stomachs, and in the feeding of their immense
+number. The most wonderful thing, in my estimation, is their flight
+over the naked wilderness, and the instinct which has guided them from
+some oasis over the inhospitable desert to the fat soil of the Nile
+vale. Fourteen years ago, it seems, this Egyptian plague last visited
+Egypt with the same force. The popular idea is that they are sent by
+the comet which we have observed for twelve days in the South-west,
+and which, as it is now no longer obscured by the rays of the moon,
+stretches forth its stately tail across the heavens in the hours
+of the night. The Zodiacal light, too, so seldom seen in the north,
+has lately been visible for several nights in succession.'
+
+Other plagues of Egypt are described by Lepsius:--
+
+'Suddenly the storm grew to a tremendous hurricane, such as I have
+never seen in Europe, and hail fell upon us in such masses as almost
+to turn day into night.... Our tents lie in a valley, whither the
+plateau of the pyramids inclines, and are sheltered from the worst
+winds from the north and west. Presently I saw a dashing mountain
+flood hurrying down upon our prostrate and sand-covered tents, like
+a giant serpent upon its certain prey. The principal stream rolled
+on to the great tent; another arm threatened mine without reaching
+it. But everything that had been washed from our tents by the shower
+was torn away by the two streams, which joined behind the tents, and
+carried into a pool behind the Sphinx, where a great lake immediately
+formed, which fortunately had no outlet. Just picture this scene
+to yourself! Our tents, dashed down by the storm and heavy rain,
+lying between two mountain torrents, thrusting themselves in several
+places to the depth of six feet in the sand, and depositing our books,
+drawings, sketches, shirts, and instruments--yes, even our levers and
+iron crow-bars; in short, everything they could seize, in the dark
+foaming mud-ocean. Besides this, ourselves wet to the skin, without
+hats, fastening up the weightier things, rushing after the lighter
+ones, wading into the lake to the waist to fish out what the sand had
+not yet swallowed; and all this was the work of a quarter of an hour,
+at the end of which the sun shone radiantly again, and announced the
+end of this flood by a bright and glorious rainbow.
+
+'Now comes the plague of mice, with which we were not formerly
+acquainted; in my tent they grow, play, and whistle, as if they
+had been at home here all their lives, and quite regardless of my
+presence. At night they have already run across my bed and face,
+and yesterday I started terrified from my slumbers, as I suddenly
+felt the sharp tooth of such a daring guest at my foot.
+
+'Above me a canopy of gauze is spread, in order to keep off the flies,
+these most shameless of the plagues of Egypt, during the day, and the
+mosquitos at night.... Scorpions and serpents have not bitten us yet,
+but there are very malicious wasps, which have often stung us.
+
+'The dale (in the Desert) was wild and monotonous, nothing but
+sandstone rock, the surfaces of which were burned as black as coals,
+but turned into burning golden yellow at every crack, and every ravine,
+whence a number of sand-rivulets, like fire-streams from black dross,
+ran and filled the valleys. No tree, no tuft of grass had we yet seen,
+also no animals, except a few vultures and crows feeding on the carcase
+of the latest fallen camel.... Over a wild and broken path, and cutting
+stones, we came deeper and deeper into the gorge. The first wide
+basins were empty, we therefore left the camels and donkeys behind,
+climbed up the smooth granite wall, and thus proceeded amidst these
+grand rocks from one basin to another; they were all empty. Behind
+there, in the farthest ravine, the guide said there must be water,
+for it was never empty; but there proved to be not a single drop. We
+were obliged to return dry.... We saw the most beautiful mirages very
+early in the day; they most minutely resemble seas and lakes, in which
+mountains, rocks, and everything in their vicinity, are reflected
+as in the clearest water. They form a remarkable contrast with the
+staring dry desert, and have probably deceived many a poor wanderer,
+as the legend goes. If one be not aware that no water is there, it is
+quite impossible to distinguish the appearance from the reality. A
+few days ago I felt quite sure that I perceived an overflowing of
+the Nile, or a branch near El Mechêref, and rode towards it, but only
+found Bahr Sheitan, Satan's water, as the Arabs call it.' [133]
+
+Amid such scenery the Sphinx arose. Egypt was able to recognise the
+problem of blended barrenness and beauty--alternation of Nature's
+flowing breast and leonine claw--but could she return the right
+answer? The primitive Egyptian answer may, indeed, as I have guessed,
+be the great monuments of her civilisation, but her historic solution
+has been another world. This world a desert, with here and there a
+momentary oasis, where man may dance and feast a little, stimulated
+by the corpse borne round the banquet, ere he passes to paradise. So
+thought they and were deceived; from generation to generation have
+they been destroyed, even unto this day. How destroyed, Lepsius may
+again be our witness.
+
+'The Sheîkh of the Saadîch-derwishes rides to the chief Sheîkh of all
+the derwishes of Egypt, El Bekri. On the way thither, a great number
+of these holy folk, and others, too, who fancy themselves not a whit
+behind-hand in piety, throw themselves flat on the ground, with their
+faces downward, and so that the feet of one lie close to the head of
+the next; over this living carpet the sheîkh rides on his horse, which
+is led on each side by an attendant, in order to compel the animal to
+the unnatural march. Each body receives two treads of the horse; most
+of them jump up again without hurt, but whoever suffers serious, or as
+it occasionally happens, mortal injury, has the additional ignominy
+to bear of not having pronounced, or not being able to pronounce,
+the proper prayers and magical charms that alone could save him.'
+
+'What a fearful barbarous worship' (the Sikr, in which the derwishes
+dance until exhausted, howling 'No God but Allah') 'which the astounded
+multitude, great and small, gentle and simple, gaze upon seriously,
+and with stupid respect, and in which it not unfrequently takes a
+part! The invoked deity is manifestly much less an object of reverence
+than the fanatic saints who invoke him; for mad, idiotic, or other
+psychologically-diseased persons are very generally looked upon as
+holy by the Mohammedans, and treated with great respect. It is the
+demoniacal, incomprehensibly-acting, and therefore fearfully-observed,
+power of nature that the natural man always reveres when he perceives
+it, because he is sensible of some connection between it and his
+intellectual power, without being able to command it; first in the
+mighty elements, then in the wondrous but obscure law-governed
+instincts of animals, and at last in the yet more overpowering
+ecstatical or generally abnormal mental condition of his own race.'
+
+The right answer to the enigma of the Sphinx is Man. But this creature
+prostrating himself under the Sheîkh's horse, or under the invisible
+Sheîkh called Allah, and ascribing sanctity to the half-witted, is not
+Man at all. Those hard-worked slaves who escaped into the wilderness,
+and set up for worship an anthropomorphic Supreme Will, and sought
+their promised milk and honey in this world alone, carried with them
+the only force that could rightly answer the Sphinx. Their Allah or
+Elohim they heard say,--'Why howlest thou to me? Go forward.' Somewhat
+more significant than his usual jests was that cartoon of Punch which
+represented the Sphinx with relaxed face smiling recognition on the
+most eminent of contemporary Israelites returning to the land of his
+race's ancient bondage, to buy the Suez Canal. The Suez Canal half
+answers the Sphinx; when man has subdued the Great Desert to a sea,
+the solution will be complete, and the Sphinx may cast herself into it.
+
+Far and wide through the Southern world have swarmed the
+locusts described by Lepsius, and with them have migrated many
+superstitions. The writer of this well remembers the visit of the
+so-called 'Seventeen-year locusts,' to the region of Virginia where he
+was born, and across many years can hear the terrible never-ceasing
+roar coming up from the woods, uttering, as all agreed, the ominous
+word 'Pharaoh.' On each wing every eye could see the letter W,
+signifying War. With that modern bit of ancient Egypt in my memory,
+I find the old Locust-mythology sufficiently impressive.
+
+By an old tradition the Egyptians, as described by Lepsius, connected
+the locusts with the comet. In the Apocalypse (ix.) a falling star
+is the token of the descent of the Locust-demon to unlock the pit
+that his swarms may issue forth for their work of destruction. Their
+king Abaddon, in Greek Apollyon,--Destroyer,--has had an evolution
+from being the angel of the two (rabbinical) divisions of Hades to the
+successive Chiefs of Saracenic hordes. It is interesting to compare the
+graphic description of a locust-storm in Joel, with its adaptation to
+an army of human destroyers in the Apocalypse. And again the curious
+description of these hosts of Abaddon in the latter book, partly repeat
+the strange notions of the Bedouins concerning the locust,--one of
+whom, says Niebuhr, 'compared the head of the locust to that of the
+horse; its breast to that of a lion; its feet to those of a camel;
+its body to that of the serpent; its tail to that of the scorpion;
+its horns (antennæ) to the locks of hair of a virgin.' The present
+generation has little reason to deny the appropriateness of the
+biblical descriptions of Scythian hordes as locusts. 'The land is as
+the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness.'
+
+The ancient seeming contest between apparent Good and Evil in Egypt,
+was represented in the wars of Ra and Set. It is said (Gen. iv. 26),
+'And to Seth, to him also was born a son; and he called his name
+Enos; then began men to call upon the name of the Lord.' Aquila
+reads this--'Then Seth began to be called by the name of the
+Lord.' Mr. Baring-Gould remarks on this that Seth was at first regarded
+by the Egyptians as the deity of light and civilisation, but that
+they afterwards identified as Typhon, because he was the chief god of
+the Hyksos or shepherd kings; and in their hatred of these oppressors
+the name of Seth was everywhere obliterated from their monuments, and
+he was represented as an ass, or with an ass's head. [134] But the
+earliest date assigned to the Hyksos dominion in Egypt, B.C. 2000,
+coincides with that of the Egyptian planisphere in Kircher, [135]
+where Seth is found identified with Sirius, or the dog-headed Mercury,
+in Capricorn. This is the Sothiac Period, or Cycle of the Dog-star. He
+was thus associated with the goat and the winter solstice, to which
+(B.C. 2000) Capricorn was adjacent. That Seth or Set became the
+name for the demon of disorder and violence among the Egyptians is,
+indeed, probably due to his being a chief god, among some tribes
+Baal himself, among the Asiatics, before the time of the Hyksos. It
+was already an old story to put their neighbours' Light for their own
+Darkness. The Ass's ears they gave him referred not to his stupidity,
+but to his hearing everything, as in the case of the Ass of Apuleius,
+and the ass Nicon of Plutarch, or, indeed, the many examples of the
+same kind which preceeded the appearance of this much misunderstood
+animal as the steed of Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem. In
+Egyptian symbolism those long ears were as much dreaded as devils'
+horns. From the eyes of Ra all beneficent things, from the eyes of Set
+all noxious things, were produced. Amen-Ra, as the former was called,
+slew the son of Set, the great serpent Naka, which in one hymn is
+perhaps tauntingly said to have 'saved his feet.' Amen-Ra becomes
+Horus and Set becomes Typhon. The Typhonian myth is very complex,
+and includes the conflict between the Nile and all its enemies--the
+crocodiles that lurk in it, the sea that swallows it, the drouth that
+dries it, the burning heat that brings malaria from it, the floods
+that render it destructive--and Set was through it evolved to a point
+where he became identified with Saturn, Sheitan, or Satan. Plutarch,
+identifying Set with Typho, says that those powers of the universal
+Soul, which are subject to the influences of passions, and in the
+material system whatever is noxious, as bad air, irregular seasons,
+eclipses of the sun and moon, are ascribed to Typho. The name Set,
+according to him, means 'violent' and 'hostile;' and he was described
+as 'double-headed,' 'he who has two countenances,' and 'the Lord of
+the World.' Not the least significant fact, in a moral sense, is that
+Set or Typho is represented as the brother of Osiris whom he slew.
+
+Without here going into the question of relationship between Typhaon
+and Typhoeus, we may feel tolerably certain that the fire-breathing
+hurricane-monster Typhaon of Homer, and the hundred-headed,
+fierce-eyed roarer Typhoeus--son of Tartarus, father of Winds and
+Harpies--represent the same ferocities of Nature. No fitter place
+was ever assigned him than the African desert, and the story of
+the gods and goddesses fleeing before Typhon into Egypt, and there
+transforming themselves into animals, from terror, is a transparent
+tribute to the dominion over the wilderness of sand exercised by the
+typhoon in its many moods. The vulture-harpy tearing the dead is his
+child. He is many-headed; now hot, stifling, tainted; now tempestuous;
+here sciroc, there hurricane, and often tornado. It may be indeed that
+as at once coiled in the whirlwind and blistering, he is the fiery
+serpent to appease whom Moses lifted the brasen serpent for the worship
+of Israel. I have often seen snakes hung up by negroes in Virginia,
+to bring rain in time of drouth. Typhon, as may easily be seen by the
+accompanying figure (14), is a hungry and thirsty demon. His tongue is
+lolling out with thirst. [136] His later connection with the underworld
+is shown in various myths, one of which seems to suggest a popular
+belief that Typhon is not pleased with the mummies withheld from him,
+and that he can enjoy his human viands only through burials of the
+dead. In Egypt, after the Coptic Easter Monday--called Shemmen-Nesseem
+(smelling the zephyr)--come the fifty-days' hot wind, called Khamseen
+or Cain wind. After slaying Abel, Cain wandered amid such a wind,
+tortured with fever and thirst. Then he saw two birds fight in the
+air; one having killed the other scratched a hole in the desert sand
+and buried it. Cain then did the like by his brother's body, when a
+zephyr sprang up and cooled his fever. But still, say the Alexandrians,
+the fifty-days' hot Cain wind return annually.
+
+In pictures of the mirage, or in cloud-shapes faintly illumined by
+the afterglow, the dwellers beside the plains of sand saw, as in
+phantasmagoria, the gorgeous palaces, the air-castles, and mysterious
+cities, which make the romance of the desert. Unwilling to believe
+that such realms of barrenness had ever been created by any good god,
+they beheld in dreams, which answer to nature's own mirage-dreaming,
+visions of dynasties passed away, of magnificent palaces and monarchs
+on whose pomp and heaven-defying pride the fatal sand-storm had fallen,
+and buried their glories in the dust for ever. The desert became the
+emblem of immeasurable all-devouring Time. In many of these legends
+there are intimations of a belief that Eden itself lay where now all is
+unbroken desert. In the beautiful legend in the Midrash of Solomon's
+voyage on the Wind, the monarch alighted near a lofty palace of gold,
+'and the scent there was like the scent of the garden of Eden.' The
+dust had so surrounded this palace that Solomon and his companions only
+learned that there had been an entrance from an eagle in it thirteen
+centuries old, which had heard from its father the tradition of an
+entrance on the western side. The obedient Wind having cleared away
+the sand, a door was found on whose lock was written, 'Be it known to
+you, ye sons of men, that we dwelt in this palace in prosperity and
+delight many years. When the famine came upon us we ground pearls
+in the mill instead of wheat, but it profited us nothing.' Amid
+marvellous splendours, from chamber to chamber garnished with ruby,
+topaz, emerald, Solomon passed to a mansion on whose three gates
+were written admonitions of the transitory nature of all things
+but--Death. 'Let not fortune deceive thee.' 'The world is given from
+one to another.' On the third gate was written, 'Take provision for
+thy journey, and make ready food for thyself while it is yet day;
+for thou shalt not be left on the earth, and thou knowest not the day
+of thy Death.' This gate Solomon opened and saw within a life-like
+image seated: as the monarch approached, this image cried with a
+loud voice, 'Come hither, ye children of Satan; see! King Solomon is
+come to destroy you.' Then fire and smoke issued from the nostrils of
+the image; and there were loud and bitter cries, with earthquake and
+thunder. But Solomon uttered against them the Ineffable Name, and all
+the images fell on their faces, and the sons of Satan fled and cast
+themselves into the sea, that they might not fall into the hands of
+Solomon. The king then took from the neck of the image a silver tablet,
+with an inscription which he could not read, until the Almighty sent
+a youth to assist him. It said:--'I, Sheddad, son of Ad, reigned over
+a thousand thousand provinces, and rode on a thousand thousand horses;
+a thousand thousand kings were subject to me, and a thousand thousand
+warriors I slew. Yet in the hour that the Angel of Death came against
+me, I could not withstand him. Whoso shall read this writing let him
+not trouble himself greatly about this world, for the end of all men
+is to die, and nothing remains to man but a good name.' [137]
+
+Azazel--'of doubtful meaning'--is the biblical name of the Demon of the
+Desert (Lev. xvi.). 'Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats: one lot
+for Jehovah, and the other for Azazel. And Aaron shall bring the goat
+upon which the lot for Jehovah fell, and offer him for a sin-offering:
+But the goat, on which the lot for Azazel fell, shall be presented
+alive before Jehovah, to make an atonement with him, to let him go to
+Azazel in the wilderness.... And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon
+the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of
+the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins,
+putting them upon the head of the goat, and send him away by the hand
+of a fit man into the desert. And the goat shall bear upon him all
+their iniquities unto a land not inhabited; and he shall let go the
+goat in the desert.' Of the moral elements here involved much will
+have to be said hereafter. This demon ultimately turned to a devil;
+and persisting through both forms is the familiar principle that it
+is 'well enough to have friends on both sides' so plainly at work in
+the levitical custom; but it is particularly interesting to observe
+that the same animal should be used as offerings to the antagonistic
+deities. In Egyptian Mythology we find that the goat had precisely
+this two-fold consecration. It was sacred to Chem, the Egyptian Pan,
+god of orchards and of all fruitful lands; and it became also sacred
+to Mendes, the 'Destroyer,' or 'Avenging Power' of Ra. It will thus
+be seen that the same principle which from the sun detached the
+fructifying from the desert-making power, and made Typhon and Osiris
+hostile brothers, prevailed to send the same animal to Azazel in the
+Desert and Jehovah of the milk and honey land. Originally the goat was
+supreme. The Samaritan Pentateuch, according to Aben Ezra (Preface to
+Esther), opens, 'In the beginning Ashima created the heaven and the
+earth.' In the Hebrew culture-myth of Cain and Abel, also brothers,
+there may be represented, as Goldziher supposes, the victory of the
+agriculturist over the nomad or shepherd; but there is also traceable
+in it the supremacy of the Goat, Mendez or Azima. 'Abel brought the
+firstling of the goats.'
+
+Very striking is the American (Iroquois) myth of the conflict between
+Joskeha and Tawiscara,--the White One and the Dark One. They were
+twins, born of a virgin who died in giving them life. Their grandmother
+was the moon (Ataensic, she who bathes). These brothers fought, Joskeha
+using as weapon the horns of a stag, Tawiscara the wild-rose. The
+latter fled sorely wounded, and the blood gushing from him turned to
+flint-stones. The victor, who used the stag-horns (the same weapon
+that Frey uses against Beli, in the Prose Edda, and denoting perhaps a
+primitive bone-age art), destroyed a monster frog which swallowed all
+the waters, and guided the torrents into smooth streams and lakes. He
+stocked the woods with game, invented fire, watched and watered crops,
+and without him, says the old missionary Brebeuf, 'they think they
+could not boil a pot.' The use by the desert-demon Tawiscara of a
+wild rose as his weapon is a beautiful touch in this myth. So much
+loveliness grew even amid the hard flints. One is reminded of the
+closing scene in the second part of Goethe's Faust. There, when Faust
+has realised the perfect hour to which he can say, 'Stay, thou art
+fair!' by causing by his labour a wilderness to blossom as a rose,
+he lies down in happy death; and when the demons come for his soul,
+angels pelt them with roses, which sting them like flames. Not wild
+roses were these, such as gave the Dark One such poor succour. The
+defence of Faust is the roses he has evoked from briars.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+OBSTACLES.
+
+ Mephistopheles on Crags--Emerson on Monadnoc--Ruskin on
+ Alpine peasants--Holy and Unholy Mountains--The Devil's
+ Pulpit--Montagnards--Tarns--Tenjo--T'ai-shan--Apocatequil--Tyrolese
+ Legends--Rock Ordeal--Scylla and Charybdis--Scottish
+ Giants--Pontifex--Devil's Bridges--Le géant Yéous.
+
+
+Related to the demons of Barrenness, and to the hostile human demons,
+but still possessing characteristics of their own, are the demons
+supposed to haunt gorges, mountain ranges, ridges of rocks, streams
+which cannot be forded and are yet unbridged, rocks that wreck the
+raft or boat. Each and every obstruction that stood in the way of man's
+plough, or of his first frail ship, or his migration, has been assigned
+its demon. The reader of Goethe's page has only to turn to the opening
+lines of Walpurgisnacht in Faust to behold the real pandemonium of
+the Northern man, as in Milton he may find that of the dweller amid
+fiery deserts and volcanoes. That labyrinth of vales, crossed with
+wild crag and furious torrent, is the natural scenery to surround
+the orgies of the phantoms which flit from the uncultured brain to
+uncultured nature. Elsewhere in Goethe's great poem, Mephistopheles
+pits against the philosophers the popular theory of the rugged remnants
+of chaos in nature, and the obstacles before which man is powerless.
+
+
+ FAUST. For me this mountain mass rests nobly dumb;
+ I ask not whence it is, nor why 'tis come?
+ Herself when Nature in herself did found
+ This globe of earth, she then did purely round;
+ The summit and abyss her pleasure made,
+ Mountain to mountain, rock to rock she laid;
+ The hillocks down she neatly fashion'd then,
+ To valleys soften'd them with gentle train.
+ Then all grew green and bloom'd, and in her joy
+ She needs no foolish spoutings to employ.
+
+ MEPHISTOPHELES. So say ye! It seems clear as noon to ye,
+ Yet he knows who was there the contrary.
+ I was hard by below, when seething flame
+ Swelled the abyss, and streaming fire forth came;
+ When Moloch's hammer forging rock to rock,
+ Far flew the fragment-cliffs beneath the shock:
+ Of masses strange and huge the land was full;
+ Who clears away such piles of hurl'd misrule?
+ Philosophers the reason cannot see;
+ There lies the rock, and they must let it be.
+ We have reflected till ashamed we've grown;
+ The common folk can thus conceive alone,
+ And in conception no disturbance know,
+ Their wisdom ripen'd has long while ago:
+ A miracle it is, they Satan honour show.
+ My wanderer on faith's crutches hobbles on
+ Towards the devil's bridge and devil's stone. [138]
+
+
+The great American poet made his pilgrimage to the mountain so
+beautiful in the distance, thinking to find there the men of equal
+elevation. Did not Milton describe Freedom as 'a mountain nymph?'
+
+
+ To myself I oft recount
+ The tale of many a famous mount,--
+ Wales, Scotland, Uri, Hungary's dells;
+ Roys, and Scanderbergs, and Tells.
+ Here Nature shall condense her powers,
+ Her music, and her meteors,
+ And lifting man to the blue deep
+ Where stars their perfect courses keep,
+ Like wise preceptor, lure his eye.
+ To sound the science of the sky.
+
+
+But instead of finding there the man using those crags as a fastness
+to fight pollution of the mind, he
+
+
+ searched the region round
+ And in low hut my monarch found:
+ He was no eagle, and no earl;--
+ Alas! my foundling was a churl,
+ With heart of cat and eyes of bug,
+ Dull victim of his pipe and mug. [139]
+
+
+Ruskin has the same gloomy report to make of the mountaineers of
+Europe. 'The wild goats that leap along those rocks have as much
+passion of joy in all that fair work of God as the men that toil
+among them. Perhaps more.' 'Is it not strange to reflect that hardly
+an evening passes in London or Paris but one of those cottages is
+painted for the better amusement of the fair and idle, and shaded
+with pasteboard pines by the scene-shifter; and that good and kind
+people,--poetically minded,--delight themselves in imagining the
+happy life led by peasants who dwell by Alpine fountains, and kneel
+to crosses upon peaks of rock? that nightly we lay down our gold to
+fashion forth simulacra of peasants, in gay ribbons and white bodices,
+singing sweet songs and bowing gracefully to the picturesque crosses;
+and all the while the veritable peasants are kneeling, songlessly, to
+veritable crosses in another temper than the kind and fair audiences
+dream of, and assuredly with another kind of answer than is got out
+of the opera catastrophe.' [140]
+
+The writer remembers well the emphasis with which a poor woman at whose
+cottage he asked the path to the Natural Bridge in Virginia said,
+'I don't know why so many people come to these rocks; for my part,
+give me a level country.' Many ages lay between that aged crone and
+Emerson or Ruskin, and they were ages of heavy war with the fortresses
+of nature. The fabled ordeals of water and fire through which the human
+race passed were associated with Ararat and Sinai, because to migrating
+or farming man the mountain was always an ordeal, irrespective even of
+its torrents or its occasional lava-streams. A terrible vista is opened
+by the cry of Lot, 'I cannot escape to the mountain lest some evil take
+me!' Not even the fire consuming Sodom in the plains could nerve him
+to dare cope with the demons of the steep places. As time went on,
+devotees proved to the awe-stricken peasantries their sanctity and
+authority by combating those mountain demons, and erecting their altars
+in the 'high places.' So many summits became sacred. But this very
+sanctity was the means of bringing on successive demoniac hordes to
+haunt them; for every new religion saw in those altars in 'high places'
+not victories over demons, but demon-shrines. And thus mountains became
+the very battlefields between rival deities, each demon to his or her
+rival; and the conflict lasts from the cursing of the 'high places'
+by the priests of Israel [141] to the Devil's Pulpits of the Alps
+and Apennines. Among the beautiful frescoes at Baden is that of the
+Angel's and the Devil's Pulpit, by Götzenberger. Near Gernsbach,
+appropriately at the point where the cultivable valley meets the
+unconquerable crests of rock, stand the two pulpits from which Satan
+and an Angel contended, when the first Christian missionaries had
+failed to convert the rude foresters. When, by the Angel's eloquence,
+all were won from the Devil's side except a few witches and usurers,
+the fiend tore up great masses of rock and built the 'Devil's Mill'
+on the mountain-top; and he was hurled down by the Almighty on the
+rocks near 'Lord's Meadow,' where the marks of his claws may still
+be seen, and where, by a diminishing number of undiminished ears,
+his groans are still heard when a storm rages through the valley.
+
+Such conflicts as these have been in some degree associated with every
+mountain of holy or unholy fame. Each was in its time a prosaic Hill
+Difficulty, with lions by no means chained, to affright the hearts
+of Mistrust and Timorous, till Dervish or Christian impressed there
+his holy footprint, visible from Adam's Peak to Olivet, or built
+there his convents, discernible from Meru and Olympus to Pontyprydd
+and St. Catharine's Hill. By necessary truces the demons and deities
+repair gradually to their respective summits,--Seir and Sinai hold
+each their own. But the Holy Hills have never equalled the number of
+Dark Mountains [142] dreaded by man. These obstructive demons made
+the mountains Moul-ge and Nin-ge, names for the King and Queen of
+the Accadian Hell; they made the Finnish Mount Kippumaki the abode
+of all Pests. They have identified their name (Elf) with the Alps,
+given nearly every tarn an evil fame, and indeed created a special
+class of demons, 'Montagnards,' much dreaded by mediæval miners,
+whose faces they sometimes twisted so that they must look backward
+physically, as they were much in the habit of doing mentally, for ever
+afterward. Gervais of Tilbury, in his Chronicle, declares that on the
+top of Mount Canigon in France, which has a very inaccessible summit,
+there is a black lake of unknown depth, at whose bottom the demons
+have a palace, and that if any one drops a stone into that water,
+the wrath of the mountain demons is shown in sudden and frightful
+tempests. From a like tarn in Cornwall, as Cornish Folklore claims,
+on an accessible but very tedious hill, came up the hand which received
+the brand Escalibore when its master could wield it no more,--as told
+in the Morte D'Arthur, with, however, clear reference to the sea.
+
+I cannot forbear enlivening my page with the following sketch of a
+visit of English officers to the realm of Ten-jo, the long-nosed
+Mountain-demon of Japan, which is very suggestive of the mental
+atmosphere amid which such spectres exist. The mountains and forests
+of Japan are, say these writers, inhabited as thickly by good and
+evil spirits as the Hartz and Black Forest, and chief among them,
+in horrible sanctity, is O-yama,--the word echoes the Hindu Yama,
+Japanese Amma, kings of Hades,--whose demon is Ten-jo. 'Abdul and
+Mulney once started, on three days' leave, with the intention of
+climbing to the summit--not of Ten-jo's nose, but of the mountain;
+their principal reason for so doing being simply that they were told
+by every one that they had better not. They first tried the ascent on
+the most accessible side, but fierce two-sworded yakomins jealously
+guarded it; and they were obliged to make the attempt on the other,
+which was almost inaccessible, and was Ten-jo's region. The villagers
+at the base of the mountain begged them to give up the project; and
+one old man, a species of patriarch, reasoned with them. 'What are
+you going to do when you get to the top?' he asked. Our two friends
+were forced to admit that their course, then, would be very similar
+to that of the king of France and his men--come down again.
+
+The old man laughed pityingly, and said, 'Well, go if you like; but,
+take my word for it, Ten-jo will do you an injury.'
+
+They asked who Ten-jo was.
+
+'Why Ten-jo,' said the old man, 'is an evil spirit, with a long nose,
+who will dislocate your limbs if you persist in going up the mountain
+on this side.'
+
+'How do you know he has got a long nose?' they asked, 'Have you ever
+seen him?'
+
+'Because all evil spirits have long noses'--here Mulney hung his
+head,--'and,' continued the old man, not noticing how dreadfully
+personal he was becoming to one of the party, 'Ten-jo has the longest
+of the lot. Did you ever know a man with a long nose who was good?'
+
+'Come on,' said Mulney hurriedly to Abdul, 'or the old fool will make
+me out an evil spirit.'
+
+'Syonara,' said the old man as they walked away, 'but look out for
+Ten-jo!'
+
+After climbing hard for some hours, and not meeting a single human
+being,--not even the wood-cutter could be tempted by the fine timber
+to encroach on Ten-jo's precincts,--they reached the top, and enjoyed
+a magnificent view. After a rest they started on their descent,
+the worst part of which they had accomplished, when, as they were
+walking quietly along a good path, Abdul's ankle turned under him,
+and he went down as if he had been shot, with his leg broken in two
+places. With difficulty Mulney managed to get him to the village
+they had started from, and the news ran like wild-fire that Ten-jo
+had broken the leg of one of the adventurous tojins.
+
+'I told you how it would be,' exclaimed the old man, 'but you would
+go. Ah, Ten-jo is a dreadful fellow!'
+
+All the villagers, clustering round, took up the cry, and shook
+their heads. Ten-jo's reputation had increased wonderfully by this
+accident. Poor Abdul was on his back for eleven weeks, and numbers of
+Japanese--for he was a general favourite amongst them--went to see him,
+and to express their regret and horror at Ten-jo's behaviour. [143]
+
+It is obvious that to a demon dwelling in a high mountain a
+long nose would be variously useful to poke into the affairs of
+people dwelling in the plains, and also to enjoy the scent of
+their sacrifices offered at a respectful distance. That feature
+of the face which Napoleon I. regarded as of martial importance,
+and which is prominent in the warriors marked on the Mycenæ pottery,
+has generally been a physiognomical characteristic of European ogres,
+who are blood-smellers. That the significance of Ten-jo's long nose
+is this, appears probable when we compare him with the Calmuck
+demon Erlik, whose long nose is for smelling out the dying. The
+Cossacks believed that the protector of the earth was a many-headed
+elephant. The snouted demon (figure 15) is from a picture of Christ
+delivering Adam and Eve from hell, by Lucas Van Leyden, 1521.
+
+The Chinese Mountains also have their demons. The demon of the mountain
+T'ai-shan, in Shantung, is believed to regulate the punishments
+of men in this world and the next. Four other demon princes rule
+over the principal mountain chains of the Empire. Mr. Dennys remarks
+that mountainous localities are so regularly the homes of fairies in
+Chinese superstition that some connection between the fact and the
+relation of 'Elf' to 'Alp' in Europe is suggested. [144] But this
+coincidence is by no means so remarkable as the appearance among
+these Chinese mountain sprites of the magical 'Sesame,' so familiar
+to us in Arabian legend. The celebrated mountain Ku'en Lun (usually
+identified with the Hindoo Kush) is said to be peopled with fairies,
+who cultivate upon its terraces the 'fields of sesamum and gardens
+of coriander seeds,' which are eaten as ordinary food by those who
+possess the gift of longevity.
+
+In the superstitions of the American Aborigines we find gigantic demons
+who with their hands piled up mountain-chains as their castles, from
+whose peak-towers they hurled stones on their enemies in the plains,
+and slung them to the four corners of the earth. [145] Such was the
+terrible Apocatequil, whose statue was erected on the mountains, with
+that of his mother on the one hand and his brother on the other. He
+was Prince of Evil and the chief god of the Peruvians. From Quito
+to Cuzco every Indian would give all he possessed to conciliate
+him. Five priests, two stewards, and a crowd of slaves served his
+image. His principal temple was surrounded by a considerable village,
+whose inhabitants had no other occupation than to wait on him. [146]
+
+The plaudits which welcomed the first railway train that sped beneath
+the Alps, echoing amid their crags and gorges, struck with death
+the old phantasms which had so long held sway in the imagination of
+the Southern peasantry. The great tunnel was hewn straight through
+the stony hearts of giants whom Christianity had tried to slay, and,
+failing that, baptised and adopted. It is in the Tyrol that we find
+the clearest survivals of the old demons of obstruction, the mountain
+monarchs. Such is Jordan the Giant of Kohlhütte chasm, near Ungarkopf,
+whose story, along with others, is so prettily told by the Countess Von
+Gunther. This giant is something of a Ten-jo as to nose, for he smells
+'human meat' where his pursued victims are hidden, and his snort makes
+things tremble as before a tempest; but he has not the intelligence
+ascribed to large noses, for the boys ultimately persuade him that
+the way to cross a stream is to tie a stone around his neck, and he
+is drowned. One of the giants of Albach could carry a rock weighing
+10,000 pounds, and his comrades, while carrying others of 700 pounds,
+could leap from stone to stone across rivers, and stoop to catch
+the trout with their hands as they leaped. The ferocious Orco, the
+mountain-ghost who never ages, fulfils the tradition of his classic
+name by often appearing as a monstrous black dog, from whose side
+stones rebound, and fills the air with a bad smell (like Mephisto). His
+employment is hurling wayfarers down precipices. In her story of the
+'Unholdenhof'--or 'monster farm' in the Stubeithal--the Countess Von
+Gunther describes the natural character of the mountain demons.
+
+'It was on this self-same spot that the forester and his son took up
+their abode, and they became the dread and abomination of the whole
+surrounding country, for they practised, partly openly and partly in
+secret, the most manifold iniquities, so that their nature and bearing
+grew into something demoniacal. As quarrellers very strong, and as
+enemies dreadfully revengeful, they showed their diabolical nature by
+the most inhuman deeds, which brought down injury not only on those
+against whom their wrath was directed, but also upon their families for
+centuries. In the heights of the mountains they turned the beds of the
+torrents, and devastated by this means the most flourishing tracts of
+land; on other places the Unholde set on fire whole mountain forests,
+to allow free room for the avalanches to rush down and overwhelm the
+farms. Through certain means they cut holes and fissures in the rocks,
+in which, during the summer, quantities of water collected, which froze
+in the winter, and then in the spring the thawing ice split the rocks,
+which then rolled down into the valleys, destroying everything before
+them.... But at last Heaven's vengeance reached them. An earthquake
+threw the forester's house into ruins, wild torrents tore over it,
+and thunderbolts set all around it in a blaze; and by fire and water,
+with which they had sinned, father and son perished, and were condemned
+to everlasting torments. Up to the present day they are to be seen
+at nightfall on the mountain in the form of two fiery boars.' [147]
+
+Some of these giants, as has been intimated, were converted. Such was
+the case with Heimo, who owned and devastated a vast tract of country
+on the river Inn, which, however, he bridged--whence Innsbruck--when
+he became a christian and a monk. This conversion was a terrible
+disappointment to the devil, who sent a huge dragon to stop the
+building of the monastery; but Heimo attacked the dragon, killed him,
+and cut out his tongue. With this tongue, a yard and a half long, in
+his hand, he is represented in his statue, and the tongue is still
+preserved in the cloister. Heimo became a monk at Wilten, lived
+a pious life, and on his death was buried near the monastery. The
+stone coffin in which the gigantic bones repose is shown there,
+and measures over twenty-eight feet.
+
+Of nearly the same character as the Mountain Demons, and possessing
+even more features of the Demons of Barrenness, are the monsters
+guarding rocky passes. They are distributed through land, sea,
+and rivers. The famous rocks between Italy and Sicily bore the
+names of dangerous monsters, Scylla and Charybdis, which have now
+become proverbial expressions for alternative perils besetting any
+enterprise. According to Homer, Scylla was a kind of canine monster
+with six long necks, the mouths paved each with three rows of sharp
+teeth; while Charybdis, sitting under her fig-tree, daily swallowed
+the waters and vomited them up again. [148] Distantly related to these
+fabulous monsters, probably, are many of the old notions of ordeals
+undergone between rocks standing close together, or sometimes through
+holes in rocks, of which examples are found in Great Britain. An
+ordeal of this kind exists at Pera, where the holy well is reached
+through a narrow slit. Visitors going there recently on New Year's
+Day were warned by the dervish in charge--'Look through it at the
+water if you please, but do not essay to enter unless your consciences
+are completely free from sin, for as sure as you try to pass through
+with a taint upon your soul, you will be gripped by the rock and held
+there for ever.' [149] The 'Bocca della Verità'--a great stone face
+like a huge millstone--stands in the portico of the church S. Maria
+in Cosmedin at Rome, and its legend is that a suspected person was
+required to place his hand through the open mouth; if he swore falsely
+it would bite off the hand--the explanation now given being that a
+swordsman was concealed behind to make good the judicial shrewdness
+of the stone in case the oath were displeasing to the authorities.
+
+The myth of Scylla, which relates that she was a beautiful maiden,
+beloved by Glaucus, whom Circe through jealousy transformed to a
+monster by throwing magic herbs into the well where she was wont to
+bathe, is recalled by various European legends. In Thuringia, on the
+road to Oberhof, stands the Red Stone, with its rosebush, and a stream
+issuing from beneath it, where a beautiful maid is imprisoned. Every
+seven years she may be seen bathing in the stream. On one occasion
+a peasant passing by heard a sneeze in the rock, and called out,
+'God help thee!' The sneeze and the benediction were repeated,
+until at the seventh time the man cried, 'Oh, thou cursed witch,
+deceive not honest people!' As he then walked off, a wailing voice
+came out of the stone, 'Oh, hadst thou but only wished the last time
+that God would help me. He would have helped me, and thou wouldst
+have delivered me; now I must tarry till the Day of Judgment!' The
+voice once cried out to a wedding procession passing by the stone,
+'To-day wed, next year dead;' and the bride having died a year after,
+wedding processions dread the spot.
+
+The legends of giants and giantesses, so numerous in Great Britain,
+are equally associated with rocky mountain-passes, or the boulders
+they were supposed to have tossed thence when sportively stoning each
+other. They are the Tor of the South and Ben of the North. The hills of
+Ross-shire in Scotland are mythological monuments of Cailliachmore,
+great woman, who, while carrying a pannier filled with earth and
+stones on her back, paused for a moment on a level spot, now the site
+of Ben-Vaishard, when the bottom of the pannier gave way, forming the
+hills. The recurrence of the names Gog and Magog in Scotland suggests
+that in mountainous regions the demons were especially derived from the
+hordes of robbers and savages, among whom, in their uncultivable hills,
+the ploughshare could never conquer the spear and club. Richard Doyle
+enriched the first Exhibition of the Grosvenor Gallery in London, 1877,
+with many beautiful pictures inspired by European Folklore. They were
+a pretty garniture for the cemetery of dead religions. The witch once
+seen on her broom departing from the high crags of Cuhillan, cheered
+by her faithful dwarf, is no longer unlovely as in the days when she
+was burned by proxy in some poor human hag; obedient to art--a more
+potent wand than her own--she reascends to the clouds from which she
+was borne, and is hardly distinguishable from them. Slowly man came
+to learn with the poet--
+
+
+ It was the mountain streams that fed
+ The fair green plain's amenities. [150]
+
+
+Then the giants became fairies, and not a few of these wore at last
+the mantles of saints. A similar process has been undergone by another
+subject, which finds its pretty epitaph in the artist's treatment. We
+saw in two pictures the Dame Blanche of Normandy, lurking in the ravine
+beside a stream under the dusk, awaiting yon rustic wood-cutter who is
+presently horizontal in the air in that mad dance, after which he will
+be found exhausted. As her mountain-sister is faintly shaped out of
+the clouds that cap Cuhillan, this one is an imaginative outgrowth of
+the twilight shadows, the silvery glintings of moving clouds mirrored
+in pools, and her tresses are long luxuriant grasses. She is of a
+sisterhood which passes by hardly perceptible gradations into others,
+elsewhere described--the creations of Illusion and Night. She is not
+altogether one of these, however, but a type of more direct danger--the
+peril of fords, torrents, thickets, marshes, and treacherous pools,
+which may seem shallow, but are deep.
+
+The water-demons have been already described in their obvious aspects,
+but it is necessary to mention here the simple obstructive river-demons
+haunting fords and burns, and hating bridges. Many tragedies, and
+many personifications of the forces which caused them, preceded the
+sanctity of the title Pontifex. The torrent that roared across man's
+path seemed the vomit of a demon: the sacred power was he who could
+bridge it. In one of the most beautiful celebrations of Indra it is
+said: 'He tranquillised this great river so that it might be crossed;
+he conveyed across it in safety the sages who had been unable to pass
+over it, and who, having crossed, proceeded to realise the wealth
+they sought; in the exhilaration of the soma, Indra has done these
+deeds.' [151] In Ceylon, the demon Tota still casts malignant spells
+about fords and ferries.
+
+Many are the legends of the opposition offered by demons to
+bridge-building, and of the sacrifices which had to be made to them
+before such works could be accomplished. A few specimens must suffice
+us. Mr. Dennys relates a very interesting one of the 'Loh-family
+bridge' at Shanghai. Difficulty having been found in laying the
+foundations, the builder vowed to Heaven two thousand children if the
+stones could be placed properly. The goddess addressed said she would
+not require their lives, but that the number named would be attacked by
+small-pox, which took place, and half the number died. A Chinese author
+says, 'If bridges are not placed in proper positions, such as the
+laws of geomancy indicate, they may endanger the lives of thousands,
+by bringing about a visitation of small-pox or sore eyes.' At Hang-Chow
+a tea-merchant cast himself into the river Tsien-tang as a sacrifice
+to the Spirit of the dikes, which were constantly being washed away.
+
+The 'Devil's Bridges,' to which Mephistopheles alludes so proudly, are
+frequent in Germany, and most of them, whether natural or artificial,
+have diabolical associations. The oldest structures often have legends
+in which are reflected the conditions exacted by evil powers, of
+those who spanned the fords in which men had often been drowned. Of
+this class is the Montafon Bridge in the Tyrol, and another is the
+bridge at Ratisbon. The legend of the latter is a fair specimen of
+those which generally haunt these ancient structures. Its architect
+was apprentice to a master who was building the cathedral, and laid
+a wager that he would bridge the Danube before the other laid the
+coping-stone of the sacred edifice. But the work of bridging the river
+was hard, and after repeated failures the apprentice began to swear,
+and wished the devil had charge of the business! Whereupon he of the
+cloven foot appeared in guise of a friar, and agreed to build the
+fifteen arches--for a consideration. The fee was to be the first three
+that crossed the bridge. The cunning apprentice contrived that these
+three should not be human, but a dog, a cock, and a hen. The devil,
+in wrath at the fraud, tore the animals to pieces and disappeared;
+a procession of monks passed over the bridge and made it safe;
+and thereon are carved figures of the three animals. In most of the
+stories it is a goat which is sent over and mangled, that poor animal
+having preserved its character as scape-goat in a great deal of the
+Folklore of Christendom. The Danube was of old regarded as under the
+special guardianship of the Prince of Darkness, who used to make great
+efforts to obstruct the Crusaders voyaging down it to rescue the Holy
+Land from pagans. On one occasion, near the confluence of the Vilz
+and Danube, he began hurling huge rocks into the river-bed from the
+cliffs; the holy warriors resisted successfully by signing the cross
+and singing an anthem, but the huge stone first thrown caused a whirl
+and swell in that part of the river, which were very dangerous until
+it was removed by engineers.
+
+It is obvious, especially to the English, who have so long found a
+defensive advantage in the silver streak of sea that separates them
+from the Continent, that an obstacle, whether of mountain-range
+or sea, would, at a certain point in the formation of a nation,
+become as valuable as at another it might be obstructive. Euphemism
+is credited with having given the friendly name 'Euxine' to the
+rough 'Axine' Sea,--'terrible to foreigners.' But this is not so
+certain. Many a tribe has found the Black Sea a protection and a
+friend. In the case of mountains, their protective advantages would
+account at once for Milton's celebration of Freedom as a mountain
+nymph, and for the stupidity of the people that dwell amid them,
+so often remarked; the very means of their independence would also
+be the cause of their insulation and barbarity. It is for those who
+go to and fro that knowledge is increased. The curious and inquiring
+are most apt to migrate; the enterprising will not submit to be shut
+away behind rocks and mountains; by their departure there would be
+instituted, behind the barriers of rock and hill, a survival of the
+stupidest. These might ultimately come to worship their chains and
+cover their craggy prison-walls with convents and crosses. The demons
+of aliens would be their gods. The climbing Hannibals would be their
+devils. It might have been expected, after the passages quoted from
+Mr. Ruskin concerning the bovine condition of Alpine peasantries,
+that he would salute the tunnel through Mont Cenis. The peasantries
+who would see in the sub-alpine engine a demon are extinct. Admiration
+of the genii of obstruction, and horror of the demons that vanquished
+them, are discoverable only in folk-tales distant enough to be pretty,
+such as the interesting Serbian story of 'Satan's jugglings and God's
+might,' in which fairies hiding in successively opened nuts vainly
+try to oppose with fire and flood a she-demon pursuing a prince and
+his bride, to whose aid at last comes a flash of lightning which
+strikes the fiend dead.
+
+One of the beautiful 'Contes d'une Grand'mère,' by George Sand,
+Le géant Yéous, has in it the sense of many fables born of man's
+struggle with obstructive nature. With her wonted felicity she
+places the scene of this true human drama near the mountain Yéous,
+in the Pyrenees, whose name is a far-off echo of Zeus. The summit
+bore an enormous rock which, seen from a distance, appeared somewhat
+like a statue. The peasant Miquelon, who had his little farm at the
+mountain's base, whenever he passed made the sign of the cross and
+taught his little son Miquel to do the same, telling him that the
+great form was that of a pagan god, an enemy of the human race. An
+avalanche fell upon the home and garden of Miquelon; the poor man
+himself was disabled for life, his house and farm turned in a moment
+into a wild mass of stones. Miquel looked up to the summit of Yéous;
+the giant had disappeared; henceforth it was the mighty form of an
+organic monster which the boy saw stretched over what had once been
+their happy home and smiling acres. The family went about begging,
+Miquelon repeating his strange appeal, 'Le géant s'est couché sur
+moi.' But when at last the old man dies, the son resolves to fulfil the
+silent dream of his life; he will encounter the giant Yéous still in
+possession of his paternal acres. With eyes of the young world this
+boy sees starting up here and there amid the vast debris, the head
+of the demon he wishes to crush. He hurls stones hither and thither
+where some fearful feature or limb appears. He is filled with rage;
+his dreams are filled with attacks on the giant, in which the colossal
+head tumbles only to reappear on the shoulders; every broken limb has
+the self-repairing power. There is no progress. But as the boy grows,
+and the contest grows, and need comes, there gathers in Miquel a
+desire to clear the ground. When he begins to think, it is no longer
+the passion to avenge his father on the stony giant which possesses
+him, but to recover their lost garden. Thus, indeed, the giant himself
+could alone be conquered. The huge rocks are split by gunpowder, some
+fragments are made into fences, others into a comfortable mansion
+for Miquel's mother and sisters. When the garden smiles again, and
+all are happy the demon form is no longer discoverable. [152]
+
+This little tale interprets with fine insight the demonology of
+barrenness and obstruction. The boy's wrath against the unconscious
+cause of his troubles is the rage often observed in children
+who retaliate upon the table or chair on which they have been
+bruised, and it repeats embryologically the rage of the world's
+boyhood inspired by ascription of personal motives to inanimate
+obstructions. Possibly such wrath might have added something to
+the force with which man entered upon his combat with nature; but
+George Sand's tale reminds us that whatever was gained in force was
+lost in its misdirection. Success came in the proportion that fury
+was replaced by the youth's growing recognition that he was dealing
+with facts that could not be raged out of existence. It is crowned
+when he makes friends with the unconquerable remnant of the giant,
+and sees that he is not altogether evil.
+
+It is at this stage that the higher Art, conversant with Beauty, enters
+to relieve man of many moral wounds received in the struggle. Clothed
+with moss and clematis, Yéous appears not so hideous after all. Further
+invested by the genius of a Turner, he would be beautiful. Yéous is
+a fair giant after all, only he needed finish. He is a type of nature.
+
+The boyhood of the world has not passed away with Miquel. We find a
+fictitious dualism cherished by the lovers of nature in their belief or
+feeling that nature exerts upon man some spiritual influence. Ruskin
+has said that in looking from the Campanile at Venice to the circle
+of snow which crowns the Adriatic, and then to the buildings which
+contain the works of Titian and Tintoret, he has felt unable to
+answer the question of his own heart, By which of these--the nature
+or the manhood--has God given mightier evidence of Himself? So nature
+may teach the already taught. While Ruskin looks from the Campanile,
+the peasant is fighting the mountain and calling its rocky grandeurs
+by the devil's name; before the pictures he kneels. Untaught by art
+and science, the mind can derive no elevation from nature, can find no
+sympathy in it. It is a false notion that there is any compensation for
+the ignorant, denied access to art-galleries, in ability to pass their
+Sundays amid natural scenery. Health that may bring them, but mentally
+they are still inside the prison-walls from which look the stony eyes
+of Fates and Furies. Natural sublimities cannot refine minds crude
+as themselves; they must pass through thought before they can feed
+thought; it is nature transfigured in art that changes the snow-clad
+mountain from a heartless giant to a saviour in snow-pure raiment.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+ILLUSION.
+
+ Maya--Natural Treacheries--Misleaders--Glamour--Lorelei--Chinese
+ Mermaid--Transformations--Swan Maidens--Pigeon Maidens--The
+ Seal-skin--Nudity--Teufelsee--Gohlitsee--Japanese Siren--Dropping
+ Cave--Venusberg--Godiva--Will-o'-Wisp--Holy Fräulein--The Forsaken
+ Merman--The Water-Man--Sea Phantom--Sunken Treasures--Suicide.
+
+
+Most beautiful of all the goddesses of India is Maya, Illusion. In
+Hindu iconography she is portrayed in drapery of beautiful colours,
+with decoration of richest gems and broidery of flowers. From above
+her crown falls a veil which, curving above her knees, returns on
+the other side, making, as it were, also an apron in which are held
+fair animal forms--prototypes of the creation over which she has
+dominion. The youthful yet serious beauty of her face and head is
+surrounded with a semi-aureole, fringed with soft lightning, striated
+with luminous sparks; and these are background for a cruciform nimbus
+made of three clusters of rays. Maya presses her full breasts, from
+which flow fountains of milk which fall in graceful streams to mingle
+with the sea on which she stands.
+
+So to our Aryan ancestors appeared the spirit that paints the universe,
+flushing with tints so strangely impartial fruits forbidden and
+unforbidden for man and beast. Mankind are slandered by the priest's
+creed, Populus vult decipi; they are justly vindicated in Plato's
+aphorism, 'Unwillingly is the soul deprived of truth;' but still
+they are deceived. Large numbers are truly described by Swedenborg,
+who found hells whose occupants believed themselves in heaven and
+sang praises therefor. Such praises we may hear in the loud laughter
+proceeding from dens where paradise has been gained by the cheap charm
+of a glass of gin or a prostitute's caress. Serpent finds its ideal
+in serpent. In heaven, says Swedenborg, we shall see things as they
+are. But it is the adage of those who have lost their paradise, and
+eat still the dry dust of reality not raised by science; the general
+world has not felt that divine curse, or it has been wiped away so that
+the most sensual fool may rejoice in feeling himself God's darling,
+and pities the paganism of Plato. Man and beast are certain that they
+do see things as they are. Maya's milk is tinctured from the poppies
+of her robe; untold millions of misgivings have been put to sleep by
+her tender bounty; the waters that sustain her are those of Lethe.
+
+But beneath every illusive heaven Nature stretches also an illusive
+hell. The poppies lose their force at last, and under the scourge
+of necessity man wakes to find all his paradise of roses turned to
+briars. Maya's breast-fountains pass deeper than the surface--from
+one flows soft Lethe, the other issues at last in Phlegethon. Fear is
+even a more potent painter than Hope, and out of the manifold menaces
+of Nature can at last overlay the fairest illusions. It is a pathetic
+fact, that so soon as man begins to think his first theory infers a
+will at work wherever he sees no cause; his second, to suppose that
+it will harm him!
+
+Harriet Martineau's account of her childish terror caused by seeing
+some prismatic colours dancing on the wall of a vacant room she was
+entering--'imps' that had no worse origin than a tremulous candelabrum,
+but which haunted her nerves through life--is an experience which may
+be traced in the haunted childhood of every nation. There are other
+phenomena besides these prismatic colours, which have had an evil name
+in popular superstition, despite their beauty. Strange it might seem to
+a Buddhist that yon exquisite tree with its blood-red buds should be
+called the Judas-tree, as to us that the graceful swan which might be
+the natural emblem of purity should be associated with witchcraft! But
+the student of mythology will at every moment be impressed by the fact
+that myths oftener represent a primitive science than mere fancies
+and conceits. The sinuous neck of the swan, its passionate jealousy,
+and the uncanny whistle, or else dumbness, found where, from so snowy
+an outside, melody might have been looked for, may have made this
+animal the type of a double nature. The treacherous brilliants of
+the serpent, or honey protected by stings, or the bright blossoms of
+poisons, would have trained the instinct which apprehends evil under
+the apparition of beauty. This, as we shall have occasion to see,
+has had a controlling influence upon the ethical constitution of our
+nature. But it is at present necessary to observe that the primitive
+science generally reversed the induction of our later philosophy; for
+where an evil or pain was discovered in anything, it concluded that
+such was its raison d'être, and its attractive qualities were simply
+a demon's treacherous bait. However, here are the first stimulants
+to self-control in the lessons that taught distrust of appearances.
+
+Because many a pilgrim perished through a confidence in the
+lake-pictures of the mirage which led to carelessness about economising
+his skin of water, the mirage gained its present name--Bahr Sheitan,
+or Devil's Water. The 'Will o' wisp,' which appeared to promise the
+night-wanderer warmth or guidance, but led him into a bog, had its
+excellent directions as to the place to avoid perverted by an unhappy
+misunderstanding into a wilful falsehood, and has been branded ignis
+fatuus. Most of the mimicries in nature gradually became as suspicious
+to the primitive observer as aliases to a magistrate. The thing
+that seemed to be fire, or water, but was not; the insect or animal
+which took its hue or form from some other, from the leaf-spotted
+or stem-striped cats to that innocent insect whose vegetal disguise
+has gained for it the familiar name of 'Devil's Walking-stick;'
+the humanlike hiss, laugh, or cry of animals; the vibratory sound or
+movement which so often is felt as if near when it really is far; the
+sand which seems hard but sinks; the sward which proves a bog;--all
+these have their representation in the demonology of delusion. The
+Coroados of Brazil says that the Evil One 'sometimes transforms
+(himself) into a swamp, &c., leads him astray, vexes him, brings him
+into danger, and even kills him.' [153] It is like an echo of Burton's
+account. 'Terrestrial devils are those lares, genii, faunes, satyrs,
+wood-nymphs, foliots, fairies, Robin Good-fellows, trulli, &c., which,
+as they are most conversant with men, so they do them most harm. These
+are they that dance on heaths and greens, as Lavater thinks with
+Trithemius, and, as Olaus Magnus adds, leave that green circle which
+we commonly find in plain fields. They are sometimes seen by old women
+and children. Hieron. Pauli, in his description of the city of Bercino,
+Spain, relates how they have been familiarly seen near that town, about
+fountains and hills. 'Sometimes,' saith Trithemius, 'they lead simple
+people into the recesses of mountains and show them wonderful sights,'
+&c. Giraldus Cambrensis gives an instance of a monk of Wales that was
+so deluded. Paracelsus reckons up many places in Germany where they
+do usually walk about in little coats, some two feet long. [154] Real
+dangers beset the woods and mountain passes, the swamp and quicksand;
+in such forms did they haunt the untamed jungles of imagination!
+
+Over that sea on which Maya stands extends the silvery wand of
+Glamour. It descended to the immortal Old Man of the Sea, favourite
+of the nymphs, oracle of the coasts, patron of fishermen, friend of
+Proteus, who could see through all the sea's depths and assume all
+shapes. How many witcheries could proceed from the many-tinted sea to
+affect the eyes and enable them to see Triton with his wreathed horn,
+and mermaids combing their hair, and marine monsters, and Aphrodite
+poised on the white foam! Glaucoma it may be to the physicians;
+but Glaucus it is in the scheme of Maya, who has never left land
+or sea without her witness. Beside the Polar Sea a Samoyed sailor,
+asked by Castrén 'where is Num' (i.e., Jumala, his god), pointed to
+the dark distant sea, and said, He is there.
+
+To the ancients there were two seas,--the azure above, and that
+beneath. The imaginative child in its development passes all those
+dreamy coasts; sees in clouds mountains of snow on the horizon, and in
+the sunset luminous seas laving golden isles. When as yet to the young
+world the shining sun was Berchta, the white fleecy clouds were her
+swans. When she descended to the sea, as a thousand stories related,
+it was to repeat the course of the sun for all tribes looking on a
+westward sea. No one who has read that charming little book, 'The
+Gods in Exile,' [155] will wonder at the happy instinct of learning
+shown in Heine's little poem, 'Sonnenuntergang,' [156] wherein we
+see shining solar Beauty compelled to become the spinning housewife,
+or reluctant spouse of Poseidon:--
+
+
+ A lovely dame whom the old ocean-god
+ For convenience once had married;
+ And in the day-time she wanders gaily
+ Through the high heaven, purple-arrayed,
+ And all in diamonds gleaming,
+ And all beloved, and all amazing
+ To every worldly being,
+ And every worldly being rejoicing
+ With warmth and splendour from her glances.
+ Alas! at evening, sad and unwilling,
+ Back must she bend her slow steps
+ To the dripping house, to the barren embrace
+ Of grisly old age.
+
+
+This of course is Heinesque, and has no relation to any legend of
+Bertha, but is a fair specimen of mythology in the making, and is
+quite in the spirit of many of the myths that have flitted around
+sunset on the sea. Whatever the explanation of their descent, the
+Shining One and her fleecy retinue were transformed. When to sea or
+lake came Berchta (or Perchta), it was as Bertha of the Large Foot
+(i.e., webbed), or of the Long Nose (beak), and her troop were
+Swan-maidens. Their celestial character was changed with that of
+their mistress. They became familiars of sorcerers and sorceresses. To
+'wear yellow slippers' became the designation of a witch.
+
+How did these fleecy white cloud-phantoms become demonised? What
+connection is there between them and the enticing Lorelei and the
+dangerous Rhine-daughters watching over golden treasures, once,
+perhaps, metaphors of moonlight ripples? They who have listened to
+the wild laughter of these in Wagner's opera, Das Rheingold, and
+their weird 'Heiayaheia!' can hardly fail to suspect that they became
+associated with the real human nymphs whom the summer sun still finds
+freely sporting in the bright streams of Russia, Hungary, Austria,
+and East Germany, naked and not ashamed. Many a warning voice against
+these careless Phrynes, who may have left tattered raiment on the shore
+to be transfigured in the silvery waves, must have gone forth from
+priests and anxious mothers. Nor would there be wanting traditions
+enough to impress such warnings. Few regions have been without such
+stories as those which the traveller Hiouen-Thsang (7th century)
+found in Buddhist chronicles of the Rakshasis of Ceylon. 'They waylay
+the merchants who land in the isle, and, changing themselves to women
+of great beauty, come before them with fragrant flowers and music;
+attracting them with kind words to the town of Iron, they offer them
+a feast, and give themselves up to pleasure with them; then shut them
+in an iron prison, and eat them one after the other.'
+
+There is a strong accent of human nature in the usual plot of the
+Swan-maiden legend, her garments stolen while she bathes, and her
+willingness to pay wondrous prices for them--since they are her
+feathers and her swanhood, without which she must remain for ever
+captive of the thief. The stories are told in regions so widely
+sundered, and their minor details are so different, that we may at
+any rate be certain that they are not all traceable solely to fleecy
+clouds. Sometimes the garments of the demoness--and these beings
+are always feminine--are not feathery, as in the German stories, but
+seal-skins, or of nondescript red tissue. Thus, the Envoy Li Ting-yuan
+(1801) records a Chinese legend of a man named Ming-ling-tzu, a poor
+and worthy farmer without family, who, on going to draw water from
+a spring near his house, saw a woman bathing in it. She had hung
+her clothes on a pine tree, and, in punishment for her 'shameless
+ways' and for her fouling the well, he carried off the dress. The
+clothing was unlike the familiar Lewchewan in style, and 'of a ruddy
+sunset colour.' The woman, having finished her bath, cried out in
+great anger, 'What thief has been here in broad day? Bring back my
+clothes, quick.' She then perceived Ming-ling-tzu, and threw herself
+on the ground before him. He began to scold her, and asked why she
+came and fouled his water; to which she replied that both the pine
+tree and the well were made by the Creator for the use of all. The
+farmer entered into conversation with her, and pointed out that fate
+evidently intended her to be his wife, as he absolutely refused to
+give up her clothes, while without them she could not get away. The
+result was that they were married. She lived with him for ten years,
+and bore him a son and a daughter. At the end of that time her fate
+was fulfilled: she ascended a tree during the absence of her husband,
+and having bidden his children farewell, glided off on a cloud and
+disappeared. [157]
+
+In South Africa a parallel myth, in its demonological aspect, bears
+no trace of a cloud origin. In this case a Hottentot, travelling with
+a Bushwoman and her child, met a troop of wild horses. They were all
+hungry; and the woman, taking off a petticoat made of human skin,
+was instantly changed into a lioness. She struck down a horse, and
+lapped its blood; then, at the request of the Hottentot, who in his
+terror had climbed a tree, she resumed her petticoat and womanhood, and
+the friends, after a meal of horseflesh, resumed their journey. [158]
+Among the Minussinian Tartars these demons partake of the nature of
+the Greek Harpies; they are bloodthirsty vampyre-demons who drink
+the blood of men slain in battle, darken the air in their flight,
+and house themselves in one great black fiend. [159] As we go East
+the portrait of the Swan-maiden becomes less dark, and she is not
+associated with the sea or the under-world. Such is one among the
+Malays, related by Mr. Tylor. In the island of Celebes it is said
+that seven nymphs came down from the sky to bathe, and were seen by
+Kasimbaha, who at first thought them white doves, but in the bath
+perceived they were women. He stole the robe of one of them, Utahagi,
+and as she could not fly without it, she became his wife and bare him
+a son. She was called Utahagi because of a single magic white hair
+she had; this her husband pulled out, when immediately a storm arose,
+and she flew to heaven. The child was in great grief, and the husband
+cast about how he should follow her up into the sky.
+
+The Swan-maiden appears somewhat in the character of a Nemesis in
+a Siberian myth told by Mr. Baring-Gould. A certain Samoyed who had
+stolen a Swan-maiden's robe, refused to return it unless she secured
+for him the heart of seven demon robbers, one of whom had killed
+the Samoyed's mother. The robbers were in the habit of hanging
+up their hearts on pegs in their tent. The Swan-maiden procured
+them. The Samoyed smashed six of the hearts; made the seventh robber
+resuscitate his mother, whose soul, kept in a purse, had only to be
+shaken over the old woman's grave for that feat to be accomplished,
+and the Swan-maiden got back her plumage and flew away rejoicing. [160]
+
+In Slavonic Folklore the Swan-maiden is generally of a dangerous
+character, and if a swan is killed they are careful not to show it to
+children for fear they will die. When they appear as ducks, geese,
+and other water-fowl, they are apt to be more mischievous than when
+they come as pigeons; and it is deemed perilous to kill a pigeon,
+as among sailors it was once held to kill an albatross. Afanasief
+relates a legend which shows that, even when associated with the
+water-king, the Tsar Morskoi or Slavonic Neptune, the pigeon preserves
+its beneficent character. A king out hunting lies down to drink from
+a lake (as in the story related on p. 146), when Tsar Morskoi seizes
+him by the beard, and will not release him until he agrees to give
+him his infant son. The infant prince, deserted on the edge of the
+fatal lake, by advice of a sorceress hides in some bushes, whence he
+presently sees twelve pigeons arrive, which, having thrown off their
+feathers, disport themselves in the lake. At length a thirteenth,
+more beautiful than the rest, arrives, and her sorochka (shift) Ivan
+seizes. To recover it she agrees to be his wife, and, having told
+him he will find her beneath the waters, resumes her pigeon-shape and
+flies away. Beneath the lake he finds a beautiful realm, and though
+the Tsar Morskoi treats him roughly and imposes heavy tasks on him,
+the pigeon-maiden (Vassilissa) assists him, and they dwell together
+happily. [161]
+
+In Norse Mythology the vesture of the uncanny maid is oftenest a
+seal-skin, and a vein of pathos enters the legends. Of the many
+legends of this kind, still believed in Sweden and Norway, one has
+been pleasantly versified by Miss Eliza Keary. A fisherman having
+found a pretty white seal-skin, took it home with him. At night there
+was a wailing at his door; the maid enters, becomes his wife, and
+bears him three children. But after seven years she finds the skin,
+and with it ran to the shore. The eldest child tells the story to
+the father on his return home.
+
+
+ Then we three, Daddy,
+ Ran after, crying, 'Take us to the sea!
+
+ Wait for us, Mammy, we are coming too!
+ Here's Alice, Willie can't keep up with you!
+ Mammy, stop--just for a minute or two!'
+ At last we came to where the hill
+ Slopes straight down to the beach,
+ And there we stood all breathless, still
+ Fast clinging each to each.
+ We saw her sitting upon a stone,
+ Putting the little seal-skin on.
+ O Mammy! Mammy!
+ She never said goodbye, Daddy,
+ She didn't kiss us three;
+ She just put the little seal-skin on
+ And slipt into the sea!
+
+
+Some of the legends of this character are nearly as realistic as
+Mr. Swinburne's 'Morality' of David and Bathsheba. To imagine
+the scarcity of wives in regions to which the primitive Aryan
+race migrated, we have only to remember the ben trovato story of
+Californians holding a ball in honour of a bonnet, in the days before
+women had followed them in migration. To steal Bathsheba's clothes,
+and so capture her, might at one period have been sufficiently common
+in Europe to require all the terrors contained in the armoury of
+tradition concerning the demonesses that might so be taken in, and
+might so tempt men to take them in. In the end they might disappear,
+carrying off treasures in the most prosaic fashion, or perhaps they
+might bring to one's doors a small Trojan war. It is probable that
+the sentiment of modesty, so far as it is represented in the shame
+of nudity, was the result of prudential agencies. Though the dread
+of nudity has become in some regions a superstition in the female
+mind strong enough to have its martyrs--as was seen at the sinking
+of the Northfleet and the burning hotel in St. Louis--it is one
+that has been fostered by men in distrust of their own animalism. In
+barbarous regions, where civilisation introduces clothes, the women
+are generally the last to adopt them; and though Mr. Herbert Spencer
+attributes this to female conservatism, it appears more probable
+that it is because the men are the first to lose their innocence and
+the women last to receive anything expensive. It is noticeable how
+generally the Swan-maidens are said in the myths to be captured by
+violence or stratagem. At the same time the most unconscious temptress
+might be the means of breaking up homes and misleading workmen, and
+thus become invested with all the wild legends told of the illusory
+phenomena of nature in popular mythology.
+
+It is marvellous to observe how all the insinuations of the bane were
+followed by equal dexterities in the antedote. The fair tempters might
+disguise their intent in an appeal to the wayfarer's humanity; and,
+behold, there were a thousand well-attested narratives ready for the
+lips of wife and mother showing the demoness appealing for succour
+to be fatalest of all!
+
+There is a stone on the Müggelsberger, in Altmark, which is said to
+cover a treasure; this stone is sometimes called 'Devil's Altar,'
+and sometimes it is said a fire is seen there which disappears when
+approached. It lies on the verge of Teufelsee,--a lake dark and small,
+and believed to be fathomless. Where the stone lies a castle once
+stood which sank into the ground with its fair princess. But from the
+underground castle there is a subterranean avenue to a neighbouring
+hill, and from this hill of an evening sometimes comes an old woman,
+bent over her staff. Next day there will be seen a most beautiful lady
+combing her long golden hair. To all who pass she makes her entreaties
+that they will set her free, her pathetic appeals being backed by offer
+of a jewelled casket which she holds. The only means of liberating her
+is, she announces, that some one shall bear her on his shoulders three
+times round Teufelsee church without looking back. The experiment
+has several times been made. One villager at his first round saw a
+large hay-waggon drawn past him by four mice, and following it with
+his eyes received blows on the ears. Another saw a waggon drawn by
+four coal-black fire-breathing horses coming straight against him,
+started back, and all disappeared with the cry 'Lost again for ever!' A
+third tried and almost got through. He was found senseless, and on
+recovering related that when he took the princess on his shoulders
+she was light as a feather, but she grew heavier and heavier as he
+bore her round. Snakes, toads, and all horrible animals with fiery
+eyes surrounded him; dwarfs hurled blocks of wood and stones at him;
+yet he did not look back, and had nearly completed the third round,
+when he saw his village burst into flames; then he looked behind--a
+blow felled him--and he seems to have only lived long enough to tell
+this story. The youth of Köpernick are warned to steel their hearts
+against any fair maid combing her hair near Teufelsee. But the folklore
+of the same neighbourhood admits that it is by no means so dangerous
+for dames to listen to appeals of this kind. In the Gohlitzsee, for
+example, a midwife was induced to plunge in response to a call for aid;
+having aided a little Merwoman in travail, she was given an apronful of
+dust, which appeared odd until on shore it proved to be many thalers.
+
+In countries where the popular imagination, instead of being
+scientific, is trained to be religiously retrospective, it relapses
+at the slightest touch into the infantine speculations of the human
+race. Not long ago, standing at a shop-window in Ostend where a
+'Japanese Siren' was on view, the clever imposture interested me
+less than the comments of the passing and pausing observers. The
+most frequent wonders seriously expressed were, whether she sang,
+or combed her hair, or was under a doom, or had a soul to be
+saved. Every question related to Circe, Ulysses and the Sirens, and
+other conceptions of antiquity. The Japanese artists rightly concluded
+they could float their Siren in any intellectual waters where Jonah
+in his whale could pass, or a fish appear with its penny. Nay, even
+in their primitive form the Sirens find their kith and kin still
+haunting all the coasts of northern Europe. A type of the Irish and
+Scottish Siren may be found in the very complete legend of one seen
+by John Reid, shipmaster of Cromarty. With long flowing yellow hair
+she sat half on a rock, half in water, nude and beautiful, half woman
+half fish, and John managed to catch and hold her tight till she had
+promised to fulfil three wishes; then, released, she sprang into the
+sea. The wishes were all fulfilled, and to one of them (though John
+would never reveal it) the good-luck of the Reids was for a century
+after ascribed. [162]
+
+The scene of this legend is the 'Dropping Cave,' and significantly
+near the Lover's Leap. One of John's wishes included the success of
+his courtship. These Caves run parallel with that of Venusberg, where
+the minstrel Tannhäuser is tempted by Venus and her nymphs. Heine
+finishes off his description of this Frau Venus by saying he fancied
+he met her one day in the Place Bréda. 'What do you take this lady
+to be?' asked he of Balzac, who was with him. 'She is a mistress,'
+replied Balzac. 'A duchess rather,' returned Heine. But the friends
+found on further explanation that they were both quite right. Venus'
+doves, soiled for a time, were spiritualised at last and made white,
+while the snowy swan grew darker. An old German word for swan,
+elbiz, originally denoting its whiteness (albus), furthered its
+connection with all 'elfish' beings--elf being from the same word,
+meaning white; but, as in Goethe's 'Erl König,' often disguising a
+dark character. The Swan and the Pigeon meet (with some modifications)
+as symbols of the Good and Evil powers in the legend of Lohengrin. The
+witch transforms the boy into a Swan, which, however, draws to save his
+sister, falsely accused of his murder, the Knight of the Sangreal, who,
+when the mystery of his holy name is inquired into by his too curious
+bride, is borne away by white doves. These legends all bear in them,
+however faintly, the accent of the early conflict of religion with
+the wild passions of mankind. Their religious bearings bring us to
+inquiries which must be considered at a later phase of our work. But
+apart from purely moral considerations, it is evident that there must
+have been practical dangers surrounding the early social chaos amid
+which the first immigrants in Europe found themselves.
+
+Although the legend of Lady Godiva includes elements of another origin,
+it is probable that in the fate of Peeping Tom there is a distant
+reflection of the punishment sometimes said to overtake those who
+gazed too curiously upon the Swan-maiden without her feathers. The
+devotion of the nude lady of Coventry would not be out of keeping
+with one class of these mermaiden myths. There is a superstition, now
+particularly strong in Iceland, that all fairies are children of Eve,
+whom she hid away on an occasion when the Lord came to visit her,
+because they were not washed and presentable. So he condemned them
+to be for ever invisible. This superstition seems to be related to
+an old debate whether these præternatural beings are the children of
+Adam and Eve or not. A Scotch story bears against that conclusion. A
+beautiful nymph, with a slight robe of green, came from the sea and
+approached a fisherman while he was reading his Bible. She asked him if
+it contained any promise of mercy for her. He replied that it contained
+an offer of salvation to 'all the children of Adam;' whereupon with a
+loud shriek she dashed into the sea again. Euphemism would co-operate
+with natural compassion in saying a good word for 'the good little
+people,' whether hiding in earth or sea. In Altmark, 'Will-o'-wisps'
+are believed to be the souls of unbaptized children--sometimes of
+lunatics--unable to rest in their graves; they are called 'Light-men,'
+and it is said that though they may sometimes mislead they often guide
+rightly, especially if a small coin be thrown them,--this being also
+an African plan of breaking a sorcerer's spell. Christianity long
+after its advent in Germany had to contend seriously with customs and
+beliefs found in some lakeside villages where the fishermen regarded
+themselves as in friendly relations with the præternatural guardians
+of the waters, and unto this day speak of their presiding sea-maiden
+as a Holy Fräulein. They hear her bells chiming up from the depths in
+holy seasons to mingle with those whose sounds are wafted from church
+towers; and it seems to have required many fables, told by prints of
+fishermen found sitting lifeless on their boats while listening to
+them, to gradually transfer reverence to the new christian fairy.
+
+It may be they heard some such melody as that which has found its
+finest expression in Mr. Matthew Arnold's 'Forsaken Merman:'--
+
+
+ Children dear, was it yesterday
+ (Call yet once) that she went away?
+ Once she sate with you and me,
+ On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea,
+ And the youngest sate on her knee.
+ She comb'd its bright hair, and she tended it well,
+ When down swung the sound of the far-off bell.
+ She sigh'd, she look'd up through the clear green sea;
+ She said: 'I must go, for my kinsfolk pray
+ In the little grey church on the shore to-day.
+ 'Twill be Easter-time in the world--ah me!
+ And I lose my poor soul, Merman, here with thee.'
+ I said, 'Go up, dear heart, through the waves,
+ Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves.'
+ She smil'd, she went up through the surf in the bay.
+ Children dear, was it yesterday?
+
+
+Perhaps we should find the antecedents of this Merman's lost Margaret,
+whom he called back in vain, in the Danish ballad of 'The Merman and
+the Marstig's Daughter,' who, in Goethe's version, sought the winsome
+May in church, thither riding as a gay knight on
+
+
+ horse of the water clear,
+ The saddle and bridle of sea-sand were.
+
+ They went from the church with the bridal train,
+ They danced in glee, and they danced full fain;
+ They danced them down to the salt-sea strand,
+ And they left them standing there, hand in hand.
+
+ 'Now wait thee, love, with my steed so free,
+ And the bonniest bark I'll bring for thee.'
+ And when they passed to the white, white sand,
+ The ships came sailing on to the land;
+
+ But when they were out in the midst of the sound,
+ Down went they all in the deep profound!
+ Long, long on the shore, when the winds were high,
+ They heard from the waters the maiden's cry.
+
+ I rede ye, damsels, as best I can--
+ Tread not the dance with the Water-Man!
+
+
+According to other legends, however, the realm under-sea was not a
+place for weeping. Child-eyes beheld all that the Erl-king promised,
+in Goethe's ballad--
+
+
+ Wilt thou go, bonny boy? wilt thou go with me?
+ My daughters shall wait on thee daintily;
+ My daughters around thee in dance shall sweep,
+ And rock thee and kiss thee, and sing thee to sleep!
+
+
+Or perhaps child-eyes, lingering in the burning glow of manhood's
+passion, might see in the peaceful sea some picture of lost love like
+that so sweetly described in Heine's 'Sea Phantom:'--
+
+
+ But I still leaned o'er the side of the vessel,
+ Gazing with sad-dreaming glances
+ Down at the water, clear as a mirror,
+ Looking yet deeper and deeper,--
+ Till far in the sea's abysses,
+ At first like dim wavering vapours,
+ Then slowly--slowly--deeper in colour,
+ Domes of churches and towers seemed rising,
+ And then, as clear as day, a city grand....
+ Infinite longing, wondrous sorrow,
+ Steal through my heart,--
+ My heart as yet scarce healed;
+ It seems as though its wounds, forgotten,
+ By loving lips again were kissed,
+ And once again were bleeding
+ Drops of burning crimson,
+ Which long and slowly trickle down
+ Upon an ancient house below there
+ In the deep, deep sea-town,
+ On an ancient, high-roofed, curious house,
+ Where, lone and melancholy,
+ Below by the window a maiden sits,
+ Her head on her arm reclined,--
+ Like a poor and uncared-for child;
+ And I know thee, thou poor and long-sorrowing child!
+
+ ... I meanwhile, my spirit all grief,
+ Over the whole broad world have sought thee,
+ And ever have sought thee,
+ Thou dearly beloved,
+ Thou long, long lost one,
+ Thou finally found one,--
+ At last I have found thee, and now am gazing
+ Upon thy sweet face,
+ With earnest, faithful glances,
+ Still sweetly smiling;
+ And never will I again on earth leave thee.
+ I am coming adown to thee,
+ And with longing, wide-reaching embraces,
+ Love, I leap down to thy heart!
+
+
+The temptations of fishermen to secure objects seen at the bottom of
+transparent lakes, sometimes appearing like boxes or lumps of gold,
+and even more reflections of objects in the upper world or air, must
+have been sources of danger; there are many tales of their being so
+beguiled to destruction. These things were believed treasures of the
+little folk who live under water, and would not part with them except
+on payment. In Blumenthal lake, 'tis said, there is an iron-bound
+yellow coffer which fishermen often have tried to raise, but their
+cords are cut as it nears the surface. At the bottom of the same
+lake valuable clothing is seen, and a woman who once tried to secure
+it was so nearly drowned that it is thought safer to leave it. The
+legends of sunken towns (as in Lake Paarsteinchen and Lough Neagh),
+and bells (whose chimes may be heard on certain sacred days), are
+probably variants of this class of delusions. They are often said to
+have been sunk by some final vindictive stroke of a magician or witch
+resolved to destroy the city no longer trusting them. Landslides,
+engulfing seaside homes, might originate legends like that of King
+Gradlon's daughter Dahut, whom the Breton peasant sees in rough weather
+on rocks around Poul-Dahut, where she unlocked the sluice-gates on
+the city Is in obedience to her fiend-lover.
+
+If it be remembered that less than fifty years ago Dr. Belon [163]
+thought it desirable to anatomise gold fishes, and prove in various
+ways that it is a fallacy to suppose they feed on pure gold (as
+many a peasant near Lyons declares of the laurets sold daily in the
+market), it will hardly be thought wonderful that perilous visions of
+precious things were seen by early fishermen in pellucid depths, and
+that these should at last be regarded as seductive arts of Lorelei,
+who have given many lakes and rivers the reputation of requiring one
+or more annual victims.
+
+Possibly it was through accumulation of many dreams about beautiful
+realms beneath the sea or above the clouds that suicide became among
+the Norse folk so common. It was a proverb that the worst end was to
+die in bed, and to die by suicide was to be like Egil, and Omund, and
+King Hake, like nearly all the heroes who so passed to Valhalla. The
+Northman had no doubt concerning the paradise to which he was going,
+and did not wish to reach it enfeebled by age. But the time would come
+when the earth and human affection must assert their claims, and the
+watery tribes be pictured as cruel devourers of the living. Even so
+would the wood-nymphs and mountain-nymphs be degraded, and fearful
+legends of those lost and wandering in dark forests be repeated to
+shuddering childhood. The actual dangers would mask themselves in
+the endless disguises of illusion, the wold and wave be peopled with
+cruel and treacherous seducers. Thus suicide might gradually lose
+its charms, and a dismal underworld of heartless gnomes replace the
+grottoes and fairies.
+
+We may close this chapter with a Scottish legend relating to the
+'Shi'ichs,' or Men of Peace, in which there is a strange intimation
+of a human mind dreaming that it dreams, and so far on its way to
+waking. A woman was carried away by these shadowy beings in order that
+she might suckle her child which they had previously stolen. During her
+retention she once observed the Shi'ichs anointing their eyes from a
+caldron, and seizing an opportunity, she managed to anoint one of her
+own eyes with the ointment. With that one eye she now saw the secret
+abode and all in it 'as they really were.' The deceptive splendour
+had vanished. The gaudy ornaments of a fairy grot had become the
+naked walls of a gloomy cavern. When this woman had returned to live
+among human beings again, her anointed eye saw much that others saw
+not; among other things she once saw a 'man of peace,' invisible to
+others, and asked him about her child. Astonished at being recognised,
+he demanded how she had been able to discover him; and when she had
+confessed, he spit in her eye and extinguished it for ever.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+DARKNESS.
+
+ Shadows--Night Deities--Kobolds--Walpurgisnacht--Night as
+ Abettor of Evil-doers--Nightmare--Dreams--Invisible Foes--Jacob
+ and his Phantom--Nott--The Prince of Darkness--The Brood of
+ Midnight--Second-Sight--Spectres of Souter Fell--The Moonshine
+ Vampyre--Glamour--Glam and Grettir--A Story of Dartmoor.
+
+
+From the little night which clings to man even by day--his own
+shadow--to the world's great shade of darkness, innumerable are the
+coverts from which have emerged the black procession of phantoms which
+have haunted the slumbers of the world, and betrayed the enterprise
+of man.
+
+How strange to the first man seemed that shadow walking beside him,
+from the time when he saw it as a ghost tracking its steps and giving
+him his name for a ghost, on to the period in which it seemed the
+emanation of an occult power, as to them who brought their sick into
+the streets to be healed by the passing shadow of Peter; and still
+on to the day when Beaumont wrote--
+
+
+ Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
+ Our fatal shadows that walk by us still;
+
+
+or that in which Goethe found therein the mystical symbol of the
+inward arrest of our moral development, and said 'No man can jump
+off of his shadow.' And then from the culture of Europe we pass to
+the Feejee-Islanders, and find them believing that every man has
+two spirits. One is his shadow, which goes to Hades; the other is
+his image as reflected in water, and it is supposed to stay near the
+place where the man dies. [164] But, like the giants of the Brocken,
+these demons of the Shadow are trembled at long after they are known
+to be the tremblers themselves mirrored on air. Have we not priests
+in England still fostering the belief that the baptized child goes
+attended by a white spirit, the unbaptized by a dark one? Why then
+need we apologise for the Fijians?
+
+But little need be said here of demons of the Dark, for they are
+closely related to the phantasms of Delusion, of Winter, and others
+already described. Yet have they distinctive characters. As many as
+were the sunbeams were the shadows; every goddess of the Dawn (Ushas)
+cast her shadow; every Day was swallowed up by Night. This is the
+cavern where hide the treacherous Panis (fog) in Vedic mythology,
+they who steal and hide Indra's cows; this is the realm of Hades (the
+invisible); this is the cavern of the hag Thökk (dark) in Scandinavian
+mythology,--she who alone of all in the universe refused to weep
+for Baldur when he was shut up in Helheim, where he had been sent
+by the dart of his blind brother Hödr (darkness). In the cavern of
+Night sleep the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, and Barbarossa, and all
+slumbering phantoms whose genius is the night-winged raven. Thorr,
+the Norse Hercules, once tried to lift a cat--as it seemed to him--from
+the ground; but it was the great mid-earth serpent which encircles the
+whole earth. Impossible feat as it was for Thorr--who got only one paw
+of the seeming cat off the ground--in that glassless and gasless era,
+invention has accomplished much in that direction; but the black Cat
+is still domiciled securely among idols of the mental cave.
+
+There is an Anglo-Saxon word, cof-godas (lit. cove-gods), employed as
+the equivalent of the Latin lares (the Penates, too, are interpreted as
+cof-godu, cofa signifying the inner recess of a house, penetrale). The
+word in German corresponding to this cofa, is koben; and from this
+Hildebrand conjectures kob-old to be derived. The latter part of
+the word he supposes to be walt (one who 'presides over,' e.g.,
+Walter); so that the original form would be kob-walt. [165] Here,
+then, in the recesses of the household, among the least enlightened
+of its members--the menials, who still often neutralise the efforts
+of rational people to dispel the delusions of their children--the
+discredited deities and demons of the past found refuge, and through
+a little baptismal change of names are familiars of millions unto
+this day. In the words of the ancient Hebrew, 'they lay in their
+own houses prisoners of darkness, fettered with the bonds of a long
+night.' 'No power of the fire might give them light, neither could
+the bright flames of the stars lighten that horrible night.' [166]
+Well is it added, 'Fear is nothing else but a betraying of the succours
+which reason offereth,' a truth which finds ample illustration in the
+Kobolds. These imaginary beings were naturally associated with the dark
+recesses of mines. There they gave the name to our metal Cobalt. The
+value of Cobalt was not understood until the 17th century, and the
+metal was first obtained by the Swedish chemist Brandt in 1733. The
+miners had believed that the silver was stolen away by Kobolds, and
+these 'worthless' ores left in its place. Nickel had the like history,
+and is named after Old Nick. So long did those Beauties slumber in
+the cavern of Ignorance till Science kissed them with its sunbeam,
+and led them forth to decorate the world!
+
+How passed this (mental) cave-dweller even amid the upper splendours
+and vastnesses of his unlit world? A Faust guided by his Mephistopheles
+only amid interminable Hartz labyrinths.
+
+
+ How sadly rises, incomplete and ruddy,
+ The moon's lone disk, with its belated glow,
+ And lights so dimly, that, as one advances,
+ At every step one strikes a rock or tree!
+ Let us then use a Jack-o'-lantern's glances:
+ I see one yonder, burning merrily.
+ Ho, there! my friend! I'll levy thine attendance:
+ Why waste so vainly thy resplendence?
+ Be kind enough to light us up the steep!
+
+ Tell me, if we still are standing,
+ Or if further we're ascending?
+ All is turning, whirling, blending,
+ Trees and rocks with grinning faces,
+ Wandering lights that spin in mazes,
+ Still increasing and expanding. [167]
+
+
+It could only have been at a comparatively late period of social
+development that Sancho's benediction on the inventor of sleep could
+have found general response. The Red Indian found its helplessness
+fatal when the 'Nick of the Woods' was abroad; the Scotch sailor found
+in it a demon's opiate when the 'Nigg of the Sea' was gathering his
+storms above the sleeping watchman. It was among the problems of Job,
+the coöperation of darkness with evil-doers.
+
+
+ The eye of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight;
+ He saith, No eye will see me,
+ And putteth a mask upon his face.
+ In the dark men break into houses;
+ In the day-time they shut themselves up;
+ They are strangers to the light.
+ The morning to them is the shadow of death;
+ They are familiar with the dark terrors of midnight.
+
+
+Besides this fact that the night befriends and masks every treacherous
+foe, it is also to be remembered that man is weakest at night. Not
+only is he weaker than by day in the veil drawn over his senses,
+but physiologically also. When the body is wearied out by the toils
+or combats of the day, and the mind haunted by dreams of danger,
+there are present all the terrors which Byron portrays around the
+restless pillow of Sardanapalus. The war-horse of the day becomes
+a night-mare in the darkness. In the Heimskringla it is recorded:
+'Vanland, Svegdir's son, succeeded his father and ruled over the
+Upsal domain. He was a great warrior, and went far around in different
+lands. Once he took up his winter abode in Finland with Snio the Old,
+and got his daughter Drisa in marriage; but in spring he set out
+leaving Drisa behind, and although he had promised to return within
+three years he did not come back for ten. Then Drisa sent a message to
+the witch Hulda; and sent Visbur, her son by Vanland, to Sweden. Drisa
+bribed the witch-wife Hulda, either that she should bewitch Vanland
+to return to Finland or kill him. When this witch-work was going
+on Vanland was at Upsal, and a great desire came over him to go to
+Finland, but his friends and counsellors advised him against it, and
+said the witchcraft of the Fin people showed itself in this desire of
+his to go there. He then became very drowsy, and laid himself down to
+sleep; but when he had slept but a little while he cried out, saying,
+'Mara was treading on him.' His men hastened to help him; but when they
+took hold of his head she trod on his legs, and when they laid hold
+of his legs she pressed upon his head; and it was his death.' [168]
+
+This witch is, no doubt, Hildur, a Walkyr of the Edda, leading heroes
+to Walhalla. Indeed, in Westphalia, nightmare is called Walriderske. It
+is a curious fact that 'Mara' should be preserved in the French
+word for nightmare, Cauche-mar, 'cauche' being from Latin calcare,
+to tread. Through Teutonic folklore this Night-demon of many names,
+having floated from England in a sieve paddled with cow-ribs, rides to
+the distress of an increasingly unheroic part of the population. Nearly
+always still the 'Mahrt' is said to be a pretty woman,--sometimes,
+indeed, a sweetheart is involuntarily transformed to one,--every
+rustic settlement abounding with tales of how the demoness has been
+captured by stopping the keyhole, calling the ridden sleeper by his
+baptismal name, and making the sign of the cross; by such process the
+wicked beauty appears in human form, and is apt to marry the sleeper,
+with usually evil results. The fondness of cats for getting on the
+breasts of sleepers, or near their breath, for warmth, has made that
+animal a common form of the 'Mahrt.' Sometimes it is a black fly with
+red ring around its neck. This demoness is believed to suffer more
+pain than it inflicts, and vainly endeavours to destroy herself.
+
+In savage and nomadic times sound sleep being an element of danger, the
+security which required men to sleep on their arms demanded also that
+they should sleep as it were with one eye open. Thus there might have
+arisen both the intense vividness which demons acquired by blending
+subjective and objective impressions, and the curious inability, so
+frequent among barbarians and not unknown among the men civilised, to
+distinguish dream from fact. The habit of day-dreaming seems, indeed,
+more general than is usually supposed. Dreams haunt all the region of
+our intellectual twilight,--the borderland of mystery, where rise the
+sources of the occult and the mystical which environ our lives. The
+daily terrors of barbarous life avail to haunt the nerves of civilised
+people, now many generations after they have passed away, with special
+and irrational shudders at certain objects or noises: how then must
+they have haunted the dreams of humanity when, like the daughter of
+Nathan the Wise, rescued from flames, it passed the intervals of strife
+
+
+ With nerves unstrung through fear,
+ And fire and flame in all she sees or fancies;
+ Her soul awake in sleep, asleep when wide awake?
+
+
+Among the sources of demoniac beliefs few indeed are more prolific than
+Dreams. 'The witchcraft of sleep,' says Emerson, 'divides with truth
+the empire of our lives. This soft enchantress visits two children
+lying locked in each other's arms, and carries them asunder by wide
+spans of land and sea, wide intervals of time. 'Tis superfluous to
+think of the dreams of multitudes; the astonishment remains that
+one should dream; that we should resign so quietly this deifying
+reason and become the theatre of delusions, shows, wherein time,
+space, persons, cities, animals, should dance before us in merry and
+mad confusion, a delicate creation outdoing the prime and flower of
+actual nature, antic comedy alternating with horrid spectres. Or we
+seem busied for hours and days in peregrinations over seas and lands,
+in earnest dialogues, strenuous actions for nothings and absurdities,
+cheated by spectral jokes, and waking suddenly with ghostly laughter,
+to be rebuked by the cold lonely silent midnight, and to rake with
+confusion in memory among the gibbering nonsense to find the motive
+of this contemptible cachinnation.' [169]
+
+It has always been the worst of periods of religious excitement that
+they shape the dreams of old and young, and find there a fearful
+and distorted, but vivid and realistic, embodiment of their feverish
+experiences. In the days of witchcraft thousands visited the Witches'
+Sabbaths, as they believed and danced in the Walpurgis orgies,
+borne (by hereditary orthodox canon) on their own brooms up their own
+chimneys; and to-day, by the same morbid imaginations, the victims are
+able to see themselves or others elongated, levitated, floating through
+the air. If people only knew how few are ever really wide-awake,
+these spiritual nightmares would soon reach their termination. The
+natural terrors before which helpless man once cowered, have been
+prolonged past all his real victories over his demons by a succession
+of such nightmares, so that the vulgar religion might be portrayed
+somewhat as Richard Wagner described his first tragedy, in which,
+having killed off forty-two of his characters, he had to bring them
+back as ghosts to carry on the fifth act!
+
+The perils of darkness, as ambush of foes human and animal,
+concealer of pitfalls, misguider of footsteps, misdirector of aims,
+were more real than men can well imagine in an age of gaslight plus
+the policeman. The myth of Joshua commanding the sun to stand still;
+the cry of Ajax when darkness fell on the combat, 'Grant me but to
+see!' refer us to the region from which come all childish shudders
+at going into the dark. The limit of human courage is reached where
+its foe is beyond the reach of its force. Fighting in the dark may
+even be suicidal. A German fable of blindfold zeal--the awakened
+sleeper demolishing his furniture and knocking out his own teeth in
+the attempt to punish cats--has its tragical illustrations also. But
+none of these actual dangers have been of more real evil to man than
+the demonisation of them. This rendered his very skill a blunder, his
+energy weakness. If it was bad to retreat in the dusk from an innocent
+bush into an unrecognised well, it was worse to meet the ghost with
+rune or crucifix and find it an assassin. When man fights with his
+shadow, he instantly makes it the demon he fears; ghoul-like it preys
+upon his paralysed strength, vampyre-like it sucks his blood, and he is
+consigned disarmed to the evil that is no shadow. The Scottish Sinclair
+marching through Norway, in the 16th century, owes his monument at
+Wiblungen rather to the magpie believed to precede him as a spy,
+with night and day upon its wings, than to his own prowess or power.
+
+In a sense all demons, whatever their shapes, are the ancient
+brood of night. Mental darkness, even more moral darkness within,
+supply the phantasmagoria in which unknown things shape themselves as
+demons. Esau is already reconciled, but guilty Jacob must still wrestle
+with him as a phantom of Fear till daybreak. A work has already been
+written on 'The Night-side of Nature,' but it would require many
+volumes to tell the story of what monsters have been conjured out
+of the kind protecting darkness. How great is the darkness which
+man makes for himself out of the imagination which should be his
+light and vision! Much of the so-called 'religion' of our time is
+but elaborate demoniculture and artificial preservation of mental
+Walpurgis-nights. Nott (Night) says the Edda rides first on her horse
+called Hrimfaxi (frost-maned), which every morning as he ends his
+course bedews the earth with the foam that falls from his bit. Though
+the horse of Day--Skinfaxi, or Shining-mane--follows hard after her,
+yet the foam is by no means drunk up by his fires. Foam of the old
+phantasms still lingers in our mediæval liturgies, and even falls
+afresh where the daylight is shut out that altar-candles may burn,
+or for other dark seances are prepared the conditions necessary for
+whatsoever loves not the light.
+
+What we call the Dark Ages were indeed spiritually a perpetual seance
+with lights lowered. Nay, human superstition was able to turn the
+very moon and stars into mere bluish night-tapers, giving just light
+enough to make the darkness visible in fantastic shapes fluttering
+around the Prince of Darkness,--or Non-existence in Chief! How much
+of the theosophic speculation of our time is the mere artificial
+conservation of that darkness? How much that still flits bat-winged
+from universities, will, in the future, be read with the same wonder
+as that with which even the more respectable bats can now read account
+of the midnight brood which now for the most part sleep tranquilly in
+such books as Burton's 'Anatomy of Melancholy'? 'There are,' he says,
+'certain spirits which Miraldus calls Ambulones, that walk about
+midnight on great heaths and desert places, which (saith Lavater)
+draw men out of their way, and lead them all night by a byway, or
+quite bar them of their way. These have several names in several
+places. We commonly call them Pucks. In the deserts of Lop, in Asia,
+such illusions of walking spirits are often perceived, as you may read
+in M. Paulus, the Venetian, his travels. If one lose his company by
+chance, these devils will call him by his name, and counterfeit voices
+of his companions to seduce him. Lavater and Cicogna have a variety of
+examples of spirits and walking devils in this kind. Sometimes they
+sit by the wayside to give men falls, and make their horses stumble
+and start as they ride (according to the narration of that holy man
+Ketellus in Nubrigensis, that had an especial grace to see devils);
+and if a man curse and spur his horse for stumbling, they do heartily
+rejoice at it.'
+
+While observing a spirited and imaginative picture by Macallum of
+the Siege of Jerusalem, it much interested me to observe the greater
+or less ease with which other visitors discovered the portents in
+the air which, following the narrative of Josephus, the artist had
+vaguely portrayed. The chariots and horsemen said to have been seen
+before that event were here faintly blent with indefinite outlines
+of clouds; and while some of the artist's friends saw them with a
+distinctness greater, perhaps, than that with which they impressed
+the eye of the artist himself, others could hardly be made to see
+anything except shapeless vapour, though of course they all agreed
+that they were there and remarkably fine.
+
+It would seem that thus, in a London studio, there were present all
+the mental pigments for frescoing the air and sky with those visions
+of aërial armies or huntsmen which have become so normal in history
+as to be, in a subjective sense, natural. In the year 1763, an author,
+styling himself Theophilus Insulanus, published at Edinburgh a book on
+Second-Sight, in which he related more than a hundred instances of the
+power he believed to exist of seeing events before they had occurred,
+and whilst, of course, they did not exist. It is not difficult in
+reading them to see that they are all substantially one and the
+same story, and that the sight in operation was indeed second; for
+man or woman, at once imaginative and illiterate, have a second and
+supernumerary pair of eyes inherited from the traditional superstitions
+and ghost stories which fill all the air they breathe from the cradle
+to the grave. While the mind is in this condition, that same nature
+whose apparitions and illusions originally evoked and fostered the
+glamoury, still moves on with her minglings of light and shade, cloud
+and mirage, giving no word of explanation. There are never wanting the
+shadowy forms without that cast their shuttles to the dark idols of the
+mental cave, together weaving subtle spells round the half-waking mind.
+
+In the year 1743 all the North of England and Scotland was in alarm
+on account of some spectres which were seen on the mountain of Souter
+Fell in Cumberland. The mountain is about half-a-mile high. On a summer
+evening a farmer and his servant, looking from Wilton Hall, half a
+mile off, saw the figures of a man and a dog pursuing some horses
+along the mountain-side, which is very steep; and on the following
+morning they repaired to the place, expecting to find dead bodies, but
+finding none. About one year later a troop of horsemen were seen riding
+along the same mountain-side by one of the same persons, the servant,
+who then called others who also saw the aërial troopers. After a year
+had elapsed the above vision was attested before a magistrate by two
+of those who saw it. The event occurred on the eve of the Rebellion,
+when horsemen were exercising, and when also the popular mind along
+the Border may be supposed to have been in a highly excited condition.
+
+What was seen on this strongly-authenticated occasion? Was anything
+seen? None can tell. It is open to us to believe that there may have
+been some play of mirage. As there are purely aërial echoes, so are
+there aërial reflectors for the eye. On the other hand, the vision so
+nearly resembles the spectral processions which have passed through
+the mythology of the world, that we can never be sure that it was
+not the troop of King Arthur, emerging from Avallon to announce
+the approaching strife. A few fleecy, strangely-shaped clouds,
+chasing each other along the hillside in the evening's dusk would
+have amply sufficed to create the latter vision, and the danger of
+the time would easily have supplied all the Second-Sight required to
+reveal it to considerable numbers. In questions of this kind a very
+small circumstance--a phrase, a name, perhaps--may turn the balance
+of probabilities. Thus it may be noted that, in the instance just
+related, the vision was seen on the steep side of Souter Fell. Fell
+means a hill or a steep rock, as in Drachenfels. But as to Souter,
+although, as Mr. Robert Ferguson says, the word may originally
+have meant sheep, [170] it is found in Scotland used as 'shoemaker'
+in connection with the fabulous giants of that region. Sir Thomas
+Urquhart, in the seventeenth century, relates it as the tradition
+of the two promontories of Cromarty, called 'Soutars,' that they
+were the work-stools of two giants who supplied their comrades with
+shoes and buskins. Possessing but one set of implements, they used
+to fling these to each other across the opening of the firth, where
+the promontories are only two miles apart. In process of time the name
+Soutar, shoemaker, was bequeathed by the craftsmen to their stools. It
+is not improbable that the name gradually connected itself with other
+places bearing traditions connecting them with the fabulous race,
+and that in this way the Souter Fell, from meaning in early times
+much the same as Giants' Hill, preserved even in 1743-44 enough of the
+earlier uncanny associations to awaken the awe of Borderers in a time
+of rebellion. The vision may therefore have been seen by light which
+had journeyed all the way from the mythologic heavens of ancient India:
+substantially subjective--such stuff as dreams and dreamers are made
+of--no doubt there were outer clouds, shapes and afterglows enough,
+even in the absence of any fata morgana to supply canvas and pigment
+to the cunning artist that hides in the eye.
+
+In an old tale, the often-slain Vampyre-bat only requests, with
+pathos, that his body may be laid where no sunlight, but only the
+moonlight, will fall on it--only that! But it is under the moonshine
+that it always gains new life. No demon requires absolute darkness,
+but half-darkness, in which to live: enough light to disclose a
+Somewhat, but not enough to define and reveal its nature, is just
+what has been required for the bat-eyes of fable and phantasy, which
+can make vampyre of a sparrow or giant out of a windmill.
+
+Glamour! A marvellous history has this word of the artists and
+poets,--sometimes meaning the charm with which the eye invests any
+object; or, in Wordsworth's phrase, 'the light that never was on
+land or sea.' But no artist or poet ever rose to the full height
+of the simple term itself, which well illustrates Emerson's saying,
+'Words are fossil poetry.' Professor Cowell of Cambridge says: 'Glám,
+or in the nominative Glámr, is also a poetical name for the Moon. It
+does not actually occur in the ancient literature, but it is given in
+the glossary in the Prose Edda in the list of the very old words for
+the Moon.' Vigfusson in his dictionary says, 'The word is interesting
+on account of its identity with Scot. Glamour, which shows that the
+tale of Glam was common to Scotland and Iceland, and this much older
+than Grettir (in the year 1014).' The Ghost or Goblin Glam seems
+evidently to have arisen from a personification of the delusive and
+treacherous effects of moonlight on the benighted traveller,
+
+
+ Quale per incertam lunam sub luce malignâ,
+ Est iter in sylvis.
+
+
+Now, there is a curious old Sanskrit word, glau or gláv, which is
+explained in all the old native lexicons as meaning 'the moon.' It
+might either be taken as 'waning,' or in a casual sense 'obscuring.'
+
+The following lines from an early mediæval poet, Bhása (seventh
+century), will illustrate the deceptive character of moonlight from
+a Hindu point of view. The strong and wild Norse imagination delights
+in what is terrible and gloomy: the Hindu loves to dwell on the milder
+and quieter aspects of human life.
+
+'The cat laps the moonbeams in the bowl of water, thinking them to
+be milk: the elephant thinks that the moonbeams, threaded through
+the intervals of the trees, are the fibres of the lotus-stalk. The
+woman snatches at the moonbeams as they lie on the bed, taking them
+for her muslin garment: oh, how the moon, intoxicated with radiance,
+bewilders all the world!'
+
+A similar passage, no doubt imitated from this, is also quoted:
+
+'The bewildered herdsmen place the pails under the cows, thinking
+that the milk is flowing; the maidens also put the blue lotus blossom
+in their ears, thinking that it is the white; the mountaineer's wife
+snatches up the jujube fruit, avaricious for pearls. Whose mind is
+not led astray by the thickly clustering moonbeams?' [171]
+
+In the Icelandic legend of the struggle between the hero Grettir,
+translated by Magnússen and Morris (London, 1869), the saga
+supplies a scenery as archæological as if the philologists had been
+consulted. 'Bright moonlight was there without, and the drift was
+broken, now drawn over the moon, now driven off from her; and even as
+Glam fell, a cloud was driven from the moon, and Glam glared up against
+her.' When the hero beheld these glaring eyes of the giant Ghost, he
+felt some fiendish craft in them, and could not draw his short sword,
+and 'lay well nigh 'twixt home and hell.' This half-light of the moon,
+which robs the Strong of half his power, is repeated in Glam's curse:
+'Exceedingly eager hast thou sought to meet me, Grettir, but no
+wonder will it be deemed, though thou gettest no good hap of me;
+and this I must tell thee, that thou now hast got half the strength
+and manhood which was thy lot if thou hadst not met me: now I may
+not take from thee the strength which thou hast got before this;
+but that may I rule, that thou shalt never be mightier than now thou
+art ... therefore this weird I lay on thee, ever in those days to
+see these eyes with thine eyes, and thou wilt find it hard to be
+alone--and that shalt drag thee unto death.'
+
+The Moon-demon's power is limited to the spell of illusion he can
+cast. Presently he is laid low; the 'short sword' of a sunbeam pales,
+decapitates him. But after Glam is burned to cold coals, and his
+ashes buried in skin of a beast 'where sheep-pastures were fewest,
+or the ways of men,' the spell lay upon the hero's eyes. 'Grettir
+said that his temper had been nowise bettered by this, that he was
+worse to quiet than before, and that he deemed all trouble worse than
+it was; but that herein he found the greatest change, in that he was
+become so fearsome a man in the dark, that he durst go nowhither alone
+after nightfall, for then he seemed to see all kinds of horrors. And
+that has fallen since into a proverb, that Glam lends eyes, or gives
+Glamsight to those who see things nowise as they are.'
+
+In reading which one may wonder how this world would look if for
+a little moment one's eyes could be purged of glamour. Even at the
+moon's self one tries vainly to look: where Hindu and Zulu see a hare,
+the Arab sees coils of a serpent, and the Englishman sees a man; and
+the most intelligent of these several races will find it hard to see in
+the moon aught save what their primitive ancestors saw. And this small
+hint of the degree to which the wisest, like Merlin, are bound fast
+in an air-prison by a Vivien whose spells are spun from themselves,
+would carry us far could we only venture to follow it out. 'The Moon,'
+observed Dr. Johnson unconsciously, 'has great influence in vulgar
+philosophy.' How much lunar theology have we around us, so that
+many from the cradle to the grave get no clear sight of nature or of
+themselves! Very closely did Carlyle come to the fable of Glam when
+speaking of Coleridge's 'prophetic moonshine,' and its effect on poor
+John Sterling. 'If the bottled moonshine beactually substance? Ah,
+could one but believe in a church while finding it incredible!... The
+bereaved young lady has taken the veil then!... To such lengths can
+transcendental moonshine, cast by some morbidly radiating Coleridge
+into the chaos of a fermenting life, act magically there, and produce
+divulsions and convulsions and diseased developments.' One can almost
+fancy Carlyle had ringing in his memory the old Scottish ballad of
+the Rev. Robert Kirk, translator of the Psalms into Gaelic, who,
+while walking in his night-gown at Aberfoyle, was 'snatched away to
+the joyless Elfin bower.'
+
+
+ It was between the night and day
+ When the fairy-king has power.
+
+
+The item of the night-gown might have already prepared us for the
+couplet; and it has perhaps even a mystical connection with the
+vestment of the 'black dragoon' which Sterling once saw patrolling
+in every parish, to whom, however, he surrendered at last.
+
+A story is told of a man wandering on a dark night over Dartmoor,
+whose feet slipped over the edge of a pit. He caught the branch of
+a tree suspended over the terrible chasm, but unable to regain the
+ground, shrieked for help. None came, though he cried out till his
+voice was gone; and there he remained dangling in agony until the grey
+light revealed that his feet were only a few inches from the solid
+ground. Such are the chief demons that bind man till cockcrow. Such are
+the apprehensions that waste also the moral and intellectual strength
+of man, and murder his peace as he regards the necessary science of his
+time to be cutting some frail tenure sustaining him over a bottomless
+pit, instead of a release from real terror to the solid ground.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+DISEASE.
+
+ The Plague Phantom--Devil-dances--Destroying Angels--Ahriman in
+ Astrology---Saturn--Satan and Job--Set--The Fatal Seven--Yakseyo
+ --The Singhalese Pretraya--Reeri--Maha Sohon--Morotoo--Luther on
+ Disease-demons--Gopolu--Madan--Cattle-demon in Russia--Bihlweisen
+ --The Plough.
+
+
+A familiar fable in the East tells of one who met a fearful phantom,
+which in reply to his questioning answered--'I am Plague: I have come
+from yon city where ten thousand lie dead: one thousand were slain by
+me, the rest by Fear.' Perhaps even this story does not fully report
+the alliance between the plague and fear; for it is hardly doubtful
+that epidemics retain their power in the East largely because they have
+gained personification through fear as demons whose fatal power man
+can neither prevent nor cure, before which he can only cower and pray.
+
+In the missionary school at Canterbury the young men prepare themselves
+to help the 'heathen' medically, and so they go forth with materia
+medica in one hand, and in the other an infallible revelation from
+heaven reporting plagues as the inflictions of Jehovah, or the
+destroying angel, or Satan, and the healing of disease the jealously
+reserved monopoly of God. [172]
+
+The demonisation of diseases is not wonderful. To thoughtful
+minds not even science has dispelled the mystery which surrounds
+many of the ailments that afflict mankind, especially the normal
+diseases besetting children, hereditary complaints, and the strange
+liabilities to infection and contagion. A genuine, however partial,
+observation would suggest to primitive man some connection between
+the symptoms of many diseases and the mysterious universe of which he
+could not yet recognise himself an epitome. There were indications
+that certain troubles of this kind were related to the seasons,
+consequently to the celestial rulers of the seasons,--to the sun
+that smote by day, and the moon at night. Professor Monier Williams,
+describing the Devil-dances of Southern India, says that there seems
+to be an idea among them that when pestilences are rife exceptional
+measures must be taken to draw off the malignant spirits, supposed
+to cause them, by tempting them to enter into these wild dancers,
+and so become dissipated. He witnessed in Ceylon a dance performed by
+three men who personated the forms and phases of typhus fever. [173]
+These dances probably belong to the same class of ideas as those of
+the dervishes in Persia, whose manifold contortions are supposed
+to repeat the movements of planets. They are invocations of the
+souls of good stars, and propitiations of such as are evil. Belief
+in such stellar and planetary influences has pervaded every part of
+the world, and gave rise to astrological dances. 'Gebelin says that
+the minuet was the danse oblique of the ancient priests of Apollo,
+performed in their temples. The diagonal line and the two parallels
+described in this dance were intended to be symbolical of the zodiac,
+and the twelve steps of which it is composed were meant for the twelve
+signs and the months of the year. The dance round the Maypole and the
+Cotillon has the same origin. Diodorus tells us that Apollo was adored
+with dances, and in the island of Iona the god danced all night. The
+Christians of St. Thomas till a very late day celebrated their worship
+with dances and songs. Calmet says there were dancing-girls in the
+temple at Jerusalem.' [174]
+
+The influence of the Moon upon tides, the sleeplessness it causes,
+the restlessness of the insane under its occasional light, and such
+treacheries of moonshine as we have already considered, have populated
+our uninhabited satellite with demons. Lunar legends have decorated
+some well-founded suspicions of moonlight. The mother draws the
+curtain between the moonshine and her little Endymion, though not
+because she sees in the waning moon a pining Selene whose kiss may
+waste away the beauty of youth. A mere survival is the 'bowing to
+the new moon:' a euphonism traceable to many myths about 'lunacy,'
+among them, as I think, to Delilah ('languishing'), in whose lap
+the solar Samson is shorn of his locks, leaving him only the blind
+destructive strength of the 'moonstruck.'
+
+In the purely Semitic theories of the Jews we find diseases ascribed
+to the wrath of Jehovah, and their cure to his merciful mood. 'Jehovah
+will make thy plagues wonderful, and the plagues of thy seed; ... he
+will bring upon thee all the diseases of Egypt whereof thou wast
+afraid.' [175] The emerods which smote the worshippers of Dagon were
+ascribed directly to the hand of Jehovah. [176] In that vague degree
+of natural dualistic development which preceded the full Iranian
+influence upon the Jews, the infliction of diseases was delegated to
+an angel of Jehovah, as in the narratives of smiting the firstborn
+of Egypt, wasting the army of Sennacherib, and the pestilence sent
+upon Israel for David's sin. In the progress of this angel to be
+a demon of disease we find a phase of ambiguity, as shown in the
+hypochondria of Saul. 'The spirit of Jehovah departed from Saul,
+and an evil spirit from Jehovah troubled him.' [177]
+
+All such ambiguities disappeared under the influence of Iranian
+dualism. In the Book of Job we find the infliction of diseases and
+plagues completely transferred to a powerful spirit, a fully formed
+opposing potentate. The 'sons of God,' who in the first chapter
+of Job are said to have presented themselves before Jehovah, may
+be identified in the thirty-eighth as the stars which shouted for
+joy at the creation. Satan is the wandering or malign planet which
+leads in the Ahrimanic side of the Persian planisphere. In the
+cosmographical theology of that country Ormuzd was to reign for
+six thousand years, and then Ahriman was to reign for a similar
+period. The moral associations of this speculation are discussed
+elsewhere; it is necessary here only to point out the bearing of the
+planispheric conception upon the ills that flesh is heir to. Ahriman
+is the 'star-serpent' of the Zendavasta. 'When the pâris rendered
+this world desolate, and overran the universe; when the star-serpent
+made a path for himself between heaven and earth,' &c.; 'when Ahriman
+rambles on the earth, let him who takes the form of a serpent glide
+on the earth; let him who takes the form of the wolf run on the earth,
+and let the violent north wind bring weakness.' [178]
+
+The dawn of Ormuzd corresponds with April. The sun returns from
+winter's death by sign of the lamb (our Aries), and thenceforth
+every month corresponds with a thousand years of the reign of the
+Beneficent. September is denoted by the Virgin and Child. To the dark
+domain of Ahriman the prefecture of the universe passes by Libra,--the
+same balances which appear in the hand of Satan. The star-serpent
+prevails over the Virgin and Child. Then follow the months of the
+scorpion, the centaur, goat, &c., every month corresponding to a
+thousand years of the reign of Ahriman.
+
+While this scheme corresponds in one direction with the demons of
+cold, and in another with the entrance and reign of moral evil in
+the world, beginnings of disease on earth were also ascribed to this
+seventh thousand of years when the Golden Age had passed. The depth of
+winter is reached in domicile of the goat, or of Sirius, Seth, Saturn,
+Satan--according to the many variants. And these, under their several
+names, make the great 'infortune' of astrology, wherein old Culpepper
+amply instructed our fathers. 'In the general, consider that Saturn
+is an old worn-out planet, weary, and of little estimation in this
+world; he causeth long and tedious sicknesses, abundance of sadness,
+and a Cartload of doubts and fears; his nature is cold, and dry,
+and melancholy. And take special notice of this, that when Saturn is
+Lord of an Eclipse (as he is one of the Lords of this), he governs all
+the rest of the planets, but none can govern him. Melancholy is made
+of all the humors in the body of man, but no humor of melancholy. He
+is envious, and keeps his anger long, and speaks but few words, but
+when he speaks he speaks to purpose. A man of deep cogitations; he
+will plot mischief when men are asleep; he hath an admirable memory,
+and remembers to this day how William the Bastard abused him; he
+cannot endure to be a slave; he is poor with the poor, fearful with
+the fearful; he plots mischief against the Superiours, with them that
+plot mischief against them; have a care of him, Kings and Magistrates
+of Europe; he will show you what he can do in the effects of this
+Eclipse; he is old, and therefore hath large experience, and will
+give perilous counsel; he moves but slowly, and therefore doth the
+more mischief; all the planets contribute their natures and strength
+to him, and when he sets on doing mischief he will do it to purpose;
+he doth not regard the company of the rest of the Planets, neither
+do any of the rest of the Planets regard his; he is a barren Planet,
+and therefore delights not in women; he brings the Pestilence; he is
+destructive to the fruits of the earth; he receives his light from
+the Sun, and yet he hates the Sun that gives it him.' [179]
+
+Many ages anterior to this began in India the dread of Ketu,
+astronomically the ninth planet, mythologically the tail of the
+demon Rahu, cut in twain as already told (p. 46), supposed to be
+the prolific source of comets, meteors, and falling stars, also of
+diseases. From this Ketu or dragon's tail were born the Arunah Ketavah
+(Red Ketus or apparitions), and Ketu has become almost another word
+for disease. [180]
+
+Strongly influenced as were the Jews by the exact division of the
+duodecimal period between Good and Evil, affirmed by the Persians,
+they never lost sight of the ultimate supremacy of Jehovah. Though
+Satan had gradually become a voluntary genius of evil, he still had
+to receive permission to afflict, as in the case of Job, and during
+the lifetime of Paul appears to have been still denied that 'power of
+death' which is first asserted by the unknown author of the Epistle
+to the Hebrews. [181] Satan's especial office was regarded as the
+infliction of disease. Paul delivers the incestuous Corinthian to
+Satan 'for the destruction of the flesh,' and he also attributed the
+sickness and death of many to their communicating unworthily. [182]
+He also recognises his own 'thorn in the flesh' as 'an angel from
+Satan,' though meant for his moral advantage. [183]
+
+A penitential Psalm (Assyrian) reads as follows:--
+
+O my Lord! my sins are many, my trespasses are great; and the wrath
+of the gods has plagued me with disease, and with sickness and sorrow.
+
+
+ I fainted, but no one stretched forth his hand!
+ I groaned, but no one drew nigh!
+ I cried aloud, but no one heard!
+ O Lord, do not abandon thy servant!
+ In the waters of the great storm seize his hand!
+ The sins which he has committed turn them to righteousness. [184]
+
+
+This Psalm would hardly be out of place in the English burial-service,
+which deplores death as a visitation of divine wrath. Wherever such
+an idea prevails, the natural outcome of it is a belief in demons of
+disease. In ancient Egypt--following the belief in Ra the Sun, from
+whose eyes all pleasing things proceeded, and Set, from whose eyes came
+all noxious things,--from the baleful light of Set's eyes were born the
+Seven Hathors, or Fates, whose names are recorded in the Book of the
+Dead. Mr. Fox Talbot has translated 'the Song of the Seven Spirits:'--
+
+
+ They are seven! they are seven!
+ In the depths of ocean they are seven!
+ In the heights of heaven they are seven!
+ In the ocean-stream in a palace they were born!
+ Male they are not: female they are not!
+ Wives they have not: children are not born to them!
+ Rule they have not: government they know not!
+ Prayers they hear not!
+ They are seven! they are seven! twice over they are seven! [185]
+
+
+These demons have a way of herding together; the Assyrian tablets
+abundantly show that their occupation was manifested by diseases,
+physical and mental. One prescription runs thus:--
+
+
+ The god (...) shall stand by his bedside:
+ Those seven evil spirits he shall root out, and shall expel them
+ from his body:
+ And those seven shall never return to the sick man again!
+
+
+It is hardly doubtful that these were the seven said to have been
+cast out of Mary Magdalen; for their father Set is Shedîm (devils)
+of Deut. xxxii. 17, and Shaddai (God) of Gen. xvi. 1. But the fatal
+Seven turn to the seven fruits that charm away evil influences at
+parturition in Persia, also the Seven Wise Women of the same country
+traditionally present on holy occasions. When Ardá Viráf was sent
+to Paradise by a sacred narcotic to obtain intelligence of the true
+faith, seven fires were kept burning for seven days around him,
+and the seven wise women chanted hymns of the Avesta. [186]
+
+The entrance of the seven evil powers into a dwelling was believed by
+the Assyrians to be preventible by setting in the doorway small images,
+such as those of the sun-god (Hea) and the moon-goddess, but especially
+of Marduk, corresponding to Serapis the Egyptian Esculapius. These
+powers were reinforced by writing holy texts over and on each side
+of the threshold. 'In the night time bind around the sick man's head
+a sentence taken from a good book.' The phylacteries of the Jews were
+originally worn for the same purpose. They were called Tefila, and were
+related to teraphim, the little idols [187] used by the Jews to keep
+out demons--such as those of Laban, which his daughter Rachel stole.
+
+The resemblance of teraphim to the Tarasca (connected by some with
+G. teras, a monster) of Spain may be noted,--the serpent figures
+carried about in Corpus Christi processions. The latter word is
+known in the south of France also, and gave its name to the town
+Tarascon. The legend is that an amphibious monster haunted the Rhone,
+preventing navigation and committing terrible ravages, until sixteen
+of the boldest inhabitants of the district resolved to encounter
+it. Eight lost their lives, but the others, having destroyed the
+monster, founded the town of Tarascon, where the 'Fête de la tarasque'
+is still kept up. [188] Calmet, Sedley, and others, however, believe
+that teraphim is merely a modification of seraphim, and the Tefila,
+or phylacteries, of the same origin.
+
+The phylactery was tied into a knot. Justin Martyr says that the
+Jewish exorcists used 'magic ties or knots.' The origin of this
+custom among the Jews and Babylonians may be found in the Assyrian
+Talismans preserved in the British Museum, of which the following
+has been translated by Mr. Fox Talbot:--
+
+
+Hea says: Go, my son!
+Take a woman's kerchief,
+Bind it round thy right hand, loose it from the left hand!
+Knot it with seven knots: do so twice:
+Sprinkle it with bright wine:
+Bind it round the head of the sick man:
+Bind it round his hands and feet, like manacles and fetters.
+Sit down on his bed:
+Sprinkle holy water over him.
+He shall hear the voice of Hea,
+Darkness shall protect him!
+And Marduk, eldest son of Heaven, shall find him a happy
+habitation. [189]
+
+
+The number seven holds an equally high degree of potency in Singhalese
+demonolatry, which is mainly occupied with diseases. The Capuas or
+conjurors of that island enumerate 240,000 magic spells, of which all
+except one are for evil, which implies a tolerably large preponderance
+of the emergencies in which their countervailing efforts are required
+by their neighbours. That of course can be easily appreciated by
+those who have been taught that all human beings are included under a
+primal curse. The words of Micah, 'Thou wilt cast all their sins into
+the depths of the sea,' [190] are recalled by the legend of these
+evil spells of Ceylon. The king of Oude came to marry one of seven
+princesses, all possessing præternatural powers, and questioned each
+as to her art. Each declared her skill in doing harm, except one who
+asserted her power to heal all ills which the others could inflict. The
+king having chosen this one as his bride, the rest were angry, and
+for revenge collected all the charms in the world, enclosed them in a
+pumpkin--the only thing that can contain spells without being reduced
+to ashes--and sent this infernal machine to their sister. It would
+consume everything for sixteen hundred miles round; but the messenger
+dropped it in the sea. A god picked it up and presented it to the King
+of Ceylon, and these, with the healing charm known to his own Queen,
+make the 240,000 spells known to the Capuas of that island, who have
+no doubt deified the rescuer of the spells on the same principle that
+inspires some seaside populations to worship Providence more devoutly
+on the Sunday after a valuable wreck in their neighbourhood.
+
+The astrological origin of the evils ascribed to the Yakseyo (Demons)
+of Ceylon, and the horoscope which is a necessary preliminary to
+any dealing with their influences; the constant recurrence of the
+number seven, denoting origin with races holding the seven-planet
+theories of the universe; and the fact that all demons are said, on
+every Saturday evening, to attend an assemblage called Yaksa Sabawa
+(Witches' Sabbath), are facts that may well engage the attention
+of Comparative Mythologists. [191] In Dardistan the evil spirits are
+called Yatsh; they dwell 'in the regions of snow,' and the overthrow of
+their reign over the country is celebrated at the new moon of Daykio,
+the month preceding winter.
+
+The largest proportion of the Disease Demons of Ceylon are descended
+from its Hunger Demons. The Preta there is much the same phantom
+as in Siam, only they are not quite so tall. [192] They range from
+two to four hundred feet in height, and are so numerous that a Pali
+Buddhist book exhorts people not to throw stones, lest they should
+harm one of these harmless starveling ghosts, who die many times
+of hunger, and revive to suffer on in expiation of their sins in a
+previous existence. They are harmless in one sense, but filthy; and
+bad smells are personified in them. The great mass of demons resemble
+the Pretraya, in that their king (Wessamony) has forbidden them to
+satisfy themselves directly upon their victims, but by inflicting
+diseases they are supposed to receive an imaginative satisfaction
+somewhat like that of eating people.
+
+Reeri is the Demon of Blood-disease. His form is that of a man with
+face of a monkey; he is fiery red, rides on a red bull, and all
+hemorrhages and diseases of the blood are attributed to him. Reeri
+has eighteen different disguises or avatars. One of these recalls his
+earlier position as a demon of death, before Vishnu revealed to Capuas
+the means of binding him: he is now supposed to be present at every
+death-bed in the form of a delighted pigmy, one span and six inches
+high. On such occasions he bears a cock in one hand, a club in the
+other, and in his mouth a corpse. In the same country Maha Sohon is the
+'great graveyard demon.' He resides in a hill where he is supposed to
+surround himself with carcases. He is 122 feet high, has four hands
+and three eyes, and a red skin. He has the head of a bear; the legend
+being that while quarrelling with another giant his head was knocked
+off, and the god Senasura was gracious enough to tear off the head
+of a bear and clap it on the decapitated giant. His capua threatens
+him with a repetition of this catastrophe if he does not spare any
+threatened victim who has called in his priestly aid. Except for this
+timidity about his head, Maha is formidable, being chief of 30,000
+demons. But curiously enough he is said to choose for his steeds the
+more innocent animals,--goat, deer, horse, elephant, and hog.
+
+One of the demons most dreaded in Ceylon is the 'Foreign Demon'
+Morotoo, said to have come from the coast of Malabar, and from
+his residence in a tree disseminated diseases which could not be
+cured until, the queen being afflicted, one capua was found able
+to master him. Seven-eighths of the charms used in restraining the
+disease-demons of Ceylon, of which I have mentioned but a few, are
+in the Tamil tongue. In various parts of India are found very nearly
+the same systematic demonolatry and 'devil-dancing;' for example in
+Travancore, to whose superstitions of this character the Rev. Samuel
+Mateer has devoted two chapters in his work 'The Land of Charity.'
+
+The great demon of diseases in Ceylon is entitled Maha Cola Sanni
+Yakseya. His father, a king, ordered his queen to be put to death in
+the belief that she had been faithless to him. Her body was to be cut
+in two pieces, one of which was to be hung upon a tree (Ukberiya),
+the other to be thrown at its foot to the dogs. The queen before
+her execution said, 'If this charge be false, may the child in my
+womb be born this instant a demon, and may that demon destroy the
+whole of this city and its unjust king.' So soon as the executioners
+had finished their work, the two severed parts of the queen's body
+reunited, a child was born who completely devoured his mother,
+and then repaired to the graveyard (Sohon), where for a time he
+fattened on corpses. Then he proceeded to inflict mortal diseases
+upon the city, and had nearly depopulated it when the gods Iswara
+and Sekkra interfered, descending to subdue him in the disguise of
+mendicants. Possibly the great Maha Sohon mentioned above, and the
+Sohon (graveyard) from which Sanni dealt out deadliness, may be best
+understood by the statement of the learned writer from whom these facts
+are quoted, that, 'excepting the Buddhist priests, and the aristocrats
+of the land, whose bodies were burnt in regular funeral-piles after
+death, the corpses of the rest of the people were neither burned nor
+buried, but thrown into a place called Sohona, which was an open piece
+of ground in the jungle, generally a hollow among the hills, at the
+distance of three or four miles from any inhabited place, where they
+were left in the open air to be decomposed or devoured by dogs and
+wild beasts.' [193] There would appear to be even more ground for
+the dread of the Great Graveyard Demon in many parts of Christendom,
+where, through desire to preserve corpses for a happy resurrection,
+they are made to steal through the water-veins of the earth, and find
+their resurrection as fell diseases. Iswara and Sekkra were probably
+two reformers who persuaded the citizens to bury the poor deep in
+the earth; had they been wise enough to place the dead where nature
+would give them speedy resurrection and life in grass and flowers,
+it would not have been further recorded that 'they ordered him (the
+demon) to abstain from eating men, but gave him Wurrun or permission
+to inflict disease on mankind, and to obtain offerings.' This is very
+much the same as the privilege given our Western funeral agencies and
+cemeteries also; and when the Modliar adds that Sanni 'has eighteen
+principal attendants,' one can hardly help thinking of the mummers,
+gravediggers, chaplains, all engaged unconsciously in the work of
+making the earth less habitable.
+
+The first of the attendants of this formidable avenger of his mother's
+wrongs is named Bhoota Sanni Yakseya, Demon of Madness. The whole
+demonolatry and devil-dancing of that island are so insane that one is
+not surprised that this Bhoota had but little special development. It
+is amid clear senses we might naturally look for full horror of
+madness, and there indeed do we find it. One of the most horrible
+forms of the disease-demon was the personification of madness among
+the Greeks, as Mania. [194] In the Hercules Furens of Euripides,
+where Madness, 'the unwedded daughter of black Night,' and sprung of
+'the blood of Coelus,' is evoked from Tartarus for the express purpose
+of imbreeding in Hercules 'child-slaying disturbances of reason,'
+there is a suggestion of the hereditary nature of insanity. Obedient
+to the vindictive order of Juno, 'in her chariot hath gone forth the
+marble-visaged, all-mournful Madness, the Gorgon of Night, and with
+the hissing of hundred heads of snakes, she gives the goad to her
+chariot, on mischief bent.' We may plainly see that the religion
+which embodied such a form was itself ending in madness. Already
+ancient were the words mantikê (prophecy) and manikê (madness) when
+Plato cited their identity to prove one kind of madness the special
+gift of Heaven: [195] the notion lingers in Dryden's line, 'Great
+wits to madness sure are near allied;' and survive in regions where
+deference is paid to lunatics and idiots. Other diseases preserve in
+their names indications of similar association: e.g., Nympholepsy,
+St. Vitus's Dance, St. Anthony's Fire. Wesley attributes still epilepsy
+to 'possession.' This was in pursuance of ancient beliefs. Typhus, a
+name anciently given to every malady accompanied with stupor (typhos),
+seemed the breath of feverish Typhon. Max Müller connects the word
+quinsy with Sanskrit amh, 'to throttle,' and Ahi the throttling
+serpent, its medium being angina; and this again is kynanchê,
+dog-throttling, the Greek for quinsy. [196]
+
+The genius of William Blake, steeped in Hebraism, never showed
+greater power than in his picture of Plague. A gigantic hideous form,
+pale-green, with the slime of stagnant pools, reeking with vegetable
+decays and gangrene, the face livid with the motley tints of pallor
+and putrescence, strides onward with extended arms like a sower sowing
+his seeds, only in this case the germs of his horrible harvest are not
+cast from the hands, but emanate from the fingers as being of their
+essence. Such, to the savage mind, was the embodiment of malaria,
+sultriness, rottenness, the putrid Pretraya, invisible, but smelt
+and felt. Such, to the ignorant imagination, is the Destroying Angel
+to which rationalistic artists and poets have tried to add wings
+and majesty; but which in the popular mind was no doubt pictured
+more like this form found at Ostia (fig. 16), and now passing in
+the Vatican for a Satan,--probably a demon of the Pontine Marshes,
+and of the fever that still has victims of its fatal cup (p. 291). In
+these fearful forms the poor savage believed with such an intensity
+that he was able to shape the brain of man to his phantasy; bringing
+about the anomaly that the great reformer, Luther, should affirm,
+even while fighting superstition, that a Christian ought to know
+that he lives in the midst of devils, and that the devil is nearer
+to him than his coat or his shirt. The devils, he tells us, are
+all around us, and are at every moment seeking to ensnare our lives,
+salvation, and happiness. There are many of them in the woods, waters,
+deserts, and in damp muddy places, for the purpose of doing folk a
+mischief. They also house in the dense black clouds, and send storms,
+hail, thunder and lightning, and poison the air with their infernal
+stench. In one place, Luther tells us that the devil has more vessels
+and boxes full of poison, with which he kills people, than all the
+apothecaries in the whole world. He sends all plagues and diseases
+among men. We may be sure that when any one dies of the pestilence,
+is drowned, or drops suddenly dead, the devil does it.
+
+Knowing nothing of Zoology, the primitive man easily falls into the
+belief that his cattle--the means of life--may be the subjects of
+sorcery. Jesus sending devils into a herd of swine may have become
+by artificial process a divine benefactor in the eye of Christendom,
+but the myth makes Him bear an exact resemblance to the dangerous
+sorcerer that fills the savage mind with dread. It is probable that the
+covetous eye denounced in the decalogue means the evil eye, which was
+supposed to blight an object intensely desired but not to be obtained.
+
+Gopolu, already referred to (p. 136) as the Singhalese demon of
+hydrophobia, bears the general name of the 'Cattle Demon.' He
+is said to have been the twin of the demigod Mangara by a queen
+on the Coromandel coast. The mother died, and a cow suckled the
+twins, but afterwards they quarrelled, and Gopolu being slain was
+transformed into a demon. He repaired to Arangodde, and fixed his
+abode in a Banyan where there is a large bee-hive, whence proceed
+many evils. The population around this Banyan for many miles being
+prostrated by diseases, the demigod Mangara and Pattini (goddess of
+chastity) admonished the villagers to sacrifice a cow regularly,
+and thus they were all resuscitated. Gopolu now sends all cattle
+diseases. India is full of the like superstitions. The people of
+Travancore especially dread the demon Madan, 'he who is like a cow,'
+believed to strike oxen with sudden illness,--sometimes men also.
+
+In Russia we find superstition sometimes modified by common
+sense. Though the peasant hopes that Zegory (St. George) will defend
+his cattle, he begins to see the chief foes of his cattle. As in
+the folk-song--
+
+
+ We have gone around the field,
+ We have called Zegory....
+ O thou, our brave Zegory,
+ Save our cattle,
+ In the field and beyond the field,
+ In the forest and beyond the forest,
+ Under the bright moon,
+ Under the red sun,
+ From the rapacious wolf,
+ From the cruel bear,
+ From the cunning beast. [197]
+
+
+Nevertheless when a cattle plague occurs many villages relapse into a
+normally extinct state of mind. Thus, a few years ago, in a village
+near Moscow, all the women, having warned the men away, stripped
+themselves entirely naked and drew a plough so as to make a furrow
+entirely around the village. At the point of juncture in this circle
+they buried alive a cock, a cat, and a dog. Then they filled the
+air with lamentations, crying--'Cattle Plague! Cattle Plague! spare
+our cattle! Behold, we offer thee cock, cat, and dog!' The dog is
+a demonic character in Russia, while the cat is sacred; for once
+when the devil tried to get into Paradise in the form of a mouse,
+the dog allowed him to pass, but the cat pounced on him--the two
+animals being set on guard at the door. The offering of both seems to
+represent a desire to conciliate both sides. The nudity of the women
+may have been to represent to the hungry gods their utter poverty,
+and inability to give more; but it was told me in Moscow, where I
+happened to be staying at the time, that it would be dangerous for
+any man to draw near during the performance.
+
+In Altmark [198] the demons who bewitch cattle are called 'Bihlweisen,'
+and are believed to bury certain diabolical charms under thresholds
+over which the animals are to pass, causing them to wither away, the
+milk to cease, etc. The prevention is to wash the cattle with a lotion
+of sea cabbage boiled with infusion of wine. In the same province it
+is related that once there appeared in a harvest-field at one time
+fifteen, at another twelve men (apparently), the latter headless.
+They all laboured with scythes, but though the rustling could be
+heard no grain fell. When questioned they said nothing, and when
+the people tried to seize them they ran away, cutting fruitlessly as
+they ran. The priests found in this a presage of the coming cattle
+plague. The Russian superstition of the plough, above mentioned, is
+found in fragmentary survivals in Altmark. Thus, it is said that to
+plough around a village and then sit under the plough (placed upright),
+will enable any one to see the witches; and in some villages, some
+bit of a plough is hung up over a doorway through which cattle pass,
+as no devil can then approach them. The demons have a natural horror
+of honest work, and especially the culture of the earth. Goethe,
+as we have seen, notes their fear of roses: perhaps he remembered
+the legend of Aspasia, who, being disfigured by a tumour on the chin,
+was warned by a dove-maiden to dismiss her physicians and try a rose
+from the garland of Venus; so she recovered health and beauty.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+DEATH.
+
+ The Vendetta of Death--Teoyaomiqui--Demon of Serpents--Death on
+ the Pale Horse--Kali--War-gods--Satan as Death--Death-beds--
+ Thanatos--Yama--Yimi--Towers of Silence--Alcestis--Hercules,
+ Christ, and Death--Hel--Salt--Azraël--Death and the Cobbler--
+ Dance of Death--Death as Foe, and as Friend.
+
+
+Savage races believe that no man dies except by sorcery. Therefore
+every death must be avenged. The Actas of the Philippines regard the
+'Indians' as the cause of the deaths among them; and when one of them
+loses a relative, he lurks and watches until he has spied an 'Indian'
+and killed him. [199] It is a progress from this when primitive man
+advances to the belief that the fatal sorcerer is an invisible man--a
+demon. When this doctrine is taught in the form of a belief that death
+entered the world through the machinations of Satan, and was not in the
+original scheme of creation, it is civilised; but when it is inculcated
+under a set of African or other non-christian names, it is barbarian.
+
+The following sketch, by Mr. Gideon Lang, will show the intensity of
+this conviction among the natives of New South Wales:--
+
+'While at Nanima I constantly saw one of these, named Jemmy, a
+remarkably fine man, about twenty-eight years of age, who was the
+'model Christian' of the missionaries, and who had been over and
+over again described in their reports as a living proof that, taken
+in infancy, the natives were as capable of being truly christianised
+as a people who had had eighteen centuries of civilisation. I confess
+that I strongly doubted, but still there was no disputing the apparent
+facts. Jemmy was not only familiar with the Bible, which he could
+read remarkably well, but he was even better acquainted with the more
+abstruse tenets of christianity; and so far as the whites could see,
+his behaviour was in accordance with his religious acquirements. One
+Sunday morning I walked down to the black fellows' camp, to have
+a talk with Jemmy, as usual. I found him sitting in his gunyah,
+overlooking a valley of the Macquarrie, whose waters glanced brightly
+in the sunshine of the delicious spring morning. He was sitting in a
+state of nudity, excepting his waistcloth, very earnestly reading the
+Bible, which indeed was his constant practice; and I could see that
+he was perusing the Sermon on the Mount. I seated myself, and waited
+till he concluded the chapter, when he laid down the Bible, folded
+his hands, and sat with his eyes fixed abstractedly on his fire. I
+bade him 'good morning,' which he acknowledged without looking up. I
+then said, 'Jemmy, what is the meaning of your spears being stuck
+in a circle round you?' He looked me steadily in the eyes, and said
+solemnly and with suppressed fierceness, 'Mother's dead!' I said that
+I was very sorry to hear it; 'but what had her death to do with the
+spears being stuck around so?' 'Bogan black-fellow killed her!' was
+the fierce and gloomy reply. 'Killed by a Bogan black!' I exclaimed:
+'why, your mother has been dying a fortnight, and Dr. Curtis did not
+expect her to outlive last night, which you know as well as I do.' His
+only reply was a dogged repetition of the words: 'A Bogan black-fellow
+killed her!' I appealed to him as a Christian--to the Sermon on the
+Mount, that he had just been reading; but he absolutely refused to
+promise that he would not avenge his mother's death. In the afternoon
+of that day we were startled by a yell which can never be mistaken by
+any person who has once heard the wild war-whoop of the blacks when
+in battle array. On marching out we saw all the black fellows of the
+neighbourhood formed into a line, and following Jemmy in an imaginary
+attack upon an enemy. Jemmy himself disappeared that evening. On the
+following Wednesday morning I found him sitting complacently in his
+gunyah, plaiting a rope of human hair, which I at once knew to be that
+of his victim. Neither of us spoke; I stood for some time watching him
+as he worked with a look of mocking defiance of the anger he knew I
+felt. I pointed to a hole in the middle of his fire, and said, 'Jemmy,
+the proper place for your Bible is there.' He looked up with his eyes
+flashing as I turned away, and I never saw him again. I afterwards
+learned that he had gone to the district of the Bogan tribe, where
+the first black he met happened to be an old friend and companion of
+his own. This man had just made the first cut in the bark of a tree,
+which he was about to climb for an opossum; but on hearing footsteps
+he leaped down and faced round, as all blacks do, and whites also,
+when blacks are in question. Seeing that it was only Jemmy, however,
+he resumed his occupation, but had no sooner set to work than Jemmy
+sent a spear through his back and nailed him to the tree. [200]
+
+Perhaps if Jemmy could have been cross-examined by the non-missionary
+mind, he might have replied with some effect to Mr. Lang's suggestion
+that he ought to part with his Bible. Surely he must have found
+in that volume a sufficient number of instances to justify his
+faith in the power of demons over human health and life. Might he
+not have pondered the command, 'thou shalt not suffer a witch to
+live,' and imagined that he was impaling another Manasseh, who 'used
+enchantments, and used witchcraft, and dealt with a familiar spirit,
+and with wizards (and) wrought much evil in the sight of the Lord to
+provoke Him to anger.' [201] Those who hope that the Bible may carry
+light into the dark places of superstition and habitations of cruelty
+might, one would say, reflect upon the long contest which European
+science had with bibliolators in trying to relieve the popular mind
+from the terrors of witchcraft, whose genuineness it was (justly)
+declared contrary to the Scriptures to deny. There are districts in
+Great Britain and America, and many more on the continent of Europe,
+where the spells that waste and destroy are still believed in; where
+effigies of wax or even onions are labelled with some hated name,
+and stuck over with pins, and set near fires to be melted or dried
+up, in full belief that some subject of the charm will be consumed by
+disease along with the object used. Under every roof where such coarse
+superstitions dwell the Bible dwells beside them, and experience proves
+that the infallibility of all such talismans diminishes pari passu.
+
+What the savage is really trying to slay when he goes forth to avenge
+his relative's death on the first alien he finds may be seen in the
+accompanying figure (17), which represents the Mexican goddess of
+death--Teoyaomiqui. The image is nine feet high, and is kept in
+a museum in the city of Mexico. Mr. Edward B. Tylor, from whose
+excellent book of travels in that country the figure is copied,
+says of it:--'The stone known as the statue of the war-goddess is a
+huge block of basalt covered with sculptures. The antiquaries think
+that the figures on it stand for different personages, and that it is
+three gods--Huitzilopochtli, the god of war; Teoyaomiqui, his wife; and
+Mictlanteuctli, the god of hell. It has necklaces of alternate hearts
+and dead men's hands, with death's heads for a central ornament. At the
+bottom of the block is a strange sprawling figure, which one cannot
+see now, for it is the base which rests on the ground; but there are
+two shoulders projecting from the idol, which show plainly that it
+did not stand on the ground, but was supported aloft on the tops of
+two pillars. The figure carved upon the bottom represents a monster
+holding a skull in each hand, while others hang from his knees and
+elbows. His mouth is a mere oval ring, a common feature of Mexican
+idols, and four tusks project just above it. The new moon laid down
+like a bridge forms his forehead, and a star is placed on each side
+of it. This is thought to have been the conventional representation
+of Mictlanteuctli (Lord of the Land of the Dead), the god of hell,
+which was a place of utter and eternal darkness. Probably each victim
+as he was led to the altar could look up between the two pillars and
+see the hideous god of hell staring down upon him from above. There is
+little doubt that this is the famous war-idol which stood on the great
+teocalli of Mexico, and before which so many thousands of human beings
+were sacrificed. It lay undisturbed under ground in the great square,
+close to the very site of the teocalli, until sixty years ago. For
+many years after that it was kept buried, lest the sight of one of
+their old deities might be too exciting for the Indians, who, as I
+have mentioned before, had certainly not forgotten it, and secretly
+ornamented it with garlands of flowers while it remained above ground.'
+
+If my reader will now turn to the (fig. 11) portrait of the Demon
+of Serpents, he will find a conception fundamentally similar to
+the Mexican demoness of death or slaughter, but one that is not
+shut up in a museum of antiquities; it still haunts and terrifies a
+vast number of the people born in Ceylon. He is the principal demon
+invoked in Ceylon by the malignant sorcerers in performing the 84,000
+different charms that afflict evils (Hooniyan). His general title is
+Oddy Cumara Hooniyan Dewatawa; but he has a special name for each of
+his six several apparitions, the chief of these being Cali Oddisey,
+or demon of incurable diseases, therefore of death, and Naga Oddisey,
+demon of serpents--deadliest of animals. Beneath him is the Pale Horse
+which has had its career so long and far,--even to the White Mare on
+which, in some regions, Christ is believed to revisit the earth every
+Christmas; and also the White Mare of Yorkshire Folklore which bore
+its rider from Whitestone Cliff to hell. This Singhalese form also,
+albeit now associated by Capuas with fatal disease, was probably at
+first, like the Mexican, a war goddess and god combined, as is shown
+by the uplifted sword, and reeking hand uplifted in triumph. Equally
+a god of war is our 'Death on the Pale Horse,' which christian art,
+following the so-called Apocalypse, has made so familiar. 'I looked,
+and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and
+Hell followed with him. And power was given to him over the fourth
+part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death,
+and with the beasts of the earth.' This is but a travesty of the Greek
+Ares, the Roman Mars, or god of War. In the original Greek-form Ares
+was not solely the god of war, but of destruction generally. In the
+OEdipus Tyrannus of Sophocles we have the popular conception of him
+as one to whom the deadly plague is ascribed. He is named as the
+'god unhonoured among gods,' and it is said:--'The city is wildly
+tossing, and no more can lift up her head from the waves of death;
+withering the ripening grain in the husks, withering the kine in their
+pastures; blighted are the babes through the failing labours of women;
+the fire-bearing god, horrid Pestilence, having darted down, ravages
+the city; by him the house of Cadmus is empty, and dark Hades enriched
+with groans and lamentations.'
+
+Mother of the deadliest 'Calas' of Singhalese demonolatry, sister of
+the Scandinavian Hel in name and nature, is Kali. Although the Hindu
+writers repudiate the idea that there is any devil among their three
+hundred and thirty millions of deities, it is difficult to deny Kali
+that distinction. Her wild dance of delight over bodies of the slain
+would indicate pleasure taken in destruction for its own sake, so
+fulfilling the definition of a devil; but, on the other hand, there
+is a Deccan legend that reports her as devouring the dead, and this
+would make her a hunger-demon. We may give her the benefit of the
+doubt, and class her among the demons--or beings whose evil is not
+gratuitous--all the more because the mysteriously protruding tongue,
+as in the figure of Typhon (p. 185), probably suggests thirst. Hindu
+legend does, indeed, give another interpretation, and say that when she
+was dancing for joy at having slain a hundred-headed giant demigod, the
+shaking of the earth was so formidable that Siva threw himself among
+the slain, whom she was crushing at every step, hoping to induce her
+to pause; but when, unheeding, she trod upon the body of her husband,
+she paused and thrust out her tongue from surprise and shame. The
+Vedic description of Agni as an ugra (ogre), with 'tongue of flame,'
+may better interpret Kali's tongue. It is said Kali is pleased for
+a hundred years by the blood of a tiger; for a thousand by that of
+a man; for a hundred thousand by the blood of three men.
+
+How are we to understand this dance of Death, and the further legend
+of her tossing dead bodies into the air for amusement? Such a figure
+found among a people who shudder at taking life even from the lowest
+animals is hardly to be explained by the destructiveness of nature
+personified in her spouse Siva. Her looks and legends alike represent
+slaughter by human violence. May it not be that Kali represents some
+period when the abhorrence of taking life among a vegetarian people--a
+people, too, believing in transmigration--might have become a public
+danger? When Krishna appeared it was, according to the Bhágavat Gita,
+as charioteer inciting Arjoon to war. There must have been various
+periods when a peaceful people must fall victims to more savage
+neighbours unless they could be stimulated to enter on the work of
+destruction with a light heart. There may have been periods when the
+human Kalis of India might stimulate their husbands and sons to war
+with such songs as the women of Dardistan sing at the Feast of Fire
+(p. 91). The amour of the Greek goddess of Beauty with the god of War,
+leaving her lawful spouse the Smith, is full of meaning. The Assyrian
+Venus, Istar, appeared in a vision, with wings and halo, bearing a bow
+and arrow for Assurbanipal. The Thug appears to have taken some such
+view of Kali, regarding her as patroness of their plan for reducing
+population. They are said to have claimed that Kali left them one of
+her teeth for a pickaxe, her rib for a knife, her garment's hem for
+a noose, and wholesale murder for a religion. The uplifted right
+hand of the demoness has been interpreted as intimating a divine
+purpose in the havoc around her, and it is possible that some such
+euphemism attached to the attitude before the Thug accepted it as his
+own benediction from this highly decorated personage of human cruelty.
+
+The ancient reverence for Kali has gradually passed to her mitigated
+form--Durgá. Around her too are visible the symbols of destruction;
+but she is supposed to be satisfied with pumpkin-animals, and the
+weapons in her ten hands are believed to be directed against the
+enemies of the gods, especially against the giant king Muheshu. She
+is mother of the beautiful boy Kartik, and of the elephant-headed
+inspirer of knowledge Ganesa. She is reverenced now as female energy,
+the bestower of beauty and fruitfulness on women.
+
+The identity of war-gods and death-demons, in the most frightful
+conceptions which have haunted the human imagination, is of profound
+significance. These forms do not represent peaceful and natural death,
+not death by old age,--of which, alas, those who cowered before them
+knew but little,--but death amid cruelty and agony, and the cutting
+down of men in the vigour of life. That indeed was terrible,--even
+more than these rude images could describe.
+
+But there are other details in these hideous forms. The priest has
+added to the horse and sword of war the adored serpent, and hideous
+symbols of the 'Land of the Dead.' For it is not by terror of death,
+but of what he can persuade men lies beyond, that the priest has
+reigned over mankind. When Isabel (in 'Measure for Measure') is
+trying to persuade her brother that the sense of death lies most in
+apprehension, the sentenced youth still finds death 'a fearful thing.'
+
+
+ Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
+ To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
+ This sensible warm motion to become
+ A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
+ To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
+ In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
+ To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
+ And blown with violence round about
+ The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
+ Of these, that lawless and incertain thoughts
+ Imagine howling!--'tis too horrible!
+ The weariest and most loathed worldly life
+ That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
+ Can lay on nature, is a paradise
+ To what we fear of death.
+
+
+In all these apprehensions of Claudio there is no thought of
+annihilation. What if he had seen death as an eternal sleep? Let
+Hamlet answer:--
+
+
+ To die,--to sleep;--
+ No more;--and, by a sleep, to say we end
+ The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
+ That flesh is heir to,--'tis a consummation
+ Devoutly to be wished.
+
+
+The greater part of the human race still belong to religions which,
+in their origin, promised eternal repose as the supreme final
+bliss. Had death in itself possessed horrors for the human mind,
+the priest need not have conjured up beyond it those tortures that
+haunted Hamlet with the dreams of possible evils beyond which make
+even the wretched rather bear the ills they have than fly to others
+they know not of. It would have been sufficient sanction to promise
+immortality only to the pious. But as in Claudio's shuddering lines
+every hell is reflected--whether of ice, fire, or brutalisation--so
+are the same mixed with the very blood and brain of mankind, even
+where literally outgrown. Christianity superadded to the horrors by
+importing the idea that death came by human sin, and so by gradual
+development ascribing to Satan the power of death; thereby forming a
+new devil who bore in him the power to make death a punishment. How
+the matter stood in the mediæval belief may be seen in figure 19,
+copied from a Russian Bible of the (early) seventeenth century. Lazarus
+smiles to see the nondescript soul of Dives torn from him by a devil
+with a hook, while another drowns the groans with a drum. Satan
+squirts an infernal baptism on the departing soul, and the earnest
+co-operation of the archangel justifies the satisfaction of Lazarus
+and Abraham. This degraded belief is still found in the almost gleeful
+pulpit-picturings of physical agonies as especially attending the
+death-beds of 'infidels,'--as Voltaire and Paine,--and its fearful
+result is found in the degree to which priesthoods are still able
+to paralyse the common sense and heart of the masses by the barbaric
+ceremonials with which they are permitted to surround death, and the
+arrogant line drawn between unorthodox goats and credulous sheep by
+'consecrated' ground.
+
+Mr. Keary, in his interesting volume on 'The Dawn of History,' [202]
+says that it has been suggested that the youthful winged figure
+on the drum of a column from the temple of Diana at Ephesus to the
+British Museum, may be a representation of Thanatos, Death. It would
+be agreeable to believe that the only important representation of Death
+left by Greek art is that exquisite figure, whose high tribute is that
+it was at first thought to be Love! The figure is somewhat like the
+tender Eros of preraphaelite art, and with the same look of gentle
+melancholy. Such a sweet and simple form of Death would be worthy of
+the race which, amid all the fiery or cold rivers of the underworld
+which had gathered about their religion, still saw running there the
+soft-flowing stream of forgetfulness. Let one study this Ephesian
+Thanatos reverently--no engraving or photograph can do it even partial
+justice--and then in its light read those myths of Death which seem to
+bear us back beyond the savagery of war and the artifices of priests
+to the simpler conceptions of humanity. In its serene light we may
+especially read both Vedic and Iranian hymns and legends of Yama.
+
+The first man to die became the powerful Yama of the Hindus, the
+monarch of the dead; and he became invested with metaphors of the sun
+that had set. [203] In a solemn and pathetic hymn of the Vedas he is
+said to have crossed the rapid waters, to have shown the way to many,
+to have first known the path on which our fathers crossed over. [204]
+But in the splendours of sunset human hope found its prophetic pictures
+of a heaven beyond. The Vedic Yama is ever the friend. It is one of
+the most picturesque facts of mythology that, after Yama had become
+in India another name for Death, the same name reappeared in Persia,
+and in the Avesta, as a type at once of the Golden Age in the past
+and of paradise in the future.
+
+Such was the Iranian Yima. He was that 'flos regum' whose reign
+represented 'the ideal of human happiness, when there was neither
+illness nor death, neither heat nor cold,' and who has never
+died. 'According to the earlier traditions of the Avesta,' says
+Spiegel, 'Jima does not die, but when evil and misery began to prevail
+on earth, retires to a smaller space, a kind of garden or Eden, where
+he continues his happy life with those who remained true to him.' Such
+have been the antecedents of our many beautiful myths which ascribe
+even an earthly immortality to the great,--to Barbarossa, Arthur,
+and even to the heroes of humbler races as Hiawatha and Glooscap
+of North American tribes,--who are or were long believed to have
+'sailed into the fiery sunset,' or sought some fair island, or to
+slumber in a hidden grotto, until the world shall have grown up to
+their stature and requires their return.
+
+In Japan the (Sintoo) god of Hell is now named Amma, and one may
+suspect that it is some imitation of Yama by reason of the majesty he
+still retains in the popular conception. He is pictured as a grave
+man, wearing a judicial cap, and no cruelties seem to be attributed
+to him personally, but only to the oni or demons of whom he is lord.
+
+The kindly characteristics of the Hindu Yama seem in Persia to have
+been replaced by the bitterness of Ahriman, or Anra-mainyu, the
+genius of evil. Haug interprets Anra-mainyu as 'Death-darting.' The
+word is the counterpart of Speñta-mainyu, and means originally the
+'throttling spirit;' being thus from anh, philologically the root of
+all evil, as we shall see when we consider its dragon brood. Professor
+Whitney translates the name 'Malevolent.' But, whatever may be the
+meaning of the word, there is little doubt that the Twins of Vedic
+Mythology--Yama and Yami--parted into genii of Day and Night, and
+were ultimately spiritualised in the Spirit of Light and Spirit of
+Darkness which have made the basis of all popular theology from the
+time of Zoroaster until this day.
+
+Nothing can be more remarkable than the extreme difference between
+the ancient Hindu and the Persian view of death. As to the former it
+was the happy introduction to Yama, to the latter it was the visible
+seal of Ahriman's equality with Ormuzd. They held it in absolute
+horror. The Towers of Silence stand in India to-day as monuments of
+this darkest phase of the Parsî belief. The dead body belonged to
+Ahriman, and was left to be devoured by wild creatures; and although
+the raising of towers for the exposure of the corpse, so limiting its
+consumption to birds, has probably resulted from a gradual rationalism
+which has from time to time suggested that by such means souls of the
+good may wing their way to Ormuzd, yet the Parsî horror of death is
+strong enough to give rise to such terrible suspicions, even if they
+were unfounded, as those which surrounded the Tower (Khao's Dokhma)
+in June 1877. The strange behaviour of the corpse-bearers in leaving
+one tower, going to another, and afterwards (as was said) secretly
+repairing to the first, excited the belief that a man had been found
+alive in the first and was afterwards murdered. The story seems to have
+begun with certain young Parsîs themselves, and, whether it be true
+or not, they have undoubtedly interpreted rightly the ancient feeling
+of that sect with regard to all that had been within the kingdom of
+the King of Terrors. 'As sickness and death,' says Professor Whitney,
+'were supposed to be the work of the malignant powers, the dead body
+itself was regarded with superstitious horror. It had been gotten by
+the demons into their own peculiar possession, and became a chief
+medium through which they exercised their defiling action upon the
+living. Everything that came into its neighbourhood was unclean, and to
+a certain extent exposed to the influences of the malevolent spirits,
+until purified by the ceremonies which the law prescribed.' [205]
+It is to be feared this notion has crept in among the Brahmans;
+the Indian Mirror (May 26, 1878) states that a Chandernagore lady,
+thrown into the Ganges, but afterwards found to be alive, was believed
+to be possessed by Dano (an evil spirit), and but for interference
+would have found a watery grave. The Jews also were influenced by
+this belief, and to this day it is forbidden a Cohen, or descendant
+of the priesthood, to touch a dead body.
+
+The audience at the Crystal Palace which recently witnessed the
+performance of Euripides' Alcestis could hardly, it is to be feared,
+have realised the relation of the drama to their own religion. Apollo
+induces the Fates to consent that Admetus shall not die provided he
+can find a substitute for him. The pure Alcestis steps forward and
+devotes herself to death to save her husband. Apollo tries to persuade
+Death to give back Alcestis, but Death declares her fate demanded
+by justice. While Alcestis is dying, Admetus bids her entreat the
+gods for pity; but Alcestis says it is a god who has brought on the
+necessity, and adds, 'Be it so!' She sees the hall of the dead, with
+'the winged Pluto staring from beneath his black eyebrows.' She reminds
+her husband of the palace and regal sway she might have enjoyed in
+Thessaly had she not left it for him. Bitterly does Pheres reproach
+Admetus for accepting life through the vicarious suffering and death
+of another. Then comes Hercules; he vanquishes Death; he leads forth
+Alcestis from 'beneath into the light.' With her he comes into the
+presence of Admetus, who is still in grief. Admetus cannot recognise
+her; but when he recognises her with joy, Hercules warns him that it
+is not lawful for Alcestis to address him 'until she is unbound from
+her consecration to the gods beneath, and the third day come.'
+
+It only requires a change of names to make Alcestis a Passion-play. The
+unappeasable Justice which is as a Fate binding the deity, though it
+may be satisfied vicariously; 'the last enemy, Death;' the atonement
+by sacrifice of a saintly human being, who from a father's palace is
+brought by love freely to submit to death; the son of a god (Zeus) by a
+human mother (Alcmene),--the god-man Herakles,--commissioned to destroy
+earthly evils by twelve great labours,--descending to conquer Death and
+deliver one of the 'spirits in prison,' the risen spirit not recognised
+at first, as Jesus was not by Mary; still bearing the consecration
+of the grave until the third day, which forbade intercourse with the
+living ('Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father'),--all
+these enable us to recognise in the theologic edifices around us the
+fragments of a crumbled superstition as they lay around Euripides.
+
+From the old pictures of Christ's triumphal pilgrimage on earth
+parallels for the chief Labours of Herakles may be found; he is shown
+treading on the lion, asp, dragon, and Satan; but the myths converge
+in the Descent into Hades and the conquest of Death. It is remarkable
+that in the old pictures of Christ delivering souls from Hades he is
+generally represented closely followed by Eve, whose form so emerging
+would once have been to the greater part of Europe already familiar as
+that of either Alcestis, Eurydice, or Persephone. One of the earliest
+examples of the familiar subject, Christ conquering Death, is that in
+the ancient (tenth century) Missal of Worms,--that city whose very name
+preserves the record of the same combat under the guise of Siegfried
+and the Worm, or Dragon. The cross is now the sword thrust near the
+monster's mouth. The picture illustrates the chant of Holy Week:
+'De manu Mortis liberabo eos, de Morte redimam eos. Ero Mors tua,
+O Mors; morsus tuus ero, inferne.' From the pierced mouth of Death
+are vomited flames, which remind us of his ethnical origin; but it
+is not likely that to the christianised pagans of Worms the picture
+could ever have conveyed an impression so weirdly horrible as that
+of their own goddess of Death, Hel. 'Her hall is called Elvidnir,
+realm of the cold storm: Hunger is her table; Starvation, her knife;
+Delay, her man; Slowness, her maid; Precipice, her threshold; Care,
+her bed; burning Anguish, the hangings of her apartments. One half
+of her body is livid, the other half the colour of human flesh.'
+
+With the Scandinavian picture of the Abode of Death may be compared the
+description of the Abode of Nin-ki-gal, the Assyrian Queen of Death,
+from a tablet in the British Museum, translated by Mr. Fox Talbot:
+[206]--
+
+
+ To the House men enter--but cannot depart from:
+ To the Road men go--but cannot return.
+ The abode of darkness and famine
+ Where Earth is their food: their nourishment Clay:
+ Light is not seen; in darkness they dwell:
+ Ghosts, like birds, flutter their wings there;
+ On the door and the gate-posts the dust lies undisturbed.
+
+
+The Semitic tribes, undisturbed, like the importers of their theology
+into the age of science, by the strata in which so many perished animal
+kingdoms are entombed, attributed all death, even that of animals,
+to the forbidden fruit. The Rabbins say that not only Adam and Eve,
+but the animals in Eden, partook of that fruit, and came under the
+power of Sammaël the Violent, and of his agent Azraël, the demon of
+Death. The Phoenix, having refused this food, preserved the power of
+renovating itself.
+
+It is an example of the completeness and consistency with which a
+theory may organise its myth, that the fatal demons are generally
+represented as abhorring salt--the preserving agent and foe of
+decay. The 'Covenant of Salt' among the ancient Jews probably had
+this significance, and the care with which Job salted his sacrifice
+is considered elsewhere. Aubrey says, 'Toads (Saturnine animals) are
+killed by putting salt upon them. I have seen the experiment.' The
+devil, as heir of death-demons, appears in all European folklore
+as a hater of salt. A legend, told by Heine, relates that a knight,
+wandering in a wood in Italy, came upon a ruin, and in it a wondrous
+statue of the goddess of Beauty. Completely fascinated, the knight
+haunted the spot day after day, until one evening he was met by a
+servant who invited him to enter a villa which he had not before
+remarked. What was his surprise to be ushered into the presence of
+the living image of his adored statue! Amid splendour and flowers
+the enraptured knight is presently seated with his charmer at
+a banquet. Every luxury of the world is there; but there is no
+salt! When he hints this want a cloud passes over the face of his
+Beauty. Presently he asks the servant to bring the salt; the servant
+does so, shuddering; the knight helps himself to it. The next sip of
+wine he takes elicits a cry from him: it is liquid fire. Madness seizes
+upon him; caresses, burning kisses follow, until he falls asleep on the
+bosom of his goddess. But what visions! Now he sees her as a wrinkled
+crone, next a great bat bearing a torch as it flutters around him,
+and again as a frightful monster, whose head he cuts off in an agony
+of terror. When the knight awakes it is in his own villa. He hastens
+to his ruin, and to the beloved statue; he finds her fallen from the
+pedestal, and the beautiful head cut from the neck lying at her feet.
+
+The Semitic Angel of Death is a figure very different from any that
+we have considered. He is known in theology only in the degradation
+which he suffered at the hands of the Rabbins, but originally was an
+awful but by no means evil genius. The Persians probably imported him,
+under the name of Asuman, for we do not find him mentioned in their
+earlier books, and the name has a resemblance to the Hebrew shamad,
+to exterminate, which would connect it with the biblical 'destroyer'
+Abaddon. This is rendered more probable because the Zoroastrians
+believed in an earlier demon, Vízaresha, who carried souls after death
+to the region of Deva-worshippers (India). The Chaldaic Angel of Death,
+Malk-ad Mousa, may have derived his name from the legend of his having
+approached Moses with the object of forcing his soul out of his body,
+but, being struck by the glory of Moses' face, and by virtue of the
+divine name on his rod, was compelled to retire. The legend is not
+so ancient as the name, and was possibly a Saga suggested by the
+name; it is obviously the origin of the tradition of the struggle
+between Michael and Satan for the body of Moses (Jude 9.). This
+personification had thus declined among the Jews into being evil enough
+to be identified with Samaël,--who, in the Book of the Assumption of
+Moses, is named as his assailant,--and subsequently with Satan himself,
+named in connection with the New Testament version. It was on account
+of this degradation of a being described in the earlier books of the
+Bible as the commissioner of Jehovah that there was gradually developed
+among the Jews two Angels of Death, one (Samaël, or his agent Azraël)
+for those who died out of the land of Israel, and the other (Gabriel)
+for those who had the happier lot of dying in their own country.
+
+This relegation of Samaël to the wandering Jews--who if they died
+abroad were not supposed to reach Paradise with facility, if at
+all--is significant. For Samaël is pretty certainly a conception
+borrowed from outlying Semitic tribes. What that conception was we
+find in Job xviii. 18, where he is 'the king of Terrors,' and still
+more in the Arabic Azraël. The legend of this typical Angel of Death
+is that he was promoted to his high office for special service. When
+Allah was about to create man he sent the angels Gabriel, Michael,
+and Israfil to the earth to bring clay of different colours for that
+purpose; but the Earth warned them that the being about to be formed
+would rebel against his creator and draw down a curse upon her (the
+Earth), and they returned without bringing the clay. Then Azraël was
+sent by Allah, and he executed his commission without fear; and for
+this he was appointed the angel to separate souls from bodies. Azraël
+had subordinate angels under him, and these are alluded to in the
+opening lines of the Sura 79 of the Koran:
+
+
+ By the angels who tear forth the souls of some with violence;
+ And by those who draw forth the souls of others with gentleness.
+
+
+The souls of the righteous are drawn forth with gentleness, those
+of the wicked torn from them in the way shown in the Russian picture
+(Fig. 19), which is indeed an illustration of the same mythology.
+
+These terrible tasks were indeed such as were only too likely to
+bring Azraël into the evil repute of an executioner in the course
+of time; but no degradation of him seems to have been developed
+among the Moslems. He seems to have been associated in their minds
+with Fate, and similar stories were told of him. Thus it is related
+that once when Azraël was passing by Solomon he gazed intently upon
+a man with whom Solomon was conversing. Solomon told his companion
+that it was the Angel of Death who was looking at him, and the man
+replied, 'He seems to want me: order the wind to carry me from hence
+into India;' when this was done Azraël approached Solomon and said,
+'I looked earnestly at that man from wonder, for I was commanded to
+take his soul in India.' [207]
+
+Azraël was often represented as presenting to the lips a cup of
+poison. It is probable that this image arose from the ancient ordeal
+by poison, whereby draughts, however manipulated beforehand with
+reference to the results, were popularly held to be divinely mingled
+for retributive or beneficent effects. 'Cup' thus became among Semitic
+tribes a symbol of Fate. The 'cup of consolation,' 'cup of wrath,'
+'cup of trembling,' which we read of in the Old Testament; the 'cup
+of blessing,' and 'cup of devils,' spoken of by Paul, have this
+significance. The cup of Nestor, ornamented with the dove (Iliad,
+xi. 632), was probably a 'cup of blessing,' and Mr. Schliemann has
+found several of the same kind at Mycenæ. The symbol was repeatedly
+used by Christ,--'Let this cup pass from me,' 'The cup that my Father
+hath given me to drink shall I not drink it,' 'Are ye able to drink
+of the cup that I drink of,'--and the familiar association of Azraël's
+cup is expressed in the phrase 'taste of death.'
+
+One of the most pleasing modifications of the belief in the Angel of
+Death is that found by Lepsius [208] among the Mohammedan negroes of
+Kordofan. Osraîn (Azraël), it is said, receives the souls of the dead,
+and leads the good to their reward, the bad to punishment. 'He lives
+in a tree, el segerat mohana (the tree of fulfilling), which has as
+many leaves as there are inhabitants in the world. On each leaf is
+a name, and when a child is born a new one grows. If any one becomes
+ill his leaf fades, and should he be destined to die, Osraîn breaks
+it off. Formerly he used to come visibly to those whom he was going
+to carry away, and thus put them in great terror. Since the prophet's
+time, however, he has become invisible; for when he came to fetch
+Mohammed's soul he told him that it was not good that by his visible
+appearance he should frighten mankind. They might then easily die of
+terror, before praying; for he himself, although a courageous and
+spirited man, was somewhat perturbed at his appearance. Therefore
+the prophet begged God to make Osraîn invisible, which prayer was
+granted.' Mr. Mackenzie adds on this that, among the Moravian Jews,
+at new moon a branch is held in its light, and the name of a person
+pronounced: his face will appear between the horns of the moon,
+and should he be destined to die the leaves will fade.
+
+Mr. John Ruskin has been very severe upon the Italians for the humour
+with which they introduce Death as a person of their masque. 'When I
+was in Venice in 1850,' he says, 'the most popular piece of the comic
+opera was "Death and the Cobbler," in which the point of the plot was
+the success of a village cobbler as a physician, in consequence of
+the appearance of Death to him beside the bed of every patient who
+was not to recover; and the most applauded scene in it was one in
+which the physician, insolent in success, and swollen with luxury,
+was himself taken down into the abode of Death, and thrown into an
+agony of terror by being shown lives of men, under the form of wasting
+lamps, and his own ready to expire.' On which he expresses the opinion
+that 'this endurance of fearful images is partly associated with
+indecency, partly with general fatuity and weakness of mind.' [209]
+But may it not rather be the healthy reaction from morbid images of
+terror, with which a purely natural and inevitable event has so long
+been invested by priests, and portrayed in such popular pictures as
+'The Dance of Death?' The mocking laughter with which the skeletons
+beset the knight in our picture (Fig. 20), from the wall of La Chaise
+Dieu, Auvergne, marks the priestly terrorism, which could not fail
+to be vulgarised even more by the frivolous. In 1424 there was a
+masquerade of the Dance of Death in the Cemetery of the Innocents
+at Paris, attended by the Duke of Bedford and the Duke of Burgundy,
+just returned from battle. It may have been the last outcome in
+the west of Kali's dance over the slain; but it is fortunate when
+Fanaticism has no worse outcome than Folly. The Skeleton Death has
+the advantage over earlier forms of suggesting the naturalness of
+death. It is more scientific. The gradual discovery by the people
+that death is not caused by sin has largely dissipated its horrors
+in regions where the ignorance and impostures of priestcraft are of
+daily observation; and although the reaction may not be expressed with
+good taste, there would seem to be in it a certain vigour of nature,
+reasserting itself in simplicity.
+
+In the northern world we are all too sombre in the matter. It is the
+ages of superstition which have moulded our brains, and too generally
+given to our natural love of life the unnatural counterpart of a
+terror of death. What has been artificially bred into us can be
+cultivated out of us. There are indeed deaths corresponding to the
+two Angels--the death that comes by lingering disease and pain, and
+that which comes by old age. There are indeed Azraëls in our cities
+who poison the food and drink of the people, and mingle death in the
+cup of water; and of them there should be increasing horror until the
+gentler angel abides with us, and death by old age becomes normal. The
+departure from life being a natural condition of entering upon it,
+it is melancholy indeed that it should be ideally confused with the
+pains and sorrows often attending it. It is fabled that Menippus
+the Cynic, travelling through Hades, knew which were the kings there
+by their howling louder than the rest. They howled loudest because
+they had parted from most pleasures on earth. But all the happy and
+young have more reason to lament untimely death than kings. The only
+tragedy of Death is the ruin of living Love. Mr. Watts, in his great
+picture of Love and Death (Grosvenor Gallery, 1877), revealed the
+real horror. Not that skeleton which has its right time and place,
+not the winged demon (called angel), who has no right time or place,
+is here, but a huge, hard, heartless form, as of man half-blocked out
+of marble; a terrible emblem of the remorseless force that embodies
+the incompleteness and ignorance of mankind--a force that steadily
+crushes hearts where intellects are devoting their energies to alien
+worlds. Poor Love has little enough science; his puny arm stretched
+out to resist the colossal form is weak as the prayers of agonised
+parents and lovers directed against never-swerving laws; he is almost
+exhausted; his lustrous wings are broken and torn in the struggle;
+the dove at his feet crouches mateless; the rose that climbed on his
+door is prostrate; over his shoulder the beam-like arm has set the
+stony hand against the door where the rose of joy must fall.
+
+The aged when they die do but follow the treasures that have gone
+before. One by one the old friends have left them, the sweet ties
+parted, and the powers to enjoy and help become feeble. When of the
+garden that once bloomed around them memory alone is left, friendly
+is death to scatter also the leaves of that last rose where the loved
+ones are sleeping. This is the real office of death. Nay, even when
+it comes to the young and happy it is not Death but Disease that is
+the real enemy; in disease there is almost no compensation at all but
+learning its art of war; but Death is Nature's pity for helpless pain;
+where love and knowledge can do no more it comes as a release from
+sufferings which were sheer torture if prolonged. The presence of
+death is recognised oftenest by the cessation of pain. Superstition
+has done few heavier wrongs to humanity than by the mysterious terrors
+with which it has invested that change which, to the simpler ages,
+was pictured as the gentle river Lethe, flowing from the abode of
+sleep, from which the shades drank oblivion alike of their woes and
+of the joys from which they were torn.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART III.
+
+THE DRAGON.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+DECLINE OF DEMONS.
+
+ The Holy Tree of Travancore--The growth of Demons in India and
+ their decline--The Nepaul Iconoclast--Moral Man and unmoral
+ Nature--Man's physical and mental migrations--Heine's 'Gods in
+ Exile'--The Goban Saor--Master Smith--A Greek caricature of
+ the Gods--The Carpenter v. Deity and Devil--Extermination of
+ the Werewolf--Refuges of Demons--The Giants reduced to Little
+ People--Deities and Demons returning to nature.
+
+
+Having indicated, necessarily in mere outline and by selected
+examples, the chief obstacles encountered by primitive man, and his
+apprehensions, which he personified as demons, it becomes my next
+task to show how and why many of these demons declined from their
+terrible proportions and made way for more general forms, expressing
+comparatively abstract conceptions of physical evil. This will involve
+some review of the processes through which man's necessary adaptation
+to his earthly environment brought him to the era of Combat with
+multiform obstruction.
+
+There was, until within a few recent years, in a mountain of
+Travancore, India, an ancient, gigantic Tree, regarded by the natives
+as the residence of a powerful and dangerous deity who reigned over
+the mountains and the wild beasts. [210] Sacrifices were offered to
+this tree, sermons preached before it, and it seems to have been the
+ancient cathedral of the district. Its trunk was so large that four
+men with outstretched arms could not compass it.
+
+This tree in its early growth may symbolise the upspringing of natural
+religion. Its first green leaves may be regarded as corresponding
+to the first crude imaginations of man as written, for instance,
+on leaves of the Vedas. Perceiving in nature, as we have seen, a
+power of contrivance like his own, a might far superior to his own,
+man naturally considered that all things had been created and were
+controlled by invisible giants; and bowing helplessly beneath them
+sang thus his hymns and supplications.
+
+'This earth belongs to Varuna, the king, and the wide sky, with its
+ends far apart: the two seas (sky and ocean) are Varuna's loins;
+he is also contained in this drop of water. He who would flee far
+beyond the sky even he would not be rid of Varuna. His spies proceed
+from heaven towards this earth.'
+
+'Through want of strength, thou ever strong and bright god, have I
+gone wrong: have mercy, have mercy!'
+
+'However we break thy laws from day to day, men as we are, O god
+Varuna, do not deliver us to death!'
+
+'Was it an old sin, Varuna, that thou wished to destroy the friend
+who always praises thee!'
+
+'O Indra, have mercy, give me my daily bread! Raise up wealth to the
+worshipper, thou mighty Dawn!'
+
+'Thou art the giver of horses, Indra, thou art the giver of cows,
+the giver of corn, the strong lord of wealth: the old guide of
+man disappointing no desires: to him we address this song. All this
+wealth around here is known to be thine alone: take from it conqueror,
+bring it hither!'
+
+In these characteristic sentences from various hymns we behold
+man making his first contract with the ruling powers of nature:
+so much adoration and flattery on his part for so much benefit on
+theirs. But even in these earliest hymns there are intimations that
+the gods were not fulfilling their side of the engagement. 'Why is
+it,' pleads the worshipper, 'that you wish to destroy one who always
+praises you? Was it an old sin?' The simple words unconsciously report
+how faithfully man was performing his part of the contract. Having
+omitted no accent of the prayer, praise, or ritual, he supposes the
+continued indifference of the gods must be due to an old sin, one he
+has forgotten, or perhaps one committed by some ancestor.
+
+In this state of mind the suggestion would easily take root that
+words alone were too cheap to be satisfactory to the gods. There must
+be offerings. Like earthly kings they must have their revenues. We
+thus advance to the phase of sacrifices. But still neither in answer
+to prayer, flattery, or sacrifice did the masses receive health or
+wealth. Poverty, famine, death, still continued their remorseless
+course with the silent machinery of sun, moon, and star.
+
+But why, then, should man have gone on fulfilling his part of
+the contract--believing and worshipping deities, who when he
+begged for corn gave him famine, and when he asked for fish gave
+him a serpent? The priest intervened with ready explanation. And
+here we may consult the holy Tree of Travancore again? Why should
+that particular Tree--of a species common in the district and not
+usually very large--have grown so huge? 'Because it is holy,' said
+the priest. 'Because it was believed holy,' says the fact. For ages
+the blood and ashes of victims fed its roots and swelled its trunk;
+until, by an argument not confined to India, the dimensions of
+the superstition were assumed to prove its truth. When the people
+complained that all their offerings and worship did not bring
+any returns the priest replied, You stint the gods and they stint
+you. The people offered the fattest of their flocks and fruits:
+More yet! said the priest. They built fine altars and temples for
+the gods: More yet! said the priest. They built fine houses for the
+priests, and taxed themselves to support them. And when thus, fed by
+popular sacrifices and toils, the religion had grown to vast power,
+the priest was able to call to his side the theologian for further
+explanation. The theologian and the priest said--'Of course there must
+be good reasons why the gods do not answer all your prayers (if they
+did not answer some you would be utterly consumed); mere mortals must
+not dare to inquire into their mysteries; but that there are gods,
+and that they do attend to human affairs, is made perfectly plain
+by this magnificent array of temples, and by the care with which
+they have supplied all the wants of us, their particular friends,
+whose cheeks, as you see, hang down with fatness.'
+
+If, after this explanation, any scepticism or rebellion arose among
+the less favoured, the priest might easily add--'Furthermore, we and
+our temples are now institutions; we are so strong and influential
+that it is evident that the gods have appointed us to be their
+representatives on earth, the dispensers of their favours. Also, of
+their disfavours. We are able to make up for the seeming indifference
+of the gods, rewarding you if you give us honour and wealth, but
+ruining you if you turn heretical.'
+
+So grew the holy Tree. But strong as it was there was something
+stronger. Some few years ago a missionary from London went to
+Travancore, and desired to build a chapel near the same tree, no
+doubt to be in the way of its worshippers and to borrow some of
+the immemorial sanctity of the spot. This missionary fixed a hungry
+eye upon that holy timber, and reflected how much holier it would
+be if ending its career in the beams of a christian chapel. So one
+day--English authorities being conveniently near--he and his workmen
+began to cut down the sacred Tree. The natives gradually gathered
+around, and looked on with horror. While the cutting proceeded a
+tiger drew near, but shouts drove him off: the natives breathed freer;
+the demon had come and looked on, but could not protect the Tree from
+the Englishman. They still shuddered, however, at the sacrilege, and
+when at last the Holy Tree of Travancore fell, its crash was mingled
+with the cries and screams of its former worshippers. The victorious
+missionary may be pointing out in his chapel the cut-up planks which
+reveal the impotence of the deity so long feared by the natives; and
+perhaps he is telling them of the bigness of his Tree, and claiming
+its flourishing condition in Europe as proof of its supernatural
+character. Possibly he may omit to mention the blood and ashes which
+have fattened the root and enlarged the trunk of his Holy Tree!
+
+That Tree in Travancore could never have been so destroyed if the
+primitive natural religion in which lay its deeper root had not
+previously withered. The gods, the natural forces, which through
+so many ages had not heeded man's daily martyrdoms, had now for a
+long time been shown quite as impotent to protect their own shrines,
+images, holy trees, and other interests. The priests as vainly invoked
+those gods to save their own country from subjugation by other nations
+with foreign gods, as the masses had invoked their personal aid. For
+a long time the gods in some parts of India have received only a
+formal service, coextensive with their association with a lingering
+order, or as part of princely establishments; but they topple down
+from time to time, as the masses realise their freedom to abandon
+them with impunity. They are at the mercy of any strong heretic
+who arises. The following narrative, quoted by Mr. Herbert Spencer,
+presents a striking example of what some Hindoos had been doing before
+the missionary cut down the Tree at Travancore:--
+
+'A Nepaul king, Rum Bahâdur, whose beautiful queen, finding her
+lovely face had been disfigured by smallpox, poisoned herself,
+cursed his kingdom, her doctors, and the gods of Nepaul, vowing
+vengeance on all. Having ordered the doctors to be flogged, and
+the right ear and nose of each to be cut off, he then wreaked his
+vengeance on the gods of Nepaul, and after abusing them in the most
+gross way, he accused them of having obtained from him 12,000 goats,
+some hundred-weights of sweetmeats, 2000 gallons of milk, &c., under
+false pretences. He then ordered all the artillery, varying from
+three to twelve-pounders, to be brought in front of the palace. All
+the guns were then loaded to the muzzle, and down he marched to
+the headquarters of the Nepaul deities. All the guns were drawn up
+in front of the several deities, honouring the most sacred with the
+heaviest metal. When the order to fire was given, many of the chiefs
+and soldiers ran away panic-stricken, and others hesitated to obey
+the sacrilegious order; and not till several gunners had been cut down
+were the guns opened. Down came the gods and the goddesses from their
+hitherto sacred positions; and after six hours' heavy cannonading,
+not a vestige of the deities remained.'
+
+However panic-stricken the Nepaulese may have been at this ferocious
+manifestation, it was but a storm bred out of a more general mental and
+moral condition. Rum Bahâdur only laid low in a few moments images of
+gods who, passing from the popular interest, had been successively
+laid to sleep on the innumerable shelves of Hindu mythology. The
+early Dualism was developed into Moral Man on one side, and Unmoral
+Nature on the other. Man had discovered that moral order in nature
+was represented solely by his own power: by his culture or neglect the
+plant or animal grew or withered, and where his control did not extend,
+there sprang the noxious weed or beast. So far as good gods had been
+imagined they were respected now only as incarnate in men. But the
+active powers of evil still remained, hurtful and hateful to man, and
+the pessimist view of nature became inevitable. To man engaged in his
+life-and-death struggle with nature many a beauty which now nourishes
+the theist's optimism was lost. The fragrant flower was a weed to
+the man hungry for bread, and he viewed many an idle treasure with
+the disappointment of Sâdi when, travelling in the desert, he found a
+bag in which he hoped to discover grain, but found only pearls. Fatal
+to every deity not anthropomorphic was the long pessimistic phase of
+human faith. Each became more purely a demon, and passed on the road
+to become a devil.
+
+Many particular demons man conquered as he progressively carried
+order amid the ruggedness and wildness of his planet. Every new weapon
+or implement he invented punctured a thousand phantoms. Only in the
+realms he could not yet conquer remained the hostile forces to which
+he ascribed præternatural potency, because not able to pierce them and
+see through them. Nevertheless, the early demonic forms had to give
+way, for man had discovered that they were not his masters. He could
+cut down the Upas and root up the nightshade; he had bruised many a
+serpent's head and slain many a wolf. In detail innumerable enemies
+had been proved his inferiors in strength and intelligence. Important
+migrations took place: man passes, geographically, away from the region
+of some of his worst enemies, inhabits countries more fruitful, less
+malarious, his habitat exceeding that of his animal foe in range;
+and, still better, he passes by mental migration out of the stone
+age, out of other helpless ages, to the age of metal and the skill to
+fashion and use it. He has made the fire-fiend his friend. No longer
+henceforth a naked savage, with bit of stone or bone only to meet
+the crushing powers of the world and win its reluctant supplies!
+
+There is a sense far profounder than its charming play of fancy in
+Heine's account of the 'Gods in Exile,' an essay which Mr. Pater
+well describes as 'full of that strange blending of sentiment which
+is characteristic of the traditions of the Middle Age concerning
+the Pagan religions.' [211] Heine writes: 'Let me briefly remind
+the reader how the gods of the older world, at the time of the
+definite triumph of Christianity, that is, in the third century,
+fell into painful embarrassments, which greatly resembled certain
+tragical situations of their earlier life. They now found themselves
+exposed to the same troublesome necessities to which they had once
+before been exposed during the primitive ages, in that revolutionary
+epoch when the Titans broke out of the custody of Orcus, and, piling
+Pelion on Ossa, scaled Olympus. Unfortunate gods! They had, then,
+to take flight ignominiously, and hide themselves among us here on
+earth under all sorts of disguises. Most of them betook themselves to
+Egypt, where for greater security they assumed the form of animals,
+as is generally known. Just in the same way they had to take flight
+again, and seek entertainment in remote hiding-places, when those
+iconoclastic zealots, the black brood of monks, broke down all the
+temples, and pursued the gods with fire and curses. Many of these
+unfortunate emigrants, entirely deprived of shelter and ambrosia,
+had now to take to vulgar handicrafts as a means of earning their
+bread. In these circumstances, many, whose sacred groves had been
+confiscated, let themselves out for hire as wood-cutters in Germany,
+and had to drink beer instead of nectar. Apollo seems to have been
+content to take service under graziers, and as he had once kept the
+cows of Admetus, so he lived now as a shepherd in Lower Austria. Here,
+however, having become suspected, on account of his beautiful singing,
+he was recognised by a learned monk as one of the old pagan gods,
+and handed over to the spiritual tribunal. On the rack he confessed
+that he was the god Apollo; and before his execution he begged that
+he might be suffered to play once more upon the lyre and to sing a
+song. And he played so touchingly, and sang with such magic, and was
+withal so beautiful in form and feature that all the women wept, and
+many of them were so deeply impressed that they shortly afterwards
+fell sick. And some time afterwards the people wished to drag him
+from the grave again, that a stake might be driven through his body,
+in the belief that he had been a vampire, and that the sick women
+would by this means recover. But they found the grave empty.'
+
+Naturally: it is hard to bury Apollo. The next time he appeared was, no
+doubt, as musical director in the nearest cathedral. The young singers
+and artists discovered by such severe lessons that it was dangerous
+to sing Pagan ballads too realistically; that a cowl is capable of a
+high degree of decoration; that Pan's pipe sounds well evolved into
+an organ; that Cupids look just as well if called Cherubs. It is odd
+that it should have required Robert Browning three centuries away to
+detect the real form and face beneath the vestment of the Bishop who
+orders his tomb at Saint Praxed's Church:--
+
+
+ The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me,
+ Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance
+ Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so,
+ The Saviour at his sermon on the mount,
+ Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan
+ Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off,
+ And Moses with the tables....
+
+
+So in one direction grew the hermitage to the Vatican; so Zeus regained
+his throne by exchanging his thunderbolts for Peter's keys, and Mars
+regained his steed as St. George, and Hercules as Christ wrestles with
+Death once more. But while these artificial restorations were going on
+in one direction, in another some of the gods were passing through many
+countries, outwitting and demolishing their former selves as lowered
+to demons. There are many legends which report this strange phase of
+development, one of the finest being that of The Goban Saor, told by
+Mr. Kennedy. The King of Munster sent for this wonderful craftsman to
+build him a castle. The Goban could fashion a spear with three strokes
+of his hammer--St. Patrick, who found the Trinity in the shamrock,
+may have determined the number of strokes,--and when he wished to drive
+in nails high up, had only to throw his hammer at them. On his way to
+work for the King, Goban, accompanied by his son, passed the night at
+the house of a farmer, whose daughters--one dark and industrious, the
+other fair and idle--received from him (Goban) three bits of advice:
+'Always have the head of an old woman by the hob; warm yourselves
+with your work in the morning; and some time before I come back take
+the skin of a newly-killed sheep to the market, and bring itself and
+the price of it home again.' As Goban, with his son, journeyed on,
+they found a poor man vainly trying to roof his house with three
+joists and mud; and by simply making one end of each joist rest on
+the middle of another, the other ends being on the wall, the structure
+was perfect. He relieved puzzled carpenters by putting up for them the
+pegless and nailless bridge described in Cæsar's Commentaries. Having
+done various great things, Goban returns to the homestead of the
+girls who had received his three bits of advice. The idle one had,
+of course, blundered at each point, and been ridiculed in the market
+for her proposition to bring back the sheep's skin and its price. The
+other, by kindly taking in an aged female relative, by working till
+she was warm, and by plucking and selling the wool of the sheep's
+skin and bringing home the latter, had obeyed the Goban's advice,
+and was selected as his daughter-in-law--the prince attending the
+wedding. Now, as to building the castle, Goban knew that the King had
+employed on previous castles four architects and then slain them, so
+that they should never build another palace equal to his. He therefore
+says he has left at home a necessary implement which his wife will
+only give to himself or one of royal blood. The King sends his son,
+who is kept as hostage till the husband's safe return.
+
+This is the Master Smith of Norse fable, who has a chair from which
+none can rise, and who therein binds the devil; which again is the
+story of Hephaistos, and the chair in which he entrapped Hera until
+she revealed the secret of his birth. The 'devil' whom the Master
+Smith entraps is, in Norse mythology, simply Loki: and as Loki is a
+degraded Hephaistos, fire in its demonic forms, we have in all these
+legends the fire-fiend fought with fire.
+
+This re-dualisation of the gods into demonic and saintly forms
+had a long preparation. The forces that brought it about may be
+seen already beginning in Hesiod's representations of the gods, in
+their presentation on the stage by Euripides, in a manner certain
+to demonise them to the vulgar, and to subject them to such laughter
+among scholars as still rings across the ages in the divine dialogues
+of Lucian. What the gods had become to the Lucians before they
+reached the Heines may be gathered from the accompanying caricature
+(Fig. 21). [212] Nothing can be more curious than the encounters of the
+gods with their dead selves, their Manes. What unconscious ingenuity
+in the combinations! St. Martin on his grey steed divides with the
+beggar the cloud-cloak of Wodan on his black horse, treading down
+just such paupers in his wild hunt; as saint he now shelters those
+whom as storm-demon he chilled; but the identity of Junker Martin
+is preserved in both titles and myths, and the Martinhorns (cakes),
+twisted after fashion of the horns of goat or buck pursued by Wodan,
+are deemed potent like horse-shoes to defend house or stable from
+the outlawed god. [213]
+
+The more impressive and attractive myths transferred to christian
+saints--as the flowers sacred to Freyja became Our Lady's-glove,
+or slipper, or smock--there remained to the old gods, in their own
+name, only the repulsive and puerile, and by this means they were
+doomed at once to become unmitigated knaves and fools. If Titans,
+Jötunn or Jinni, they were giant humbugs, whom any small Hans or Jack
+might outwit and behead. Our Fairy lore is full of stories which show
+that in the North as well as in Latin countries there had already
+been a long preparation for the contempt poured by Christianity
+upon the Norse deities. Many of the stories, as they now stand in
+Folktales, speak of the vanquished demon or giant as the devil,
+but it is perfectly easy to detach the being meant from the name
+so indiscriminately bestowed by christian priests upon most of the
+outlawed deities. In Lithuania, where survived too much reverence for
+some of the earlier deities to admit of their being identified with
+the devil, we still find them triumphed over by the wit and skill of
+the artisan. Such is the case in a favourite popular legend of that
+country in which Perkunas--the ancient Thunder-god, corresponding to
+Perun in Russia--is involved in disgrace along with the devil by the
+sagacity and skill of a carpenter. The aged god, the venerable Devil,
+and the young Carpenter, united for a journey. Perkun kept the beasts
+off with thunder and lightning, the Devil hunted up food, the Carpenter
+cooked. At length they built a hut and lived in it, and planted the
+ground with vegetables. Presently a thief invaded their garden. Perkun
+and the Devil successively tried to catch him, but were well thrashed;
+whereas the Carpenter by playing the fiddle fascinated the thief,
+who was a witch, a hag whose hand the fiddler managed to get into
+a split tree (under pretence of giving her a music lesson), holding
+her there till she gave up her iron waggon and the whip which she had
+used on his comrades. After this the three, having decided to separate,
+disputed as to which should have the hut; and they finally agreed that
+it should be the possession of him who should succeed in frightening
+the two others. The Devil raised a storm which frightened Perkun, and
+Perkun with his thunder and lightning frightened the Devil; but the
+Carpenter held out bravely, and, in the middle of the night, came in
+with the witch's waggon, and, cracking her whip, the Devil and Perkun
+both took flight, leaving the Carpenter in possession of the hut. [214]
+
+So far as Perkun is concerned, and may be regarded as representative
+of the gods, the hut may be symbol of Europe, and the Carpenter
+type of the power which conquered all that was left of them after
+their fair or noble associations had been transferred to christian
+forms. Somewhat later, the devil was involved in a like fate, as we
+shall have to consider in a future chapter.
+
+The most horrible superstitions, if tracked in their popular
+development, reveal with special impressiveness the progressive
+emancipation of man from the phantasms of ferocity which represented
+his primal helplessness. The universal werewolf superstition, for
+instance, drew its unspeakable horrors from deep and wide-spreading
+roots. Originating, probably, in occasional relapses to cannibalism
+among tribes or villages which found themselves amid circumstances as
+urgent as those which sometimes lead a wrecked crew to draw lots which
+shall die to support the rest, it would necessarily become demonised
+by the necessity of surrounding cannibalism with dangers worse than
+starvation. But it would seem that individuals are always liable,
+by arrest of development which usually takes the form of disease
+or insanity, to be dragged back to the savage condition of their
+race. In the course of this dark history, we note first an increasing
+tendency to show the means of the transformation difficult. In the
+Volsunga Saga it is by simply putting on a 'wolf-shirt' (wolfskin)
+that a man may become a wolf. Then it is said it is done by a belt
+made of the skin of a man who has been hung--all executed persons
+being sacred to Wodan (because not dying a natural death), to whom
+also the wolf was sacred. Then it is added, that the belt must be
+marked with the signs of the zodiac, and have a buckle with seven
+teeth. Then it is said that 'only a seventh son' is possessed of
+this diabolical power; or others say one whose brows meet over his
+nose. The means of detecting werewolves and retransforming them to
+human shape multiplied as those of transformation diminished in number,
+and such remedies reflected the advance of human skill. The werewolf
+could be restored by crossing his path with a knife or polished
+steel; by a sword laid on the ground with point towards him; by a
+silver ball. Human skill was too much for him. In Posen mothers had
+discovered that one who had bread in his or her mouth could by even
+such means discover werewolves; and fathers, to this hint about keeping
+'the wolf from the door,' added that no one could be attacked by any
+such monster if he were in a cornfield. The Slav levelled a plough
+at him. Thus by one prescription and another, and each representing a
+part of man's victory over chaos, the werewolf was driven out of all
+but a few 'unlucky' days in the year, and especially found his last
+refuge in Twelfth Night. But even on that night the werewolf might
+be generally escaped by the simple device of not speaking of him. If
+a wolf had to be spoken of he was then called Vermin, and Dr. Wuttke
+mentions a parish priest named Wolf in East Prussia who on Twelfth
+Night was addressed as Mr. Vermin! The actual wolf being already out
+of the forests in most places by art of the builder and the architect;
+the phantasmal wolf driven out of fear for most of the year by man's
+recognition of his own superiority to this exterminated beast; even
+the proverbial 'ears' of the vanishing werewolf ceased to be visible
+when on his particular fest-night his name was not mentioned.
+
+The last execution of a man for being an occasional werewolf was,
+I believe, in 1589, near Cologne, there being some evidence of
+cannibalism. But nine years later, in France, where the belief in
+the Loup-garou had been intense, a man so accused was simply shut
+up in a mad-house. It is an indication of the revolution which has
+occurred, that when next governments paid attention to werewolves
+it was because certain vagabonds went about professing to be able
+to transform themselves into wolves, in order to extort money from
+the more weak-minded and ignorant peasants. [215] There could hardly
+be conceived a more significant history: the werewolf leaves where
+he entered. Of ignorance and weakness trying, too often in vain,
+'to keep the wolf from the door,' was born this voracious phantom;
+with the beggar and vagabond, survivals of helplessness become
+inveterate, he wanders thin and crafty. He keeps out of the way of all
+culture, whether of field or mind. So is it indeed with all demons
+in decline--of which I can here only adduce a few characteristic
+examples. So runs the rune--
+
+
+ When the barley there is,
+ Then the devils whistle;
+ When the barley is threshed,
+ Then the devils whine;
+ When the barley is ground,
+ Then the devils roar;
+ When the flour is produced,
+ Then the devils perish.
+
+
+The old Scottish custom, mentioned by Sir Walter Scott, of leaving
+around each cultivated field an untilled fringe, called the Gude
+Man's Croft, is derived from the ancient belief that unless some
+wild place is left to the sylvan spirits they will injure the grain
+and vegetables; and, no doubt, some such notion leads the farmers of
+Thurgau still to graft mistletoe upon their fruit-trees. Many who can
+smile at such customs do yet preserve in their own minds, or those of
+their servants or neighbours, crofts which the ploughshare of science
+is forbidden to touch, and where the præternatural troops still hide
+their shrivelled forms. But this wild girdle becomes ever narrower,
+and the images within it tend to blend with rustling leaf and straw,
+and the insects, and to be otherwise invisible, save to that second
+sight which is received from Glam. As in some shadow-pantomime, the
+deities and demons pursue each other in endless procession, dropping
+down as awe-inspiring Titans, vanishing as grotesque pigmies--vanishing
+beyond the lamp into Nothingness!
+
+So came most of the monsters we have been describing--Animals,
+Volcanoes, Icebergs, Deserts, though they might be--by growing culture
+and mastery of nature to be called 'the little people;' and perhaps
+it is rather through pity than euphemism when they were so often
+called, as in Ireland (Duine Matha), 'the good little people.' [216]
+At every step in time or space back of the era of mechanic arts
+the little fairy gains in physical proportions. The house-spirits
+(Domovoi) of Russia are full-sized, shaggy human-shaped beings. In
+Lithuania the corresponding phantoms (Kaukas) average only a foot
+in height. The Krosnyata, believed in by the Slavs on the Baltic
+coast, are similarly small; and by way of the kobolds, elves, fays,
+travelling westward, we find the size of such shapes diminishing, until
+warnings are given that the teeth must never be picked with a straw,
+that slender tube being a favourite residence of the elf! In Bavaria
+a little red chafer with seven spots (Coccinella septempunctata) is
+able to hold Thor with his lightnings, and in other regions is a form
+of the goddess of Love! [217] Our English name for the tiny beetle
+'Lady-bug' is derived from the latter notion; and Mr. Karl Blind has
+expressed the opinion that our children's rune--
+
+
+ Lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home,
+ Thy house is on fire, thy children will roam--
+
+
+is last echo of the Eddaic prophecies of the destruction of the
+universe by the fire-fiend Loki! [218] Such reductions of the ancient
+gods, demons, and terrors to tiny dimensions would, of course, be
+only an indirect result of the general cause stated. They were driven
+from the great world, and sought the small world: they survived in
+the hut and were adapted to the nerves of the nursery. So alone can
+Tithonos live on: beyond the age for which he is born he shrinks to
+a grasshopper; and it is now by only careful listening that in the
+chirpings of the multitudinous immortals, of which Tithonos is type,
+may be distinguished the thunders and roarings of deities and demons
+that once made the earth to tremble.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+GENERALISATION OF DEMONS.
+
+ The Demons' bequest to their conquerors--Nondescripts--
+ Exaggerations of tradition--Saurian Theory of Dragons--
+ The Dragon not primitive in Mythology--Monsters of Egyptian,
+ Iranian, Vedic, and Jewish Mythologies--Turner's Dragon--
+ Della Bella--The Conventional Dragon.
+
+
+After all those brave victories of man over the first chaos, organic
+and inorganic, whose effect upon his phantasms has been indicated;
+after fire had slain its thousands, and iron its tens of thousands of
+his demons, and the rough artisan become a Nemesis with his rudder and
+wheel pursuing the hosts of darkness back into Night and Invisibility;
+still stood the grim fact of manyformed pain and evil in the world,
+still defying the ascending purposes of mankind. Moreover, confronting
+these, he is by no means so different mentally from that man he was
+before conquering many foes in detail, and laying their phantoms, as
+he was morally. More courage man had gained, and more defiance; and,
+intellectually, a step had been taken, if only one: he had learned
+that his evils are related to each other. Hunger is of many heads
+and forms. Its yawning throat may be seen in the brilliant sky that
+lasts till it is as brass, in the deluge, the earthquake, in claw
+and fang; and then these together do but relate the hunger-brood to
+Fire and Ferocity; the summer sunbeam may be venomous as a serpent,
+and the end of them all is Death. Some tendency to these more general
+conceptions of an opposing principle and power in the world seems
+to be represented in that phase of development at which nondescript
+forms arise. These were the conquered demons' bequest.
+
+It is, of course, impossible to measure the various forces which
+combined to produce the complex symbolical forms of physical
+evil. Tradition is not always a good draughtsman, and in portraying
+for a distant generation in Germany a big snake killed in India might
+not be exact as to the number of its heads or other details. Heroes
+before Falstaff were liable to overstate their foes in buckram. The
+less measurable a thing by fact, the more immense in fancy: werewolves
+of especial magnitude haunted regions where there had not been actual
+wolves for centuries; huge serpents play a large part in the annals
+of Ireland, where not even the smallest have been found. But after all
+natural influences have been considered, one can hardly look upon the
+sphynx, the chimæra, or on a conventional dragon, without perceiving
+that he is in presence of a higher creation than a demonic bear or a
+giant ruffian. The fundamental difference between the two classes is
+that one is natural, the other præternatural. Of course a werewolf is
+as præternatural as a gryphon to the eye of science, but as original
+expressions of human imagination the former could hardly have been a
+more miraculous monster than the Siamese twins to intelligent people
+to-day. The demonic forms are generally natural, albeit caricatured
+or exaggerated. And this effort at a præternatural conception is,
+in this early form, by no means mere superstition; rather is it
+poetic and artistic,--a kind of crude effort at allgemeinheit, at
+realisation of the types of evil--the claw-principle, fang-principle
+in the universe, the physiognomies of venom and pain detached from
+forms to which they are accidental.
+
+Some of the particular forms we have been considering are, indeed,
+by no means of the prosaic type. Such conceptions as Ráhu, Cerberus,
+and several others, are transitional between the natural and mystical
+conceptions; while the sphynx, however complete a combination of ideal
+forms, is not all demonic. In this Part III. are included those forms
+whose combination is not found in objective nature, but which are
+yet travesties of nature and genuine fauna of the human mind.
+
+Perhaps it may be thought somewhat arbitrary that I should describe
+all these intermediate forms between demon and devil by the term
+Dragon; but I believe there is no other fabulous form which includes
+so many individual types of transition, or whose evolution may be
+so satisfactorily traced from the point where it is linked with the
+demon to that where it bequeathes its characters to the devil. While,
+however, this term is used as the best that suggests itself, it cannot
+be accepted as limiting our inquiry or excluding other abstract forms
+which ideally correspond to the dragon,--the generalised expression
+for an active, powerful, and intelligent enemy to mankind, a being
+who is antagonism organised, and able to command every weapon in
+nature for an antihuman purpose.
+
+The opinion has steadily gained that the conventional dragon is the
+traditional form of some huge Saurian. It has been suggested that some
+of those extinct forms may have been contemporaneous with the earliest
+men, and that the traditions of conflicts with them, transmitted orally
+and pictorially, have resulted in preserving their forms in fable
+(proximately). The restorations of Saurians on their islet at the
+Crystal Palace show how much common sense there is in this theory. The
+discoveries of Professor Marsh of Yale College have proved that the
+general form of the dragon is startlingly prefigured in nature; and
+Mr. Alfred Tylor, in an able paper read before the Anthropological
+Society, has shown that we are very apt to be on the safe side in
+sticking to the theory of an 'object-origin' for most things.
+
+Concerning this theory, it may be said that the earliest descriptions,
+both written and pictorial, which have been discovered of the
+reptilian monsters around which grew the germs of our dragon-myths,
+are crocodiles or serpents, and not dragons of any conventional
+kind,--with a few doubtful exceptions. In an Egyptian papyrus there
+is a hieroglyphic picture of San-nu Hut-ur, 'plunger of the sea;'
+it is a marine, dolphin-like monster, with four feet, and a tail
+ending in a serpent's head. [219] With wings, this might approach
+the dragon-form. Again, Amen-Ra slew Naka, and this serpent 'saved
+his feet.' Possibly the phrase is ironical, and means that the
+serpent saved nothing; but apart from that, the poem is too highly
+metaphorical--the victorious god himself being described in it
+as a 'beautiful bull'--for the phrase to be important. On Egyptian
+monuments are pictured serpents with human heads and members, and the
+serpent Nahab-ka is pictured on amulets with two perfect human legs
+and feet. [220] Winged serpents are found on Egyptian monuments, but
+almost as frequently with the incredible number of four as with the
+conceivable two wings of the pterodactyl. The forms of the serpents
+thus portrayed with anthropomorphic legs and slight wings are, in
+their main shapes, of ordinary species. In the Iranian tradition of the
+temptation of the first man and woman, Meschia and Meschiane, by the
+'two-footed serpent of lies.' And it is possible that out of this myth
+of the 'two-footed' serpent grew the puzzling legend of Genesis that
+the serpent of Eden was sentenced thereafter to crawl on his belly. The
+snake's lack of feet, however, might with equal probability have given
+rise to the explanation given in mussulman and rabbinical stories of
+his feet being cut off by the avenging angel. But the antiquity of the
+Iranian myth is doubtful; while the superior antiquity of the Hindu
+fable of Ráhu, to which it seems related, suggests that the two legs
+of the Ahriman serpent, like the four arms of serpent-tailed Ráhu,
+is an anthropomorphic addition. In the ancient planispheres we find
+the 'crooked serpent' mentioned in the Book of Job, but no dragon.
+
+The two great monsters of Vedic mythology, Vritra and Ahi, are
+not so distinguishable from each other in the Vedas as in more
+recent fables. Vritra is very frequently called Vritra Ahi--Ahi
+being explained in the St. Petersburg Dictionary as 'the Serpent
+of the Heavens, the demon Vritra.' Ahi literally means 'serpent,'
+answering to the Greek echi-s, echi-dna; and when anything is added
+it appears to be anthropomorphic--heads, arms, eyes--as in the case
+of the Egyptian serpent-monsters. The Vedic demon Urana is described
+as having three heads, six eyes, and ninety-nine arms.
+
+There would appear to be as little reason for ascribing to the
+Tannin of the Old Testament the significance of dragon, though it is
+generally so translated. It is used under circumstances which show it
+to mean whale, serpent, and various other beasts. Jeremiah (xiv. 6)
+compares them to wild asses snuffing the wind, and Micah (i. 8)
+describes their 'wailing.' The fiery serpents said to have afflicted
+Israel in the wilderness are called seraphim, but neither in their
+natural or mythological forms do they anticipate our conventional
+dragon beyond the fiery character that is blended with the serpent
+character. Nor do the descriptions of Behemoth and Leviathan comport
+with the dragon-form.
+
+The serpent as an animal is a consummate development. Its feet, so
+far from having been amputated, as the fables say, in punishment of
+its sin, have been withdrawn beneath the skin as crutches used in a
+feebler period. It is found as a tertiary fossil. Since, therefore,
+the dragon form ex hypothesi is a reminiscence of the huge, now fossil,
+Saurians which preceded the serpent in time, the early mythologies
+could hardly have so regularly described great serpents instead of
+dragons. If the realistic theory we are discussing were true, the
+earliest combats--those of Indra, for instance--ought to have been
+with dragons, and the serpent enemies would have multiplied as time
+went on; but the reverse is the case--the (alleged) extinct forms
+being comparatively modern in heroic legend.
+
+Mr. John Ruskin once remarked upon Turner's picture of the Dragon
+guarding the Hesperides, that this conception so early as 1806,
+when no Saurian skeleton was within the artist's reach, presented
+a singular instance of the scientific imagination. As a coincidence
+with such extinct forms Turner's dragon is surpassed by the monster on
+which a witch rides in one of the engravings of Della Bella, published
+in 1637. In that year, on the occasion of the marriage of the grand
+duke Ferdinand II. in Florence, there was a masque d'Inferno, whose
+representations were engraved by Della Bella, of which this is one, so
+that it may be rather to some scenic artist than to the distinguished
+imitator of Callot that we owe this grotesque form, which the late
+Mr. Wright said 'might have been borrowed from some distant geological
+period.' If so, the fact would present a curious coincidence with the
+true history of Turner's Dragon; for after Mr. Ruskin had published
+his remark about the scientific imagination represented in it,
+an old friend of the artist declared that Turner himself had told
+him that he copied that dragon from a Christmas spectacle in Drury
+Lane theatre. But Turner had shown the truest scientific instinct
+in repairing to the fossil-beds of human imagination, and drawing
+thence the conventional form which never had existence save as the
+structure of cumulative tradition.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE SERPENT.
+
+ The beauty of the Serpent--Emerson on ideal forms--Michelet's
+ thoughts on the viper's head--Unique characters of the
+ Serpent--The monkey's horror of Snakes--The Serpent protected
+ by superstition--Human defencelessness against its subtle
+ powers--Dubufe's picture of the Fall of Man.
+
+
+In the accompanying picture, a medal of the ancient city of Tyre,
+two of the most beautiful forms of nature are brought together,--the
+Serpent and the Egg. Mr. D. R. Hay has shown the endless extent to
+which the oval arches have been reproduced in the ceramic arts of
+antiquity; and the same sense of symmetry which made the Greek vase
+a combination of Eggs prevails in the charm which the same graceful
+outline possesses wherever suggested,--as in curves of the swan,
+crescent of the moon, the elongated shell,--on which Aphrodite may well
+be poised, since the same contours find their consummate expression
+in the flowing lines attaining their repose in the perfect form of
+woman. The Serpent--model of the 'line of grace and beauty'--has had
+an even larger fascination for the eye of the artist and the poet. It
+is the one active form in nature which cannot be ungraceful, and to
+estimate the extent of its use in decoration is impossible, because
+all undulating and coiling lines are necessarily serpent forms. But
+in addition to the perfections of this form--which fulfil all the
+ascent of forms in Swedenborg's mystical morphology, circular, spiral,
+perpetual-circular, vortical, celestial--the Serpent bears on it, as
+it were, gems of the underworld that seem to find their counterpart
+in galaxies.
+
+One must conclude that Serpent-worship is mainly founded in fear. The
+sacrifices offered to that animal are alone sufficient to prove
+this. But as it is certain that the Serpent appears in symbolism
+and poetry in many ways which have little or no relation to its
+terrors, we may well doubt whether it may not have had a career in the
+human imagination previous to either of the results of its reign of
+terror,--worship and execration. It is the theory of Pestalozzi that
+every child is born an artist, and through its pictorial sense must be
+led on its first steps of education. The infant world displayed also
+in its selection of sacred trees and animals a profound appreciation
+of beauty. The myths in which the Serpent is represented as kakodemon
+refer rather to its natural history than to its appearance; and even
+when its natural history came to be observed, there was--there now
+is--such a wide discrepancy between its physiology and its functions,
+also between its intrinsic characters and their relation to man,
+that we can only accept its various aspects in mythology without
+attempting to trace their relative precedence in time.
+
+The past may in this case be best interpreted by the present. How
+different now to wise and observant men are the suggestions of this
+exceptional form in nature!
+
+Let us read a passage concerning it from Ralph Waldo Emerson:--
+
+'In the old aphorism, nature is always self-similar. In the plant,
+the eye or germinative point opens to a leaf, then to another leaf,
+with a power of transforming the leaf into radicle, stamen, pistil,
+petal, bract, sepal, or seed. The whole art of the plant is still to
+repeat leaf on leaf without end, the more or less of heat, light,
+moisture, and food, determining the form it shall assume. In the
+animal, nature makes a vertebra, or a spine of vertebræ, and helps
+herself still by a new spine, with a limited power of modifying its
+form,--spine on spine, to the end of the world. A poetic anatomist,
+in our own day, teaches that a snake being a horizontal line, and man
+being an erect line, constitute a right angle; and between the lines
+of this mystical quadrant, all animated beings find their place:
+and he assumes the hair-worm, the span-worm, or the snake, as the
+type or prediction of the spine. Manifestly, at the end of the spine,
+nature puts out smaller spines, as arms; at the end of the arms, new
+spines, as hands; at the other end she repeats the process, as legs
+and feet. At the top of the column she puts out another spine, which
+doubles or loops itself over, as a span-worm, into a ball, and forms
+the skull, with extremities again: the hands being now the upper jaw,
+the feet the lower jaw, the fingers and toes being represented this
+time by upper and lower teeth. This new spine is destined to high
+uses. It is a new man on the shoulders of the last.' [221]
+
+As one reads this it might be asked, How could its idealism be more
+profoundly pictured for the eye than in the Serpent coiled round
+the egg,--the seed out of which all these spines must branch out for
+their protean variations? What refrains of ancient themes subtly sound
+between the lines,--from the Serpent doomed to crawl on its belly in
+the dust, to the Serpent that is lifted up!
+
+Now let us turn to the page of Jules Michelet, and read what the
+Serpent signified to one mood of his sympathetic nature.
+
+'It was one of my saddest hours when, seeking in nature a refuge from
+thoughts of the age, I for the first time encountered the head of
+the viper. This occurred in a valuable museum of anatomical imitations.
+
+The head marvellously imitated and enormously enlarged, so as to
+remind one of the tiger's and the jaguar's, exposed in its horrible
+form a something still more horrible. You seized at once the delicate,
+infinite, fearfully prescient precautions by which the deadly machine
+is so potently armed. Not only is it provided with numerous keen-edged
+teeth, not only are these teeth supplied with an ingenious reservoir
+of poison which slays immediately, but their extreme fineness which
+renders them liable to fracture is compensated by an advantage that
+perhaps no other animal possesses, namely, a magazine of supernumerary
+teeth, to supply at need the place of any accidentally broken. Oh,
+what provisions for killing! What precautions that the victim shall
+not escape! What love for this horrible creature! I stood by it
+scandalised, if I may so speak, and with a sick soul. Nature, the great
+mother, by whose side I had taken refuge, shocked me with a maternity
+so cruelly impartial. Gloomily I walked away, bearing on my heart a
+darker shadow than rested on the day itself, one of the sternest in
+winter. I had come forth like a child; I returned home like an orphan,
+feeling the notion of a Providence dying away within me.' [222]
+
+Many have so gone forth and so returned; some to say, 'There is no
+God;' a few to say (as is reported of a living poet), 'I believe in
+God, but am against him;' but some also to discern in the viper's
+head Nature's ironclad, armed with her best science to defend the
+advance of form to humanity along narrow passes.
+
+The primitive man was the child that went forth when his world was also
+a child, and when the Serpent was still doing its part towards making
+him and it a man. It was a long way from him to the dragon-slayer; but
+it is much that he did not merely cower; he watched and observed, and
+there is not one trait belonging to his deadly crawling contemporaries
+that he did not note and spiritualise in such science as was possible
+to him.
+
+The last-discovered of the topes in India represents
+Serpent-worshippers gathered around their deity, holding their tongues
+with finger and thumb. No living form in nature could be so fitly
+regarded in that attitude. Not only is the Serpent normally silent,
+but in its action it has 'the quiet of perfect motion.' The maximum of
+force is shown in it, relatively to its size, along with the minimum
+of friction and visible effort. Footless, wingless, as a star, its
+swift gliding and darting is sometimes like the lightning whose forked
+tongue it seemed to incarnate. The least touch of its ingenious tooth
+is more destructive than the lion's jaw. What mystery in its longevity,
+in its self-subsistence, in its self-renovation! Out of the dark it
+comes arrayed in jewels, a crawling magazine of death in its ire,
+in its unknown purposes able to renew its youth, and fable for man
+imperishable life! Wonderful also are its mimicries. It sometimes
+borrows colours of the earth on which it reposes, the trees on which it
+hangs, now seems covered with eyes, and the 'spectacled snake' appeared
+to have artificially added to its vision. Altogether it is unique
+among natural forms, and its vast history in religious speculation
+and mythology does credit to the observation of primitive man.
+
+Recent experiments have shown the monkeys stand in the greatest terror
+of snakes. Such terror is more and more recognised as a survival in
+the European man. The Serpent is almost the only animal which can
+follow a monkey up a tree and there attack its young. Our arboreal
+anthropoid progenitors could best have been developed in some place
+naturally enclosed and fortified, as by precipices which quadrupeds
+could not scale, but which apes might reach by swinging and leaping
+from trees. But there could be no seclusion where the Serpent could
+not follow. I am informed by the King of Bonny that in his region
+of Africa the only serpent whose worship is fully maintained is the
+Nomboh (Leaper), a small snake, white and glistening, whose bite is
+fatal, and which, climbing into trees, springs thence upon its prey
+beneath, and can travel far by leaping from branch to branch. The
+first arboreal man who added a little to the natural defences of any
+situation might stand in tradition as a god planting a garden; but even
+he would not be supposed able to devise any absolute means of defence
+against the subtlest of all the beasts. Among the three things Solomon
+found too wonderful for him was 'the way of a serpent upon a rock'
+(Prov. xxx. 19). This comparative superiority of the Serpent to any and
+all devices and contrivances known to primitive men--whose proverbs
+must have made most of Solomon's wisdom--would necessarily have its
+effect upon the animal and mental nerves of our race in early times,
+and the Serpent would find in his sanctity a condition favourable to
+survival and multiplication. It is this fatal power of superstition
+to change fancies into realities which we find still protecting the
+Serpent in various countries. From being venerated as the arbiter of
+life and death, it might thus actually become such in large districts
+of country. In Dubufe's picture of the Fall of Man, the wrath of
+Jehovah is represented by the lightning, which has shattered the tree
+beneath which the offending pair are now crouching; beyond it Satan
+is seen in human shape raising his arm in proud defiance against the
+blackened sky. So would the Serpent appear. His victims were counted
+by many thousands where the lightning laid low one. Transmitted along
+the shuddering nerves of many generations came the confession of the
+Son of Sirach, 'There is no head above the head of a serpent.'
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE WORM.
+
+ An African Serpent-drama in America--The Veiled Serpent--The
+ Ark of the Covenant--Aaron's Rod--The Worm--An Episode
+ on the Dii Involuti--The Serapes--The Bambino at
+ Rome--Serpent-transformations.
+
+
+On the eve of January 1, 1863,--that historic New Year's Day on
+which President Lincoln proclaimed freedom to American slaves,--I was
+present at a Watchnight held by negroes in a city of that country. In
+opening the meeting the preacher said,--though in words whose eloquent
+shortcomings I cannot reproduce:--'Brethren and sisters, the President
+of the United States has promised that, if the Confederates do not
+lay down their arms, he will free all their slaves to-morrow. They
+have not laid down their arms. To-morrow will be the day of liberty
+to the oppressed. But we all know that evil powers are around the
+President. While we sit here they are trying to make him break his
+word. But we have come together to watch, and see that he does not
+break his word. Brethren, the bad influences around the President
+to-night are stronger than any Copperheads. [223] The Old Serpent
+is abroad to-night, with all his emissaries, in great power. His
+wrath is great, because he knows his hour is near. He will be in this
+church this evening. As midnight comes on we shall hear his rage. But,
+brethren and sisters, don't be alarmed. Our prayers will prevail. His
+head will be bruised. His back will be broken. He will go raging to
+hell, and God Almighty's New Year will make the United States a true
+land of freedom.'
+
+The sensation caused among the hundreds of negroes present by these
+words was profound; they were frequently interrupted by cries of
+'Glory!' and there were tears of joy. But the scene and excitement
+which followed were indescribable. A few moments before midnight
+the congregation were requested to kneel, which they did, and prayer
+succeeded prayer with increasing fervour. Presently a loud, prolonged
+hiss was heard. There were cries--'He's here! he's here!' Then came a
+volley of hisses; they seemed to proceed from every part of the room,
+hisses so entirely like those of huge serpents that the strongest
+nerves were shaken; above them rose the preacher's prayer that
+had become a wild incantation, and ecstatic ejaculations became so
+universal that it was a marvel what voices were left to make the
+hisses. Finally, from a neighbouring steeple the twelve strokes
+of midnight sounded on the frosty air, and immediately the hisses
+diminished, and presently died away altogether, and the New Year
+that brought freedom to four millions of slaves was ushered in by
+the jubilant chorus of all present singing a hymn of victory.
+
+Far had come those hisses and that song of victory, terminating the
+dragon-drama of America. In them was the burden of Ezekiel: 'Son of
+man, set thy face against Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and prophesy against
+him and against all Egypt, saying, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah:
+Behold I am against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon
+that lieth in the midst of the rivers ... I will put a hook in thy
+jaws.' In them was the burden of Isaiah: 'In that day Jehovah with
+his sore and great and strong sword shall punish Leviathan the
+piercing serpent, even Leviathan that crooked serpent: he shall
+slay the dragon that is in the sea.' In it was the cry of Zophar:
+'His meat in his bowels is turned, it is the gall of asps within
+him. He hath swallowed down riches, and he shall vomit them up again:
+God shall cast them out of his belly.' And these Hebrew utterances,
+again, were but the distant echoes of far earlier voices of those
+African slaves still seen pictured with their chains on the ruined
+walls of Egypt,--voices that gathered courage at last to announce the
+never-ending struggle of man with Oppression, as that combat between
+god and serpent which never had a nobler event than when the dying
+hiss of Slavery was heard in America, and the victorious Sun rose
+upon a New World of free and equal men.
+
+The Serpent thus exalted in America to a type of oppression is very
+different from any snake that may this day be found worshipped as a
+deity by the African in his native land. The swarthy snake-worshipper
+in his migration took his god along with him in his chest or
+basket--at once ark and altar--and in that hiding-place it underwent
+transformations. He emerged as the protean emblem of both good and
+evil. In a mythologic sense the serpent certainly held its tail in its
+mouth. No civilisation has reached the end of its typical supremacy.
+
+Concerning the accompanying Eleusinian form (Fig. 24), Calmet
+says:--'The mysterious trunk, coffer, or basket, may be justly
+reckoned among the most remarkable and sacred instruments of worship,
+which formed part of the processional ceremonies in the heathen
+world. This was held so sacred that it was not publicly exposed to
+view, or publicly opened, but was reserved for the inspection of the
+initiated, the fully initiated only. Completely to explain this symbol
+would require a dissertation; and, indeed, it has been considered,
+more or less, by those who have written on the nature of the Ark of
+the testimony among the Hebrews. Declining the inquiry at present, we
+merely call the attention of the reader to what this mystical coffer
+was supposed to contain--a serpent!' The French Benedictine who wrote
+this passage, though his usual candour shames the casuistry of our own
+time, found it necessary to conceal the Hebrew Ark: it was precisely
+so that the occupant of the Ark was originally concealed; and though
+St. John exorcised it from the Chalice its genius lingers in the Pyx,
+before whose Host 'lifted up' the eyes of worshippers are lowered.
+
+The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews (chap. ix.), describing
+the Tabernacle, says: 'After the second veil, the tabernacle which
+is called the Holiest of all; which had the golden censer, and the
+ark of the covenant overlaid round about with gold, wherein was
+the golden pot that had manna, and Aaron's rod that budded, and the
+tables of the covenant.' But this rod of Aaron, which, by budding,
+had swallowed up all rival pretensions to the tribal priesthood,
+was the same rod which had been changed to a serpent, and swallowed
+up the rod-serpents of the sorcerers in Pharaoh's presence. So soft
+and subtle is 'the way of a serpent upon a rock!'
+
+This veiling of the Serpent, significant of a great deal, is
+characteristic even of the words used to name it. Of these I have
+selected one to head this chapter, because it is one of the innumerable
+veils which shielded this reptile's transformation from a particular
+external danger to a demonic type. This general description of things
+that wind about or turn (vermes, traced by some to the Sanskrit
+root hvar, 'curved'), gradually came into use to express the demon
+serpents. Dante and Milton call Satan a worm. No doubt among the two
+hundred names for the Serpent, said to be mentioned in an Arabic work,
+we should find parallels to this old adaptation of the word 'worm.' In
+countries--as Germany and England--where no large serpents are found,
+the popular imagination could not be impressed by merely saying that
+Siegfried or Lambton had slain a snake. The tortuous character of
+the snake was preserved, but, by that unconscious dexterity which so
+often appears in the making of myths, it was expanded so as to include
+a power of supernatural transformation. The Lambton worm comes out of
+the well very small, but it afterwards coils in nine huge folds around
+its hill. The hag-ridden daughter of the King of Northumberland, who
+
+
+ crept into a hole a worm
+ And out stept a fair ladye,
+
+
+did but follow the legendary rule of the demonic serpent tribe.
+
+Why was the Serpent slipped into the Ark or coffer and hid behind
+veils? To answer this will require here an episode.
+
+In the Etruscan theology and ceremonial the supreme power was lodged
+with certain deities that were never seen. They were called the Dii
+Involuti, the veiled gods. Not even the priests ever looked upon
+them. When any dire calamity occurred, it was said these mysterious
+deities had spoken their word in the council of the gods,--a word
+always final and fatal.
+
+There have been fine theories on the subject, and the Etruscans
+have been complimented for having high transcendental views of the
+invisible nature of the Divine Being. But a more prosaic theory is
+probably true. These gods were wrapped up because they were not fit to
+be seen. The rude carvings of some savage tribe, they had been seen and
+adored at first: temples had been built for them, and their priesthood
+had grown powerful; but as art advanced and beautiful statues arose,
+these rude designs could not bear the contrast, and the only way of
+preserving reverence for them, and the institutions grown up around
+them, was to hide them out of sight altogether. Then it could be said
+they were so divinely beautiful that the senses would be overpowered
+by them.
+
+There have been many veiled deities, and though their veils have
+been rationalised, they are easily pierced. The inscription on the
+temple of Isis at Sais was: 'I am that which has been, which is,
+and which shall be, and no one has yet lifted the veil that hides
+me.' Isis at this time had probably become a negro Madonna, like
+that still worshipped in Spain as holiest of images, and called by
+the same title, 'Our Immaculate Lady.' As the fair race and the dark
+mingled in Egypt, the primitive Nubian complexion and features of
+Isis could not inspire such reverence as more anciently, and before
+her also a curtain was hung. The Ark of Moses carried this veil
+into the wilderness, and concealed objects not attractive to look
+at--probably two scrawled stones, some bones said to be those of
+Joseph, a pot of so-called manna, and the staff said to have once
+been a serpent and afterwards blossomed. Fashioned by a rude tribe,
+the Ark was a fit thing to hide, and hidden it has been to this
+day. When the veil of the Temple was rent,--allegorically at the
+death of Christ, actually by Titus,--nothing of the kind was found;
+and it would seem that the Jews must long have been worshipping before
+a veil with emptiness behind it. Paul discovered that the veil said
+to have covered the face of Moses when he descended from Sinai was a
+myth; it meant that the people should not see to the end of what was
+nevertheless transient. 'Their minds were blinded; for unto this day,
+when Moses is read, that veil is on their heart.'
+
+Kircher says the Seraphs of Egypt were images without any eminency of
+limbs, rolled as it were in swaddling clothes, partly made of stone,
+partly of metal, wood, or shell. Similar images, he says, were called
+by the Romans 'secret gods.' As an age of scepticism advanced, it was
+sometimes necessary that these 'involuti' should be slightly revealed,
+lest it should be said there was no god there at all. Such is the
+case with the famous bambino of Aracoeli Church in Rome. This effigy,
+said to have been carved by a pilgrim out of a tree on the Mount of
+Olives, and painted by St. Luke while the pilgrim was sleeping, is now
+kept in its ark, and visitors are allowed to see part of its painted
+face. When the writer of this requested a sight of the whole form, or
+of the head at any rate, the exhibiting priest was astounded at the
+suggestion. No doubt he was right: the only wonder is that the face
+is not hid also, for a more ingeniously ugly thing than the flat,
+blackened, and rouged visage of the bambino it were difficult to
+conceive. But it wears a very cunning veil nevertheless. The face is
+set in marvellous brilliants, but these are of less effect in hiding
+its ugliness than the vesture of mythology around it. The adjacent
+walls are covered with pictures of the miracles it has performed,
+and which have attracted to it such faith that it is said at one
+time to have received more medical fees than all the physicians in
+Rome together. Priests have discovered that a veil over the mind
+is thicker than a veil on the god. Such is the popular veneration
+for the bambino, that, in 1849, the Republicans thought it politic
+to present the monks with the Pope's state coach to carry the idol
+about. In the end it was proved that the Pope was securely seated
+beside the bambino, and he presently emerged from behind his veil also.
+
+There came, then, a period when the Serpent crept behind the veil,
+or lid of the ark, or into a chalice,--a very small worm, but yet
+able to gnaw the staff of Solomon. No wisdom could be permitted to
+rise above fear itself, though its special sources might be here and
+there reduced or vanquished. The snake had taught man at last its arts
+of war. Man had summoned to his aid the pig, and the ibis made havoc
+among the reptiles; and some of that terror which is the parent of
+that kind of devotion passed away. When it next emerged, it was in
+twofold guise,--as Agathodemon and Kakodemon,--but in both forms as
+the familiar of some higher being. It was as the genius of Minerva,
+of Esculapius, of St. Euphemia. We have already seen him (Fig. 13)
+as the genius of the Eleans, the Sosopolis, where also we see the
+Serpent hurrying into his cavern, leaving the mother and child to
+be worshipped in the temple of Lucina. In Christian symbolism the
+Seraphim--'burning (sáraf) serpents'--veiled their faces and forms
+beneath their huge wings, crossed in front, and so have been able to
+become 'the eminent,' and to join in the praises of modern communities
+at being delivered from just such imaginary fiery worms as themselves!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+APOPHIS.
+
+ The Naturalistic Theory of Apophis--The Serpent of Time--
+ Epic of the Worm--The Asp of Melite--Vanquishers of Time--
+ Nachash-Beriach--The Serpent-Spy--Treading on Serpents.
+
+
+The considerations advanced in the previous chapter enable us to
+dismiss with facility many of the rationalistic interpretations which
+have been advanced to explain the monstrous serpents of sacred books
+by reference to imaginary species supposed to be now extinct. Flying
+serpents, snakes many-headed, rain-bringing, woman-hating, &c., may be
+suffered to survive as the fauna of bibliolatrous imaginations. Such
+forms, however, are of such mythologic importance that it is necessary
+to watch carefully against this method of realistic interpretation,
+especially as there are many actual characteristics of serpents
+sufficiently mysterious to conspire with it. A recent instance of
+this literalism may here be noticed.
+
+Mr. W. R. Cooper [224] supposes the evil serpent of Egyptian Mythology
+to have a real basis in 'a large and unidentified species of coluber,
+of great strength and hideous longitude,' which 'was, even from the
+earliest ages, associated as the representative of spiritual, and
+occasionally physical evil, and was named Hof, Rehof, or Apophis,'
+the 'destroyer, the enemy of the gods, and the devourer of the souls
+of men.' That such a creature, he adds, 'once inhabited the Libyan
+desert, we have the testimony of both Hanno the Carthaginian and Lucan
+the Roman, and if it is now no longer an inhabitant of that region,
+it is probably owing to the advance of civilisation having driven it
+farther south.'
+
+Apart from the extreme improbability that African exploration should
+have brought no rumours of such a monster if it existed, it may be said
+concerning Mr. Cooper's theory: (1.) If, indeed, the references cited
+were to a reptile now unknown, we might be led by mythologic analogy
+to expect that it would have been revered beyond either the Asp or the
+Cobra. In proportion to the fear has generally been the exaltation of
+its objects. Primitive peoples have generally gathered courage to pour
+invective upon evil monsters when--either from their non-existence
+or rarity--there was least danger of its being practically resented
+as a personal affront. (2.) The regular folds of Apophis on the
+sarcophagus of Seti I. and elsewhere are so evidently mystical and
+conventional that, apparently, they refer to a serpent-form only as
+the guilloche on a wall may refer to sea-waves. Apophis (or Apap)
+would have been a decorative artist to fold himself in such order.
+
+These impossible labyrinthine coils suggest Time, as the serpent
+with its tail in its mouth signifies Eternity,--an evolution of the
+same idea. This was the interpretation given by a careful scholar,
+the late William Hickson, [225] to the procession of nine persons
+depicted on the sarcophagus mentioned as bearing a serpent, each
+holding a fold, all being regular enough for a frieze. 'The scene,'
+says this author, 'appears to relate to the Last Judgment, for Osiris
+is seen on his throne, passing sentence on a crowd before him; and
+in the same tableaux are depicted the river that divides the living
+from the dead, and the bridge of life. The death of the serpent may
+possibly be intended to symbolise the end of time.' This idea of long
+duration might be a general one relating to all time, or it might
+refer to the duration of individual life; it involved naturally the
+evils and agonies of life; but the fundamental conception is more
+simple, and also more poetic, than even these implications, and it
+means eternal waste and decay. One has need only to sit before a clock
+to see Apophis: there coil upon coil winds the ever-moving monster,
+whose tooth is remorseless, devouring little by little the strength
+and majesty of man, and reducing his grandest achievements--even his
+universe--to dust. Time is the undying Worm.
+
+
+ God having made me worm, I make you--smoke.
+ Though safe your nameless essence from my stroke,
+ Yet do I gnaw no less
+ Love in the heart, stars in the livid space,--
+ God jealous,--making vacant thus your place,--
+ And steal your witnesses.
+
+ Since the star flames, man would be wrong to teach
+ That the grave's worm cannot such glory reach;
+ Naught real is save me.
+ Within the blue, as 'neath the marble slab I lie,
+ I bite at once the star within the sky,
+ The apple on the tree.
+
+ To gnaw yon star is not more tough to me
+ Than hanging grapes on vines of Sicily;
+ I clip the rays that fall;
+ Eternity yields not to splendours brave.
+ Fly, ant, all creatures die, and nought can save
+ The constellations all.
+
+ The starry ship, high in the ether sea,
+ Must split and wreck in the end: this thing shall be:
+ The broad-ringed Saturn toss
+ To ruin: Sirius, touched by me, decay,
+ As the small boat from Ithaca away
+ That steers to Kalymnos. [226]
+
+
+The natural history of Apophis, so far as he has any, is probably
+suggested in the following passage cited by Mr. Cooper from
+Wilkinson:--'Ælian relates many strange stories of the asp, and the
+respect paid to it by the Egyptians; but we may suppose that in his
+sixteen species of asps other snakes were included. He also speaks
+of a dragon which was sacred in the Egyptian Melite, and another
+kind of snake called Paries or Paruas, dedicated to Æsculapius. The
+serpent of Melite had priests and ministers, a table and bowl. It
+was kept in a tower, and fed by the priests with cakes made of flour
+and honey, which they placed there in a bowl. Having done this they
+retired. The next day, on returning to the apartment, the food was
+found to be eaten, and the same quantity was again put into the bowl,
+for it was not lawful for any one to see the sacred reptile.' [227]
+
+It was in this concealment from the outward eye that the Serpent was
+able to assume such monstrous proportions to the eye of imagination;
+and, indeed, it is not beyond conjecture that this serpent of Melite,
+coming in conflict with Osirian worship, was degraded and demonised
+into that evil monster (Apophis) whom Horus slew to avenge his
+destruction of Osiris (for he was often identified with Typhon).
+
+Though Horus cursed and slew this terrible demon-serpent, he reappears
+in all Egyptian Mythology with undiminished strength, and all evil
+powers were the brood of himself or Typhon, who were sometimes
+described as brothers and sometimes as the same beings. From the
+'Ritual of the Dead' we learn that it was the high privilege and task
+of the heroic dead to be reconstructed and go forth to encounter
+and subdue the agents of Apophis, who sent out to engage them the
+crocodiles Seb, Hem, and Shui, and other crocodiles from north, south,
+east, and west; the hero having conquered these, acquires their might,
+and next prevails over the walking viper Ru; and so on with other
+demons called 'precursors of Apophis,' until their prince himself is
+encountered and slain, all the hero's guardian deities attending to
+fix a knife in each of the monster's folds. These are the Vanquishers
+of Time,--the immortal.
+
+In Apophis we find the Serpent fairly developed to a principle of
+evil. He is an 'accuser of the sun;' the twelve gateways into Hades
+are surmounted by his representatives, which the Sun must pass--twelve
+hours of night. He is at once the 'Nachash beriach' and 'Nachash
+aktalon'--the 'Cross-bar serpent' and the 'Tortuous serpent'--which we
+meet with in Isa. xxvii. 1: 'In that day the Lord with his sore and
+great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent,
+even leviathan that crooked serpent.' The marginal translation in the
+English version is 'crossing like a bar,' instead of piercing, and the
+Vulgate has serpens vectis. This refers to the moral function of the
+serpent, as barring the way, or guarding the door. No doubt this is the
+'crooked serpent' of Job xxvi. 13, for the astrological sense of it
+does not invalidate the terrestrial significance. Imagination could
+only project into the heavens what it had learned on earth. Bochart
+in identifying 'Nachash-beriach' as 'the flying Serpent,' is quite
+right: the Seraph, or winged Serpent, which barred the way to the tree
+of life in Eden, and in some traditions was the treacherous guard
+at the gate of the garden, and which bit Israel in the wilderness,
+was this same protean Apophis. For such tasks, and to soar into the
+celestial planisphere, the Serpent must needs have wings; and thus
+it is already far on its way to become the flying Dragon. But in one
+form, as the betrayer of man, it must lose its wings and crawl upon
+the ground for ever. The Serpent is thus not so much agathodemon
+and kakodemon in one form, as a principle of destructiveness which
+is sometimes employed by the deity to punish his enemies, as Horus
+employs fiery Kheti, but sometimes requires to be himself punished.
+
+There have been doubts whether the familiar derivation of ophis,
+serpent, from ops, the eye, shall continue. Some connect the Greek
+word with echis, but Curtius maintains that the old derivation from
+ops is correct. [228] Even were this not the etymology, the popularity
+of it would equally suggest the fact that this reptile was of old
+supposed to kill with its glance; and it was also generally regarded
+as gifted with præternatural vision. By a similar process to that
+which developed avenging Furies out of the detective dawn--Erinyes
+from Saranyu, Satan from Lucifer [229]--this subtle Spy might have
+become also a retributive and finally a malignant power. The Furies
+were portrayed bearing serpents in their hands, and each of these
+might carry ideally the terrors of Apophis: Time also is a detective,
+and the guilty heard it saying, 'Your sin will find you out.'
+
+Through many associations of this kind the Serpent became at an
+early period an agent of ordeal. Any one handling it with impunity
+was regarded as in league with it, or specially hedged about by the
+deity whose 'hands formed the crooked serpent.' It may have been
+as snake-charmers that Moses and Aaron appeared before Pharaoh and
+influenced his imagination; or, if the story be a myth, its existence
+still shows that serpent performances would then have been regarded
+as credentials of divine authentication. So when Paul was shipwrecked
+on Malta, where a viper is said to have fastened on his hand, the
+barbarians, having at first inferred that he was a murderer, 'whom
+though he hath escaped the sea, yet Vengeance suffereth not to live,'
+concluded he was a god when they found him unharmed. Innumerable
+traditions preceded the words ascribed to Christ (Luke x. 19),
+'Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions,
+and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means
+hurt you.' It is instructive to compare this sentence attributed to
+Christ with the notion of the barbarians concerning Paul's adventure,
+whatever it may have been. Paul's familiarity with the Serpent seems
+to them proof that he is a god. Such also is the idea represented
+in Isa. xi. 8, 'The sucking child shall play on the hole of the
+asp.' But the idea of treading on serpents marks a period more
+nearly corresponding to that of the infant Hercules strangling
+the serpents. Yet though these two conceptions--serpent-treading,
+and serpent-slaying--approach each other, they are very different
+in source and significance, both morally and historically. The word
+used in Luke, pateiin, conveys the idea of walking over something in
+majesty, not in hostility; it must be interpreted by the next sentence
+(x. 20), 'Notwithstanding, in this rejoice not, that the spirits are
+subject unto you (ta pneumata hypotassetai).' The serpent-slayer
+or dragon-slayer is not of Semitic origin. The awful supremacy of
+Jehovah held all the powers of destruction chained to his hand;
+and to ask man if he could draw out Leviathan with a hook was only
+another form of reminding him of his own inferiority to the creator
+and lord of Leviathan. How true the Semitic ideas running through the
+Bible, and especially represented in the legend of Paul in Malta,
+are to the barbarian nature is illustrated by an incident related
+in Mr. Brinton's 'Myths of the New World.' The pious founder of the
+Moravian Brotherhood, Count Zinzendorf, was visiting a missionary
+station among the Shawnees in the Wyoming Valley, America. Recent
+quarrels with the white people had so irritated the red men that they
+resolved to make him their victim. After he had retired to his hut
+several of the braves softly peered in. Count Zinzendorf was seated
+before a fire, lost in perusal of the Scriptures; and while the
+red men gazed they saw what he did not--a huge rattlesnake trailing
+across his feet to gather itself in a coil before the comfortable
+warmth of the fire. Immediately they forsook their murderous purpose,
+and retired noiselessly, convinced that this was indeed a divine man.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE SERPENT IN INDIA.
+
+ The Kankato na--The Vedic Serpents not worshipful--Ananta and
+ Sesha--The Healing Serpent--The guardian of treasures--Miss
+ Buckland's theory--Primitive rationalism--Underworld
+ plutocracy--Rain and lightning--Vritra--History of the word
+ 'Ahi'--The Adder--Zohák--A Teutonic Laokoon.
+
+
+That Serpent-worship in India was developed by euphemism seems
+sufficiently shown in the famous Vedic hymn called Kankato na,
+recited as an antidote against all venom, of which the following is
+a translation:--
+
+'1. Some creature of little venom; some creature of great venom;
+or some venomous aquatic reptile; creatures of two kinds, both
+destructive of life, or poisonous, unseen creatures, have anointed
+me with their poison.
+
+'2. The antidote coming to the bitten person destroys the unseen
+venomous creatures; departing it destroys them; deprived of substance
+it destroys them by its odour; being ground it pulverises them.
+
+'3. Blades of sara grass, of kusara, of darhba, of sairya, of munja,
+of virana, all the haunt of unseen venomous creatures, have together
+anointed me with their venom.
+
+'4. The cows had lain down in their stalls; the wild beasts had
+retreated to their lairs; the senses of men were at rest; when the
+unseen venomous creatures anointed me with their venom.
+
+'5. Or they may be discovered in the dark, as thieves in the dusk
+of evening; for although they be unseen yet all are seen by them;
+therefore, men be vigilant.
+
+'6. Heaven, serpents, is your father; Earth, your mother; Soma, your
+brother; Aditi, your sister; unseen, all-seeing, abide in your holes;
+enjoy your own good pleasure.
+
+'7. Those who move with their shoulders, those who move with their
+bodies, those who sting with sharp fangs, those who are virulently
+venomous; what do ye here, ye unseen, depart together far from us.
+
+'8. The all-seeing Sun rises in the East, the destroyer of the unseen,
+driving away all the unseen venomous creatures, and all evil spirits.
+
+'9. The Sun has risen on high, destroying all the many poisons;
+Aditya, the all-seeing, the destroyer of the unseen, rises for the
+good of living beings.
+
+'10. I deposit the poison in the solar orb, like a leathern bottle
+in the house of a vendor of spirits; verily that adorable Sun never
+dies; nor through his favour shall we die of the venom; for, though
+afar off, yet drawn by his coursers he will overtake the poison:
+the science of antidotes converted thee, Poison, to ambrosia.
+
+'11. That insignificant little bird has swallowed thy venom; she does
+not die; nor shall we die; for although afar off, yet, drawn by his
+coursers, the Sun will overtake the poison: the science of antidotes
+has converted thee, Poison, to ambrosia.
+
+'12. May the thrice-seven sparks of Agni consume the influence of
+the venom; they verily do not perish; nor shall we die; for although
+afar off, the Sun, drawn by his coursers, will overtake the poison:
+the science of antidotes has converted thee, Poison, to ambrosia.
+
+'13. I recite the names of ninety and nine rivers, the destroyers
+of poison: although afar off, the Sun, drawn by his coursers, will
+overtake the poison: the science of antidotes will convert thee,
+Poison, to ambrosia.
+
+'14. May the thrice-seven peahens, the seven-sister rivers, carry off,
+O Body, thy poison, as maidens with pitchers carry away water.
+
+'15. May the insignificant mungoose carry off thy venom, Poison: if
+not, I will crush the vile creature with a stone: so may the poison
+depart from my body, and go to distant regions.
+
+'16. Hastening forth at the command of Agastya, thus spake the
+mungoose: The venom of the scorpion is innocuous; Scorpion, thy venom
+is innocuous.' [230]
+
+Though, in the sixth verse of this hymn, the serpents are said to
+be born of Heaven and Earth, the context does not warrant the idea
+that any homage to them is intended; they are associated with the
+evil Rakshasas, the Sun and Agni being represented as their haters
+and destroyers. The seven-sister rivers (streams of the sacred
+Ganges) supply an antidote to their venom, and certain animals,
+the partridge and the mungoose, are said, though insignificant,
+to be their superiors. The science of antidotes alluded to is that
+which Indra taught to Dadhyanch, who lost his head for communicating
+it to the Aswins. It is notable, however, that in the Vedic period
+there is nothing which represents the serpent as medicinal, unless by
+a roundabout process we connect the expression in the Rig-Veda that
+the wrath of the Maruts, or storm-gods, is 'as the ire of serpents,'
+with the fact that their chief, Rudra, is celebrated as the bestower of
+'healing herbs,' and they themselves solicited for 'medicaments.' This
+would be stretching the sense of the hymns too far. It is quite
+possible, however, that at a later day, when serpent-worship was fully
+developed in India, what is said in the sixth verse of the hymn may
+have been adduced to confirm the superstition.
+
+It seems clear, then, that at the time the Kankato na was written,
+the serpent was regarded with simple abhorrence. And we may remember,
+also, that even now, when the Indian cobra is revered as a Brahman
+of the highest caste, there is a reminiscence of his previous ill
+repute preserved in the common Hindu belief that a certain mark
+on his head was left there by the heel of Vishnu, Lord of Life,
+who trod on it when, in one of his avatars, he first stepped upon
+the earth. Although in the later mythology we find Vishnu, in the
+intervals between his avatars or incarnations, reposing on a serpent
+(Sesha), this might originally have signified only his lordship over
+it, though Sesha is also called Ananta, the Infinite. The idea of
+the Infinite is a late one, however, and the symbolisation of it
+by Sesha is consistent with a lower significance at first. In Hindu
+popular fables the snake appears in its simple character. Such is the
+fable of which so many variants are found, the most familiar in the
+West being that of Bethgelert, and which is the thirteenth of the 4th
+Hitopadesa. The Brahman having left his child alone, while he performs
+a rite to his ancestors, on his return finds a pet mungoose (nakula)
+smeared with blood. Supposing the mungoose has devoured his child,
+he slays it, and then discovers that the poor animal had killed a
+serpent which had crept upon the infant. In the Kankato na the word
+interpreted by Sáyana as mungoose (Viverra Mungo, or ichneumon) is
+not the same (nakula), but it evidently means some animal sufficiently
+unimportant to cast contempt upon the Serpent.
+
+The universality of the Serpent as emblem of the healing art--found
+as such among the Egyptians, Greeks, Germans, Aztecs, and natives
+of Brazil--suggests that its longevity and power of casting its old
+skin, apparently renewing its youth, may have been the basis of this
+reputation. No doubt, also, they would have been men of scientific
+tendencies and of close observation who first learned the snake's
+susceptibilities to music, and how its poison might be drawn, or even
+its fangs, and who so gained reputation as partakers of its supposed
+powers. Through such primitive rationalism the Serpent might gain an
+important alliance and climb to make the asp-crown of Isis as goddess
+of health (the Thermuthis), to twine round the staff of Esculapius,
+to be emblem of Hippocrates, and ultimately survive to be the sign of
+the European leech, twining at last as a red stripe round the barber's
+pole. The primitive zoologist and snake-charmer would not only, in all
+likelihood, be a man cunning in the secrets of nature, but he would
+study to meet as far as he could the popular demand for palliatives
+and antidotes against snake-bites; all who escaped death after such
+wounds would increase his credit as a practitioner; and even were his
+mitigations necessarily few, his knowledge of the Serpent's habits
+and of its varieties might be the source of valuable precautions.
+
+Such probable facts as these must, of course, be referred to a
+period long anterior to the poetic serpent-symbolism of Egypt,
+and the elaborate Serpent mythology of Greece and Scandinavia. How
+simple ideas, having once gained popular prestige, may be caught up
+by theologians, poets, metaphysicians, and quacks, and modified into
+manifold forms, requires no proof in an age when we are witnessing the
+rationalistic interpretations by which the cross, the sacraments, and
+the other plain symbols are invested with all manner of philosophical
+meanings. The Serpent having been adopted as the sign-post of Egyptian
+and Assyrian doctors--and it may have been something of that kind
+that was set up by Moses in the wilderness--would naturally become
+the symbol of life, and after that it would do duty in any capacity
+whatever.
+
+An ingenious anthropologist, Mr. C. Staniland Wake, [231] supposes the
+Serpent in India to have been there also the symbol of præternatural
+and occult knowledge. Possibly this may have been so to a limited
+extent, and in post-Vedic times, but to me the accent of Hindu
+serpent-mythology appears to be emphatically in the homage paid to
+it as the guardian of the treasures. I may mention here also the
+theory propounded by Miss A. W. Buckland in a paper submitted to the
+Anthropological Institute in London, March 10, 1874, on 'The Serpent in
+connection with Primitive Metallurgy.' In this learned monograph the
+writer maintains that a connection may be observed between the early
+serpent-worship and a knowledge of metals, and indeed that the Serpent
+was the sign of Turanian metallurgists in the same way as I have
+suggested that in Egypt and Assyria it was the sign of physicians. She
+believes that the Serpent must have played some part in the original
+discovery of the metals and precious stones by man, in recognition
+of which that animal was first assumed as a totem and thence became
+an emblem. She states that traditional and ornamentational evidences
+show that the Turanian races were the first workers in metals, and
+that they migrated westward, probably from India to Egypt and Chaldæa,
+and thence to Europe, and even to America, bearing their art and its
+sign; and that they fled before the Aryans, who had the further art
+of smelting, and that the Aryan myths of serpent-slaying record the
+overthrow of the Turanian serpent-worshippers.
+
+I cannot think that Miss Buckland has made out a case for crediting
+nomadic Turanians with being the original metallurgists; though it
+is not impossible that it may have been a Scythian tribe in Southern
+India who gave its fame to 'the gold of Ophir,' which Max Müller has
+shown to have been probably an Indian region. [232] But that these
+early jewellers may have had the Serpent as their sign or emblem is
+highly probable, and in explanation of it there seems little reason
+to resort to the hypothesis of aid having been given by the Serpent
+to man in his discovery of metals. Surely the jewelled decoration of
+the serpent would in itself have been an obvious suggestion of it
+as the emblem of gems. Where a reptile for some reasons associated
+with the snake--the toad--had not the like bright spots, the cognate
+superstition might arise that its jewel is concealed in its head. And,
+finally, when these reptiles had been connected with gems, the eye
+of either would easily receive added rays from manifold eye-beams
+of superstition.
+
+We might also credit the primitive people with sufficient logical power
+to understand why they should infer that an animal so wonderfully
+and elaborately provided with deadliness as the Serpent should have
+tasks of corresponding importance. The medicine which healed man
+(therefore possibly gods), the treasures valued most by men (therefore
+by anthropomorphic deities), the fruit of immortality (which the gods
+might wish to monopolise),--might seem the supreme things of value,
+which the supreme perfection of the serpent's fang might be created
+to guard. This might be so in the heavens as well as in the world
+or the underworld. The rainbow was called the 'Celestial Serpent'
+in Persia, and the old notion that there is a bag of gold at the end
+of it is known to many an English and American child.
+
+Whatever may have been the nature of the original suggestion, there
+are definite reasons why, when the Serpent was caught up to be part
+of combinations representing a Principle of Evil, his character as
+guardian of treasures should become of great importance. Wealth is
+the characteristic of the gods of the Hades, or unseen world beneath
+the surface of the earth.
+
+In the vast Sinhalese demonology we find the highest class of demons
+(dewatawas) described as resident in golden palaces, glittering with
+gems, themselves with skins of golden hue, wearing cobras as ornaments,
+their king, Wessamony seated on a gem-throne and wielding a golden
+sword. Pluto is from the word for wealth (ploutos), as also is his
+Latin name Dis (dives). For such are lords of all beneath the sod,
+or the sea's surface. Therefore, it is important to observe, they own
+all the seeds in the earth so long as they remain seeds. So soon as
+they spring to flower, grain, fruitage, they belong not to the gods
+of Hades but to man: an idea which originated the myth of Persephone,
+and seems to survive in a school of extreme vegetarians, who refuse
+to eat vegetables not ripened in the sun.
+
+These considerations may enable us the better to apprehend the
+earlier characters of Ahi, the Throttler, and Vritra, the Coverer. As
+guardians of such hidden treasures as metals and drugs the Serpent
+might be baroneted and invoked to bestow favours; but those particular
+serpents which by hiding away the cloud-cows withheld the rain,
+or choked the rivers with drought, all to keep under-world garners
+fat and those of the upper world lean, were to be combated. Against
+them man invoked the celestial deities, reminding them that their own
+altars must lack offerings if they did not vanquish these thievish
+Binders and Concealers.
+
+The Serpent with its jewelled raiment, its self-renovating power, and
+its matchless accomplishments for lurking, hiding, fatally striking,
+was gradually associated with undulations of rivers and sea-waves on
+the earth, with the Milky-way, with 'coverers' of the sky--night and
+cloud--above all, with the darting, crooked, fork-tongued lightning. It
+may have been the lightning that was the Amrita churned out of the
+azure sea in the myth of the 'Mahábhárata,' when the gods and demons
+turned the mountain with a huge serpent for cord (p. 59), meaning
+the descent of fire, or its discovery; but other fair and fruitful
+things emerged also,--the goddess of wine, the cow of plenty, the
+tree of heaven. The inhabitants of Burmah still have a custom of
+pulling at a rope to produce rain. A rain party and a drought party
+tug against each other, the rain party being allowed the victory,
+which, in the popular notion is generally followed by rain. I have
+often seen snakes hung up after being killed to bring rain, in the
+State of Virginia. For there also rain means wealth. It is there
+believed also that, however much it may be crushed, a snake will
+not die entirely until it thunders. These are distant echoes of the
+Vedic sentences. 'Friend Vishnu,' says Indra, 'stride vastly; sky give
+room for the thunderbolt to strike; let us slay Vritra and let loose
+the waters.' 'When, Thunderer, thou didst by thy might slay Vritra,
+who stopped up the streams, then thy dear steeds grew.'
+
+Vritra, though from the same root as Varuna (the sky), means at first
+a coverer of the sky--cloud or darkness; hence eventually he becomes
+the hider, the thief, who steals and conceals the bounties of heaven--a
+rainless cloud, a suffocating night; and eventually Vritra coalesces
+with the most fearful phantasm of the Aryan mind--the serpent Ahi.
+
+The Greek word for Adder, echis, is a modification of Ahi. Perhaps
+there exists no more wonderful example of the unconscious idealism of
+human nature than the history of the name of the great Throttler, as it
+has been traced by Professor Max Müller. The Serpent was also called
+ahi in Sanskrit, in Greece echis or echidna, in Latin anguis. The
+root is ah in Sanskrit, or amh, which means to press together,
+to choke, to throttle. It is a curious root this amh, and it still
+lives in several modern words, In Latin it appears as ango, anxi,
+anctum, to strangle; in angina, quinsy; in angor, suffocation. But
+angor meant not only quinsy or compression of the neck: it assumed
+a moral import, and signifies anguish or anxiety. The two adjectives
+angustus, narrow, and anxius, uneasy, both came from the same root. In
+Greek the root retained its natural and material meaning; in eggys,
+near, and echis, serpent, throttler. But in Sanskrit it was chosen
+with great truth as the proper name of sin. Evil no doubt presented
+itself under various aspects to the human mind, and its names are
+many; but none so expressive as those derived from our root amh, to
+throttle. Amhas in Sanskrit means sin, but it does so only because
+it meant originally throttling--the consciousness of sin being
+like the grasp of the assassin on the throat of the victim. All
+who have seen and contemplated the statue of Laokoon and his sons,
+with the serpent coiled around them from head to foot, may realise
+what those ancients felt and saw when they called sin amhas, or the
+throttler. This amhas is the same as the Greek agos, sin. In Gothic
+the same root has produced agis, in the sense of fear, and from the
+same source we have awe, in awful, i.e., fearful, and ug in ugly. The
+English anguish is from the French angoise, a corruption of the Latin
+angustitæ, a strait. [233] In this wonderful history of a word, whose
+biography, as Max Müller in his Hibbert Lectures said of Deva, might
+fill a volume, may also be included our ogre, and also the German unke,
+which means a 'frog' or 'toad,' but originally a 'snake'--especially
+the little house-snake which plays a large part in Teutonic folklore,
+and was supposed to bring good luck. [234]
+
+This euphemistic variant is, however, the only exception I can find
+to the baleful branches into which the root ah has grown through
+the world; one of its fearful fruits being the accompanying figure,
+copied from one of the ornamental bosses of Wells Cathedral.
+
+The Adder demon has been universal. Herodotus relates that from a
+monster, half-woman, half-serpent, sprang the Scythians, and the fable
+has often been remembered in the history of the Turks. The 'Zohák'
+of Firdusi is the Iranian form of Ahi. The name is the Arabicised form
+of the 'Azhi Daháka' of the Avesta, the 'baneful serpent' vanquished
+by Thraêtaono (Traitana of the Vedas), and this Iranian name again
+(Dásaka) is Ahi. The name reappears in the Median Astyages. [235] Zohák
+is represented as having two serpents growing out of his shoulders,
+which the late Professor Wilson supposed might have been suggested by
+a phrase in the Kankato na (ye ansyá ye angyáh) which he translates,
+'Those who move with their shoulders, those who move with their
+bodies,' which, however, may mean 'those produced on the shoulders,
+biting with them,' and 'might furnish those who seek for analogies
+between Iranian and Indian legends with a parallel in the story of
+Zohák.' The legend alluded to is a favourite one in Persia, where it
+is used to point a moral, as in the instruction of the learned Saib to
+the Prince, his pupil. Saib related to the boy the story of King Zohák,
+to whom a magician came, and, breathing on him, caused two serpents to
+come forth from the region of his breast, and told him they would bring
+him great glory and pleasure, provided he would feed these serpents
+with the poorest of his subjects. This Zohák did; and he had great
+pleasure and wealth until his subjects revolted and shut the King up
+in a cavern where he became himself a prey to the two serpents. The
+young Prince to whom this legend was related was filled with horror,
+and begged Saib to tell him a pleasanter one. The teacher then related
+that a young Sultan placed his confidence in an artful courtier
+who filled his mind with false notions of greatness and happiness,
+and introduced into his heart Pride and Voluptuousness. To those two
+passions the young Sultan sacrificed the interests of his kingdom,
+until his subjects banished him; but his Pride and Voluptuousness
+remained in him, and, unable to gratify them in his exile, he died
+of rage and despair. The prince-pupil said, 'I like this story better
+than the other.' 'And yet,' said Saib, 'it is the same.'
+
+It is curious that this old Persian fable should have survived in
+the witch-lore of America, and at last supplied Nathaniel Hawthorne
+with the theme of one of his beautiful allegorical romances,--that,
+namely, of the man with a snake in his bosom which ever threatened to
+throttle him if he did not feed it. It came to the American fabulist
+through many a mythical skin, so to say. One of the most beautiful it
+has worn is a story which is still told by mothers to their children
+in some districts of Germany. It relates that a little boy and girl
+went into the fields to gather strawberries. After they had gathered
+they met an aged woman, who asked for some of the fruit. The little
+girl emptied her basket into the old woman's lap; but the boy clutched
+his, and said he wanted his berries for himself. When they had passed
+on the old woman called them back, and presented to each a little
+box. The girl opened hers, and found in it two white caterpillars which
+speedily became butterflies, then grew to be angels with golden wings,
+and bore her away to Paradise. The boy opened his box, and from it
+issued two tiny black worms; these swiftly swelled to huge serpents,
+which, twining all about the boy's limbs, drew him away into the dark
+forest; where this Teutonic Laokoon still remains to illustrate in
+his helplessness the mighty power of little faults to grow into bad
+habits and bind the whole man.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE BASILISK.
+
+ The Serpent's gem--The Basilisk's eye--Basiliscus mitratus--
+ House-snakes in Russia and Germany--King-snakes--Heraldic
+ dragon--Henry III.--Melusina--The Laidley Worm--Victorious
+ dragons--Pendragon--Merlin and Vortigern--Medicinal dragons.
+
+
+A Dragoon once presented himself before Frederick the Great and offered
+the king a small pebble, which, he said, had been cut from the head
+of a king-snake, and would no doubt preserve the throne. Frederick
+probably trusted more to dragoons than dragons, but he kept the little
+curiosity, little knowing, perhaps, that it would be as prolific
+of legends as the cock's egg, to which it is popularly traceable,
+in cockatrices (whose name may have given rise to the cock-fables)
+or basilisks. It has now taken its place in German folklore that
+Frederick owed his greatness to a familiar kept near him in the form
+of a basilisk. But there are few parts of the world where similar
+legends might not spring up and coil round any famous reputation. An
+Indian newspaper, the Lawrence Gazette, having mentioned that the
+ex-king of Oudh is a collector of snakes, adds--'Perhaps he wishes to
+become possessed of the precious jewel which some serpents are said
+to contain, or of that species of snake by whose means, it is said,
+a person can fly in the air.' Dr. Dennys, in whose work on Chinese
+Folklore this is quoted, finds the same notion in China. In one
+story a foreigner repeatedly tries to purchase a butcher's bench,
+but the butcher refuses to sell it, suspecting there must be some
+hidden value in the article; for this reason he puts the bench by,
+and when the foreigner returns a year afterwards, learns from him
+that lodged in the bench was a snake, kept alive by the blood soaking
+through it, which held a precious gem in its mouth--quite worthless
+after the snake was dead. Cursing his stupidity at having put the
+bench out of use, the butcher cut it open and found the serpent dead,
+holding in its mouth something like the eye of a dried fish.
+
+Here we have two items which may only be accidental, and yet, on the
+other hand, possibly possess significance. The superior knowledge
+about the serpent attributed to a 'foreigner' may indicate that such
+stories in China are traditionally alien, imported with the Buddhists;
+and the comparison of the dead gem to an eye may add a little to
+the probabilities that this magical jewel, whether in head of toad or
+serpent, is the reptile's eye as seen by the glamour of human eyes. The
+eye of the basilisk is at once its wealth-producing, its fascinating,
+and its paralysing talisman, though all these beliefs have their
+various sources and their several representations in mythology. That
+it was seen as a gem was due, as I think, to the jewelled skin of most
+serpents, which gradually made them symbols of riches; that it was
+believed able to fascinate may be attributed to the general principles
+of illusion already considered; but its paralysing power, its evil
+eye, connects it with a notion, found alike in Egypt and India, that
+the serpent kills with its eye. Among Sanskrit words for serpent are
+'drig-visha' and 'drishti-visha'--literally 'having poison in the eye.'
+
+While all serpents were lords and guardians of wealth, certain of
+them were crested, or had small horns, which conveyed the idea of a
+crowned and imperial snake, the basiliskos. Naturalists have recognised
+this origin of the name by giving the same (Basiliscus mitratus)
+to a genus of Iguanidæ, remarkable for a membranous crest not only
+on the occiput but also along the back, which this lizard can raise
+and depress at pleasure. But folklore, the science of the ignorant,
+had established the same connection by alleging that the basilisk
+is hatched from the egg of a black cock,--which was the peasant's
+explanation of the word cockatrice. De Plancy traces one part of
+the belief to a disease which causes the cock to produce a small
+egg-like substance; but the resemblance between its comb and the
+crests of serpent and frog [236] was the probable link between them;
+while the ancient eminence of the cock as the bird of dawn relegated
+the origin of the basilisk to a very exceptional member of the
+family--a black cock in its seventh year. The useful fowl would seem,
+however, to have suffered even so slightly mainly through a phonetic
+misconception. The word 'cockatrice' is 'crocodile' transformed. We
+have it in the Old French 'cocatrix,' which again is from the Spanish
+'cocotriz,' meaning 'crocodile,'--krokodeilos; which Herodotus, by the
+way, uses to denote a kind of lizard, and whose sanctity has extended
+from the Nile to the Danube, where folklore declares that the skeleton
+of the lizard presents an image of the passion of Christ, and it must
+never be harmed. Thus 'cockatrice' has nothing to do with 'cock' or
+'coq,' though possibly the coincidence of the sound has marred the
+ancient fame of the 'Bird of Dawn.' Indeed black cocks have been so
+generally slain on this account that they were for a long time rare,
+and so the basilisks had a chance of becoming extinct. There were
+fabulous creatures enough, however, to perpetuate the basilisk's
+imaginary powers, some of which will be hereafter considered. We
+may devote the remainder of this chapter to the consideration of a
+variant of dragon-mythology, which must be cleared out of our way in
+apprehending the Dragon. This is the agathodemonic or heraldic Dragon,
+which has inherited the euphemistic characters of the treasure-guarding
+and crowned serpent.
+
+In Slavonic legend the king-serpent plays a large part, and innumerable
+stories relate the glories of some peasant child that, managing to
+secure a tiny gem from his crown, while the reptilian monarch was
+bathing, found the jewel daily surrounded with new treasures. This is
+the same serpent which, gathering up the myths of lightning and of
+comets, flies through many German legends as the red Drake, Kolbuk,
+Alp, or Alberflecke, dropping gold when it is red, corn if blue,
+and yielding vast services and powers to those who can magically
+master it. The harmless serpents of Germany were universally invested
+with agathodemonic functions, though they still bear the name that
+relates them to Ahi, viz., unken. Of these household-snakes Grimm
+and Simrock give much information. It is said that in fields and
+houses they approach solitary children and drink milk from the dish
+with them. On their heads they wear golden crowns, which they lay
+down before drinking, and sometimes forget when they retire. They
+watch over children in the cradle, and point out to their favourites
+where treasures are hidden. To kill them brings misfortune. If the
+parents surprise the snake with the child and kill it, the child
+wastes away. Once the snake crept into the mouth of a pregnant woman,
+and when the child was born the snake was found closely coiled around
+its neck, and could only be untwined by a milk-bath; but it never left
+the child's side, ate and slept with it, and never did it harm. If
+such serpents left a house or farm, prosperity went with them. In
+some regions it is said a male and female snake appear whenever the
+master or mistress of the house is about to die, and the legends of
+the Unken sometimes relapse into the original fear out of which they
+grew. Indeed, their vengeance is everywhere much dreaded, while their
+gratitude, especially for milk, is as imperishable as might be expected
+from their ancestor's quarrel with Indra about the stolen cows. In the
+Gesta Romanorum it is related that a milkmaid was regularly approached
+at milking-time by a large snake to which she gave milk. The maid
+having left her place, her successor found on the milking-stool a
+golden crown, on which was inscribed 'In Gratitude.' The crown was
+sent to the milkmaid who had gone, but from that time the snake was
+never seen again. [237]
+
+In England serpents were mastered by the vows of a saintly
+Christian. The Knight Bran in the Isle of Wight is said to have
+picked up the cockatrice egg, to have been pursued by the serpents,
+which he escaped by vowing to build St. Lawrence Church in that
+island,--the egg having afterwards brought him endless wealth and
+uniform success in combat. With the manifold fables concerning the
+royal dragon would seem to blend traditions of the astrological,
+celestial, and lightning serpents. But these would coincide with
+a development arising from the terrestrial worms and their heroic
+slayers. The demonic dragon with his terrible eye might discern
+from afar the advent of his predestined destroyer. It might seek
+to devour him in infancy. As the comet might be deemed a portent of
+some powerful prince born on earth, so it might be a compliment to a
+royal family, on the birth of a prince, to report that a dragon had
+been seen. Nor would it be a long step from this office of the dragon
+as the herald of greatness to placing that monster on banners. From
+these banners would grow sagas of dragons encountered and slain. The
+devices might thus multiply. Some process of this kind would account
+for the entirely good reputation of the dragon in China and Japan,
+where it is the emblem of all national grandeur. It would also appear
+to underlie the proud titles of the Pythian Apollo and Bellerophon,
+gained from the monsters they were said to have slain. The city of
+Worms takes its name from the serpent instead of its slayer. [238]
+Pendragon, in the past--and even our dragoon of the present--are
+names in which the horrors of the monster become transformed in the
+hero's fame. The dragon, says Mr. Hardwicke, was the standard of the
+West Saxons, and of the English previous to the Norman Conquest. It
+formed one of the supporters of the royal arms borne by all the
+Tudor monarchs, with the exception of Queen Mary, who substituted the
+eagle. Several of the Plantagenet kings and princes inscribed a figure
+of the dragon on their banners and shields. Peter Langtoffe says,
+at the battle of Lewis, fought in 1264, 'The king schewed forth his
+schild, his dragon full austere.' Another authority says the said king
+(Henry III.) ordered to be made 'a dragon in the manner of a banner,
+of a certain red silk embroidered with gold; its tongue like a flaming
+fire must always seem to be moving; its eyes must be made of sapphire,
+or of some other stone suitable for that purpose.' [239]
+
+It will thus be seen that an influence has been introduced into
+dragon-lore which has no relation whatever to the demon itself. This
+will explain those variants of the legend of Melusina--the famous
+woman-serpent--which invest her with romance. Melusina, whose
+indiscreet husband glanced at her in forbidden hours, when she was in
+her serpent shape, was long the glory of the Chateau de Lusignan, where
+her cries announced the approaching death of her descendants. There is
+a peasant family still dwelling in Fontainebleau Forest who claim to
+be descended from Melusina; and possibly some instance of this kind
+may have dropped like a seed into the memory of the author of 'Elsie
+Venner' to reappear in one of the finest novels of our generation. The
+corresponding sentiment is found surrounding the dragon in the familiar
+British legend of the Laidley [240] Worm. The king of Northumberland
+brought home a new Queen, who was also a sorceress, and being envious
+of the beauty of her step-daughter, changed that poor princess into
+the worm which devastated all Spindleton Heugh. For seven miles every
+green thing was blighted by its venom, and seven cows had to yield
+their daily supplies of milk. Meanwhile the king and his son mourned
+the disappearance of the princess. The young prince fitted out a ship
+to go and slay the dragon. The wicked Queen tries unsuccessfully to
+prevent the expedition. The prince leaps from his ship into the shallow
+sea, and wades to the rock around which the worm lay coiled. But as
+he drew near the monster said to him:
+
+
+ Oh, quit thy sword, and bend thy bow,
+ And give me kisses three;
+ If I'm not won ere the sun goes down,
+ Won I shall never be.
+
+ He quitted his sword and bent his bow,
+ He gave her kisses three;
+ She crept into a hole a worm,
+ But out stept a ladye.
+
+
+In the end the prince managed to have the wicked Queen transformed
+into a toad, which in memory thereof, as every Northumbrian boy knows,
+spits fire to this day: but it is notable that the sorceress was not
+transformed into a dragon, as the story would probably have run if the
+dragon form had not already been detached from its original character,
+and by many noble associations been rendered an honourable though
+fearful shape for maidens like this princess and like Melusina.
+
+In the same direction point the legends which show dragons as sometimes
+victorious over their heroic assailants. Geoffrey of Monmouth so
+relates of King Morvidus of Northumbria, who encountered a dragon
+that came from the Irish Sea, and was last seen disappearing in
+the monster's jaws 'like a small fish.' A more famous instance is
+that of Beowulf, whose Anglo-Saxon saga is summed up by Professor
+Morley as follows:--'Afterward the broad land came under the sway of
+Beowulf. He held it well for fifty winters, until in the dark night
+a dragon, which in a stone mound watched a hoard of gold and cups,
+won mastery. It was a hoard heaped up in sin, its lords were long
+since dead; the last earl before dying hid it in the earth-cave, and
+for three hundred winters the great scather held the cave, until some
+man, finding by chance a rich cup, took it to his lord. Then the den
+was searched while the worm slept; again and again when the dragon
+awoke there had been theft. He found not the man but wasted the whole
+land with fire; nightly the fiendish air-flyer made fire grow hateful
+to the sight of men. Then it was told to Beowulf.... He sought out
+the dragon's den and fought with him in awful strife. One wound the
+poison-worm struck in the flesh of Beowulf.' Whereof Beowulf died.
+
+Equally significant is the legend that when King Arthur had embarked
+at Southampton on his expedition against Rome, about midnight he
+saw in a dream 'a bear flying in the air, at the noise of which all
+the shores trembled; also a terrible dragon, flying from the west,
+which enlightened the country with the brightness of its eyes. When
+these two met they had a dreadful fight, but the dragon with its fiery
+breath burned the bear which assaulted him, and threw him down scorched
+to the earth.' This vision was taken to augur Arthur's victory. The
+father of Arthur had already in a manner consecrated the symbol, being
+named Uther Pendragon (dragon's head). On the death of his brother
+Aurelius, it was told 'there appeared a star of wonderful magnitude
+and brightness,' darting forth a ray, at the end of which was a globe
+of fire, in form of a dragon, out of whose mouth issued two rays,
+one of which seemed to stretch out itself towards the Irish Sea,
+and ended in seven lesser rays.' Merlin interpreted this phenomenon
+to mean that Uther would be made king and conquer various regions;
+and after his first victory Uther had two golden dragons made, one
+of which he presented to Winchester Cathedral, retaining the other
+to attend him in his wars.
+
+In the legend of Merlin and Vortigern we find the Dragon so completely
+developed into a merely warrior-like symbol that its moral character
+has to be determined by its colour. As in the two armies of serpents
+seen by Zoroaster, in Persian legends, which fought in the air, the
+victory of the white over the black foreshowing the triumph of Ormuzd
+over Ahriman, the tyranny of Vortigern is represented by a red dragon,
+while Aurelius and Uther are the two heads of a white dragon. Merlin,
+about to be buried alive, in pursuance of the astrologer's declaration
+to Vortigern that so only would his ever-falling wall stand firm,
+had revealed that the recurring disaster was caused by the struggle
+of these two dragons underground. When the monsters were unearthed
+they fought terribly, until the white one
+
+
+ Hent the red with all his might,
+ And to the ground he him cast,
+ And, with the fire of his blast,
+ Altogether brent the red,
+ That never of him was founden shred;
+ But dust upon the ground he lay.
+
+
+The white dragon vanished and was seen no more; but the tyrant
+Vortigern fulfilled the fate of the red dragon, being burnt in his
+castle near Salisbury. These two dragons met again, however, as red
+and white roses.
+
+Many developments corresponding to these might be cited. One indeed
+bears a startling resemblance to our English legends. Of King Nuat
+Meiamoun, whose conquest of Egypt is placed by G. Maspero about
+B.C. 664-654, the Ethiopian 'Stele of the Dream' relates:--'His
+Majesty beheld a dream in the night, two snakes, one to his right,
+the other to his left, (and) when His Majesty awoke ... he said:
+'Explain these things to me on the moment,' and lo! they explained
+it to him, saying: 'Thou wilt have the Southern lands, and seize the
+Northern, and the two crowns will be put on thy head, (for) there is
+given unto thee the earth in all its width and its breadth.' These
+two snakes were probably suggested by the uræi of the Egyptian diadem.
+
+Beyond the glory reflected upon a monster from his conqueror,
+there would be reason why the alchemist and the wizard should
+encourage that aspect of the dragon. The more perilous that Gorgon
+whose blood Esculapius used, the more costly such medicament; while,
+that the remedy may be advantageous, the monster must not be wholly
+destructive. This is so with the now destructive now preservative
+forces of nature, and how they may blend in the theories, and subserve
+the interests, of pretenders is well shown in a German work on Alchemy
+(1625) quoted by Mr. Hardwicke. 'There is a dragon lives in the forest,
+who has no want of poison; when he sees the sun or fire he spits venom,
+which flies about fearfully. No living animal can be cured of it;
+even the basilisk does not equal him. He who can properly kill this
+serpent has overcome all his danger. His colours increase in death;
+physic is produced from his poison, which he entirely consumes,
+and eats his own venomous tail. This must be accomplished by him,
+in order to produce the noblest balm. Such great virtue as we will
+point out herein that all the learned shall rejoice.'
+
+It will be readily understood that these traditions and fables would
+combine to 'hedge about a king' by ascribing to him familiarity
+with a monster so formidable to common people, and even investing
+him with its attributes. The dragon's name, drakôn, derived from the
+Sanskrit word for serpent (drig-visha), came to mean 'the thing that
+sees.' While this gave rise to many legends of præternatural powers
+of vision gained by tasting or bathing in a dragon's blood, as in
+the poem of Siegfried; or from waters it guarded, as 'Eye Well,'
+in which Guy's dragon dipped its tail to recover from wounds; the
+Sanskrit sense of eye-poisoning was preserved in legends of occult
+and dangerous powers possessed by kings,--one of the latest being the
+potent evil eye popularly ascribed in Italy to the late Pius IX. But
+these stories are endless; the legends adduced will show the sense
+of all those which, if unexplained, might interfere with our clear
+insight into the dragon itself, whose further analysis will prove it
+to be wholly bad,--the concentrated terrors of nature.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE DRAGON'S EYE.
+
+ The Eye of Evil--Turner's Dragons--Cloud-phantoms--Paradise and
+ the Snake--Prometheus and Jove--Art and Nature--Dragon forms:
+ Anglo-Saxon, Italian, Egyptian, Greek, German--The modern
+ conventional Dragon.
+
+
+The etymologies of the words Dragon and Ophis given in the preceding
+chapter, ideally the same, both refer to powers of the serpent which
+it does not possess in nature,--the præternatural vision and the
+glance that kills. The real nature of the snake is thus overlaid;
+we have now to deal with the creation of another world.
+
+There are various conventionalised types of the Dragon, but through
+them all one feature is constant,--the idealised serpent. Its presence
+is the demonic or supernatural sign. The heroic dragon-slayer must not
+be supposed to have wrestled with mere flesh and blood, in whatever
+powerful form. The combat which immortalises him is waged with all
+the pains and terrors of earth and heaven concentrated and combined
+in one fearful form.
+
+Impossible and phantasmal as was this form in nature, its mystical
+meaning in the human mind was terribly real. It was this Eye of
+anti-human nature which filled man with dismay, and conjured up
+the typical phantom. It was this Pain, purposed and purposing, the
+Agony of far-searching vision, subtlest skill, silently creeping,
+winged, adapted to meet his every device with a cleverer device,
+which gradually impressed mankind with belief in a general principle
+of antagonism to human happiness.
+
+It is only as a combination that any dragon form is miraculous. Every
+constituent feature and factor of it is in nature, but here they are
+rolled together in one pandemonic expression and terror. Yet no such
+form loses its relations with nature: it is lightning and tempest,
+fever-bearing malaria and fire, venom and fang, slime and jungle,
+all the ferocities of the earth, air, and heavens, gathering to
+their fatal artistic force, and waylaying man at every step in his
+advance. In Turner's picture of Apollo slaying the Python there is
+a marvellous suggestion of the natural conceptions from which the
+dragon was evolved. The fearful folds of the monster, undulating
+with mound and rock on which he lies, at points almost blend with
+tangle of bushes and the jagged chaos amid which he stretches. The
+hard, wild, cruel aspects of inanimate nature seem here and there
+rankly swelling to horrible life, as yet but half-distinguishable
+from the stony-hearted matrix; the crag begins to coil and quiver,
+the jungle puts forth in claws; but above all appear the monstrous
+EYES, in which the forces of pain, hardship, obstacle have at last
+acquired purpose and direction. The god confronts them with eyes yet
+keener; his arrow, feathered with eyebeams, has reached its mark,
+straight between the monster's eyes; but there is no more anger in
+his face than might mar the calm strength of a gardener clearing away
+the stone and thicket that make the constituent parts of Python.
+
+If we turn now to the neighbouring picture in the National Gallery
+by the same artist, the Hesperian Gardens and their Guard, we behold
+the Dragon on his high crag outlining and vitalising not only the
+edge of rock but also the sky it meets. His breath steams up into
+cloud. The heavens also have their terrors, which take on eyes and
+coils. On the line of the horizon were hung the pictures of the
+primitive art-gallery. Imagination painted them with brush dipped
+now in blackness of the storm, now in fires of the lightning or the
+sunset, but the forms were born of experience, of earthly struggle,
+defeat, and victory.
+
+As I write these words, I lay aside my pen to look across a little
+lake amid the lonely hills of Wales to a sunset which is flooding the
+sky with glory. Through the almost greenish sky the wind is bearing
+fantastic clouds, that sometimes take the shape of chariots, in which
+cloud-veiled forms are seated, and now great birds with variegated
+plumage, all hastening as it were to some gathering-place of aerial
+gods. Beneath a long bar of maroon-tint stretches a sea of yellow
+light, on the hither side of which is set a garden of fleecy trees
+touched with golden fruit. Amid them plays a fountain of changing
+colours. On the left has stood, fast as a mountain range, a mass
+of dark-blue cloud with uneven peaks; suddenly a pink faint glow
+shines from behind that leaden mass, and next appears, sinuous with
+its long indented top, the mighty folds of a fiery serpent. Nay,
+its head is seen, its yawning lacertine jaws, its tinted crest. It
+is sleepless Ladon on his high barrier keeping watch and ward over
+the Hesperian garden.
+
+Juno set him there, but he is the son of Ge,--the earth. The tints of
+heaven invest and transform, and in a sense create him; but he would
+never have been born mythologically had it not been that in this world
+stings hover near all sweetness, danger environs beauty, and, as Plato
+said, 'Good things come hard.' The grace and lustre of the serpent
+with his fatal fang preceded him, and all the perils that lurk beneath
+things fair and fascinating. So far there is nothing essentially moral
+or unmoral about him. This dragon is a shape designed by primitive
+meteorology and metaphysics together. Man has asked what is so, and
+this is the answer: he has not yet asked why it is so, whether it ought
+to be so, and whether it may not be otherwise. The challenge has not
+yet been given, the era of combat not yet arrived. The panoplied guard
+and ally of gods as unmoral as himself has yet to be transformed under
+the touch of the religious sentiment, and expelled from the heaven of
+nobler deities as a dragon cast down, deformed, and degraded for ever.
+
+As thought goes on, such allies compromise their employers; the
+creator's work reflects the creator's character; and after many
+timorous ages we find the dragon-guarded deities going down with
+their cruel defenders. It is not without significance that in the
+Sanskrit dictionary the most ancient of all words for god, Asura,
+has for its primary meaning 'demon' or 'devil:' the gods and dragons
+united to churn the ocean for their own wealth, and in the end they
+were tarred with one brush. I have already described in the beginning
+of this work the degradation of deities, and need here barely recall
+to the reader's memory the forces which operated to that result. The
+bearing of that force upon the celestial or paradise-guarding Serpent
+is summed up in one quatrain of Omar Khayyám:--
+
+
+ O Thou who man of baser earth didst make,
+ And e'en in Paradise devised the Snake;
+ For all the sin wherewith the face of man
+ Is blackened, man's forgiveness give--and take!
+
+
+The heart of humanity anticipated its logic by many ages, and, long
+before the daring genius of the Persian poet wrote this immortal
+epitaph on the divine allies of the Serpent, heroes had given battle
+to the whole fraternity. Nay, in their place had arisen a new race
+of gods, whose theoretical omnipotence was gladly surrendered in the
+interest of their righteousness; and there was now war in heaven;
+the dragon and his allies were cast down, and man was now free to
+fight them as enemies of the gods as well as himself. Woe henceforth
+to any gods suspected of taking sides with the dragon in this man's
+life-and-death struggle with the ferocities of nature, and with his
+own terrors reflected from them! The legend of Prometheus was their
+unconsciously-given 'notice to quit,' though it waited many centuries
+for its great interpreter. It is Goethe who alone has seen how pale
+and weak grow Jove's fireworks before the thought-thunderbolts of
+the artist, launched far beyond the limitations that chain him in
+nature. Gods are even yet going down in many lands before the sublime
+sentence of Prometheus:--
+
+
+ Curtain thy heavens, thou Jove, with clouds and mist,
+ And, like a boy that moweth thistles down,
+ Unloose thy spleen on oaks and mountain-tops;
+ Yet canst thou not deprive me of my earth,
+ Nor of my hut, the which thou didst not build,
+ Nor of my hearth, whose little cheerful flame
+ Thou enviest me!
+
+ I know not aught within the universe
+ More slight, more pitiful than you, ye gods!
+ Who nurse your majesty with scant supplies
+ Of offerings wrung from fear, and muttered prayers,
+ And needs must starve, were't not that babes and beggars
+ Are hope-besotted fools!
+
+ When I was yet a child, and knew not whence
+ My being came, nor where to turn its powers,
+ Up to the sun I bent my wildered eye,
+ As though above, within its glorious orb,
+ There dwelt an ear to listen to my plaint,
+ A heart, like mine, to pity the oppressed.
+
+ Who gave me succour
+ Against the Titans in their tyrannous might?
+ Who rescued me from death--from slavery?
+ Thou!--thou, my soul, burning with hallowed fire,
+ Thou hast thyself alone achieved it all!
+ Yet didst thou, in thy young simplicity,
+ Glow with misguided thankfulness to him
+ That slumbers on in idlenesse there above!
+
+ I reverence thee?
+ Wherefore? Hast thou ever
+ Lightened the sorrows of the heavy laden?
+ Thou ever stretch thy hand to still the tears
+ Of the perplexed in spirit?
+ Was it not
+ Almighty Time, and ever-during Fate--
+ My lords and thine--that shaped and fashioned me
+ Into the MAN I am?
+
+ Belike it was thy dream
+ That I should hate life--fly to wastes and wilds,
+ For that the buds of visionary thought
+ Did not all ripen into goodly flowers?
+
+ Here do I sit and mould
+ Men after mine own image--
+ A race that may be like unto myself,
+ To suffer, weep; to enjoy, and to rejoice;
+ And, like myself, unheeding all of thee!
+
+
+The myth of Prometheus reveals the very dam of all dragons,--the mere
+terrorism of nature which paralysed the energies of man. Man's first
+combat was to be with his own quailing heart. Apollo driving back the
+Argives to their ships with the image of the Gorgon's head on Jove's
+shield is Homer's picture of the fears that unnerved heroes:--
+
+
+ Phoebus himself the rushing battle led;
+ A veil of clouds involved his radiant head:
+ High held before him, Jove's enormous shield
+ Portentous shone, and shaded all the field:
+ Vulcan to Jove th' immortal gift consigned,
+ To scatter hosts, and terrify mankind....
+ Deep horror seizes ev'ry Grecian breast,
+ Their force is humbled, and their fear confest.
+ So flies a herd of oxen, scattered wide,
+ No swain to guard them, and no day to guide,
+ When two fell lions from the mountain come,
+ And spread the carnage thro' the shady gloom....
+ The Grecians gaze around with wild despair,
+ Confused, and weary all their pow'rs with prayer. [241]
+
+
+A generation whose fathers remembered the time when men educated
+in universities regarded Franklin with his lightning-rod as
+'heaven-defying,' can readily understand the legend of Vulcan--type of
+the untamed force of fire--being sent to bind Prometheus, master of
+fire. [242] How much fear of the forces of nature, as personified by
+superstition, levelled against the first creative minds and hands the
+epithets which Franklin heard, and which still fall upon the heads
+of some scientific investigators! Storm, lightning, rock, ocean,
+vulture,--these blend together with the intelligent cruelty of Jove
+in the end; and behold, the Dragon! The terrors of nature, which
+drive cowards to their knees, raise heroes to their height. Then
+it is a flame of genius matched against mad thunderbolts. Whether
+the jealous nature-god be Jehovah forbidding sculpture, demanding
+an altar of unhewn stone, and refusing the fruits of Cain's garden,
+or Zeus jealous of the artificer's flame, they are thrown into the
+Opposition by the artist; and when the two next meet, he of the
+thunderbolt with all his mob will be the Dragon, and Prometheus will
+be the god, sending to its heart his arrow of light.
+
+The dragon forms which have become familiar to us through mediæval
+and modern iconography are of comparatively little importance as
+illustrating the social or spiritual conditions out of which they
+grew, and of which they became emblems. They long ago ceased to be
+descriptive, and in the rude periods or places a very few scratches
+were sometimes enough to indicate the dragon; such mere suggestions
+in the end allowing large freedom to subsequent designers in varying
+original types.
+
+As to external form, the various shapes of the more primitive
+dragons have been largely determined by the mythologic currents
+amid which they have fallen, though their original basis in nature
+may generally be traced. In the far North, where the legends of
+swan-maidens, pigeon-maidens, and vampyres were paramount in the
+Middle Ages, we find the bird-shaped dragon very common. Sometimes
+the serpent-characteristics are pronounced, as in this ancient French
+Swan-Dragon (Fig. 26); but, again, and especially in regions where
+serpents are rare and comparatively innocuous, the serpent tail is
+often conventionalised away, as in this initial V from the Cædmon
+Manuscript, tenth century (Fig. 27), a fair example of the ornamental
+Anglo-Saxon dragon. The cuttlefish seems to have suggested the
+animalised form of the Hydra, which in turn helped to shape the Dragon
+of the Apocalypse. Yet the Hydra in pictorial representation appears
+to have been influenced by Assyrian ideas; for although the monster
+had nine heads, it is often given seven (number of the Hathors, or
+Fates) by the engravers, as in Fig. 6. The conflicts of Hercules with
+the Hydra repeated that of Bel with Tiamat ('the Deep'), and had no
+doubt its counterpart in that of Michael with the Dragon,--the finest
+representation of which, perhaps, is the great fresco by Spinello
+(fourteenth century) at Arezzo, a group from which is presented in
+Fig. 28. In this case the wings represent those always attributed
+in Semitic mythology to the Destroying Angel. The Egyptian Dragon,
+of which the crocodile is the basis, at an early period entered
+into christian symbolism, and gradually effaced most of the pagan
+monsters. The crocodile and the alligator, besides being susceptible
+of many horrible variations in pictorial treatment, were particularly
+acceptable to the Christian propaganda, because of the sanctity
+attached to them by African tribes,--a sanctity which continues to
+this day in many parts of that country, where to kill one of these
+reptiles is believed to superinduce dangerous inundations. In Semitic
+traditions, also, Leviathan was generally identified as a demonic
+crocodile, and the feat of destroying him was calculated to impress the
+imaginations of all varieties of people in the Southern countries for
+which Christianity struggled so long. This form contributed some of its
+characters to the lacertine dragons which were so often painted in the
+Middle Ages, with what effect may be gathered from the accompanying
+design by Albert Durer (Fig. 29). In this loathsome creature, which
+seeks to prevent deliverance of 'the spirits in prison,' we may remark
+the sly and cruel eye: the præternatural vision of such monsters was
+still strong in the traditions of the sixteenth century. In looking
+at this lizard-guard at the mouth of hell we may realise that it
+has been by some principle of psychological selection that the
+reptilian kingdom gradually gained supremacy in these portrayals of
+the repulsive. If we compare with Fig. 29 the well-known form of the
+Chimæra (Fig. 30), most of us will be conscious of a sense of relief;
+for though the reptilian form is present in the latter, it is but an
+appendage--almost an ornament--to the lion. It is impossible to feel
+any loathing towards this spirited Trisomatos, and one may recognise
+in it a different animus from that which depicted the christian
+dragon. One was meant to attest the boldness of the hero who dared
+to assail it; the other was meant, in addition to that, to excite
+hatred and horror of the monster assailed. We may, therefore, find a
+very distinct line drawn between such forms as the Chimæra and such as
+the Hydra, or our conventional Dragon. The hairy inhabitants of Lycia,
+human or bestial, whom Bellerophon conquered, [243] were not meant to
+be such an abstract expression of the evil principle in nature as the
+Dragon, and while they are generalised, the elements included are also
+limited. But the Dragon, with its claws, wings, scales, barbed and
+coiling tail, its fiery breath, forked tongue, and frequent horns,
+includes the organic, inorganic, the terrestrial and atmospheric,
+and is the combination of harmful contrivances in nature.
+
+Nearly all of the Dragon forms, whatever their original types and their
+region, are represented in the conventional monster of the European
+stage, which meets the popular conception. This Dragon is a masterpiece
+of the popular imagination, and it required many generations to give it
+artistic shape. Every Christmas he appears in some London pantomime,
+with aspect similar to that which he has worn for many ages. His body
+is partly green, with memories of the sea and of slime, and partly
+brown or dark, with lingering shadow of storm-clouds. The lightning
+flames still in his red eyes, and flashes from his fire-breathing
+mouth. The thunderbolt of Jove, the spear of Wodan, are in the barbed
+point of his tail. His huge wings--batlike, spiked--sum up all the
+mythical life of extinct Harpies and Vampyres. Spine of crocodile
+is on his neck, tail of the serpent, and all the jagged ridges of
+rocks and sharp thorns of jungles bristle around him, while the ice
+of glaciers and brassy glitter of sunstrokes are in his scales. He is
+ideal of all that is hard, obstructive, perilous, loathsome, horrible
+in nature: every detail of him has been seen through and vanquished
+by man, here or there, but in selection and combination they rise
+again as principles, and conspire to form one great generalisation
+of the forms of Pain--the sum of every creature's worst.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE COMBAT.
+
+ The pre-Munchausenite world--The Colonial Dragon--Io's journey
+ --Medusa--British Dragons--The Communal Dragon--Savage Saviours
+ --A Mimac helper--The Brutal Dragon--Woman protected--The Saint
+ of the Mikados.
+
+
+The realm of the Unknown has now, by exploration of our planet
+and by science, been pretty well pressed into annexation with the
+Unknowable. In early periods, however, unexplored lands and seas
+existed only in the human imagination, and men appear to have included
+them within the laws of analogy as slowly as their descendants so
+included the planets. The monstrous forms with which superstition
+now peoples regions of space that cannot be visited could then dwell
+securely in parts of the world where their existence or non-existence
+could not be verified. Science had not yet shown the simplicity and
+unity underlying the superficial varieties of nature; and though
+Rudolf Raspe appeared many times, and related the adventures of
+his Baron Munchausen in many languages, it was only a hundred years
+ago that he managed to raise a laugh over them. It has taken nearly
+another hundred to reveal the humour of Munchausenisms that relate
+to invisible and future worlds.
+
+The Dragon which now haunts the imagination of a few compulsory
+voyagers beyond the grave originated in speculations concerning the
+unseen shores of equally mythical realms, whose burning zones and
+frozen seas had not yet been detached from this planet to make the
+Inferno of another. In our section on Demonology we have considered
+many of these imaginary forms in detail, limiting ourselves generally
+to the more realistic embodiments of special obstacles. Just above that
+formation comes the stratum in which we find the separate features
+of the previous demonic fauna combining to forms which indicate the
+new creative power which, as we have seen, makes nature over again
+in its own image.
+
+Beginning thus on the physical plane, with a view of passing to the
+social, political, and metaphysical arenas where man has successively
+met his Dragons, we may first consider the combination of terrors
+and perils, real and imaginary, which were confronted by the early
+colonist. I will venture to call this the Colonial Dragon.
+
+This form may be represented by any of those forms against which
+the Prometheus of Æschylus cautions Io on her way to the realm which
+should be called Ionia. 'When thou shalt have crossed the stream that
+bounds the continents to the rosy realms of the morning where the sun
+sets forth, ... thou shalt reach beyond the roaring sea Cisthene's
+Gorgonian plains, where dwell the Phorkides, ... and hard by are
+their three winged sisters, the Snake-haired Gorgons, by mortals
+abhorred, on whom none of human race can look and live.... Be on
+thy guard against the Gryphons, sharp-fanged hounds of Jove that
+never bark, and against the cavalry host of one-eyed Arimaspians,
+dwelling on the gold-gushing fount, the stream of Pluto. Thou wilt
+reach a distant land, a dark tribe, near to the fount of the sun,
+where runs the river Æthiops.' [244]
+
+One who has looked upon Leonardo da Vinci's Medusa at Florence--one of
+the finest interpretations of a mythologic subject ever painted--may
+comprehend what to the early explorer and colonist were the
+fascinations of those rumoured regions where nature was fair but
+girt round with terrors. The Gorgon's head alone is given, with
+its fearful tangle of serpent tresses; her face, even in its pain,
+possesses the beauty that may veil a fatal power; from her mouth is
+exhaled a vapour which in its outline has brought into life vampyre,
+newt, toad, and loathsome nondescript creatures. Here is the malaria
+of undrained coasts, the vermin of noxious nature. The source of
+these must be destroyed before man can found his city; it is the
+fiery poisonous breath of the Colonial Dragon.
+
+Most of the Dragon-myths of Great Britain appear to have been
+importations of the Colonial monsters. Perhaps the most famous
+of these in all Europe was the Chimæra, which came westward upon
+coins, Bellerophon having become a national hero at Corinth--almost
+superseding the god of war himself--and his effigy spread with
+many migrations. Our conventional figure of St. George is still
+Bellerophon, though the Dragon has been substituted for Chimæra,--a
+change which christian tradition and national respect for the lion
+rendered necessary (Fig. 31). Corresponding to this change in outward
+representation, the monster-myths of Great Britain have been gradually
+pressed into service as moral and religious lessons. The Lambton Worm
+illustrates the duty of attending mass and sanctity of the sabbath;
+the demon serpents of Ireland and Cornwall prove the potency of
+holy exorcism; and this process of moralisation has extended, in the
+case of the Boar, whose head graces the Christmas table at Queen's
+College, Oxford, to an illustration of the value of Aristotelian
+philosophy. It was with a volume of Aristotle that the monster was
+slain, the mythologic affinities of the legend being quaintly preserved
+in the item that it was thrust down the boar's throat.
+
+But these modifications are very transparent, the British legends
+being mainly variants of one or two original myths which appear to have
+grown out of the heraldic devices imported by ancient families. These
+probably acquired realistic statement through the prowess and energy
+of chieftains, and were exaggerated by their descendants, perhaps also
+connected with some benefit to the community, in order to strengthen
+the family tenure of its estates. For this kind of duty the Colonial
+Dragon was the one usually imported by the family romancer or poet. The
+multiplication of these fables is, indeed, sufficiently curious. It
+looks as if there were some primitive agrarian sentiment which had
+to be encountered by aid of appeals to exceptional warrant. The
+family which could trace its title to an estate to an ancestor who
+rescued the whole district, was careful to preserve some memorial
+of the feat. On account of the interests concerned in old times we
+should be guarded in receiving the rationalised interpretations of
+such myths, which have become traditional in some localities. The
+barbaric achievements of knights did not lose in the ballads of
+minstrels any marvellous splendours, but gained many; and most of
+these came from the south and east. The Dragon which Guy of Warwick
+slew still retained traces of Chimæra; it had 'paws as a lion.' Sir
+William Dugdale thought that this was a romanticised version of a real
+combat which Guy fought with a Danish chief, A.C. 926. Similarly the
+Dragon of Wantley has been reduced to a fraudulent barrister.
+
+The most characteristic of this class of legends is that of
+Sockburn. Soon after the Norman conquest the Conyers family
+received that manor by episcopal grant, the tradition being that
+it was because Sir John Conyers, Knight, slew a huge Worm which had
+devoured many people. The falchion with which this feat was achieved
+is still preserved, and I believe it is still the custom, when a
+new bishop visits that diocese, for the lord of Sockburn to present
+this sword. The lord of the manor meets the bishop in the middle of
+the river Tees, and says:--'My Lord Bishop, I here present you with
+the falchion wherewith the Champion Conyers slew the Worm, Dragon,
+or fiery flying Serpent, which destroyed man, woman, and child, in
+memory of which the king then reigning gave him the manor of Sockburn
+to hold by this tenure,--that upon the first entrance of every bishop
+into the country this falchion should be presented.' The bishop
+returns the sword and wishes the lord long enjoyment of the tenure,
+which has been thus held since the year 1396. The family tradition
+is that the Dragon was a Scotch intruder named Comyn, whom Conyers
+compelled to kneel before the episcopal throne. The Conyers family
+of Sockburn seem to have been at last overtaken by a Dragon which was
+too much for them: the last knight was taken from a workhouse barely
+in time not to die there.
+
+In the 'Memoirs of the Somervilles' we read that one of that family
+acquired a parish by slaying a 'hydeous monster in forme of a
+worme.' [245]
+
+
+ The wode Laird of Laristone
+ Slew the Worme of Worme's Glen,
+ And wan all Linton parochine.
+
+
+It was 'in lenth 3 Scots yards, and somewhat bigger than an ordinary
+man's leg, with a hede more proportionable to its lenth than its
+greatness; its forme and collour (like) to our common muir adders.'
+
+This was a very moderate dragon compared with others, by slaying
+which many knights won their spurs: this, for example, which Sir
+Dygore killed in the fourteenth century--
+
+
+ ----A Dragon great and grymme,
+ Full of fyre, and also of venymme:
+ With a wide throte and tuskes grete,
+ Uppon that knight fast gan he bete;
+ And as a Lionn then was his fete,
+ His tayle was long and ful unmete;
+ Between his hede and his tayle
+ Was xxii. fote withouten fayle;
+ His body was like a wine tonne,
+ He shone full bright ageynst the sunne;
+ His eyes were bright as any glasse,
+ His scales were hard as any brasse.
+
+
+The familiar story of St. Patrick clearing the snakes out of Ireland,
+and the Cornish version of it, in which the exorcist is St. Petrox,
+presents some features which relate it to the colonist's combat
+with his dragon, though it is more interesting in other aspects. The
+Colonial Dragon includes the diseases, the wild beasts, the savages,
+and all manner of obstructions which environ a new country. But
+when these difficulties have been surmounted, the young settlement
+has still its foes to contend with,--war-like invaders from without,
+ambitious members within. We then find the Dragon taking on the form
+of a public enemy, and his alleged slayer is representative of the
+commune,--possibly in the end to transmit its more real devourer. Most
+of the British Dragon-myths have expanded beyond the stage in which
+they represent merely the struggles of immigrants with wild nature,
+and include the further stage where they represent the formation of
+the community. The growth of patriotism at length is measured by its
+shadow. The Colonial is transformed to the Communal Dragon. Many
+Dragon-myths are adaptations of the ancient symbolism to hostes
+communes: such are the monsters described as desolating villages and
+districts, until they are encountered by antagonists animated by public
+spirit. Such antagonists are distinguishable from the heroes that go
+forth to rescue the maiden in distress: their chief representative
+in mythology is Herakles, most of whose labours reveal the man of
+self-devotion redressing public wrongs, and raising the standard of
+humanity as well as civilisation.
+
+The age of chivalry has its legend in the Centaurs and Cheiron. The
+Hippo-centaurs are mounted savages: Cheiron is the true knight,
+withstanding monsters in his own shape, saving Peleus from them, and
+giving hospitality to the Argonauts. The mounted man was dragon to the
+man on foot until he became the chevalier; then the demonic character
+passed to the strategist who had no horse. It is curious enough to
+find existing among the Mormons a murderous order calling themselves
+Danites, or Destroying Angels, after the text of Gen. xlix. 17,
+'Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth
+the horse's heel that his rider shall fall backward.' The Ritter,
+however, so far as his Dragon was concerned, was as one winged, and
+every horse a Pegasus when it bore him to decide the day between the
+adder and its victim. It is remarkable that the Mormons should have
+carried from the East a cruel superstition to find even among the Red
+Men, who are disappearing before the western march of Saxon strength,
+more gentle fables.
+
+Among the Mimacs, the aborigines of Nova Scotia, there is a legend
+of a young hero named Keekwajoo, who, in seeking for a wife, is
+befriended by a good sage named Glooscap, who warns him against
+a powerful magician disguised as a beaver, and two demon sisters,
+who will waylay him in the disguise of large weasels. The youth is
+admonished to beat a certain drum as his canoe passes them, and he
+is saved as Orpheus in passing Cerberus and Ulysses in sailing past
+the Syrens. The weasels, hearing the music, aspire to wed the stars,
+but find themselves in an indescribable nest at the top of a tall
+white pine. [246]
+
+The chevalier encounters also the Brutal Dragon, whose victim is
+Woman. From immemorial time man's captive, unable to hold her own
+against brute force, she is at the mercy of all who are insensible to
+the refined and passive powers. The rock-bound Andromeda, the pursued
+Leto, or whatever fair maid it may be that the Dragon-slayer rescues,
+may have begun mythologically as emblem of the Dawn, whose swallower is
+the Night Cloud; but in the end she symbolises a brighter dawn,--that
+of civility and magnanimity among men.
+
+It is a notable fact that far away in Japan we should find a
+Dragon-myth which would appear to represent, with rare beauty, the
+social evolution we have been considering. Their great mythological
+Serpent, Yamati-no-orochi, that is, the serpent of eight heads and
+tails, stretching over eight valleys, would pretty certainly represent
+a river annually overflowing its banks. One is reminded by this monster
+of the accounts given by Mencius of the difficulties with streams
+which the Chinese had to surmount before they could make the Middle
+States habitable. But this Colonial Dragon, in the further evolution
+of the country, reappears as the Brutal Dragon. The admirable legend
+relates that, while the rest of the world were using stone implements,
+there came into the possession of Sosano-o-no-Mikoto (the Prince
+of Sosano) a piece of iron which was wrought into a sword. That
+maiden-sword of the world was fleshed to save a maiden from the jaws
+of a monster. The prince descended from heaven to a bank of the river
+Hino Kawa, and the country around seemed uninhabited; but presently
+he saw a chopped stick floating down the stream, and concluded that
+there must be beings dwelling farther up; so he travelled until he
+came to a spot where he beheld an aged man and his wife (Asinaduti
+and Tenaduti), with their beautiful daughter, Himé of Inada. The three
+were weeping bitterly, and the prince was informed that Himé was the
+last of their daughters, seven of whom had been devoured by a terrible
+serpent. This serpent had eight heads, and the condition on which it
+had ceased to desolate the district was that one of these eight maidens
+should be brought annually to this spot to satisfy his voracity. The
+last had now been brought to complete the dreadful compact. The
+Japanese are careful to distinguish this serpent from a dragon,
+with them an agathodemon. It had no feet, and its heads branched by
+as many necks from a single body, this body being so large that it
+stretched over eight valleys. It was covered with trees and moss,
+and its belly was red as blood. The prince doubted if even with his
+sword he could encounter such a monster, so he resorted to stratagem;
+he obtained eight vast bowls, filled them with eight different kinds
+of wine, and, having built a fence with the same number of openings,
+set a bowl in each. The result may be imagined: the eight heads in
+passing over the bowls paused, drank deep, and were soon in a state
+of beastly intoxication. In this condition the heads were severed
+from their neck, and the maiden saved to wed the first Mikado Prince.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE DRAGON-SLAYER.
+
+ Demigods--Alcestis--Herakles--The Ghilghit Fiend--Incarnate
+ deliverer of Ghilghit--A Dardistan Madonna--The religion
+ of Atheism--Resuscitation of Dragons--St. George and his
+ Dragon--Emerson and Ruskin on George--Saintly allies of the Dragon.
+
+
+Theology has pronounced Incarnation a mystery, but nothing is
+simpler. The demigod is man's appeal from the gods. It may also
+be, as Emerson says, that 'when the half-gods go the gods arrive,'
+but it is equally true that their coming signals the departure of
+deities which man had long invoked in vain. The great Heraklean myth
+presents us the ideal of godlike force united to human sympathy. Ra
+(the Sun) passing the twelve gates (Hours) of Hades (Night) [247]
+is humanised in Herakles and his Twelve Labours. He is Son of Zeus
+by a human mother--Alcmene--and his labours for human welfare,
+as well as his miraculous conception, influenced Christianity. The
+divine Man assailing the monsters of divine creation represents human
+recognition of the fact that moral order in nature is co-extensive
+with the control of mankind. One expression of this perception is
+the Alcestis of Euripides, whose significance in relation to death
+we have considered. [248]
+
+'Alcestis,' as I have written in another work, 'is one of the few
+ancient Greek melodramas. The majority of dramas left us by the
+poets of Greece turn upon religious themes, and usually they are
+tragedies. It is evident that to them the popular religion around them
+was itself a tragedy. Their heroes and heroines--such as Prometheus
+and Macaria--were generally victims of the jealousy or caprice of the
+gods; and though the poets display in their dramas the irresistible
+power of the gods, they do so without reverence for that power,
+and generally show the human victims to be more honourable than
+the gods. But the 'Alcestis' of Euripides is not a tragedy; it ends
+happily, and in the rescue of one of those victims of the gods. It
+stands as about the first notice served on the gods that the human
+heart had got tired of their high-handed proceedings, and they might
+prepare to quit the thrones of a universe unless they could exhibit
+more humanity.... Knowing that neither he nor any other deity can
+legally resist the decree of another deity, Apollo is reduced to
+hope for help from man. Human justice may save when divine justice
+sacrifices. He prophesies to Death that although he may seize Alcestis,
+a man will come who will conquer him, and deliver that woman from
+the infernal realm.... Then Hercules comes on the scene. He has been
+slaying lion and dragon, and he now resolves to conquer Death and
+deliver Alcestis. This he does.' [249]
+
+In this pre-christian yet christian Passion Play, the part played by
+the heart of woman is equally heroic with that which represents the
+honour of man. So in the religion which followed there was an effort
+to set beside the incarnate vanquisher of infernal powers the pierced
+heart of Mary. But among all the legends of this character it were
+difficult to find one more impressive than that which Dr. Leitner
+found in Dardistan, and one which, despite its length, will repay a
+careful perusal. This legend of the origin of the Ghilghit tribe and
+government was told by a native.
+
+'Once upon a time there lived a race at Ghilghit whose origin is
+uncertain. Whether they sprung from the soil or had immigrated from a
+distant region is doubtful; so much is believed that they were Gayupí,
+i.e., spontaneous, aborigines, unknown. Over them ruled a monarch who
+was a descendant of the evil spirits, the Yatsh, who terrorised over
+the world. His name was Shiribadatt, and he resided at a castle in
+front of which was a course for the performance of the manly game of
+Polo. His tastes were capricious, and in every one of his actions his
+fiendish origin could be discerned. The natives bore his rule with
+resignation, for what could they effect against a monarch at whose
+command even magic aids were placed? However, the country was rendered
+fertile, and round the capital bloomed attractive. The heavens,
+or rather the virtuous Peris, at last grew tired of his tyranny,
+for he had crowned his iniquities by indulging in a propensity for
+cannibalism. This taste had been developed by an accident. One day
+his cook brought him some mutton broth the like of which he had never
+tasted. After much inquiry as to the nature of the food on which the
+sheep had been brought up, it was eventually traced to an old woman,
+its first owner. She stated that her child and the sheep were born
+on the same day, and losing the former, she had consoled herself
+by suckling the latter. This was a revelation to the tyrant. He
+had discovered the secret of the palatability of the broth, and was
+determined to have a never-ending supply of it. So he ordered that
+his kitchen should be regularly provided with children of a tender
+age, whose flesh, when converted into broth, would remind him of
+the exquisite dish he had once so much relished. This cruel order was
+carried out. The people of the country were dismayed at such a state of
+things, and sought slightly to improve it by sacrificing, in the first
+place, all orphans and children of neighbouring tribes. The tyrant,
+however, was insatiable, and soon was his cruelty felt by many families
+at Ghilghit, who were compelled to give up their children to slaughter.
+
+'Relief came at last. At the top of the mountain Ko, which it takes
+a day to ascend, and which overlooks the village of Doyur, below
+Ghilghit, on the other side of the river, appeared three figures. They
+looked like men, but much more strong and handsome. In their arms they
+carried bows and arrows, and turning their eyes in the direction of
+Doyur, they perceived innumerable flocks of sheep and cattle grazing
+on a prairie between that village and the foot of the mountain. The
+three strangers were brothers, and none of them had been born at
+the same time. It was their intention to make Azru Shemsher, the
+youngest, Rajah of Ghilghit, and, in order to achieve their purpose,
+they hit upon the following plan. On the already noticed prairie,
+which is called Didingé, a sportive calf was gambolling towards
+and away from its mother. It was the pride of its owner, and its
+brilliant red colour could be seen from a distance. 'Let us see who
+is the best marksman,' exclaimed the eldest, and, saying this, he shot
+an arrow in the direction of the calf, but missed his aim. The second
+brother also tried to hit it, but also failed. At last, Azru Shemsher,
+who took a deep interest in the sport, shot his arrow, which pierced
+the poor animal from side to side and killed it. The brothers, whilst
+descending, congratulated Azru on his sportsmanship, and on arriving at
+the spot where the calf was lying, proceeded to cut its throat and to
+take out from its body the titbits, namely, the kidneys and the liver.
+
+'They then roasted these delicacies, and invited Azru to partake of
+them first. He respectfully declined, on the ground of his youth,
+but they urged him to do so, 'in order,' they said, 'to reward you
+for such an excellent shot.' Scarcely had the meat touched the lips of
+Azru than the brothers got up, and, vanishing into the air, called out,
+'Brother! you have touched impure food, which Peris never should eat,
+and we have made use of your ignorance of this law, because we want
+to make you a human being [250] who shall rule over Ghilghit; remain,
+therefore, at Doyur.' Azru, in deep grief at the separation, cried,
+'Why remain at Doyur, unless it be to grind corn?' 'Then,' said the
+brothers, 'go to Ghilghit.' 'Why,' was the reply, 'go to Ghilghit,
+unless it be to work in the gardens?' 'No, no,' was the last and
+consoling rejoinder; 'you will assuredly become the king of this
+country, and deliver it from its merciless oppressor!' No more
+was heard of the departing fairies, and Azru remained by himself,
+endeavouring to gather consolation from the great mission which
+had been bestowed on him. A villager met him, and, struck by his
+appearance, offered him shelter in his house. Next morning he went
+on the roof of his host's house, and calling out to him to come up,
+pointed to the Ko mountain, on which, he said, he plainly discerned
+a wild goat. The incredulous villager began to fear he had harboured
+a maniac, if no worse character; but Azru shot off his arrow, and,
+accompanied by the villager (who had assembled some friends for
+protection, as he was afraid his young guest might be an associate
+of robbers, and lead him into a trap), went in the direction of the
+mountain. There, to be sure, at the very spot that was pointed out,
+though many miles distant, was lying the wild goat, with Azru's arrow
+transfixing its body. The astonished peasants at once hailed him as
+their leader, but he exacted an oath of secrecy from them, for he had
+come to deliver them from their tyrant, and would keep his incognito
+till such time as his plans for the destruction of the monster would
+be matured.
+
+'He then took leave of the hospitable people of Doyur, and went
+to Ghilghit. On reaching this place, which is scarcely four miles
+distant from Doyur, he amused himself by prowling about in the
+gardens adjoining the royal residence. There he met one of the
+female companions of Shiribadatt's daughter fetching water for
+the princess. This lady was remarkably handsome, and of a sweet
+disposition. The companion rushed back, and told the young lady to look
+from over the ramparts of the castle at a wonderfully handsome young
+man whom she had just met. The princess placed herself in a place
+from which she could observe any one approaching the fort. Her maid
+then returned, and induced Azru to come with her in the Polo ground,
+in front of the castle; the princess was smitten with his beauty, and
+at once fell in love with him. She then sent word to the young prince
+to come and see her. When he was admitted into her presence he for a
+long time denied being anything more than a common labourer. At last
+he confessed to being a fairy's child, and the overjoyed princess
+offered him her heart and hand. It may be mentioned here that the
+tyrant Shiribadatt had a wonderful horse, which could cross a mile
+at every jump, and which its rider had accustomed to jump both into
+and out of the fort, over its walls. So regular were the leaps which
+this famous animal could take that he invariably alighted at the
+distance of a mile from the fort, and at the same place. On that
+very day on which the princess had admitted young Azru into the fort
+King Shiribadatt was out hunting, of which he was desperately fond,
+and to which he used sometimes to devote a week or two at a time.
+
+'We must now return to Azru, whom we left conversing with the
+princess. Azru remained silent when the lady confessed her love. Urged
+to declare his sentiments, he said that he would not marry her unless
+she bound herself to him by the most stringent oath; this she did,
+and they became in the sight of God as if they were wedded man and
+wife. He then announced that he had come to destroy her father, and
+asked her to kill him herself. This she refused; but as she had sworn
+to aid him in every way she could, he finally induced her to promise
+that she would ask her father where his soul was. 'Refuse food,' said
+Azru, 'for three or four days, and your father, who is devotedly fond
+of you, will ask for the reason of your strange conduct; then say,
+'Father, you are often staying away from me for several days at a
+time, and I am getting distressed lest something should happen to
+you; do reassure me by letting me know where your soul is, and let me
+feel certain that your life is safe.' This the princess promised to
+do, and when her father returned refused food for several days. The
+anxious Shiribadatt made inquiries, to which she replied by making
+the already named request. The tyrant was for a few moments thrown
+into mute astonishment, and finally refused compliance with her
+preposterous demand. The love-smitten lady went on starving herself,
+till at last her father, fearful for his daughter's life, told her
+not to fret herself about him as his soul was of snow, in the snows,
+and that he could only perish by fire. The princess communicated this
+information to her lover. Azru went back to Doyur and the villages
+around, and assembled his faithful peasants. Them he asked to take
+twigs of the fir-tree, bind them together, and light them; then to
+proceed in a body with torches to the castle in a circle, keep close
+together, and surround it on every side. He then went and dug out a
+very deep hole, as deep as a well, in the place where Shiribadatt's
+horse used to alight, and covered it with green boughs. The next
+day he received information that the torches were ready. He at once
+ordered the villagers gradually to draw near the fort in the manner
+which he had already indicated.
+
+King Shiribadatt was then sitting in his castle; near him his
+treacherous daughter, who was so soon to lose her parent. All at
+once he exclaimed, 'I feel very close; go out, dearest, and see what
+has happened.' The girl went out, and saw torches approaching from a
+distance; but fancying it to be something connected with the plans of
+her husband, she went back and said it was nothing. The torches came
+nearer and nearer, and the tyrant became exceedingly restless. 'Air,
+air,' he cried, 'I feel very ill; do see, daughter, what is the
+matter.' The dutiful lady went, and returned with the same answer
+as before. At last the torch-bearers had fairly surrounded the fort,
+and Shiribadatt, with a presentiment of impending danger, rushed out
+of the room, saying, 'that he felt he was dying.' He then ran to the
+stables and mounted his favourite charger, and with one blow of the
+whip made him jump over the wall of the castle. Faithful to its habit
+the noble animal alighted at the same place, but, alas! only to find
+itself engulfed in a treacherous pit. Before the king had time to
+extricate himself the villagers had run up with their torches. 'Throw
+them upon him,' cried Azru. With one accord all the blazing wood was
+thrown upon Shiribadatt, who miserably perished.'
+
+Azru was then most enthusiastically proclaimed king, celebrated his
+nuptials with the fair traitor, and, as sole tribute, exacted the
+offering of one sheep annually, instead of the human child, from
+every one of the natives.
+
+When Azru had safely ascended the throne he ordered the tyrant's place
+to be levelled to the ground. The willing peasants, manufacturing
+spades of iron, flocked to accomplish a grateful task, and sang whilst
+demolishing his castle:--
+
+'My nature is of a hard metal,' said Shiri and Badatt. 'Why hard? I,
+Koto, the son of the peasant Dem Singh, am alone hardy; with this iron
+spade I raze to the ground thy kingly house. Behold now, although
+thou art of race accursed, of Shatsho Malika, I, Dem Singh's son,
+am of a hard metal; for with this iron spade I level thy very palace;
+look out! look out!' [251]
+
+An account of the Feast of Torches, instituted as a memorial of this
+tradition, has already been given in another connection. [252] The
+legend, the festival, and the song just quoted constitute a noble
+human epic. That startling defiance of the icy-hearted god by the
+human-hearted peasant, that brave cry of the long cowering wretch who
+at last holds in his spade an iron weapon to wield against the hardness
+of nature, are the sublime pæan of the Dragon-slayer. Look out, ye
+snow-gods! Man's heart is there, and woman's heart; their courage,
+plus the spade, can level your palaces; their love will melt you,
+their arts and sciences kill you: so fatal may be torches!
+
+All great religions were born in this grand atheism. As the worship
+of Herakles meant the downfall of Zeus, the worship of Christ meant
+the overthrow of both Jove and Jehovah. Every race adores the epoch
+when their fathers grew ashamed of their gods and identified them as
+dragons--the supreme cruelties of nature--welcoming the man who first
+rose from his knees and defied them. But in the end the Priests of the
+Dragon manage to secure a compromise, and by labelling him with the
+name of his slayer, manage to resuscitate and re-enthrone him. For,
+as we shall presently see, the Dragon never really dies.
+
+Christianity did not fail to avail itself of the Dragon-slayer's
+prestige, which had preceded it in Europe and in Africa. It could
+not afford to offer for popular reverence saints less heroic than
+pagan warriors and demigods. The old Dragon-myths, especially
+those which made the fame of Herakles, were appropriated to invest
+saintly forms. St. Michael, St. Andrew, St. Margaret, and many
+another, were pictured subduing or treading on Dragons. Christ was
+shown crushing the serpent Sin, spearing the dragon Death, or even
+issuing from its impotent jaws, like Jason from the Dragon. [253]
+But in this competition for the laurels of dead Dragon-slayers, and
+fierce hostility to dragons already slain, the real Dragon was left
+to revive and flourish in security, and in the end even inherited
+the mantle and the palm of his own former conqueror.
+
+The miscarriage of canonisation in the case of St. George is a small
+and merely curious thing in itself; but it is almost mystical in its
+coincidence with the great miscarriage which brought the cross of
+Christ to authorise the crucifixions of the men most like him for a
+thousand years.
+
+Mr. John Ruskin has sharply challenged Ralph Waldo Emerson's
+penetrating touch on the effigy that decorates the escutcheons of
+England and Russia. 'George of Cappadocia,' says Emerson, 'born
+at Epiphania in Cilicia, was a low parasite, who got a lucrative
+contract to supply the army with bacon. A rogue and an informer,
+he got rich and was forced to run from justice. He saved his money,
+embraced Arianism, collected a library, and got promoted by a faction
+to the episcopal throne of Alexandria. When Julian came, A.D. 361,
+George was dragged to prison. The prison was burst open by the mob,
+and George was lynched as he deserved. And this precious knave became
+in good time Saint George of England, patron of chivalry, emblem of
+victory and civility, and the pride of the best blood of the modern
+world.' Whereon Emerson further remarks that 'nature trips us up when
+we strut.'
+
+It is certainly rather hard for the founder of the St. George
+Association to be told that his patron was no Dragon-slayer at all,
+but the Dragon's ally. Mr. Ruskin may be right in contending that
+whatever may have been the facts, they who made George patron saint
+of England still meant their homage for a hero, or at any rate
+not for a rogue; but he is unsatisfactory in his argument that our
+St. George was another who died for his faith seventy years before
+the bacon-contractor. Even if the Ruskin St. George, said to have
+suffered under Diocletian, could be shown historical, his was a
+very commonplace martyrdom compared with that of a bishop torn in
+pieces by a 'pagan' mob. The distant christian nations would never
+have listened to the pagan version of the story even had it reached
+them. A bishop so martyred would have been the very man to give
+their armies a watchword. The martyr was portrayed as a Dragon-slayer
+only as a title might be added to the name of one knighted, or the
+badge of an order set upon his breast; the heraldic device grew
+into a variant of the common legend which suggests the origin of the
+mythical George. 'The magician Athanasius, successively an opponent
+of Christianity, a convert, and a martyr, is his chief antagonist;
+and the city of Alexandria appears as the Empress Alexandria, the wife
+of Diocletian, and herself a convert and a martyr.' This sentence
+from Smith's 'Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography' tells more
+than Professor Ruskin's seventeenth-century authority. The Dragon is
+the same Athanasius whose creed sends forth its anathemas in churches
+dedicated to the Arian canonised for having slain him!
+
+Though it be granted that they who made George of Cappadocia the
+ideal hero of England really intended their homage for a martyr and
+hero, it must equally be acknowledged that his halo was clearly drawn
+from Dragon-fire. He was a man who had taken to the sword, and by it
+perished; so much was known and announced in his canonisation. He
+was honoured as 'the Victor' among the Greeks, therefore to-day
+patron of Russia; as protector of Crusaders, therefore now patron of
+England; thus is he saint of a war waged by the strong against the
+weak, in interest of a church and priesthood against human freedom;
+therefore George was taking the side of the Dragon against Christ,
+restoring the priestly power he had assailed, and delivering up his
+brave brothers in all history to be nailed to Christianity as a cross.
+
+Let George remain! Whether naming fashionable temples or engraved on
+gold coins, the fictitious Dragon-slayer will remain the right saint
+in the right place so long as the real Dragon-slayer is made to name
+every power he hated, and to consecrate every lie in whose mouth he
+darted his spear.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THE DRAGON'S BREATH.
+
+ Medusa--Phenomena of recurrence--The Brood of Echidna and their
+ survival--Behemoth and Leviathan--The Mouth of Hell--The Lambton
+ Worm--Ragnar--The Lambton Doom--The Worm's Orthodoxy--The Serpent,
+ Superstition, and Science.
+
+
+Asura has already been mentioned as the most ancient Aryan name for
+deity. The meaning of it is, the Breather. It has also been remarked
+that in the course of time the word came to signify both the good
+and the evil spirit. What this evil breath meant in nature is told
+in Leonardo da Vinci's picture of the expiring Medusa, referred to
+on p. 386, from whose breath noxious creatures are produced. It may
+have been that the artist meant only to interpret the Gorgon as a
+personification of the malarious vapours of nature and their organic
+kindred; if so, he painted better than he knew, and has suggested
+that fatal vitality of the evil power which raised it to its throne
+as a principle coeternal with good.
+
+The phenomena of recurrence in things evil made for man the mystery
+of iniquity. The darkness may be dispersed, but it returns; the storm
+may clear away, but it gathers again; inundations, sickly seasons,
+dog-days, Cain-winds, they go and return; the cancer is cut out and
+grows again; the tyrant may be slain, tyranny survives. The serpent
+slipping from one skin to another coils steadily into the symbol of
+endlessness. In another expression it is the poisonous breath of
+the Dragon. It is this breath that cannot be killed; the special
+incarnations of it, any temporary brood of it, may be destroyed,
+but the principle in nature which produces them cannot be exterminated.
+
+Dragon fables have this undertone to their brave strain. In the
+Rig Veda (v. 32) it is said that when Indra slew Ahi, 'another more
+powerful was generated.' Isaiah (xiv. 29) cries, 'Rejoice not thou,
+whole Palestina, because the rod of him that smote thee is broken:
+for out of the serpent's root shall come forth a cockatrice, and his
+fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent.' Herakles struggles with the
+giant robber, Antæus, only to find the demon's strength restored by
+contact with the earth. He kills one head of the Hydra only to see two
+grow in its place; and even when he has managed to burn away these,
+the central head is found to be immortal, and he can only hide it
+under a rock. That one is the self-multiplying principle of evil. The
+vast brood of Echidna in mythology expresses the brood of evil in
+nature. Echidna, daughter of Ge and Tartarus, Earth and Hell--phonetic
+reappearance of Ahi--is half-serpent, half-woman, with black eyes,
+fearful and bloodthirsty. She becomes the mother of fire-breathing
+Typhon, buried beneath the earth by Jove's lightning when he aspired
+to scale Olympus; of the Dragon that guarded the Hesperian garden;
+of the Sphinx which puzzled and devoured; of three-headed Cerberus;
+of the eagle that preyed on rock-bound Prometheus; of the Nemæan lion
+which Herakles slew; of Chimæra; and of Scylla the monster whom Homer
+describes sitting between two large rocks waylaying mariners on the
+way from Italy to Sicily,--possessing twelve feet, six long necks
+and mouths, each with three rows of rushing teeth.
+
+The Dragon that Cadmus slew also had terrible teeth; and it will be
+remembered that when these teeth were sown they sprang up as armed
+men. Like them, the ancient Dragon-myths were also sown, broadcast, in
+the mental and moral fields, cleared and ploughed by a new theology,
+and they sprang up as dogmas more hard and cruel than the ferocious
+forces of nature which gave birth to their ancestral monsters.
+
+What the superstitious method of interpreting nature, forced as
+it is to personify its painful as well as its pleasant phenomena,
+inevitably results in, finds illustration in the two great lines of
+tradition--the Aryan and the Semitic--which have converged to form
+the christian mythology.
+
+The Hebrew personification, Jehovah, originating in a rude period,
+became invested with many savage and immoral traditions; but when his
+worshippers had reached a higher moral culture, national sentiment
+had become too deeply involved with the sovereign majesty of their
+deity for his alleged actions to be criticised, or his absolute
+supremacy and omnipotence to be questioned, even to save his moral
+character. Thus, the Rabbins appear to have been at their wits'
+end to account for the existence of the two great monsters which
+had got into their sacred records--from an early mythology--Behemoth
+and Leviathan. Unwilling to admit that Jehovah had created foes to
+his own kingdom, or that creatures which had become foes to it were
+beyond his power to control, they worked out a theory that Behemoth
+and Leviathan were made and preserved by special order of Jehovah to
+execute his decrees at the Messianic Day of Judgment. They probably
+corresponded at an earlier period with the gryphon, or grabber, and
+the serpent which bit, guardians at the gate of paradise; but the
+need of such guards, biters, and spies by the all-powerful all-seeing
+Shaddai having been recognised, the monsters had to be rationalised
+into accord with his character as a retributive ruler. Hence Behemoth
+and Leviathan are represented as being fattened with the wicked,
+who die in order to be the food of the righteous during the unsettled
+times that follow the revelation of the Messiah! Behemoth is Jehovah's
+'cattle on a thousand hills' (Ps. i. 10). In Pireque de Rabbi Eliezur
+he is described as feeding daily upon a thousand mountains on which
+the grass grows again every night; and the Jordan supplies him with
+drink, as it is said in Job (xl. 23), 'he trusteth that he can draw up
+Jordan into his mouth.' In the Talmud these monsters are divided into
+two pairs, but are said to have been made barren lest their progeny
+should destroy the earth. They are kept in the wilderness of Dendain,
+the mythical abode of the descendants of Cain, east of Eden, for the
+unique purpose mentioned.
+
+But now we may remark the steady progress of these monsters to
+the bounds of their mythological habitat. There came a time when
+Behemoth and Leviathan were hardly more presentable than other
+personified horrors. They too must 'take the veil,'--a period in the
+history of mythical, corresponding to extinction in that of actual,
+monsters. The following passage in the Book of Enoch is believed by
+Professor Drummond to be a later insertion, probably from the Book
+of Noah, and as early as the middle of the first century:--'In that
+day two monsters shall be divided; a female monster named Leviathan,
+to dwell in the abyss of the sea, above the sources of the waters;
+but the male is called Behemoth, which occupies with its breast a
+desolate wilderness named Dendain, on the east of the garden where
+the elect and righteous dwell, where my grandfather (Enoch) was
+taken up, being the seventh from Adam, the first man whom the Lord
+of the spirits created. And I asked that other angel to show me the
+might of these monsters, how they were separated in one day, and one
+was set in the depth of the sea, the other on the firm land of the
+wilderness. And he spoke to me, 'Thou son of man, thou desirest in
+this to know what has been concealed.' And the other angel who went
+with me, and showed me what is in concealment, spake, ... 'These two
+monsters are prepared conformably to the greatness of God to be fed,
+in order that the penal judgment of God may not be in vain.' [254]
+
+We may thus see that there were antecedents to the sentiment of
+Aquinas,--'Beati in regno coelesti videbunt poenas damnatorum,
+ut beatitudo illis magis complaceat.' Or, perhaps, one might say
+rather to the logic of Aquinas; for though he saw that it would be
+necessary for souls in bliss to be happy at vision of the damned or
+else deficient in bliss, it is said he could hardly be happy from
+thinking of the irreversible doom of Satan himself. It would appear
+that only the followers of the Genevan who anticipated his god's hell
+for Servetus managed to adapt their hearts to such logic, and glory
+in the endless tortures of their fellow-creatures.
+
+An eloquent minister in New York, Octavius B. Frothingham, being
+requested to write out his views on the 'question' of everlasting
+damnation, began with the remark that he felt somewhat as a sportsman
+suddenly called upon to hunt the Iguanodon. Really it is Behemoth and
+Leviathan he was called to deal with. Leviathan transmitted from Jonah
+to the Middle Ages the idea of 'the belly of Hell,' and Behemoth's
+jaws expanded in the 'mouth of Hell' of the Miracle-plays; and their
+utility, as described in the Book of Enoch, perhaps originated
+the doctrine of souls tasting heavenly joys from the agonies of
+others. The dogma of Hell has followed the course of its prototype
+with precision. It has arrived at just that period when, as in the
+case of Enoch's inquiring, the investigator finds it has taken the
+veil. Theologians shake their heads, call it a terrible question,
+write about free-will and sin, but only a few, of the fatuous sort,
+confess belief in the old-fashioned Hell where the worm dieth not
+and the fire is not quenched.
+
+Let us now take under consideration the outcome of the Aryan Dragon,
+which has travelled far to meet Behemoth in the west. And it is
+probable that we could not, with much seeking, find an example so
+pregnant with instruction for our present inquiry as our little Durham
+folk-tale of the Lambton Worm.
+
+This Worm is said to have been slain by Sir Lambton, crusader, and
+ancestor of the Earls of Durham. This young Lambton was a wild fellow;
+he was fond of fishing in the river Wear, which runs near Durham
+Castle, and he had an especial taste for fishing there on Sunday
+mornings. He was profane, and on Sundays, when the people were all
+going to mass, they were often shocked by hearing the loud oaths
+which Lambton uttered whenever he had no rise. One Sunday morning
+something got hold of his hook, pulled strong, and he made sure of a
+good trout; what was his disappointment when instead thereof he found
+at the end of his line a tiny black worm. He tore it off with fierce
+imprecations and threw it in a well near by. However, soon after this
+the young man joined the crusaders and went off to the Holy Land,
+where he distinguished himself by slaying many Saracens.
+
+But while he was off there things were going on badly around Durham
+Castle. Some peasant passing that well into which the youth had cast
+the tiny black worm looked into it, and beheld a creature that made him
+shudder,--a diabolical big snake with nine ferocious eyes. A little
+time only had elapsed before this creature had grown too large for
+the well to hold it, and it came out and crawled on, making a path
+of desolation, breakfasting on a village, until it came to a small
+hill. Around that hill it coiled with nine coils, each weighty enough
+to make a separate terrace. One may still see this hill with its nine
+terraces, and be assured of the circumstances by peasants residing
+near. Having taken up its headquarters on this hill, the nine-eyed
+monster was in the habit of sallying forth every day and satisfying
+his hunger by devouring the plumpest family he could find, until
+at length the people consulted an oracle--some say a witch, others
+again a priest--and were told that the monster would be satisfied
+if it were given each day the milk of nine cows. So nine cows were
+got together, and a plucky dairymaid was found to milk the cows and
+carry it to the dragon. If a single gill of the milk was missing
+the monster took a dire revenge upon the nearest village. This was
+the unpleasant situation which young Lambton found when he returned
+home from the crusades. He was now an altered man. He was no longer
+given to fishing and profanity. He felt keenly that by raising the
+demon out of the river Wear he had brought woe upon his neighbours,
+and he resolved to engage the Worm in single combat. But he learned
+that it had already been fought by several knights, and had slain
+them, while no wounds received by itself availed anything, since,
+if it were cut in twain, the pieces grew together again. The knight
+then consulted the oracle, witch or priest, and was told that he could
+prevail in the combat on certain conditions. He must provide himself
+with special armour, all over which must be large razor-blades. He
+must manage to entice the worm into the middle of the river Wear,
+in whose waters the combat must take place. And, finally, he must
+vow to slay as a sacrifice the first living thing he should meet
+after his victory. These conditions having been fulfilled, the knight
+entered the stream. The dragon, not having received his milk as usual
+that morning, crawled from his hill seeking whom he might devour,
+and seeing the knight in the river, went at him. Quickly he coiled
+around the armour, but its big razors cut him into many sections;
+and these sections could not piece themselves together again because
+the current of the river washed them swiftly away.
+
+Now, observe how this dragon was pieced together mythologically. He is
+a storm cloud. He begins smaller than a man's hand and swells to huge
+dimensions; that characteristic of the howling storm was represented
+in the howling wolf Fenris of Norse Mythology, who was a little pet,
+a sort of lapdog for the gods at first, but when full grown broke the
+chains that tied him to mountains, and was only fettered at last by
+the thread finer than cobweb, which was really the sunbeam conquering
+winter. Then, when this worm was cut in two, the parts came together
+again. This feature of recurrence is especially characteristic of
+Hydras. In the Egyptian 'Tale of Setnau,' Ptah-nefer-ka saw the
+river-snake twice resume its form after he had killed it with his
+sword,--he succeeded the third time by placing sand between the two
+parts; and what returning floods taught the ancient scribe remained
+to characterise the dragon encountered by Guy of Warwick, which
+recovered from every wound by dipping its tail in the well it had
+guarded. The Lernean Hydra had nine heads, the Lambton Worm nine
+eyes and nine folds, and drank nine cows' milk. His fondness for
+the milk of cows connects him straightly with the dragon Vritra,
+whom Indra slew because he stole Indra's cows (that is, the good
+clouds, whose milk is gentle rain, and do no harm), and shut them up
+in a cavern to enjoy their milk himself. That is the oldest Dragon
+fable on record, and it is said in the Rig-Veda that beneath Indra's
+thunderbolt the monster broke up into pieces, and was washed away in a
+current of water. Finally, in being destroyed at last by razor blades,
+the dragon is connected with that slain by Ragnar, in whose armour the
+sun-darts of Apollo had turned to icicles. In the 'Death-Song of Ragnar
+Lodbrach,' preserved by Olaus Wormius, it is said that King Ella of
+Northumberland having captured that terror of the North (8th cent.),
+ordered him to be thrown into a pit of serpents. His surname, Lodbrach,
+or Hair Breeches, had been given because of his method of slaying a
+Worm which devastated Gothland, whose king had promised his daughter
+to the man who should slay the same. Ragnar dressed himself in hairy
+skins, and threw water over the hair, which, freezing, encased him in
+an armour of ice. The Worm, unable to bite through this, was impaled by
+Ragnar. Another version is that Ragnar killed two serpents which the
+King of Gothland had set to guard his daughter, but which had grown
+to such size that they terrified the country. It may be observed that
+the Lambton story christianises the Ragnar legend, showing that to be
+done in atonement for sin which in the other was done for love. The
+Cornish legend of St. Petrox has also taken a hint from Ragnar, and
+announces the rescue of christians from the serpent-pit in which the
+pagan hero perished. The icicles reappear on the slayer of the dragon
+of Wantley, represented by long spikes bristling from his armour.
+
+The Knight Lambton, remembering his vow to slay as a sacrifice the
+first living thing he might meet after the combat, had arranged that
+a dog should be placed where it would attract his eye. But it turned
+out that his own father came rushing to him. As he could not kill
+his father, he consulted the oracle again to know what would be the
+penalty of non-fulfilment of his vow. It was that no representative
+of the family should die in his bed for nine generations. The notion
+is still found in that neighbourhood that no Earl of Durham has since
+then died in his bed. The nine generations have long passed since
+any crusading Lambton lived, but several peasants of the district
+closed their narrative with, 'Strange to say, no Earl of Durham has
+died in his bed!' At the castle I talked with a servant on the estate
+while looking at the old statues of the knight, worm, and dairymaid,
+all kept there, and he told me he had heard that the late Earl, as
+death drew nigh, asked to sit up--insisted--and died in a chair. If
+there be any truth in this, it would show that the family itself has
+some morbid feeling about the legend which has been so long told them
+with pride. The old well from which the little worm emerged a monster
+is now much overgrown, but I was told that it was for a long time a
+wishing-well, and the pins cast in by rustics may still be seen at
+the bottom of it.
+
+Pins are the last offerings at the Worm's Well; 'wishes' its last
+prayers; but where go now the coins and the prayers? To propitiate a
+power and commute a doom resting upon much the same principles as those
+represented in the Lambton legend. A community desolated because one
+man is sinful miniatures a world's doom for Adam's sin. The demand of
+a human sacrifice is more clear in the Sockburn story, where Conyers
+offered up his only son to the Holy Ghost in the parish church before
+engaging the Dragon, that being a condition of success prescribed by
+the 'Oracle' or 'Sybil.' This claim of the infernal powers represented
+by the Worm--many-eyed, all-seeing--cannot be set aside; Lambton's
+filial love may resist it only to have it pass as the hereditary doom
+of his family, representing an imputed sin. 'For I, the Lord thy God,
+am a jealous God, and visit the sins of the fathers on the children
+unto the third and fourth generation.'
+
+There are processes of this kind in nature, hereditary evils,
+transmitted diseases and disgraces, and afflictions of many
+through the offences of one. But a fearful Nemesis follows the
+deification and adoration of them. 'How can I be happy in heaven,'
+said a tender-hearted lady to her clerical adviser, 'when I must
+see others in hell?' 'You will be made to see that it is all for the
+best.' 'If I am to be made so heartless, I prefer to go to hell.' This
+genuine conversation reports the doom of all deities whose extension
+is in dragons. Hell implies a Dragon as its representative and
+ruler. Theology may induce the abject and cowardly to subject their
+human hearts to the process of induration required for loyalty to such
+powers, but in the end it makes atheism the only salvation of brave,
+pure, and loving natures. The Dragons' breath has clouded the ancient
+heavens and blighted the old gods; but the starry ideals they pursue
+in vain. Behemoth has supplied sirloins to many priesthoods for a
+long time, but he has at last become too tough even for their teeth,
+and they feed him less carefully every year. Nay, he is encountered
+now and then by his professional feeders, and has found even in
+Westminster Abbey his Guy of Warwick.
+
+
+ Nor could this desp'rate champion daunt
+ A Dun Cow bigger than elephant;
+ But he, to prove his courage sterling,
+ Cut from her enormous side a sirloin.
+
+
+The Worms--whether Semitic Leviathan or Aryan Dragon--are nearly
+fossilised as to their ancient form. The sacrifice of Jephtha's
+daughter to the one, and of young Conyers to the other, found
+commutation in the case of man's rescue from Satan by Christ's descent
+to Hades, and in the substitution of nine uneasy deaths for the
+demanded parricide in the Lambton case; and the most direct 'survival'
+of these may be found in any country lad trying to cure his warts by
+providing a weed for them to adhere to. Their end in Art was in such
+forms as this starveling creature of Callot's (Fig. 32), whose thin,
+spectacled rider, tilting at St. Anthony, denotes as well the doom
+of all powers, however lofty, whose majesty requires tali auxilio et
+istis defensoribus. The Dragon passes and leaves a roar of laughter
+behind him, in which even St. Anthony could now join. But Leviathan
+and Lambton Worm have combined and merged their life in a Dogma; it
+is a Dogma as remorseless and voracious as its prototype, and requires
+to be fed with all the milk of human kindness, or it at once begins to
+gnaw the foundations of Christendom itself. Christianity rests upon the
+past work of the Worm in Paradise, and its present work in Hell. It
+makes no real difference whether man's belief in a universe enmeshed
+in serpent-coils be expressed in the Hindu's cowering adoration
+of the venomous potentate, or the christian's imprecation upon it:
+fundamentally it is serpent-worship in each case. Vishnu reposes on
+his celestial Serpent; the god of Dogma maintains his government by
+support of the infernal Serpent. Fear beheld him appearing in Durham to
+vindicate the mass and the Sabbath; but the same fear still sees him
+in the fiery world punishing Sabbath-breakers and blasphemers against
+his Creator and chief. That fear built every cathedral in Christendom,
+and they must crumble with the phantasm evoked for their creation.
+
+The Serpent in itself is a perfect type of all evil in nature. It is
+irreconcilable with the reign of a perfectly good and omnipotent man
+over the universe. No amount of casuistry can explain its co-existence
+with anthropomorphic Love and Wisdom, as all acknowledge when a
+parallel casuistry attempts to defend any other god than their own
+from deeds that are, humanly considered, evil. It is just as easy to
+defend the jealousy and cruelty of Jove, on the ground that his ways
+are not as our ways, as it is to defend similar tempers in Jehovah. The
+monster sent by one to devour Prometheus is ethically atwin with the
+snake created by the other to bite the heel of man.
+
+Man is saved from the superstitious evolution of the venomous Serpent
+into a Dragon by recognising its real evolution as seen by the eye
+of Science. Science alone can tell the true story of the Serpent,
+and justify its place in nature. It forbids man his superstitious
+method of making a god in his own image, and his egotistic method
+of judging nature according to his private likes and dislikes, his
+convenience or inconvenience. Taught by Science man may, with a freedom
+the barbarian cannot feel, exterminate the Serpent; with a freedom the
+christian cannot know, he may see in that reptile the perfection of
+that economy in nature which has ever defended the advancing forms of
+life. It judges the good and evil of every form with reference to its
+adaptation to its own purposes. Thus Science alone wields the spear
+of Ithuriel, and beneath its touch every Dragon shrinks instantly to
+its little shape in nature to be dealt with according to what it is.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+FATE.
+
+ Dorè's 'Love and Fate'--Moira and Moiræ--The 'Fates' of Æschylus
+ --Divine absolutism surrendered--Jove and Typhon--Commutation of
+ the Demon's share--Popular fatalism--Theological fatalism--Fate
+ and Necessity--Deification of Will--Metaphysics, past and present.
+
+
+Gustave Dorè has painted a picture of 'Love and Fate,' in which the
+terrible hag is portrayed towering above the tender Eros, and while
+the latter is extending the thread as far as he can, the wrinkled
+hands of Destiny are the boundaries of his power, and the fatal shears
+close upon the joy he has stretched to its inevitable limit. To the
+ancient mind these two forms made the two great realms of the universe,
+their powers meeting in the fruit with a worm at its core, in seeds
+of death germinating amid the play of life, in all the limitations
+of man. They are projected in myths of Elysium and Hades, Eden and
+the Serpent, Heaven and Hell, and their manifold variants.
+
+Perhaps there is no one line of mythological development which more
+clearly and impressively illustrates the forces under which grew the
+idea of an evil principle, than the changes which the personification
+of Fate underwent in Greece and Rome. The Moira, or Fate with Homer,
+is only a secondary cause, if that, and simply carries out the
+decrees of her father, Zeus. Zeus is the real Fate. Nevertheless,
+while this is the Homeric theory or theology, there are intimations
+(see chap. xxvii. part 4) that the real awe of men was already
+transferred from Zeus to the Erinnyes. This foreshadows a change of
+government. With Hesiod we find, instead of one, three Moiræ. They
+are no longer offspring of Zeus, but, as it were, his Cabinet. They
+do not act independently of him, but when, in pursuance of their just
+counsels, Zeus issues decrees, the Moiræ administer them. Next we find
+the Moiræ of Hesiod developed by other writers into final Recorders;
+they write the decrees of Zeus on certain indestructible tablets,
+after which they are irrevocable and inevitable. With Æschylus we
+find the Moiræ developed into independent and supreme powers, above
+Zeus himself. The chained Prometheus looks not to Zeus but to Fate
+for his final liberation.
+
+
+ Chorus. Who, then, is the guide of Necessity?
+
+ Prometheus. The tri-form Fates and the unforgetting Furies.
+
+ Cho. Is Zeus, then, less powerful than they?
+
+ Prom. At least 'tis certain he cannot escape his own doom.
+
+ Cho. And what can be Zeus' doom but everlasting rule?
+
+ Prom. This ye may not learn; press it not.
+
+ Cho. Surely some solemn mystery thou hidest.
+
+ Prom. Turn to some other theme: for this disclosure time has not
+ ripened: it must be veiled in deep mystery, for by the keeping of
+ this secret shall come my liberty from base chains and misery.
+
+
+These great landmarks represent successive revolutions in the Olympian
+government. Absolutism became burthensome: as irresponsible monarch,
+Zeus became responsible for the woes of the world, and his priests were
+satisfied to have an increasing share of that responsibility allotted
+to his counsellors, until finally the whole of it is transferred. From
+that time the countenance of Zeus, or Jupiter, shines out unclouded by
+responsibility for human misfortunes and earthly evils; and, on the
+other hand, the once beautiful Fates are proportionately blackened,
+and they become hideous hags, the aged and lame crones of popular
+belief in Greece and Rome, every line of whose ugliness would have
+disfigured the face of Zeus had he not been subordinated to them.
+
+Moira means 'share,' and originally, perhaps, meant simply the
+power that meted out to each his share of life, and of the pains
+and pleasures woven in it till the term be reached. But as the Fates
+gained more definite personality they began to be regarded as having
+also a 'share' of their own. They came to typify all the dark and
+formidable powers as to their inevitableness. No divine power could
+set them aside, or more than temporarily subdue them. Fate measured
+out her share to the remorseless Gorgon as well as to the fairest
+god. But where destructive power was exercised in a way friendly to
+man, the Fates are put somewhat in the background, and the feat is
+claimed for some god. Such, in the 'Prometheus' of Æschylus, is the
+spirit of the wonderful passage concerning Typhon, rendered with
+tragic depth by Theodore Buckley:--'I commiserated too,' says the
+rock-bound Prometheus, 'when I beheld the earth-born inmate of the
+Cilician caverns, a tremendous prodigy, the hundred-headed impetuous
+Typhon, overpowered by force; who withstood all the gods, hissing
+slaughter from his hungry jaws, and from his eyes there flashed a
+hideous glare as if he would perforce overthrow the sovereignty
+of Jove. But the sleepless shaft of Jupiter came upon him, the
+descending thunderbolt breathing forth flame which scared him out of
+his presumptuous bravadoes; for having been smitten to his very soul
+he was crumbled to a cinder, and thunder-blasted in his prowess. And
+now, a hapless and paralysed form, is he lying hard by a narrow frith,
+pressed down beneath the roots of Ætna. And, seated on the topmost
+peaks, Vulcan forges the molten masses whence there shall burst forth
+floods, devouring with full jaws the level fields of fruitful Sicily;
+with rage such as this shall Typhon boil over in hot artillery of a
+never glutted fire-breathing storm; albeit he hath been reduced to
+ashes by the thunderbolt of Jupiter.'
+
+In this passage we see Jove invested with the glory of defeating
+a great demon; but we also recognise the demon still under the
+protection of Fate. Destiny must bear that burthen. So was it said
+in the Apocalypse Satan should be loosed after being bound in the
+Pit a thousand years; and so Mohammed declared Gog and Magog should
+break loose with terror and destruction from the mountain-prison in
+which Allah had cast them. The destructive Principle had its 'share'
+as well as the creative and preservative Principles, and could not
+be permanently deprived of it. Gradually the Fates of various regions
+and names were identified with the deities, whose interests, gardens,
+or treasures they guarded; and when some of these deities were degraded
+their retainers were still more degraded, while in other cases deities
+were enabled to maintain fair fame by fables of their being betrayed
+and their good intentions frustrated by such subordinates. Thus we
+find a certain notion of technical and official power investing such
+figures as Satan, Ahriman, Iblis, and the Dragon, as if the upper
+gods could not disown or reverse altogether the bad deeds done by
+these commissioners.
+
+But the large though limited degree of control necessarily claimed for
+the greatest and best gods had to be represented theologically. Hence
+there was devised a system of Commutation. The Demon or Dragon,
+though abusing his power, could not have it violently withdrawn, but
+might be compelled to accept some sacrifice in lieu of the precise
+object sought by his voracity. These substitutions are found in every
+theological system, and to apply them to individuals constitutes the
+raison d'être of every priesthood. In the progress towards civilisation
+the substitutes diminish in value, and finally they become merely
+nominal and ceremonial,--an effigy of a man instead of the man,
+or wine instead of blood. At first the commutation was often in the
+substitution of persons of lower for others of higher rank, as when
+slaves or wives were, or are, sacrificed to assure paradise to the
+master or husband. Thus, Death is allowed to take Alcestis instead
+of Admetus. A higher degree of civilisation substitutes animals
+for human victims. In keeping with this is the legend of Christ's
+sending demons out of two men into a herd of swine: [255] which,
+again, is referable to the same class of ideas as the legend that
+followed concerning Jesus himself as a vicarious offering; mankind
+in this case being the herd, as compared with the son of a god, and
+the transfer of the Satanic power from the human race to himself,
+for even a little time, being accepted in theology as an equivalent,
+on account of the divine dignity of the being who descended into
+hell. It was some time, however, before theology worked out this
+theory as it now stands, the candid fathers having rejoiced in the
+belief that the contract for commutation on its face implied that
+Christ was to remain for ever in hell, Satan being outwitted in this.
+
+The ancient Babylonian charms often end with the refrain:--'May the
+enchantment go forth and to its own dwelling-place betake itself,'
+Every evil spirit was supposed to have an appropriate dwelling,
+as in the case of Judas, into whom Satan entered, [256] and of whom
+it is said he 'by transgression fell, that he might go to his own
+place. [257] Very ingenious are some of the ancient speculations
+concerning the habitations and congenial resorts of demons. In some
+regions the colour of a disease on the skin is supposed to indicate
+the tastes of the demon causing it; and the spells of exorcism end
+by assigning him to something of the same hue. The demon of jaundice
+is generally consigned to the yellow parrots, and inflammation to
+the red or scarlet weeds. Their colours are respected. Humanity is
+little considered in the Eastern formulas of this kind, and it is
+pretty generally the case that in praying against plague or famine,
+populations are often found selecting a tribe to which their trouble is
+adjured to betake itself. 'May Nin-cigal,' says a Babylonian exorcism,
+'turn her face towards another place; may the noxious spirit go
+forth and seize another; may the female cherub and the female demon
+settle upon his body; may the king of heaven preserve, may the king
+of earth preserve!'
+
+So is it in regions and times which we generally think of as
+semi-barbarous. But every now and then communities which fancy
+themselves civilised and enlightened are brought face to face with
+the popular fatalism in its pagan form, and are shocked thereat, not
+remembering that it is equally the dogma of vicarious satisfaction
+or atonement. A lady residing in the neighbourhood of the Traunsee,
+Austria, informs me that recently two men were nearly drowned in
+that lake, being rescued at the last moment and brought to life with
+great difficulty. But this incident, instead of causing joy among
+the neighbours of the men, excited their displeasure; and this not
+because the rescued were at all unpopular, but because of a widespread
+notion that the Destinies required two lives, that they would have to
+be presently satisfied with two others, and that since the agonies of
+the drowning men had passed into unconsciousness, it would have been
+better to surrender the selected victims to their fate. At Elsinore,
+in Denmark, when the sea moans it is said to 'want somebody,' and
+it is generally the case that some story of a person just drowned
+circulates afterwards.
+
+While the early mythological forms of the Fates diminish and pass away
+as curious superstitions, they return in metaphysical disguises. They
+gather their kindred in primitive sciences and cosmogonies, and
+finding their old home swept free of pagan demons, and, garnished
+with philosophic phrases, they enter as grave theories; but their
+subtlety and their sting is with them, and the last state of the
+house they occupy is worse than the first.
+
+Yes, worse: for all that man ever won of courage or moral freedom,
+by conquering his dragons in detail, he surrenders again to the
+phantom-forces they typified when he gives up his mind to belief in
+a power not himself that makes for evil. The terrible conclusion that
+Evil is a positive and imperishable Principle in the universe carries
+in it the poisonous breath of every Dragon. It lurks in all theology
+which represents the universe as an arena of struggle between good
+and evil Principles, and human life as a war of the soul against the
+flesh. It animates all the pious horrors which identify Materialism
+with wickedness. It nestles in the mind which imagines a personal
+deity opposed by any part of nature. It coils around every heart
+which adores absolute sovereign Will, however apotheosised.
+
+All of these notions, most of all belief in a supreme arbitrary Will,
+are modern disguises of Fate; and belief in Fate is the one thing
+fatal to human culture and energy. The notion of Fate (fatum, the
+word spoken) carries in it the conception of arbitrariness in the
+universe, of power deliberately exerted without necessary reference
+to the nature of things; and it is precisely opposed to that idea of
+Necessity taught by Science, which is another name for the supremacy of
+Law. Happily the notion of a universe held at the mercy of a personal
+decree is suicidal in a world full of sorrows and agonies, which,
+on such a theory, can only be traced to some individual caprice
+or malevolence. However long abject fear may silence the lips of
+the suffering, rebellion is in their hearts. Every blow inflicted,
+directly or permissively, by mere Will, however omnipotent, every
+agony that is consciously detached from universal organic necessity,
+in order that it may be called 'providential,' can arouse no natural
+feeling in man nobler than indignation. The feeling of a suitor in
+a court of law, who knows that the adverse judgment that ruins him
+has no root in the facts or the law, but proceeds from the prejudice
+or whim of the judge, can be nowise different from that of a mother
+who sees her son stricken down by death, and hears at his grave that
+he was consumed by the wrath of a god who might have yielded to her
+prayer, but refused it. The heart's protest may be throttled for a
+time by the lingering coil of terror, but it is there, and christian
+theologians will be as anxious to protect their deity from it, at
+whatever cost to his sovereignty, as their predecessors who invented
+the Cabinet of Women to relieve Jove from responsibility.
+
+Metaphysics--which appear to have developed into the art of
+making things look true in words when their untruth in fact
+has been detected--have indeed already set about the task just
+predicted. Eminent divines are found writing about matter and spirit,
+freedom and natural law, as solemnly as if all this discussion were
+new, and had never been carried out to its inevitable results. They
+can only put in christian or modern phraseology conclusions which have
+been reached again and again in the history of human speculation. The
+various schools of Buddhist and Vedantist philosophy have come by every
+conceivable route to their fundamental unity of belief in God, Soul,
+and Matter; in a pessimist visible nature, an ideal invisible nature,
+and a human soul held in matter like a frog in a snake's mouth, but
+able by certain mysterious, mostly metaphysical or verbal, tactics,
+to gain release, and pass into a corresponding situation in the deity.
+
+'As a king, whose son had strayed away from him and lived in ignorance
+of his father among the Veddahs (wild men), will, on discovering
+his son, exclaim, 'Come to me, my darling son!' and make him a
+participator of the happiness he himself enjoys, even so will the
+Supreme God present himself before the soul when in distress--the
+soul enmeshed in the net of the five Veddahs (senses), and, severing
+that soul from Pâsam (Matter), assimilate it to himself, and bless
+it at his holy feet.'
+
+It is too late for man to be interested in an 'omnipotent' Personality,
+whose power is mysteriously limited at the precise point when it
+is needed, and whose moral government is another name for man's own
+control of nature. Nevertheless, this Oriental pessimism is the Pauline
+theory of Matter, and it is the speculative protoplasm out of which
+has been evolved, in many shapes, that personification which remains
+for our consideration--the Devil.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART IV.
+
+THE DEVIL.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+DIABOLISM.
+
+ Dragon and Devil distinguished--Dragons' wings--War in Heaven--
+ Expulsion of Serpents--Dissolution of the Dragon--Theological
+ origin of the Devil--Ideal and actual--Devil Dogma--Debasement
+ of ideal persons--Transmigration of phantoms.
+
+
+'We are all nothing other than Wills,' says St. Augustine; and he
+adds that of the good and bad angels the nature is the same, the will
+different. In harmony with this John Beaumont says, 'A good desire
+of mind is a good God.' [1] To which all the mythology of Evil adds,
+a bad desire of mind is a Devil. Every personification of an evil
+Will looks beyond the outward phenomena of pain, and conceives a
+heart that loves evil, a spirit that makes for wickedness. At this
+point a new element altogether enters. The physical pain incidentally
+represented by the Demon, generalised and organised into a principle
+of harmfulness in the Dragon, begins now to pass under the shadow cast
+by the ascending light of man's moral nature. Man becomes conscious of
+moral and spiritual pains: they may be still imaginatively connected
+with bodily agonies, but these drop out of the immediate conception,
+disappear into a distant future, and are even replaced by the notion
+of an evil symbolised by pleasure.
+
+The fundamental difference between either a Demon or Dragon and a
+Devil may be recognised in this: we never find the former voluntarily
+bestowing physical pleasure or happiness on man, whereas it is a
+chief part of the notion of a Devil that he often confers earthly
+favours in order to corrupt the moral nature.
+
+There are, indeed, apparent exceptions to this theorem presented
+in the agatho-dragons which have already been considered in our
+chapter on the Basilisk; but the reader will observe that there is
+no intimation in such myths of any malign ulterior purpose in the
+good omens brought by those exceptional monsters, and that they are
+really forms of malevolent power whose afflictive intent is supposed
+to have been vanquished by the superior might of the heroes or saints
+to whose glory they are reluctantly compelled to become tributary.
+
+Undoubtedly the Dragon attended this moral and religious development of
+man's inward nature very far, and still occupies, as at once prisoner
+and gaoler in the underworld, a subordinate relation to it. In the long
+process he has undergone certain transformations, and in particular
+his attribute of wings, if not derived from the notion of his struggle
+against holier beings, seems to have been largely enhanced thereby. The
+exceptional wings given to serpents in Greek art, those, for instance,
+which draw Demeter and Persephone in their chariot, are trifling as
+compared with the fully-developed wings of our conventional Dragon of
+the christian era. Such wings might have been developed occasionally
+to denote the flying cloud, the fire-breathing storm, or explain how
+some Ráhu was enabled to pursue the sun and moon and swallow them
+temporarily in the phenomena of eclipse. But these wings grew to
+more important dimensions when they were caught up into the Semitic
+conception of winged genii and destroying angels, and associated with
+an ambitious assault on heaven and its divine or angelic occupants.
+
+'There was war in Heaven,' says the Apocalypse. The traditional
+descriptions of this war follow pretty closely, in dramatic details,
+other and more ancient struggles which reflect man's encounters with
+the hardships of nature. In those encounters man imagined the gods
+descending earthward to mingle in the fray; but even where the struggle
+mounted highest the scenery is mainly terrestrial and the issues those
+of place and power, the dominion of visible Light established above
+Darkness, or of a comparatively civilised over a savage race. The
+wars between the Devas and Asuras in India, the Devs and Ahuras in
+Persia, Buddha and the Nagas in Ceylon, Garúra and the Serpent-men
+in the north of India, gods and Frost-giants in Scandinavia, still
+concern man's relation to the fruits of the earth, to heat and frost,
+to darkness or storm and sunshine.
+
+But some of these at length find versions which reveal their tendency
+towards spiritualisation. The differences presented by one of these
+legends which has survived among us in nearly its ancient form from
+the same which remains in a partly mystical form will illustrate
+the transitional phase. Thus, Garúra expelling the serpents from
+his realm in India is not a saintly legend; this exterminator of
+serpents is said to have compelled the reptile race to send him one
+of their number daily that he might eat it, and the rationalised
+tradition interprets this as the prince's cannibalism. The expulsion
+of Nagas or serpents from Ceylon by Buddha, in order that he might
+consecrate that island to the holy law, marks the pious accentuation
+of the fable. The expulsion of snakes from Ireland by St. Patrick
+is a legend conceived in the spirit of the curse pronounced upon the
+serpent in Eden, but in this case the modern myth is the more primitive
+morally, and more nearly represents the exploit of Garúra. St. Patrick
+expels the snakes that he may make Ireland a paradise physically,
+and establish his reputation as an apostle by fulfilling the signs
+of one named by Christ; [2] and in this particular it slightly rises
+above the Hindu story. In the case of the serpent cursed in Eden a
+further moralisation of the conflict is shown. The serpent is not
+present in Eden, as in the realms of Garúra and St. Patrick, for
+purposes of physical devastation or pain, but to bestow a pleasure
+on man with a view to success in a further issue between himself and
+the deity. Yet in this Eden myth the ancient combat is not yet fairly
+spiritualised; for the issue still relates, as in that between the
+Devas and Asuras, to the possession of a magical fruit which by no
+means confers sanctity. In the apocalyptic legend of the war in heaven,
+[3] the legend has become fairly spiritualised. The issue is no longer
+terrestrial, it is no longer for mere power; the Dragon is arrayed
+against the woman and child, and against the spiritual 'salvation'
+of mankind, of whom he is 'accuser' and 'deceiver.'
+
+Surely nobody could be 'deceived' by 'a great fiery-red Dragon, having
+seven heads and ten horns'! In this vision the Dragon is pressed as far
+as the form can go in the symbolisation of evil. To devour the child is
+its legitimate work, but as 'accuser of the brethren before God day and
+night' the monstrous shape were surely out of place by any mythologic
+analogy; and one could hardly imagine such a physiognomy capable of
+deceiving 'the whole world.' It is not wonderful, therefore, that the
+Dragon's presence in heaven is only mentioned in connection with his
+fall from it. It is significant that the wings are lost in this fall;
+for while his 'angelic' relationship suggests the previous wings,
+the woman is able to escape the fallen monster by the two wings given
+her. [4] Wingless now, 'the old serpent' once more, the monster's
+shape has no adaptation to the moral and religious struggle which
+is to ensue. For his shape is a method, and it means the perfection
+of brute force. That, indeed, also remains in the sequel of this
+magnificent myth. As in the legend of the Hydra two heads spring up
+in place of that which falls, so in this Christian legend out of the
+overthrown monster, henceforth himself concealed, two arise from his
+inspiration,--the seven-headed, ten-horned Beast who continues the work
+of wrath and pain; but also a lamb-like Beast, with only two horns
+(far less terrible), and able to deceive by his miracles, for he is
+even able to call down fire from heaven. The ancient Serpent-dragon,
+the expression of natural pain, thus goes to pieces. His older part
+remains to work mischief and hurt; and the cry is uttered, 'Be merry,
+ye heavens, and ye that tabernacle in them: woe to the earth and the
+sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath because
+he knows that he has a short time.' [5] But there is a lamb-like part
+of him too, and his relation to the Dragon is only known by his voice.
+
+This subtle adaptation of the symbol of external pain to the
+representation of the moral struggle, wherein the hostile power
+may assume deceptive forms of beauty and pleasure, is only one
+impressive illustration of the transfer of human conceptions of evil
+from outward to inward nature. The transition is from a malevolent,
+fatal, principle of harmfulness to the body to a malevolent, fatal,
+principle of evil to the conscience. The Demon was natural; the
+Dragon was both physical and metaphysical; the Devil was and is
+theological. In the primitive Zoroastrian theology, where the Devil
+first appears in clear definition, he is the opponent of the Good
+Mind, and the combat between the two, Ormuzd and Ahriman, is the
+spiritualisation of the combat between Light and Darkness, Pain and
+Happiness, in the external world. As these visible antagonists were
+supposed to be exactly balanced against each other, so are their
+spiritual correlatives. The Two Minds are described as Twins.
+
+'Those old Spirits, who are twins, made known what is good and what is
+evil in thoughts, words, and deeds. Those who are good distinguished
+between the two; not so those who are evil-doers.
+
+'When these two Spirits came together they made first life and death,
+so that there should be at last the most wretched life for the bad,
+but for the good blessedness.
+
+'Of these two Spirits the evil one chose the worst deeds; the
+kind Spirit, he whose garment is the immovable sky, chose what is
+right.' [6]
+
+This metaphysical theory follows closely the primitive scientific
+observations on which it is based; it is the cold of the cold,
+the gloom of the darkness, the sting of death, translated into some
+order for the intellect which, having passed through the Dragon, we
+find appearing in this Persian Devil; and against his blackness the
+glory of the personality from whom all good things proceed shines
+out in a splendour no longer marred by association with the evil
+side of nature. Ormuzd is celebrated as 'father of the pure world,'
+who sustains 'the earth and the clouds that they do not fall,' and
+'has made the kindly light and the darkness, the kindly sleep and the
+awaking;' [7] at every step being suggested the father of the impure
+world, the unkindly light, darkness or sleep.
+
+The ecstasy which attended man's first vision of an ideal life defied
+the contradictory facts of outward and inward nature. So soon as he
+had beheld a purer image of himself rising above his own animalism,
+he must not only regard that animalism as an instigation of a devil,
+but also the like of it in nature; and this conception will proceed
+pari passu with the creation of pure deities in the image of that
+higher self. There was as yet no philosophy demanding unity in the
+Cosmos, or forbidding man to hold as accursed so much of nature as
+did not obviously accord with his ideals.
+
+Mr. Edward B. Tylor has traced the growth of Animism from man's
+shadow and his breathing; Sir John Lubbock has traced the influence of
+dreams in forming around him a ghostly world; Mr. Herbert Spencer has
+given an analysis of the probable processes by which this invisible
+environment was shaped for the mental conception in accordance
+with family and social conditions. But it is necessary that we
+should here recognise the shadow that walked by the moral nature,
+the breathings of religious aspiration, and the dreams which visited
+a man whose moral sense was so generally at variance with his animal
+desires. The code established for the common good, while necessarily
+having a relation to every individual conscience, is a restriction
+upon individual liberty. The conflict between selfishness and duty is
+thus inaugurated; it continues in the struggle between the 'law in the
+members and the law in the spirit,' which led Paul to beat his body
+(hypopiaxomai) to keep it in subjection; it passes from the Latin
+poet to the Englishman, who turns his experience to a rune--
+
+
+ I see the right, and I approve it too;
+ Condemn the wrong, and yet the wrong pursue.
+
+
+As the light which cast it was intense, even so intense was the shadow
+it cast beneath all it could not penetrate. Passionate as was the
+saintliest man's love of good, even so passionate was his spiritual
+enemy's love of evil. High as was the azure vault that mingled with his
+dreams of purity, so deep was the abyss beneath his lower nature. The
+superficial equalities of phenomena, painful and pleasurable, to his
+animal nature had cast the mould into which his theories of the inward
+and the moral phenomena must be cast; and thus man--in an august
+moment--surrendered himself to the dreadful conception of a supreme
+Principle of Wickedness: wherever good was there stood its adversary;
+wherever truth, there its denier; no light shone without the dark
+presence that would quench it; innocence had its official accuser,
+virtue its accomplished tempter, peace its breaker, faith its disturber
+and mocker. Nay, to this impersonation was added the last feature
+of fiendishness, a nature which found its supreme satisfaction in
+ultimately torturing human beings for the sins instigated by himself.
+
+It is open to question how far any average of mankind really conceived
+this theological dogma. Easy as it is to put into clear verbal
+statement; readily as the analogies of nature supply arguments for
+and illustrations of a balance between moral light and darkness, love
+and hatred; yet is man limited in subjective conceptions to his own
+possibilities, and it may almost be said that to genuinely believe in
+an absolute Fiend a man would have to be potentially one himself. But
+any human being, animated by causeless and purposeless desire to
+inflict pain on others, would be universally regarded as insane,
+much more one who would without motive corrupt as well as afflict.
+
+Even theological statements of the personality of Evil, and what that
+implies, are rare. The following is brave enough to be put on record,
+apart from its suggestiveness.
+
+'It cannot be denied that as there is an inspiration of holy love,
+so is there an inspiration of hatred, or frantic pleasure, with which
+men surrender themselves to the impulses of destructiveness; and when
+the popular language speaks of possessions of Satan, of incarnate
+devils, there lies at the bottom of this the grave truth that men,
+by continued sinning, may pass the ordinary limit between human and
+diabolic depravity, and lay open in themselves a deep abyss of hatred
+which, without any mixture of self-interest, finds its gratification
+in devastation and woe.' [8]
+
+On this it may be said that the popular commentary on cases of the
+kind is contained in the very phrase alluded to, 'possession,'--the
+implication being that such disinterested depravity is nowise possible
+within the range of simple human experience,--and, in modern times,
+'possessions' are treated in asylums. Morbid conditions, however, are
+of such varied degrees that it is probable many have imagined a Being
+in whom their worst impulses are unrestrained, and thus there have
+been sufficient popular approximations to an imaginative conception
+of a Devil to enable the theological dogma, which few can analyse,
+to survive.
+
+It must not be supposed, however, that the moral and spiritual ideals,
+to which allusion has just been made, are normally represented in the
+various Devils which we have to consider. It is the characteristic of
+personifications, whether celestial or infernal, to supersede gradually
+the ideas out of which they spring. As in the fable of Agni, who is
+said to have devoured his parents when he was born, a metaphor of fire
+consuming the two sticks which produce it, religious history shows both
+deities and devils, by the flame of personal devotion or hatred they
+engender, burning up the ideas that originate them. When instead of
+unconscious forces and inanimate laws working to results called good
+and evil, men see great personal Wills engaged in personal conflict,
+the universe becomes a government of combat; the stars of heaven, the
+angels and the imps, men and women, the very plants and animals, are
+caught up in the battle, to be marshalled on one side or the other;
+and in the military spirit and fury of the struggle the spiritual
+ideals become as insignificant beneath the phantom-hosts they evoked
+as the violets and daisies which an army tramples in its march. There
+is little difference at last between the moral characteristics of
+the respective armies of Ormuzd and Ahriman, Michael and Satan; their
+strategy and ferocity are the same. [9] Wherever the conception is that
+of a universe divided into hostile camps, the appropriate passions are
+kindled, and in the thick of the field, where Cruelty and Gentleness
+met, is seen at last a horned Beast confronted by a horned Lamb. [10]
+On both sides is exaltation of the horn.
+
+We need only look at the outcome of the gentle and lowly Jesus through
+the exigencies of the church militant to see how potent are such
+forces. Although lay Christians of ordinary education are accustomed
+to rationalise their dogmas as well as they can, and dwell on the
+loving and patient characteristics of Jesus, the horns which were
+attached to the brow of him who said, 'Love your enemies' by ages of
+Christian warfare remain still in the Christ of Theology, and they
+are still depended on to overawe the 'sinner.' In an orthodox family
+with which I have had some acquaintance, a little boy, who had used
+naughty expressions of resentment towards a playmate was admonished
+that he should be more like Christ, 'who never did any harm to his
+enemies.' 'No,' answered the wrathful child, 'but he's a-going to.'
+
+As in Demonology we trace the struggles of man with external
+obstructions, and the phantasms in which these were reflected until
+they were understood or surmounted, we have now to consider the forms
+which report human progression on a higher plane,--that of social,
+moral, and religious evolution. Creations of a crude Theology, in its
+attempt to interpret the moral sentiment, the Devils to which we now
+turn our attention have multiplied as the various interests of mankind
+have come into relations with their conscience. Every degree of ascent
+of the moral nature has been marked by innumerable new shadows cast
+athwart the mind and the life of man. Every new heaven of ideas
+is followed by a new earth, but ere this conformity of things to
+thoughts can take place struggles must come and the old demons will
+be recalled for new service. As time goes on things new grow old;
+the fresh issues pass away, their battlefields grow cold; then the
+brood of superstition must flit away to the next field where carrion is
+found. Foul and repulsive as are these vultures of the mind--organisms
+of moral sewage--every one of them is a witness to the victories of
+mankind over the evils they shadow, and to the steady advance of a
+new earth which supplies them no habitat but the archæologist's page.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE SECOND BEST.
+
+ Respect for the Devil--Primitive atheism--Idealisation--Birth of
+ new gods--New gods diabolised--Compromise between new gods and
+ old--Foreign deities degraded--Their utilisation.
+
+
+A lady residing in Hampshire, England, recently said to a friend of
+the present writer, both being mothers, 'Do you make your children
+bow their heads whenever they mention the Devil's name? I do,' she
+added solemnly,--'I think it's safer.'
+
+This instance of reverence for the Devil's name, occurring in a
+respectable English family, may excite a smile; but if my reader has
+perused the third and fourth chapters (Part I.) of this work, in which
+it was necessary to state certain facts and principles which underlie
+the phenomena of degradation in both Demonology and Devil-lore, he will
+already know the high significance of nearly all the names which have
+invested the personifications of evil; and he will not be surprised to
+find their original sanctity, though lowered, sometimes, surviving in
+such imaginary forms after the battles in which they were vanquished
+have passed out of all contemporary interest. If, for example, instead
+of the Devil, whose name is uttered with respect in the Hampshire
+household, any theological bogey of our own time were there mentioned,
+such as 'Atheist,' it might hardly receive such considerate treatment.
+
+The two chapters just referred to anticipate much that should be
+considered at this point of our inquiry. It is only necessary here
+to supplement them with a brief statement, and to some extent a
+recapitulation, of the processes by which degraded deities are
+preserved to continue through a structural development and fulfil
+a necessary part in every theological scheme which includes the
+conception of an eternal difference between good and evil.
+
+Every personification when it first appears expresses a higher
+and larger view. When deities representing the physical needs of
+mankind have failed, as they necessarily must, to meet those needs,
+atheism follows, though it cannot for a long time find philosophical
+expression. It is an atheism ad hoc, so to say, and works by
+degrading particular gods instead of by constructing antitheistic
+theories. Successive dynasties of deities arise and flourish in this
+way, each representing a less arbitrary relation to nature,--peril
+lying in that direction,--and a higher moral and spiritual ideal,
+this being the stronghold of deities. It is obvious that it is far
+easier to maintain the theory that prayers are heard and answered
+by a deity if those prayers are limited to spiritual requests, than
+when they are petitions for outward benefits. By giving over the
+cruel and remorseless forces of nature to the Devil,--i.e., to this
+or that personification of them who, as gods, had been appealed to
+in vain to soften such forces,--the more spiritual god that follows
+gains in security as well as beauty what he surrenders of empire and
+omnipotence. This law, illustrated in our chapter on Fate, operates
+with tremendous effect upon the conditions under which the old combat
+is spiritualised.
+
+An eloquent preacher has said:--'Hawthorne's fine fancy of the youth
+who ascribed heroic qualities to the stone face on the brow of a
+cliff, thus converting the rocky profile into a man, and, by dint of
+meditating on it with admiring awe, actually transferred to himself
+the moral elements he worshipped, has been made fact a thousand times,
+is made fact every day, by earnest spirits who by faithful longing
+turn their visions into verities, and obtain live answers to their
+petitions to shadows.' [11]
+
+However imaginary may be the benedictions so derived by the worshipper
+from his image, they are most real as they redound to the glory
+and power of the image. The crudest personification, gathering up
+the sanctities of generations, associated with the holiest hopes,
+the best emotions, the profoundest aspirations of human nature,
+may be at length so identified with these sentiments that they all
+seem absolutely dependent upon the image they invest. Every criticism
+of such a personification then seems like a blow aimed at the moral
+laws. If educated men are still found in Christendom discussing whether
+morality can survive the overthrow of such personifications, and
+whether life were worth living without them, we may readily understand
+how in times when the social, ethical, and psychological sciences
+did not exist at all, all that human beings valued seemed destined
+to stand or fall with the Person supposed to be their only keystone.
+
+But no Personage, however highly throned, can arrest the sun and
+moon, or the mind and life of humanity. With every advance in
+physical or social conditions moral elements must be influenced;
+every new combination involves a recast of experiences, and presently
+of convictions. Henceforth the deified image can only remain as a
+tyrant over the heart and brain which have created it,--
+
+
+ Creatura a un tempo
+ E tiranno de l'uom, da cui soltanto
+ Ebbe nomi ed aspetti e regno e altari. [12]
+
+
+This personification, thus 'at once man's creature and his tyrant,' is
+objectively a name. But as it has been invested with all that has been
+most sacred, it is inevitable that any name raised against it shall be
+equally associated with all that has been considered basest. This also
+must be personified, for the same reason that the good is personified;
+and as names are chiefly hereditary, it pretty generally happens that
+the title of some fallen and discredited deity is advanced to receive
+the new anathema. But what else does he receive? The new ideas; the
+growing ideals and the fresh enthusiasms are associated with some
+fantastic shape with anathematised name evoked from the past, and
+thus a portentous situation is reached. The worshippers of the new
+image will not accept the bad name and its base associations; they
+even grow strong enough to claim the name and altars of the existing
+order, and give battle for the same. Then occurs the demoralisation,
+literally speaking, of the older theology. The personification reduced
+to struggle for its existence can no longer lay emphasis upon the
+moral principles it had embodied, these being equally possessed by
+their opponents; nay, its partisans manage to associate with their
+holy Name so much bigotry and cruelty that the innovators are at length
+willing to resign it. The personal loyalty, which is found to continue
+after loyalty to principles has ceased, proceeds to degrade the virtues
+once reverenced when they are found connected with a rival name. 'He
+casteth out devils through Beelzebub' is a very ancient cry. It was
+heard again when Tertullian said, 'Satan is God's ape.' St. Augustine
+recognises the similarity between the observances of Christians and
+pagans as proving the subtle imitativeness of the Devil; the phenomena
+referred to are considered elsewhere, but, in the present connection,
+it may be remarked that this readiness to regard the same sacrament
+as supremely holy or supremely diabolical as it is celebrated in
+honour of one name or another, accords closely with the reverence
+or detestation of things more important than sacraments, as they
+are, or are not, consecrated by what each theology deems official
+sanction. When sects talk of 'mere morality' we may recognise in
+the phrase the last faint war-cry of a god from whom the spiritual
+ideal has passed away, and whose name even can survive only through
+alliance with the new claimant of his altars. While the new gods were
+being called devils the old ones were becoming such.
+
+The victory of the new ideal turns the old one to an idol. But we are
+considering a phase of the world when superstition must invest the
+new as well as the old, though in a weaker degree. A new religious
+system prevails chiefly through its moral superiority to that it
+supersedes; but when it has succeeded to the temples and altars
+consecrated to previous divinities, when the ardour of battle is
+over and conciliation becomes a policy as well as a virtue, the old
+idol is likely to be treated with respect, and may not impossibly be
+brought into friendly relation with its victorious adversary. He may
+take his place as 'the second best,' to borrow Goethe's phrase, and be
+assigned some function in the new theologic régime. Thus, behind the
+simplicity of the Hampshire lady instructing her children to bow at
+mention of the Devil's name, stretch the centuries in which Christian
+divines have as warmly defended the existence of Satan as that of God
+himself. With sufficient reason: that infernal being, some time God's
+'ape' and rival, was necessarily developed into his present position
+and office of agent and executioner under the divine government. He
+is the great Second Best; and it is a strange hallucination to fancy
+that, in an age of peaceful inquiry, any divine personification can
+be maintained without this patient Goat, who bears blame for all
+the faults of nature, and who relieves divine Love from the odium
+of supplying that fear which is the mother of devotion,--at least in
+the many millions of illogical eyes into which priests can still look
+without laughing.
+
+Such, in brief outline, has been the interaction of moral and
+intellectual forces operating within the limits of established systems,
+and of the nations governed by them. But there are added factors,
+intensifying the forces on each side, when alien are brought into
+rivalry and collision with national deities. In such a contest, besides
+the moral and spiritual sentiments and the household sanctities, which
+have become intertwined with the internal deities, national pride is
+also enlisted, and patriotism. But on the other side is enlisted the
+charm of novelty, and the consciousness of fault and failure in the
+home system. Every system imported to a foreign land leaves behind
+its practical shortcomings, puts its best foot forward--namely, its
+theoretical foot--and has the advantage of suggesting a way of escape
+from the existing routine which has become oppressive. Napoleon I. said
+that no people profoundly attached to the institutions of their country
+can be conquered; but what people are attached to the priestly system
+over them? That internal dissatisfaction which, in secular government,
+gives welcome to a dashing Corsican or a Prince of Orange, has been
+the means of introducing many an alien religion, and giving to many a
+prophet the honour denied him in his own country. Buddha was a Hindu,
+but the triumph of his religion is not in India; Zoroaster was a
+Persian, but there are no Parsees in Persia; Christianity is hardly
+a colonist even in the native land of Christ.
+
+These combinations and changes were not effected without fierce
+controversies, ferocious wars, or persecutions, and the formation
+of many devils. Nothing is more normal in ancient systems than the
+belief that the gods of other nations are devils. The slaughter of
+the priests of Baal corresponds with the development of their god
+into Beelzebub. In proportion to the success of Olaf in crushing
+the worshippers of Odin, their deity is steadily transformed to a
+diabolical Wild Huntsman. But here also the forces of partial recovery,
+which we have seen operating in the outcome of internal reform,
+manifest themselves; the vanquished, and for a time outlawed deity, is,
+in many cases, subsequently conciliated and given an inferior, and,
+though hateful, a useful office in the new order. Sometimes, indeed,
+as in the case of the Hindu destroyer Siva, it is found necessary
+to assign a god, anathematised beyond all power of whitewash, to an
+equal rank with the most virtuous deity. Political forces and the
+exigencies of propagandism work many marvels of this kind, which will
+meet us in the further stages of our investigation.
+
+Every superseded god who survives in subordination to another is pretty
+sure to be developed into a Devil. Euphemism may tell pleasant fables
+about him, priestcraft may find it useful to perpetuate belief in his
+existence, but all the evils of the universe, which it is inconvenient
+to explain, are gradually laid upon him, and sink him down, until
+nothing is left of his former glory but a shining name.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+AHRIMAN: THE DIVINE DEVIL.
+
+ Mr. Irving's impersonation of Superstition--Revolution against
+ pious privilege--Doctrine of 'merits'--Saintly immorality in
+ India--A Pantheon turned Inferno--Zendavesta on Good and Evil--
+ Parsî Mythology--The Combat of Ahriman with Ormuzd--Optimism--
+ Parsî Eschatology--Final Restoration of Ahriman.
+
+
+Any one who has witnessed Mr. Henry Irving's scholarly and masterly
+impersonation of the character of Louis XI. has had an opportunity of
+recognising a phase of superstition which happily it were now difficult
+to find off the stage. Nothing could exceed the fine realism with
+which that artist brought before the spectator the perfected type of a
+pretended religion from which all moral features have been eliminated
+by such slow processes that the final success is unconsciously reached,
+and the horrible result appears unchecked by even any affectation
+of actual virtue. We see the king at sound of a bell pausing in his
+instructions for a treacherous assassination to mumble his prayers,
+and then instantly reverting to the villany over whose prospective
+success he gloats. In the secrecy of his chamber no mask falls, for
+there is no mask; the face of superstition and vice on which we look
+is the real face which the ages of fanaticism have transmitted to him.
+
+Such a face has oftener been that of a nation than that of an
+individual, for the healthy forces of life work amid the homes
+and hearts of mankind long before their theories are reached and
+influenced. Such a face it was against which the moral insurrection
+which bears the name of Zoroaster arose, seeing it as physiognomy of
+the Evil Mind, naming it Ahriman, and, in the name of the conscience,
+aiming at it the blow which is still felt across the centuries.
+
+Ingenious theorists have accounted for the Iranian philosophy of
+a universal war between Ormuzd (Ahuramazda) the Good, and Ahriman
+(Angromainyus) the Evil, by vast and terrible climatic changes,
+involving extremes of heat and cold, of which geologists find traces
+about Old Iran, from which a colony of Aryans migrated to New Iran,
+or Persia. But although physical conditions of this character may have
+supplied many of the metaphors in which the conflict between Good and
+Evil is described in the Avesta, there are other characteristics of
+that ancient scripture which render it more probable that the early
+colonisation of Persia was, like that of New England, the result of a
+religious struggle. Some of the gods most adored in India reappear as
+execrated demons in the religion of Zoroaster; the Hindu word for god
+is the Parsî word for devil. These antagonisms are not merely verbal;
+they are accompanied in the Avesta with the most furious denunciations
+of theological opponents, whom it is not difficult to identify with
+the priests and adherents of the Brahman religion.
+
+The spirit of the early scriptures of India leaves no room for
+doubt as to the point at which this revolution began. It was against
+pious Privilege. The saintly hierarchy of India were a caste quite
+irresponsible to moral laws. The ancient gods, vague names for the
+powers of nature, were strictly limited in their dispensations to
+those of their priests; [13] and as to these priests the chief
+necessities were ample offerings, sacrifices, and fulfilment of
+the ceremonial ordinances in which their authority was organised,
+these were the performances rewarded by a reciprocal recognition of
+authority. To the image of this political régime, theology, always
+facile, accommodated the regulations of the gods. The moral law can
+only live by being supreme; and as it was not supreme in the Hindu
+pantheon, it died out of it. The doctrine of 'merits,' invented by
+priests purely for their own power, included nothing meritorious,
+humanly considered; the merits consisted of costly sacrifices,
+rich offerings to temples, tremendous penances for fictitious sins,
+ingeniously devised to aggrandise the penances which disguised power,
+and prolonged austerities that might be comfortably commuted by the
+wealthy. When this doctrine had obtained general adherence, and was
+represented by a terrestrial government corresponding to it, the
+gods were necessarily subject to it. That were only to say that the
+powers of nature were obedient to the 'merits' of privileged saints;
+and from this it is an obvious inference that they are relieved from
+moral laws binding on the vulgar.
+
+The legends which represent this phase of priestly dominion are
+curiously mixed. It would appear that under the doctrine of 'merits'
+the old gods declined. Such appears to be the intimation of the
+stories which report the distress of the gods through the power
+of human saints. The Rajah Ravana acquired such power that he was
+said to have arrested the sun and moon, and so oppressed the gods
+that they temporarily transformed themselves to monkeys in order
+to destroy him. Though Viswámitra murders a saint, his merits are
+such that the gods are in great alarm lest they become his menials;
+and the completeness, with which moral considerations are left out
+of the struggle on both sides is disclosed in the item that the gods
+commissioned a nymph to seduce the saintly murderer, and so reduce a
+little the force of his austerities. It will be remembered that the
+ancient struggle of the Devas and Asuras was not owing to any moral
+differences, but to an alleged unfair distribution of the ambrosia
+produced by their joint labours in churning the ocean. The fact that
+the gods cheated the demons on that occasion was never supposed to
+affect the supremacy they acquired by the treachery; and it could,
+therefore, cause no scandal when later legends reported that the demons
+were occasionally able to take gods captive by the practice of these
+wonderful 'merits' which were so independent of morals. One Asura
+is said to have gained such power in this way that he subjugated the
+gods, and so punished them that Siva, who had originally endowed that
+demon, called into being Scanda, a war-god, to defend the tortured
+deities. The most ludicrous part of all is that the gods themselves
+were gradually reduced to the necessity of competing like others for
+these tremendous powers; thus the Bhagavat Purana states that Brahma
+was enabled to create the universe by previously undergoing penance
+for sixteen thousand years.
+
+The legends just referred to are puranic, and consequently of much
+later date than the revolution traceable in the Iranian religion;
+but these later legends are normal growths from vedic roots. These
+were the principles of ancient theology, and the foundation of
+priestly government. In view of them we need not wonder that Hindu
+theology devised no special devil; almost any of its gods might
+answer the purposes of one. Nor need we be surprised that it had no
+particular hell; any society organised by the sanctions of religion,
+but irresponsible to its moral laws, would render it unnecessary to
+look far for a hell.
+
+From this cosmological chaos the more intelligent Hindus were of
+course liberated; but the degree to which the fearful training had
+corrupted the moral tissues of those who had been subjected to it
+was revealed in the bald principle of their philosophers, that the
+superstition must continue to be imposed on the vulgar, whilst the
+learned might turn all the gods into a scientific terminology.
+
+The first clear and truthful eye that touched that system would
+transform it from a Heaven to an Inferno. So was it changed under
+the eye of Zoroaster. That ancient pantheon which had become a refuge
+for all the lies of the known world; whose gods were liars and their
+supporters liars; was now turned into a realm of organised disorder, of
+systematised wrong; a vast creation of wickedness, at whose centre sat
+its creator and inspirer, the immoral god, the divine devil--Ahriman.
+
+It is indeed impossible to ascertain how far the revolt against the old
+Brahmanic system was political. It is, of course, highly improbable
+that any merely speculative system would excite a revolution; but at
+the same time it must be remembered that, in early days, an importance
+was generally attached to even abstract opinions such as we still
+find among the superstitious who regard an atheistic sentiment as
+worse than a theft. However this may have been, the Avesta does
+not leave us in any doubt as to the main fact,--namely, that at a
+certain time and place man came to a point where he had to confront
+antagonism to fundamental moral principles, and that he found the
+so-called gods against him. In the establishment of those principles
+priests recognised their own disestablishment. What those moral laws
+that had become necessary to society were is also made clear. 'We
+worship the Pure, the Lord of Purity!' 'We honour the good spirit,
+the good kingdom, the good law,--all that is good.' 'Evil doctrine
+shall not again destroy the world.' 'Good is the thought, good the
+word, good the deed, of the pure Zarathustra.' 'In the beginning
+the two heavenly Ones spoke--the Good to the Evil--thus: Our souls,
+doctrines, words, works, do not unite together.' These sentences are
+from the oldest Gâthâs of the Avesta.
+
+The following is a very ancient Gâthâ:--'All your Devas (Hindu 'gods')
+are only manifold children of the Evil Mind, and the great One who
+worships the Saoma of lies and deceits; besides the treacherous acts
+for which you are notorious in the Seven Regions of the earth. You have
+invented all the evil that men speak and do, which is indeed pleasant
+to the Devas, and is devoid of all goodness, and therefore perishes
+before the insight of the truth of the wise. Thus you defraud men of
+their good minds and of their immortality by your evil minds--as well
+by those of the Devas as through that of the Evil Spirit--through
+evil deeds and evil words, whereby the power of liars grows.
+
+'1. Come near, and listen to the wise sayings of the omniscient,
+the songs in praise of the Living One, and the prayers of the Good
+Spirit, the glorious truths whose origin is seen in the flames.
+
+'2. Listen, therefore, to the Earth spirit--Look at the flames with
+reverent mind. Every one, man and woman, is to be distinguished
+according to his belief. Ye ancient Powers, watch and be with us!
+
+'3. From the beginning there were two Spirits, each active in
+itself. They are the good and the bad in thought, word, and
+deed. Choose ye between them: do good, not evil!
+
+'4. And these two Spirits meet and create the first existence,
+the earthy, that which is and that which is not, and the last,
+the spiritual. The worst existence is for the liars, the best for
+the truthful.
+
+'5. Of these two spirits choose ye one, either the lying, the worker
+of Evil, or the true holiest spirit. Whoso chooses the first chooses
+the hardest fate; whoso the last, honours Ahuramazda in faith and in
+truth by his deeds.
+
+'6. Ye cannot serve both of these two. An evil spirit whom we will
+destroy surprises those who deliberate, saying, Choose the Evil
+Mind! Then do those spirits gather in troops to attack the two lives
+of which the prophets prophesy.
+
+'7. And to this earthly life came Armaiti with earthly power to help
+the truth, and the good disposition: she, the Eternal, created the
+material world, but the Spirit is with thee, O Wise One! the first
+of creations in time.
+
+'8. When any evil falls upon the spirit, thou, O Wise One, givest
+temporal possessions and a good disposition; but him whose promises
+are lies, and not truth, thou punishest.'
+
+Around the hymns of the Avesta gradually grew a theology and a
+mythology which were destined to exert a powerful influence on
+the world. These are contained in the Bundehesch. [14] Anterior to
+all things and all beings was Zeruane-Akrene ('Boundless Time'), so
+exalted that he can only be worshipped in silence. From him emanated
+two Ferouers, spiritual types, which took form in two beings, Ormuzd
+and Ahriman. These were equally pure; but Ahriman became jealous of his
+first-born brother, Ormuzd. To punish Ahriman for his evil feeling, the
+Supreme Being condemned him to 12,000 years' imprisonment in an empire
+of rayless Darkness. During that period must rage the conflict between
+Light and Darkness, Good and Evil. As Ormuzd had his pre-existing type
+or Ferouer, so by a similar power--much the same as the Platonic Logos
+or Word--he created the pure or spiritual world, by means of which the
+empire of Ahriman should be overthrown. On the earth (still spiritual)
+he raised the exceeding high mountain Albordj, Elburz (snow mountain),
+[15] on whose summit he fixed his throne; whence he stretched the
+bridge Chinevat, which, passing directly over Duzhak, the abyss of
+Ahriman (or hell), reaches to the portal of Gorodman, or heaven. All
+this was but a Ferouer world--a prototype of the material world. In
+anticipation of its incorporation in a material creation, Ormuzd
+(by emanations) created in his own image six Amshaspands, or agents,
+of both sexes, to be models of perfection to lower spirits--and to
+mankind, when they should be created--and offer up their prayers to
+himself. The second series of emanations were the Izeds, benevolent
+genii and guardians of the world, twenty-eight in number, of whom the
+chief is Mithras, the Mediator. The third series of emanations were the
+innumerable Ferouers of things and men--for each must have its soul,
+which shall purify them in the day of resurrection. In antagonism to
+all these, Ahriman produced an exactly similar host of dark and evil
+powers. These Devas rise, rank on rank, to their Arch-Devs--each
+of whom is chained to his planet--and their head is Ash-Mogh, the
+'two-footed serpent of lies,' who seems to correspond to Mithras,
+the divine Mediator.
+
+After a reign of 3000 years Ormuzd entered on the work of realising
+his spiritual emanations in a material universe. He formed the sun
+as commander-in-chief, the moon as his lieutenant, the planets as
+captains of a great host--the stars--who were soldiers in his war
+against Ahriman. The dog Sirius he set to watch at the bridge Chinevat
+(the Milky Way), lest thereby Ahriman should scale the heavens. Ormuzd
+then created earth and water, which Ahriman did not try to prevent,
+knowing that darkness was inherent in these. But he struck a blow
+when life was produced. This was in form of a Bull, and Ahriman
+entered it and it perished; but on its destruction there came out
+of its left shoulder the seed of all clean and gentle animals, and,
+out of its right shoulder--Man.
+
+Ahriman had matched every creation thus far; but to make man was
+beyond his power, and he had no recourse but to destroy him. However,
+when the original man was destroyed, there sprang from his body a tree
+which bore the first human pair, whom Ahriman, however, corrupted in
+the manner elsewhere described.
+
+It is a very notable characteristic of this Iranian theology, that
+although the forces of good and evil are co-extensive and formally
+balanced, in potency they are not quite equal. The balance of force
+is just a little on the side of the Good Spirit. And this advantage
+appears in man. Zoroaster said, 'No earthly man with a hundredfold
+strength does so much evil as Mithra with heavenly strength does good;'
+and this thought reappears in the Parsî belief that the one part
+of paradisiac purity, which man retained after his fall, balances
+the ninety-nine parts won by Ahriman, and in the end will redeem
+him. For this one divine ray preserved enables him to receive and
+obey the Avesta, and to climb to heaven by the stairway of three
+vast steps--pure thought, pure word, pure deed. The optimistic
+essence of the mythology is further shown in the belief that every
+destructive effort of Ahriman resulted in a larger benefit than Ormuzd
+had created. The Bull (Life) destroyed, man and animal sprang into
+being; the man destroyed, man and woman appeared. And so on to the
+end. In the last quarter of the 12,000 years for which Ahriman was
+condemned, he rises to greater power even than Ormuzd, and finally
+he will, by a fiery comet, set the visible universe in conflagration;
+but while this scheme is waxing to consummation Ormuzd will send his
+holy Prophet Sosioch, who will convert mankind to the true law, [16]
+so that when Ahriman's comet consumes the earth he will really be
+purifying it. Through the vast stream of melted metals and minerals
+the righteous shall pass, and to them it will be as a bath of warm
+milk: the wicked in attempting to pass shall be swept into the abyss
+of Duzhak; having then suffered three days and nights, they shall be
+raised by Ormuzd refined and purified. Duzhak itself shall be purified
+by this fire, and last of all Ahriman himself shall ascend to his
+original purity and happiness. Then from the ashes of the former
+world shall bloom a paradise that shall remain for ever.
+
+In this system it is notable that we find the monster serpent
+of vedic mythology, Ahi, transformed into an infernal region,
+Duzhak. The dragon, being a type of physical suffering, passes away
+in Iranian as in the later Semitic mythology before the new form,
+which represents the stings of conscience though it may be beneath
+external pleasure. In this respect, therefore, Ahriman fulfils the
+definition of a devil already given. In the Avesta he fulfils also
+another condition essential to a devil, the love of evil in and for
+itself. But in the later theology it will be observed that evil
+in Ahriman is not organic. The war being over and its fury past,
+the hostile chief is seen not so black as he had been painted;
+the belief obtains that he does not actually love darkness and
+evil. He was thrust into them as a punishment for his jealousy,
+pride, and destructive ambition. And because that dark kingdom was a
+punishment--therefore not congenial--it was at length (the danger past)
+held to be disciplinary. Growing faith in the real supremacy of Good
+discovers the immoral god to be an exaggerated anthropomorphic egoist;
+this divine devil is a self-centred potentate who had attempted to
+subordinate moral law and human welfare to his personal ascendancy. His
+fate having sealed the sentence on all ambitions of that character,
+humanity is able to pardon the individual offender, and find a hope
+that Ahriman, having learned that no real satisfaction for a divine
+nature can be found in mere power detached from rectitude, will join
+in the harmony of love and loyalty at last.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+VISWÁMITRA: THE THEOCRATIC DEVIL.
+
+ Priestcraft and Pessimism--An Aryan Tetzel and his Luther--Brahman
+ Frogs--Evolution of the sacerdotal Saint--Viswámitra the Accuser
+ of Virtue--The Tamil Passion-play 'Harischandra'--Ordeal of
+ Goblins--The Martyr of Truth--Virtue triumphant over ceremonial
+ 'merits'--Harischandra and Job.
+
+
+Priestcraft in government means pessimism in the creed and despair in
+the heart. Under sacerdotal rule in India it seemed paradise enough to
+leave the world, and the only hell dreaded was a return to it. 'The
+twice-born man,' says Manu, 'who shall without intermission have
+passed the time of his studentship, shall ascend after death to the
+most exalted of regions, and no more spring to birth again in this
+lower world.' Some clause was necessary to keep the twice-born man
+from suicide. Buddha invented a plan of suicide-in-life combined with
+annihilation of the gods, which was driven out of India because it put
+into the minds of the people the philosophy of the schools. Thought
+could only be trusted among classes interested to conceal it.
+
+The power and authority of a priesthood can only be maintained on
+the doctrine that man is 'saved' by the deeds of a ceremonial law;
+any general belief that morality is more acceptable to gods than
+ceremonies must be fatal to those occult and fictitious virtues which
+hedge about every pious impostor. Sacerdotal power in India depended on
+superstitions carefully fostered concerning the mystical properties of
+a stimulating juice (soma), litanies, invocations, and benedictions
+by priests; upon sacrifices to the gods, including their priests,
+austerities, penances, pilgrimages, and the like; one characteristic
+running through all the performances--their utter worthlessness to any
+being in the universe except the priest. An artificial system of this
+kind has to create its own materials, and evoke forces of evolution
+from many regions of nature. It is a process requiring much more
+than the wisdom of the serpent and more than its harmfulness; and
+there is a bit of nature's irony in the fact that when the Brahman
+Rishi gained supremacy, the Cobra was also worshipped as belonging
+to precisely the same caste and sanctity.
+
+There are traces of long and fierce struggles preceding this
+consummation. Even in the Vedic age--in the very dawn of religious
+history--Tetzel appears with his indulgences and Luther confronts
+him. The names they bore in ancient India were Viswámitra and
+Vasishtha. Both of these were among the seven powerful Rishis who
+made the hierarchy of India in the earliest age known to us. Both were
+composers of some of the chief hymns of the Vedas, and their respective
+hymns bear the stamp of the sacerdotal and the anti-sacerdotal parties
+which contended before the priestly sway had reached its complete
+triumph. Viswámitra was champion of the high priestly party and its
+political pretensions. In the Rig-Veda there are forty hymns ascribed
+to him and his family, nearly all of which celebrate the divine
+virtues of Soma-juice and the Soma-sacrifice. As the exaltation of
+the priestly caste in Israel was connected with a miracle, in which
+the Jordan stopped flowing till the ark had been carried over, so
+the rivers Sutledge and Reyah were said to have rested from their
+course when Viswámitra wished to cross them in seeking the Soma. This
+Rishi became identified in the Hindu mind for all time with political
+priestcraft. On the other hand, Vasishtha became equally famous for
+his hostility to that power, as well as for his profoundly religious
+character,--the finest hymns of the Vedas, as to moral feeling, being
+those that bear his name. The anti-sacerdotal spirit of Vasishtha is
+especially revealed in a strange satirical hymn in which he ridicules
+the ceremonial Bráhmans under the guise of a panegyric on frogs. In
+this composition occur such verses as these:--
+
+'Like Bráhmans at the Soma-sacrifice of Atirâtra, sitting round a
+full pond and talking, you, O frogs, celebrate this day of the year
+when the rainy season begins.
+
+'These Bráhmans, with their Soma, have had their say, performing the
+annual rite. These Adhwaryus, sweating while they carry the hot pots,
+pop out like hermits.
+
+'They have always observed the order of the gods as they are to
+be worshipped in the twelvemonth; these men do not neglect their
+season....
+
+'Cow-noise gave, Goat-noise gave, the Brown gave, and the Green gave
+us treasures. The frogs, who give us hundreds of cows, lengthened
+our life in the rich autumn.' [17]
+
+Viswámitra and Vasishtha appear to have been powerful rivals in
+seeking the confidence of King Sudás, and from their varying fortunes
+came the tremendous feud between them which plays so large a part
+in the traditions of India. The men were both priests, as are both
+ritualists and broad-churchmen in the present day. They were borne
+on the stream of mythologic evolution to representative regions
+very different from any they could have contemplated. Vasishtha,
+ennobled by the moral sentiment of ages, appears as the genius of
+truth and justice, maintaining these as of more 'merit' than any
+ceremonial perfections. The Bráhmans, whom he once ridiculed, were
+glad enough in the end to make him their patron saint, though they
+did not equally honour his principles. On the other hand, Viswámitra
+became the type of that immoral divinity which received its Iranian
+anathema in Ahriman. The murder he commits is nothing in a personage
+whose Soma-celebrations have raised him so high above the trivialities
+of morality.
+
+It is easy to see what must be the further development of such a
+type as Viswámitra when he shall have passed from the guarded pages
+of puranic tradition to the terrible simplicities of folklore. The
+saint whose majesty is built on 'merits,' which have no relation
+to what the humble deem virtues, naturally holds such virtues in
+cynical contempt; naturally also he is indignant if any one dares
+to suggest that the height he has reached by costly and prolonged
+observances may be attained by poor and common people through the
+practice of virtue. The next step is equally necessary. Since it is
+hard to argue down the facts of human nature, Vasishtha is pretty
+sure to have a strong, if sometimes silent, support for his heretical
+theory of a priesthood representing virtue; consequently Viswámitra
+will be reduced at length to deny the existence of virtue, and will
+become the Accuser of those to whom virtues are attributed. Finally,
+from the Accuser to the Tempter the transition is inevitable. The
+public Accuser must try and make good his case, and if the facts do
+not support it, he must create other facts which will, or else bear
+the last brand of his tribe--Slanderer.
+
+Leaving out of sight all historical or probable facts concerning
+Viswámitra and Vasishtha, but remembering the spirit of them, let us
+read the great Passion-play of the East, in which their respective
+parts are performed again as intervening ages have interpreted
+them. The hero of this drama is an ancient king named Harischandra,
+who, being childless, and consequently unable to gain immortality,
+promised the god Varuna to sacrifice to him a son if one were granted
+him. The son having been born, the father beseeches Varuna for respite,
+which is granted again and again, but stands firmly by his promise,
+although it is finally commuted. The repulsive features of the ancient
+legend are eliminated in the drama, the promise now being for a vast
+sum of money which the king cannot pay, but which Viswámitra would
+tempt him to escape by a technical fiction. Sir Mutu Cumára Swámy,
+whose translation I follow, presents many evidences of the near
+relation in which this drama stands to the religious faith of the
+people in Southern India and parts of Ceylon, where its representation
+never fails to draw vast crowds from every part of the district in
+which it may occur, the impression made by it being most profound. [18]
+
+We are first introduced to Harischandra, King of Ayòdiah (Oude),
+in his palace, surrounded by every splendour, and by the devotion
+of his prosperous people. His first word is an ascription to the
+'God of gods.' His ministers come forward and recount the wealth
+and welfare of the nation. The first Act witnesses the marriage of
+Harischandra with the beautiful princess Chandravatí, and it closes
+with the birth of a son.
+
+The second Act brings us into the presence of Indra in the Abode of
+the Gods. The Chief enters the Audience Hall of his palace, where an
+assembly of deities and sages has awaited him. These sages are holy men
+who have acquired supernatural power by their tremendous austerities;
+and of these the most august is Viswámitra. By the magnitude and
+extent of his austerities he has gained a power beyond even that of
+the Triad, and can reduce the worlds to cinders. All the gods court
+his favour. As the Council proceeds, Indra addresses the sages--'Holy
+men! as gifted with supernatural attributes, you roam the universe
+with marvellous speed, there is no place unknown to you. I am curious
+to learn who, in the present times, is the most virtuous sovereign on
+the earth below. What chief of mortals is there who has never told a
+lie--who has never swerved from the course of justice?' Vasishtha,
+a powerful sage and family-priest of Harischandra, declares that
+his royal disciple is such a man. But the more powerful Viswámitra
+denounces Harischandra as cruel and a liar. The quarrel between the
+two Rishis waxes fierce, until Indra puts a stop to it by deciding
+that an experiment shall be made on Harischandra. Vasishtha agrees
+that if his disciple can be shown to have told a lie, or can be made
+to tell one, the fruit of his life-long austerities, and all the power
+so gained, shall be added to Viswámitra; while the latter must present
+his opponent with half of his 'merits' if Harischandra be not made
+to swerve from the truth. Viswámitra is to employ any means whatever,
+neither Indra or any other interfering.
+
+Viswámitra sets about his task of trying and tempting Harischandra by
+informing that king that, in order to perform a sacrifice of special
+importance, he has need of a mound of gold as high as a missile
+slung by a man standing on an elephant's back. With the demand
+of so sacred a being Harischandra has no hesitation in complying,
+and is about to deliver the gold when Viswámitra requests him to be
+custodian of the money for a time, but perform the customary ceremony
+of transfer. Holding Harischandra's written promise to deliver the
+gold whensoever demanded, Viswámitra retires with compliments. Then
+wild beasts ravage Harischandra's territory; these being expelled,
+a demon boar is sent, but is vanquished by the monarch. Viswámitra
+then sends unchaste dancing-girls to tempt Harischandra; and when he
+has ordered their removal, Viswámitra returns with them, and, feigning
+rage, accuses him of slaying innocent beasts and of cruelty to the
+girls. He declares that unless Harischandra yields to the Pariah
+damsels, he himself shall be reduced to a Pariah slave. Harischandra
+offers all his kingdom and possessions if the demand is withdrawn,
+absolutely refusing to swerve from his virtue. This Viswámitra accepts,
+is proclaimed sovereign of Ayòdiah, and the king goes forth a beggar
+with his wife and child. But now, as these are departing, Viswámitra
+demands that mound of gold which was to be paid when called for. In
+vain Harischandra pleads that he has already delivered up all he
+possesses, the gold included; the last concession is declared to
+have nothing to do with the first. Yet Viswámitra says he will
+be charitable; if Harischandra will simply declare that he never
+pledged the gold, or, having done so, does not feel bound to pay it,
+he will cancel that debt. 'Such a declaration I can never make,'
+replies Harischandra. 'I owe thee the gold, and pay it I shall. Let a
+messenger accompany me and leave me not till I have given him thy due.'
+
+From this time the efforts of Viswámitra are directed to induce
+Harischandra to declare the money not due. Amid his heartbroken
+people--who cry, 'Where are the gods? Can they tolerate this?'--he who
+was just now the greatest and happiest monarch in the world goes forth
+on the highway a wanderer with his Chandravatí and their son Devaráta
+dressed in coarsest garments. His last royal deed is to set the crown
+on his tempter's head. The people and officers follow, and beg his
+permission to slay Viswámitra, but he rebukes them, and counsels
+submission. Viswámitra orders a messenger, Nakshatra, to accompany
+the three wretched ones, and inflict the severest sufferings on them
+until the gold is paid, and amid each ordeal to offer Harischandra
+all his former wealth and happiness if he will utter a falsehood.
+
+They come to a desert whose sands are so hot that the wife
+faints. Harischandra bears his son in his arms, but in addition
+is compelled to bear Nakshatra (the Bráhman and tormentor) on his
+shoulders. They so pass amid snakes and scorpions, and receive
+terrible stings; they pass through storm and flood, and yet vainly
+does Nakshatra suggest the desired falsehood.
+
+Then follows the ordeal of Demons, which gives an interesting insight
+into Tamil Demonology. One of the company exclaims--'How frightful
+they look! Who can face them? They come in battalions, young and old,
+small and great--all welcome us. They disport themselves with a wild
+dance; flames shoot from their mouths; their feet touch not the earth;
+they move in the air. Observe you the bleeding corpses of human
+beings in their hands. They crunch them and feed on the flesh. The
+place is one mass of gore and filth. Wolves and hyænas bark at them;
+jackals and dogs follow them. They are near. May Siva protect us!'
+
+Nakshatra. How dreadful! Harischandra, what is this? Look! evil demons
+stare at me--I tremble for my life. Protect me now, and I ask you no
+more for the gold.
+
+Harischandra. Have no fear, Nakshatra. Come, place thyself in the
+midst of us.
+
+Chief of the Goblins. Men! little men! human vermin! intrude ye thus
+into my presence? Know that, save only the Bráhman standing in the
+midst of you, you are all my prey to-night.
+
+Harischandra. Goblin! certainly thou art not an evil-doer, for thou
+hast excepted this holy Bráhman. As for ourselves, we know that the
+bodies which begin to exist upon earth must also cease to exist on
+it. What matters it when death comes? If he spares us now he reserves
+us only for another season. Good, kind demon! destroy us then together;
+here we await our doom.
+
+Nakshatra. Harischandra! before you thus desert me, make the goblin
+promise you that he will not hurt me.
+
+Harischandra. Thou hast no cause for alarm; thou art safe.
+
+Chief of the Goblins. Listen! I find that all four of you are very
+thin; it is not worth my while to kill you. On examining closely, I
+perceive that the young Bráhman is plump and fat as a wild boar. Give
+him up to me--I want not the rest.
+
+Nakshatra. O Gods! O Harischandra! you are a great monarch! Have
+mercy on me! Save me, save me! I will never trouble you for the gold,
+but treat you considerately hereafter.
+
+Harischandra. Sir, thy life is safe, stand still.
+
+Nakshatra. Allow me, sirs, to come closer to you, and to hold you by
+the hand (He grasps their hands.)
+
+Harischandra. King of the Goblins! I address thee in all sincerity;
+thou wilt confer on us a great favour indeed by despatching us
+speedily to the Judgment Hall of the God of Death. The Bráhman must
+not be touched; devour us.
+
+The Goblin (grinding his teeth in great fury). What! dare you disobey
+me? Will you not deliver the Bráhman?
+
+Harischandra. No, we cannot. We alone are thy victims.
+
+[Day breaks, and the goblins disappear.]
+
+Having thus withstood all temptation to harm his enemy, or to break
+a promise he had given to treat him kindly, Harischandra is again
+pressed for the gold or the lie, and, still holding out, an ordeal of
+fire follows. Trusting the God of Fire will cease to afflict if one is
+sacrificed, Harischandra prepares to enter the conflagration first,
+and a pathetic contention occurs between him and his wife and son
+as to which shall be sacrificed. In the end Harischandra rushes in,
+but does not perish.
+
+Harischandra is hoping to reach the temple of Vis Wanàth [19] at Kasi
+and invoke his aid to pay the gold. To the temple he comes only to
+plead in vain, and Nakshatra tortures him with instruments. Finally
+Harischandra, his wife and child, are sold as slaves to pay
+the debt. But Viswámitra, invisibly present, only redoubles his
+persecutions. Harischandra is subjected to the peculiar degradation
+of having to burn dead bodies in a cemetery. Chandravatí and her son
+are subjected to cruelties. The boy is one day sent to the forest,
+is bitten by a snake, and dies. Chandravatí goes out in the night to
+find the body. She repairs with it to the cemetery. In the darkness
+she does not recognise her husband, the burner of the bodies, nor he
+his wife. He has strictly promised his master that every fee shall be
+paid, and reproaches the woman for coming in the darkness to avoid
+payment. Chandravatí offers in payment a sacred chain which Siva
+had thrown round her neck at birth, invisible to all but a perfect
+man. Harischandra alone has ever seen it, and now recognises his
+wife. But even now he will not perform the last rites over his dead
+child unless the fee can be obtained as promised. Chandravatí goes
+out into the city to beg the money, leaving Harischandra seated beside
+the dead body of Devaráta. In the street she stumbles over the corpse
+of another child, and takes it up; it proves to be the infant Prince,
+who has been murdered. Chandravatí--arrested and dragged before the
+king--in a state of frenzy declares she has killed the child. She is
+condemned to death, and her husband must be her executioner. But the
+last scene must be quoted nearly in full.
+
+Verakvoo (Harischandra's master, leading on Chandravatí). Slave! this
+woman has been sentenced by our king to be executed without delay. Draw
+your sword and cut her head off. (Exit.)
+
+Harischandra. I obey, master. (Draws the sword and approaches her.)
+
+Chandravatí (coming to consciousness again). My husband! What! do I
+see thee again? I applaud thy resolution, my lord. Yes; let me die
+by thy sword. Be not unnerved, but be prompt, and perform thy duty
+unflinchingly.
+
+Harischandra. My beloved wife! the days allotted to you in
+this world are numbered; you have run through the span of your
+existence. Convicted as you are of this crime, there is no hope for
+your life; I must presently fulfil my instructions. I can only allow
+you a few seconds; pray to your tutelary deities, prepare yourself
+to meet your doom.
+
+Viswámitra (who has suddenly appeared). Harischandra! what, are you
+going to slaughter this poor woman? Wicked man, spare her! Tell a
+lie even now and be restored to your former state!
+
+Harischandra. I pray, my lord, attempt not to beguile me from the path
+of rectitude. Nothing shall shake my resolution; even though thou didst
+offer to me the throne of Indra I would not tell a lie. Pollute not thy
+sacred person by entering such unholy grounds. Depart! I dread not thy
+wrath; I no longer court thy favour. Depart. (Viswámitra disappears.)
+
+My love! lo I am thy executioner; come, lay thy head gently on this
+block with thy sweet face turned towards the east. Chandravatí,
+my wife, be firm, be happy! The last moment of our sufferings has
+at length come; for to sufferings too there is happily an end. Here
+cease our woes, our griefs, our pleasures. Mark! yet awhile, and thou
+wilt be as free as the vultures that now soar in the skies.
+
+This keen sabre will do its duty. Thou dead, thy husband dies too--this
+self-same sword shall pierce my breast. First the child--then the
+wife--last the husband--all victims of a sage's wrath. I the martyr of
+Truth--thou and thy son martyrs for me, the martyr of Truth. Yes; let
+us die cheerfully and bear our ills meekly. Yes; let all men perish,
+let all gods cease to exist, let the stars that shine above grow dim,
+let all seas be dried up, let all mountains be levelled to the ground,
+let wars rage, blood flow in streams, let millions of millions of
+Harischandras be thus persecuted; yet let Truth be maintained--let
+Truth ride victorious over all--let Truth be the light--Truth the
+guide--Truth alone the lasting solace of mortals and immortals. Die,
+then, O goddess of Chastity! Die, at this the shrine of thy sister
+goddess of Truth!
+
+[Strikes the neck of Chandravatí with great force; the sword, instead
+of harming her, is transformed into a string of superb pearls, which
+winds itself around her: the gods of heaven, all sages, and all kings
+appear suddenly to the view of Harischandra.]
+
+Siva (the first of the gods). Harischandra, be ever blessed! You have
+borne your severe trials most heroically, and have proved to all men
+that virtue is of greater worth than all the vanities of a fleeting
+world. Be you the model of mortals. Return to your land, resume your
+authority, and rule your state. Devaráta, victim of Viswámitra's wrath,
+rise! (He is restored to life.)
+
+Rise you, also, son of the King of Kasi, with whose murder you,
+Chandravatí, were charged through the machinations of Viswámitra. (He
+comes to life also.)
+
+Harischandra. All my misfortunes are of little consequence, since thou,
+O God of gods, hast deigned to favour me with thy divine presence. No
+longer care I for kingdom, or power, or glory. I value not children, or
+wives, or relations. To thy service, to thy worship, to the redemption
+of my erring soul, I devote myself uninterruptedly hereafter. Let me
+not become the sport of men. The slave of a Pariah cannot become a
+king; the slave-girl of a Bráhman cannot become a queen. When once the
+milk has been drawn from the udder of a cow nothing can restore the
+self-same milk to it. Our degradation, O God, is now beyond redemption.
+
+Viswámitra. I pray, O Siva, that thou wouldst pardon my folly. Anxious
+to gain the wager laid by me before the gods, I have most mercilessly
+tormented this virtuous king; yet he has proved himself the most
+truthful of all earthly sovereigns, triumphing victoriously over
+me and my efforts to divert him from his constancy. Harischandra,
+king of kings! I crave your forgiveness.
+
+Verakvoo (throwing off his disguise). King Harischandra, think not
+that I am a Pariah, for you behold in me even Yáma, the God of Death.
+
+Kalakanda (Chandravatí's cruel master, throwing off his
+disguise). Queen! rest not in the belief that you were the slave
+of a Bráhman. He to whom you devoted yourself am even I--the God of
+Fire, Agni.
+
+Vasishtha. Harischandra, no disgrace attaches to thee nor to the Solar
+race, of which thou art the incomparable gem. Even this cemetery
+is in reality no cemetery: see! the illusion lasts not, and thou
+beholdest here a holy grove the abode of hermits and ascetics. Like
+the gold which has passed through successive crucibles, devoid of all
+impurities, thou, O King of Ayòdiah, shinest in greater splendour than
+even yon god of light now rising to our view on the orient hills. (It
+is morning.)
+
+Siva. Harischandra, let not the world learn that Virtue is vanquished,
+and that its enemy, Vice, has become the victor. Go, mount yon throne
+again--proclaim to all that we, the gods, are the guardians of the
+good and the true. Indra! chief of the gods, accompany this sovereign
+with all your retinue, and recrown him emperor of Ayòdiah. May his
+reign be long--may all bliss await him in the other world!
+
+
+
+The plot of this drama has probably done as much and as various duty
+as any in the world. It has spread like a spiritual banyan, whose
+branches, taking root, have swelled to such size that it is difficult
+now to say which is the original trunk. It may even be that the only
+root they all had in common is an invisible one in the human heart,
+developed in its necessary struggles amid nature after the pure and
+perfect life.
+
+But neither in the Book of Job, which we are yet to consider, nor in
+any other variation of the theme, does it rise so high as in this drama
+of Harischandra. In Job it represents man loyal to his deity amid the
+terrible afflictions which that deity permits; but in Harischandra
+it shows man loyal to a moral principle even against divine orders
+to the contrary. Despite the hand of the licenser, and the priestly
+manipulations, visible here and there in it--especially towards the
+close--sacerdotalism stands confronted by its reaction at last, and
+receives its sentence in the joy with which the Hindu sees the potent
+Rishis with all their pretentious 'merits,' and the gods themselves,
+kneeling at the feet of the man who stands by Truth.
+
+It is amusing to find the wincings of the priests through many
+centuries embodied in a legend about Harischandra after he went to
+heaven. It is related that he was induced by Nárada to relate his
+actions with such unbecoming pride that he was lowered from Svarga
+(heaven) one stage after each sentence; but having stopped in time,
+and paid homage to the gods, he was placed with his capital in mid-air,
+where eyes sacerdotally actinised may still see the aerial city at
+certain times. The doctrine of 'merits' will no doubt be able for
+some time yet to charge 'good deeds' with their own sin--pride; but,
+after all, the priest must follow the people far enough to confess that
+one must look upward to find the martyr of Truth. In what direction
+one must look to find his accuser requires no further intimation than
+the popular legend of Viswámitra.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+ELOHIM AND JEHOVAH.
+
+ Deified power--Giants and Jehovah--Jehovah's manifesto--The various
+ Elohim--Two Jehovahs and two Tables--Contradictions--Detachment
+ of the Elohim from Jehovah.
+
+
+The sacred books of the Hebrews bring us into the presence
+of the gods (Elohim) supposed to have created all things out
+of nothing--nature-gods--just as they are in transition to the
+conception of a single Will and Personality. Though the plural is
+used ('gods') a singular verb follows: the tendency is already to
+that concentration which resulted in the enthronement of one supreme
+sovereign--Jehovah. The long process of evolution which must have
+preceded this conception is but slightly traceable in the Bible. It
+is, however, written on the face of the whole world, and the same
+process is going on now in its every phase. Whether with Gesenius
+[20] we take the sense of the word Elohim to be 'the revered,' or,
+with Fürst, [21] 'the mighty,' makes little difference; the fact
+remains that the word is applied elsewhere to gods in general,
+including such as were afterwards deemed false gods by the Jews;
+and it is more important still that the actions ascribed to the
+Elohim, who created the heavens and the earth, generally reflect
+the powerful and un-moral forces of nature. The work of creation in
+Genesis (i. and ii. 1-3) is that of giants without any moral quality
+whatever. Whether or not we take in their obvious sense the words,
+'Elohim created man in his own image, ... male and female created
+he them,' there can be no question of the meaning of Gen. vi. 1, 2:
+'The sons of Elohim saw the daughters of men that they were beautiful,
+and they took to themselves for wives whomsoever they chose.' When
+good and evil come to be spoken of, the name Jehovah [22] at once
+appears. The Elohim appear again in the Flood, the wind that assuaged
+it, the injunction to be fruitful and multiply, the cloud and rainbow;
+and gradually the germs of a moral government begin to appear in their
+assigning the violence of mankind as reason for the deluge, and in
+the covenant with Noah. But even after the name Jehovah had generally
+blended with, or even superseded, the other, we find Elohim often
+used where strength and wonder-working are thought of--e.g., 'Thou
+art the god that doest wonders' (Ps. lxxvii.). 'Thy way is in the sea,
+and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known.'
+
+Against the primitive nature-deities the personality and jealous
+supremacy of Jehovah was defined. The golden calf built by Aaron was
+called Elohim (plural, though there was but one calf). Solomon was
+denounced for building altars to the same; and when Jeroboam built
+altars to two calves, they are still so called. Other rivals--Dagon
+(Judges xvi.), Astaroth, Chemosh, Milcom (1 Kings xi.)--are called
+by the once-honoured name. The English Bible translates Elohim, God;
+Jehovah, the Lord; Jehovah Elohim, the Lord God; and the critical
+reader will find much that is significant in the varied use of these
+names. Thus (Gen. xxii.) it is Elohim that demands the sacrifice
+of Isaac, Jehovah that interferes to save him. At the same time, in
+editing the story, it is plainly felt to be inadmissible that Abraham
+should be supposed loyal to any other god than Jehovah; so Jehovah
+adopts the sacrifice as meant for himself, and the place where the
+ram was provided in place of Isaac is called Jehovah-Jireh. However,
+when we can no longer distinguish the two antagonistic conceptions
+by different names their actual incongruity is even more salient,
+and, as we shall see, develops a surprising result.
+
+Jehovah inaugurates his reign by a manifesto against these giants,
+the Elohim, for whom the special claim--clamorously asserted when
+Aaron built the Golden Calf, and continued as the plea for the same
+deity--was that they (Elohim) had brought Israel out of Egypt. 'I,'
+cries Jehovah, 'am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the
+land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage: thou shalt have no other
+gods but me;' and the first four commandments of the law are devoted
+entirely to a declaration of his majesty, his power (claiming credit
+for the creation), his jealous determination to punish his opponents
+and reward his friends, to vindicate the slightest disrespect to his
+name. The narrative of the Golden Calf was plainly connected with
+Sinai in order to illustrate the first commandment. The punishment of
+the believers in another divine emancipator, even though they had not
+yet received the proclamation, must be signal. Jehovah is so enraged
+that by his order human victims are offered up to the number of three
+thousand, and even after that, it is said, Jehovah plagued Israel on
+account of their Elohim-worship. In the same direction is the command
+to keep holy the Sabbath day, because on it he rested from the work
+of creation (Gen. xx.), or because on that day he delivered Israel
+from Egypt (Deut. v.), the editors do not seem to remember exactly
+which, but it is well enough to say both, for it is taking the two
+picked laurels from the brow of Elohim and laying them on that of
+Jehovah. In all of which it is observable that there is no moral
+quality whatever. Nero might equally command the Romans to have no
+other gods before himself, to speak his name with awe, to rest when
+he stopped working. In the fifth commandment, arbitrarily ascribed to
+the First Table, we have a transition to the moral code; though even
+there the honour of parents is jealously associated with Jehovah's
+greatness ('that thy days may be long in the land which Jehovah
+Elohim giveth thee'). The nature-gods were equal to that; for the
+Elohim had begotten the giants who were 'in the earth in those days.'
+
+'Elohim spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am Jehovah; and I
+appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob by (the name of) God
+Almighty (El-Shaddai), but by my name Jehovah was I not known to them'
+(Exod. vi. 2, 3).
+
+The ancient gods--the Elohim--were, in the process of absorption
+into the one great form, the repository of their several powers,
+distinguishable; and though, for the most part, they bear names related
+to the forces of nature, now and then they reflect the tendencies
+to humanisation. Thus we have 'the most high god' (El-elyon--e.g.,
+Gen. xiv. 18); 'the everlasting-god' (El-elim, Gen. xxi. 33); 'the
+jealous god' (El-kana, Exod. xx. 5); 'the mighty god, and terrible'
+(El-gadol and nora, Deut. vii. 21); 'the living god' (El-chi,
+Josh. iii. 10); 'the god of heaven' (El-shemim, Ps. cxxxvi. 26);
+the 'god almighty' (El-shaddai, [23] Exod. vi. 2). These Elohim,
+with each of whose names I have referred to an instance of its
+characteristic use, became epithets, as the powers they represented
+were more and more absorbed by the growing personality of Jehovah; but
+these epithets were also characters, and their historic expressions
+had also to undergo a process of slow and difficult digestion. The
+all-devouring grandeur of Jehovah showed what it had fed on. Not only
+all the honours, but many of the dishonours, of the primitive deities
+adhered to the sovereign whose rule was no doubt inaugurated by their
+disgrace and their barbarism. The costliness of the glory of divine
+absolutism is again illustrated in the evolution of the premature
+monotheism, which had for its figure-head the dread Jehovah, who,
+as heir of the nature-gods, became responsible for the monstrosities
+of a tribal demonolatry, thus being compelled to fill simultaneously
+the rôles of the demon and the lawgiver. [24]
+
+The two tables of the law--one written by Jehovistic theology, the
+other by the moral sense of mankind--ascribed to this dual deity, for
+whom unity was so fiercely insisted on, may be read in their outcome
+throughout the Bible. They are here briefly, in a few examples,
+set forth side by side.
+
+
+TABLE OF JEHOVAH I. TABLE OF JEHOVAH II.
+
+Exod. xxxiii. 27. 'Slay every Exod. xx. 13. 'Thou shalt not
+man his brother, every man his kill.'
+companion, and every man his
+neighbour.'
+
+Num. xv. 32. 'While the children Exod. xx. 14. 'Thou shalt not
+of Israel were in the wilderness, commit adultery.'
+they found a man that gathered
+sticks upon the Sabbath Day....
+And they put him in ward, because
+it was not declared what should
+be done to him. And the Lord said
+unto Moses, The man shall be
+surely put to death: all the
+congregation shall stone him with
+stones without the camp.' Neither
+this nor the similar punishment
+for blasphemy (Lev. xxiv.), were
+executions of existing law. For a
+fearful instance of murder
+inflicted on the innocent, and
+accepted as a human sacrifice by
+Jehovah, see 2 Sam. xxi.; and for
+the brutal murder of Shimei, who
+denounced and resented the crime
+which hung the seven sons of Saul
+'before the Lord,' see 1 Kings ii.
+But the examples are many.
+
+In the story of Abraham, Sarai,
+and Hagar (Gen. xvi.), Lot and
+his daughters (xix.), Abraham's
+presentation of his wife to
+Abimilech (xx.), the same done by
+Isaac (xxvi.), Judah, Tamar
+(xxxviii.), and other cases where
+the grossest violations of the
+seventh commandment go unrebuked
+by Jehovah, while in constant
+communication with the guilty
+parties, we see how little the
+second table was supported by
+the first.
+
+The extortions, frauds, and Exod. xx. 15. 'Thou shalt not
+thefts of Jacob (Gen. xxv., steal.'
+xxvii., xxx.), which brought upon
+him the unparalleled blessings of
+Jehovah; the plundering of
+Nabal's property by David and his
+fellow-bandits; the smiting of
+the robbed farmer by Jehovah and
+the taking of his treacherous
+wife by David (1 Sam. xxv.), are
+narratives befitting a Bible of
+footpads.
+
+Jehovah said, 'Who shall deceive Exod. xx. 16. 'Thou shalt not
+Ahab?... And there came forth a bear false witness against thy
+spirit, and stood before Jehovah, neighbour.'
+and said, I will deceive him. And
+Jehovah said, Wherewith? And he
+said, I will go forth and be a
+lying spirit in the mouth of all
+these thy prophets. And he said,
+Thou shalt deceive him, and
+prevail also: go forth and do so.
+Now, therefore, Jehovah hath put
+a lying spirit in the mouth of
+all these thy prophets, and
+Jehovah hath spoken evil
+concerning thee' (1 Kings xxii.).
+See Ezek. xx. 25.
+
+Deut xx. 10-18, is a complete Exod. xx. 17. 'Thou shalt not
+instruction for invasion, murder, covet they neighbour's wife,
+rapine, eating the spoil of the thou shalt not covet thy
+invaded, taking their wives, neighbour's wife, nor his
+their cattle, &c., all such as man-servant, nor his maid-
+might have been proclaimed by a servant, nor his ox, nor his
+Supreme Bashi-Bazouk. ass, nor anything that is thy
+ neighbour's.'
+
+
+Instances of this discrepancy might be largely multiplied. Any one who
+cares to pursue the subject can trace the building upon the powerful
+personal Jehovah of a religion of human sacrifices, anathemas, and
+priestly despotism; while around the moral ruler and judge of the
+same name, whose personality is more and more dispersed in pantheistic
+ascriptions, there grows the common law, and then the more moral law
+of equity, and the corresponding sentiments which gradually evolve
+the idea of a parental deity.
+
+It is obvious that the more this second idea of the deity prevails,
+the more he is regarded as 'merciful,' 'long-suffering,' 'a God
+of truth and without iniquity, just and right,' 'delighting not in
+sacrifice but mercifulness,' 'good to all,' and whose 'tender mercies
+are over all his works,' and having 'no pleasure in the death of him
+that dieth;' the less will it be possible to see in the very same
+being the 'man of war,' 'god of battles,' the 'jealous,' 'angry,'
+'fire-breathing' one, who 'visits the sins of the fathers upon the
+children,' who laughs at the calamities of men and mocks when their
+fear cometh. It is a structural necessity of the human mind that
+these two shall be gradually detached the one from the other. From
+one of the Jehovahs represented in parallel columns came the 'Father'
+whom Christ adored: from the other came the Devil he abhorred.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE CONSUMING FIRE.
+
+ The Shekinah--Jewish idols--Attributes of the fiery and
+ cruel Elohim compared with those of the Devil--The powers of
+ evil combined under a head--Continuity--The consuming fire
+ spiritualised.
+
+
+That Abraham was a Fire-worshipper might be suspected from the
+immemorial efforts of all Semitic authorities to relieve him of
+traditional connection with that particular idolatry. When the good
+and evil powers were being distinguished, we find the burning and
+the bright aspects of Fire severally regarded. The sign of Jehovah's
+covenant with Abram included both. 'It came to pass that when the sun
+went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace and a burning
+lamp that passed between those pieces' (of the sacrifice). In the
+legend of Moses we have the glory resting on Sinai and the burning
+bush, the bush which, it is specially remarked, was 'not consumed,'
+an exceptional circumstance in honour of Moses. To these corresponded
+the Urim and Thummim, marking the priest as source of light and
+of judgment. In his favourable and adorable aspect Jehovah was the
+Brightness of Fire. This was the Shekinah. In the Targum, Jonathan
+Ben Uzziel to the Prophets, it is said: 'The mountains trembled
+before the Lord; the mountains Tabor, Hermon, Carmel said one to the
+other: Upon me the Shekinah will rest, and to me will it come. But
+the Shekinah rested upon Mount Sinai, weakest and smallest of all the
+mountains. This Sinai trembled and shook, and its smoke went up as the
+smoke of an oven, because of the glory of the God of Israel which had
+manifested itself upon it.' The Brightness [25] passed on to illumine
+every event associated with the divine presence in Semitic mythology;
+it was 'the glory of the Lord' shining from the Star of Bethlehem,
+and the figure of the Transfiguration.
+
+The Consuming Fire also had its development. Among the spiritual
+it was spiritualised. 'Who among us shall dwell with the Devouring
+Fire?' cries Isaiah. 'Who among us shall dwell with the Everlasting
+Burnings? He that walketh righteously and speaketh uprightly; he
+that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from
+holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood,
+and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil.' It was by a prosaic route
+that the Devouring Fire became the residence of the wicked.
+
+After Jeroboam (1 Kings xiii.) had built altars to the Elohim,
+under form of Calves, a prophet came out of Judah to denounce the
+idolatry. 'And he cried against the altar in the word of Jehovah,
+and said, O altar, altar! thus saith Jehovah, Behold, a child shall
+be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name; and upon thee shall
+he offer the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee,
+and men's bones shall be burnt upon thee.' It was deemed so important
+that this prophecy should be fulfilled in the letter, when it could
+no longer be fulfilled in reality, that some centuries later Josiah
+dug up the bones of the Elohistic priests and burned them upon their
+long-ruined altars (2 Kings xxiii.).
+
+The incident is significant, both on account of the prophet's
+personification of the altar, and the institution of a sort of Gehenna
+in connection with it. The personification and the Gehenna became
+much more complete as time went on. The Jews originally had no Devil,
+as indeed had no races at first; and this for the obvious reason
+that their so-called gods were quite equal to any moral evils that
+were to be accounted for, as we have already seen they were adequate
+to explain all physical evils. But the antagonists of the moral
+Jehovah were recognised and personified with increasing clearness,
+and were quite prepared for connection with any General who might be
+theoretically proposed for their leadership. When the Jews came under
+the influence of Persian theology the archfiend was elected, and all
+the Elohim--Moloch, Dagon, Astarte, Chemosh, and the rest--took their
+place under his rebellious ensign.
+
+The descriptions of the Devil in the Bible are mainly borrowed from
+the early descriptions of the Elohim, and of Jehovah in his Elohistic
+character. [26] In the subjoined parallels I follow the received
+English version.
+
+
+Gen. xxii. 1. 'God tempted Matt. iv. 1. 'Then was Jesus
+Abraham.' led up into the wilderness
+ to be tempted of the devil.'
+ See also 1 Cor. vii. 5, 1
+ Thes. iii. 5, James 1.13.
+
+Exod. v. 3. 'I (Jehovah) will John xiii. 2. 'The devil having
+harden Pharaoh's heart;' v. 13, now put into the heart Judas
+'He hardened Pharaoh's heart.' Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray
+ him.'
+
+1 Kings xxii. 23. 'Behold the John viii. 44. 'He (the devil) is
+Lord hath put a lying spirit in a liar' ('and so is his father,'
+the mouth of all these thy continues the sentence by right
+prophets, and the Lord hath of translation). 1 Tim. iii. 2,
+spoken evil concerning them.' 'slanderers' (diabolous). 2 Tim.
+Ezek. xiv. 9. 'If the prophet be iii. 3, 'false accusers'
+deceived when he hath spoken a (diabolo). Also Titus ii. 3, Von
+thing, I the Lord have deceived Tischendorf translates
+that prophet, and I will stretch 'calumniators.'
+out my hand upon him, and will
+destroy him from the midst of
+my people.'
+
+Isa. xlv. 7. 'I make peace and Matt. xiii. 38. 'The tares are
+create evil. I the Lord do all the children of the wickied
+these things.' Amos iii. 6. one.' 1 John iii. 8. 'He that
+'Shall there be evil in a city committeth sin is of the devil;
+and the Lord hath not done it?' for the devil sinneth from the
+1 Sam. xvi. 14. 'An evil spirit beginning.'
+from the Lord troubled him'
+(Saul).
+
+Exod. xii. 29. 'At midnight the John viii. 44. 'He (the devil)
+Lord smote all the firstborn of was a murderer from the
+Egypt.' Ver. 30. 'There was a beginning.'
+great cry in Egypt; for there was
+not a house where there was not
+one dead.' Exod. xxxiii. 27.
+'Thus saith the Lord God of
+Israel, Put every man his sword
+by his side, and go in and out
+from gate to gate throughout the
+camp, and slay every man his
+brother, and every man his
+companion, and every man his
+neighbour.'
+
+Exod. vi. 9. 'Take thy rod and Rev. xii. 7, &c. 'There was war
+cast it before Pharaoh and it in heaven: Michael and his angels
+shall become a serpent.' Ver. 12. fought against the dragon.... And
+'Aaron's rod swallowed up their the great dragon was cast out,
+rods.' Num. xxi. 6. 'Jehovah sent that old serpent, called the
+fiery serpents (Seraphim) among Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth
+the people.' Ver. 8. 'And the the whole world.... Woe to the
+Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a inhabiters of the earth and of
+fiery serpent, and set it upon a the sea! for the devil has come
+pole: and it shall come to pass, down to you, having great wrath.'
+that every one that is bitten,
+when he looketh upon it, shall
+live.' (This serpent was
+worshipped until destroyed by
+Hezekiah, 2 Kings xviii.) Compare
+Jer. viii. 17, Ps. cxlviii.,
+'Praise ye the Lord from the
+earth, ye dragons.'
+
+Gen. xix. 24. 'The Lord rained Matt. xxv. 41. 'Depart from me,
+upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone ye cursed, into everlasting fire,
+and fire from the Lord out of prepared for the devil and his
+heaven.' Deut. iv. 24. 'The Lord angels.' Mark ix. 44. 'Where
+thy God is a consuming fire.' Ps. their worm dieth not, and the
+xi. 6. 'Upon the wicked he shall fire is not quenched.' Rev. xx.
+rain snares, fire and brimstone.' 10. 'And the devil that
+Ps. xviii. 8. 'There went up a deceiveth them was cast into the
+smoke out of his nostrils.' Ps. lake of fire and brimstone.' In
+xcvii. 3. 'A fire goeth before Rev. ix. Abaddon, or Apollyon, is
+him, and burneth up his enemies represented as the king of the
+round about.' Ezek. xxxviii. 19, scorpion tormentors; and the
+&c. 'For in my jealousy, and in diabolical horses, with stinging
+the fire of my wrath, have I serpent tails, are described as
+spoken.... I will plead against killing with the smoke and
+him with pestilence and with brimstone from their mouths.
+blood, and I will rain upon him
+... fire and brimstone.' Isa.
+xxx. 33. 'Tophet is ordained of
+old; yea, for the king is it
+prepared: he hath made it deep
+and wide; the pile thereof is
+fire and much wood; the breath
+of the Lord, like a stream of
+brimstone, doth kindle it.'
+
+
+In addition to the above passages may be cited a notable passage from
+Paul's Epistle to the Thessalonians (ii. 3). 'Let no man deceive you
+by any means: for that day (of Christ) shall not come, except there
+come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son
+of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is
+called God, or that is worshipped; so that he, as God, sitteth in the
+temple of God, showing himself that he is God. Remember ye not that,
+when I was yet with you, I told you these things? And now ye know what
+withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of
+iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he
+be taken out of the way: and then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom
+the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy
+with the brightness of his coming: even him whose coming is after the
+working of Satan, with all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and
+with all the deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish;
+because they received not the love of the truth, that they might
+be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion,
+that they should believe a lie; that they all might be damned who
+believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.'
+
+This remarkable utterance shows how potent was the survival in the
+mind of Paul of the old Elohist belief. Although the ancient deity,
+who deceived prophets to their destruction, and sent forth lying
+spirits with their strong delusions, was dethroned and outlawed, he was
+still a powerful claimant of empire, haunting the temple, and setting
+himself up therein as God. He will be consumed by Christ's breath when
+the day of triumph comes; but meanwhile he is not only allowed great
+power in the earth, but utilised by the true God, who even so far
+cooperates with the false as to send on some men 'strong delusions'
+('a working of error,' Von Tischendorf translates), in order that
+they may believe the lie and be damned. Paul speaks of the 'mystery
+of iniquity;' but it is not so very mysterious when we consider the
+antecedents of his idea. The dark problem of the origin of evil, and
+its continuance in the universe under the rule of a moral governor,
+still threw its impenetrable shadow across the human mind. It was a
+terrible reality, visible in the indifference or hostility with which
+the new gospel was met on the part of the cultured and powerful; and it
+could only then be explained as a mysterious provisional arrangement
+connected with some divine purpose far away in the depths of the
+universe. But the passage quoted from Thessalonians shows plainly
+that all those early traditions about the divinely deceived prophets
+and lying spirits, sent forth from Jehovah Elohim, had finally, in
+Paul's time, become marshalled under a leader, a personal Man of Sin;
+but this leader, while opposing Christ's kingdom, is in some mysterious
+way a commissioner of God.
+
+We may remark here the beautiful continuity by which, through all
+these shadows of terror and vapours of speculation, 'clouding the
+glow of heaven,' [27] the unquenchable ideal from first to last is
+steadily ascending.
+
+'One or three things,' says the Talmud, 'were before this world--Water,
+Fire, and Wind. Water begat the Darkness, Fire begat Light, and
+Wind begat the Spirit of Wisdom.' This had become the rationalistic
+translation by a crude science of the primitive demons, once believed
+to have created the heavens and the earth. In the process we find
+the forces outlawed in their wild action, but becoming the choir of
+God in their quiet action:--
+
+1 Kings xix. 11-13. 'And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount
+before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and
+strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before
+the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an
+earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: and after the
+earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the
+fire a still small voice. And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that
+he wrapped his face in his mantle.'
+
+But man must have a philosophical as well as a moral development: the
+human mind could not long endure this elemental anarchy. It asked,
+If the Lord be not in the hurricane, the earthquake, the volcanic
+flame, who is therein? This is the answer of the Targum: [28]
+
+'And he said, Arise and stand on the mountain before the Lord. And
+God revealed himself: and before him a host of angels of the wind,
+cleaving the mountain and breaking the rocks before the Lord; but
+not in the host of angels was the Shechinah. And after the host of
+the angels of the wind came a host of angels of commotion; but not in
+the host of the angels of commotion was the Shechinah of the Lord. And
+after the angels of commotion came a host of angels of fire; but not
+in the host of angels of fire was the Shechinah of the Lord. But after
+the host of the angels of the fire came voices singing in silence. And
+it was when Elijah heard this he hid his face in his mantle.'
+
+The moral sentiment takes another step in advance with the unknown but
+artistic writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Moses had described
+God as a 'consuming fire;' and 'the sight of the glory of the Lord
+was like devouring fire on the top of the mount in the eyes of the
+children of Israel' (Exod. xxiv. 17). When next we meet this phrase it
+is with this writer, who seeks to supersede what Moses (traditionally)
+built up. 'Whose voice,' he says, 'then shook the earth; but now he
+hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but
+also heaven. And this word, 'yet once more,' signifieth the removing
+of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those
+which cannot be shaken may remain.... For our God is a consuming fire.'
+
+'Our God also!' cries each great revolution that advances. His
+consuming wrath is not now directed against man, but the errors
+which are man's only enemies: the lightnings of the new Sinai, while
+they enlighten the earth, smite the old heaven of human faith and
+imagination, shrivelling it like a burnt scroll!
+
+In this nineteenth century, when the old heaven, amid which this
+fiery pillar glowed, is again shaken, the ancient phrase has still
+its meaning. The Russian Tourgenieff represents two friends who had
+studied together in early life, then parted, accidentally meeting
+once more for a single night. They compare notes as to what the long
+intervening years have taught them; and one sums his experience in the
+words--'I have burned what I used to worship, and worship what I used
+to burn.' The novelist artfully reproduces for this age a sentence
+associated with a crisis in the religious history of Europe. Clovis,
+King of the Franks, invoked the God of his wife Clotilda to aid him
+against the Germans, vowing to become a Christian if successful; and
+when, after his victory, he was baptized at Rheims, St. Remy said to
+him--'Bow thy head meekly, Sicambrian; burn what thou hast worshipped,
+and worship what thou hast burned!' Clovis followed the Bishop's advice
+in literal fashion, carrying fire and sword amid his old friends the
+'Pagans' right zealously. But the era has come in which that which
+Clovis' sword and St. Remy's theology set up for worship is being
+consumed in its turn. Tourgenieff's youths are consuming the altar on
+which their forerunners were consumed. And in this rekindled flame the
+world now sees shrivelling the heavens once fresh, but now reflecting
+the aggregate selfishness of mankind, the hells representing their
+aggregate cowardice, and feeds its nobler faith with this vision of the
+eternal fire which evermore consumes the false and refines the world.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+PARADISE AND THE SERPENT.
+
+ Herakles and Athena in a holy picture--Human significance of
+ Eden--The legend in Genesis puzzling--Silence of later books
+ concerning it--Its Vedic elements--Its explanation--Episode of
+ the Mahábhárata--Scandinavian variant--The name of Adam--The
+ story re-read--Rabbinical interpretations.
+
+
+Montfaucon has among his plates one (XX.) representing an antique
+agate which he supposes to represent Zeus and Athena, but which
+probably relates to the myth of Herakles and Athena in the garden of
+Hesperides. The hero having penetrated this garden, slays the dragon
+which guards its immortalising fruit, but when he has gathered this
+fruit Athena takes it from him, lest man shall eat it and share the
+immortality of the gods. In this design the two stand on either side of
+the tree, around which a serpent is twined from root to branches. The
+history which Montfaucon gives of the agate is of equal interest
+with the design itself. It was found in an old French cathedral,
+where it had long been preserved and shown as a holy picture of the
+Temptation. It would appear also to have previously deceived some
+rabbins, for on the border is written in Hebrew characters, much
+more modern than the central figures, 'The woman saw that the tree
+was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree
+to be desired to make one wise.'
+
+This mystification about a design, concerning whose origin and design
+there is now no doubt, is significant. The fable of Paradise and
+the Serpent is itself more difficult to trace, so many have been the
+races and religions which have framed it with their holy texts and
+preserved it in their sacred precincts. In its essence, no doubt,
+the story grows from a universal experience; in that aspect it is a
+mystical rose that speaks all languages. When man first appears his
+counterpart is a garden. The moral nature means order. The wild forces
+of nature--the Elohim--build no fence, forbid no fruit. They say to
+man as the supreme animal, Subdue the earth; every tree and herb shall
+be your meat; every animal your slave; be fruitful and multiply. But
+from the conflict the more real man emerges, and his sign is a garden
+hedged in from the wilderness, and a separation between good and evil.
+
+The form in which the legend appears in the Book of Genesis presents
+one side in which it is simple and natural. This has already been
+suggested (vol. i. p. 330). But the legend of man defending his refuge
+from wild beasts against the most subtle of them is here overlaid by
+a myth in which it plays the least part. The mind which reads it by
+such light as may be obtained only from biblical sources can hardly
+fail to be newly puzzled at every step. So much, indeed, is confessed
+in the endless and diverse theological theories which the story has
+elicited. What is the meaning of the curse on the Serpent that it
+should for ever crawl thereafter? Had it not crawled previously? Why
+was the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil forbidden? Why,
+when its fruit was tasted, should the Tree of Life have been for the
+first time forbidden and jealously guarded? These riddles are nowhere
+solved in the Bible, and have been left to the fanciful inventions
+of theologians and the ingenuity of rabbins. Dr. Adam Clarke thought
+the Serpent was an ape before his sin, and many rabbins concluded he
+was camel-shaped; but the remaining enigmas have been fairly given up.
+
+The ancient Jews, they who wrote and compiled the Old Testament, more
+candid than their modern descendants and our omniscient christians,
+silently confessed their inability to make anything out of this
+snake-story. From the third chapter of Genesis to the last verse of
+Malachi the story is not once alluded to! Such a phenomenon would
+have been impossible had this legend been indigenous with the Hebrew
+race. It was clearly as a boulder among them which had floated from
+regions little known to their earlier writers; after lying naked
+through many ages, it became overgrown with rabbinical lichen and
+moss, and, at the Christian era, while it seemed part of the Hebrew
+landscape, it was exceptional enough to receive special reverence as
+a holy stone. That it was made the corner-stone of Christian theology
+may be to some extent explained by the principle of omne ignotum pro
+mirifico. But the boulder itself can only be explained by tracing it
+to the mythologic formation from which it crumbled.
+
+How would a Parsi explain the curse on a snake which condemned it to
+crawl? He would easily give us evidence that at the time when most
+of those Hebrew Scriptures were written, without allusion to such
+a Serpent, the ancient Persians believed that Ahriman had tempted
+the first man and woman through his evil mediator, his anointed son,
+Ash-Mogh, 'the two-footed Serpent.'
+
+But let us pass beyond the Persian legend, carrying that and the
+biblical story together, for submission to the criticism of a
+Bráhman. He will tell us that this Ash-Mogh of the Parsi is merely
+the ancient Aèshma-daéva of the Avesta, which in turn is Ahi, the
+great Vedic Serpent-monster whom Indra 'prostrated beneath the feet'
+of the stream he had obstructed--every stream having its deity. He
+would remind us that the Vedas describe the earliest dragon-slayer,
+Indra, as 'crushing the head' of his enemy, and that this figure of
+the god with his heel on a Serpent's head has been familiar to his race
+from time immemorial. And he would then tell us to read the Rig-Veda,
+v. 32, and the Mahábhárata, and we would find all the elements of
+the story told in Genesis.
+
+In the hymn referred to we find a graphic account of how, when Ahi
+was sleeping on the waters he obstructed, Indra hurled at him his
+thunderbolt. It says that when Indra had 'annihilated the weapon of
+that mighty beast from him (Ahi), another, more powerful, conceiving
+himself one and unmatched, was generated,' This 'wrath-born son,'
+'a walker in darkness,' had managed to get hold of the sacred Soma,
+the plant monopolised by the gods, and having drunk this juice, he
+lay slumbering and 'enveloping the world,' and then 'fierce Indra
+seized upon him,' and having previously discovered 'the vital part
+of him who thought, himself invulnerable,' struck that incarnation
+of many-formed Ahi, and he was 'made the lowest of all creatures'.
+
+But one who has perused the philological biography of Ahi already
+given, vol. i. p. 357, will not suppose that this was the end of
+him. We must now consider in further detail the great episode
+of the Mahábhárata, to which reference has been made in other
+connections. [29] During the Deluge the most precious treasure of
+the gods, the Amrita, the ambrosia that rendered them immortal, was
+lost, and the poem relates how the Devas and Asuras, otherwise gods
+and serpents, together churned the ocean for it. There were two great
+mountains,--Meru the golden and beautiful, adorned with healing plants,
+pleasant streams and trees, unapproachable by the sinful, guarded
+by serpents; Mandar, rocky, covered with rank vegetation, infested
+by savage beasts. The first is the abode of the gods, the last of
+demons. To find the submerged Amrita it was necessary to uproot Mandar
+and use it to churn the ocean. This was done by calling on the King
+Serpent Ananta, who called in the aid of another great serpent, Vásuki,
+the latter being used as a rope coiling and uncoiling to whirl the
+mountain. At last the Amrita appeared. But there also streamed forth
+from the ocean bed a terrible stench and venom, which was spreading
+through the universe when Siva swallowed it to save mankind,--the
+drug having stained his throat blue, whence his epithet 'Blue Neck.'
+
+When the Asuras saw the Amrita, they claimed it; but one of the Devas,
+Narya, assumed the form of a beautiful woman, and so fascinated them
+that they forgot the Amrita for the moment, which the gods drank. One
+of the Asuras, however, Ráhu, assumed the form of a god or Deva, and
+began to drink. The immortalising nectar had not gone farther than
+his throat when the sun and moon saw the deceit and discovered it to
+Naraya, who cut off Ráhu's head. The head of Ráhu, being immortal,
+bounded to the sky, where its efforts to devour the sun and moon,
+which betrayed him, causes their eclipses. The tail (Ketu) also enjoys
+immortality in a lower plane, and is the fatal planet which sends
+diseases on mankind. A furious war between the gods and the Asuras
+has been waged ever since. And since the Devas are the strongest,
+it is not wonderful that it should have passed into the folklore
+of the whole Aryan world that the evil host are for ever seeking to
+recover by cunning the Amrita. The Serpents guarding the paradise of
+the Devas have more than once, in a mythologic sense, been induced
+to betray their trust and glide into the divine precincts to steal
+the coveted draught. This is the Kvásir [30] of the Scandinavian
+Mythology, which is the source of that poetic inspiration whose songs
+have magical potency. The sacramental symbol of the Amrita in Hindu
+Theology is the Soma juice, and this plant Indra is declared in the
+Rig-Veda (i. 130) to have discovered "hidden, like the nestlings of
+a bird, amidst a pile of rocks enclosed by bushes," where the dragon
+Drought had concealed it. Indra, in the shape of a hawk, flew away
+with it. In the Prose Edda the Frost Giant Suttung has concealed the
+sacred juice, and it is kept by the maid Gunlauth in a cavern overgrown
+with bushes. Bragi bored a hole through the rock. Odin in the shape
+of a worm crept through the crevice; then resuming his godlike shape,
+charmed the maid into permitting him to drink one draught out of the
+three jars; and, having left no drop, in form of an eagle flew to
+Asgard, and discharged in the jars the wonder-working liquid. Hence
+poetry is called Odin's booty, and Odin's gift.
+
+Those who attentively compare these myths with the legend in Genesis
+will not have any need to rest upon the doubtful etymology of 'Adam'
+[31] to establish the Ayran origin of the latter. The Tree of the
+knowledge of Good and Evil which made man 'as one of us' (the Elohim)
+is the Soma of India, the Haoma of Persia, the kvásir of Scandinavia,
+to which are ascribed the intelligence and powers of the gods, and
+the ardent thoughts of their worshippers. The Tree of Immortality is
+the Amrita, the only monopoly of the gods. 'The Lord God said, Behold
+the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest
+he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat,
+and live for ever: Therefore the Lord God sent him forth the garden
+of Eden to till the ground whence he had been taken. So he drove out
+the man; and he placed on the east of the garden of Eden cherubim,
+and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way of the
+tree of life.'
+
+This flaming sword turning every way is independent of the cherub,
+and takes the place of the serpent which had previously guarded the
+Meru paradise, but is now an enemy no longer to be trusted.
+
+If the reader will now re-read the story in Genesis with the old names
+restored, he will perceive that there is no puzzle at all in any part
+of it:--'Now Ráhu [because he had stolen and tasted Soma] was more
+subtle than any beast of the field which the Devas had made, and he
+said to Adea Suktee, the first woman, Have the Devas said you shall
+not eat of every tree in the garden? And she said unto Ráhu, We may
+eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the Soma-plant,
+which is in the middle of the garden, the Devas have said we shall
+not eat or touch it on pain of death. Then Ráhu said to Adea, You
+will not suffer death by tasting Soma [I have done so, and live]:
+the Devas know that on the day when you taste it your eyes shall be
+opened, and you will be equal to them in knowledge of good and evil
+... [and you will be able at once to discover which tree it is that
+bears the fruit which renders you immortal--the Amrita].... Adea took
+of the Soma and did eat, and gave also unto Adima, her husband, and the
+eyes of them both were opened.... And Indra, chief of the Devas, said
+to Ráhu, Because you have done this, you are cursed above all cattle
+and above every beast of the field; [for they shall transmigrate,
+their souls ascend through higher forms to be absorbed in the Creative
+principle; but] upon thy belly shalt thou go [remaining transfixed in
+the form you have assumed to try and obtain the Amrita]; and [instead
+of the ambrosia you aimed at] you shall eat dirt through all your
+existence.... And Indra said, Adima and Adea Suktee have [tasted Soma,
+and] become as one of us Devas [so far as] to know good and evil;
+and now, lest man put forth his hand [on our precious Amrita], and
+take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever [giving
+us another race of Asuras or Serpent-men to compete with].... Indra
+and the Devas drove Adima out of Meru, and placed watch-dogs at the
+east of the garden; and [a sinuous darting flame, precisely matched
+to the now unchangeable form of Ráhu], a flaming sword which turned
+every way, to keep the way of the Amrita from Adima and Asuras.'
+
+While the gods and serpents were churning the ocean for the Amrita,
+all woes and troubles for mortals came up first. That ocean shrinks
+in one region to the box of Pandora, in another to the fruit eaten by
+Eve. How foreign such a notion is to the Hebrew theology is shown by
+the fact that even while the curses are falling from the fatal fruit
+on the earth and man, they are all said to have proceeded solely from
+Jehovah, who is thus made to supplement the serpent's work.
+
+It will be seen that in the above version of the story in Genesis I
+have left out various passages. These are in part such as must be more
+fully treated in the succeeding chapter, and in part the Semitic mosses
+which have grown upon the Aryan boulder. But even after the slight
+treatment which is all I have space to devote to the comparative
+study of the myth in this aspect, it may be safely affirmed that
+the problems which we found insoluble by Hebrew correlatives no
+longer exist if an Aryan origin be assumed. We know why the fruit
+of knowledge was forbidden: because it endangered the further fruit
+of immortality. We know how the Serpent might be condemned to crawl
+for ever without absurdity: because he was of a serpent-race, able
+to assume higher forms, and capable of transmigration, and of final
+absorption. We know why the eating of the fruit brought so many woes:
+it was followed by the stream of poison from the churned ocean which
+accompanied the Amrita, and which would have destroyed the race of both
+gods and men, had not Siva drank it up. If anything were required to
+make the Aryan origin of the fable certain, it will be found in the
+fact which will appear as we go on,--namely, that the rabbins of our
+era, in explaining the legend which their fathers severely ignored,
+did so by borrowing conceptions foreign to the original ideas of
+their race,--notions about human transformation to animal shapes,
+and about the Serpent (which Moses honoured), and mainly of a kind
+travestying the Iranian folklore. Such contact with foreign races
+for the first time gave the Jews any key to the legend which their
+patriarchs and prophets were compelled to pass over in silence.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+EVE.
+
+ The Fall of Man--Fall of gods--Giants--Prajápati and Ráhu--Woman
+ and Star-serpent in Persia--Meschia and Meschiane--Bráhman
+ legends of the creation of Man--The strength of Woman--Elohist
+ and Jehovist creations of Man--The Forbidden Fruit--Eve reappears
+ as Sara--Abraham surrenders his wife to Jehovah--The idea not
+ sensual--Abraham's circumcision--The evil name of Woman--Noah's
+ wife--The temptation of Abraham--Rabbinical legends concerning
+ Eve--Pandora--Sentiment of the Myth of Eve.
+
+
+The insignificance of the Serpent of Eden in the scheme and teachings
+of the Hebrew Bible is the more remarkable when it is considered that
+the pessimistic view of human nature is therein fully represented. In
+the story of the Temptation itself, there is, indeed, no such
+generalisation as we find in the modern dogma of the Fall of Man;
+but the elements of it are present in the early assumption that
+the thoughts of man's heart run to evil continually,--which must
+be an obvious fact everywhere while goodness is identified with
+fictitious merits. There are also expressions suggesting a theory
+of heredity, of a highly superstitious character,--the inheritance
+being by force of the ancestral word or act, and without reference
+to inherent qualities. Outward merits and demerits are transmitted
+for reward and punishment to the third and fourth generation; but
+the more common-sense view appears to have gradually superseded this,
+as expressed in the proverb that the fathers ate sour grapes and the
+children's teeth were on edge.
+
+In accounting for this condition of human nature, popular traditions
+among the Jews always pointed rather to a fall of the gods than to
+any such catastrophe to man. 'The sons of the Elohim (gods) saw the
+daughters of men that they were beautiful, and they took to themselves
+for wives whomsoever they chose.' 'There were giants in the earth in
+those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto
+the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became
+mighty men, which were of old men of renown.' [32] These giants were
+to the Semitic mind what the Ahis, Vritras, Sushnas and other monsters
+were to the Aryan, or Titans to the Greek mind. They were not traced
+to the Serpent, but to the wild nature-gods, the Elohim, and when
+Jehovah appears it is to wage war against them. The strength of this
+belief is illustrated in the ample accounts given in the Old Testament
+of the Rephaim and their king Og, the Anakim and Goliath, the Emim,
+the Zamzummim, and others, all of which gained full representation in
+Hebrew folklore. The existence of these hostile beings was explained
+by their fall from angelic estate.
+
+The Book of Enoch gives what was no doubt the popular understanding
+of the fall of the angels and its results. Two hundred angels took
+wives of the daughters of men, and their offspring were giants three
+thousand yards in height. These giants having consumed the food
+of mankind, began to devour men, whose cries were brought to the
+attention of Jehovah by his angels. One angel was sent to warn Noah
+of the Flood; another to bind Azazel in a dark place in the desert
+till the Judgment Day; Gabriel was despatched to set the giants to
+destroying one another; Michael was sent to bury the fallen angels
+under the hills for seventy generations, till the Day of Judgment, when
+they should be sent to the fiery abyss for ever. Then every evil work
+should come to an end, and the plant of righteousness spring up. [33]
+
+Such exploits and successes on the part of the legal Deity against
+outlaws, though they may be pitched high in heroic romance, are
+found beside a theology based upon a reverse situation. Nothing is
+more fundamental in the ancient Jewish system than the recognition
+of an outside world given over to idolatry and wickedness, while
+Jews are a small colony of the children of Israel and chosen of
+Jehovah. Such a conception in primitive times is so natural, and
+possibly may have been so essential to the constitution of nations,
+that it is hardly useful to look for parallels. Though nearly all
+races see in their traditional dawn an Age of Gold, a Happy Garden,
+or some corresponding felicity, these are normally defined against
+anterior chaos or surrounding ferocity. Every Eden has had its guards.
+
+When we come to legends which relate particularly to the way in
+which the early felicity was lost, many facts offer themselves for
+comparative study. And with regard to the myths of Eden and Eve,
+we may remark what appears to have been a curious interchange of
+legends between the Hebrews and Persians. The ancient doctrines of
+India and Persia concerning Origins are largely, if not altogether,
+astronomical. In the Genesis of India we see a golden egg floating
+on a shoreless ocean; it divides to make the heaven above and earth
+beneath; from it emerges Prajápati, who also falls in twain to make
+the mortal and immortal substances; the parts of him again divide to
+make men and women on earth, sun and moon in the sky. This is but one
+version out of many, but all the legends about Prajápati converge
+in making him a figure of Indian astronomy. In the Rig-Veda he is
+Orion, and for ever lies with the three arrows in his belt which
+Sirius shot at him because of his love for Aldebaran,--towards which
+constellation he stretches. Now, in a sort of antithesis to this,
+the evil Ráhu is also cut in twain, his upper and immortal part
+pursuing and trying to eclipse the sun and moon, his tail (Ketu)
+becoming the 9th planet, shedding evil influences on mankind. [34]
+This tail, Ketu, is quite an independent monster, and we meet with
+him in the Persian planisphere, where he rules the first of the six
+mansions of Ahriman, and is the 'crooked serpent' mentioned in the
+Book of Job. By referring to vol. i. p. 253, the reader will see that
+this Star-serpent must stand as close to the woman with her child and
+sheaf as September stands to October. But unquestionably the woman
+was put there for honour and not disgrace; with her child and sheaf
+she represented the fruitage of the year.
+
+There is nothing in Persian Mythology going to show that the woman
+betrayed her mansion of fruitage--the golden year--to the Serpent
+near her feet. In the Bundehesch we have the original man, Kaiomarts,
+who is slain by Ahriman as Prajápati (Orion) was by Sirius; from his
+dead form came Meschia and Meschiane, the first human pair. Ahriman
+corrupts them by first giving them goats' milk, an evil influence
+from Capricorn. After they had thus injured themselves he tempted
+them with a fruit which robbed them of ninety-nine hundredths
+of their happiness. In all this there is no indication that the
+woman and man bore different relations to the calamity. But after a
+time we find a Parsî postscript to this effect: 'The woman was the
+first to sacrifice to the Devas.' This is the one item in the Parsî
+Mythology which shows bias against woman, and as it is unsupported
+by the narratives preceding it, we may suppose that it was derived
+from some foreign country.
+
+That country could hardly have been India. There is a story in remote
+districts of India which relates that the first woman was born out
+of an expanding lotus on the Ganges, and was there received in his
+paradise by the first man (Adima, or Manu). Having partaken of the
+Soma, they were expelled, after first being granted their prayer to be
+allowed a last draught from the Ganges; the effect of the holy water
+being to prevent entire corruption, and secure immortality to their
+souls. But nowhere in Indian legend or folklore do we find any special
+dishonour put upon woman such as is described in the Hebrew story.
+
+Rather we find the reverse. Early in the last century, a traveller,
+John Marshall, related stories of the creation which he says were
+told him by the Brahmins, and others 'by the Brahmins of Persia.' [35]
+
+'Once on a time,' the Brahmins said, 'as (God) was set in eternity,
+it came into his mind to make something, and immediately no sooner had
+he thought the same, but that the same minute was a perfect beautiful
+woman present immediately before him, which he called Adea Suktee,
+that is, the first woman. Then this figure put into his mind the
+figure of a man; which he had no sooner conceived in his mind, but
+that he also started up, and represented himself before him; this he
+called Manapuise, that is, the first man; then, upon a reflection of
+these things, he resolved further to create several places for them
+to abide in, and accordingly, assuming a subtil body, he breathed in
+a minute the whole universe, and everything therein, from the least
+to the greatest.'
+
+'The Brahmins of Persia tell certain long stories of a great Giant that
+was led into a most delicate garden, which, upon certain conditions,
+should be his own for ever. But one evening in a cool shade one of
+the wicked Devatas, or spirits, came to him, and tempted him with vast
+sums of gold, and all the most precious jewels that can be imagined;
+but he courageously withstood that temptation, as not knowing what
+value or use they were of: but at length this wicked Devata brought
+to him a fair woman, who so charmed him that for her sake he most
+willingly broke all his conditions, and thereupon was turned out.'
+
+In the first of these two stories the names given to the man and woman
+are popular words derived from Sanskrit. In the second the Persian
+characters are present, as in the use of Devatas to denote wicked
+powers; but for the rest, this latter legend appears to me certainly
+borrowed from the Jews so far as the woman is concerned. It was they
+who first perceived any connection between Virgo in the sixth mansion
+of Ormuzd, and Python in the seventh, and returned the Persians their
+planisphere with a new gloss. Having adopted the Dragon's tail (Ketu)
+for a little preliminary performance, the Hebrew system dismisses
+that star-snake utterly; for it has already evolved a terrestrial
+devil from its own inner consciousness.
+
+The name of that devil is--Woman. The diabolisation of woman in their
+theology and tradition is not to be regarded as any indication that
+the Hebrews anciently held women in dishonour; rather was it a tribute
+to her powers of fascination such as the young man wrote to be placed
+under the pillow of Darius--'Woman is strongest.' As Darius and his
+council agreed that, next to truth, woman is strongest--stronger than
+wine or than kings, so do the Hebrew fables testify by interweaving
+her beauty and genius with every evil of the world.
+
+Between the Elohist and Jahvist accounts of the creation of man,
+there are two differences of great importance. The Elohim are said to
+have created man in their own image, male and female,--the word for
+'created' being bará, literally meaning to carve out. Jehovah Elohim
+is said to have formed man,--nothing being said about his own image,
+or about male and female,--the word formed being yatsar'. The sense of
+this word yatsar in this place (Gen. ii. 7) must be interpreted by what
+follows: Jehovah is said to have formed man out of the aphar', which
+the English version translates dust, but the Septuagint more correctly
+sperma. The literal meaning is a finely volatilised substance, and in
+Numbers xxiii. 10, it is used to represent the seed of Jacob. In the
+Jehovistic creation it means that man was formed out of the seminal
+principle of the earth combined with the breath of Jehovah; and the
+legend closely resembles the account of the ancient Satapatha-Bráhmana,
+which shows the creative power in sexual union with the fluid world
+to produce the egg from which Prajápati was born, to be divided into
+man and woman.
+
+These two accounts, therefore,--to wit, that in the first and that in
+the second chapter of Genesis,--must be regarded as being of different
+events, and not merely varying myths of the same event. The offspring
+of Jehovah were 'living souls,' an expression not used in connection
+with the created images of the giants or Elohim. The Elohist pair
+roam about the world freely eating all fruits and herbs, possessing
+nature generally, and, as male and female, encouraged to increase
+and multiply; but Jehovah carefully separates his two children from
+general nature, places them in a garden, forbids certain food, and
+does not say a word about sex even, much less encourage its functions.
+
+Adam was formed simply to be the gardener of Eden; no other motive
+is assigned. In proposing the creation of a being to be his helper
+and companion, nothing is said about a new sex,--the word translated
+'help-meet' (ézer) is masculine. Adam names the being made 'woman,'
+(Vulg. Virago) only because she has been made out of man, but sex
+is not even yet suggested. This is so marked that the compiler has
+filled up what he considered an omission with (verse 24) a little
+lecture on duty to wives.
+
+It is plain that the jealously-guarded ambrosia of Aryan gods has here
+been adapted to signify the sexual relation. That is the fruit in the
+midst of the garden which is reserved. The eating of it is immediately
+associated with consciousness of nudity and shame. The curse upon
+Eve is appropriate. Having taken a human husband, she is to be his
+slave; she shall bring forth children in sorrow, and many of them
+(Gen. iii. 16). Adam is to lose his position in Jehovah's garden,
+and to toil in accursed ground, barren and thorny.
+
+Cast out thus into the wilderness, the human progeny as it increased
+came in contact with the giant's progeny,--those created by the Elohim
+(Gen. i.). When these had intermarried, Jehovah said that the fact
+that the human side in such alliance had been originally vitalised
+by his breath could not now render it immortal, because 'he (man)
+also is flesh,' i.e., like the creatures of the nature-gods. After
+two great struggles with these Titans, drowning most of them, hurling
+down their tower and scattering them, Jehovah resolved upon a scheme
+of vast importance, and one which casts a flood of light upon the
+narrative just given. Jehovah's great aim is shown in the Abrahamic
+covenant to be to found a family on earth, of which he can say, 'Thou
+art my son; I have begotten thee.' Eve was meant to be the mother of
+that family, but by yielding to her passion for the man meant only
+to be her companion she had thwarted the purpose of Jehovah. But she
+reappears again under the name of Sara; and from first to last the
+sense of these records, however overlaid by later beliefs, is the
+expansion, varying fortunes, and gradual spiritualisation of this
+aspiration of a deity for a family of his own in the earth.
+
+Celsus said that the story of the Virgin Mary and the Holy Ghost
+is one in which Christians would find little 'mystery' if the names
+were Danaë and Jupiter. The same may be said of the story of Sara and
+Jehovah, of which that concerning Mary is a theological travesty. Sarai
+(as she was called before her transfer to Jehovah, who then forbade
+Abraham to call her 'My Princess,' but only 'Princess') was chosen
+because she was childless. Abraham was paid a large recompense
+for her surrender, and provision was made that he should have a
+mistress, and by her a son. This natural son was to be renowned
+and have great possessions; nominally Abraham was to be represented
+by Sara's miraculously-conceived son, and to control his fortunes,
+but the blood of the new race was to be purely divine in its origin,
+so that every descendant of Isaac might be of Jehovah's family in
+Abraham's household.
+
+Abraham twice gave over his wife to different kings who were
+jealously punished by Jehovah for sins they only came near committing
+unconsciously, while Abraham himself was not even rebuked for the sin
+he did commit. The forbidden fruit was not eaten this time; and the
+certificate and proof of the supernatural conception of Isaac were
+made clear in Sarah's words--'God hath made me to laugh: all that hear
+will laugh with me: who would have said unto Abraham that Sarah should
+have given children suck? for I have borne a son in his old age.' [36]
+
+It was the passionate nature and beauty of Woman which had thus far
+made the difficulty. The forbidden fruit was 'pleasant to the eyes,'
+and Eve ate it; and it was her 'voice' to which Adam had hearkened
+rather than to that of Jehovah (Gen. iii. 17). And, again, it was
+the easy virtue and extreme beauty of Sara (Gen. xii. 11, 14) which
+endangered the new scheme. The rabbinical traditions are again on
+this point very emphatic. It is related that when Abram came to
+the border of Egypt he hid Sara in a chest, and was so taking her
+into that country. The collector of customs charged that the chest
+contained raiment, silks, gold, pearls, and Abram paid for all these;
+but this only increased the official's suspicions, and he compelled
+Abram to open the chest; when this was done and Sara rose up, the
+whole land of Egypt was illumined by her splendour. [37]
+
+There is no reason for supposing that the ideas underlying the
+relation which Jehovah meant to establish with Eve, and succeeded in
+establishing with Sara, were of a merely sensual description. These
+myths belong to the mental region of ancestor-worship, and the
+fundamental conception is that of founding a family to reign over all
+other families. Jehovah's interest is in Isaac rather than Sara, who,
+after she has borne that patriarch, lapses out of the story almost
+as completely as Eve. The idea is not, indeed, so theological as it
+became in the Judaic-christian legend of the conception of Jesus
+by Mary as spouse of the Deity; it was probably, however, largely
+ethnical in the case of Eve, and national in that of Sara.
+
+It being considered of the utmost importance that all who claimed the
+advantages in the Jewish commonwealth accruing only to the legal,
+though nominal, 'children of Abraham,' should really be of divine
+lineage, security must be had against Isaac having any full brother. It
+might be that in after time some natural son of Sara might claim
+to be the one born of divine parentage, might carry on the Jewish
+commonwealth, slay the children of Jehovah by Sara, and so end the
+divine lineage with the authority it carried. Careful precautions
+having been taken that Ishmael should be an 'irreconcilable,'
+there is reason to suspect that the position of Isaac as Jehovah's
+'only-begotten son' was secured by means obscurely hinted in the
+circumcision first undergone by Abraham, and made the sign of the
+covenant. That circumcision, wheresoever it has survived, is the
+relic of a more horrible practice of barbarian asceticism, is hardly
+doubtful; that the original rite was believed to have been that by
+which Abraham fulfilled his contract with Jehovah, appears to me
+intimated in various passages of the narrative which have survived
+editorial arrangement in accordance with another view. For instance,
+the vast inducements offered Abraham, and the great horror that fell
+on the patriarch, appear hardly explicable on the theory that nothing
+was conceded on Abraham's side beyond the surrender of a wife whom
+he had freely consigned to earthly monarchs.
+
+Though the suspicion just expressed as to the nature of Abraham's
+circumcision may be doubted, it is not questionable that the rite of
+circumcision bears a significance in rabbinical traditions and Jewish
+usages which renders its initiation by Abraham at least a symbol of
+marital renunciation. Thus, the custom of placing in a room where
+the rite of circumcision was performed a pot of dust, was explained
+by the rabbins to have reference to the dust which Jehovah declared
+should be the serpent's food. [38] That circumcision should have been
+traditionally associated with the temptation of Eve is a confirmation
+of the interpretation which regards her (Eve) as the prototype of
+Sara and the serpent as sexual desire.
+
+Although, if the original sense of Abraham's circumcision were what
+has been suggested, it had been overlaid, when the Book of Genesis
+in its present form was compiled, by different traditions, and that
+patriarch is described as having married again and had other children,
+the superior sanctity of Sara's son was preserved. Indeed, there would
+seem to have continued for a long time a tradition that the Abrahamic
+line and covenant were to be carried out by 'the seed of the woman'
+alone, and the paternity of Jehovah. Like Sara, Rebekah is sterile, and
+after her Rachel; the birth of Jacob and Esau from one, and of Joseph
+and Benjamin from the other, being through the intervention of Jehovah.
+
+The great power of woman for good or evil, and the fact that it has
+often been exercised with subtlety--the natural weapon of the weak in
+dealing with the strong--are remarkably illustrated in the legends of
+these female figures which appear in connection with the divine schemes
+in the Book of Genesis. But even more the perils of woman's beauty
+are illustrated, especially in Eve and Sara. There were particular and
+obvious reasons why these representative women could not be degraded or
+diabolised in their own names or history, even where their fascinations
+tended to countervail the plans of Jehovah. The readiness with which
+Sara promoted her husband's prostitution and consented to her own,
+the treachery of Rebekah to her son Esau, could yet not induce Jewish
+orthodoxy to give evil names to the Madonnas of their race; but the
+inference made was expressed under other forms and names. It became
+a settled superstition that wherever evil was going on, Woman was at
+the bottom of it. Potiphar's wife, Jezebel, Vashti, and Delilah, were
+among the many she-scape-goats on whom were laid the offences of their
+august official predecessors who 'could do no wrong.' Even after Satan
+has come upon the scene, and is engaged in tempting Job, it seems to
+have been thought essential to the task that he should have an agent
+beside the troubled man in the wife who bade him 'curse God and die.'
+
+It is impossible to say at just what period the rabbins made their
+ingenious discovery that the devil and Woman entered the world at
+the same time,--he coming out of the hole left by removal of the
+rib from Adam before it was closed. This they found disclosed in the
+fact that it is in Genesis iii. 21, describing the creation of Woman,
+that there appears for the first time Samech--the serpent-letter S
+(in Vajisgor). [39] But there were among them many legends of a
+similar kind that leave one no wonder concerning the existence of
+a thanksgiving taught boys that they have not been created women,
+however much one may be scandalised at its continuance in the present
+day. It was only in pursuance of this theory of Woman that there was
+developed at a later day a female assistant of the Devil in another
+design to foil the plans of Jehovah, from the Scriptual narrative of
+which the female rôle is omitted. In the Scriptural legend of Noah
+his wife is barely mentioned, and her name is not given, but from an
+early period vague rumours to her discredit floated about, and these
+gathered consistency in the Gnostic legend that it was through her
+that Satan managed to get on board the Ark, as is elsewhere related
+(Part IV. chap. xxvii.), and was so enabled to resuscitate antediluvial
+violence in the drunken curses of Noah. Satan did this by working
+upon both the curiosity and jealousy of Noraita, the name assigned
+Noah's wife.
+
+It has been necessary to give at length the comparative view of the
+myth of Eden in order that the reader may estimate the grounds upon
+which rests a theory which has been submitted after much hesitation
+concerning its sense. The 'phallic' theory by which it has become
+the fashion to interpret so many of these old fables, appears
+to me to have been done to death; yet I cannot come to any other
+conclusion concerning the legend of Eve than that she represents
+that passional nature of Woman which, before it was brought under
+such rigid restraint, might easily be regarded as a weakness to any
+tribe desirous of keeping itself separate from other tribes. The
+oath exacted by Abraham of his servant that he should seek out a
+wife from among his own people, and not among Canaanitish women,
+is one example among many of this feeling, which, indeed, survives
+among Jews at the present day. Such a sentiment might underlie the
+stories of Eve and Sara--the one mingling the blood of the family
+of Jehovah with mere human flesh, the other nearly confusing it
+with aliens. As the idea of tribal sanctity and separateness became
+strengthened by the further development of theocratic government,
+such myths would take on forms representing Jehovah's jealousy in
+defending his family line against the evil powers which sought to
+confuse or destroy it. One such attempt appears to underlie the story
+of the proposed sacrifice of Isaac. Although the account we have of
+that proceeding in the Bible was written at a time when the Elohist
+and Jahvist parties had compromised their rivalries to some extent,
+and suggests the idea that Jehovah himself ordered the sacrifice in
+order to try the faith of Abraham, enough of the primitive tradition
+lingers in the narrative to make it probable that its original intent
+was to relate how one of the superseded Elohim endeavoured to tempt
+Abraham to sacrifice Sara's only son, and so subvert the aim of Jehovah
+to perpetuate his seed. The God who 'tempted Abraham' is throughout
+sharply distinguished from the Jehovah who sent his angel to prevent
+the sacrifice and substitute an animal victim for Isaac.
+
+Although, as we have seen, Sara was spared degradation into a she-devil
+in subsequent myths, because her body was preserved intact despite her
+laxity of mind, such was not the case with Eve. The silence concerning
+her preserved throughout the Bible after her fall is told was broken
+by the ancient rabbins, and there arose multitudinous legends in
+which her intimacies with devils are circumstantially reported. Her
+first child, Cain, was generally believed to be the son of one of the
+devils (Samaël) that consorted with her, and the world was said to be
+peopled with gnomes and demons which she brought forth during that
+130 years at the end of which it is stated that Adam begot a son in
+his own image and likeness, and called his name Seth (Gen. v. 3). The
+previous children were supposed to be not in purely human form, and
+not to have been of Adam's paternity. Adam had during that time refused
+to have any children, knowing that he would only rear inmates of hell.
+
+The legend of Eden has gone round the world doing various duty,
+but nearly always associated with the introduction of moral evil
+into the world. In the Lateran Museum at Rome there is a remarkable
+bas-relief representing a nude man and woman offering sacrifice before
+a serpent coiled around a tree, while an angel overthrows the altar
+with his foot. This was probably designed as a fling at the Ophites,
+and is very interesting as a survival from the ancient Aryan meaning
+of the Serpent. But since the adaptation of the myth by the Semitic
+race, it has generally emphasised the Tree of the Knowledge of Good
+and Evil, instead of the Tree of Immortality (Amrita), which is the
+chief point of interest in the Aryan myth. There are indeed traces of
+a conflict with knowledge and scepticism in it which we shall have
+to consider hereafter. The main popular association with it, the
+introduction into the world of all the ills that flesh is heir to,
+is perfectly consistent with the sense which has been attributed to
+its early Hebrew form; for this includes the longing for maternity,
+its temptations and its pains, and the sorrows and sins which are
+obviously traceable to it.
+
+Some years ago, when the spectacular drama of 'Paradise' was performed
+in Paris, the Temptation was effected by means of a mirror. Satan
+glided behind the tree as a serpent, and then came forth as a
+handsome man, and after uttering compliments that she could not
+understand, presented Eve with a small oval mirror which explained them
+all. Mlle. Abingdon as Eve displayed consummate art in her expression
+of awakening self-admiration, of the longing for admiration from the
+man before her, and the various stages of self-consciousness by which
+she is brought under the Tempter's power. This idea of the mirror
+was no doubt borrowed from the corresponding fable of Pandora. On
+a vase (Etruscan) in the Hamilton Collection there is an admirable
+representation of Pandora opening her box, from which all evils are
+escaping. She is seated beneath a tree, around which a serpent is
+coiled. Among the things which have come out of the box is this same
+small oval mirror. In this variant, Hope, coming out last corresponds
+with the prophecy that the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's
+head. The ancient Etruscan and the modern Parisian version are both
+by the mirror finely connected with the sexual sense of the legend.
+
+The theological interpretation of the beautiful myth of Eden
+represents a sort of spiritual vivisection; yet even as a dogma the
+story preserves high testimony: when woman falls the human race falls
+with her; when man rises above his inward or outward degradations
+and recovers his Paradise, it is because his nature is refined by
+the purity of woman, and his home sweetened by her heart. There is a
+widespread superstition that every Serpent will single out a woman
+from any number of people for its attack. In such dim way is felt
+her gentle bruising of man's reptilian self. No wonder that woman is
+excluded from those regions of life where man's policy is still to
+crawl, eat dust, and bite the heel.
+
+It is, I suppose, the old Mystery of the Creation which left Coventry
+its legend of a Good Eve (Godiva, whose name is written 'good Eve'
+in a Conventry verse, 1494), whose nakedness should bring benefit to
+man, as that of the first Eve brought him evil. The fig-leaf of Eve,
+gathered no doubt from the tree whose forbidden fruit she had eaten,
+has gradually grown so large as to cloak her mind and spirit as well
+as her form. Her work must still be chiefly that of a spirit veiled
+and ashamed. Her passions suppressed, her genius disbelieved, her
+influence forced to seek hidden and often illegitimate channels,
+Woman now outwardly represents a creation of man to suit his own
+convenience. But the Serpent has also changed a great deal since
+the days of Eve, and now, as Intelligence, has found out man in his
+fool's-paradise, where he stolidly maintains that, with few exceptions,
+it is good for man to be alone. But good women are remembering Godiva;
+and realising that, the charms which have sometimes lowered man or
+cost him dear may be made his salvation. It shall be so when Woman
+can face with clear-eyed purity all the facts of nature, can cast
+away the mental and moral swathing-clothes transmitted from Eden,
+and put forth all her powers for the welfare of mankind,--a Good Eva,
+whom Coventry Toms may call naked, but who is 'not ashamed' of the
+garb of Innocence and Truth.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+LILITH.
+
+ Madonnas--Adam's first wife--Her flight and doom--Creation of
+ devils--Lilith marries Samaël--Tree of Life--Lilith's part
+ in the Temptation--Her locks--Lamia--Bodeima--Meschia and
+ Meschiane--Amazons--Maternity--Rib-theory of Woman--Káli and
+ Durga--Captivity of Woman.
+
+
+The attempt of the compilers of the Book of Genesis to amalgamate
+the Elohist and Jehovist legends, ignoring the moral abyss that yawns
+between them, led to some sufficiently curious results. One of these
+it may be well enough to examine here, since, though later in form
+than some other legends which remain to be considered, it is closely
+connected in spirit with the ancient myth of Eden and illustrative
+of it.
+
+The differences between the two creations of man and woman critically
+examined in the previous chapter were fully recognised by the ancient
+rabbins, and their speculations on the subject laid the basis for
+the further legend that the woman created (Gen. i.) at the same time
+with Adam, and therefore not possibly the woman formed from his rib,
+was a first wife who turned out badly.
+
+To this first wife of Adam it was but natural to assign the name
+of one of the many ancient goddesses who had been degraded into
+demonesses. For the history of Mariolatry in the North of Europe has
+been many times anticipated: the mother's tenderness and self-devotion,
+the first smile of love upon social chaos, availed to give every race
+its Madonna, whose popularity drew around her the fatal favours of
+priestcraft, weighing her down at last to be a type of corruption. Even
+the Semitic tribes, with their hard masculine deities, seem to have
+once worshipped Alilat, whose name survives in Elohim and Allah. Among
+these degraded Madonnas was Lilith, whose name has been found in a
+Chaldean inscription, which says, when a country is at peace 'Lilith
+(Lilatu) is not before them.' The name is from Assyr. lay'lâ, Hebrew
+Lil (night), which already in Accadian meant 'sorcery.' It probably
+personified, at first, the darkness that soothed children to slumber;
+and though the word Lullaby has, with more ingenuity than accuracy,
+been derived from Lilith Abi, the theory may suggest the path by
+which the soft Southern night came to mean a nocturnal spectre.
+
+The only place where the name of Lilith occurs in the Bible is
+Isa. xxxiv. 14, where the English version renders it 'screech-owl.' In
+the Vulgate it is translated 'Lamia,' and in Luther's Bible, 'Kobold;'
+Gesenius explains it as 'nocturna, night-spectre, ghost.'
+
+The rabbinical myths concerning Lilith, often passed over as puerile
+fancies, appear to me pregnant with significance and beauty. Thus
+Abraham Ecchelensis, giving a poor Arabic version of the legend, says,
+'This fable has been transmitted to the Arabs from Jewish sources
+by some converts of Mahomet from Cabbalism and Rabbinism, who have
+transferred all the Jewish fooleries to the Arabs.' [40] But the
+rabbinical legend grew very slowly, and relates to principles and facts
+of social evolution whose force and meaning are not yet exhausted.
+
+Premising that the legend is here pieced together mainly from
+Eisenmenger, [41] who at each mention of the subject gives ample
+references to rabbinical authorities, I will relate it without further
+references of my own.
+
+Lilith was said to have been created at the same time and in the same
+way as Adam; and when the two met they instantly quarrelled about
+the headship which both claimed. Adam began the first conversation
+by asserting that he was to be her master. Lilith replied that she
+had equal right to be chief. Adam insisting, Lilith uttered a certain
+spell called Schem-hammphorasch--afterwards confided by a fallen angel
+to one of 'the daughters of men' with whom he had an intrigue, and of
+famous potency in Jewish folklore--the result of which was that she
+obtained wings. Lilith then flew out of Eden and out of sight. [42]
+Adam then cried in distress--'Master of the world, the woman whom thou
+didst give me has flown away.' The Creator then sent three angels to
+find Lilith and persuade her to return to the garden; but she declared
+that it could be no paradise to her if she was to be the servant of
+man. She remained hovering over the Red Sea, where the angels had
+found her, while these returned with her inflexible resolution. And
+she would not yield even after the angels had been sent again to
+convey to her, as the alternative of not returning, the doom that
+she should bear many children but these should all die in infancy.
+
+This penalty was so awful that Lilith was about to commit suicide
+by drowning herself in the sea, when the three angels, moved by her
+anguish, agreed that she should have the compensation of possessing
+full power over all children after birth up to their eighth day; on
+which she promised that she would never disturb any babes who were
+under their (the angels') protection. Hence the charm (Camea) against
+Lilith hung round the necks of Jewish children bore the names of these
+three angels--Senói, Sansenói, and Sammangelóf. Lilith has special
+power over all children born out of wedlock for whom she watches,
+dressed in finest raiment; and she has especial power on the first
+day of the month, and on the Sabbath evening. When a little child
+laughs in its sleep it was believed that Lilith was with it, and the
+babe must be struck on the nose three times, the words being thrice
+repeated--'Away, cursed Lilith! thou hast no place here!'
+
+The divorce between Lilith and Adam being complete, the second Eve
+(i.e., Mother) was now formed, and this time out of Adam's rib in
+order that there might be no question of her dependence, and that the
+embarrassing question of woman's rights might never be raised again.
+
+But about this time the Devils were also created. These beings were
+the last of the six days' creation, but they were made so late in
+the day that there was no daylight by which to fashion bodies for
+them. The Creator was just putting them off with a promise that he
+would make them bodies next day, when lo! the Sabbath--which was
+for a long time personified--came and sat before him, to represent
+the many evils which might result from the precedent he would set
+by working even a little on the day whose sanctity had already been
+promulgated. Under these circumstances the Creator told the Devils
+that they must disperse and try to get bodies as they could find
+them. On this account they have been compelled ever since to seek
+carnal enjoyments by nestling in the hearts of human beings and
+availing themselves of human senses and passions.
+
+These Devils as created were ethereal spirits; they had certain
+atmospheric forms, but felt that they had been badly treated in not
+having been provided with flesh and blood, and they were envious
+of the carnal pleasures which human beings could enjoy. So long as
+man and woman remained pure, the Devils could not take possession of
+their bodies and enjoy such pleasures, and it was therefore of great
+importance to them that the first human pair should be corrupted. At
+the head of these Devils stood now a fallen angel--Samaël. Of this
+archfiend more is said elsewhere; at this point it need only be said
+that he had been an ideal flaming Serpent, leader of the Seraphim. He
+was already burning with lust and envy, as he witnessed the pleasures
+of Adam and Eve in Eden, when he found beautiful Lilith lamenting
+her wrongs in loneliness.
+
+She became his wife. The name of Samaël by one interpretation signifies
+'the Left'; and we may suppose that Lilith found him radical on
+the question of female equality which she had raised in Eden. He
+gave her a splendid kingdom where she was attended by 480 troops;
+but all this could not compensate her for the loss of Eden,--she
+seems never to have regretted parting with Adam,--and for the loss
+of her children. She remained the Lady of Sorrow. Her great enemy was
+Machalath who presided over 478 troops, and who was for ever dancing,
+as Lilith was for ever sighing and weeping. It was long believed that
+at certain times the voice of Lilith's grief could be heard in the air.
+
+Samaël found in Lilith a willing conspirator against Jehovah in
+his plans for man and woman. The corruption of these two meant, to
+the troops of Samaël, bringing their bodies down into a plane where
+they might be entered by themselves (the Devils), not to mention at
+present the manifold other motives by which they were actuated. It
+may be remarked also that in the rabbinical traditions, after their
+Aryan impregnation, there are traces of a desire of the Devils to
+reach the Tree of Life.
+
+Truly a wondrous Tree! Around it, in its place at the east of
+Eden, sang six hundred thousand lovely angels with happy hymns,
+and it glorified the vast garden. It possessed five hundred thousand
+different flavours and odours, which were wafted to the four sides
+of the world by zephyrs from seven lustrous clouds that made its
+canopy. Beneath it sat the disciples of Wisdom on resplendent seats,
+screened from the blaze of sun, moon, and cloud-veiled from potency
+of the stars (there was no night); and within were the joys referred
+to in the verse (Prov. viii. 21), 'That I may cause those that love
+me to inherit substance; and I will fill their treasures.'
+
+Had there been an order of female rabbins the story of Lilith might
+have borne obvious modifications, and she might have appeared as
+a heroine anxious to rescue her sex from slavery to man. As it is
+the immemorial prerogative of man to lay all blame upon woman, that
+being part of the hereditary following of Adam, it is not wonderful
+that Lilith was in due time made responsible for the temptation of
+Eve. She was supposed to have beguiled the Serpent on guard at the
+gate of Eden to lend her his form for a time, after which theory the
+curse on the serpent might mean the binding of Lilith for ever in
+that form. This would appear to have originated the notion mentioned
+in Comestor (Hist. Schol., 12th cent.), that while the serpent was
+yet erect it had a virgin's head. The accompanying example is from a
+very early missal in the possession of Sir Joseph Hooker, of which I
+could not discover the date or history, but the theory is traceable
+in the eighth century. In this picture we have an early example of
+those which have since become familiar in old Bibles. Pietro d'Orvieto
+painted this serpent-woman in his finest fresco, at Pisa. Perhaps in
+no other picture has the genius of Michæl Angelo been more felicitous
+than in that on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, in which Lilith is
+portrayed. In this picture (Fig. 2) the marvellous beauty of his first
+wife appears to have awakened the enthusiasm of Adam; and, indeed,
+it is quite in harmony with the earlier myth that Lilith should be
+of greater beauty than Eve.
+
+An artist and poet of our own time (Rossetti) has by both of his arts
+celebrated the fatal beauty of Lilith. His Lilith, bringing 'soft
+sleep,' antedates, as I think, the fair devil of the Rabbins, but is
+also the mediæval witch against whose beautiful locks Mephistopheles
+warns Faust when she appears at the Walpurgis-night orgie.
+
+
+ The rose and poppy are her flowers; for where
+ Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent
+ And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare?
+ Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went
+ Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent,
+ And round his heart one strangling golden hair.
+
+
+The potency of Lilith's tresses has probably its origin in the hairy
+nature ascribed by the Rabbins to all demons (shedim), and found
+fully represented in Esau. Perhaps the serpent-locks of Medusa had a
+similar origin. Nay, there is a suggestion in Dante that these tresses
+of Medusa may have once represented fascinating rather than horrible
+serpents. As she approaches, Virgil is alarmed for his brother-poet:
+
+
+ 'Turn thyself back, and keep thy vision hid;
+ For, if the Gorgon show, and then behold,
+ 'Twould all be o'er with e'er returning up.'
+ So did the master say; and he himself
+ Turned me, and to my own hands trusted not,
+ But that with his too he should cover me.
+ O you that have a sane intelligence,
+ Look ye unto the doctrine which herein
+ Conceals itself 'neath the strange verses' veil. [43]
+
+
+If this means that the security against evil is to veil the eyes from
+it, Virgil's warning would be against a beautiful seducer, similar to
+the warning given by Mephistopheles to Faust against the fatal charms
+of Lilith. Since, however, even in the time of Homer, the Gorgon was
+a popular symbol of terrors, the possibility of a survival in Dante's
+mind of any more primitive association with Medusa is questionable. The
+Pauline doctrine, that the glory of a woman is her hair, no doubt had
+important antecedents: such glory might easily be degraded, and every
+hair turn to a fatal 'binder,' like the one golden thread of Lilith
+round the heart of her victim; or it might ensnare its owner. In
+Treves Cathedral there is a curious old picture of a woman carried
+to hell by her beautiful hair; one devil draws her by it, another is
+seated on her back and drives her by locks of it as a bridle.
+
+In the later developments of the myth of Lilith she was, among
+the Arabs, transformed to a Ghoul, but in rabbinical legend she
+appears to have been influenced by the story of Lamia, whose name is
+substituted for Lilith in the Vulgate. Like Lilith, Lamia was robbed
+of her children, and was driven by despair to avenge herself on all
+children. [44] The name of Lamia was long used to frighten Italian
+children, as that of Lilith was by Hebrew nurses.
+
+It is possible that the part assigned to Lilith in the temptation
+of Eve may have been suggested by ancient Egyptian sculptures,
+which represent the Tree of Life in Amenti (Paradise) guarded by the
+Serpent-goddess Nu. One of these in the British Museum represents
+the Osirian on his journey to heaven, and his soul in form of a
+human-headed bird, drinking the water of Life as poured out to them
+from a jar by the goddess who coils around the sacred sycamore, her
+woman's bust and face appearing amid the branches much like Lilith
+in our old pictures.
+
+The Singhalese also have a kind of Lilith or Lamia whom they call
+Bodrima, though she is not so much dreaded for the sake of children as
+for her vindictive feelings towards men. She is the ghost of a woman
+who died in childbirth and in great agony. She may be heard wailing
+in the night, it is said, and if she meets any man will choke him
+to death. When her wailing is heard men are careful to stay within
+doors, but the women go forth with brooms in their hands and abuse
+Bodrima with epithets. She fears women, especially when they carry
+brooms. But the women have also some compassion for this poor ghost,
+and often leave a lamp and some betel leaves where she may get some
+warmth and comfort from them. If Bodrima be fired at, there may be
+found, perhaps, a dead lizard near the spot in the morning.
+
+As protomartyr of female independence, Lilith suffered a fate not
+unlike that of her sisters and successors in our own time who have
+appealed from the legendary decision made in Eden: she became the
+prototype of the 'strong-minded' and 'cold-hearted' woman, and
+personification of the fatal fascination of the passionless. Her
+special relation to children was gradually expanded, and she was
+regarded as the perilous seducer of young men, each of her victims
+perishing of unrequited passion. She was ever young, and always dressed
+with great beauty. It would seem that the curse upon her for forsaking
+Adam--that her children should die in infancy--was escaped in the
+case of the children she had by Samaël. She was almost as prolific as
+Echidna. Through all the latter rabbinical lore it is repeated, 'Samaël
+is the fiery serpent, Lilith the crooked serpent,' and from their
+union came Leviathan, Asmodeus, and indeed most of the famous devils.
+
+There is an ancient Persian legend of the first man and woman, Meschia
+and Meschiane, that they for a long time lived happily together:
+they hunted together, and discovered fire, and made an axe, and with
+it built them a hut. But no sooner had they thus set up housekeeping
+than they fought terribly, and, after wounding each other, parted. It
+is not said which remained ruler of the hut, but we learn that after
+fifty years of divorce they were reunited.
+
+These legends show the question of equality of the sexes to have
+been a very serious one in early times. The story of Meschia and
+Meschiane fairly represents primitive man living by the hunt; that
+of Eden shows man entering on the work of agriculture. In neither
+of these occupations would there be any reason why woman should be
+so unequal as to set in motion the forces which have diminished her
+physical stature and degraded her position. Women can still hunt and
+fish, and they are quite man's equal in tilling the soil. [45]
+
+In all sex-mythology there are intimations that women were taken
+captive. The proclamation of female subordination is made not only in
+the legend of Eve's creation out of the man's rib, but in the emphasis
+with which her name is declared to have been given her because she
+was the Mother of all living. In the variously significant legends
+of the Amazons they are said to have burned away their breasts that
+they might use the bow: in the history of contemporary Amazons--such
+as the female Areoi of Polynesia--the legend is interpreted in the
+systematic slaughter of their children. In the hunt, Meschia might be
+aided by Meschiane in many ways; in dressing the garden Adam might find
+Lilith or Eve a 'help meet' for the work; but in the brutal régime of
+war the child disables woman, and the affections of maternity render
+her man's inferior in the work of butchery. Herakles wins great glory
+by slaying Hyppolite; but the legends of her later reappearances--as
+Libussa at Prague, &c.,--follow the less mythological story of the
+Amazons given by Herodotus (IV. 112), who represents the Scythians
+as gradually disarming them by sending out their youths to meet them
+with dalliance instead of with weapons. The youths went off with
+their captured captors, and from their union sprang the Sauromatæ,
+among whom the men and women dressed alike, and fought and hunted
+together. But of the real outcome of that truce and union Tennyson
+can tell us more than Herodotus: in his Princess we see the woman
+whom maternity and war have combined to produce, her independence
+betrayed by the tenderness of her nature. The surrender, once secured,
+was made permanent for ages by the sentiments and sympathies born of
+the child's appeal for compassion.
+
+In primitive ages the child must in many cases have been a burthen
+even to man in the struggle for existence; the population question
+could hardly have failed to press its importance upon men, as it does
+even upon certain animals; and it would be an especial interest to a
+man not to have his hut overrun with offspring not his own,--turning
+his fair labour into drudgery for their support, and so cursing the
+earth for him. Thus, while Polyandry was giving rise to the obvious
+complications under which it must ultimately disappear, it would be
+natural that devils of lust should be invented to restrain the maternal
+instinct. But as time went on the daughters of Eve would have taken
+the story of her fall and hardships too much to heart. The pangs and
+perils of childbirth were ever-present monitors whose warnings might
+be followed too closely. The early Jewish laws bear distinct traces
+of the necessity which had arrived for insisting on the command to
+increase and multiply. Under these changed circumstances it would
+be natural that the story of a recusant and passionless Eve should
+arise and suffer the penalties undergone by Lilith,--the necessity
+of bearing, as captive, a vast progeny against her will only to lose
+them again, and to long for human children she did not bring forth
+and could not cherish. The too passionate and the passionless woman
+are successively warned in the origin and outcome of the myth. [46]
+
+It is a suggestive fact that the descendants of Adam should trace their
+fall not to the independent Lilith, who asserted her equality at cost
+of becoming the Devil's bride, but to the apparently submissive Eve
+who stayed inside the garden. The serpent found out the guarded and
+restrained woman as well as the free and defiant, and with much more
+formidable results. For craft is the only weapon of the weak against
+the strong. The submissiveness of the captive woman must have been
+for a long time outward only. When Adam found himself among thorns
+and briars he might have questioned whether much had been gained
+by calling Eve his rib, when after all she really was a woman, and
+prepared to take her intellectual rights from the Serpent if denied
+her in legitimate ways. The question is, indeed, hardly out of date
+yet when the genius of woman is compelled to act with subtlety and
+reduced to exert its influence too often by intrigue.
+
+It is remarkable that we find something like a similar development to
+the two wives of Adam in Hindu mythology also. Káli and Dúrga have the
+same origin: the former is represented dancing on the prostrate form
+of her 'lord and master,' and she becomes the demoness of violence,
+the mother of the diabolical 'Calas' of Singhalese demonolatry. Dúrga
+sacrificed herself for her husband's honour, and is now adored. The
+counterpart of Dúrga-worship is the Zenana system. In countries where
+the Zenana system has not survived, but some freedom has been gained
+for woman, it is probable that Káli will presently not be thought of
+as necessarily trampling on man, and Lilith not be regarded as the
+Devil's wife because she will not submit to be the slave of man. When
+man can make him a home and garden which shall not be a prison, and in
+which knowledge is unforbidden fruit, Lilith will not have to seek her
+liberty by revolution against his society, nor Eve hers by intrigue;
+unfitness for co-operation with the ferocities of nature will leave
+her a help meet for the rearing of children, and for the recovery
+and culture of every garden, whether within or without the man who
+now asserts over woman a lordship unnatural and unjust.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+WAR IN HEAVEN.
+
+ The 'Other'--Tiamat, Bohu, 'the Deep'--Ra and Apophis--Hathors--
+ Bel's combat--Revolt in Heaven--Lilith--Myth of the Devil at the
+ creation of Light.
+
+
+In none of the ancient scriptures do we get back to any theory or
+explanation of the origin of evil or of the enemies of the gods. In
+a Persian text at Persepolis, of Darius I., Ahriman is called with
+simplicity 'the Other' (Aniya), and 'the Hater' (Duvaisañt, Zend
+thaisat), and that is about as much as we are really told about the
+devils of any race. Their existence is taken for granted. The legends
+of rebellion in heaven and of angels cast down and transformed to
+devils may supply an easy explanation to our modern theologians, but
+when we trace them to their origin we discover that to the ancients
+they had no such significance. The angels were cast down to Pits
+prepared for them from the foundation of the world, and before it, and
+when they fell it was into the hands of already existing enemies eager
+to torment them. Nevertheless these accounts of rebellious spirits
+in heaven are of great importance and merit our careful consideration.
+
+It is remarkable that the Bible opens with an intimation of the
+existence of this 'Other.' Its second verse speaks of a certain
+'darkness upon the face of the deep.' The word used here is Bohu,
+which is identified as the Assyrian Bahu, the Queen of Hades. In the
+inscription of Shalmaneser the word is used for 'abyss of chaos.' [47]
+Bahu is otherwise Gula, a form of Ishtar or Allat, 'Lady of the House
+of Death,' and an epithet of the same female demon is Nin-cigal,
+'Lady of the Mighty Earth.' The story of the Descent of Ishtar into
+Hades, the realm of Nin-cigal, has already been told (p. 77); in
+that version Ishtar is the same as Astarte, the Assyrian Venus. But
+like the moon with which she was associated she waned and declined,
+and the beautiful legend of her descent (like Persephone) into Hades
+seems to have found a variant in the myth of Bel and the Dragon. There
+she is a sea-monster and is called Tiamat (Thalatth of Berosus),--that
+is, 'the Deep,' over which rests the darkness described in Genesis
+i. 2. The process by which the moon would share the evil repute of
+Tiamat is obvious. In the Babylonian belief the dry land rested upon
+the abyss of watery chaos from which it was drawn. This underworld
+ocean was shut in by gates. They were opened when the moon was created
+to rule the night--therefore Prince of Darkness. The formation by Anu
+of this Moon-god (Uru) from Tiamat, might even have been suggested
+by the rising of the tides under his sway. The Babylonians represent
+the Moon as having been created before the Sun, and he emerged from
+'a boiling' in the abyss. 'At the beginning of the month, at the rising
+of the night, his horns are breaking through to shine on heaven.' [48]
+In the one Babylonian design, a seal in the British Museum, [49] which
+seems referable to the legend of the Fall of Man, the male figure
+has horns. It may have been that this male Moon (Uru) was supposed
+to have been corrupted by some female emanation of Tiamat, and to
+have fallen from a 'ruler of the night' to an ally of the night. This
+female corrupter, who would correspond to Eve, might in this way have
+become mistress of the Moon, and ultimately identified with it.
+
+Although the cause of the original conflict between the Abyss
+beneath and the Heaven above is left by ancient inscriptions and
+scriptures to imagination, it is not a very strained hypothesis that
+ancient Chaos regarded the upper gods as aggressors on her domain
+in the work of creation. 'When above,' runs the Babylonian legend,
+'were not raised the heavens, and below on the earth a plant had not
+grown ... the chaos (or water) Tiamat was the producing mother of the
+whole of them.' 'The gods had not sprung up, any one of them.' [50]
+Indeed in the legend of the conflict between Bel and the Dragon,
+on the Babylonian cylinders, it appears that the god Sar addressed
+her as wife, and said, 'The tribute to thy maternity shall be forced
+upon them by thy weapons.' [51] The Sun and Moon would naturally be
+drawn into any contest between Overworld (with Light) and Underworld
+(with Darkness).
+
+Though Tiamat is called a Dragon, she was pictured by the Babylonians
+only as a monstrous Griffin. In the Assyrian account of the fight
+it will be seen that she is called a 'Serpent.' The link between
+the two--Griffin and Serpent--will be found, I suspect, in Typhonic
+influence on the fable. In a hymn to Amen-Ra (the Sun), copied about
+fourteenth century b.c. from an earlier composition, as its translator,
+Mr. Goodwin, supposes, we have the following:--
+
+
+ The gods rejoice in his goodness who exalts those who are lowly:
+ Lord of the boat and barge,
+ They conduct thee through the firmament in peace.
+ Thy servants rejoice:
+ Beholding the overthrow of the wicked:
+ His limbs pierced with the sword:
+ Fire consumes him:
+ His soul and body are annihilated.
+ Naka (the serpent) saves his feet:
+ The gods rejoice:
+ The servants of the Sun are in peace.
+
+
+The allusion in the second line indicates that this hymn relates to
+the navigation of Ra through Hades, and the destruction of Apophis.
+
+We may read next the Accadian tablet (p. 256) which speaks of the
+seven Hathors as neither male nor female, and as born in 'the Deep.'
+
+Another Accadian tablet, translated by Mr. Sayce, speaks of these
+as the 'baleful seven destroyers;' as 'born in the mountain of the
+sunset;' as being Incubi. It is significantly said:--'Among the
+stars of heaven their watch they kept not, in watching was their
+office.' Here is a primæval note of treachery. [52]
+
+We next come to a further phase, represented in a Cuneiform tablet,
+which must be quoted at length:--
+
+
+ Days of storm, Powers of Evil,
+ Rebellious spirits, who were born in the lower part of heaven,
+ They were workers of calamity.
+
+
+(The lines giving the names and descriptions of the spirits are
+here broken.)
+
+
+ The third was like a leopard,
+ The fourth was like a snake ...
+ The fifth was like a dog ...
+ The sixth was an enemy to heaven and its king.
+ The seventh was a destructive tempest.
+ These seven are the messengers of Anu [53] their king.
+ From place to place by turns they pass.
+ They are the dark storms in heaven, which into fire unite
+ themselves.
+ They are the destructive tempests, which on a fine day sudden
+ darkness cause.
+ With storms and meteors they rush.
+ Their rage ignites the thunderbolts of Im. [54]
+ From the right hand of the Thunderer they dart forth.
+ On the horizon of heaven like lightning they ...
+ Against high heaven, the dwelling-place of Anu the king, they
+ plotted evil, and had none to withstand them.
+ When Bel heard this news, he communed secretly with his own heart.
+ Then he took counsel with Hea the great Inventor (or Sage) of the
+ gods.
+ And they stationed the Moon, the Sun, and Ishtar to keep guard over
+ the approach to heaven.
+ Unto Anu, ruler of heaven, they told it.
+ And those three gods, his children,
+ To watch night and day unceasingly he commanded them.
+ When those seven evil spirits rushed upon the base of heaven,
+ And close in front of the Moon with fiery weapons advanced,
+ Then the noble Sun and Im the warrior side by side stood firm.
+ But Ishtar, with Anu the king, entered the exalted dwelling, and
+ hid themselves in the summit of heaven.
+
+
+Column II.
+
+
+ Those evil spirits, the messengers of Anu their king ...
+ They have plotted evil ...
+ From mid-heaven like meteors they have rushed upon the earth.
+ Bel, who the noble Moon in eclipse
+ Saw from heaven,
+ Called aloud to Paku his messenger:
+ O my messenger Paku, carry my words to the Deep. [55]
+ Tell my son that the Moon in heaven is terribly eclipsed!
+ To Hea in the Deep repeat this!
+ Paku understood the words of his Lord.
+ Unto Hea in the Deep swiftly he went.
+ To the Lord, the great Inventor, the god Nukimmut,
+ Paku repeated the words of his Lord.
+ When Hea in the Deep heard these words,
+ He bit his lips, and tears bedewed his face.
+ Then he sent for his son Marduk to help him.
+ Go to my son Marduk,
+ Tell my son that the Moon in heaven is terribly eclipsed!
+ That eclipse has been seen in heaven!
+ They are seven, those evil spirits, and death they fear not!
+ They are seven, those evil spirits, who rush like a hurricane,
+ And fall like firebrands on the earth!
+ In front of the bright Moon with fiery weapons (they draw nigh);
+ But the noble Sun and Im the warrior (are withstanding them).
+
+
+[The rest of the legend is lost.]
+
+Nukimmut is a name of Hea which occurs frequently: he was the good
+genius of the earth, and his son Marduk was his incarnation--a Herakles
+or Saviour. It will be noted that as yet Ishtar is in heaven. The
+next Tablet, which shows the development of the myth, introduces us
+to the great female dragon Tiamat herself, and her destroyer Bel.
+
+
+ ... And with it his right hand he armed.
+ His naming sword he raised in his hand.
+ He brandished his lightnings before him.
+ A curved scymitar he carried on his body.
+ And he made a sword to destroy the Dragon,
+ Which turned four ways; so that none could avoid its rapid blows.
+ It turned to the south, to the north, to the east, and to the west.
+ Near to his sabre he placed the bow of his father Anu.
+ He made a whirling thunderbolt, and a bolt with double flames,
+ impossible to extinguish.
+ And a quadruple bolt, and a septuple bolt, and a ... bolt of
+ crooked fire.
+ He took the thunderbolts which he had made, and there were seven
+ of them,
+ To be shot at the Dragon, and he put them into his quiver behind
+ him.
+ Then he raised his great sword, whose name was 'Lord of the Storm.'
+ He mounted his chariot, whose name was 'Destroyer of the Impious.'
+ He took his place, and lifted the four reins
+ In his hand.
+
+
+[Bel now offers to the Dragon to decide their quarrel by single combat,
+which the Dragon accepts. This agrees with the representations of
+the combat on Babylonian cylinders in Mr. Smith's 'Chaldean Genesis,'
+p. 62, etc.]
+
+
+ (Why seekest thou thus) to irritate me with blasphemies?
+ Let thy army withdraw: let thy chiefs stand aside:
+ Then I and thou (alone) we will do battle.
+ When the Dragon heard this.
+ Stand back! she said, and repeated her command.
+ Then the tempter rose watchfully on high.
+ Turning and twisting, she shifted her standing point,
+ She watched his lightnings, she provided for retreat.
+ The warrior angels sheathed their swords.
+ Then the Dragon attacked the just Prince of the gods.
+ Strongly they joined in the trial of battle,
+ The King drew his sword, and dealt rapid blows,
+ Then he took his whirling thunderbolt, and looked well behind
+ and before him:
+ And when the Dragon opened her mouth to swallow him,
+ He flung the bolt into her, before she could shut her lips.
+ The blazing lightning poured into her inside.
+ He pulled out her heart; her mouth he rent open;
+ He drew his (falchion), and cut open her belly.
+ He cut into her inside and extracted her heart;
+ He took vengeance on her, and destroyed her life.
+ When he knew she was dead he boasted over her.
+ After that the Dragon their leader was slain,
+ Her troops took to flight: her army was scattered abroad,
+ And the angels her allies, who had come to help her,
+ Retreated, grew quiet, and went away.
+ They fled from thence, fearing for their own lives,
+ And saved themselves, flying to places beyond pursuit.
+ He followed them, their weapons he broke up.
+ Broken they lay, and in great heaps they were captured.
+ A crowd of followers, full of astonishment,
+ Its remains lifted up, and on their shoulders hoisted.
+ And the eleven tribes pouring in after the battle
+ In great multitudes, coming to see,
+ Gazed at the monstrous serpent....
+
+
+In the fragment just quoted we have the 'flaming sword which turned
+every way' (Gen. iii. 24). The seven distinct forms of evil are but
+faintly remembered in the seven thunderbolts taken by Bel: they are
+now all virtually gathered into the one form he combats, and are
+thus on their way to form the seven-headed dragon of the Apocalypse,
+where Michael replaces Bel. [56] 'The angels, her allies who had come
+to help her,' are surely that 'third part of the stars of heaven'
+which the apocalyptic dragon's tail drew to the earth in its fall
+(Rev. xii. 4). Bel's dragon is also called a 'Tempter.'
+
+At length we reach the brief but clear account of the 'Revolt in
+Heaven' found in a cuneiform tablet in the British Museum, and
+translated by Mr. Fox Talbot: [57]--
+
+
+ The Divine Being spoke three times, the commencement of a psalm.
+ The god of holy songs, Lord of religion and worship
+ seated a thousand singers and musicians: and established a choral
+ band who to his hymn were to respond in multitudes....
+ With a loud cry of contempt they broke up his holy song
+ spoiling, confusing, confounding his hymn of praise.
+ The god of the bright crown with a wish to summon his
+ adherents sounded a trumpet blast which would wake the dead,
+ which to those rebel angels prohibited return
+ he stopped their service, and sent them to the gods who were his
+ enemies.
+ In their room he created mankind.
+ The first who received life, dwelt along with him.
+ May he give them strength never to neglect his word,
+ following the serpent's voice, whom his hands had made.
+ And may the god of divine speech expel from his five thousand
+ that wicked thousand
+ who in the midst of his heavenly song had shouted evil blasphemies!
+
+
+It will be observed that there were already hostile gods to whom
+these riotous angels were sent. It is clear that in both the Egyptian
+and Assyrian cosmogonies the upper gods had in their employ many
+ferocious monsters. Thus in the Book of Hades, Horus addresses a
+terrible serpent: 'My Kheti, great fire, of which this flame in
+my eye is the emission, and of which my children guard the folds,
+open thy mouth, draw wide thy jaws, launch thy flame against the
+enemies of my father, burn their bodies, consume their souls!' [58]
+Many such instances could be quoted. In this same book we find a great
+serpent, Saa-Set, 'Guardian of the Earth.' Each of the twelve pylons
+of Hades is surmounted by its serpent-guards--except one. What has
+become of that one? In the last inscription but one, quoted in full,
+it will be observed (third line from the last) that eleven (angel)
+tribes came in after Bel's battle to inspect the slain dragon. The
+twelfth had revolted. These, we may suppose, had listened to 'the
+serpent's voice' mentioned in the last fragment quoted.
+
+We have thus distributed through these fragments all the elements
+which, from Egyptian and Assyrian sources gathered around the legend
+of the Serpent in Eden. The Tree of Knowledge and that of Life are
+not included, and I have given elsewhere my reasons for believing
+these to be importations from the ancient Aryan legend of the war
+between the Devas and Asuras for the immortalising Amrita.
+
+In the last fragment quoted we have also a notable statement, that
+mankind were created to fill the places that had been occupied by the
+fallen angels. It is probable that this notion supplied the basis
+of a class of legends of which Lilith is type. She whose place Eve
+was created to fill was a serpent-woman, and the earliest mention
+of her is in the exorcism already quoted, found at Nineveh. In all
+probability she is but another form of Gula, the fallen Istar and
+Queen of Hades; in which case her conspiracy with the serpent Samaël
+would be the Darkness which was upon the face of Bahu, 'the Deep,'
+in the second verse of the Bible.
+
+The Bible opens with the scene of the gods conquering the Dragon of
+Darkness with Light. There is a rabbinical legend, that when Light
+issued from under the throne of God, the Prince of Darkness asked the
+Creator wherefore he had brought Light into existence? God answered
+that it was in order that he might be driven back to his abode of
+darkness. The evil one asked that he might see that; and entering
+the stream of Light, he saw across time and the world, and beheld the
+face of the Messiah. Then he fell upon his face and cried, 'This is
+he who shall lay low in ruin me and all the inhabitants of hell!'
+
+What the Prince of Darkness saw was the vision of a race: beginning
+with the words (Gen. i. 3, 4), 'God said, Let there be Light; and
+there was Light; and God saw the Light that it was good; and God
+divided between the Light and the Darkness;' ending with Rev. xx. 1,
+2, 'And I saw an angel come down from heaven having the key of the
+bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on
+the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, and bound
+him a thousand years.'
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+WAR ON EARTH.
+
+ The Abode of Devils--Ketef--Disorder--Talmudic legends--The
+ restless Spirit--The Fall of Lucifer--Asteria, Hecate, Lilith--The
+ Dragon's triumph--A Gipsy legend--Cædmon's Poem of the Rebellious
+ Angels--Milton's version--The Puritans and Prince Rupert--Bel as
+ ally of the Dragon--A 'Mystery' in Marionettes--European Hells.
+
+
+'Rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them! Woe to the earth
+and the sea! for the devil is come down to you, having great wrath,
+because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.' This passage from
+the Book of Revelations is the refrain of many and much earlier
+scriptures. The Assyrian accounts of the war in heaven, given in
+the preceding chapter, by no means generally support the story that
+the archdragon was slain by Bel. Even the one that does describe the
+chief dragon's death leaves her comrades alive, and the balance of
+testimony is largely in favour of the theory which prevailed, that the
+rebellious angels were merely cast out of heaven, and went to swell
+the ranks of the dark and fearful abode which from the beginning had
+been peopled by the enemies of the gods. The nature of this abode is
+described in various passages of the Bible, and in many traditions.
+
+'Out of the north an evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of
+the land.' So said Jeremiah (i. 14), in pursuance of nearly universal
+traditions as to the region of space in which demons and devils
+had their abode. 'Hell is naked before him,' says Job (xxvi. 6),
+'and destruction hath no covering. He stretcheth out the north over
+the empty place.' According to the Hebrew mythology this habitation
+of demons was a realm of perpetual cold and midnight, which Jehovah,
+in creating the world, purposely left chaotic; so it was prepared
+for the Devil and his angels at the foundation of the world.
+
+Although this northern hell was a region of disorder, so far as the
+people of Jehovah and the divine domain were concerned, they had
+among themselves a strong military and aristocratic government. It
+was disorder perfectly systematised. The anarchical atmosphere of
+the region is reflected in the abnormal structures ascribed to the
+many devils with whose traits Jewish and Arabic folklore is familiar,
+and which are too numerous to be described here. Such a devil, for
+instance, is Bedargon, 'hand-high,' with fifty heads and fifty-six
+hearts, who cannot strike any one or be struck, instant death ensuing
+to either party in such an attack. A more dangerous devil is Ketef,
+identified as the 'terror from the chambers' alluded to by Jeremiah
+(xxxii. 25), 'Bitter Pestilence.' His name is said to be from kataf,
+'cut and split,' because he divides the course of the day; and those
+who are interested to compare Hebrew and Hindu myths may find it
+interesting to note the coincidences between Ketef and Ketu, the
+cut-off tail of Ráhu, and source of pestilence. [59] Ketef reigns
+neither in the dark or day, but between the two; his power over the
+year is limited to the time between June 17 and July 9, during which
+it was considered dangerous to flog children or let them go out after
+four P.M. Ketef is calf-headed, and consists of hide, hair, and eyes;
+he rolls like a cask; he has a terrible horn, but his chief terror
+lies in an evil eye fixed in his heart which none can see without
+instant death. The arch-fiend who reigns over the infernal host has
+many Court Fools--probably meteors and comets--who lead men astray.
+
+All these devils have their regulations in their own domain, but, as
+we have said, their laws mean disorder in that part of the universe
+which belongs to the family of Jehovah. In flying about the world
+they are limited to places which are still chaotic or waste. They
+haunt such congenial spots as rocks and ruins, and frequent desert,
+wilderness, dark mountains, and the ruins of human habitations. They
+can take possession of a wandering star.
+
+There is a pretty Talmudic legend of a devil having once gone to sleep,
+when some one, not seeing him of course, set down a cask of wine on
+his ears. In leaping up the devil broke the cask, and being tried for
+it, was condemned to repay the damage at a certain period. The period
+having elapsed before the money was brought, the devil was asked the
+cause of the delay. He replied that it was very difficult for devils
+to obtain money, because men were careful to keep it locked or tied
+up; and 'we have no power,' he said, 'to take from anything bound
+or sealed up, nor can we take anything that is measured or counted;
+we are permitted to take only what is free or common.'
+
+According to one legend the devils were specially angered, because
+Jehovah, when he created man, gave him dominion over things in the
+sea (Gen. i. 28), that being a realm of unrest and tempest which they
+claimed as belonging to themselves. They were denied control of the
+life that is in the sea, though permitted a large degree of power
+over its waters. Over the winds their rule was supreme, and it was
+only by reducing certain demons to slavery that Solomon was able to
+ride in a wind-chariot.
+
+Out of these several realms of order and disorder in nature were
+evolved the angels and the devils which were supposed to beset man. The
+first man is said to have been like an angel. From the instant of
+his creation there attended him two spirits, whom the rabbins found
+shadowed out in the sentence, 'Jehovah-Elohim formed man of the dust
+of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;
+and man became a living soul' (Gen. ii. 7). This 'breath of life'
+was a holy spirit, and stood on Adam's right; the 'living soul' was a
+restless spirit on his left, which continually moved up and down. When
+Adam had sinned, this restless spirit became a diabolical spirit,
+and it has ever acted as mediator between man and the realm of anarchy.
+
+It has been mentioned that in the Assyrian legends of the Revolt in
+Heaven we find no adequate intimation of the motive by which the rebels
+were actuated. It is said they interrupted the heavenly song, that they
+brought on an eclipse, that they afflicted human beings with disease;
+but why they did all this is not stated. The motive of the serpent
+in tempting Eve is not stated in Genesis. The theory which Cædmon
+and Milton have made so familiar, that the dragons aspired to rival
+Jehovah, and usurp the throne of Heaven, must, however, have been
+already popular in the time of Isaiah. In his rhapsody concerning
+the fall of Babylon, he takes his rhetoric from the story of Bel
+and the Dragon, and turns a legend, as familiar to every Babylonian
+as that of St. George and the Dragon now is to Englishmen, into an
+illustration of their own doom. The invective is directed against
+the King of Babylon, consequently the sex of the devil is changed;
+but the most remarkable change is in the ascription to Lucifer of a
+clear purpose to rival the Most High, and seize the throne of heaven.
+
+'Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming,
+it stirreth up the (spirits of) the dead, even all the chief ones
+(great goats) of the earth: it hath raised up from their thrones all
+the kings of the nations (demon-begotten aliens). All these shall
+say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? Art thou become like
+unto us? Thy splendour is brought down to the underworld, and the
+noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms
+cover thee. How art thou fallen, O Lucifer (Daystar), son of the
+morning! how art thou cut down to the ground which didst weaken the
+nations! For thou hast said in thy heart, I will ascend into (the
+upper) heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars (archangels)
+of God: I will sit (reign) also upon the mount of the congregation
+(the assembly of the enemies of God) in the sides of the north. I will
+ascend above the heights of the clouds (the thunder-throne of Jehovah);
+I will be like the Most High. Yet shalt thou be brought down to hell,
+to the sides of the pit.' [60]
+
+In this passage we mark the arena of the combat shifted from heaven
+to earth. It is not the throne of heaven but that of the world at
+which the fiends now aim. Nay, there is confession in every line of
+the prophecy that the enemy of Jehovah has usurped his throne. Hell
+has prevailed, and Lucifer is the Prince of this World. The celestial
+success has not been maintained on earth. This would be the obvious
+fact to a humiliated, oppressed, heavily-taxed people, who believed
+themselves the one family on earth sprung from Jehovah, and their
+masters the offspring of demons. This situation gave to the vague
+traditions of a single combat between Bel and the Dragon, about an
+eclipse or a riot, the significance which it retained ever afterward of
+a mighty conflict on earth between the realms of Light and Darkness,
+between which the Elohim had set a boundary-line (Gen. i. 4) in
+the beginning.
+
+A similar situation returned when the Jews were under the sway of
+Rome, and then all that had ever been said of Babylon was repeated
+against Rome under the name of Edom. It recurred in the case of those
+Jews who acknowledged Jesus as their Messiah: in the pomp and glory
+of the Cæsars they beheld the triumph of the Powers of Darkness,
+and the burthen of Isaiah against Lucifer was raised again in that
+of the Apocalypse against the seven-headed Dragon. It is notable how
+these writers left out of sight the myth of Eden so far as it did
+not belong to their race. Isaiah does not say anything even of the
+serpent. The Apocalypse says nothing of the two wonderful trees, and
+the serpent appears only as a Dragon from whom the woman is escaping,
+by whom she is not at all tempted. The shape of the Devil, and the
+Combat with him, have always been determined by dangers and evils
+that are actual, not such as are archæological.
+
+A gipsy near Edinburgh gave me his version of the combat between God
+and Satan as follows. 'When God created the universe and all things
+in it, Satan tried to create a rival universe. He managed to match
+everything pretty well except man. There he failed; and God to punish
+his pride cast him down to the earth and bound him with a chain. But
+this chain was so long that Satan was able to move over the whole
+face of the earth!' There had got into this wanderer's head some bit
+of the Babylonian story, and it was mingled with Gnostic traditions
+about Ildabaoth; but there was also a quaint suggestion in Satan's
+long chain of the migration of this mythical combat not only round
+the world, but through the ages.
+
+The early followers of Christ came before the glories of Paganism
+with the legend that the lowly should inherit the earth. And though
+they speedily surrendered to the rulers of the world in Rome, and made
+themselves into a christian aristocracy, when they came into Northern
+Europe the christians were again brought to confront with an humble
+system the religion of thrones and warriors. St. Gatien celebrating
+mass in a cavern beside the Loire, meant as much weakness in presence
+of Paganism as the Huguenots felt twelve centuries later hiding in
+the like caverns from St. Gatien's priestly successors.
+
+The burthen of Isaiah is heard again, and with realistic intensity,
+in the seventh century, and in the north, with our patriarchial
+poet Cædmon.
+
+
+ The All-powerful had
+ Angel-tribes,
+ Through might of hand,
+ The holy Lord,
+ Ten established,
+ In whom he trusted well
+ That they his service
+ Would follow,
+ Work his will;
+ Therefore gave he them wit,
+ And shaped them with his hands,
+ The holy Lord.
+ He had placed them so happily,
+ One he had made so powerful,
+ So mighty in his mind's thought,
+ He let him sway over so much,
+ Highest after himself in heaven's kingdom.
+ He had made him so fair,
+ So beauteous was his form in heaven,
+ That came to him from the Lord of hosts,
+ He was like to the light stars.
+ It was his to work the praise of the Lord,
+ It was his to hold dear his joys in heaven,
+ And to thank his Lord
+ For the reward that he had bestowed on him in that light;
+ Then had he let him long possess it;
+ But he turned it for himself to a worse thing,
+ Began to raise war upon him,
+ Against the highest Ruler of heaven,
+ Who sitteth in the holy seat.
+ Dear was he to our Lord,
+ But it might not be hidden from him
+ That his angel began
+ To be presumptuous,
+ Raised himself against his Master,
+ Sought speech of hate,
+ Words of pride towards him,
+ Would not serve God,
+ Said that his body was
+ Light and beauteous,
+ Fair and bright of hue:
+ He might not find in his mind
+ That he would God
+ In subjection,
+ His Lord, serve:
+ Seemed to himself
+ That he a power and force
+ Had greater
+ Than the holy God
+ Could have
+ Of adherents.
+ Many words spake
+ The angel of presumption:
+ Thought, through his own power,
+ How he for himself a stronger
+ Seat might make,
+ Higher in heaven:
+ Said that him his mind impelled,
+ That he west and north
+ Would begin to work,
+ Would prepare structures:
+ Said it to him seemed doubtful
+ That he to God would
+ Be a vassal.
+ 'Why shall I toil?' said he;
+ 'To me it is no whit needful.
+ To have a superior;
+ I can with my hands as many
+ Wonders work;
+ I have great power
+ To form
+ A diviner throne,
+ A higher in heaven.
+ Why shall I for his favour serve,
+ Bend to him in such vassalage?
+ I may be a god as he
+ Stand by me strong associates,
+ Who will not fail me in the strife,
+ Heroes stern of mood,
+ They have chosen me for chief,
+ Renowned warriors!
+ With such may one devise counsel,
+ With such capture his adherents;
+ They are my zealous friends,
+ Faithful in their thoughts;
+ I may be their chieftain,
+ Sway in this realm:
+ Thus to me it seemeth not right
+ That I in aught
+ Need cringe
+ To God for any good;
+ I will no longer be his vassal.'
+ When the All-powerful it
+ All had heard,
+ That his angel devised
+ Great presumption
+ To raise up against his Master,
+ And spake proud words
+ Foolishly against his Lord,
+ Then must he expiate the deed,
+ Share the work of war,
+ And for his punishment must have
+ Of all deadly ills the greatest.
+ So doth every man
+ Who against his Lord
+ Deviseth to war,
+ With crime against the great Ruler.
+ Then was the Mighty angry;
+ The highest Ruler of heaven
+ Hurled him from the lofty seat;
+ Hate had he gained at his Lord,
+ His favour he had lost,
+ Incensed with him was the Good in his mind,
+ Therefore must he seek the gulf
+ Of hard hell-torment,
+ For that he had warred with heaven's Ruler,
+ He rejected him then from his favour,
+ And cast him into hell,
+ Into the deep parts,
+ Where he became a devil:
+ The fiend with all his comrades
+ Fell then from heaven above,
+ Through as long as three nights and days,
+ The angels from heaven into hell;
+ And them all the Lord transformed to devils,
+ Because they his deed and word
+ Would not revere;
+ Therefore them in a worse light,
+ Under the earth beneath,
+ Almighty God
+ Had placed triumphless
+ In the swart hell;
+ There they have at even,
+ Immeasurably long,
+ Each of all the fiends,
+ A renewal of fire;
+ Then cometh ere dawn
+ The eastern wind,
+ Frost bitter-cold,
+ Ever fire or dart;
+ Some hard torment
+ They must have,
+ It was wrought for them in punishment,
+ Their world was changed:
+ For their sinful course
+ He filled hell
+ With the apostates.
+
+
+Whether this spirited description was written by Cædmon, and whether
+it is of his century, are questions unimportant to the present
+inquiry. The poem represents a mediæval notion which long prevailed,
+and which characterised the Mysteries, that Satan and his comrades
+were humiliated from the highest angelic rank to a hell already
+prepared and peopled with devils, and were there, and by those devils,
+severely punished. One of the illuminations of the Cædmon manuscript,
+preserved in the Bodleian Library, shows Satan undergoing his torment
+(Fig. 3). He is bound over something like a gridiron, and four devils
+are torturing him, the largest using a scourge with six prongs. His
+face manifests great suffering. His form is mainly human, but his
+bushy tail and animal feet indicate that he has been transformed to
+a devil similar to those who chastise him.
+
+On Cædmon's foundation Milton built his gorgeous edifice. His
+Satan is an ambitious and very English lord, in whom are reflected
+the whole aristocracy of England in their hatred and contempt of
+the holy Puritan Commonwealth, the Church of Christ as he deemed
+it. The ages had brought round a similar situation to that which
+confronted the Jews at Babylon, the early Christians of Rome, and
+their missionaries among the proud pagan princes of the north. The
+Church had long allied itself with the earlier Lucifers of the north,
+and now represented the proud empire of a satanic aristocracy, and
+the persecuted Nonconformists represented the authority of the King
+of kings. In the English palace, and in the throne of Canterbury,
+Milton saw his Beelzebub and his Satan.
+
+
+ Th' infernal serpent; he it was, whose guile,
+ Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived
+ The mother of mankind, what time his pride
+ Had cast him out from heav'n, with all his host
+ Of rebel angels, by whose aid aspiring
+ To set himself in glory above his peers
+ He trusted to have equall'd the Most High,
+ If he opposed; and with ambitious aim
+ Against the throne and monarchy of God
+ Raised impious war in heav'n, and battle proud,
+ With vain attempt. Him the almighty Power
+ Hurl'd headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky,
+ With hideous ruin and combustion, down
+ To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
+ In adamantine chains and penal fire,
+ Who durst defy th' Omnipotent to arms. [61]
+
+
+This adaptation of the imagery of Isaiah concerning Lucifer has in
+it all the thunder hurled by Cromwell against Charles. Even a Puritan
+poet might not altogether repress admiration for the dash and daring
+of a Prince Rupert, to which indeed even his prosaic co-religionists
+paid the compliment of ascribing to it a diabolical source. [62] Not
+amid conflicts that raged in ancient Syria broke forth such lines as--
+
+
+ Better to reign in hell, than serve in heav'n.
+
+ With rallied arms to try what may be yet
+ Regain'd in heav'n, or what more lost in hell.
+
+
+The Bel whom Milton saw was Cromwell, and the Dragon that serpent
+of English oppression which the Dictator is trampling on in a
+well-known engraving of his time. In the history of the Reformation
+the old legend did manifold duty again, as in the picture (Fig. 13)
+by Luther's friend Lucas Cranach.
+
+It would seem that in the course of time Bel and the Dragon became
+sufficiently close allies for their worshippers to feed and defend
+them both with equal devotion, and for Daniel to explode them both in
+carrying on the fight of his deity against the gods of Babylon. This
+story of Bel is apocryphal as to the canon, but highly significant as
+to the history we are now considering. Although the Jews maintained
+their struggle against 'principalities and powers' long after it had
+been a forlorn hope, and never surrendered, nor made alliance with the
+Dragon, the same cannot be said of those who appropriated their title
+of 'the chosen of God,' counterfeited their covenant, and travestied
+their traditions. The alliance of Christianity and the Dragon has
+not been nominal, but fearfully real. In fulfilling their mission of
+'inheriting the earth,' the 'meek' called around them and pressed into
+their service agents and weapons more diabolical than any with which
+the Oriental imagination had peopled the abode of devils in the north.
+
+At a Fair in Tours (August 1878) I saw two exhibitions which were
+impressive enough in the light they cast through history. One was
+a shrunken and sufficiently grotesque production by puppets of the
+Mediæval 'Mystery' of Hell. Nearly every old scheme and vision of
+the underworld was represented in the scene. The three Judges sat
+to hear each case. A devil rang a bell whenever any culprit appeared
+at the gate. The accused was ushered in by a winged devil--Satan, the
+Accuser--who, by the show-woman's lips, stated the charges against each
+with an eager desire to make him or her out as wicked as possible. A
+devil with pitchfork received the sentenced, and shoved them down into
+a furnace. There was an array of brilliant dragons around, but they
+appeared to have nothing to do beyond enjoying the spectacle. But this
+exhibition which was styled 'Twenty minutes in Hell,' was poor and
+faint beside the neighbouring exhibition of the real Hell, in which
+Europe had been tortured for fifteen centuries. Some industrious
+Germans had got together in one large room several hundreds of the
+instruments of torture by which the nations of the West were persuaded
+to embrace Christianity. Every limb, sinew, feature, bone, and nerve of
+the human frame had suggested to christian inventiveness some ingenious
+device by which it might be tortured. Wheels on which to break bones,
+chairs of anguish, thumbscrews, the iron Virgin whose embrace pierced
+through every vital part; the hunger-mask which renewed for Christ's
+sake the exact torment of Tantalus; even the machine which bore the
+very name of the enemy that was cast down--the Dragon's Head! By such
+instrumentalities came those quasi-miraculous 'Triumphs of the Cross,'
+of which so much has been said and sung! The most salient phenomenon
+of christian history is the steady triumph of the Dragon. Misleader
+and Deceiver to the last, he is quite willing to sprinkle his fork
+and rack with holy water, to cross himself, to label his caldrons
+'divine justice,' to write CHRIST upon his forehead; by so doing he
+was able to spring his infernal engine on the best nations, and cow
+the strongest hearts, till from their pallid lips were wrung the
+'confessions of faith,' or the last cry of martyred truth. So was
+he able to assault the pure heavens once more, to quench the stars
+of human faith and hope, and generate a race of polite, learned,
+and civilised hypocrites. But the ancient sunbeams are after him:
+the mandate has again gone forth, 'Let there be light,' and the Light
+that now breaks forth is not of that kind which respects the limit
+of Darkness.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+STRIFE.
+
+ Hebrew god of War--Samaël--The father's blessing and curse--Esau
+ --Edom--Jacob and the Phantom--The planet Mars--Tradesman and
+ Huntsman--'The Devil's Dream.'
+
+
+ Who is this that cometh from Edom,
+ In dyed garments from Bozrah?
+ This that is glorious in his apparel,
+ Travelling in the greatness of his strength?
+ I who promise deliverance, mighty to save.
+ Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel,
+ And thy garments like him that treadeth the wine-vat?
+ I have trodden the wine-press alone;
+ And of the peoples there was none with me:
+ And I will tread them in mine anger,
+ And trample them in my fury;
+ And their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments,
+ And I will stain all my raiment.
+ For the day of vengeance is in my heart,
+ And the year of mine avenged is come.
+ And I looked, and there was none to help;
+ And I wondered that there was none to uphold;
+ Therefore mine own arm gained me the victory,
+ And mine own fury, it upheld me.
+ And I will tread down the peoples in mine anger,
+ And make them drunk in my wrath,
+ And will bring down their strength to the earth. [63]
+
+
+This is the picture of the god of War. Upon it the comment in Emek
+Hammelech is: 'The colour of the godless Samaël and of all his princes
+and lords has the aspect of red fire; and all their emanations are
+red. Samaël is red, also his horse, his sword, his raiment, and the
+ground beneath him, are red. In the future the Holy God shall wear
+his raiment.' [64] Samaël is leader of the Opposition. He is the
+Soul of the fiery planet Mars. He is the Creator and inspirer of
+all Serpents. Azazel, demon of the Desert, is his First Lord. He was
+the terrestrial Chief around whom the fallen angels gathered, and his
+great power was acknowledged. All these characters the ancient Rabbins
+found blended in his name. Simmé (dazzling), Sóme (blinding), Semól
+(the left side), and Samhammaveth (deadly poison), were combined in
+the terrible name of Samaël. He ruled over the sinister Left. When
+Moses, in war with the Amalekites, raised his ten fingers, it was a
+special invocation to the Ten Sephiroth, Divine Emanations, because
+he knew the power which the Amalekites got from Samaël might turn his
+own left hand against Israel. [65] The scapegoat was a sacrifice to
+him through Azazel.
+
+Samaël is the mythologic expression and embodiment of the history of
+Esau, afterward Edom. Jacob and Esau represented the sheep and the
+goat, divided in the past and to be sundered for ever. As Jacob by
+covering his flesh with goat-skins obtained his father's blessing due
+to Esau, the Israelites wandering through the wilderness (near Edom's
+forbidden domain) seemed to have faith that the offering of a goat
+would convince his Viceroy Azazel that they were orthodox Edomites. The
+redness of Samaël begins with the red pottage from which Esau was
+called Edom. The English version does not give the emphasis with which
+Esau is said to have called for the pottage--"the red! the red!" The
+characteristics ascribed to Esau in the legend are merely a saga built
+on the local names with which he was associated. 'Edom' means red,
+and 'Seir' means hairy. It probably meant the 'Shaggy Mountains.' [66]
+
+It is interesting to observe the parting of the human and the
+theological myths in this story. Jacob is the third person of a
+patriarchal trinity,--Abraham the Heavenly Father, Isaac the Laugher
+(the Sun), and Jacob the Impostor or Supplanter. As the moon supplants
+the sun, takes hold of his heel, shines with his light, so does Jacob
+supplant his elder brother; and all the deadliness ascribed to the
+Moon, and other Third Persons of Trinities, was inherited by Jacob
+until his name was changed by euphemism. As the impartial sun shines
+for good and evil, the smile of Isaac, the Laugher, promised great
+blessings to both of his sons. The human myth therefore represents
+both of them gaining great power and wealth, and after a long feud
+they are reconciled. This feature of the legend we shall consider
+hereafter. Jehovah has another interest to be secured. He had
+declared that one should serve the other; that they should be
+cursed who cursed Jacob; and he said, 'Jacob have I loved, Esau
+have I hated.' Jahvistic theology had here something more important
+than two brothers to harmonise; namely a patriarch's blessing and
+a god's curse. It was contrary to all orthodoxy that a man whom
+Jehovah hated should possess the blessings of life; it was equally
+unorthodox that a father's blessing should not carry with it every
+advantage promised. It had to be recorded that Esau became powerful,
+lived by his sword, and had great possessions.
+
+It had also to be recorded that 'Edom revolted from under the hand of
+Judah and made a king unto themselves,' and that such independence
+continued 'unto this day' (2 Kings viii. 20, 22). There was thus no
+room for the exhibition of Jacob's superiority,--that is of Israel's
+priority over Edom,--in this world; nor yet any room to carry out
+Isaac's curse on all who cursed Jacob, and the saying: 'Jacob have
+I loved, Esau have I hated, and laid his mountains and his heritage
+waste for the dragons of the wilderness' (Mal. i.).
+
+Answers to such problems as these evolve themselves slowly
+but inevitably. The agonised cry of the poor girl in Browning's
+poem--'There may be heaven, there must be hell'--marks the direction in
+which necessity led human speculation many ages before her. A future
+had to be invented for the working out of the curse on Esau, who on
+earth had to fulfil his father's blessing by enjoying power, wealth,
+and independence of his brother. In that future his greatness while
+living was repaid by his relegation to the desert and the rock with
+the he-goat for his support. Esau was believed to have been changed
+into a terrible hairy devil. [67] But still there followed him in his
+phantasmal transformation a ghostly environment of his former power
+and greatness; the boldest and holiest could not afford to despise
+or set aside that 'share' which had been allotted him in the legend,
+and could not be wholly set aside in the invisible world.
+
+Jacob's share began with a shrewd bargain with his imprudent
+brother. Jacob by his cunning in the breeding of the streaked animals
+(Gen. xxx.), by which he outwitted Laban, and other manoeuvres, was
+really the cause of bringing on the race called after him that repute
+for extortion, affixed to them in such figures as Shylock, which they
+have found it so hard to live down. In becoming the great barterers
+of the East, their obstacle was the plunderer sallying forth from
+the mountain fastnesses or careering over the desert. These were the
+traditional descendants of Esau, who gradually included the Ishmaelites
+as well as the Edomites, afterwards merged in the Idumeans. But as
+the tribal distinctions became lost, the ancient hostility survived
+in the abstract form of this satan of Strife--Samaël. He came to
+mean the spirit that stirs up antagonism between those who should be
+brethren. He finally became, and among the more superstitious Jews
+still is, instigator of the cruel persecutions which have so long
+pursued their race, and the prejudices against them which survive
+even in countries to whose wealth, learning, and arts they have
+largely contributed. In Jewish countries Edom has long been a name
+for the power of Rome and Romanism, somewhat in the same way as the
+same are called 'Babylon' by some christians. Jacob, when passing
+into the wilderness of Edom, wrestled with the invisible power of
+Esau, or Samaël, and had not been able to prevail except with a lame
+thigh,--a part which, in every animal, Israel thereafter held sacred
+to the Opposing Power and abstained from eating. A rabbinical legend
+represents Jacob as having been bitten by a serpent while he was
+lingering about the boundary of Edom, and before his gift of goats
+and other cattle had been offered to his brother. The fiery serpents
+which afflicted Israel were universally attributed to Samaël, and
+the raising of the Brazen Serpent for the homage of the people was an
+instance of the uniform deference to Esau's power in his own domain
+which was long inculcated.
+
+As I write, fiery Mars, near enough for the astronomer to detect
+its moons, is a wondrous phenomenon in the sky. Beneath it fearful
+famine is desolating three vast countries, war is raging between
+two powerful nations, and civil strife is smiting another ere it has
+fairly recovered from the wounds of a foreign struggle. The dismal
+conditions seem to have so little root in political necessity that
+one might almost be pardoned even now for dreaming that some subtle
+influence has come among men from the red planet that has approached
+the earth. How easy then must it have been in a similar conjunction of
+earthly and celestial phenomena to have imagined Samaël, the planetary
+Spectre, to be at work with his fatal fires! Whatever may have been
+the occasion, the red light of Mars at an early period fixed upon that
+planet the odium of all the burning, blighting, desert-producing powers
+of which it was thought necessary to relieve the adorable Sun. It
+was believed that all 'born under' that planet were quarrelsome. And
+it was part of the popular Jewish belief in the ultimate triumph of
+good over evil that under Mars the Messias was to be born.
+
+We may regard Esau-Samaël then as the Devil of Strife. His traditional
+son Cain was like himself a 'murderer from the beginning;' [68] but in
+that early period the conflict was between the nomad and the huntsman
+on one side, on the other the agriculturist and the cattle-breeder,
+who was never regarded as a noble figure among the Semitic tribes. In
+the course of time some Semitic tribes became agriculturists, and among
+them, in defiance of his archæological character, Samaël was saddled
+with the evils that beset them. As an ox he brought rinderpest. But
+his visible appearance was still more generally that of the raven,
+the wild ass, the hog which brought scurvy; while in shape of a dog
+he was so generally believed to bring deadly disease, that it would
+seem as if 'hydrophobia' was specially attributed to him.
+
+In process of time benignant Peace dwelt more and more with the
+agriculturists, but still among the Israelites the tradesman was
+the 'coming man,' and to him peace was essential. The huntsman, of
+the Esau clan, figures in many legends, of which the following is
+translated from the Arabic by Lane:--There was a huntsman who from a
+mountain cave brought some honey in his water-skin, which he offered
+to an oilman; when the oilman opened the skin a drop of honey fell
+which a bird ate; the oilman's cat sprang on the bird and killed it;
+the huntsman's hound killed the cat; the oilman killed the dog; the
+huntsman killed the oilman; and as the two men belonged to different
+villages, their inhabitants rose against each other in battle,
+'and there died of them a great multitude, the number of whom none
+knoweth but God, whose name be exalted!' [69]
+
+Esau's character as a wild huntsman is referred to in another
+chapter. It is as the genius of strife and nomadic war that he more
+directly stands in contrast with his 'supplanter.'
+
+From the wild elemental demons of storm and tempest of the most
+primitive age to this Devil of Strife, the human mind has associated
+evil with unrest. 'The wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot
+rest.' Such is the burthen of the Japanese Oni throned in the heart
+of the hurricane, of the wild huntsman issuing forth at the first
+note of war, of Edom hating the victories of peace, living by the
+sword. The prophecy that the Prince of Peace should be born under
+the planet Mars is a strange and mystical suggestion. In a powerful
+poem by Thomas Aird, 'The Devil's Dream,' the last fearful doom of
+Satan's vision is imprisonment beneath a lake for ever still,--the
+Spirit of Unrest condemned for ever to the realm of absolute stillness!
+
+
+ There all is solemn idleness: no music here, no jars,
+ Where Silence guards the coast, e'er thrill her everlasting bars.
+ No sun here shines on wanton isles; but o'er the burning sheet
+ A rim of restless halo shakes, which marks the internal heat;
+ As, in the days of beauteous earth, we see with dazzled sight
+ The red and setting sun o'erflow with rings of welling light.
+
+ Oh! here in dread abeyance lurks of uncreated things
+ The last Lake of God's Wrath, where He His first great Enemy brings.
+ Deep in the bosom of the gulf the Fiend was made to stay,
+ Till, as it seemed, ten thousand years had o'er him rolled away;
+ In dreams he had extended life to bear the fiery space;
+ But all was passive, dull, and stern within his dwelling-place.
+
+ Oh! for a blast of tenfold ire to rouse the giant surge,
+ Him from that flat fixed lethargy impetuously to urge!
+ Let him but rise, but ride upon the tempest-crested wave
+ Of fire enridged tumultuously, each angry thing he'd brave!
+ The strokes of Wrath, thick let them fall! a speed so glorious dread
+ Would bear him through, the clinging pains would strip from off
+ his head.
+
+ The vision of this Last Stern Lake, oh! how it plagued his soul,
+ Type of that dull eternity that on him soon must roll,
+ When plans and issues all must cease that earlier care beguiled,
+ And never era more shall stand a landmark on the wild:
+ Nor failure nor success is there, nor busy hope nor fame,
+ But passive fixed endurance, all eternal and the same.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+BARBARIC ARISTOCRACY.
+
+ Jacob, the 'Impostor'--The Barterer--Esau, the 'Warrior'--Barbarian
+ Dukes--Trade and War--Reconciliation of Jacob and Esau--Their
+ Ghosts--Legend of Iblis--Pagan Warriors of Europe--Russian
+ Hierarchy of Hell.
+
+
+In the preceding chapter it was noted that there were two myths
+wrapped up in the story of Jacob and Esau,--the one theological,
+the other human. The former was there treated, the latter may be
+considered here. Rabbinical theology has made the Jewish race adopt
+as their founder that tricky patriarch whom Shylock adopted as his
+model; but any censure on them for that comes with little grace
+from christians who believe that they are still enjoying a covenant
+which Jacob's extortions and treacheries were the divinely-adopted
+means of confirming. It is high time that the Jewish people should
+repudiate Jacob's proceedings, and if they do not give him his first
+name ('Impostor') back again, at least withdraw from him the name
+Israel. But it is still more important for mankind to study the phases
+of their civilisation, and not attribute to any particular race the
+spirit of a legend which represents an epoch of social development
+throughout the world.
+
+When Rebekah asked Jehovah why her unborn babes struggled in her
+womb, he answered, 'Two nations are in thy womb. One people shall
+be stronger than the other people; the elder shall be subject to
+the younger.' What peoples these were is described in the blessings
+of Jacob on the two representatives when they had grown up to be,
+the one red and hairy, a huntsman; the other a quiet man, dwelling
+in tents and builder of cattle-booths.
+
+Jacob--cunning, extortionate, fraudulent in spirit even when
+technically fair--is not a pleasing figure in the eyes of the
+nineteenth century. But he does not belong to the nineteenth
+century. His contest was with Esau. The very names of them belong
+to mythology; they are not individual men; they are conflicting
+tendencies and interests of a primitive period. They must be thought
+of as Israel and Edom historically; morally, as the Barter principle
+and the Bandit principle.
+
+High things begin low. Astronomy began as Astrology; and when Trade
+began there must have been even more trickery about it than there
+is now. Conceive of a world made up of nomadic tribes engaged in
+perpetual warfare. It is a commerce of killing. If a tribe desires
+the richer soil or larger possessions of another, the method is to
+exterminate that other. But at last there rises a tribe either too
+weak or too peaceful to exterminate, and it proposes to barter. It
+challenges its neighbours to a contest of wits. They try to get the
+advantage of each other in bargains; they haggle and cheat; and it
+is not heroic at all, but it is the beginning of commerce and peace.
+
+But the Dukes of Edom as they are called will not enter into this
+compact. They have not been used to it; they are always outwitted
+at a bargain; just like those other red men in the West of America,
+whose lands are bought with beads, and their territorial birthright
+taken for a mess of pottage. They prefer to live by the hunt and by
+the sword. Then between these two peoples is an eternal feud, with
+an occasional truce, or, in biblical phrase, 'reconciliation.'
+
+Surrounded by a commercial civilisation, with its prosaic virtues and
+its petty vices, we cannot help admiring much about the Duke of Edom,
+non-producer though he be. Brave, impulsive, quick to forgive as to
+resent; generous, as people can afford to be when they may give what
+they never earned; his gallant qualities cast a certain meanness
+over his grasping brother, the Israelite. It is a healthy sign in
+youth to admire such qualities. The boy who delights in Robin Hood;
+the youth who feels a stir of enthusiasm when he reads Schiller's
+Robbers; the ennuyés of the clubs and the roughs, with unfulfilled
+capacities for adventure in them, who admire 'the gallant Turk,' are
+all lingering in the nomadic age. They do not think of things but
+of persons. They are impressed by the barbaric dash. The splendour
+of warriors hides trampled and decimated peasantries; their courage
+can gild atrocities. Beside such captivating qualities and thrilling
+scenes how poor and commonplace appear thrifty rusticity, and the
+cautious, selfish, money-making tradesmen!
+
+But fine and heroic as the Duke of Edom may appear in the distance,
+it is best to keep him at a distance. When Robin Hood reappeared on
+Blackheath lately, his warmest admirers were satisfied to hear he was
+securely lodged in gaol. The Jews had just the same sensations about
+the Dukes of Edom. They saw that tribe near to, and lived in daily
+dread of them. They were hirsute barbarians, dwelling amid mountain
+fastnesses, and lording it over a vast territory. The weak tribe of
+the plains had no sooner got together some herds and a little money,
+than those dashing Edomites fell upon them and carried away their
+savings and substance in a day. This made the bartering tribe all the
+more dependent on their cunning. They had to match their wits against,
+the world; and they have had to do the same to this day, when it is
+a chief element of their survival that their thrift is of importance
+to the business and finance of Europe. But in the myth it is shown
+that Trade, timorous as it is in presence of the sword, may have a
+magnanimity of its own. The Supplanter of Edom is haunted by the wrong
+he has done his elder brother, and driven him to greater animosity. He
+resolves to seek him, offer him gifts, and crave reconciliation. It is
+easy to put an unfavourable construction upon his action, but it is not
+necessary. The Supplanter, with droves of cattle, a large portion of
+his possessions, passes out towards perilous Edom, unarmed, undefended,
+except by his amicable intentions towards the powerful chieftain
+he had wronged. At the border of the hostile kingdom he learns that
+the chieftain is coming to meet him with four hundred men. He is now
+seized, with a mighty spirit of Fear. He sends on the herdsmen with
+the herds, and remains alone. During the watches of the night there
+closes upon him this phantom of Fear, with its presage of Death. The
+tricky tradesman has met his Conscience, and it is girt about with
+Terror. But he feels that his nobler self is with it, and that he
+will win. Finely has Charles Wesley told the story in his hymn:--
+
+
+ Come, O thou traveller unknown,
+ Whom still I hold but cannot see!
+ My company before is gone
+ And I am left alone with thee:
+ With thee all night I mean to stay
+ And wrestle till the break of day.
+
+
+'Confident in self-despair,' the Supplanter conquers his Fear; with
+the dawn he travels onward alone to meet the man he had outraged
+and his armed men, and to him says, 'I have appeared before thee as
+though I had appeared before God, that thou mightest be favourable
+to me.' The proud Duke is disarmed. The brothers embrace and weep
+together. The chieftain declines the presents, and is only induced
+to accept them as proof of his forgiveness. The Tradesman learns for
+all time that his mere cleverness may bring a demon to his side in
+the night, and that he never made so good a bargain as when he has
+restored ill-gotten gains. The aristocrat and warrior returns to his
+mountain, aware now that magnanimity and courage are not impossible
+to quiet men living by merchandise. The hunting-ground must make way
+now for the cattle-breeder. The sword must yield before the balances.
+
+Whatever may have been the tribes which in primitive times had
+these encounters, and taught each other this lesson, they were long
+since reconciled. But the ghosts of Israel and Edom, of Barter and
+Plunder, fought on through long tribal histories. Israel represented
+by the archangel Michael, and Edom by dragon Samaël, waged their
+war. One characteristic of the opposing power has been already
+considered. Samaël embodied Edom as the genius of Strife. He was the
+especial Accuser of Israel, their Antichrist, so to say, as Michael
+was their Advocate. But the name 'Edom' itself was retained as a kind
+of personification of the barbaric military and lordly Devil. The
+highwayman in epaulettes, the heroic spoiler, with his hairy hand
+which Israel itself had imitated many a time in its gloves, were
+summed up as 'Edom.'
+
+This personification is the more important since it has characterised
+the more serious idea of Satan which prevails in the world. He is
+mainly a moral conception, and means the pride and pomp of the world,
+its natural wildness and ferocities, and the glory of them. The
+Mussulman fable relates that when Allah created man, and placed him
+in a garden, he called all the angels to worship this crowning work
+of his hands. Iblis alone refused to worship Adam. The very idea of
+a garden is hateful to the spirit of Nomadism. [70] Man the gardener
+receives no reverence from the proud leader of the Seraphim. God
+said unto him (Iblis), What hindered thee from worshipping Adam,
+since I commanded thee? He answered, I am more excellent than he:
+thou hast created me of (ethereal) fire, and hast created him of clay
+(black mud). God said, Get thee down therefore from paradise, for it
+is not fit that thou behave thyself proudly therein. [71]
+
+The earnestness and self-devotion of the northern pagans in their
+resistance to Christianity impressed the finest minds in the Church
+profoundly. Some of the Fathers even quoted the enthusiasm of those
+whom they regarded as devotees of the Devil, to shame the apathy of
+christians. The Church could show no martyr braver than Rand, down
+whose throat St. Olaf made a viper creep, which gnawed through his
+side; and Rand was an example of thousands. This gave many of the early
+christians of the north a very serious view of the realm of Satan,
+and of Satan himself as a great potentate. It was increased by their
+discovery that the pagan kings--Satan's subjects--had moral codes and
+law-courts, and energetically maintained justice. In this way there
+grew up a more dignified idea of Hell. The grotesque imps receded
+before the array of majestic devils, like Satan and Beelzebub; and
+these were invested with a certain grandeur and barbaric pride. They
+were regarded as rival monarchs who had refused to submit themselves to
+Jehovah, but they were deemed worthy of heroic treatment. The traces of
+this sentiment found in the ancient frescoes of Russia are of especial
+importance. Nothing can exceed the grandeur of the Hierarchy of Hell
+as they appear in some of these superb pictures. Satan is generally
+depicted with similar dignity to the king of heaven, from whom he is
+divided by a wall's depth, sometimes even resembling him in all but
+complexion and hair (which is fire on Satan). There are frequent
+instances, as in the accompanying figure (4), where, in careful
+correspondence with the attitude of Christ on the Father's knees,
+Satan supports the betrayer of Christ. Beside the king of Hell,
+seated in its Mouth, are personages of distinction, some probably
+representing those poets and sages of Greece and Rome, the prospect
+of whose damnation filled some of the first christian Fathers with
+such delight.
+
+In Spain, when a Bishop is about to baptize one of the European
+Dukes of the Devil, he asks at the font what has become of his
+ancestors, naming them--all heathen. 'They are all in hell!' replies
+the Bishop. 'Then there will I follow them,' returns the Chief, and
+thereafter by no persuasion can he be induced to fare otherwise than
+to Hell. Gradually the Church made up its mind to ally itself with
+this obstinate barbaric pride and ambition. It was willing to give
+up anything whatever for a kingdom of this world, and to worship any
+number of Princes of Darkness, if they would give unto the Bishops
+such kingdoms, and the glory of them. They induced Esau to be baptized
+by promise of their aid in his oppressions, and free indulgences to
+all his passions; and then, by his help, they were able to lay before
+weaker Esaus the christian alternatives--Be baptized or burnt!
+
+Not to have known how to conquer in bloodless victories the barbaric
+Esaus of the world by a virtue more pure, a heroism more patient,
+than theirs, and with that 'sweet reasonableness of Christ,'
+which is the latest epitaph on his tomb among the rich; not to have
+recognised the true nobility of the Dukes, and purified their pride
+to self-reverence, their passion to moral courage, their daring and
+freedom to a self-reliance at once gentle and manly; this was no doubt
+the necessary failure of a dogmatic and irrational system. But it
+is this which has made the christian Israel more of an impostor than
+its prototype, in every country to which it came steadily developing
+to a hypocritical imitator of the Esau whose birthright it stole
+by baptism. It speedily lost his magnanimity, but never his sword,
+which however it contrived to make at once meaner and more cruel
+by twisting it into thumbscrews and the like. For many centuries
+its voice has been, in a thin phonographic way, the voice of Jesus,
+but the hands are the hands of Esau with Samaël's claw added.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+JOB AND THE DIVIDER.
+
+ Hebrew Polytheism--Problem of Evil--Job's disbelief in a
+ future life--The Divider's realm--Salted Sacrifices--Theory
+ of Orthodoxy--Job's reasoning--His humour--Impartiality of
+ Fortune between the evil and good--Agnosticism of Job--Elihu's
+ eclecticism--Jehovah of the Whirlwind--Heresies of Job--Rabbinical
+ legend of Job--Universality of the legend.
+
+
+ Israel is a flourishing vine,
+ Which bringeth forth fruit to itself;
+ According to the increase of his fruit
+ He hath multiplied his altars;
+ According to the goodness of his land
+ He hath made goodly images.
+ Their heart is divided: now shall they be found guilty;
+ He will break down their altars, he will spoil their images.
+
+
+These words of the prophet Hosea (x. 1, 2) foreshadow the devil which
+the devout Jahvist saw growing steadily to enormous strength through
+all the history of Israel. The germ of this enemy may be found in our
+chapter on Fate; one of its earliest developments is indicated in the
+account already given of the partition between Jacob and Esau, and the
+superstition to which that led of a ghostly Antagonist, to whom a share
+had been irreversibly pledged. From the principle thus adopted, there
+grew a host of demons whom it was believed necessary to propitiate by
+offering them their share. A divided universe had for its counterpart
+a divided loyalty in the heart of the people. The growth of a belief
+in the supremacy of one God was far from being a real monotheism; as
+a matter of fact no primitive race has been monotheistic. In 2 Kings
+xvii. it is stated as a belief of the Jews that some Assyrians who
+had been imported into their territory (Samaria) were slain by lions
+because they knew not 'the manner of the God of the land.' Spinoza
+noticed the indications given in this and other narratives that
+the Jews believed that gods whose worship was intolerable within
+their own boundaries were yet adapted to other regions (Tractatus,
+ii.). With this state of mind it is not wonderful that when the Jews
+found themselves in those alien regions they apprehended that the
+gods of those countries might also employ lions on such as knew not
+their manner, but adhered to the worship of Jehovah too exclusively.
+
+Among the Jews grew up a more spiritual class of minds, whose feeling
+towards the mongrel worship around them was that of abhorrence; but
+these had a very difficult cause to maintain. The popular superstitions
+were firmly rooted in the fact that terrible evils afflicted mankind,
+and in the further fact that these did not spare the most pious. Nay,
+it had for a long time been a growing belief that the bounties and
+afflictions of nature, instead of following the direction promised by
+the patriarchs,--rewarding the pious, punishing the wicked,--were
+distributed in a reverse way. Dives and Lazarus seemed to have
+their respective lots before any future paradise was devised for
+their equalisation--as indeed is natural, since Dives attends to
+his business, while Lazarus is investing his powers in Abraham's
+bosom. Out of this experience there came at last the demand for a
+life beyond the grave, without whose redress the pious began to deem
+themselves of all men the most miserable. But before this heavenly
+future became a matter of common belief, there were theories which
+prepared, the way for it. It was held by the devout that the evils
+which afflicted the righteous were Jehovah's tests of their loyalty
+to him, and that in the end such trials would be repaid. And when
+observation, following the theory, showed that they were not so
+repaid, it was said the righteousness had been unreal, the devotee
+was punished for hidden wickedness. When continued observation had
+proved that this theory too was false, and that piety was not paid in
+external bounties, either to the good man or his family, the solution
+of a future settlement was arrived at.
+
+This simple process may be traced in various races, and in its
+several phases.
+
+The most impressive presentation of the experiences under which the
+primitive secular theory of rewards and punishments perished, and
+that of an adjustment beyond the grave arose, is found in the Book
+of Job. The solution here reached--a future reward in this life--is
+an impossible one for anything more than an exceptional case. But
+the Book of Job displays how beautiful such an instance would be,
+showing afflictions to be temporary and destined to be followed by
+compensations largely outweighing them. It was a tremendous statement
+of the question--If a man die, shall he live again? Jehovah answered,
+'Yes' out of the whirlwind, and raised Job out of the dust. But
+for the millions who never rose from the dust that voice was heard
+announcing their resurrection from a trial that pressed them even
+into the grave. It is remarkable that Job's expression of faith that
+his Vindicator would appear on earth, should have become the one text
+of the Old Testament which has been adapted by christians to express
+faith in immortality. Job strongly disowns that faith.
+
+
+ There is hope for a tree,
+ If it be cut down, that it will sprout again,
+ And that its tender branches will not fail;
+ Though its root may have grown old in the earth,
+ And though its trunk be dead upon the ground,
+ At the scent of water it will bud,
+ And put forth boughs, like a young plant.
+ But man dieth and is gone for ever!
+
+ Yet I know that my Vindicator liveth,
+ And will stand up at length on the earth;
+ And though with my skin this body be wasted away,
+ Yet in my flesh shall I see God.
+ Yea, I shall see him my friend;
+ My eyes shall behold him no longer an adversary;
+ For this my soul panteth within me. [72]
+
+
+The scenery and details of this drama are such as must have made
+an impression upon the mind of the ancient Jews beyond what is now
+possible for any existing people. In the first place, the locality
+was the land of Uz, which Jeremiah (Lam. iv. 21) points out as part
+of Edom, the territory traditionally ruled over by the great invisible
+Accuser of Israel, who had succeeded to the portion of Esau, adversary
+of their founder, Jacob. Job was within the perilous bounds. And
+yet here, where scape-goats were offered to deprecate Samaël, and
+where in ordinary sacrifices some item entered for the devil's share,
+Job refused to pay any honour to the Power of the Place. He offered
+burnt-offerings alone for himself and his sons, these being exclusively
+given to Jehovah. [73] Even after his children and his possessions were
+destroyed by this great adversary, Job offered his sacrifice without
+even omitting the salt, which was the Oriental seal of an inviolable
+compact between two, and which so especially recalled and consecrated
+the covenant with Jehovah. [74] Among his twenty thousand animals,
+Azazel's animal, the goat, is not even named. Job's distinction was
+an absolute and unprecedented singleness of loyalty to Jehovah.
+
+This loyalty of a disciple even in the enemy's country is
+made the subject of a sort of boast by Jehovah when the Accuser
+enters. Postponing for the moment consideration of the character and
+office of this Satan, we may observe here that the trial which he
+challenges is merely a test of the sincerity of Job's allegiance
+to Jehovah. The Accuser claims that it is all given for value
+received. These possessions are taken away.
+
+This is but the framework around the philosophical poem in which all
+theories of the world are personified in grand council.
+
+First of all Job (the Troubled) asks--Why? Orthodoxy answers. (Eliphaz
+was the son of Esau (Samaël), and his name here means that he was
+the Accuser in disguise. He, 'God's strength,' stands for the Law. It
+affirms that God's ways are just, and consequently afflictions imply
+previous sin.) Eliphaz repeats the question put by the Accuser in
+heaven--'Was not thy fear of God thy hope?' And he brings Job to the
+test of prayer, in which he has so long trusted. Eliphaz rests on
+revelation; he has had a vision; and if his revelation be not true,
+he challenges Job to disprove it by calling on God to answer him, or
+else securing the advocacy of some one of the heavenly host. Eliphaz
+says trouble does not spring out of the dust.
+
+Job's reply is to man and God--Point out the error! Grant my troubles
+are divine arrows, what have I done to thee, O watcher of men! Am I
+a sea-monster--and we imagine Job looking at his wasted limbs--that
+the Almighty must take precautions and send spies against me?
+
+Then follows Bildad the Shuhite,--that is the 'contentious,' one
+of the descendants of Keturah (Abraham's concubine), traditionally
+supposed to be inimical to the legitimate Abrahamic line, and at a
+later period identified as the Turks. Bildad, with invective rather
+than argument, charges that Job's children had been slain for their
+sins, and otherwise makes a personal application of Eliphaz's theology.
+
+Job declares that since God is so perfect, no man by such standard
+could be proved just; that if he could prove himself just, the
+argument would be settled by the stronger party in his own favour;
+and therefore, liberated from all temptation to justify himself, he
+affirms that the innocent and the guilty are dealt with much in the
+same way. If it is a trial of strength between God and himself, he
+yields. If it is a matter of reasoning, let the terrors be withdrawn,
+and he will then be able to answer calmly. For the present, even if
+he were righteous, he dare not lift up his head to so assert, while
+the rod is upon him.
+
+Zophar 'the impudent' speaks. Here too, probably, is a disguise:
+he is (says the LXX.) King of the Minæans, that is the Nomades, and
+his designation 'the Naamathite,' of unknown significance, bears a
+suspicious resemblance to Naamah, a mythologic wife of Samaël and
+mother of several devils. Zophar is cynical. He laughs at Job for
+even suggesting the notion of an argument between himself and God,
+whose wisdom and ways are unsearchable. He (God) sees man's iniquity
+even when it looks as if he did not. He is deeper than hell. What
+can a man do but pray and acknowledge his sinfulness?
+
+But Job, even in his extremity, is healthy-hearted enough to laugh
+too. He tells his three 'comforters' that no doubt Wisdom will die
+with them. Nevertheless, he has heard similar remarks before, and he
+is not prepared to renounce his conscience and common-sense on such
+grounds. And now, indeed, Job rises to a higher strain. He has made
+up his mind that after what has come upon him, he cares not if more
+be added, and challenges the universe to name his offence. So long as
+his transgression is 'sealed up in a bag,' he has a right to consider
+it an invention. [75]
+
+Temanite Orthodoxy is shocked at all this. Eliphaz declares that
+Job's assertion that innocent and guilty suffer alike makes the fear
+of God a vain thing, and discourages prayer. 'With us are the aged
+and hoary-headed.' (Job is a neologist.) Eliphaz paints human nature
+in Calvinistic colours.
+
+
+ Behold, (God) putteth no trust in his ministering spirits,
+ And the heavens are not pure in his sight;
+ Much less abominable and polluted man,
+ Who drinketh iniquity as water!
+
+
+The wise have related, and they got it from the fathers to whom
+the land was given, and among whom no stranger was allowed to bring
+his strange doctrines, that affliction is the sign and punishment
+of wickedness.
+
+Job merely says he has heard enough of this, and finds no wise man
+among them. He acknowledges that such reproaches add to his sorrows. He
+would rather contend with God than with them, if he could. But he
+sees a slight indication of divine favour in the remarkable unwisdom
+of his revilers, and their failure to prove their point.
+
+Bildad draws a picture of what he considers would be the proper
+environment of a wicked man, and it closely resembles the situation
+of Job.
+
+But Job reminds him that he, Bildad, is not God. It is God that has
+brought him so low, but God has been satisfied with his flesh. He
+has not yet uttered any complaint as to his conduct; and so he,
+Job, believes that his vindicator will yet appear to confront his
+accusers--the men who are so glib when his afflictor is silent. [76]
+
+Zophar harps on the old string. Pretty much as some preachers
+go on endlessly with their pictures of the terrors which haunted
+the deathbeds of Voltaire and Paine, all the more because none are
+present to relate the facts. Zophar recounts how men who seemed good,
+but were not, were overtaken by asps and vipers and fires from heaven.
+
+But Job, on the other hand, has a curious catalogue of examples in
+which the notoriously wicked have lived in wealth and gaiety. And
+if it be said God pays such off in their children, Job denies the
+justice of that. It is the offender, and not his child, who ought
+to feel it. The prosperous and the bitter in soul alike lie down in
+the dust at last, the good and the evil; and Job is quite content to
+admit that he does not understand it. One thing he does understand:
+'Your explanations are false.'
+
+But Eliphaz insists on Job having a dogma. If the orthodox dogma is
+not true, put something in its place! Why are you afflicted? What is,
+your theory? Is it because God was afraid of your greatness? It must be
+as we say, and you have been defrauding and injuring people in secret.
+
+Job, having repeated his ardent desire to meet God face to face as
+to his innocence, says he can only conclude that what befalls him and
+others is what is 'appointed' for them. His terror indeed arises from
+that: the good and the evil seem to be distributed without reference
+to human conduct. How darkness conspires with the assassin! If God
+were only a man, things might be different; but as it is, 'what he
+desireth that he doeth,' and 'who can turn him?'
+
+Bildad falls back on his dogma of depravity. Man is a 'worm,' a
+'reptile.' Job finds that for a worm Bildad is very familiar with the
+divine secrets. If man is morally so weak he should be lowly in mind
+also. God by his spirit hath garnished the heavens; his hand formed
+the 'crooked serpent'--
+
+
+ Lo! these are but the borders of his works;
+ How faint the whisper we have heard of him!
+ But the thunder of his power who can understand?
+
+
+Job takes up the position of the agnostic, and the three 'Comforters'
+are silenced. The argument has ended where it had to end. Job then
+proceeds with sublime eloquence. A man may lose all outward things, but
+no man or god can make him utter a lie, or take from him his integrity,
+or his consciousness of it. Friends may reproach him, but he can see
+that his own heart does not. That one superiority to the wicked he
+can preserve. In reviewing his arguments Job is careful to say that
+he does not maintain that good and evil men are on an equality. For
+one thing, when the wicked man is in trouble he cannot find resource
+in his innocence. 'Can he delight himself in the Almighty?' When such
+die, their widows do not bewail them. Men do not befriend oppressors
+when they come to want. Men hiss them. And with guilt in their heart
+they feel their sorrows to be the arrows of God, sent in anger. In
+all the realms of nature, therefore, amid its powers, splendours,
+and precious things, man cannot find the wisdom which raises him
+above misfortune, but only in his inward loyalty to the highest,
+and freedom from moral evil.
+
+Then enters a fifth character, Elihu, whose plan is to mediate
+between the old dogma and the new agnostic philosophy. He is Orthodoxy
+rationalised. Elihu's name is suggestive of his ambiguity; it seems to
+mean one whose 'God is He' and he comes from the tribe of Buz, whose
+Hebrew meaning might almost be represented in that English word which,
+with an added z, would best convey the windiness of his remarks. Buz
+was the son of Milkah, the Moon, and his descendant so came fairly
+by his theologic 'moonshine' of the kind which Carlyle has so well
+described in his account of Coleridgean casuistry. Elihu means to be
+fair to both sides! Elihu sees some truth in both sides! Eclectic
+Elihu! Job is perfectly right in thinking he had not done anything
+to merit his sufferings, but he did not know what snares were
+around him, and how he might have done something wicked but for his
+affliction. Moreover, God ruins people now and then just to show how
+he can lift them up again. Job ought to have taken this for granted,
+and then to have expressed it in the old abject phraseology, saying,
+'I have received chastisement; I will offend no more! What I see not,
+teach thou me!' (A truly Elihuic or 'contemptible' answer to Job's
+sensible words, 'Why is light given to a man whose way is hid?' Why
+administer the rod which enlightens as to the anger but not its cause,
+or as to the way of amend?) In fact the casuistic Elihu casts no light
+whatever on the situation. He simply overwhelms him with metaphors and
+generalities about the divine justice and mercy, meant to hide this
+new and dangerous solution which Job had discovered--namely, that
+the old dogmatic theories of evil were proved false by experience,
+and that a good man amid sorrow should admit his ignorance, but never
+allow terror to wring from him the voice of guilt, nor the attempt
+to propitiate divine wrath.
+
+When Jehovah appears on the scene, answering Job out of the whirlwind,
+the tone is one of wrath, but the whole utterance is merely an
+amplification of what Job had said--what we see and suffer are but
+fringes of a Whole we cannot understand. The magnificence and wonder
+of the universe celebrated in that voice of the whirlwind had to be
+given the lame and impotent conclusion of Job 'abhorring himself,'
+and 'repenting in dust and ashes.' The conventional Cerberus must
+have his sop. But none the less does the great heart of this poem
+reveal the soul that was not shaken or divided in prosperity or
+adversity. The burnt-offering of his prosperous days, symbol of a
+worship which refused to include the supposed powers of mischief,
+was enjoined on Job's Comforters. They must bend to him as nearer God
+than they. And in his high philosophy Job found what is symbolised in
+the three daughters born to him: Jemima (the Dove, the voice of the
+returning Spring); Kezia (Cassia, the sweet incense); Kerenhappuch
+(the horn of beautiful colour, or decoration).
+
+From the Jewish point of view this triumph of Job represented a
+tremendous heresy. The idea that afflictions could befall a man without
+any reference to his conduct, and consequently not to be influenced
+by the normal rites and sacrifices, is one fatal to a priesthood. If
+evil may be referred in one case to what is going on far away among
+gods in obscurities of the universe, and to some purpose beyond the
+ken of all sages, it may so be referred in all cases, and though
+burnt-offerings may be resorted to formally, they must cease when
+their powerlessness is proved. Hence the Rabbins have taken the
+side of Job's Comforters. They invented a legend that Job had been
+a great magician in Egypt, and was one of those whose sorceries so
+long prevented the escape of Israel. He was converted afterwards,
+but it is hinted that his early wickedness required the retribution
+he suffered. His name was to them the troubler troubled.
+
+Heretical also was the theory that man could get along without any
+Angelolatry or Demon-worship. Job in his singleness of service,
+fearing God alone, defying the Seraphim and Cherubim from Samaël
+down to do their worst, was a perilous figure. The priests got no
+part of any burnt-offering. The sin-offering was of almost sumptuary
+importance. Hence the rabbinical theory, already noticed, that it
+was through neglect of these expiations to the God of Sin that the
+morally spotless Job came under the power of his plagues.
+
+But for precisely the same reasons the story of Job became
+representative to the more spiritual class of minds of a genuine as
+contrasted with a nominal monotheism, and the piety of the pure, the
+undivided heart. Its meaning is so human that it is not necessary to
+discuss the question of its connection with the story of Harischandra,
+or whether its accent was caught from or by the legends of Zoroaster
+and of Buddha, who passed unscathed through the ordeals of Ahriman
+and Mara. It was repeated in the encounters of the infant Christ with
+Herod, and of the adult Christ with Satan. It was repeated in the
+unswerving loyalty of the patient Griselda to her husband. It is indeed
+the heroic theme of many races and ages, and it everywhere points to
+a period when the virtues of endurance and patience rose up to match
+the agonies which fear and weakness had tried to propitiate,--when
+man first learned to suffer and be strong.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+SATAN.
+
+ Public Prosecutors--Satan as Accuser--English Devil-worshipper
+ --Conversion by Terror--Satan in the Old Testament--The trial
+ of Joshua--Sender of Plagues--Satan and Serpent--Portrait of
+ Satan--Scapegoat of Christendom--Catholic 'Sight of Hell'--
+ The ally of Priesthoods.
+
+
+There is nothing about the Satan of the Book of Job to indicate him
+as a diabolical character. He appears as a respectable and powerful
+personage among the sons of God who present themselves before Jehovah,
+and his office is that of a public prosecutor. He goes to and fro
+in the earth attending to his duties. He has received certificates
+of character from A. Schultens, Herder, Eichorn, Dathe, Ilgen, who
+proposed a new word for Satan in the prologue of Job, which would
+make him a faithful but too suspicious servant of God.
+
+Such indeed he was deemed originally; but it is easy to see how the
+degradation of such a figure must have begun. There is often a clamour
+in England for the creation of Public Prosecutors; yet no doubt there
+is good ground for the hesitation which its judicial heads feel in
+advising such a step. The experience of countries in which Prosecuting
+Attorneys exist is not such as to prove the institution one of unmixed
+advantage. It is not in human nature for an official person not to make
+the most of the duty intrusted to him, and the tendency is to raise
+the interest he specially represents above that of justice itself. A
+defeated prosecutor feels a certain stigma upon his reputation as much
+as a defeated advocate, and it is doubtful whether it be safe that
+the fame of any man should be in the least identified with personal
+success where justice is trying to strike a true balance. The recent
+performances of certain attorneys in England and America retained by
+Societies for the Suppression of Vice strikingly illustrate the dangers
+here alluded to. The necessity that such salaried social detectives
+should perpetually parade before the community as purifiers of society
+induces them to get up unreal cases where real ones cannot be easily
+discovered. Thus they become Accusers, and from this it is an easy
+step to become Slanderers; nor is it a very difficult one which may
+make them instigators of the vices they profess to suppress.
+
+The first representations of Satan show him holding in his hand
+the scales; but the latter show him trying slyly with hand or
+foot to press down that side of the balance in which the evil
+deeds of a soul are being weighed against the good. We need not
+try to track archæologically this declension of a Prosecutor, by
+increasing ardour in his office, through the stages of Accuser,
+Adversary, Executioner, and at last Rival of the legitimate Rule,
+and tempter of its subjects. The process is simple and familiar. I
+have before me a little twopenny book, [77] which is said to have
+a vast circulation, where one may trace the whole mental evolution
+of Satan. The ancient Devil-worshipper who has reappeared with such
+power in England tells us that he was the reputed son of a farmer,
+who had to support a wife and eleven children on from 7s. to 9s. per
+week, and who sent him for a short time to school. 'My schoolmistress
+reproved me for something wrong, telling me that God Almighty took
+notice of children's sins. This stuck to my conscience a great while;
+and who this God Almighty could be I could not conjecture; and how he
+could know my sins without asking my mother I could not conceive. At
+that time there was a person named Godfrey, an exciseman, in the town,
+a man of a stern and hard-favoured countenance, whom I took notice of
+for having a stick covered with figures, and an ink-bottle hanging at
+the button-hole of his coat. I imagined that man to be employed by
+God Almighty to take notice and keep an account of children's sins;
+and once I got into the market-house and watched him very narrowly,
+and found that he was always in a hurry, by his walking so fast; and I
+thought he had need to hurry, as he must have a deal to do to find out
+all the sins of children!' This terror caused the little Huntington to
+say his prayers. 'Punishment for sin I found was to be inflicted after
+death, therefore I hated the churchyard, and would travel any distance
+round rather than drag my guilty conscience over that enchanted spot.'
+
+The child is father to the man. When Huntington, S.S., grew up, it
+was to record for the thousands who listened to him as a prophet his
+many encounters with the devil. The Satan he believes in is an exact
+counterpart of the stern, hard-favoured exciseman whom he had regarded
+as God's employé. On one occasion he writes, 'Satan began to tempt me
+violently that there was no God, but I reasoned against the belief of
+that from my own experience of his dreadful wrath, saying, How can I
+credit this suggestion, when (God's) wrath is already revealed in my
+heart, and every curse in his book levelled at my head.' (That seems
+his only evidence of God's existence--his wrath!) 'The Devil answered
+that the Bible was false, and only wrote by cunning men to puzzle and
+deceive people. 'There is no God,' said the adversary, 'nor is the
+Bible true.' ... I asked, 'Who, then, made the world?' He replied,
+'I did, and I made men too.' Satan, perceiving my rationality almost
+gone, followed me up with another temptation; that as there was no
+God I must come back to his work again, else when he had brought me
+to hell he would punish me more than all the rest. I cried out, 'Oh,
+what will become of me! what will become of me!' He answered that
+there was no escape but by praying to him; and that he would show me
+some lenity when he took me to hell. I went and sat in my tool-house
+halting between two opinions; whether I should petition Satan, or
+whether I should keep praying to God, until I could ascertain the
+consequences. While I was thinking of bending my knees to such a
+cursed being as Satan, an uncommon fear of God sprung up in my heart
+to keep me from it.'
+
+In other words, Mr. Huntington wavered between the petitions 'Good
+Lord! Good Devil!' The question whether it were more moral, more
+holy, to worship the one than the other did not occur to him. He
+only considers which is the strongest--which could do him the most
+mischief--which, therefore, to fear the most; and when Satan has almost
+convinced him in his own favour, he changes round to God. Why? Not
+because of any superior goodness on God's part. He says, 'An uncommon
+fear of God sprung up in my heart.' The greater terror won the day;
+that is to say, of two demons he yielded to the stronger. Such an
+experience, though that of one living in our own time, represents a
+phase in the development of the relation between God and Satan which
+would have appeared primitive to an Assyrian two thousand years
+ago. The ethical antagonism of the two was then much more clearly
+felt. But this bit of contemporary superstition may bring before us
+the period when Satan, from having been a Nemesis or Retributive Agent
+of the divine law, had become a mere personal rival of his superior.
+
+Satan, among the Jews, was at first a generic term for an adversary
+lying in wait. It is probably the furtive suggestion at the root of
+this Hebrew word which aided in its selection as the name for the
+invisible adverse powers when they were especially distinguished. But
+originally no special personage, much less any antagonist of Jehovah,
+was signified by the word. Thus we read: 'And God's anger was kindled
+because he (Balaam) went; and the angel of the Lord stood in the way
+for a Satan against him.... And the ass saw the angel of the Lord
+standing in the way and his sword drawn in his hand.' [78] The eyes of
+Balaam are presently opened, and the angel says, 'I went out to be a
+Satan to thee because the way is perverse before me.' The Philistines
+fear to take David with them to battle lest he should prove a Satan to
+them, that is, an underhand enemy or traitor. [79] David called those
+who wished to put Shimei to death Satans; [80] but in this case the
+epithet would have been more applicable to himself for affecting to
+protect the honest man for whose murder he treacherously provided. [81]
+
+That it was popularly used for adversary as distinct from evil appears
+in Solomon's words, 'There is neither Satan nor evil occurrent.' [82]
+Yet it is in connection with Solomon that we may note the entrance
+of some of the materials for the mythology which afterwards invested
+the name of Satan. It is said that, in anger at his idolatries,
+'the Lord stirred up a Satan unto Solomon, Hadad the Edomite:
+he was of the king's seed in Edom.' [83] Hadad, 'the Sharp,' bore
+a name next to that of Esau himself for the redness of his wrath,
+and, as we have seen in a former chapter, Edom was to the Jews the
+land of 'bogeys.' 'Another Satan,' whom the Lord 'stirred up,' was
+the Devastator, Prince Rezon, founder of the kingdom of Damascus,
+of whom it is said, 'he was a Satan to Israel all the days of
+Solomon.' [84] The human characteristics of supposed 'Scourges of
+God' easily pass away. The name that becomes traditionally associated
+with calamities whose agents were 'stirred up' by the Almighty is not
+allowed the glory of its desolations. The word 'Satan,' twice used in
+this chapter concerning Solomon's fall, probably gained here a long
+step towards distinct personification as an eminent national enemy,
+though there is no intimation of a power daring to oppose the will of
+Jehovah. Nor, indeed, is there any such intimation anywhere in the
+'canonical' books of the Old Testament. The writer of Psalm cix.,
+imprecating for his adversaries, says: 'Set thou a wicked man over
+him; and let Satan stand at his right hand. When he shall be judged,
+let him be condemned; and let his prayer become sin.' In this there is
+an indication of a special Satan, but he is supposed to be an agent
+of Jehovah. In the catalogue of the curses invoked of the Lord,
+we find the evils which were afterwards supposed to proceed only
+from Satan. The only instance in the Old Testament in which there
+is even a faint suggestion of hostility towards Satan on the part of
+Jehovah is in Zechariah. Here we find the following remarkable words:
+'And he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of
+Jehovah, and the Satan standing at his right hand to oppose him. And
+Jehovah said unto Satan, Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan; even Jehovah,
+that hath chosen Jerusalem, rebuke thee: is not this a brand plucked
+out of the fire? Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and
+stood before the angel. And he answered and spake to those that stood
+before him, saying, Take away the filthy garments from him. And to
+him he said, Lo, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee,
+and I will clothe thee with goodly raiment.' [85]
+
+Here we have a very fair study and sketch of that judicial trial of
+the soul for which mainly the dogma of a resurrection after death
+was invented. The doctrine of future rewards and punishments is not
+one which a priesthood would invent or care for, so long as they
+possessed unrestricted power to administer such in this life. It is
+when an alien power steps in to supersede the priesthood--the Gallio
+too indifferent whether ceremonial laws are carried out to permit the
+full application of terrestrial cruelties--that the priest requires a
+tribunal beyond the grave to execute his sentence. In this picture
+of Zechariah we have this invisible Celestial Court. The Angel
+of Judgment is in his seat. The Angel of Accusation is present to
+prosecute. A poor filthy wretch appears for trial. What advocate can
+he command? Where is Michael, the special advocate of Israel? He does
+not recognise one of his clients in this poor Joshua in his rags. But
+lo! suddenly Jehovah himself appears; reproves his own commissioned
+Accuser; declares Joshua a brand plucked from the burning (Tophet);
+orders a change of raiment, and, condoning his offences, takes him
+into his own service. But in all this there is nothing to show general
+antagonism between Jehovah and Satan, but the reverse.
+
+When we look into the Book of Job we find a Satan sufficiently
+different from any and all of those mentioned under that name in other
+parts of the Old Testament to justify the belief that he has been
+mainly adapted from the traditions of other regions. The plagues and
+afflictions which in Psalm cix. are invoked from Jehovah, even while
+Satan is mentioned as near, are in the Book of Job ascribed to Satan
+himself. Jehovah only permits Satan to inflict them with a proviso
+against total destruction. Satan is here named as a personality in
+a way not known elsewhere in the Old Testament, unless it be in 1
+Chron. xxi. 1, where Satan (the article being in this single case
+absent) is said to have 'stood up against Israel, and provoked David
+to number Israel.' But in this case the uniformity of the passage with
+the others (excepting those in Job) is preserved by the same incident
+being recorded in 2 Sam. xxiv. 1, 'The anger of Jehovah was kindled
+against Israel, and he (Jehovah) moved David against them to say,
+Go number Israel and Judah.'
+
+It is clear that, in the Old Testament, it is in the Book of Job
+alone that we find Satan as the powerful prince of an empire which
+is distinct from that of Jehovah,--an empire of tempest, plague, and
+fire,--though he presents himself before Jehovah, and awaits permission
+to exert his power on a loyal subject of Jehovah. The formality of
+a trial, so dear to the Semitic heart, is omitted in this case. And
+these circumstances confirm the many other facts which prove this
+drama to be largely of non-Semitic origin. It is tolerably clear that
+the drama of Harischandra in India and that of Job were both developed
+from the Sanskrit legends mentioned in our chapter on Viswámitra; and
+it is certain that Aryan and Semitic elements are both represented in
+the figure of Satan as he has passed into the theology of Christendom.
+
+Nor indeed has Satan since his importation into Jewish literature
+in this new aspect, much as the Rabbins have made of him, ever
+been assigned the same character among that people that has been
+assigned him in Christendom. He has never replaced Samaël as their
+Archfiend. Rabbins have, indeed, in later times associated him
+with the Serpent which seduced Eve in Eden; but the absence of any
+important reference to that story in the New Testament is significant
+of the slight place it had in the Jewish mind long after the belief
+in Satan had become popular. In fact, that essentially Aryan myth
+little accorded with the ideas of strife and immorality which the
+Jews had gradually associated with Samaël. In the narrative, as
+it stands in Genesis, it is by no means the Serpent that makes the
+worst appearance. It is Jehovah, whose word--that death shall follow
+on the day the apple is eaten--is falsified by the result; and while
+the Serpent is seen telling the truth, and guiding man to knowledge,
+Jehovah is represented as animated by jealousy or even fear of man's
+attainments. All of which is natural enough in an extremely primitive
+myth of a combat between rival gods, but by no means possesses the
+moral accent of the time and conditions amid which Jahvism certainly
+originated. It is in the same unmoral plane as the contest of the
+Devas and Asuras for the Amrita, in Hindu mythology, a contest of
+physical force and wits.
+
+The real development of Satan among the Jews was from an accusing
+to an opposing spirit, then to an agent of punishment--a hated
+executioner. The fact that the figure here given (Fig. 5) was
+identified by one so familiar with Semitic demonology as Calmet as a
+representation of him, is extremely interesting. It was found among
+representations of Cherubim, and on the back of one somewhat like
+it is a formula of invocation against demons. The countenance is of
+that severe beauty which the Greeks ascribed to Nemesis. Nemesis has
+at her feet the wheel and rudder, symbols of her power to overtake
+the evil-doer by land or sea; the feet of this figure are winged
+for pursuit. He has four hands. In one he bears the lamp which, like
+Lucifer, brings light on the deed of darkness. As to others, he answers
+Baruch's description (Ep. 13, 14) of the Babylonian god, 'He hath a
+sceptre in his hand like a man, like a judge of the kingdom--he hath
+in his hand a sword and an axe.' He bears nicely-graduated implements
+of punishment, from the lash that scourges to the axe that slays; and
+his retributive powers are supplemented by the scorpion tail. At his
+knees are signets; whomsoever he seals are sealed. He has the terrible
+eyes which were believed able to read on every forehead a catalogue
+of sins invisible to mortals, a power that made women careful of
+their veils, and gave meaning to the formula 'Get thee behind me!' [86]
+
+Now this figure, which Calmet believed to be Satan, bears on its
+reverse, 'The Everlasting Sun.' He is a god made up of Egyptian and
+Magian forms, the head-plumes belonging to the one, the multiplied
+wings to the other. Matter (Hist. Crit. de Gnost.) reproduces it,
+and says that 'it differs so much from all else of the kind as to
+prove it the work of an impostor.' But Professor C. W. King has a
+(probably fifth century) gem in his collection evidently a rude copy
+of this (reproduced in his 'Gnostics,' Pl. xi. 3), on the back of
+which is 'Light of Lights;' and, in a note which I have from him,
+he says that it sufficiently proves Matter wrong, and that this form
+was primitive. In one gem of Professor King's (Pl. v. 1) the lamp
+is also carried, and means the 'Light of Lights.' The inscription
+beneath, within a coiled serpent, is in corrupt cuneiform characters,
+long preserved by the Magi, though without understanding them. There
+is little doubt, therefore, that the instinct of Calmet was right,
+and that we have here an early form of the detective and retributive
+Magian deity ultimately degraded to an accusing spirit, or Satan.
+
+Although the Jews did not identify Satan with their Scapegoat, yet
+he has been veritably the Scapegoat among devils for two thousand
+years. All the nightmares and phantasms that ever haunted the human
+imagination have been packed upon him unto this day, when it is
+almost as common to hear his name in India and China as in Europe and
+America. In thus passing round the world, he has caught the varying
+features of many fossilised demons: he has been horned, hoofed,
+reptilian, quadrupedal, anthropoid, anthropomorphic, beautiful, ugly,
+male, female; the whites painted him black, and the blacks, with
+more reason, painted him white. Thus has Satan been made a miracle
+of incongruities. Yet through all these protean shapes there has
+persisted the original characteristic mentioned. He is prosecutor
+and executioner under the divine government, though his office has
+been debased by that mental confusion which, in the East, abhors the
+burner of corpses, and, in the West, regards the public hangman with
+contempt; the abhorrence, in the case of Satan, being intensified
+by the supposition of an overfondness for his work, carried to the
+extent of instigating the offences which will bring him victims.
+
+In a well-known English Roman Catholic book [87] of recent times, there
+is this account of St. Francis' visit to hell in company with the Angel
+Gabriel:--'St. Francis saw that, on the other side of (a certain) soul,
+there was another devil to mock at and reproach it. He said, Remember
+where you are, and where you will be for ever; how short the sin was,
+how long the punishment. It is your own fault; when you committed that
+mortal sin you knew how you would be punished. What a good bargain you
+made to take the pains of eternity in exchange for the sin of a day,
+an hour, a moment. You cry now for your sin, but your crying comes
+too late. You liked bad company; you will find bad company enough
+here. Your father was a drunkard, look at him there drinking red-hot
+fire. You were too idle to go to mass on Sundays; be as idle as you
+like now, for there is no mass to go to. You disobeyed your father,
+but you dare not disobey him who is your father in hell.'
+
+This devil speaks as one carrying out the divine decrees. He
+preaches. He utters from his chasuble of flame the sermons of Father
+Furniss. And, no doubt, wherever belief in Satan is theological, this
+is pretty much the form which he assumes before the mind (or what such
+believers would call their mind, albeit really the mind of some Syrian
+dead these two thousand years). But the Satan popularly personalised
+was man's effort to imagine an enthusiasm of inhumanity. He is the
+necessary appendage to a personalised Omnipotence, whose thoughts are
+not as man's thoughts, but claim to coerce these. His degradation
+reflects the heartlessness and the ingenuity of torture which must
+always represent personal government with its catalogue of fictitious
+crimes. Offences against mere Majesty, against iniquities framed in
+law, must be doubly punished, the thing to be secured being doubly
+weak. Under any theocratic government law and punishment would become
+the types of diabolism. Satan thus has a twofold significance. He
+reports what powerful priesthoods found to be the obstacles to their
+authority; and he reports the character of the priestly despotisms
+which aimed to obstruct human development.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+RELIGIOUS DESPOTISM.
+
+ Pharaoh and Herod--Zoroaster's mother--Ahriman's emissaries--Kansa
+ and Krishna--Emissaries of Kansa--Astyages and Cyrus--Zohák--Bel
+ and the Christian.
+
+
+The Jews had already, when Christ appeared, formed the theory that
+the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, and his resistance to the departure
+of Israel from Egypt, were due to diabolical sorcery. The belief
+afterwards matured; that Edom (Esau or Samaël) was the instigator
+of Roman aggression was steadily forming. The mental conditions
+were therefore favourable to the growth of a belief in the Jewish
+followers of Christ that the hostility to the religious movement
+of their time was another effort on the part of Samaël to crush
+the kingdom of God. Herod was not, indeed, called Satan or Samaël,
+nor was Pharaoh; but the splendour and grandeur of this Idumean
+(the realm of Esau), notwithstanding his oppressions and crimes,
+had made him a fair representative to the people of the supernatural
+power they dreaded. Under these circumstances it was a powerful appeal
+to the sympathies of the Jewish people to invent in connection with
+Herod a myth exactly similar to that associated with Pharaoh,--namely,
+a conspiracy with sorcerers, and consequent massacre of all new-born
+children.
+
+The myths which tell of divine babes supernaturally saved from royal
+hostility are veritable myths, even where they occur so late in
+time that historic names and places are given; for, of course, it is
+impossible that by any natural means either Pharaoh or Herod should be
+aware of the peculiar nature of any particular infant born in their
+dominions. Such traditions, when thus presented in historical guise,
+can only be explained by reference to corresponding fables written out
+in simpler mythic form; while it is especially necessary to remember
+that such corresponding narratives may be of independent ethnical
+origin, and that the later in time may be more primitive spiritually.
+
+In the Legend of Zoroaster [88] his mother Dogdo, previous to his
+birth, has a dream in which she sees a black cloud, which, like
+the wing of some vast bird, hides the sun, and brings on frightful
+darkness. This cloud rains down on her house terrible beasts with
+sharp teeth,--tigers, lions, wolves, rhinoceroses, serpents. One
+monster especially attacks her with great fury, and her unborn babe
+speaks in reassuring terms. A great light rises and the beasts fall. A
+beautiful youth appears, hurls a book at the Devas (Devils), and they
+fly, with exception of three,--a wolf, a lion, and a tiger. These,
+however, the youth drives away with a luminous horn. He then replaces
+the holy infant in the womb, and says to the mother: 'Fear nothing! The
+King of Heaven protects this infant. The earth waits for him. He is
+the prophet whom Ormuzd sends to his people: his law will fill the
+world with joy: he will make the lion and the lamb drink in the same
+place. Fear not these ferocious beasts; why should he whom Ormuzd
+preserves fear the enmity of the whole world?' With these words
+the youth vanished, and Dogdo awoke. Repairing to an interpreter,
+she was told that the Horn meant the grandeur of Ormuzd; the Book
+was the Avesta; the three Beasts betokened three powerful enemies.
+
+Zoroaster was born laughing. This prodigy being noised abroad, the
+Magicians became alarmed, and sought to slay the child. One of them
+raised a sword to strike him, but his arm fell to the ground. The
+Magicians bore the child to the desert, kindled a fire and threw him
+into it, but his mother afterwards found him sleeping tranquilly and
+unharmed in the flames. Next he was thrown in front of a drove of
+cows and bulls, but the fiercest of the bulls stood carefully over
+the child and protected him. The Magicians killed all the young of
+a pack of wolves, and then cast the infant Zoroaster to them that
+they might vent their rage upon him, but the mouths of the wolves
+were shut. They abandoned the child on a lonely mountain, but two
+ewes came and suckled him.
+
+Zoroaster's father respected the ministers of the Devas (Magi),
+but his child rebuked him. Zoroaster walked on the water (crossing
+a great river where was no bridge) on his way to Mount Iran where he
+was to receive the Law. It was then he had the vision of the battle
+between the two serpent armies,--the white and black adders, the
+former, from the South, conquering the latter, which had come from
+the North to destroy him.
+
+The Legend of the Infant Krishna is as follows:--The tyrant Kansa,
+having given his sister Devaki in marriage to Vasudéva, as he was
+returning from the wedding heard a voice declare, 'The eighth son of
+Devaki is destined to be thy destroyer.' Alarmed at this, Kansa cast
+his sister and her husband into a prison with seven iron doors, and
+whenever a son was born he caused it to be instantly destroyed. When
+Devaki became pregnant the eighth time, Brahma and Siva, with attending
+Devas, appeared and sang: 'O favoured among women! in thy delivery all
+nature shall have cause to exult! How ardently we long to behold that
+face for the sake of which we have coursed round three worlds!' When
+Krishna was born a chorus of celestial spirits saluted him; the room
+was illumined with supernatural light. While Devaki was weeping at the
+fatal decree of Kansa that her son should be destroyed, a voice was
+heard by Vasudéva saying: 'Son of Yadu, carry this child to Gokul,
+on the other side of the river Jumna, to Nauda, whose wife has just
+given birth to a daughter. Leave him and bring the girl hither.' At
+this the seven doors swung open, deep sleep fell on the guards,
+and Vasudéva went forth with the holy infant in his arms. The river
+Jumna was swollen, but the waters, having kissed the feet of Krishna,
+retired on either side, opening a pathway. The great serpent of
+Vishnu held its hood over this new incarnation of its Lord. Beside
+sleeping Nauda and his wife the daughter was replaced by the son,
+who was named Krishna, the Dark.
+
+When all this had happened a voice came to Kansa saying: 'The boy
+destined to destroy thee is born, and is now living.' Whereupon Kansa
+ordered all the male children in his kingdom to be destroyed. This
+being ineffectual, the whereabouts of Krishna were discovered; but the
+messenger who was sent to destroy the child beheld its image in the
+water and adored it. The Rakshasas worked in the interest of Kansa. One
+approached the divine child in shape of a monstrous bull whose head
+he wrung off; and he so burned in the stomach of a crocodile which
+had swallowed him that the monster cast him from his mouth unharmed.
+
+Finally, as a youth, Krishna, after living some time as a herdsman,
+attacked the tyrant Kansa, tore the crown from his head, and dragged
+him by his hair a long way; with the curious result that Kansa became
+liberated from the three worlds, such virtue had long thinking about
+the incarnate one, even in enmity!
+
+The divine beings represented in these legends find their complement
+in the fabulous history of Cyrus; and the hostile powers which
+sought their destruction are represented in demonology by the Persian
+tyrant-devil Zohák. The name of Astyages, the grandfather of Cyrus,
+has been satisfactorily traced to Ashdahák, and Ajis Daháka, the
+'biting snake.' The word thus connects him with Vedic Ahi and with
+Iranian Zohák, the tyrant out of whose shoulders a magician evoked
+two serpents which adhered to him and became at once his familiars and
+the arms of his cruelty. As Astyages, the last king of Media, he had
+a dream that the offspring of his daughter Mandane would reign over
+Asia. He gave her in marriage to Cambyses, and when she bore a child
+(Cyrus), committed it to his minister Harpagus to be slain. Harpagus,
+however, moved with pity, gave it to a herdsman of Astyages, who
+substituted for it a still-born child, and having so satisfied the
+tyrant of its death, reared Cyrus as his own son.
+
+The luminous Horn of the Zoroastrian legend and the diabolism
+of Zohák are both recalled in the Book of Daniel (viii.) in the
+terrific struggle of the ram and the he-goat. The he-goat, ancient
+symbol of hairy Esau, long idealised into the Invisible Foe of
+Israel, had become associated also with Babylon and with Nimrod
+its founder, the Semitic Zohák. But Bel, conqueror of the Dragon,
+was the founder of Babylon, and to Jewish eyes the Dragon was his
+familiar; to the Jews he represented the tyranny and idolatry of
+Nimrod, the two serpents of Zohák. When Cyrus supplanted Astyages,
+this was the idol he found the Babylonians worshipping until Daniel
+destroyed it. And so, it would appear, came about the fact that to
+the Jews the power of Christendom came to be represented as the Reign
+of Bel. One can hardly wonder at that. If ever there were cruelty
+and oppression passing beyond the limit of mere human capacities, it
+has been recorded in the tragical history of Jewish sufferings. The
+disbeliever in præternatural powers of evil can no less than others
+recognise in this 'Bel and the Christian,' which the Jews substituted
+for 'Bel and the Dragon,' the real archfiend--Superstition, turning
+human hearts to stone when to stony gods they sacrifice their own
+humanity and the welfare of mankind.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+THE PRINCE OF THIS WORLD.
+
+ Temptations--Birth of Buddha--Mara--Temptation of power--Asceticism
+ and Luxury--Mara's menaces--Appearance of the Buddha's
+ Vindicator--Ahriman tempts Zoroaster--Satan and Christ--Criticism
+ of Strauss--Jewish traditions--Hunger--Variants.
+
+
+The Devil, having shown Jesus all the kingdoms of this world, said,
+'All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is
+delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will I give it,' The theory
+thus announced is as a vast formation underlying many religions. As
+every religion begins as an ideal, it must find itself in antagonism
+to the world at large; and since the social and political world
+are themselves, so long as they last, the outcome of nature, it is
+inevitable that in primitive times the earth should be regarded as a
+Satanic realm, and the divine world pictured elsewhere. A legitimate
+result of this conclusion is asceticism, and belief in the wickedness
+of earthly enjoyments. To men of great intellectual powers, generally
+accompanied as they are with keen susceptibilities of enjoyment and
+strong sympathies, the renunciation of this world must be as a living
+burial. To men who, amid the corruptions of the world, feel within them
+the power to strike in with effect, or who, seeing 'with how little
+wisdom the world is governed,' are stirred by the sense of power, the
+struggle against the temptation to lead in the kingdoms of this world
+is necessarily severe. Thus simple is the sense of those temptations
+which make the almost invariable ordeal of the traditional founders
+of religions. As in earlier times the god won his spurs, so to say,
+by conquering some monstrous beast, the saint or saviour must have
+overcome some potent many-headed world, with gems for scales and
+double-tongue, coiling round the earth, and thence, like Lilith's
+golden hair, round the heart of all surrendered to its seductions.
+
+It is remarkable to note the contrast between the visible and
+invisible worlds which surrounded the spiritual pilgrimage of Sakya
+Muni to Buddhahood or enlightenment. At his birth there is no trace
+of political hostility: the cruel Kansa, Herod, Magicians seeking to
+destroy, are replaced by the affectionate force of a king trying to
+retain his son. The universal traditions reach their happy height in
+the ecstatic gospels of the Siamese. [89] The universe was illumined;
+all jewels shown with unwonted lustre; the air was full of music;
+all pain ceased; the blind saw, the deaf heard; the birds paused
+in their flight; all trees and plants burst into bloom, and lotus
+flowers appeared in every place. Not under the dominion of Mara [90]
+was this beautiful world. But by turning from all its youth, health,
+and life, to think only of its decrepitude, illness, and death, the
+Prince Sakya Muni surrounded himself with another world in which Mara
+had his share of power. I condense here the accounts of his encounters
+with the Prince, who was on his way to be a hermit.
+
+When the Prince passed out at the palace gates, the king Mara,
+knowing that the youth was passing beyond his evil power, determined
+to prevent him. Descending from his abode and floating in the air,
+Mara cried, 'Lord, thou art capable of such vast endurance, go not
+forth to adopt a religious life, but return to thy kingdom, and in
+seven days thou shalt become an emperor of the world, ruling over
+the four great continents.' 'Take heed, O Mara!' replied the Prince;
+'I also know that in seven days I might gain universal empire, but
+I have no desire for such possessions. I know that the pursuit of
+religion is better than the empire of the world. See how the world
+is moved, and quakes with praise of this my entry on a religious
+life! I shall attain the glorious omniscience, and shall teach the
+wheel of the law, that all teachable beings may free themselves from
+transmigratory existence. You, thinking only of the lusts of the flesh,
+would force me to leave all beings to wander without guide into your
+power. Avaunt! get thee away far from me!'
+
+Mara withdrew, but only to watch for another opportunity. It came when
+the Prince had reduced himself to emaciation and agony by the severest
+austerities. Then Mara presented himself, and pretending compassion,
+said, 'Beware, O grand Being! Your state is pitiable to look on; you
+are attenuated beyond measure, and your skin, that was of the colour of
+gold, is dark and discoloured. You are practising this mortification
+in vain. I can see that you will not live through it. You, who are a
+Grand Being, had better give up this course, for be assured you will
+derive much more advantage from sacrifices of fire and flowers.' Him
+the Grand Being indignantly answered, 'Hearken, thou vile and wicked
+Mara! Thy words suit not the time. Think not to deceive me, for I
+heed thee not. Thou mayest mislead those who have no understanding,
+but I, who have virtue, endurance, and intelligence, who know what
+is good and what is evil, cannot be so misled. Thou, O Mara! hast
+eight generals. Thy first is delight in the five lusts of the flesh,
+which are the pleasures of appearance, sound, scent, flavour, and
+touch. Thy second general is wrath, who takes the form of vexation,
+indignation, and desire to injure. Thy third is concupiscence. Thy
+fourth is desire. Thy fifth is impudence. Thy sixth is arrogance. Thy
+seventh is doubt. And thine eighth is ingratitude. These are thy
+generals, who cannot be escaped by those whose hearts are set on
+honour and wealth. But I know that he who can contend with these thy
+generals shall escape beyond all sorrow, and enjoy the most glorious
+happiness. Therefore I have not ceased to practise mortification,
+knowing that even were I to die whilst thus engaged, it would be a
+most excellent thing.'
+
+It is added that Mara 'fled in confusion,' but the next incident
+seems to show that his suggestion was not unheeded; for 'after he
+had departed,' the Grand Being had his vision of the three-stringed
+guitar--one string drawn too tightly, the second too loosely, the third
+moderately--which last, somewhat in defiance of orchestral ideas,
+alone gave sweet music, and taught him that moderation was better
+than excess or laxity. By eating enough he gained that pristine
+strength and beauty which offended the five Brahmans so that they
+left him. The third and final effort of Mara immediately preceded
+the Prince's attainment of the order of Buddha under the Bo-tree. He
+now sent his three daughters, Raka (Love), Aradi (Anger), Tanha
+(Desire). Beautifully bedecked they approached him, and Raka said,
+'Lord, fearest thou not death?' But he drove her away. The two others
+also he drove away as they had no charm of sufficient power to entice
+him. Then Mara assembled his generals, and said, 'Listen, ye Maras,
+that know not sorrow! Now shall I make war on the Prince, that man
+without equal. I dare not attack him in face, but I will circumvent
+him by approaching on the north side. Assume then all manner of shapes,
+and use your mightiest powers, that he may flee in terror.'
+
+Having taken on fearful shapes, raising awful sounds, headed by
+Mara himself, who had assumed immense size, and mounted his elephant
+Girimaga, a thousand miles in height, they advanced; but they dare not
+enter beneath the shade of the holy Bo-tree. They frightened away,
+however, the Lord's guardian angels, and he was left alone. Then
+seeing the army approaching from the north, he reflected, 'Long have I
+devoted myself to a life of mortification, and now I am alone, without
+a friend to aid me in this contest. Yet may I escape the Maras,
+for the virtue of my transcendent merits will be my army.' 'Help
+me,' he cried, 'ye thirty Barami! ye powers of accumulated merit,
+ye powers of Almsgiving, Morality, Relinquishment, Wisdom, Fortitude,
+Patience, Truth, Determination, Charity, and Equanimity, help me in
+my fight with Mara!' The Lord was seated on his jewelled throne (the
+same that had been formed of the grass on which he sat), and Mara
+with his army exhausted every resource of terror--monstrous beasts,
+rain of missiles and burning ashes, gales that blew down mountain
+peaks--to inspire him with fear; but all in vain! Nay, the burning
+ashes were changed to flowers as they fell.
+
+'Come down from thy throne,' shouted the evil-formed one; 'come down,
+or I will cut thine heart into atoms!' The Lord replied, 'This jewelled
+throne was created by the power of my merits, for I am he who will
+teach all men the remedy for death, who will redeem all beings,
+and set them free from the sorrows of circling existence.'
+
+Mara then claimed that the throne belonged to himself, and had been
+created by his own merits; and on this armed himself with the Chakkra,
+the irresistible weapon of Indra, and Wheel of the Law. Yet Buddha
+answered, 'By the thirty virtues of transcendent merits, and the five
+alms, I have obtained the throne. Thou, in saying that this throne
+was created by thy merits, tellest an untruth, for indeed there is
+no throne for a sinful, horrible being such as thou art.'
+
+Then furious Mara hurled the Chakkra, which clove mountains in its
+course, but could not pass a canopy of flowers which rose over the
+Lord's head.
+
+And now the great Being asked Mara for the witnesses of his acts of
+merit by virtue of which he claimed the throne. In response, Mara's
+generals all bore him witness. Then Mara challenged him, 'Tell me now,
+where is the man that can bear witness for thee?' The Lord reflected,
+'Truly here is no man to bear me witness, but I will call on the earth
+itself, though it has neither spirit nor understanding, and it shall
+be my witness.' Stretching forth his hand, he thus invoked the earth:
+'O holy Earth! I who have attained the thirty powers of virtue,
+and performed the five great alms, each time that I have performed a
+great act have not failed to pour water on thee. Now that I have no
+other witness, I call upon thee to give thy testimony!'
+
+The angel of the earth appeared in shape of a lovely woman, and
+answered, 'O Being more excellent than angels or men! it is true
+that, when you performed your great works, you ever poured water on
+my hair.' And with these words she wrung her long hair, and from it
+issued a stream, a torrent, a flood, in which Mara and his hosts were
+overturned, their insignia destroyed, and King Mara put to flight,
+amid the loud rejoicings of angels.
+
+Then the evil one and his generals were conquered not only in power but
+in heart; and Mara, raising his thousand arms, paid reverence, saying,
+'Homage to the Lord, who has subdued his body even as a charioteer
+breaks his horses to his use! The Lord will become the omniscient
+Buddha, the Teacher of angels, and Brahmas, and Yakkhas (demons),
+and men. He will confound all Maras, and rescue men from the whirl
+of transmigration!'
+
+The menacing powers depicted as assailing Sakya Muni appear only
+around the infancy of Zoroaster. The interview of the latter with
+Ahriman hardly amounts to a severe trial, but still the accent of
+the chief temptation both of Buddha and Christ is in it, namely,
+the promise of worldly empire. It was on one of those midnight
+journeys through Heaven and Hell that Zoroaster saw Ahriman, and
+delivered from his power 'one who had done both good and evil.' [91]
+When Ahriman met Zoroaster's gaze, he cried, 'Quit thou the pure law;
+cast it to the ground; thou wilt then be in the world all that thou
+canst desire. Be not anxious about thy end. At least, do not destroy
+my subjects, O pure Zoroaster, son of Poroscharp, who art born of
+her thou hast borne!' Zoroaster answered, 'Wicked Majesty! it is for
+thee and thy worshippers that Hell is prepared, but by the mercy of
+God I shall bury your work with shame and ignominy.'
+
+In the account of Matthew, Satan begins his temptation of Jesus in
+the same way and amid similar circumstances to those we find in the
+Siamese legends of Buddha. It occurs in a wilderness, and the appeal
+is to hunger. The temptation of Buddha, in which Mara promises the
+empire of the world, is also repeated in the case of Satan and Jesus
+(Fig. 6). The menaces, however, in this case, are relegated to the
+infancy, and the lustful temptation is absent altogether. Mark has an
+allusion to his being in the wilderness forty days 'with the beasts,'
+which may mean that Satan 'drove' him into a region of danger to
+inspire fear. In Luke we have the remarkable claim of Satan that
+the authority over the world has been delivered to himself, and he
+gives it to whom he will; which Jesus does not deny, as Buddha did
+the similar claim of Mara. As in the case of Buddha, the temptation
+of Jesus ends his fasting; angels bring him food (diêkonoun aytô
+probably means that), and thenceforth he eats and drinks, to the
+scandal of the ascetics.
+
+The essential addition in the case of Jesus is the notable temptation
+to try and perform a crucial act. Satan quotes an accredited messianic
+prophecy, and invites Jesus to test his claim to be the predicted
+deliverer by casting himself from the pinnacle of the Temple,
+and testing the promise that angels should protect the true Son
+of God. Strauss, [92] as it appears to me, has not considered the
+importance of this in connection with the general situation. 'Assent,'
+he says, 'cannot be withheld from the canon that, to be credible,
+the narrative must ascribe nothing to the devil inconsistent with his
+established cunning. Now, the first temptation, appealing to hunger,
+we grant, is not ill-conceived; if this were ineffectual, the devil,
+as an artful tactician, should have had a yet more alluring temptation
+at hand; but instead of this, we find him, in Matthew, proposing to
+Jesus the neck-breaking feat of casting himself down from the pinnacle
+of the Temple--a far less inviting miracle than the metamorphosis of
+the stones. This proposition finding no acceptance, there follows,
+as a crowning effort, a suggestion which, whatever might be the bribe,
+every true Israelite would instantly reject with abhorrence--to fall
+down and worship the devil.'
+
+Not so! The scapegoat was a perpetual act of worship to the Devil. In
+this story of the temptation of Christ there enter some characteristic
+elements of the temptation of Job. [93] Uz in the one case and the
+wilderness in the other mean morally the same, the region ruled over
+by Azazel. In both cases the trial is under divine direction. And
+the trial is in both cases to secure a division of worship between
+the good and evil powers, which was so universal in the East that
+it was the test of exceptional piety if one did not swerve from
+an unmixed sacrifice. Jesus is apparently abandoned by the God in
+whom he trusted; he is 'driven' into a wilderness, and there kept
+with the beasts and without food. The Devil alone comes to him;
+exhibits his own miraculous power by bearing him through the air to
+his own Mount Seir, and showing him the whole world in a moment of
+time; and now says to him, as it were, 'Try your God! See if he will
+even turn stones into bread to save his own son, to whom I offer the
+kingdoms of the world!' Then bearing him into the 'holy hill' of his
+own God--the pinnacle of the Temple--says, 'Try now a leap, and see
+if he saves from being dashed to pieces, even in his own precincts,
+his so trustful devotee, whom I have borne aloft so safely! Which,
+then, has the greater power to protect, enrich, advance you,--he who
+has left you out here to starve, so that you dare not trust yourself to
+him, or I? Fall down then and worship me as your God, and all the world
+is yours! It is the world you are to reign over: rule it in my name!
+
+When St. Anthony is tempted by the Devil in the form of a lean monk,
+it was easy to see that the hermit was troubled with a vision of his
+own emaciation. When the Devil appears to Luther under guise of a holy
+monk, it is an obvious explanation that he was impressed by a memory
+of the holy brothers who still remained in the Church, and who, while
+they implored his return, pointed out the strength and influence he had
+lost by secession. Equally simple are the moral elements in the story
+of Christ's temptation. While a member of John's ascetic community,
+for which 'though he was rich he became poor,' hunger, and such
+anxiety about a living as victimises many a young thinker now, must
+have assailed him. Later on his Devil meets him on the Temple, quotes
+scripture, and warns him that his visionary God will not raise him so
+high in the Church as the Prince of this World can. [94] And finally,
+when dreams of a larger union, including Jews and Gentiles, visited
+him, the power that might be gained by connivance with universal
+idolatry would be reflected in the offer of the kingdoms of the world
+in payment for the purity of his aims and singleness of his worship.
+
+That these trials of self-truthfulness and fidelity, occurring
+at various phases of life, would be recognised, is certain. A
+youth of high position, as Christ probably was, [95] or even one
+with that great power over the people which all concede, was, in a
+worldly sense, 'throwing away his prospects;' and this voice, real
+in its time, would naturally be conventionalised. It would put on
+the stock costume of devils and angels; and among Jewish christians
+it would naturally be associated with the forty-days' fast of Moses
+(Exod. xxxiv. 28; Deut. ix. 9), and that of Elias (1 Kings xix. 8),
+and the forty-years' trial of Israel in the wilderness. Among Greek
+christians some traces of the legend of Herakles in his seclusion as
+herdsman, or at the cross-roads between Vice and Virtue, might enter;
+and it is not impossible that some touches might be added from the
+Oriental myth which invested Buddha.
+
+However this may be, we may with certainty repair to the common
+source of all such myths in the higher nature of man, and recognise
+the power of a pure genius to overcome those temptations to a success
+unworthy of itself. We may interpret all such legends with a clearness
+proportioned to the sacrifices we have made for truth and ideal right;
+and the endless perplexities of commentators and theologians about
+the impossible outward details of the New Testament story are simple
+confessions that the great spirit so tried is now made to label with
+his name his own Tempter--namely, a Church grown powerful and wealthy,
+which, as the Prince of this World, bribes the conscience and tempts
+away the talent necessary to the progress of mankind.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+TRIAL OF THE GREAT.
+
+ A 'Morality' at Tours--The 'St. Anthony' of Spagnoletto--Bunyan's
+ Pilgrim--Milton on Christ's Temptation--An Edinburgh saint and
+ Unitarian fiend--A haunted Jewess--Conversion by fever--Limit of
+ courage--Woman and sorcery--Luther and the Devil--The ink-spot at
+ Wartburg--Carlyle's interpretation--The cowled devil--Carlyle's
+ trial--In Rue St. Thomas d'Enfer--The Everlasting No--Devil of
+ Vauvert--The latter-day conflict--New conditions--The Victory of
+ Man--The Scholar and the World.
+
+
+A representation of the Temptation of St. Anthony (marionettes), which
+I witnessed at Tours (1878), had several points of significance. It
+was the mediæval 'Morality' as diminished by centuries, and
+conventionalised among those whom the centuries mould in ways and
+for ends they know not. Amid a scenery of grotesque devils, rudely
+copied from Callot, St. Anthony appeared, and was tempted in a way
+that recalled the old pictures. There was the same fair Temptress, in
+this case the wife of Satan, who warns her lord that his ugly devils
+will be of no avail against Anthony, and that the whole affair should
+be confided to her. She being repelled, the rest of the performance
+consisted in the devils continually ringing the bell of the hermitage,
+and finally setting fire to it. This conflagration was the supreme
+torment of Anthony--and, sooth to say, it was a fairly comfortable
+abode--who utters piteous prayers and is presently comforted by an
+angel bringing him wreaths of evergreen.
+
+The prayers of the saint and the response of the angel were meant to
+be seriously taken; but their pathos was generally met with pardonable
+laughter by the crowd in the booth. Yet there was a pathos about it
+all, if only this, that the only temptations thought of for a saint
+were a sound and quiet house and a mistress. The bell-noise alone
+remained from the great picture of Spagnoletto at Siena, where the
+unsheltered old man raises his deprecating hand against the disturber,
+but not his eyes from the book he reads. In Spagnoletto's picture
+there are five large books, pen, ink, and hour-glass; but there is
+neither hermitage to be burnt nor female charms to be resisted.
+
+But Spagnoletto, even in his time, was beholding the vision of
+exceptional men in the past, whose hunger and thirst was for knowledge,
+truth, and culture, and who sought these in solitude. Such men have
+so long left the Church familiar to the French peasantry that any
+representation of their temptations and trials would be out of place
+among the marionettes. The bells which now disturb them are those
+that sound from steeples.
+
+Another picture loomed up before my eyes over the puppet performance at
+Tours, that which for Bunyan frescoed the walls of Bedford Gaol. There,
+too, the old demons, giants, and devils took on grave and vast forms,
+and reflected the trials of the Great Hearts who withstood the Popes
+and Pagans, the armed political Apollyons and the Giant Despairs,
+who could make prisons the hermitages of men born to be saviours of
+the people.
+
+Such were the temptations that Milton knew; from his own heart
+came the pigments with which he painted the trial of Christ in the
+wilderness. 'Set women in his eye,' said Belial:--
+
+
+ Women, when nothing else, beguiled the heart
+ Of wisest Solomon, and made him build,
+ And made him bow to the gods of his wives.
+ To whom quick answer Satan thus returned.
+ Belial, in much uneven scale thou weigh'st
+ All others by thyself....
+ But he whom we attempt is wiser far
+ Than Solomon, of more exalted mind,
+ Made and set wholly on the accomplishment
+ Of greatest things....
+ Therefore with manlier objects we must try
+ His constancy, with such as have more show
+ Of worth, of honour, glory, and popular praise;
+ Rocks whereon greatest men have oftest wrecked. [96]
+
+
+The progressive ideas which Milton attributed to Satan have not
+failed. That Celestial City which Bunyan found it so hard to reach
+has now become a metropolis of wealth and fashion, and the trials
+which once beset pilgrims toiling towards it are now transferred
+to those who would pass beyond it to another city, seen from afar,
+with temples of Reason and palaces of Justice.
+
+The old phantasms have shrunk to puppets. The trials by personal
+devils are relegated to the regions of insanity and disease. It is
+everywhere a dance of puppets though on a cerebral stage. A lady well
+known in Edinburgh related to me a terrible experience she had with
+the devil. She had invited some of her relations to visit her for some
+days; but these relatives were Unitarians, and, after they had gone,
+having entered the room which they had occupied, she was seized by
+the devil, thrown on the floor, and her back so strained that she had
+to keep her bed for some time. This was to her 'the Unitarian fiend'
+of which the Wesleyan Hymn-Book sang so long; but even the Wesleyans
+have now discarded the famous couplet, and there must be few who would
+not recognise that the old lady at Edinburgh merely had a tottering
+body representing a failing mind.
+
+I have just read a book in which a lady in America relates her trial
+by the devil. This lady, in her girlhood, was of a christian family,
+but she married a rabbi and was baptized into Judaism. After some years
+of happy life a terrible compunction seized her; she imagined herself
+lost for ever; she became ill. A christian (Baptist) minister and
+his wife were the evil stars in her case, and with what terrors they
+surrounded the poor Jewess may be gathered from the following extract.
+
+'She then left me--that dear friend left me alone to my God, and to
+him I carried a lacerated and bleeding heart, and laid it at the foot
+of the cross, as an atonement for the multiplied sins I had committed,
+whether of ignorance or wilfulness; and how shall I proceed to portray
+the heart-felt agonies of that night preceding my deliverance from
+the shafts of Satan? Oh! this weight, this load of sin, this burden
+so intolerable that it crushed me to the earth; for this was a
+dark hour with me--the darkest; and I lay calm, to all appearance,
+but with cold perspiration drenching me, nor could I close my eyes;
+and these words again smote my ear, No redemption, no redemption; and
+the tempter came, inviting me, with all his blandishment and power,
+to follow him to his court of pleasure. My eyes were open; I certainly
+saw him, dressed in the most phantastic shape. This was no illusion;
+for he soon assumed the appearance of one of the gay throng I had
+mingled with in former days, and beckoned me to follow. I was awake,
+and seemed to lie on the brink of a chasm, and spirits were dancing
+around me, and I made some slight outcry, and those dear girls watching
+with me came to me, and looked at me. They said I looked at them but
+could not speak, and they moistened my lips, and said I was nearly
+gone; then I whispered, and they came and looked at me again, but
+would not disturb me. It was well they did not; for the power of God
+was over me, and angels were around me, and whispering spirits near,
+and I whispered in sweet communion with them, as they surrounded me,
+and, pointing to the throne of grace, said, 'Behold!' and I felt that
+the glory of God was about to manifest itself; for a shout, as if a
+choir of angels had tuned their golden harps, burst forth in, 'Glory
+to God on high,' and died away in softest strains of melody. I lifted
+up my eyes to heaven, and there, so near as to be almost within my
+reach, the brightest vision of our Lord and Saviour stood before me,
+enveloped with a light, ethereal mist, so bright and yet transparent
+that his divine figure could be seen distinctly, and my eyes were
+riveted upon him; for this bright vision seemed to touch my bed,
+standing at the foot, so near, and he stretched forth his left hand
+toward me, whilst with the right one he pointed to the throne of grace,
+and a voice came, saying, 'Blessed are they who can see God; arise,
+take up thy cross and follow me; for though thy sins be as scarlet
+they shall be white as wool.' And with my eyes fixed on that bright
+vision, I saw from the hand stretched toward me great drops of blood,
+as if from each finger; for his blessed hand was spread open, as if
+in prayer, and those drops fell distinctly, as if upon the earth;
+and a misty light encircled me, and a voice again said, 'Take up thy
+cross and follow me; for though thy sins be as scarlet they shall be
+white as wool.' And angels were all around me, and I saw the throne
+of heaven. And, oh! the sweet calm that stole over my senses. It
+must have been a foretaste of heavenly bliss. How long I lay after
+this beautiful vision I know not; but when I opened my eyes it was
+early dawn, and I felt so happy and well. My young friends pressed
+around my bedside, to know how I felt, and I said, 'I am well and so
+happy.' They then said I was whispering with some one in my dreams
+all night. I told them angels were with me; that I was not asleep,
+and I had sweet communion with them, and would soon be well.' [97]
+
+That is what the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness comes to when
+dislocated from its time and place, and, with its gathered ages of
+fable, is imported at last to be an engine of torture sprung on the
+nerves of a devout woman. This Jewess was divorced from her husband
+by her Christianity; her child died a victim to precocious piety;
+but what were home and affection in ruins compared with salvation
+from that frightful devil seen in her holy delirium?
+
+History shows that it has always required unusual courage for a human
+being to confront an enemy believed to be præternatural. This Jewess
+would probably have been able to face a tiger for the sake of her
+husband, but not that fantastic devil. Not long ago an English actor
+was criticised because, in playing Hamlet, he cowered with fear on
+seeing the ghost, all his sinews and joints seeming to give way;
+but to me he appeared then the perfect type of what mankind have
+always been when believing themselves in the presence of præternatural
+powers. The limit of courage in human nature was passed when the foe
+was one which no earthly power or weapon could reach.
+
+In old times, nearly all the sorcerers and witches were women; and
+it may have been, in some part, because woman had more real courage
+than man unarmed. Sorcery and witchcraft were but the so-called
+pagan rites in their last degradation, and women were the last to
+abandon the declining religion, just as they are the last to leave
+the superstition which has followed it. Their sentiment and affection
+were intertwined with it, and the threats of eternal torture by devils
+which frightened men from the old faith to the new were less powerful
+to shake the faith of women. When pagan priests became christians,
+priestesses remained, to become sorceresses. The new faith had
+gradually to win the love of the sex too used to martyrdom on earth
+to fear it much in hell. And now, again, when knowledge clears away
+the old terrors, and many men are growing indifferent to all religion,
+because no longer frightened by it, we may expect the churches to be
+increasingly kept up by women alone, simply because they went into them
+more by attraction of saintly ideals than fear of diabolical menaces.
+
+Thomas Carlyle has selected Luther's boldness in the presence of what
+he believed the Devil to illustrate his valour. 'His defiance of the
+'Devils' in Worms,' says Carlyle, 'was not a mere boast, as the like
+might be if spoken now. It was a faith of Luther's that there were
+Devils, spiritual denizens of the Pit, continually besetting men. Many
+times, in his writings, this turns up; and a most small sneer has
+been grounded on it by some. In the room of the Wartburg, where he sat
+translating the Bible, they still show you a black spot on the wall;
+the strange memorial of one of these conflicts. Luther sat translating
+one of the Psalms; he was worn down with long labour, with sickness,
+abstinence from food; there rose before him some hideous indefinable
+Image, which he took for the Evil One, to forbid his work; Luther
+started up with fiend-defiance; flung his inkstand at the spectre,
+and it disappeared! The spot still remains there; a curious monument
+of several things. Any apothecary's apprentice can now tell us what we
+are to think of this apparition, in a scientific sense; but the man's
+heart that dare rise defiant, face to face, against Hell itself, can
+give no higher proof of fearlessness. The thing he will quail before
+exists not on this earth nor under it--fearless enough! 'The Devil
+is aware,' writes he on one occasion, 'that this does not proceed
+out of fear in me. I have seen and defied innumerable Devils. Duke
+George,'--of Leipzig, a great enemy of his,--'Duke George is not equal
+to one Devil,' far short of a Devil! 'If I had business at Leipzig,
+I would ride into Leipzig, though it rained Duke Georges for nine
+days running.' What a reservoir of Dukes to ride into!' [98]
+
+Although Luther's courage certainly appears in this, it is plain that
+his Devil was much humanised as compared with the fearful phantoms
+of an earlier time. Nobody would ever have tried an inkstand on the
+Gorgons, Furies, Lucifers of ancient belief. In Luther's Bible the
+Devil is pictured as a monk--a lean monk, such as he himself was only
+too likely to become if he continued his rebellion against the Church
+(Fig. 17). It was against a Devil liable to resistance by physical
+force that he hurled his inkstand, and against whom he also hurled
+the contents of his inkstand in those words which Richter said were
+half-battles.
+
+Luther's Devil, in fact, represents one of the last phases in
+the reduction of the Evil Power from a personified phantom with
+which no man could cope, to that impersonal but all the more real
+moral obstruction with which every man can cope--if only with
+an inkstand. The horned monster with cowl, beads, and cross, is a
+mere transparency, through which every brave heart may recognise the
+practical power of wrong around him, the established error, disguised
+as religion, which is able to tempt and threaten him.
+
+The temptations with menace described--those which, coming upon
+the weak nerves of women, vanquished their reason and heart; that
+which, in a healthy man, raised valour and power--may be taken as
+side-lights for a corresponding experience in the life of a great
+man now living--Carlyle himself. It was at a period of youth when,
+amid the lonely hills of Scotland, he wandered out of harmony with the
+world in which he lived. Consecrated by pious parents to the ministry,
+he had inwardly renounced every dogma of the Church. With genius and
+culture for high work, the world demanded of him low work. Friendless,
+alone, poor, he sat eating his heart, probably with little else to
+eat. Every Scotch parson he met unconsciously propounded to that youth
+the question whether he could convert his heretical stone into bread,
+or precipitate himself from the pinnacle of the Scotch Kirk without
+bruises? Then it was he roamed in his mystical wilderness, until he
+found himself in the gayest capital of the world, which, however,
+on him had little to bestow but a further sense of loneliness.
+
+'Now, when I look back, it was a strange isolation I then lived
+in. The men and women around me, even speaking with me, were but
+Figures; I had practically forgotten that they were alive, that they
+were not merely automatic. In the midst of their crowded streets and
+assemblages, I walked solitary; and (except as it was my own heart,
+not another's, that I kept devouring) savage also, as is the tiger in
+his jungle. Some comfort it would have been, could I, like a Faust,
+have fancied myself tempted and tormented of a Devil; for a Hell,
+as I imagine, without Life, though only diabolic Life, were more
+frightful: but in our age of Downpulling and Disbelief, the very Devil
+has been pulled down--you cannot so much as believe in a Devil. To
+me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even
+of Hostility: it was one huge, dead, immeasurable, Steam-engine,
+rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb. Oh,
+the vast gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death! Why was the
+Living banished thither, companionless, conscious? Why, if there is
+no Devil; nay, unless the Devil is your God?' ...
+
+'From suicide a certain aftershine of Christianity withheld me.' ...
+
+'So had it lasted, as in bitter, protracted Death-agony, through
+long years. The heart within me, unvisited by any heavenly dewdrop,
+was smouldering in sulphurous, slow-consuming fire. Almost since
+earliest memory I had shed no tear; or once only when I, murmuring
+half-audibly, recited Faust's Deathsong, that wild Selig der den er
+im Siegesglanze findet (Happy whom he finds in Battle's splendour),
+and thought that of this last Friend even I was not forsaken, that
+Destiny itself could not doom me not to die. Having no hope, neither
+had I any definite fear, were it of Man or of Devil; nay, I often
+felt as if it might be solacing could the Arch-Devil himself, though
+in Tartarean terrors, rise to me that I might tell him a little of my
+mind. And yet, strangely enough, I lived in a continual, indefinite,
+pining fear; tremulous, pusillanimous, apprehensive of I knew not what;
+it seemed as if all things in the Heavens above and the Earth beneath
+would hurt me; as if the Heavens and the Earth were but boundless jaws
+of a devouring monster, wherein I, palpitating, waited to be devoured.
+
+'Full of such humour, and perhaps the miserablest man in the whole
+French Capital or Suburbs, was I, one sultry Dogday, after much
+perambulation, toiling along the dirty little Rue Sainte Thomas
+de l'Enfer, among civic rubbish enough, in a close atmosphere, and
+over pavements hot as Nebuchadnezzar's Furnace; whereby doubtless my
+spirits were little cheered; when all at once there rose a Thought
+in me, and I asked myself, 'What art thou afraid of? Wherefore, like
+a coward, dost thou for ever pip and whimper, and go cowering and
+trembling? Despicable biped! what is the sum-total of the worst that
+lies before thee? Death? Well, Death; and say the pangs of Tophet too,
+and all that the Devil or Man may, will, or can do against thee! Hast
+thou not a heart; canst thou not suffer whatsoever it be; and, as a
+Child of Freedom, though outcast, trample Tophet itself under thy feet,
+while it consumes thee! Let it come, then; I will meet it and defy
+it!' And as I so thought, there rushed like a stream of fire over my
+whole soul; and I shook base Fear away from me for ever. I was strong,
+of unknown strength; a spirit, almost a god. Ever from that time the
+temper of my misery was changed: not Fear or whining Sorrow was it,
+but Indignation and grim fire-eyed Defiance.
+
+'Thus had the Everlasting No pealed authoritatively through all the
+recesses of my Being, of my Me; and then was it that my whole Me
+stood up, in native God-created majesty and with emphasis recorded
+its Protest. Such a Protest, the most important transaction in Life,
+may that same Indignation and Defiance, in a psychological point of
+view, be fitly called. The Everlasting No had said, 'Behold thou
+art fatherless, outcast, and the Universe is mine (the Devil's);'
+to which my whole Me now made answer, 'I am not thine, but Free,
+and for ever hate thee!'
+
+'It is from this hour that I incline to date my spiritual New Birth,
+or Baphometic fire-baptism; perhaps I directly thereupon began to be
+a Man.' [99]
+
+Perhaps he who so uttered his Apage Satana did not recognise amid
+what haunted Edom he wrestled with his Phantom. Saint Louis, having
+invited the Carthusian monks to Paris, assigned them a habitation in
+the Faubourg Saint-Jacques, near the ancient chateau of Vauvert,
+a manor built by Robert (le Diable), but for a long time then
+uninhabited, because infested by demons, which had, perhaps, been
+false coiners. Fearful howls had been heard there, and spectres seen,
+dragging chains; and, in particular, it was frequented by a fearful
+green monster, serpent and man in one, with a long white beard,
+wielding a huge club, with which he threatened all who passed that
+way. This demon, in common belief, passed along the road to and
+from the chateau in a fiery chariot, and twisted the neck of every
+human being met on his way. He was called the Devil of Vauvert. The
+Carthusians were not frightened by these stories, but asked Louis to
+give them the Manor, which he did, with all its dependencies. After
+that nothing more was heard of the Diable Vauvert or his imps. It
+was but fair to the Demons who had assisted the friars in obtaining a
+valuable property so cheaply that the street should thenceforth bear
+the name of Rue d'Enfer, as it does. But the formidable genii of the
+place haunted it still, and, in the course of time, the Carthusians
+proved that they could use with effect all the terrors which the
+Devils had left behind them. They represented a great money-coining
+Christendom with which free-thinking Michaels had to contend, even
+to the day when, as we have just read, one of the bravest of these
+there encountered his Vauvert devil and laid him low for ever.
+
+I well remember that wretched street of St. Thomas leading into Hell
+Street, as if the Parisian authorities, remembering that Thomas
+was a doubter, meant to remind the wayfarer that whoso doubteth
+is damned. Near by is the convent of St. Michael, who makes no war
+on the neighbouring Rue Dragon. All names--mere idle names! Among
+the thousands that crowd along them, how many pause to note the
+quaintness of the names on the street-lamps, remaining there from
+fossil fears and phantom battles long turned to fairy lore. Yet amid
+them, on that sultry day, in one heart, was fought and won a battle
+which summed up all their sense and value. Every Hell was conquered
+then and there when Fear was conquered. There, when the lower Self
+was cast down beneath the poised spear of a Free Mind, St. Michael at
+last chained his dragon. There Luther's inkstand was not only hurled,
+but hit its mark; there, 'Get thee behind me,' was said, and obeyed;
+there Buddha brought the archfiend Mara to kneel at his feet.
+
+And it was by sole might of a Man. Therefore may this be emphasised
+as the temptation and triumph which have for us to-day the meaning
+of all others.
+
+A young man of intellectual power, seeing beyond all the conventional
+errors around him, without means, feeling that ordinary work, however
+honourable, would for him mean failure of his life--because failure
+to contribute his larger truth to mankind--he finds the terrible
+cost of his aim to be hunger, want, a life passed amid suspicion
+and alienation, without sympathy, lonely, unloved--and, alas! with a
+probability that all these losses may involve loss of just what they
+are incurred for, the power to make good his truth. After giving up
+love and joy, he may, after all, be unable to give living service
+to his truth, but only a broken body and shed blood. Similar trials
+in outer form have been encountered again and again; not only in
+the great temptations and triumphs of sacred tradition, but perhaps
+even more genuinely in the unknown lives of many pious people all
+over the world, have hunger, want, suffering, been conquered by
+faith. But rarely amid doubts. Rarely in the way of Saint Thomas,
+in no fear of hell or devil, nor in any hope of reward in heaven, or
+on earth; rarely indeed without any feeling of a God taking notice,
+or belief in angels waiting near, have men or women triumphed utterly
+over self. All history proves what man can sacrifice on earth for an
+eternal weight of glory above. We know how cheerfully men and women
+can sing at the stake, when they feel the fire consuming them to be
+a chariot bearing them to heaven. We understand the valour of Luther
+marching against his devils with his hymn, 'Ein feste Burg ist unser
+Gott.' But it is important to know what man's high heart is capable of
+without any of these encouragements or aids, what man's moral force
+when he feels himself alone. For this must become an increasingly
+momentous consideration.
+
+Already the educated youth of our time have followed the wanderer
+of threescore years ago into that St. Thomas d'Enfer Street, which
+may be morally translated as the point where man doubts every hell
+he does not feel, and every creed he cannot prove. The old fears
+and hopes are fading faster from the minds around us than from
+their professions. There must be very few sane people now who are
+restrained by fear of hell, or promises of future reward. What then
+controls human passion and selfishness? For many, custom; for others,
+hereditary good nature and good sense; for some, a sense of honour;
+for multitudes, the fear of law and penalties. It is very difficult
+indeed, amid these complex motives, to know how far simple human
+nature, acting at its best, is capable of heroic endurance for truth,
+and of pure passion for the right. This cannot be seen in those
+who intellectually reject the creed of the majority, but conform to
+its standards and pursue its worldly advantages. It must be seen,
+if at all, in those who are radically severed from the conventional
+aims of the world,--who seek not its wealth, nor its honours, decline
+its proudest titles, defy its authority, share not its prospects for
+time or eternity. It must be proved by those, the grandeur of whose
+aims can change the splendours of Paris to a wilderness. These may
+show what man, as man, is capable of, what may be his new birth,
+and the religion of his simple manhood. What they think, say, and
+do is not prescribed either by human or supernatural command; in
+them you do not see what society thinks, or sects believe, or what
+the populace applaud. You see the individual man building his moral
+edifice, as genuinely as birds their nests, by law of his own moral
+constitution. It is a great thing to know what those edifices are,
+for so at last every man will have to build if he build at all. And if
+noble lives cannot be so lived, we may be sure the career of the human
+race will be downhill henceforth. For any unbiassed mind may judge
+whether the tendency of thought and power lies toward or away from
+the old hopes and fears on which the regime of the past was founded.
+
+A great and wise Teacher of our time, who shared with Carlyle his
+lonely pilgrimage, has admonished his generation of the temptations
+brought by talent,--selfish use of it for ambitious ends on the
+one hand, or withdrawal into fruitless solitude on the other; and I
+cannot forbear closing this chapter with his admonition to his young
+countrymen forty years ago. [100]
+
+'Public and private avarice makes the air we breathe thick and fat. The
+scholar is decent, indolent, complacent. See already the tragic
+consequence. The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects,
+eats upon itself. There is no work for any but the decorous and the
+complacent. Young men of the fairest promise, who begin life upon our
+shores, inflated by the mountain winds, shined upon by all the stars of
+God, find the earth below not in unison with these,--but are hindered
+from action by the disgust which the principles on which business is
+managed inspire and turn drudges, or die of disgust,--some of them
+suicides. What is the remedy? They did not yet see, and thousands of
+young men as hopeful, now crowding to the barriers for the career,
+do not yet see, that if the single man plant himself indomitably on
+his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to
+him. Patience--patience;--with the shades of all the good and great
+for company; and for solace, the perspective of your own infinite
+life; and for work, the study and the communication of principles,
+the making those instincts prevalent, the conversion of the world. Is
+it not the chief disgrace in the world--not to be an unit; not to
+be reckoned one character; not to yield that peculiar fruit which
+each man was created to bear,--but to be reckoned in the gross, in
+the hundred, in the thousand of the party, the section, to which we
+belong; and our opinion predicted geographically, as the north or the
+south? Not so, brothers and friends,--please God, ours shall not be
+so. We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands;
+we will speak our own minds.'
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THE MAN OF SIN.
+
+ Hindu myth--Gnostic theories--Ophite scheme of
+ redemption--Rabbinical traditions of primitive man--Pauline
+ Pessimism--Law of death--Satan's ownership of man--Redemption of
+ the elect--Contemporary statements--Baptism--Exorcism--The 'new
+ man's' food--Eucharist--Herbert Spencer's explanation--Primitive
+ ideas--Legends of Adam and Seth--Adamites--A Mormon 'Mystery'
+ of initiation.
+
+
+In a Hindu myth, Dhrubo, an infant devotee, passed much time in a
+jungle, surrounded by ferocious beasts, in devotional exercises of
+such extraordinary merit that Vishnu erected a new heaven for him
+as the reward of his piety. Vishnu even left his own happy abode
+to superintend the construction of this special heaven. In Hebrew
+mythology the favourite son, the chosen people, is called out of
+Egypt to dwell in a new home, a promised land, not in heaven but on
+earth. The idea common to the two is that of a contrast between a
+natural and a celestial environment,--a jungle and beasts, bondage
+and distress; a new heaven, a land flowing with milk and honey,--and
+the correspondence with these of the elect child, Dhrubo or Israel.
+
+The tendency of Christ's mind appears to have been rather in the Aryan
+direction; he pointed his friends to a kingdom not of this world,
+and to his Father's many mansions in heaven. But the Hebrew faith in a
+messianic reign in this world was too strong for his dream; a new earth
+was appended to the new heaven, and became gradually paramount, but
+this new earth was represented only by the small society of believers
+who made the body of Christ, the members in which his blood flowed.
+
+That great cauldron of confused superstitions and mysticisms which the
+Roman Empire became after the overthrow of Jerusalem, formed a thick
+scum which has passed under the vague name of Gnosticism. The primitive
+notions of all races were contained in it, however, and they gathered
+in the second and third centuries a certain consistency in the system
+of the Ophites. In the beginning existed Bythos (the Depth); his first
+emanation and consort is Ennoia (Thought); their first daughter is
+Pneuma (Spirit), their second Sophia (Wisdom). Sophia's emanations are
+two--one perfect, Christos; the other imperfect, Sophia-Achamoth,--who
+respectively guide all that proceed from God and all that proceed
+from Matter. Sophia, unable to act directly upon anything so gross
+as Matter or unordered as Chaos, employs her imperfect daughter
+Sophia-Achamoth for that purpose. But she, finding delight in imparting
+life to inert Matter, became ambitious of creating in the abyss a
+world for herself. To this end she produced the Demiurgus Ildabaoth
+(otherwise Jehovah) to be creator of the material world. After this
+Sophia-Achamoth shook off Matter, in which she had become entangled;
+but Ildabaoth ('son of Darkness') proceeded to produce emanations
+corresponding to those of Bythos in the upper universe. Among his
+creations was Man, but his man was a soulless monster crawling on the
+ground. Sophia-Achamoth managed to transfer to Man the small ray of
+divine light which Ildabaoth had inherited from her. The 'primitive
+Man' became thus a divine being. Ildabaoth, now entirely evil, was
+enraged at having produced a being who had become superior to himself,
+and his envy took shape in a serpent-formed Satan, Ophiomorphos. He
+is the concentration of all that is most base in Matter, conjoined
+with a spiritual intelligence. Their anti-Judaism led the Ophites to
+identify Ildabaoth as Jehovah, and this serpent-son of his as Michael;
+they also called him Samaël. Ildabaoth then also created the animal,
+vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, with all their evils. Resolving
+to confine man within his own lower domain, he forbade him to eat
+of the Tree of Knowledge. To defeat his scheme, which had all been
+evolved out of her own temporary fall, Sophia-Achamoth sent her own
+genius, also in form of a serpent, Ophis, to induce Man to transgress
+the tyrant's command. Eve supposing Ophis the same as Ophiomorphos,
+regarded the prohibition against the fruit as withdrawn and readily
+ate of it. Man thus became capable of understanding heavenly
+mysteries, and Ildabaoth made haste to imprison him in the dungeon
+of Matter. He also punished Ophis by making him eat dust, and this
+heavenly serpent, contaminated by Matter, changed from Man's friend
+to his foe. Sophia-Achamoth has always striven against these two
+Serpents, who bind man to the body by corrupt desires; she supplied
+mankind with divine light, through which they became sensible of
+their nakedness--the misery of their condition. Ildabaoth's seductive
+agents gained control over all the offspring of Adam except Seth, type
+of the Spiritual Man. Sophia-Achamoth moved Bythos to send down her
+perfect brother Christos to aid the Spiritual Race of Seth. Christos
+descended through the seven planetary regions, assuming successively
+forms related to each, and entered into the man Jesus at the moment
+of his baptism. Ildabaoth, discovering him, stirred up the Jews to
+put him to death; but Christos and Sophia, abandoning the material
+body of Jesus on the cross, gave him one made of ether. Hence his
+mother and disciples could not recognise him. He ascended to the
+Middle Space, where he sits by the right hand of Ildabaoth, though
+unperceived by the latter, and, putting forth efforts for purification
+of mankind corresponding to those put forth by Ildabaoth for evil,
+he is collecting all the Spiritual elements of the world into the
+kingdom which is to overthrow that of the Enemy. [101]
+
+Notwithstanding the animosity shown by the Ophites towards the
+Jews, most of the elements in their system are plagiarised from the
+Jews. According to ancient rabbinical traditions, Adam and Eve, by
+eating the fruit of the lowest region, fell through the six regions
+to the seventh and lowest; they were there brought under control of
+the previously fallen Samaël, who defiled them with his spittle. Their
+nakedness consisted in their having lost a natural protection of which
+only our finger-nails are left; others say they lost a covering of
+hair. [102] The Jews also from of old contended that Seth was the
+son of Adam, in whom returned the divine nature with which man was
+originally endowed. We have, indeed, only to identify Ildabaoth with
+Elohim instead of Jehovah to perceive that the Ophites were following
+Jewish precedents in attributing the natural world to a fiend. The link
+between, the two conceptions may be discovered in the writings of Paul.
+
+Paul's pessimistic conception of this world and of human nature was
+radical, and it mainly formed the mould in which dogmatic Christianity
+subsequently took shape. His general theology is a travesty of the
+creation of the world and of man. All that work of Elohim was, by
+implication, natural, that is to say, diabolical. The earth as then
+created belonged to the Prince of this world, who was the author of
+sin, and its consequence, death. In Adam all die. The natural man is
+enmity against God; he is of the earth earthy; his father is the devil;
+he cannot know spiritual things. All mankind are born spiritually
+dead. Christ is a new and diviner Demiurgos, engaged in the work of
+producing a new creation and a new man. For his purpose the old law,
+circumcision or uncircumcision, are of no avail or importance, but a
+new creature. His death is the symbol of man's death to the natural
+world, his resurrection of man's rising into a new world which mere
+flesh and blood cannot inherit. As God breathed into Adam's nostrils
+the breath of life, the Spirit breathes upon the elect of Christ a
+new mind and new heart.
+
+The 'new creature' must inhale an entirely new physical
+atmosphere. When Paul speaks of 'the Prince of the Power of the Air,'
+it must not be supposed that he is only metaphorical. On this, however,
+we must dwell for a little.
+
+'The air,' writes Burton in his 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' 'The air
+is not so full of flies in summer as it is at all times of invisible
+devils. They counterfeit suns and moons, and sit on ships' masts. They
+cause whirlwinds of a sudden, and tempestuous storms, which though our
+meteorologists generally refer to natural causes, yet I am of Bodine's
+mind, they are more often caused by those aerial devils in their
+several quarters. Cardan gives much information concerning them. His
+father had one of them, an aerial devil, bound to him for eight and
+twenty years; as Agrippa's dog had a devil tied to his collar. Some
+think that Paracelsus had one confined in his sword pommel. Others
+wear them in rings;' and so the old man runs on, speculating about
+the mysterious cobwebs collected in the ceiling of his brain.
+
+The atmosphere mentally breathed by Burton and his authorities was
+indeed charged with invisible phantasms; and every one of them was in
+its origin a genuine intellectual effort to interpret the phenomena
+of nature. It is not wonderful that the ancients should have ascribed
+to a diabolical source the subtle deaths that struck at them from
+the air. A single breath of the invisible poison of the air might
+lay low the strongest. Even after man had come to understand his
+visible foes, the deadly animal or plant, he could only cower and
+pray before the lurking power of miasma and infection, the power of
+the air. The Tyndalls of a primitive time studied dust and disease,
+and called the winged seeds of decay and death 'aerial devils,' and
+prepared the way for Mephistopheles (devil of smells), as he in turn
+for the bacterial demon of modern science.
+
+There were not wanting theologic explanations why these malignant
+beings should find their dwelling-place in the air. They had been
+driven out of heaven. The etherial realm above the air was reserved
+for the good. Of the demons the Hindus say, 'Their feet touch not the
+ground.' 'What man of virtue is there,' said Titus to his soldiers,
+'who does not know that those souls which are severed from their
+fleshy bodies in battles by the sword are received by the æther--that
+purest of elements--and joined to that company which are placed among
+the stars; that they become gods, dæmons, and propitious heroes,
+and show themselves as such to their posterity afterwards?' [103]
+Malignant spirits were believed to hold a more undisputed sway over
+the atmosphere than over the earth, although our planet was mainly
+in their power, and the subjects of the higher empire always a small
+colony. [104] Moreover, there was a natural tendency of demons, which
+originally represented earthly evils, when these were conquered by
+human intelligence, to pass into the realm least accessible to science
+or to control by man. The uncharted winds became their refuge.
+
+This belief was general among the Christian Fathers, [105] lasted a
+very long time even among the educated, and is still the teaching
+of the Roman Catholic Church, as any one may see by reading the
+authorised work of Mgr. Gaume on 'Holy Water' (p. 305). So long as
+it was admitted among thinking people that the mind was as competent
+to build facts upon theory as theories on fact, a great deal might
+be plausibly said for this atmospheric diabolarchy. In the days
+when witchcraft was first called in question, Glanvil argued 'that
+since this little Spot is so thickly peopled in every Atome of it,
+'tis weakness to think that all the vast spaces Above and hollows
+under Ground are desert and uninhabited,' and he anticipated that,
+as microscopic science might reveal further populations in places
+seemingly vacant, it would necessitate the belief that the regions of
+the upper air are inhabited. [106] Other learned men concluded that
+the spirits that lodge there are such as are clogged with earthly
+elements; the baser sort; dwelling in cold air, they would like to
+inhabit the more sheltered earth. In repayment for broth, and various
+dietetic horrors proffered them by witches, they enable them to pass
+freely through their realm--the air.
+
+Out of such intellectual atmosphere came Paul's sentence (Eph. ii. 2)
+about 'the Prince of the Power of the Air.' It was a spiritualisation
+of the existing aerial demonology. When Paul and his companions carried
+their religious agitation into the centres of learning and wealth,
+and brought the teachings of a Jew to confront the temples of Greece
+and Rome, they found themselves unrelated to that great world. It had
+another habit of mind and feeling, and the idea grew in him that it
+was the spirits of the Satanic world counteracting the spirit sent on
+earth from the divine world. This animated its fashions, philosophy,
+science, and literature. He warns the Church at Ephesus that they
+will need the whole armour of God, because they are wrestling not with
+mere flesh and blood, but against the rulers of the world's darkness,
+the evil spirits in high places--that is, in the Air.
+
+As heirs of this new nature and new world, with its new atmosphere,
+purchased and endowed by Christ, the Pauline theory further
+presupposes, that the natural man, having died, is buried with
+Christ in baptism, rises with him, and is then sealed to him by the
+Holy Ghost. For a little time such must still bear about them their
+fleshy bodies, but soon Christ shall come, and these vile bodies
+shall be changed into his likeness; meanwhile they must keep their
+bodies in subjection, even as Paul did, by beating it black and blue
+(hypôpiazô), and await their deliverance from the body of the dead
+world they have left, but which so far is permitted to adhere to
+them. This conception had to work itself out in myths and dogmas of
+which Paul knew nothing. 'If any man come after me and hate not his
+father and mother, and his own (natural) life also, he cannot be my
+disciple.' The new race with which the new creation was in travail
+was logically discovered to need a new Mother as well as a new
+Father. Every natural mother was subjected to a stain that it might
+be affirmed that only one mother was immaculate--she whose conception
+was supernatural, not of the flesh. Marriage became an indulgence to
+sin (whose purchase-money survives still in the marriage-fee). The
+monastery and the nunnery represented this new ascetic kingdom;
+that perilous word 'worldliness' was transmitted to be the source of
+insanity and hypocrisy.
+
+Happily, the common sense and sentiment of mankind have so steadily
+and successfully won back the outlawed interests of life and the
+world, that it requires some research into ecclesiastical archæology
+to comprehend the original significance of the symbols in which
+it survives. The ancient rabbins limited the number of souls which
+hang on Adam to 600,000, but the Christian theologians extended the
+figures to include the human race. Probably even some orthodox people
+may be scandalised at the idea of the fathers (Irenæus, for example),
+that, at the Fall, the human race became Satan's rightful property,
+did they see it in the picture copied by Buslaef, from an ancient
+Russian Bible, in possession of Count Uvarof. Adam gives Satan
+a written contract for himself and his descendants (Fig. 7). And
+yet, according to a recent statement, the Rev. Mr. Simeon recently
+preached a sermon in the Church of St. Augustine, Kilburn, London,
+'to prove that the ruler of the world is the devil. He stated that the
+Creator of the world had given the control of the world to one of his
+chief angels, Lucifer, who, however, had gone to grief, and done his
+utmost to ruin the world. Since then the Creator and Lucifer had been
+continually striving to checkmate each other. As Lucifer is still the
+Prince of this world, it would seem that it is not he who has been
+beaten yet.' [107] A popular preacher in America, Rev. Dr. Talmage,
+states the case as follows:--
+
+'I turn to the same old book, and I find out that the Son of Mary,
+who was the Son of God, the darling of heaven, the champion of the
+ages, by some called Lord, by some called Jesus, by others called
+Christ, but this morning by us called by the three blessed titles,
+Lord Jesus Christ, by one magnificent stroke made it possible for
+us all to be saved. He not only told us that there was a hell, but
+he went into it. He walked down the fiery steeps. He stepped off the
+bottom rung of the long ladder of despair. He descended into hell. He
+put his bare foot on the hottest coal of the fiercest furnace.
+
+'He explored the darkest den of eternal midnight, and then He came
+forth lacerated and scarified, and bleeding and mauled by the hands
+of infernal excruciation, to cry out to all the ages, 'I have paid
+the price for all those who would make me their substitute. By my
+piled-up groans, by my omnipotent agony, I demand the rescue of all
+those who will give up sin and trust in me,' Mercy! mercy! mercy! But
+how am I to get it? Cheap. It will not cost you as much as a loaf of
+bread. Only a penny? No, no. Escape from hell, and all the harps,
+and mansions, and thrones, and sunlit fields of heaven besides in
+the bargain, 'without money, and without price.''
+
+These preachers are only stating with creditable candour the
+original significance of the sacraments and ceremonies which were
+the physiognomy of that theory of 'a new creature.' Following various
+ancient traditions, that life was produced out of water, that water
+escaped the primal curse on nature, that devils hate and fear it
+because of this and the saltness of so much of it, many religions
+have used water for purification and exorcism. [108] Baptism is
+based on the notion that every child is offspring of the Devil,
+and possessed of his demon; the Fathers agreed that all unbaptized
+babes, even the still-born, are lost; and up to the year 1550 every
+infant was subjected at baptism to the exorcism, 'I command thee,
+unclean spirit, in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the
+Holy Ghost, that thou come out, and depart from, these infants whom
+our Lord Jesus Christ has vouchsafed to call to his holy baptism,
+to be made members of his body and of his holy congregation,' &c.
+
+A clergyman informed me that he knew of a case in which a man,
+receiving back his child after christening, kissed it, and said,
+'I never kissed it before, because I knew it was not a child of God;
+but now that it is, I love it dearly.' But why not? Some even now teach
+that a white angel follows the baptized, a black demon the unbaptized.
+
+The belief was wide-spread that unbaptized children were turned into
+elves at death. In Iceland it is still told as a bit of folk-lore,
+that when God visited Eve, she kept a large number of her children
+out of sight, 'because they had not been washed,' and these children
+were turned into elves, and became the progenitors of that uncanny
+race. The Greek Church made so much of baptism, that there has been
+developed an Eastern sect which claims John the Baptist as its founder,
+making little of Christ, who baptized none; and to this day in Russia
+the peasant regards it as almost essential to a right reception of
+the benedictions of Sunday to have been under water on the previous
+day--soap being sagaciously added. The Roman Catholic Church, following
+the provision of the Council of Carthage, still sets a high value on
+baptismal exorcism; and Calvin refers to a theological debate at the
+Sorbonne in Paris, whether it would not be justifiable for a priest to
+throw a child into a well rather than have it die unbaptized. Luther
+preserved the Catholic form of exorcism; and, in some districts of
+Germany, Protestants have still such faith in it, that, when either
+a child or a domestic animal is suspected of being possessed, they
+will send for the Romish priest to perform the rite of exorcism.
+
+Mr. Herbert Spencer has described the class of superstitions out of
+which the sacrament of the Eucharist has grown. 'In some cases,' he
+says, 'parts of the dead are swallowed by the living, who seek thus
+to inspire themselves with the good qualities of the dead; and we saw
+(§ 133) that the dead are supposed to be honoured by this act. The
+implied notion was supposed to be associated with the further notion
+that the nature of another being, inhering in all the fragments of
+his body, inheres too in the unconsumed part of anything consumed
+with his body; so that an operation wrought on the remnants of his
+food becomes an operation wrought on the food swallowed, and therefore
+on the swallower. Yet another implication is, that between those who
+swallow different parts of the same food some community of nature is
+established. Hence such beliefs as that ascribed by Bastian to some
+negroes, who think that, 'on eating and drinking consecrated food,
+they eat and drink the god himself'--such god being an ancestor, who
+has taken his share. Various ceremonies among savages are prompted
+by this conception; as, for instance, the choosing a totem. Among
+the Mosquito Indians, 'the manner of obtaining this guardian was
+to proceed to some secluded spot and offer up a sacrifice: with
+the beast or bird which thereupon appeared, in dream or in reality,
+a compact for life was made, by drawing blood from various parts of
+the body.' This blood, supposed to be taken by the chosen animal,
+connected the two, and the animal's life became so bound up with their
+own that the death of one involved that of the other.' [109] And now
+mark that, in these same regions, this idea reappears as a religious
+observance. Sahagun and Herrera describe a ceremony of the Aztecs
+called 'eating the god.' Mendieta, describing this ceremony, says,
+'They had also a sort of eucharist.... They made a sort of small idols
+of seeds, ... and ate them as the body or memory of their gods.' As
+the seeds were cemented partly by the blood of sacrificed boys;
+as their gods were cannibal gods; as Huitzilopochtli, whose worship
+included this rite, was the god to whom human sacrifices were most
+extensive; it is clear that the aim was to establish community with
+gods by taking blood in common.' [110]
+
+When, a little time ago, a New Zealand chief showed his high
+appreciation of a learned German by eating his eyes to improve his
+own intellectual vision, the case seemed to some to call for more
+and better protected missionaries; but the chief might find in the
+sacramental communion of the missionaries the real principle of his
+faith. The celebration of the 'Lord's Supper' when a Bishop is ordained
+has only to be 'scratched,' as the proverb says, to reveal beneath
+it the Indians choosing their episcopal totem. As Israel observed
+the Passover--eating together of the lamb whose blood sprinkled on
+their door-posts had marked those to be preserved from the Destroying
+Angel in Egypt--they who believed that Jesus was Messias tasted the
+body and blood of their Head, as indicating the elect out of a world
+otherwise given over to the Destroyer spiritually, and finally to be
+delivered up to him bodily. 'He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my
+blood dwelleth in me and I in him.' These were to tread on serpents,
+or handle them unharmed, as it is said Paul did. They were not really
+to die, but to fall asleep, that they might be changed as a seed to
+its flower, through literal resurrection from the earth.
+
+We should probably look in vain after any satisfactory vestiges of
+the migration of the superstition concerning the mystical potency
+of food. It is found fully developed in the ancient Hindu myth
+of the struggle between the gods and demons for the Amrita, the
+immortalising nectar, one stolen sip of which gave the monster Ráhu
+the imperishable nature which no other of his order possesses. It
+is found in corresponding myths concerning the gods of Asgard and of
+Olympus. The fall of man in the Iranian legend was through a certain
+milk given by Ahriman to the first pair, Meschia and Meschiane. In
+Buddhist mythology, it was eating rice that corrupted the nature
+of man. It was the process of incarnation in the Gilghit legend
+(i. 398). The whole story of Persephone turns upon her having
+eaten the seed of a pomegranate in Hades, by which she was bound to
+that sphere. There is a myth very similar to that of Persephone in
+Japan. There is a legend in the Scottish Highlands that a woman was
+conveyed into the secret recesses of the 'men of peace'--the Daoine
+Shi', euphemistic name of uncanny beings, who carry away mortals to
+their subterranean apartments, where beautiful damsels tempt them to
+eat of magnificent banquets. This woman on her arrival was recognised
+by a former acquaintance, who, still retaining some portion of human
+benevolence, warned her that, if she tasted anything whatsoever for a
+certain space of time, she would be doomed to remain in that underworld
+for ever. The woman having taken this counsel, was ultimately restored
+to the society of mortals. It was added that, when the period named by
+her unfortunate friend had elapsed, a disenchantment of this woman's
+eyes took place, and the viands which had before seemed so tempting
+she now discovered to consist only of the refuse of the earth. [111]
+
+The difficulty of tracing the ethnical origin of such legends as
+these is much greater than that of tracing their common natural
+origin. The effect of certain kinds of food upon the human system is
+very marked, even apart from the notorious effects of the drinks made
+from the vegetative world. The effects of mandrake, opium, tobacco,
+various semi-poisonous fungi, the simplicity with which differences of
+race might be explained by their vegetarian or carnivorous customs,
+would be enough to suggest theories of the potency of food over the
+body and soul of man such as even now have their value in scientific
+speculation.
+
+The Jewish opinion that Seth was the offspring of the divine part of
+Adam was the germ of a remarkable christian myth. Adam, when dying,
+desired Seth to procure the oil of mercy (for his extreme unction)
+from the angels guarding Paradise. Michael informs Seth that it
+can only be obtained after the lapse of the ages intervening the
+Fall and the Atonement. Seth received, however, a small branch of
+the Tree of Knowledge, and was told that when it should bear fruit,
+Adam would recover. Returning, Seth found Adam dead, and planted the
+branch in his grave. It grew to a tree which Solomon had hewn down
+for building the temple; but the workmen could not adapt it, threw it
+aside, and it was used as a bridge over a lake. The Queen of Sheba,
+about to cross this lake, beheld a vision of Christ on the cross,
+and informed Solomon that when a certain person had been suspended
+on that tree the fall of the Jewish nation would be near. Solomon in
+alarm buried the wood deep in the earth, and the spot was covered by
+the pool of Bethesda. Shortly before the crucifixion the tree floated
+on that water, and ultimately, as the cross, bore its fruit. [112]
+
+In our old Russian picture (Fig. 8) Seth is shown offering a branch
+of the Tree of Knowledge to his father Adam. That it should spring up
+to be the Tree of Life is simply in obedience to Magian and Gnostic
+theories, which generally turn on some scheme by which the Good turns
+against the Evil Mind the point of his own weapon. These were the
+influences which gave to christian doctrines on the subject their
+perilous precision. The universal tradition was that Adam was the
+first person liberated by Christ from hell; and this corresponded
+with an equally wide belief that all who were saved by the death
+of Christ and his descent into hell were at once raised into the
+moral condition of Adam and Eve before the Fall,--to eat the food
+and breathe the holy air of Paradise.
+
+An honest mirror was held up before this theology by the christian
+Adamites. Their movement (second and third centuries) was a most
+legitimate outcome of the Pauline and Johannine gospel. The author of
+this so-called 'heresy,' Prodicus, really anticipated the Methodist
+doctrine of 'sanctification,' and he was only consistent in admonishing
+his followers that clothing was, in the Bible, the original badge
+of carnal guilt and shame, and was no longer necessary for those
+whom Christ had redeemed from the Fall and raised to the original
+innocence of Adam and Eve. These believers, in the appropriate
+climate of Northern Africa, had no difficulty in carrying out their
+doctrine practically, and having named their churches 'Paradises,'
+assembled in them quite naked. There is still a superstition in
+the East that a snake will never attack one who is naked. The same
+Adamite doctrine--a prelapsarian perfection symbolised by nudity--was
+taught by John Picard in Bohemia, and a flourishing sect of 'Adamites'
+arose there in the fifteenth century. The Slavonian Adamites of the
+last century--and they are known to carry on their services still in
+secret--not only dispense with clothing, but also with sacraments and
+ceremonies, which are for the imperfect, not for the perfected. Again
+and again has this logical result of the popular theology appeared,
+and with increasingly gross circumstances, as the refined and
+intelligent abandon except in name the corresponding dogmas. It is
+an impressive fact that Paul's central doctrine of 'a new creature'
+is now adopted with most realistic orthodoxy by the Mormons of Utah,
+whose initiation consists of a dramatic performance on each candidate
+of moulding the body out of clay, breathing in the nostrils, the
+'deep sleep' presentation of an Eve to each Adam, the temptation,
+fall, and redemption. The 'saints' thus made, unfortunately, seem
+to have equally realistic ideas that the Gentiles are adherents of
+the Prince of this world, and their sacramental bands have shown some
+striking imitations of those events of history which, when not labelled
+'Christian,' are pronounced barbarous. Now that the old dogmatic system
+is being left more and more to the ignorant and vulgar to make over
+into their own image and likeness, it may be hoped that elsewhere also
+the error that libels and outrages nature will run to seed; for error,
+like the aloe, has its period when it shoots up a high stem and--dies.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE HOLY GHOST.
+
+ A Hanover relic--Mr. Atkinson on the Dove--The Dove in the Old
+ Testament--Ecclesiastical symbol--Judicial symbol--A vision of
+ St. Dunstan's--The witness of chastity--Dove and Serpent--The
+ unpardonable sin--Inexpiable sin among the Jews--Destructive
+ power of Jehovah--Potency of the breath--Third persons of
+ Trinities--Pentecost--Christian superstitions--Mr. Moody on the
+ sin against the Holy Ghost--Mysterious fear--Idols of the cave.
+
+
+There is in the old town of Hanover, in Germany, a schoolhouse
+in which, above the teacher's chair, there was anciently the
+representation of a dove perched upon an iron branch or rod; and
+beneath the inscription--'This shall lead you into all truth.' In the
+course of time the dove fell down and was removed to the museum; but
+there is still left before the children the rod, with the admonition
+that it will lead them into all truth. This is about as much as for
+a long time was left in the average christian mind of the symbolical
+Dove, the Holy Ghost. Half of its primitive sense departed, and there
+remained only an emblem of mysterious terror. More spiritual minds
+have introduced into the modern world a conception of the Holy Ghost
+as a life-giving influence or a spirit of love, but the ancient view
+which regarded it as the Iron Rod of judgment and execution still
+survives in the notion of the 'sin against the Holy Ghost.'
+
+Mr. Henry G. Atkinson writes as follows: [113]--'My old friend
+Barry Cornwall, the fine poet, once said to me, 'My dear Atkinson,
+can you tell me the meaning of the Holy Ghost; what can it possibly
+mean?' 'Well,' I said, 'I suppose it means a pigeon. We have never
+heard of it in any other form but that of the dove descending from
+heaven to the Virgin Mary. Then we have the pretty fable of the dove
+returning to the ark with the olive-branch, so that the Christian
+religion may be called the Religion of the Pigeon. In the Greek Church
+the pigeon is held sacred. St. Petersburgh is swarming with pigeons,
+but they are never killed or disturbed. I knew a lady whose life
+was made wretched in the belief that she had sinned the unpardonable
+sin against the Holy Ghost, and neither priest nor physician could
+persuade her out of the delusion, though in all other respects she
+was quite sensible. She regarded herself as such a wretch that she
+could not bear to see herself in the glass, and the looking-glasses
+had all to be removed, and when she went to an hotel, her husband had
+to go first and have the looking-glasses of the apartments covered
+over. But what is the Holy Ghost--what is its office? Sitting with
+Miss Martineau at her house at Ambleside one day, a German lady, who
+spoke broken English, came in. She was a neighbour, and had a large
+house and grounds, and kept fowls. 'Oh!' she said, quite excited,
+'the beast has taken off another chicken (meaning the hawk). I saw
+it myself. The wretch! it came down just like the Holy Ghost, and
+snatched off the chicken.' How Miss Martineau did laugh; but I don't
+know that this story throws much light upon the subject, since it
+does but bring us back to the pigeon.'
+
+It would require a volume to explain fully all the problems suggested
+in this brief note, but the more important facts may be condensed.
+
+It is difficult to show how far the natural characteristics and habits
+of the dove are reflected in its wide-spread symbolism. Its plaintive
+note and fondness for solitudes are indicated in the Psalmist's
+aspiration, 'Oh that I had the wings of a dove, then would I fly
+away and be at rest; lo, then would I wander far off, and remain in
+the wilderness.' [114] It is not a difficult transition from this
+association with the wilderness to investment with a relationship with
+the demon of the wilderness--Azazel. So we find it in certain passages
+in Jeremiah, where the word has been suppressed in the ordinary
+English version. 'The land is desolate because of the fierceness
+of the dove.' 'Let us go again to our own people to avoid the sword
+of the dove.' 'They shall flee away every one for fear of the sword
+of the dove.' [115] In India its lustres--blue and fiery--may have
+connected it with azure-necked Siva.
+
+The far-seeing and wonderful character of the pigeon as a carrier
+was well known to the ancients. On Egyptian bas-reliefs priests are
+shown sending them with messages. They appear in the branches of the
+oaks of Dodona, and in old Russian frescoes they sometimes perch on
+the Tree of Knowledge in paradise. It is said that, in order to avail
+himself of this universal symbolism, Mohammed trained a dove to perch
+on his shoulder. As the raven was said to whisper secrets to Odin,
+so the dove was often pictured at the ear of God. In Nôtre Dame de
+Chartres, its beak is at the ear of Pope Gregory the Great.
+
+It passed--and did not have far to go--to be the familiar of kings. It
+brought the chrism from heaven at the baptism of Clovis. White
+doves came to bear the soul of Louis of Thuringia to heaven. The
+dove surmounted the sceptre of Charlemagne. At the consecration of
+the kings of France, after the ceremony of unction, white doves were
+let loose in the church. At the consecration of a monarch in England,
+a duke bears before the sovereign the sceptre with the dove.
+
+By association with both ecclesiastical and political sovereignty,
+it came to represent very nearly the old fatal serpent power which
+had lurked in all its transformations. When the Holy Ghost was
+represented as a crowned man, the dove was pictured on his wrist like
+that falcon with which the German lady, mentioned by Mr. Atkinson,
+identified it. But in this connection its symbolism is more especially
+referable to a passage in Isaiah: [116] 'There shall come forth a rod
+out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots;
+and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom
+and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of the
+knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.' The sanctity of the number
+seven led to the partition of the last clause into three spirits,
+making up the seven, which were: Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel,
+Strength, Knowledge, Piety, Fear. In some of the representations
+of these where each of the seven Doves is labelled with its name,
+'Fear' is at the top of their arch, a Psalm having said, 'The fear
+of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.' When the knightly Order
+of the Holy Ghost was created in 1352, it was aristocratic, and,
+when reorganised by Henry III. of France in 1579, it was restricted
+to magisterial and political personages. With them was the spirit of
+Fear certainly; and the Order shows plainly what had long been the
+ideas connected with the Holy Ghost.
+
+M. Didron finds this confirmed in the legends of every country, and
+especially refers to a story of St. Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury,
+in the tenth century. Three men, convicted of coining false money, had
+been condemned to death. Immediately before the celebration of mass
+on the day of Pentecost, the festival of the Holy Ghost, St. Dunstan
+inquired whether justice had been done upon the three criminals:
+he was informed in reply that the execution had been delayed on
+account of the solemn feast of Pentecost then in celebration. 'It
+shall not be thus,' cried the indignant archbishop, and gave orders
+for the immediate execution of the guilty men. Several of those who
+were present remonstrated against the cruelty of that order; it was
+nevertheless obeyed.
+
+After the execution of the criminals, Dunstan washed his face, and
+turned with a joyful countenance towards his oratory. 'I now hope,'
+said he, 'that God will be pleased to accept the sacrifice I am about
+to offer;' and in fact, during the celebration of mass, at the moment
+when the Saint raised his hands to implore that God the Father would
+be pleased to give peace to his Church, to guide, guard, and keep
+it in unity throughout the world, 'a dove, as white as snow, was
+seen to descend from heaven, and during the entire service remained
+with wings extended, floating silently in air above the head of the
+archbishop.' [117]
+
+The passionate sexual nature of the dove made it emblem of Aphrodite,
+and it became spiritualised in its consecration to the Madonna. From
+its relation to the falsely-accused Mary, there grew around the Dove
+a special class of legends which show it attesting female innocence
+or avenging it. The white dove said to have issued from the mouth
+of Joan of Arc is one of many instances. There is still, I believe,
+preserved in the Lyttleton family the picture painted by Dowager
+Lady Lyttleton in 1780, in commemoration of the warning of death
+given to Lord Lyttleton by the mother of two girls he had seduced,
+the vision being attended by a fluttering dove. The original account
+of his vision or dream, attributed to Lord Lyttleton, mentions only
+'a bird.' When next told, it is that he 'heard a noise resembling the
+fluttering of a dove,' and on looking to the window saw 'an unhappy
+female whom he had seduced.' But the exigencies of orthodoxy are too
+strong for original narratives. As the 'bird' attested an announcement
+that on the third day (that too was gradually added) he would die,
+it must have been a dove; and as the dove attends only the innocent,
+it must have been the poor girl's mother that appeared. It was easy
+to have the woman die at the precise hour of appearance. [118] When in
+Chicago in 1875, I read in one of the morning papers a very particular
+account of how a white dove flew into the chamber window of a young
+unmarried woman in a neighbouring village, she having brought forth
+a child, and solemnly declaring that she had never lost her virginity.
+
+In this history of the symbolism of the Dove the theological
+development of the Holy Ghost has been outlined. We have seen
+in the previous chapter that the Holy Spirit is in opposition to
+the Natural Air,--repository of evils. The Dove symbolised this
+aspect of it in hovering over the world emerging from its diluvial
+baptism, and also over the typical new Adam (Jesus) coming from his
+baptism. But in this it corresponds with the serpent-symbol of life
+in Egyptian mythology brooding over the primal mundane egg (as in
+Fig. 23, vol. i.). Nathaniel Hawthorne found a mystical meaning in
+the beautiful group at Rome representing a girl pressing a dove to
+her bosom while she is attacked by a serpent. But in their theological
+aspects the Dove and the Serpent blend; they are at once related and
+separated in Christ's words, 'Be ye wise as serpents and harmless
+as doves;' but in the office of the Holy Ghost as representing a
+divine Intelligence, and its consequent evolution as executor of
+divine judgments, it fulfils in Christendom much the same part as
+the Serpent in the more primitive mythologies.
+
+'Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven unto men,' said a legendary
+Christ; [119] 'but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be
+forgiven. And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man,
+it will be forgiven him, but whosoever shall speak against the Holy
+Ghost, it will not be forgiven him, neither in this world nor in that
+to come.' In Mark [120] it is said, 'All things shall be forgiven
+unto the sons of men, the sins and the blasphemies wherewith they
+shall blaspheme: but whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy
+Ghost has never forgiveness, but will be guilty of everlasting sin;
+(because they said, He has an unclean spirit).' When Christ uttered
+these tremendous words, no disciple seems to have been startled,
+or to have inquired into the nature of that sin, so much worse than
+any offence against himself or the Father, which has since employed
+so much theological speculation.
+
+In fact, they needed no explanation: it was an old story;
+the unpardonable sin was a familiar feature of ancient Jewish
+law. Therein the sin excluded from expiation was any presumptuous
+language or action against Jehovah. It is easy to see why this was
+so. Real offences, crimes against man or society, were certain of
+punishment, through the common interest and need. But the honour
+and interests of Jehovah, not being obvious or founded in nature,
+required special and severe statutes. The less a thing is protected
+by its intrinsic and practical importance, the more it must, if at
+all, be artificially protected. This is illustrated in the story
+of Eli and his two sons. These youths were guilty of the grossest
+immoralities, but not a word was said against them, they being sons
+of the High Priest, except a mild remonstrance from Eli himself. But
+when on an occasion these youths tasted the part of the sacrificial
+meat offered to Jehovah, the divine wrath was kindled. Eli, much more
+terrified at this ceremonial than the moral offence, said to his sons,
+'If one man sin against another, the judge shall judge him, but if a
+man sin against Jehovah, who shall entreat for him?' In protecting
+his interests, Jehovah's destroying angel does not allude to any
+other offence of Eli's sons except that against himself. But when the
+priestly guardians of the divine interests came with their people under
+the control of successive Gallios,--aliens who cared not for their
+ceremonial law, and declined to permit the infliction of its penalties,
+as England now forbids suttee in India,--the priests could only pass
+sentences; execution of them had to be adjourned to a future world.
+
+The doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments is not one
+which a priesthood would naturally prefer or invent. So long as a
+priesthood possesses the power of life and death over the human body,
+they would not, by suggesting future awards, risk the possibility
+of a heresy arising to maintain Deorum injuria diis cura. But where
+an alien jurisdiction has relegated to local deities the defence of
+their own majesty, there must grow up the theory that such offences
+as cannot be expiated on earth are unpardonable, and must, because
+of the legal impunity with which they can be committed, be all the
+more terribly avenged somewhere else.
+
+Under alien influences, also, the supreme and absolute government of
+Jehovah had been divided, as is elsewhere described. He who originally
+claimed the empire of both light and darkness, good and evil, when
+his rivalry against other gods was on a question of power, had to be
+relieved of responsibility for earthly evils when the moral sense
+demanded dualism. Thus there grew up a separate personification of
+the destructive power of Jehovah, which had been supposed to lodge
+in his breath. The last breath of man obviously ends life; there is
+nothing more simple in its natural germ than the association of the
+first breath and the last with the Creative Spirit. [121] This potency
+of the breath or spirit is found in many ancient regions. It is the
+natural teaching of the destructive simoom, [122] or even of the annual
+autumnal breath which strikes the foliage with death. Persia especially
+abounded with superstitions of this character. By a sorcerer's breath
+the two serpents were evoked from the breast of Zohák. Nizami has woven
+the popular notion into his story of the two physicians who tried to
+destroy each other; one of whom survived his rival's poisonous draught,
+and killed that rival by making him smell a flower on which he had
+breathed. [123] Such notions as these influenced powerfully the later
+development of the idea of Jehovah, concerning whom it was said of old,
+'With the breath of his mouth shall he slay the wicked;' 'the breath
+of the Lord like a stream of brimstone doth kindle (Tophet).'
+
+Meanwhile in all the Trinitarian races which were to give form to
+christian Mythology, destructiveness had generally (not invariably)
+become the traditional rôle of the Third Person. [124] In Egypt there
+were Osiris the Creator, Horus the Preserver, Typhon the Destroyer;
+in Babylonia, Anu the Upper Air, Sin (Uri) the Moon, Samis the Sun. In
+Assyria the Sun regains his place, and deadly influences were ascribed
+to the Moon. In India, Brahma the Father, Vishnu the Saviour, Siva the
+Destroyer; in Persia, Zeruâne-Akrane Infinite Time, Ormuzd the Good,
+Ahriman the Evil; in Greece Zeus, Poseidôn, and Hadês, or Heaven,
+Ocean, and Hell, were the first-born of Time. The Trinitarian form had
+gradually crept in among the Jews, though their Jahvistic theology only
+admitted its application to inferior deities--Cain, Abel, Seth; Moses,
+Aaron, Hur; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. As time went on, these succeeded
+the ideas of Jehovah, Messias, and Wisdom. But already the serpent
+was the wisest of all the beasts of the field in Jewish mythology;
+and the personified Wisdom was fully prepared to be identified with
+Athene, the Greek Wisdom, who sprang armed from the head of Zeus
+(the Air), and whose familiar was a serpent.
+
+On the other hand, however, the divine Breath had also its benign
+significance. Siva ('the auspicious') inherited the character of Rudra
+('roaring storm'), but it was rather supported later on by his wife
+Káli. Athena though armed was the goddess of agriculture. The breath
+of Elohim had given man life. 'I now draw in and now let forth,'
+says Krishna; [125] 'I am generation and dissolution; I am death
+and immortality.' 'Thou wilt fancy it the dawning zephyr of an early
+spring,' says Sàdi; 'but it is the breath of Isa, or Jesus; for in
+that fresh breath and verdure the dead earth is reviving.' [126]
+'The voice of the turtle is heard in the land,' sings Solomon.
+
+When the Third Person of the Christian Trinity was constituted,
+it inherited the fatality of all the previous Third Persons--the
+Destroyers--while it veiled them in mystery. When the Holy Ghost
+inspired the disciples the account is significant. [127] 'Suddenly
+there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind,
+... and there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire,
+and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy
+Ghost.' This was on the Day of Pentecost, the harvest festival, when
+the first-fruits were offered to the quickening Spirit or Breath of
+nature; but the destructive feature is there also--the tongues are
+cloven like those of serpents. The beneficent power was manifest at
+the gate called Beautiful when the lame man was made to walk by Peter's
+power; but its fatal power was with the same apostle, and when he said,
+'Why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Ghost?' instantly
+Ananias fell down and gave up the ghost. [128] The spirit was carried,
+it is said, in the breath of the apostles. Its awfulness had various
+illustrations. Mary offered up two doves in token of her conception by
+the Holy Ghost. Jesus is described as scourging from the temple those
+that sold doves, and the allegory is repeated in Peter's denunciation
+of Simon Magus, who offered money for the gift of the Holy Ghost. [129]
+
+In one of his sermons Mr. Moody said, 'Nearly every day we have
+somebody coming into the inquiry-room very much discouraged and
+disheartened and cast down, because they think they have committed
+a sin against the Holy Ghost, and that there is no hope for
+them.' Mr. Moody said he believed the sin was nearly impossible, but
+he adds this remarkable statement, 'I don't remember of ever hearing
+a man swear by the Holy Ghost except once, and then I looked upon
+him expecting him to fall dead, and my blood ran cold when I heard
+him.' But it is almost as rare to hear prayers addressed to the Holy
+Ghost; and both phenomena--for praying and swearing are radically
+related--are no doubt survivals of the ancient notions which I
+have described. The forces of nature out of which the symbol grew,
+the life that springs from death and grows by decay, is essentially
+repeated again by those who adhere to the letter that kills, and
+also by those who ascend with the spirit that makes alive. It is
+probable that no more terrible form of the belief in a Devil survives
+than this Holy Ghost Dogma, which, lurking in vagueness and mystery,
+like the serpent of which it was born, passes by the self-righteous
+to cast its shadows over the most sensitive and lowly minds, chiefly
+those of pure women prone to exaggerate their least blemishes.
+
+In right reason the fatal Holy Ghost stands as the type of that Fear
+by which priesthoods have been able to preserve their institutions
+after the deities around whom they grew had become unpresentable,
+and which could best be fostered beneath the veil of mystery. They
+who love darkness rather than light because their deeds cannot bear
+the light, veil their gods not to abolish them but to preserve
+them. Calvinism is veiled, and Athanasianism, and Romanism; they
+are all veiled idols, whose power lives by being hid in a mass of
+philology and casuistry. So long as Christianity can persuade the
+Pope and Dr. Martineau, Dean Stanley and Mr. Moody, Quakers, Shakers,
+Jumpers, all to describe themselves alike as 'Christians,' its real
+nature will be veiled, its institutions will cumber the ground, and
+draw away the strength and intellect due to humanity; the indefinable
+'infidel' will be a devil. This process has been going on for a long
+time. The serpent-god, accursed by the human mind which grew superior
+to it, has crept into its Ark; but its fang and venom linger with that
+Bishop breathing on a priest, the priest breathing on a sick child,
+and bears down side by side with science that atmosphere of mystery
+in which creep all the old reptiles that throttle common sense and
+send their virus through all the social frame.
+
+In demonology the Holy Ghost is not a Devil, but in it are reflected
+the diabolisation of Culture and Progress and Art. It was these
+'Devils' which compelled the gods to veil themselves through successive
+ages, and to spiritualise their idols and dogmas to save their
+institutions. The deities concealed have proved far more potent over
+the popular imagination than when visible. The indefinable terrible
+menace of the Holy Ghost was a consummate reply to that equally
+indefinable spirit of loathing and contempt which rises among the
+cultured and refined towards things that have become unreal, their
+formalities and their cant. It is this ever-recurring necessity that
+enables clergymen to denounce belief in Hell and a Devil in churches
+which assuredly would never have been built but for the superstition
+so denounced. The ancient beliefs and the present denunciation of them
+are on the same thread,--the determination of a Church to survive and
+hold its power at any and every cost. The jesuitical power to veil
+the dogma is the most successful method of confronting the Spirit
+of an Age, which in the eye of reason is the only holy spirit, but
+which to ecclesiastical power struggling with enlightenment is the
+only formidable Satan.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+ANTICHRIST.
+
+ The Kali Age--Satan sifting Simon--Satan as Angel of
+ Light--Epithets of Antichrist--The Cæsars--Nero--Sacraments
+ imitated by Pagans--Satanic signs and wonders--Jerome
+ on Antichrist--Armillus--Al Dajjail--Luther on
+ Mohammed--'Mawmet'--Satan 'God's ape'--Mediæval notions--Witches
+ Sabbath--An Infernal Trinity--Serpent of Sins--Antichrist
+ Popes--Luther as Antichrist--Modern notions of Antichrist.
+
+
+In the 'Padma Purana' it is recorded that when King Vena embraced
+heretical doctrine and abjured the temples and sacrifices, the people
+following him, seven powerful Rishis, high priests, visited him
+and entreated him to return to their faith. They said, 'These acts,
+O king, which thou art performing, are not of our holy traditions,
+nor fit for our religion, but are such as shall be performed by
+mankind at the entrance of Kali, the last and sinful age, when thy
+new faith shall be received by all, and the service of the gods be
+utterly relinquished.' King Vena, being thus in advance of his time,
+was burned on the sacred grass, while a mantra was performed for him.
+
+This theory of Kali is curious as indicating a final triumph of the
+enemies of the gods. In the Scandinavian theory of 'Ragnarok,' the
+Twilight of the gods, there also seems to have been included no hope
+of the future victory of the existing gods. In the Parsí faith we
+first meet with the belief in a general catastrophe followed by the
+supremacy and universal sway of good. This faith characterised the
+later Hebrew prophecies, and is the spirit of Paul's brave saying,
+'When all things shall be subjected unto him, then also shall the
+Son himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that
+God may be all in all.'
+
+When, however, theology and metaphysics advanced and modelled this
+fiery lava of prophetic and apostolic ages into dogmatic shapes,
+evil was accorded an equal duration with good. The conflict between
+Christ and his foes was not to end with the conversion or destruction
+of his foes, but his final coming as monarch of the world was to
+witness the chaining up of the Archfiend in the Pit.
+
+Christ's own idea of Satan, assuming certain reported expressions to
+have been really uttered by him, must have been that which regarded
+him as a Tempter to evil, whose object was to test the reality of
+faith. 'Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked you for himself, that he
+might sift you as the wheat; but I made supplication for thee, that
+thy faith fail not; and when once thou hast returned, confirm thy
+brethren. And he said unto him, Lord, I am ready to go with thee,
+both into prison and into death. And he said, I tell thee, Peter,
+a cock will not crow this day till thou wilt thrice deny that thou
+knowest me.' [130] Such a sentiment could not convey to Jewish ears
+a degraded notion of Satan, except as being a nocturnal spirit who
+must cease his work at cock-crow. It is an adaptation of what Jehovah
+himself was said to do, in the prophecy of Amos. 'I will not utterly
+destroy the house of Jacob, saith the Lord.... I will sift the house
+of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve,
+yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth.' [131]
+
+Paul, too, appears to have had some such conception of Satan, since he
+speaks of an evil-doer as delivered up to Satan 'for the destruction
+of the flesh that the spirit may be saved.' [132] There is, however,
+in another passage an indication of the distinctness with which Paul
+and his friends had conceived a fresh adaptation of Satan as obstacle
+of their work. 'For such,' he says, 'are false apostles, deceitful
+workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And no
+marvel: for Satan transforms himself into an angel of light. It is
+no great thing therefore if his ministers also transform themselves
+as ministers of righteousness; whose end will be according to their
+works.' [133] It may be noted here that Paul does not think of Satan
+himself as transforming himself to a minister of righteousness, but of
+Satan's ministers as doing so. It is one of a number of phrases in the
+New Testament which reveal the working of a new movement towards an
+expression of its own. Real and far-reaching religious revolutions in
+history are distinguished from mere sectarian modifications, which they
+sum up in nothing more than in their new phraseology. When Jehovah,
+Messias, and Satan are gradually supplanted by Father, Christ, and
+Antichrist (or Man of Sin, False Christ, Withholder (katechon), False
+Prophet, Son of Perdition, Mystery of Iniquity, Lawless One), it is
+plain that new elements are present, and new emergencies. These varied
+phrases just quoted could not, indeed, crystallise for a long time into
+any single name for the new Obstacle to the new life, for during the
+same time the new life itself was too living, too various, to harden
+in any definite shape or be marked with any special name. The only New
+Testament writer who uses the word Antichrist is the so-called Apostle
+John; and it is interesting to remark that it is by him connected
+with a dogmatic statement of the nature of Christ and definition of
+heresy. 'Every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ is come in the flesh
+is of God; and every spirit that confesses not Jesus is not of God:
+and this is the spirit of Antichrist, whereof ye have heard that
+it comes; and now it is in the world already.' [134] This language,
+characteristic of the middle and close of the second century, [135]
+is in strong contrast with Paul's utterance in the first century,
+describing the Man of Sin (or of lawlessness, the son of perdition),
+as one 'who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God,
+or that is worshipped; so that he sat in the temple of God, showing
+himself that he is God.' [136] Christ has not yet begun to supplant
+God; to Paul he is the Son of God confronting the Son of Destruction,
+the divine man opposed by the man of sin. When the nature of Christ
+becomes the basis of a dogma, the man of sin is at once defined as
+the opponent of that dogma.
+
+As this dogma struggled on to its consummation and victory, it
+necessarily took the form of a triumph over the Cæsars, who were
+proclaiming themselves gods, and demanding worship as such. The writer
+of the second Epistle bearing Peter's name saw those christians who
+yielded to such authority typified in Balaam, the erring prophet who
+was opposed by the angel; [137] the writer of the Gospel of John saw
+the traitor Judas as the 'son of perdition,' [138] representing Jesus
+as praying that the rest of his disciples might be kept 'out of the
+evil one;' and many similar expressions disclose the fact that, towards
+the close of the second century, and throughout the third, the chief
+obstacle of those who were just beginning to be called 'Christians'
+was the temptation offered by Rome to the christians themselves to
+betray their sect. It was still a danger to name the very imperial
+gods who successively set themselves up to be worshipped at Rome,
+but the pointing of the phrases is unmistakable long before the last
+of the pagan emperors held the stirrup for the first christian Pontiff
+to mount his horse.
+
+Nero had answered to the portrait of 'the son of perdition sitting
+in the temple of God' perfectly. He aspired to the title 'King
+of the Jews.' He solemnly assumed the name of Jupiter. He had his
+temples and his priests, and shared divine honours with his mistress
+Poppæa. Yet, when Nero and his glory had perished under those phials
+of wrath described in the Apocalypse, a more exact image of the
+insidious 'False Christ' appeared in Vespasian. His alleged miracles
+('lying wonders'), and the reported prediction of his greatness
+by a prophet on Mount Carmel, his oppression of the Jews, who had
+to contribute the annual double drachma to support the temples and
+gods which Vespasian had restored, altogether made this decorous and
+popular emperor a more formidable enemy than the 'Beast' Nero whom
+he succeeded. The virtues and philosophy of Marcus Aurelius still
+increased the danger. Political conditions favoured all those who
+were inclined to compromise, and to mingle the popular pagan and the
+Jewish festivals, symbols, and ceremonies. In apocalyptic metaphor,
+Vespasian and Aurelius are the two horns of the Lamb who spake like
+the Dragon, i.e., Nero (Rev. xiii. 11).
+
+The beginnings of that mongrel of superstitions which at last gained
+the name of Christianity were in the liberation, by decay of parts
+and particles, of all those systems which Julius Cæsar had caged
+together for mutual destruction. 'With new thrones rise new altars,'
+says Byron's Sardanapalus; but it is still more true that, with new
+thrones all altars crumble a little. At an early period the differences
+between the believers in Christ and those they called idolaters
+were mainly in name; and, with the increase of Gentile converts,
+the adoption of the symbolism and practices of the old religions was
+so universal that the quarrel was about originality. 'The Devil,'
+says Tertullian, 'whose business it is to pervert the truth, mimics
+the exact circumstances of the Divine Sacraments in the mysteries of
+idols. He himself baptizes some, that is to say, his believers and
+followers: he promises forgiveness of sins from the sacred fount,
+and thus initiates them into the religion of Mithras; he thus marks
+on the forehead his own soldiers: he then celebrates the oblation of
+bread; he brings in the symbol of resurrection, and wins the crown
+with the sword.' [139]
+
+What masses of fantastic nonsense it was possible to cram into
+one brain was shown in the time of Nero, the brain being that of
+Simon the Magician. Simon was, after all, a representative man;
+he reappears in christian Gnosticism, and Peter, who denounced him,
+reappears also in the phrenzy of Montanism. Take the followers of
+this Sorcerer worshipping his image in the likeness of Jupiter,
+the Moon, and Minerva; and Montanus with his wild women Priscilla
+and Maximilla going about claiming to be inspired by the Holy Ghost
+to re-establish Syrian orthodoxy and asceticism; and we have fair
+specimens of the parties that glared at each other, and apostrophised
+each other as children of Belial. They competed with each other by
+pretended miracles. They both claimed the name of Christ, and all the
+approved symbols and sacraments. The triumph of one party turned the
+other into Antichrist.
+
+Thus in process of time, as one hydra-head fell only to be followed
+by another, there was defined a Spirit common to and working through
+them all--a new devil, whose special office was hostility to Christ,
+and whose operations were through those who claimed to be christians
+as well as through open enemies.
+
+As usual, when the phrases, born of real struggles, had lost their
+meaning, they were handed up to the theologians to be made into
+perpetual dogmas. Out of an immeasurable mass of theories and
+speculations, we may regard the following passage from Jerome as
+showing what had become the prevailing belief at the beginning of
+the fifth century. 'Let us say that which all ecclesiastical writers
+have handed down, viz., that at the end of the world, when the Roman
+Empire is to be destroyed, there will be ten kings, who will divide
+the Roman world among them; and there will arise an eleventh little
+king who will subdue three of the ten kings, that is, the king of
+Egypt, of Africa, and of Ethiopia; and on these having been slain,
+the seven other kings will submit.' 'And behold,' he says, 'in the
+ram were the eyes of a man'--this is that we may not suppose him to
+be a devil or a dæmon, as some have thought, but a man in whom Satan
+will dwell utterly and bodily--'and a mouth speaking great things;'
+for he is the 'man of sin, the son of perdition, who sitteth in the
+temple of God making himself as God.' [140]
+
+The 'Little Horn' of Daniel has proved a cornucopia of Antichrists. Not
+only the christians but the Jews and the mussulmans have definite
+beliefs on the subject. The rabbinical name for Antichrist is Armillus,
+a word found in the Targum (Isa. xi. 4): 'By the word of his mouth
+the wicked Armillus shall die.' There will be twelve signs of the
+Messiah's coming--appearance of three apostate kings, terrible heat of
+the sun, dew of blood, healing dew, the sun darkened for thirty days,
+universal power of Rome with affliction for Jews, and the appearance
+of the first Messias (Joseph's tribe), Nehemiah. The next and seventh
+sign will be the appearance of Armillus, born of a marble statue in a
+church at Rome. The Romans will accept him as their god, and the whole
+world be subject to him. Nehemiah alone will refuse to worship him,
+and for this will be slain, and the Jews suffer terrible things. The
+eighth sign will be the appearance of the angel Michael with three
+blasts of his trumpet--which shall call forth Elias, the forerunner,
+and the true Messias (Ben David), and bring on the war with Armillus
+who shall perish, and all christians with him. The ten tribes shall
+be gathered into Paradise. Messias shall wed the fairest daughter of
+their race, and when he dies his sons shall succeed him, and reign
+in unbroken line over a beatified Israel.
+
+The mussulman modification of the notion of Antichrist is very
+remarkable. They call him Al Dajjail, that is, the impostor. They say
+that Mohammed told his follower Tamisri Al-Dari, that at the end of
+the world Antichrist would enter Jerusalem seated on an ass; but that
+Jesus will then make his second coming to encounter him. The Beast of
+the Apocalypse will aid Antichrist, but Jesus will be joined by Imam
+Mahadi, who has never died; together they will subdue Antichrist,
+and thereafter the mussulmans and christians will for ever be united
+in one religion. The Jews, however, will regard Antichrist as their
+expected Messias. Antichrist will be blind of one eye, and deaf of
+one ear. 'Unbeliever' will be written on his forehead. In that day
+the sun will rise in the west. [141]
+
+The christians poorly requited this amicable theory of the mussulmans
+by very extensively identifying Mohammed as Antichrist, at one
+period. From that period came the English word mawmet (idol),
+and mummery (idolatry), both of which, probably, are derived from
+the name of the Arabian Prophet. Daniel's 'Little Horn' betokens,
+according to Martin Luther, Mohammed. 'But what are the Little Horn's
+Eyes? The Little Horn's Eyes,' says he, 'mean Mohammed's Alkoran,
+or Law, wherewith he ruleth. In the which Law there is nought but
+sheer human reason (eitel menschliche Vernunft).' ... 'For his Law,'
+he reiterates, 'teaches nothing but that which human understanding and
+reason may well like.' ... Wherefore 'Christ will come upon him with
+fire and brimstone.' When he wrote this--in his 'army sermon' against
+the Turks--in 1529, he had never seen a Koran. 'Brother Richard's'
+(Predigerordens) Confutatio Alcoran, dated 1300, formed the exclusive
+basis of his argument. But in Lent of 1540, he relates, a Latin
+translation, though a very unsatisfactory one, fell into his hands,
+and once more he returned to Brother Richard, and did his Refutation
+into German, supplementing his version with brief but racy notes. This
+Brother Richard had, according to his own account, gone in quest of
+knowledge to 'Babylon, that beautiful city of the Saracens,' and at
+Babylon he had learnt Arabic and been inured in the evil ways of the
+Saracens. When he had safely returned to his native land he set about
+combating the same. And this is his exordium:--'At the time of the
+Emperor Heraclius there arose a man, yea, a Devil, and a first-born
+child of Satan, ... who wallowed in ... and he was dealing in the Black
+Art, and his name it was Machumet.' ... This work Luther made known to
+his countrymen by translating and commenting, prefacing, and rounding
+it off by an epilogue. True, his notes amount to little more but an
+occasional 'Oh fie, for shame, you horrid Devil, you damned Mahomet,'
+or 'O Satan, Satan, you shall pay for that,' or, 'That's it, Devils,
+Saracens, Turks, it's all the same,' or, 'Here the Devil smells a rat,'
+or briefly, 'O Pfui Dich, Teufel!' except when he modestly, with a
+query, suggests whether those Assassins, who, according to his text,
+are regularly educated to go out into the world in order to kill and
+slay all Worldly Powers, may not, perchance, be the Gypsies or the
+'Tattern' (Tartars); or when he breaks down with a 'Hic nescio quid
+dicat translator.' His epilogue, however, is devoted to a special
+disquisition as to whether Mohammed or the Pope be worse. And in the
+twenty-second chapter of this disquisition he has arrived at the
+final conclusion that, after all, the Pope is worse, and that he,
+and not Mohammed, is the real 'Endechrist.' 'Wohlen,' he winds up,
+'God grant us his grace, and punish both the Pope and Mohammed,
+together with their devils. I have done my part as a true prophet
+and teacher. Those who won't listen may leave it alone.' In similar
+strains speaks the learned and gentle Melancthon. In an introductory
+epistle to a reprint of that same Latin Koran which displeased Luther
+so much, he finds fault with Mohammed, or rather, to use his own
+words, he thinks that 'Mohammed is inspired by Satan,' because he
+'does not explain what sin is,' and further, since he 'showeth not the
+reason of human misery.' He agrees with Luther about the Little Horn:
+though in another treatise he is rather inclined to see in Mohammed
+both Gog and Magog. And 'Mohammed's sect,' he says, 'is altogether
+made up (conflata) of blasphemy, robbery, and shameful lusts.' Nor
+does it matter in the least what the Koran is all about. 'Even if
+there were anything less scurrilous in the book, it need not concern
+us any more than the portents of the Egyptians, who invoked snakes
+and cats.... Were it not that partly this Mohammedan pest, and partly
+the Pope's idolatry, have long been leading us straight to wreck and
+ruin--may God have mercy upon some of us!' [142]
+
+'Mawmet' was used by Wicliffe for idol in his translation of the
+New Testament, Acts vii. 41, 'And they made a calf in those days and
+offered a sacrifice to the Mawmet' (idol). The word, though otherwise
+derived by some, is probably a corruption of Mohammed. In the 'Mappa
+Mundi' of the thirteenth century we find the representation of the
+golden calf in the promontory of Sinai, with the superscription 'Mahum'
+for Mohammed, whose name under various corruptions, such as Mahound,
+Mawmet, &c., became a general byword in the mediæval languages for an
+idol. In a missionary hymn of Wesley's Mohammed is apostrophised as--
+
+
+ That Arab thief, as Satan bold,
+ Who quite destroyed Thy Asian fold;
+
+
+and the Almighty is adjured to--
+
+
+ The Unitarian fiend expel,
+ And chase his doctrine back to Hell.
+
+
+In these days, when the very mention of the Devil raises a smile,
+we can hardly realise the solemnity with which his work was once
+viewed. When Goethe represents Mephistopheles as undertaking to
+teach Faust's class in theology and dwells on his orthodoxy, it
+is the refrain of the faith of many generations. The Devil was not
+'God's Ape,' as Tertullian called him, in any comical way; not only
+was his ceremonial believed to be modelled on that of God, but his
+inspiration of his followers was believed to be quite as potent and
+earnest. Tertullian was constrained to write in this strain--'Blush,
+my Roman fellow-soldiers, even if ye are not to be judged by Christ,
+but by any soldier of Mithras, who when he is undergoing initiation
+in the cave, the very camp of the Powers of Darkness, when the wreath
+is offered him (a sword being placed between as if in semblance of
+martyrdom), and then about to be set on his head, he is warned to
+put forth his hand and push the wreath away, transferring it to,
+perchance, his shoulder, saying at the same time, My only crown is
+Mithras. And thenceforth he never wears a wreath; and this is a mark
+he has for a test, whenever tried as to his initiation, for he is
+immediately proved to be a soldier of Mithras if he throws down the
+wreath offered him, saying his crown is in his god. Let us therefore
+acknowledge the craft of the Devil, who mimics certain things of
+those that be divine, in order that he may confound and judge us by
+the faith of his own followers.'
+
+This was written before the exaltation of Christianity under
+Constantine. When the age of the martyrdom of the so-called pagans
+came on, these formulæ became real, and the christians were still
+more confounded by finding that the worshippers of the Devil,
+as they thought them, could yield up their lives in many parts of
+Europe as bravely for their faith as any christian had ever done. The
+'Prince of this world' became thus an unmeaning phrase except for
+the heretics. Christ had become the Prince of this world; and he was
+opposed by religious devotees as earnest as any who had suffered under
+Nero. The relation of the Opposition to the Devil was yet more closely
+defined when it claimed the christian name for its schism or heresy,
+and when it carried its loyalty to the Adversary of the Church to the
+extent of suffering martyrdom. 'Tell me, holy father,' said Evervinus
+to St. Bernard, concerning the Albigenses, 'how is this? They entered
+to the stake and bore the torment of the fire not only with patience,
+but with joy and gladness. I wish your explanation, how these members
+of the Devil could persist in their heresy with a courage and constancy
+scarcely to be found in the most religious of the faith of Christ?'
+
+Under these circumstances the personification of Antichrist had
+a natural but still wonderful development. He was to be born of a
+virgin, in Babylon, to be educated at Bethsaida and Chorazin, and to
+make a triumphal entry into Jerusalem, proclaiming himself the Son of
+God. In the interview at Messina (1202) between Richard I. and the
+Abbot Joachim of Floris, the king said, 'I thought that Antichrist
+would be born at Antioch or in Babylon, and of the tribe of Dan,
+and would reign in the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem, and would
+walk in that land in which Christ walked, and would reign in it for
+three years and a half, and would dispute against Elijah and Enoch,
+and would kill them, and would afterwards die; and that after his
+death God would give sixty days of repentance, in which those might
+repent which should have erred from the way of truth, and have been
+seduced by the preaching of Antichrist and his false prophets.'
+
+This belief was reflected in Western Europe in the belief that the
+congregation of Witches assembled on their Sabbath (an institution
+then included among paganisms) to celebrate grand mass to the Devil,
+and that all the primitive temples were raised in honour of Satan. In
+the Russian Church the correspondence between the good and evil powers,
+following their primitive faith in the conflict between Byelbog and
+Tchernibog (white god and black god), went to the curious extent of
+picturing in hell a sort of infernal Trinity. The Father throned in
+Heaven with the Son between his knees and the Dove beside or beneath
+him, was replied to by a majestic Satan in hell, holding his Son
+(Judas) on his knees, and the Serpent acting as counteragent of
+the Dove. This singular arrangement may still be seen in many of
+the pictures which cover the walls of the oldest Russian churches
+(Fig. 9). The infernal god is not without a solemn majesty answering
+to that of his great antagonist above. The Serpent of Sins proceeds
+from the diabolical Father and Son, passing from beneath their throne
+through one of the two mouths of Hell, and then winds upward, hungrily
+opening its jaws near the terrible Balances where souls are weighed
+(Fig. 10). Along its hideous length are seated at regular intervals
+nine winged devils, representing probably antagonists of the nine
+Sephiroth or Æons of the Gnostic theology. Each is armed with a hook
+whereby the souls weighed and found wanting may be dragged. The
+sins which these devils represent are labelled, generally on
+rings around the serpent, and increase in heinousness towards the
+head. It is a curious fact that the Sin nearest the head is marked
+'Unmercifulness.' Strange and unconscious sarcasm on an Omnipotent
+Deity under whose sway exists this elaboration of a scheme of sins
+and tortures precisely corresponding to the scheme of virtues and joys!
+
+Truly said the Epistle of John, there be many Antichrists. If this
+was true before the word Christianity had been formed, or the system
+it names, what was the case afterwards? For centuries we find vast
+systems denouncing each other as Antichrist. And ultimately, as a
+subtle hardly-conscious heresy spread abroad, the great excommunicator
+of antichrists itself, Rome, acquired that title, which it has
+never shaken off since. The See of Rome did not first receive that
+appellation from Protestants, but from its own chiefs. Gregory himself
+(A.C. 590) started the idea by declaring that any man who held even
+the shadow of such power as the Popes arrogated to themselves after
+his time would be the forerunner of Antichrist. Arnulphus, Bishop
+of Orleans, in an invective against John XV. at Rheims (A.C. 991),
+intimated that a Pope destitute of charity was Antichrist. But the
+stigma was at length fixed (twelfth century) by Amalrich of Bena
+('Quia Papa esset Antichristus et Roma Babylon et ipse sedit in
+Monte Oliveti, i.e., in pinguedine potestatis'); and also by the
+Abbot Joachim (A.C. 1202). The theory of Richard I., as stated to
+Joachim concerning Antichrist, has already been quoted. It was in the
+presence of the Archbishops of Rouen and Auxerre, and the Bishop of
+Bayonne, and represented their opinion and the common belief of the
+time. But Joachim said the Second Apocalyptic Beast represented some
+great prelate who will be like Simon Magus, and, as it were, universal
+Pontiff, and that very Antichrist of whom St. Paul speaks. Hildebrand
+was the first Pope to whom this ugly label was affixed, but the
+career of Alexander VI. (Roderic Borgia) made it for ever irremovable
+for the Protestant mind. There is in the British Museum a volume of
+caricatures, dated 1545, in which occurs an ingenious representation
+of Alexander VI. The Pope is first seen in his ceremonial robes; but
+a leaf being raised, another figure is joined to the lower part of the
+former, and there appears the papal devil, the cross in his hand being
+changed to a pitchfork (Fig. 11). Attached to it is an explanation in
+German giving the legend of the Pope's death. He was poisoned (1503)
+by the cup he had prepared for another man. It was afterwards said
+that he had secured the papacy by aid of the Devil. Having asked
+how long he would reign, the Devil returned an equivocal answer;
+and though Alexander understood that it was to be fifteen years, it
+proved to be only eleven. When in 1520 Pope Leo X. issued his formal
+bull against Luther, the reformer termed it 'the execrable bull of
+Antichrist.' An Italian poem of the time having represented Luther
+as the offspring of Megæra, the Germans returned the invective in a
+form more likely to impress the popular mind; namely, in a caricature
+(Fig. 12), representing the said Fury as nursing the Pope. This
+caricature is also of date 1545, and with it were others showing
+Alecto and Tisiphone acting in other capacities for the papal babe.
+
+The Lutherans had made the discovery that the number of the Apocalyptic
+Beast, 666, put into Hebrew numeral letters, contained the words
+Aberin Kadescha Papa (our holy father the Pope). The downfall of this
+Antichrist was a favourite theme of pulpit eloquence, and also with
+artists. A very spirited pamphlet was printed (1521), and illustrated
+with designs by Luther's friend Lucas Cranach. It was entitled
+Passional Christi und Antichristi. The fall of the papal Antichrist
+(Fig. 13), has for its companion one of Christ washing the feet of
+his disciples.
+
+But the Catholics could also make discoveries; and among many other
+things they found that the word 'Luther' in Hebrew numerals also made
+the number of the Beast. It was remembered that one of the earliest
+predictions concerning Antichrist was that he would travesty the birth
+of Christ from a virgin by being born of a nun by a Bishop. Luther's
+marriage with the nun Catharine von Bora came sufficiently near the
+prediction to be welcomed by his enemies. The source of his inspiration
+as understood by Catholics is cleverly indicated in a caricature of
+the period (Fig. 14).
+
+The theory that the Papacy represents Antichrist has so long been the
+solemn belief of rebels against its authority, that it has become a
+vulgarised article of Protestant faith. On the other hand, Catholics
+appear to take a political and prospective view of Antichrist. Cardinal
+Manning, in his pastoral following the election of Leo XIII., said:
+'A tide of revolution has swept over all countries. Every people
+in Europe is inwardly divided against itself, and the old society
+of Christendom, with its laws, its sanctities, and its stability,
+is giving way before the popular will, which has no law, or rather
+which claims to be a law to itself. This is at least the forerunning
+sign of the Lawless One, who in his own time shall be revealed.'
+
+Throughout the endless exchange of epithets, it has been made clear
+that Antichrist is the reductio ad absurdum of the notion of a personal
+Devil. From the day when the word was first coined, it has assumed
+every variety of shape, has fitted with equal precision the most
+contrarious things and persons; and the need of such a novel form
+at one point or another in the progress of controversy is a satire
+on the inadequacy of Satan and his ancient ministers. Bygone Devils
+cannot represent new animosities. The ascent of every ecclesiastical
+or theological system is traceable in massacres and martyrdoms; each
+of these, whether on one side or the other, helps to develop a new
+devil. The story of Antichrist shows devils in the making. Meantime,
+to eyes that see how every system so built up must sacrifice a
+virtue at every stage of its ascent, it will be sufficiently clear
+that every powerful Church is Adversary of the religion it claims to
+represent. Buddhism is Antibuddha; Islam is Antimohammed; Christianity
+is Antichrist.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+THE PRIDE OF LIFE.
+
+ The curse of Iblis--Samaël as Democrat--His vindication by
+ Christ and Paul--Asmodäus--History of the name--Aschmedai of the
+ Jews--Book of Tobit--Doré's 'Triumph of Christianity'--Aucassin
+ and Nicolette--Asmodeus in the convent--The Asmodeus of Le
+ Sage--Mephistopheles--Blake's 'Marriage of Heaven and Hell'--The
+ Devil and the artists--Sádi's Vision of Satan--Arts of the
+ Devil--Suspicion of beauty--Earthly and heavenly mansions--Deacon
+ versus Devil.
+
+
+On the parapet of the external gallery of Nôtre Dame in Paris is the
+carved form, of human size, represented in our figure (15). There is
+in the face a remarkable expression of pride and satisfaction as he
+looks forth on the gay city and contemplates all the wickedness in it,
+but this satisfaction is curiously blended with a look of envy and
+lust. His elegant head-dress gives him the pomp becoming the Asmodeus
+presiding over the most brilliant capital in the world.
+
+His seat on the fine parapet is in contrast with the place assigned
+him in Eastern traditions--ruins and desert places,--but otherwise he
+fairly fulfilled, no doubt, early ideas in selecting his headquarters
+at Paris. A mussulman legend says that when, after the Fall of Man,
+Allah was mitigating the sentences he had pronounced, Iblis (who,
+as the Koran relates, pleaded and obtained the deferment of his
+consignment to Hell until the resurrection, and unlimited power over
+sinners who do not accept the word of Allah) asked--
+
+'Where shall I dwell in the meantime?
+
+'In ruins, tombs, and all other unclean places shunned by man.
+
+'What shall be my food?
+
+'All things slain in the name of idols.
+
+'How shall I quench my thirst?
+
+'With wine and intoxicating liquors.
+
+'What shall occupy my leisure hours?
+
+'Music, song, love-poetry, and dancing.
+
+'What is my watchword?
+
+'The curse of Allah until the day of judgment.
+
+'But how shall I contend with man, to whom thou hast granted two
+guardian angels, and who has received thy revelation?
+
+'Thy progeny shall be more numerous than his,--for for every man that
+is born, there shall come into the world seven evil spirits--but they
+shall be powerless against the faithful.'
+
+Iblis with wine, song, and dance--the 'pride of life'--is also said
+to have been aided in entering Paradise by the peacock, which he
+flattered. [143]
+
+This fable, though later than the era of Mohammed in form, is as
+ancient as the myth of Eden in substance. The germ of it is already
+in the belief that Jehovah separated from the rest of the earth a
+garden, and from the human world a family of his own, and from the
+week a day of his own. The reply of the elect to the proud Gentile
+aristocracy was an ascetic caste established by covenant with the
+King of kings. This attitude of the pious caste turned the barbaric
+aristocrats, in a sense, to democrats. Indeed Samaël, in whom the
+execrated Dukes of Edom were ideally represented, might be almost
+described as the Democratic Devil. According to an early Jewish
+legend, Jehovah, having resolved to separate 'men' (i.e., Jews)
+from 'swine' (i.e., idolaters, Gentiles), made circumcision the
+seal on them as children of Abraham. There having been, however,
+Jews who were necessarily never circumcised, their souls, it was
+arranged, should pass at death into the forms of certain sacred
+birds where they would be purified, and finally united to the elect
+in Paradise. Now, Samaël, or Adam Belial as he was sometimes called,
+is said to have appealed to the Creator that this arrangement should
+include all races of beings. 'Lord of the world!' he said, 'we also
+are of your creation. Thou art our father. As thou savest the souls
+of Israel by transforming them that they may be brought back again
+and made immortal, so also do unto us! Why shouldst thou regard the
+seed of Abraham before us?' Jehovah answered, 'Have you done the same
+that Abraham did, who recognised me from his childhood and went into
+Chaldean fire for love of me? You have seen that I rescued him from
+your hands, and from the fiery oven which had no power over him,
+and yet you have not loved and worshipped me. Henceforth speak no
+more of good or evil.' [144]
+
+The old rabbinical books which record this conversation do not report
+Samaël's answer; nor is it necessary: that answer was given by Jesus
+and Paul breaking down the partitions between Jew and Gentile. It was
+quite another thing, however, to include the world morally. Jesus,
+it would seem, aimed at this also; he came 'eating and drinking,'
+and the orthodox said Samaël was in him. Personally, he declined to
+substitute even the cosmopolitan rite of baptism for the discredited
+national rite of circumcision. But Paul was of another mind. His
+pharisaism was spiritualised and intensified in his new faith, to
+which the great world was all an Adversary.
+
+It was a tremendous concession, this giving up of the gay and beautiful
+world, with its mirth and amusements, its fine arts and romance--to
+the Devil. Unswerving Nemesis has followed that wild theorem in many
+forms, of which the most significant is Asmodeus.
+
+Asmodäus, or Aêshma-daêva of the Zend texts, the modern Persian Khasm,
+is etymologically what Carlyle might call 'the god Wish;' aêsha
+meaning 'wish,' from the Sanskrit root ish, 'to desire.' An almost
+standing epithet of Aêshma is Khrvîdra, meaning apparently 'having a
+hurtful weapon or lance.' He is occasionally mentioned immediately
+after Anrô-mainyus (Ahriman); sometimes is expressly named as one
+of his most prominent supporters. In the remarkable combat between
+Ahuro-mazda (Ormuzd) and Anrô-mainyus, described in Zam. Y. 46, the
+good deity summons to his aid Vohumano, Ashavahista, and Fire; while
+the Evil One is aided by Akômano, Aêshma, and Aji-Daháka. [145] Here,
+therefore, Aêshma appears as opposed to Ashavahista, 'supreme purity'
+of the Lord of Fire. Aêshma is the spirit of the lower or impure Fire,
+Lust and Wrath. A Sanskrit text styles him Kossa-deva, 'the god of
+Wrath.' In Yaçna 27, 35, Sraosha, Aêshma's opponent, is invoked to
+shield the faithful 'in both worlds from Death the Violent, from Aêshma
+the Violent, from the hosts of Violence that raise aloft the terrible
+banner--from the assaults of Aêshma that he makes along with Vídátu
+('Divider, Destroyer'), the demon-created.' He is thus the leading
+representative of dissolution, the fatal power of Ahriman. Ormuzd
+is said to have created Sraosha to be the destroyer of 'Aêshma of
+the fatal lance.' Sraosha ('the Hearer') is the moral vanquisher of
+Aêshma, in distinction from Haoma, who is his chief opponent in the
+physical domain.
+
+Such, following Windischmann, [146] is the origin of the devil
+whom the apocryphal book of Tobit has made familiar in Europe as
+Asmodeus. Aschmedai, as the Jews called him, appears in this story as
+precisely that spirit described in the Avesta--the devil of Violence
+and Lust, whose passion for Sara leads him to slay her seven husbands
+on their wedding-night. The devils of Lust are considered elsewhere,
+and Asmodeus among them; there is another aspect of him which here
+concerns us. He is a fastidious devil. He will not have the object of
+his passion liable to the embrace of any other. He cannot endure bad
+smells, and that raised by the smoke of the fish-entrails burnt by
+Tobit drives him 'into the utmost parts of Egypt, where the angel
+bound him.' It is, however, of more importance to read the story
+by the light of the general reputation of Aschmedai among the Jews
+and Arabians. It was notably that of the devil represented in the
+Moslem tradition at the beginning of this chapter. He is the Eastern
+Don Giovanni and Lothario; he plies Noah and Solomon with wine,
+and seduces their wives, and always aims high with his dashing
+intrigues. He would have cried Amen to Luther's lines--
+
+
+ Who loves not wine, woman, and song,
+ He lives a fool his whole life long.
+
+
+Besides being an aristocrat, he is a scholar, the most learned Master
+of Arts, educated in the great College of Hell, founded by Asa and
+Asael, as elsewhere related. He was fond of gaming; and so fashionable
+that Calmet believed his very name signifies fine dress.
+
+Now, the moral reflections in the Book of Tobit, and its casual
+intimations concerning the position of the persons concerned, show
+that they were Jewish captives of the humblest working class, whose
+religion is of a type now found chiefly among the more ignorant
+sectarians. Tobit's moral instructions to his son, 'In pride is
+destruction and much trouble, and in lewdness is decay and much want,'
+'Drink not wine to make thee drunken,' and his careful instructions
+about finding wealth in the fear of God, are precisely such as would
+shape a devil in the image of Asmodeus. Tobit's moral truisms are
+made falsities by his puritanism: 'Prayer is good with fasting and
+alms and righteousness;' 'but give nothing to the wicked;' 'If thou
+serve God he will repay thee.'
+
+'Cakes and ale' do not cease to exist because Tobits are virtuous;
+but unfortunately they may be raised from their subordinate to an
+insubordinate place by the transfer of religious restraints to the
+hands of Ignorance and Cant. Asmodeus, defined against Persian and
+Jewish asceticism and hypocrisy, had his attractions for men of the
+world. Through him the devil became perilously associated with wit,
+gallantry, and the one creed of youth which is not at all consumptive--
+
+
+ Grey is all Theory,
+ Green Life's golden-fruited tree!
+
+
+Especially did Asmodeus represent the subordination of so-called
+'religious' and tribal distinctions to secular considerations. As
+Samaël had petitioned for an extension of the Abrahamic Covenant to
+all the world and failed to secure it from Jehovah, Asmodeus proposed
+to disregard the distinction. There is much in the Book of Tobit which
+looks as if it were written especially with the intention of persuading
+Jewish youth, tempted by Babylonians to marriage, that their lovers
+might prove to be succubi or incubi. Tobit implores his son to marry
+in his own tribe, and not take a 'strange woman.' Asmodeus was as
+cosmopolitan as the god of Love himself, and many of his uglier early
+characteristics were hidden out of sight by such later developments.
+
+Gustave Doré has painted in his vivid way the 'Triumph of
+Christianity.' In it we see the angelic hosts with drawn swords
+overthrowing the forms adored of paganism--hurling them headlong
+into an abyss. So far as the battle and victory go, this is just
+the conception which an early christian would have had of what took
+place through the advent of Christ. It filled their souls with joy to
+behold by Faith's vision those draped angels casting down undraped
+goddesses; they would delight to imagine how the fall might break
+the bones of those beautiful limbs. For they never thought of these
+gods and goddesses as statues, but as real seductive devils; and when
+these christians had brought over the arts, they often pictured the
+black souls coming out of these fair idols as they fell.
+
+Doré may have tried to make the angels as beautiful as the goddesses,
+but he has not succeeded. In this he has interpreted the heart behind
+every deformity which was ever added to a pagan deity. The horror
+of the monks was transparent homage. Why did they starve and scourge
+their bodies, and roll them in thorns? Because not even by defacing
+the beautiful images were they able to expel from their inward worship
+the lovely ideals they represented.
+
+It is not difficult now to perceive that the old monks were consigning
+the pagan ideals to imaginary and themselves to actual hells, in full
+hope of thereby gaining permanent possession of the same beauty abjured
+on earth. The loveliness of the world was transient. They grew morbid
+about death; beneath the rosiest form they saw the skeleton. The
+heavenly angels they longed for were Venuses and Apollos, with no
+skeletons visible beneath their immortalised flesh. They never made
+sacrifices for a disembodied heaven. The force of self-crucifixion
+lay in the creed--'I believe in the resurrection of the body, and
+the life everlasting.'
+
+The world could not generally be turned into a black procession at its
+own funeral. In proportion to the conquests of Christianity must be its
+progressive surrender to the unconquerable--to human nature. Aphrodite
+and Eros, over whose deep graves nunneries and monasteries had been
+built, were the first to revive, and the story, as Mr. Pater has told
+it, is like some romantic version of Ishtar's Descent into Hades and
+her resurrection. [147] While as yet the earth seemed frostbound,
+long before the Renaissance, the song of the turtle was heard in the
+ballad of Aucassin and Nicolette. The christian knight will marry the
+beautiful Saracen, and to all priestly warnings that he will surely
+go to hell, replies, 'What could I do in Paradise? I care only to go
+where I can be with Nicolette. Who go to Paradise? Old priests, holy
+cripples, dried-up monks, who pass their lives before altars. I much
+prefer Hell, where go the brave, the gay, and beautiful. There will
+be the players on harps, the classic poets and singers; and there I
+shall not be parted from Nicolette!'
+
+Along with pretty Saracen maidens, or memories of them, were brought
+back into Europe legends of Asmodeus. Aphrodite and Eros might disguise
+themselves in his less known and less anathematised name, so that
+he could manage to sing of his love for Sara, of Parsi for Jewess,
+under the names of christian Aucassin and saracen Nicolette. In the
+Eastern Church he reappeared also. There are beautiful old pictures
+which show the smart cavalier, feather-in-cap, on the youth's left,
+while on his right stands 'grey Theory' in the form of a long-bearded
+friar. Such pictures, no doubt, taught for many a different lesson
+from that intended--namely, that the beat of the heart is on the left.
+
+Where St. Benedict rolled himself in thorns for dreaming of his
+(deserted) 'Nicolette,' St. Francis planted roses; and the Latin Church
+had to recognise this evolution of seven centuries. They hid the thorns
+in the courts of convents, and sold the roses to the outside world as
+indulgences. But as Asmodeus had not respected the line between Jew
+and Gentile in Nineveh, so he passed over that between priest, nun,
+and worldling in the West. In the days of Witchcraft the Church was
+scandalised by the rumour that the nuns of the Franciscan Convent of
+Louviers had largely taken to sorcery, and were attending the terrible
+'Witches' Sabbaths.' The nun most prominent in this affair was one
+Madeleine Bavent. The priests announced that she had confessed that
+she was borne away to the orgies by the demon Asmodeus, and that
+he had induced her to profane the sacred host. It turned out that
+the nuns had engaged in intrigues with the priests who had charge
+of them--especially with Fathers David, Picard, and Boulé--but
+Asmodeus was credited with the crime, and the nuns were punished
+for it. Madeleine was condemned to life-long penance, and Picard
+anticipated the fire by a suicide, in which he was said to have been
+assisted by the devil.
+
+Following the rabbinical tradition which represented him as continually
+passing from the high infernal College of Asa and Asael to the
+earth to apply his arts of sorcery, Asmodeus gained a respectable
+position in European literature through the romance of Le Sage ('Le
+Diable Boiteux'), and his fame so gained did much to bring about
+in France that friendly feeling for the Devil which has long been a
+characteristic of French literature. A very large number of books,
+periodicals, and journals in France have gained popularity through
+the Devil's name. Asmodeus was, in fact, the Arch-bohemian. As such,
+he largely influenced the conception of Mephistopheles as rendered by
+Goethe--himself the Prince of Bohemians. The old horror of Asmodeus
+for bad smells is insulted in the name Mephistopheles, and this devil
+is many rolled into one; yet in many respects his kinship to Asmodeus
+is revealed. All the dried starveling Anthonys and Benedicts are,
+in a cultured way, present in the theologian and scholar Faust;
+all the sweet ladies that haunted their seclusion became realistic
+in Gretchen. She is the Nemesis of suppressed passions.
+
+One province of nature after another has been recovered from
+Asceticism. In this case Ishtar has had to regain her apparel and
+ornaments at successive portals that are centuries, and they are not
+all recovered yet. But we have gone far enough, even in puritanised
+England, to produce a 'madman' far-seeing enough to behold The
+Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The case of Asmodeus is stated well,
+albeit radically, by William Blake, in that proverb which was told
+him by the devils, whom he alone of midnight travellers was shrewd
+enough to consult: 'The pride of the peacock is the glory of God;
+the lust of the goat is the bounty of God; the wrath of the lion is
+the wisdom of God.' When that statement is improved, as it well may
+be, it will be when those who represent religion shall have learned
+that human like other nature is commanded by obedience.
+
+In this connection may be mentioned a class of legends indicating
+the Devil's sensitiveness with regard to his personal appearance. The
+anxiety of the priests and hermits to have him represented as hideous
+was said to have been warmly resented by Satan, one of the most
+striking being the legend of many versions concerning a Sacristan,
+who was also an artist, who ornamented an abbey with a devil so ugly
+that none could behold it without terror. It was believed he had by
+inspiration secured an exact portrait of the archfiend. The Devil
+appeared to the Sacristan, reproached him with having made him so
+ugly, and threatened to punish him grievously if he did not make him
+better looking. Although this menace was thrice repeated, the Sacristan
+refused to comply. The Devil then tempted him into an intrigue with a
+lady of the neighbourhood, and they eloped after robbing the abbey of
+its treasure. But they were caught, and the Sacristan imprisoned. The
+Devil then appears and offers to get him out of his trouble if he will
+only destroy the ugly likeness, and make another and handsomer. The
+Sacristan consented, and suddenly found himself in bed as if nothing
+had happened, while the Devil in his image lay in chains. The Devil
+when discovered vanished; the Sacristan got off on the theory that
+crimes and all had been satanic juggles. But the Sacristan took care
+to substitute a handsome devil for the ugly one. In another version
+the Sacristan remained faithful to his original portraiture of the
+Devil despite all menaces of the latter, who resolved to take a dire
+revenge. While the artist was completing his ornamentation of the abbey
+with an image of the Virgin, made as beautiful as the fiend near it was
+ugly, the Devil broke the ladder on which he was working, and a fatal
+fall was only prevented by the hand of the Madonna he had just made,
+which was outstretched to sustain him. The accompanying picture of this
+scene (Fig. 16) is from 'Queen Mary's Psalter' in the British Museum.
+
+Vasari relates that when Spinello of Arezzo, in his famous fresco of
+the fall of the rebellious angels, had painted the hideous devil with
+seven faces about his body, the fiend appeared to him in the same form,
+and asked the artist where he had seen him in so frightful an aspect,
+and why he had treated him so ignominiously. When Spinello awoke in
+horror, he fell into a state of gloom, and soon after died.
+
+The Persian poet Sádi has a remarkable passage conceived in the spirit
+of these legends, but more kindly.
+
+
+ I saw the demon in a dream,
+ But how unlike he seemed to be
+ To all of horrible we dream,
+ And all of fearful that we see.
+ His shape was like a cypress bough,
+ His eyes like those that Houris wear,
+ His face as beautiful as though
+ The rays of Paradise were there.
+ I near him came, and spoke--'Art thou,'
+ I said, 'indeed the Evil One?
+ No angel has so bright a brow,
+ Such yet no eye has looked upon.
+ Why should mankind make thee a jest,
+ When thou canst show a face like this?
+ Fair as the moon in splendour drest,
+ An eye of joy, a smile of bliss!
+ The painter draws thee vile to sight,
+ Our baths thy frightful form display;
+ They told me thou wert black as night,
+ Behold, thou art as fair as day!'
+ The lovely vision's ire awoke,
+ His voice was loud and proud his mien:
+ 'Believe not, friend!' 'twas thus he spoke,
+ 'That thou my likeness yet hast seen:
+ The pencil that my portrait made
+ Was guided by an envious foe;
+ In Paradise I man betrayed,
+ And he, from hatred, paints me so.'
+
+
+Boehme relates that when Satan was asked the cause of God's enmity
+to him and his consequent downfall, he replied, 'I wished to be an
+artist.' There is in this quaint sentence a very true intimation of the
+allurements which, in ancient times, the arts of the Gentile possessed
+for the Jews and christian judaisers. Indeed, a similar feeling towards
+the sensuous attractions of the Catholic and Ritualistic Churches is
+not uncommon among the prosaic and puritanical sects whose younger
+members are often thus charmed away from them. Dr. Donne preached a
+sermon before Oliver Cromwell at Whitehall, in which he affirmed that
+the Muses were damned spirits of devils; and the discussion on the
+Drama which occurred at Sheffield Church Congress (1878), following
+Dr. Bickerstith's opening discourse on 'the Devil and his wiles,'
+shows that the Low Church wing cherishes much the same opinion as that
+of Dr. Donne. The dread of the theatre among some sects amounts to
+terror. The writer remembers the horror that spread through a large
+Wesleyan circle, with which he was connected, when a distinguished
+minister of that body, just returned from Europe, casually remarked
+that 'the theatre at Rome seemed to be poorly supported.' The fearful
+confession spread through the denomination, and it was understood that
+the observant traveller had 'made shipwreck of faith.' The Methodist
+instinct told true: the preacher became an accomplished Gentile.
+
+Music made its way but slowly in the Church, and the suspicion of it
+still lingers among many sects. The Quakers took up the burthen of
+Epiphanius who wrote against the flute-players, 'After the pattern
+of the serpent's form has the flute been invented for the deceiving
+of mankind. Observe the figure that the player makes in blowing his
+flute. Does he not bend himself up and down to the right hand and
+to the left, like unto the serpent? These forms hath the Devil used
+to manifest his blasphemy against things heavenly, to destroy things
+upon earth, to encompass the world, capturing right and left such as
+lend an ear to his seductions.' The unregenerate birds that carol
+all day, be it Sabbath or Fast, have taught the composer that his
+best inspiration is from the Prince of the Air. Tartini wrote over a
+hundred sonatas and as many concertos, but he rightly valued above
+them all his 'Sonata del Diavolo.' Concerning this he wrote to the
+astronomer Lalande:--'One night, in the year 1713, I dreamed that I
+had made a compact with his Satanic Majesty, by which he was received
+into my service. Everything succeeded to the utmost of my desires, and
+my every wish was anticipated by my new domestic. I thought that, in
+taking up my violin to practise, I jocosely asked him if he could play
+on this instrument. He answered that he believed he was able to pick
+out a tune; when, to my astonishment, he began a sonata, so strange,
+and yet so beautiful, and executed in so masterly a manner, that in the
+whole course of my life I had never heard anything so exquisite. So
+great was my amazement that I could scarcely breathe. Awakened
+by the violence of my feelings, I instantly seized my violin, in
+the hope of being able to catch some part of the ravishing melody
+which I had just heard, but all in vain. The piece which I composed
+according to my scattered recollections is, it is true, the best I
+ever produced. I have entitled it, 'Sonata del Diavolo;' but it is so
+far inferior to that which had made so forcible an impression on me,
+that I should have dashed my violin into a thousand pieces, and given
+up music for ever in despair, had it been possible to deprive myself
+of the enjoyments which I receive from it.'
+
+The fire and originality of Tartini's great work is a fine
+example of that power which Timoleon called Automatia, and Goethe
+the Dämonische,--'that which cannot be explained by reason or
+understanding; it is not in my nature, but I am subject to it.' 'It
+seems to play at will with all the elements of our being.'
+
+The Puritans brought upon England and America that relapse into the
+ancient asceticism which was shown in the burning of great pictures
+by Cromwell's Parliament. It is shown still in the jealousy with
+which the puritanised mind in both countries views all that aims at
+the simple decoration of life, and whose ministry is to the sense of
+beauty. On that day of the week when England and New England hebraise,
+as Matthew Arnold says, it is observable that the sabbatarian fury is
+especially directed against everything which proposes to give simple
+pleasure or satisfy the popular craving for beauty. Sabbatarianism
+sees a great deal of hard work going on, but is not much troubled so
+long as it is ugly and dismal work. It utters no cry at the thousands
+of hands employed on Sunday railways, but is beside itself if one of
+the trains takes excursionists to the seaside, and is frantic at the
+thought of a comparatively few persons being employed on that day in
+Museums and Art Galleries. It is a survival of the old feeling that
+the Devil lurks about all beauty and pleasure.
+
+A money-making age has measurably dispersed the superstitions which
+once connected the Devil with all great fortunes. For a long time,
+and in many regions of the world, the Jews suffered grievously by
+being supposed to get their wealth by the Devil's help. Their wealth
+(largely the result of their not exchanging it for worldly enjoyments)
+so often proved their misfortune, that it was easy to illustrate by
+their case the monkish theory that devil's gifts turn to ashes. Princes
+were indefatigable in relieving the Jews of such ashes, however. The
+Lords of Triar, who possessed the mines of Glucksbrunn, were believed
+to have been guided to them by a gold stag which often appeared to
+them--of course the Devil. It is related that when St. Wolfram went
+to convert the Frislanders, their king, Radbot, was prevented from
+submitting to baptism by a diabolical deception. The Devil appeared
+to him as an angel clothed in a garment woven of gold, on his head
+a jewelled diadem, and said, 'Bravest of men! what has led thee to
+depart from the Prince of thy gods? Do it not; be steadfast to thy
+religion and thou shalt dwell in a house of gold which I will give
+into thy possession to all eternity. Go to Wolfram to-morrow, ask
+him about those bright dwellings he promises thee. If he cannot show
+them, let both parties choose an ambassador; I will be their leader
+and will show them the gold house I promise thee.' St. Wolfram being
+unable to show Radbot the bright dwellings of Paradise, one of his
+deacons was sent along with a representative of the king, and the
+Devil (disguised as a traveller) took them to the house of gold,
+which was of incredible size and splendour. The Deacon exclaimed,
+'If this house be made by God it will stand for ever; if by the
+Devil, it must vanish speedily.' Whereupon he crossed himself; the
+house vanished, and the Deacon found himself with the Frislander in
+a swamp. It took them three days to extricate themselves and return
+to King Radbot, whom they found dead.
+
+The ascetic principle which branded the arts, interests, pursuits,
+and pleasures of the world as belonging to the domain of Satan,
+involved the fatal extreme of including among the outlawed realms all
+secular learning. The scholar and man of science were also declared
+to be inspired by the 'pride of life.' But this part of our subject
+requires a separate chapter.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+THE CURSE ON KNOWLEDGE.
+
+ A Bishop on intellect--The Bible on learning--The Serpent and
+ Seth--A Hebrew Renaissance--Spells--Shelley at Oxford--
+ Book-burning--Japanese ink-devil--Book of Cyprianus--Devil's
+ Bible--Red letters--Dread of Science--Roger Bacon--Luther's
+ Devil--Lutherans and Science.
+
+
+In Lucas van Leyden's picture of Satan tempting Christ (Fig. 6),
+the fiend is represented in the garb of a University man of the
+time. From his head falls a streamer which coils on the ground to a
+serpent. From that serpent to the sceptical scholar demanding a miracle
+the evolution is fully traceable. The Serpent, of old the 'seer,'
+was in its Semitic adaptation a tempter to forbidden knowledge. This
+was the earliest priestly outcry against 'godless education.'
+
+During the Shakespere tercentenary festival at Stratford-on-Avon,
+the Bishop of St. Andrews declared that there is not a word in the
+Bible warranting homage to Intellect, and such a boast beside the
+grave of the most intellectual of Englishmen is in itself a survival
+illustrating the tremendous curse hurled by jealous Jehovah on man's
+first effort to obtain knowledge. That same Serpent of knowledge
+has passed very far, and his curse has many times been repeated. In
+the Accadian poem of the fatal Seven, as we have seen, it is said,
+'In watching was their office;' and the Assyrian version says,
+'Unto heaven that which was not seen they raised.' On the Babylonian
+cylinders is inscribed the curse of the god of Intelligence (Hea)
+upon man--'Wisdom and knowledge hostilely may they injure him.' [148]
+The same Serpent twined round the staff of Æsculapius and whispered
+those secrets which made the gods jealous, so that Jove killed the
+learned Physician with a flash of lightning. Its teeth were sown when
+Cadmus imported the alphabet into Greece; and when these alphabetical
+dragon's-teeth had turned to type, the ancient curse was renewed in
+legends which connected Fust with the Devil.
+
+The Hebrews are least among races responsible for the legend which
+has drifted into Genesis. Nor was the Bishop's boast about their Bible
+correct. The homage paid to Solomon was hardly on account of his moral
+character. 'He spake of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon,
+even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall; he spake also of
+beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes.' [149]
+While the curse on man for eating the fruit of knowledge is never
+quoted in the Hebrew scriptures, there are many indications of their
+devotion to knowledge; and their prophets even heard Jehovah saying,
+'My people are destroyed through lack of knowledge.' It is not
+wonderful, therefore, that we find among the Jews the gradual growth
+of a legend concerning Seth, which may be regarded as a reply to the
+curse on the Serpent.
+
+The apotheosis of Seth in rabbinical and mussulman mythology represents
+a sort of Semitic Renaissance. As we have seen in a former chapter,
+the Egyptians and Greeks identified Set with Typhon, but at the same
+time that demon was associated with science. He is astronomically
+located in Capricorn, the sphere of the hierophants in the Egyptian
+Mysteries, and the mansion of the guardians of science. Thus he would
+correspond with the Serpent, who, as adapted by the Hebrews in the
+myth of Eden, whispers to Eve of divine knowledge. But, as detached
+from Typho, Seth, while leaving behind the malignancy, carried away
+the reputation for learning usually ascribed to devils. Thus, while we
+have had to record so many instances of degraded deities, we may note
+in Seth a converted devil. In the mussulman and rabbinical traditions
+Seth is a voluminous author; he receives a library from heaven; he is
+the originator of astronomy and of many arts; and, as an instructor in
+cultivation, he restores many an acre which as Set he had blighted. In
+the apocryphal Genesis he is represented as having been caught up to
+heaven and shown the future destiny of mankind. Anastasius of Sinai
+says that when God created Adam after his own image, he breathed
+into him grace and illumination, and a ray of the Holy Spirit. But
+when he had sinned this glory left him. Then he became the father of
+Cain and Abel. But afterwards it is said Adam 'begat a son in his own
+likeness, after his image, and called his name 'Seth,' which is not
+said of Cain and Abel; and this means that Seth was begotten in the
+likeness of unfallen man in paradise--Seth meaning 'Resurrection.' And
+all those then living, when they saw how the face of Seth shone with
+divine light, and heard him speak with divine wisdom, said, He is God;
+therefore his sons were commonly called the sons of God. [150]
+
+That this 'Resurrection' of departed glory and wisdom was really,
+as I have said, a Renaissance--a restoration of learning from the
+curse put upon it in the story of the Serpent--is indicated by
+its evolution in the Gnostic myth wherein Seth was made to avenge
+Satan. He took under his special care the Tree of the Knowledge of
+Good and Evil, and planted it in his father's grave (Fig. 8). Rabbins
+carried their homage to Seth even to the extent of vindicating Saturn,
+the most notorious of planets, and say that Abraham and the Prophets
+were inspired by it. [151] The Dog (Jackal) was, in Egyptian symbols,
+emblem of the Scribe; Sirius was the Dog-star domiciled with Saturn;
+Seth was by them identified with Sirius, as the god of occult
+and infernal knowledge. He was near relative of the serpent Sesha,
+familiar of Æsculapius, and so easily connected with the subtlest of
+the beasts in Eden which had crept in from the Iranian mythology.
+
+This reaction was instituted by scholars, who, in their necessarily
+timid way of fable, may be said to have recovered the Tree of
+Knowledge under guise of homage to Seth. It flourished, as we have seen
+(chap. xi.), to the extent of finally raising the Serpent to be a god,
+and lowering Jehovah who cursed him to a jealous devil!
+
+But the terror with which Jehovah is said to have been inspired when
+he said, 'The man has become as one of us, to know good and evil,'
+never failed to reappear among priesthoods when anything threatened
+to remove the means of learning from under their control. The causes
+of this are too many to be fully considered here; but the main cause
+unquestionably was the tendency of learning to release men from
+the sway of the priest. The primitive man of science would speedily
+discover how many things existed of which his priest was ignorant, and
+thus the germ of Scepticism would be planted. The man who possessed
+the Sacred Books, in whole or in part, might become master of the
+'spells' supposed to be contained in its words and sentences, and
+might use them against the priests; or, at any rate, he might feel
+independent of the ordinary apparatus of salvation.
+
+The anxiety of priests to keep fast hold of the keys of learning,
+so that no secular son of Adam should become 'as one of them,'
+coupled with the wonderful powers they professed ability to exercise,
+powerfully stimulated the curiosity of intellectual men, and led
+them to seek after this forbidden fruit in subtle ways, which
+easily illustrated the story of the Serpent. The poet Shelley,
+who was suspected at Oxford because of his fondness for chemistry,
+recognised his mythological ancestry, and used to speak of 'my
+cousin, the Serpent.' The joke was born of circumstances sufficiently
+scandalous in the last generation to make the Oxonian of to-day blush;
+but the like histories of earlier ages are so tragical that, when fully
+known by the common people, they will change certain familiar badges
+into brands of shame. While the cant goes on about the Church being
+the protector of learning through the dark ages, the fact is that,
+from the burning of valuable books at Ephesus by christian fanatics
+(Acts xix. 19) to the present day, the Church has destroyed tenfold
+more important works than it ever produced, and almost suffocated the
+intellectual life of a thousand years. Amid the unbroken persecution
+of the Jews by christian cruelty, which lasted from the early eleventh
+century for five hundred years, untold numbers of manuscripts were
+destroyed, which might have now been giving the world full and clear
+knowledge concerning ages, for whose records archæological scholars
+are painfully exploring the crumbled ruins of the East. Synagogues
+were believed to be temples of Satan; they were plundered and razed
+to the ground, and their precious archives strewed the streets of
+many cities. On the 17th of June 1244 twenty-four cartloads of these
+ancient MSS. were burned in Paris alone. "And all this by our holy
+'protector of learning' through the Middle Ages!
+
+The Japanese have pictures of a famous magician who conjured up a
+demon--vast, vague, and terrible--out of his inkstand. They call
+it latterly 'emblem of a licentious press,' but, no doubt, it was
+originally used to terrify the country generally concerning the
+press. That Devil has also haunted the ecclesiastical imagination
+in Europe. Nearly every book written without priestly command was
+associated with the Devil, and there are several old books in Europe,
+laboriously and honestly written, which to this day are invested with
+popular superstitions reporting the denunciations with which they
+were visited. For some centuries it has been believed in Denmark and
+neighbouring countries that a strange and formidable book exists,
+by means of which you can raise or lay the Devil. It is vulgarly
+known as the Book of Cyprianus. The owner of it can neither sell,
+bury, or burn it, and if he cannot get rid of it before his death,
+he becomes the prey of the fiend. The only way of getting rid of it is
+to find somebody who will accept it as a present, well knowing what it
+is. Cyprianus is said to have been a clever and virtuous young student,
+but he studied the black art in Norway, and came under the power of the
+Devil, who compelled him to use his unholy learning to evil ends. This
+grieved him sorely, and he wrote a book, in which he shows first,
+how evil shall be done, and then how to counteract it. The book is
+probably one which really exists or existed, and professed to teach
+the art of sorcery, and likewise the charms against it. It consists
+of three parts, severally called Cyprianus, Dr. Faust, and Jacob
+Ramel. The two latter are written in cypher. It teaches everything
+appertaining to 'signing,' conjuring, second sight, and all the
+charms alluded to in Deuteronomy xviii. 10-12. The person possessing
+Cyprianus' book is said never to be in need of money, and none can
+harm him. The only way of getting rid of it is to put it away in a
+secret place in a church along with a clerk's fee of four shillings.
+
+In Stockholm I saw the so-called Devil's Bible, the biggest book in
+the world, in the Royal Library. It is literally as they describe it,
+'gigas librorum': no single man can lift it from the floor. It was part
+of the booty carried off by the Swedes after the surrender of Prague,
+A.D. 1648. It contains three hundred parchment leaves, each one made of
+an ass's hide, the cover being of oak planks, 1 1/2 inches thick. It
+contains the Old and New Testaments; Josephi Flavii Antiquitates
+Judaicæ; Isidori Episcopi L. XX. de diversis materiis; Confessio
+peccatorum; and some other works. The last-named production is written
+on black and dark brown ground with red and yellow letters. Here and
+there sentences are marked 'hæc sunt suspecta,' 'superstitiosa,'
+'prohibita.' One MS., which is headed, 'Experimentum de furto et
+febribus', is a treatise in Monkish Latin on the exorcism of ghosts
+and evil spirits, charms against thieves and sickness, and various
+prescriptions in 'White Magic.' The age of the book is considerably
+over three hundred years. The autograph of a German emperor is in it:
+'Ferdinandus Imperator Romanorum, A.D. 1577.' The volume is known
+in Sweden as Fan's Bibel (Devil's Bible). The legend says, that
+a monk, suspected of black arts, who had been condemned to death,
+begged for life, and his judge mockingly told him that he would be
+pardoned only if he should produce next morning all the books here
+found and in this vast size. The monk invoked the Devil's assistance,
+and the ponderous volume was written in a single night. This Devil
+must have been one who prided himself more on his literary powers
+than his personal appearance; for the face and form said to be his
+portrait, frontispiece of the volume, represent a most hideous ape,
+green and hairy, with horrible curled tusks. It is, no doubt, the ape
+Anerhahn of the Wagner legends; Burns's 'towzie tyke, black, grim,
+and large.' [152]
+
+I noticed particularly in this old work the recurrence of deep red
+letters and sentences similar to the ink which Fust used at the close
+of his earliest printed volumes to give his name, with the place and
+date of printing. Now Red is sacred in one direction as symbolising
+the blood of Christ, but it is also the colour of Judas, who betrayed
+that blood. Hence, while red letters might denote sacred days and
+sentences in priestly calendars, they might be supposed mimicry
+of such sanctities by 'God's Ape' if occurring in secular works or
+books of magic. It is said that these red letters were especially
+noted in Paris as indications of the diabolical origin of the works
+so easily produced by Fust; and, though it is uncertain whether he
+suffered imprisonment, the red lines with his name appear to have
+been regarded as his signature in blood.
+
+For a long time every successive discovery of science, every invention
+of material benefit to man, was believed by priest-ridden peoples
+to have been secured by compact with the devil. The fate of the
+artist Prometheus, fettered by jealous Jove, was repeated in each
+who aspired to bring light to man, and some men of genius--such as
+Cornelius Agrippa, and Paracelsus--appear to have been frightened away
+from legitimate scientific research by the first connection of their
+names with sorcery. They had before them the example of the greatest
+scientific man of the Middle Ages, Roger Bacon, and knew how easily,
+in the priestly whisper, the chemist's crucible grew to a wizard's
+cauldron. The time may come when Oxford University will have learned
+enough to build a true memorial of the grandest man who ever wrote
+and taught within its walls. It would show Roger Bacon--rectifier
+of the Julian Calendar, analyst of lenses, inventor of spectacles
+and achromatic lenses, probable constructor of the first telescope,
+demonstrator of the chemical action of air in combustion, inventor of
+the mode of purifying saltpetre and crystallising it into gunpowder,
+anticipator of the philosophical method with which his namesake is
+credited--looking on a pile of his books for whose researches he had
+paid two thousand French livres, to say nothing of a life's labour,
+only to see them condemned by his University, their circulation
+prohibited; and his sad gaze might be from the prison to which the
+Council of Franciscans at Paris sentenced him whom Oxford gladly
+delivered into their hands. He was condemned, says their historian
+Wadding, 'propter novitates quasdam suspectas.' The suspected novelties
+were crucibles, retorts, and lenses that made the stars look larger. So
+was it with the Oxford six hundred years ago. Undeniably some progress
+had been made even in the last generation, for Shelley was only
+forbidden to study chemistry, and expelled for his metaphysics. But
+now that it is claimed that Oxford is no longer partaker with them
+that stoned investigators and thinkers from Bacon to Shelley, it would
+be in order to build for its own great martyr of science a memorial,
+that superstition may look on one whom it has pierced.
+
+Referring to Luther's inkstand thrown at the Devil, Dr. Zerffii,
+in his lecture on the Devil, says, 'He (the devil) hates nothing
+so much as writing or printer's ink.' But the truth of this remark
+depends upon which of two devils be considered. It would hardly
+apply to the Serpent who recommended the fruit of knowledge, or to
+the University man in Lucas van Leyden's picture (Fig. 6). But if
+we suppose the Devil of Luther's Bible (Fig. 17) to be the one at
+which the inkstand was thrown, the criticism is correct. The two
+pictures mentioned may be instructively compared. Luther's Devil
+is the reply of the University to the Church. These are the two
+devils--the priest and the scholar--who glared at each other in the
+early sixteenth century. 'The Devil smelled the roast,' says Luther,
+'that if the languages revived, his kingdom would get a hole which
+he could not easily stop again.' And it must be admitted that some
+of the monkish execrations of the time, indeed of many times since,
+have an undertone of Jahvistic jealousy. 'These Knowers will become
+as one of us.' It must also be admitted that the clerical instinct
+told true: the University man held in him that sceptical devil who
+is always the destroyer of the priest's paradise. These two devils
+which struggled with each other through the sixteenth century still
+wage their war in the arena of Protestantism. Many a Lutheran now
+living may remember to have smiled when Hofmann's experiments in
+discovering carbonic acid gas gained him repute for raising again
+Mephosto; but perhaps they did not recognise Luther's devil when,
+at the annual assembly of Lutheran Pastors in Berlin (Sept. 1877), he
+reappeared as the Rev. Professor Grau, and said, 'Not a few listen to
+those striving to combine Christ with Belial, to reconcile redeeming
+truth with modern science and culture.' But though they who take the
+name of Luther in vain may thus join hands with the Devil, at whom
+the Reformer threw his inkstand, the combat will still go on, and the
+University Belial do the brave work of Bel till beneath his feet lies
+the dragon of Darkness whether disguised as Pope or Protestant.
+
+If the Church wishes to know precisely how far the roughness pardonable
+in the past survives unpardonably in itself, let its clergy peruse
+carefully the following translation by Mr. Leland of a poem by Heine;
+and realise that the Devil portrayed in it is, by grace of its own
+prelates, at present the most admired personage in every Court and
+fashionable drawing-room in Christendom.
+
+
+ I called the Devil, and he came:
+ In blank amaze his form I scan.
+ He is not ugly, is not lame,
+ But a refined, accomplished man,--
+ One in the very prime of life,
+ At home in every cabinet strife,
+ Who, as diplomatist, can tell
+ Church and State news extremely well.
+ He is somewhat pale--and no wonder either,
+ Since he studies Sanskrit and Hegel together.
+ His favourite poet is still Fonqué.
+ Of criticism he makes no mention,
+ Since all such matters unworthy attention
+ He leaves to his grandmother, Hecaté.
+ He praised my legal efforts, and said
+ That he also when younger some law had read,
+ Remarking that friendship like mine would be
+ An acquisition, and bowed to me,--
+ Then asked if we had not met before,
+ At the Spanish Minister's soiree?
+ And, as I scanned his face once more,
+ I found I had known him for many a day.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+WITCHCRAFT.
+
+ Minor gods--Saint and Satyr--Tutelaries--Spells--Early Christianity
+ and the poor--Its doctrine as to pagan deities--Mediæval
+ Devils--Devils on the stage--An Abbot's revelations--The fairer
+ deities--Oriental dreams and spirits--Calls for Nemesis--Lilith
+ and her children--Neoplatonicism--Astrology and Alchemy--Devil's
+ College--Shem-hammphorásch--Apollonius of Tyana--Faustus--Black Art
+ Schools--Compacts with the Devil--Blood-covenant--Spirit-seances in
+ old times--The Fairfax delusion--Origin of its devil--Witch, goat,
+ and cat--Confessions of Witches--Witchcraft in New England--Witch
+ trials--Salem demonology--Testing witches--Witch trials in
+ Sweden--Witch Sabbath--Mythological elements--Carriers--Scotch
+ Witches--The cauldron--Vervain--Rue--Invocation of Hecaté--Factors
+ of Witch persecution--Three centuries of massacre--Würzburg
+ horrors--Last victims--Modern Spiritualism.
+
+
+St. Cyprian saw the devil in a flower. [153] That little vision may
+report more than many more famous ones the consistency with which
+the first christians had developed the doctrine that nature is the
+incarnation of the Evil Spirit. It reports to us the sense of many
+sounds and sights which were heard and seen by ears and eyes trained
+for such and no other, all showing that the genii of nature and
+beauty were vanishing from the earth. Over the Ægean sea were heard
+lamentations and the voice, 'Great Pan is dead!' Augustus consults
+the oracle of Apollo and receives reply--
+
+
+ Me puer Hebræus, Divos Deus ipse gubernans,
+ Cedere sede jubet, tristremque redire sub orcum;
+ Aris ergo dehinc tacitis abscedito nostris.
+
+
+But while the rage of these Fathers towards all the great gods and
+goddesses, who in their grand temples represented 'the pride of life,'
+was remorseless, they were comparatively indifferent to the belief or
+disbelief of the lower classes in their small tutelary divinities. They
+appear almost to have encouraged belief in these, perhaps appreciating
+the advantages of the popular custom of giving generous offerings
+to such personal and domestic patrons. At a very early period there
+seems to have arisen an idea of converting these more plebeian spirits
+into guardian angels with christian names. Thus Jerome relates in
+his Life of the first Hermit Paul, that when St. Anthony was on his
+way to visit that holy man, he encountered a Centaur who pointed
+out the way; and next a human-like dwarf with horns, hooked fingers,
+and feet like those of a goat. St. Anthony believing this to be an
+apparition of the Devil, made the sign of the Cross; but the little
+man, nowise troubled by this, respectfully approached the monk,
+and having been asked who he was, answered: 'I am a mortal, and one
+of those inhabitants of the Desert whom the Gentiles in their error
+worship under the names of Fauns, Satyrs, and Incubi: I am delegated
+by my people to ask of thee to pray for us to our common God, who we
+know has descended for the salvation of the world, and whose praises
+resound in all the earth.' At this glorification of Christ St. Anthony
+was transported with joy, and turning towards Alexandria he cried,
+'Woe to thee, adulterous city, which adorest animals as gods!'
+
+Perhaps the evolution of these desert demons into good christians would
+have gone on more rapidly and completely if the primitive theologians
+had known as much of their history as comparative mythology has
+disclosed to the modern world. St. Anthony was, however, fairly on
+the track of them when he turned towards Alexandria. Egypt appears
+to have been the especial centre from which were distributed through
+the world the fetish guardians of provinces, towns, households and
+individuals. Their Serapes reappear in the Teraphim of Laban, and many
+of the forms they used reappear in the Penates, Lares, and genii of
+Latin countries. All these in their several countries were originally
+related to its ancient religion or mythology, but before the christian
+era they were very much the same in Egypt, Greece, and Italy. They were
+shaped in many different, but usually natural forms, such as serpents,
+dogs, boys, and old men, though often some intimation was given of
+their demonic character. They were so multiplied that even plants
+and animals had their guardians. The anthropomorphic genii called the
+Patrii, who were supposed to preside over provinces, were generally
+represented bearing weapons with which they defended the regions of
+which they were patrons. These were the Averrunci or Apotropæi.
+
+There are many interesting branches of this subject which cannot be
+entered into here, and others have already been considered in the
+foregoing parts of this work. It is sufficient for my present purpose
+to remark, that, in the course of time, all the households of the world
+had traditional guardians; these were generally represented in some
+shape on amulets and talismans, on which were commonly inscribed the
+verbal charms by which the patron could be summoned. In the process
+of further time the amulets--especially such as were reproduced
+by tribes migrating from the vicinity of good engravers--might
+be marked only with the verbal charms; these again were, in the
+end, frequently represented only by some word or name. This was the
+'spell.' Imagination fails in the effort to conceive how many strata of
+extinct deities had bequeathed to the ancient Egyptians those mystical
+names whose exact utterance they believed would constrain each god so
+named to appear and bind him to serve the invoker's purpose whether
+good or evil. [154] This idea continued among the Jews and shaped
+the commandment, 'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God
+in vain.'
+
+It was in these diminutive forms that great systems survived among
+the common people. Amid natural convulsions ancient formations of
+faith were broken into fragments; in the ebb and flow of time these
+fragments were smoothed, as it were, into these talismanic pebbles. Yet
+each of these conveyed all the virtue which had been derived from the
+great and costly ceremonial system from which it originally crumbled;
+the virtue of soothing the mind and calming the nerves of sufferers
+with the feeling that, though they might have been assailed by
+hostile powers, they had friendly powers too who were active in their
+behalf--Vindicators, to recall Job's phrase--who at last would stand
+by them to the end. In the further ebb and flow of generations the
+mass of such charms are further pulverised into sand or into mud; but
+not all of them: amid the mud will be found many surviving specimens,
+and such mud of accumulated superstitions is always susceptible of
+being remoulded after such lingering models, should occasion demand.
+
+Erasmus, in his 'Adages,' suggests that it was from these genii of
+'the Gentiles' that the christians derived their notion of each person
+being attended by two angels, a good and a bad. Probably he was but
+half right. The peoples to whom he refers did not generally believe
+that each man was attended by a bad spirit, a personal enemy. That was
+an honour reserved for individuals particularly formidable to the evil
+powers,--Adam, Jacob, Hercules, or Zoroaster. The one preternatural
+power attending each ordinary individual defended him from the general
+forces of evil. But it was Christianity which, in the gradual effort
+to substitute patron-saints and guardian-angels of its own for the
+pagan genii, turned the latter from friends to enemies, and their
+protecting into assailing weapons.
+
+All the hereditary household gods of what is now called Christendom
+were diabolised. But in order that the masses might turn from them
+and invoke christian guardians, the Penates, Lares, and genii had to
+be belittled on the one hand, and the superior power of the saints
+and angels demonstrated. When Christianity had gained the throne of
+political power, it was easy to show that the 'imps,' as the old
+guardians were now called, could no longer protect their invokers
+from christian punishment, or confer equal favours.
+
+Christianity conquered Europe by the sword, but at first that sword
+was not wielded against the humble masses. It was wielded against
+their proud oppressors. To the common people it brought glad tidings
+of a new order, in which, under the banner of a crucified working-man
+and his (alleged) peasant mother, all caste should disappear but that
+of piety and charity. Christ eating with publicans and sinners and
+healing the wayside cripples reappeared in St. Martin dividing his
+embroidered cloak with a beggar--type of a new aristocracy. They
+who worshipped the Crucified Peasant in the rock-cave of Tours
+which St. Martin had consecrated, or in little St. Martin's Church
+at Canterbury where Bertha was baptized, could not see the splendid
+cathedrals now visible from them, built of their bones and cemented
+with their blood. King Ethelbert surrendered the temple of his idol
+to the consecration of Augustine, and his baptized subjects had no
+difficulty in seeing the point of the ejected devil's talons on the
+wall which he assailed when the first mass was therein celebrated.
+
+Glad tidings to the poor were these that the persecuted first
+missionaries brought to Gaul, Britain, and Germany. But they did not
+last. The christians and the pagan princes, like Herod and Pilate,
+joined hands to crucify the European peasant, and he was reduced to
+a worse serfdom than he had suffered before. Every humble home in
+Europe was trampled in the mire in the name of Christ. The poor man's
+wife and child, and all he possessed were victims of the workman of
+Jerusalem turned destroyer of his brethren. Michelet has well traced
+Witchcraft to the Despair of the Middle Ages. [155] The decay of
+the old religions, which Christianity had made too rapid for it to
+be complete, had left, as we have seen, all the trains laid for that
+terrible explosion; and now its own hand of cruelty brought the torch
+to ignite them. Let us, at risk of some iteration, consider some of
+these combustible elements.
+
+In the first place the Church had recognised the existence of the
+pagan gods and goddesses, not wishing to imbreed in the popular mind a
+sceptical habit, and also having use for them to excite terror. Having
+for this latter purpose carved and painted them as ugly and bestial,
+it became further of importance that they should be represented as
+stupid and comparatively impotent. Baptism could exorcise them,
+and a crucifix put thousands of them to flight. This tuition was
+not difficult. The peasantries of Europe had readily been induced
+to associate the newly announced (christian) Devil with their most
+mischievous demons. But we have already considered the forces under
+which these demons had entered on their decline before they were
+associated with Satan. Many conquered obstructions had rendered the
+Demons which represented them ridiculous. Hence the 'Dummeteufel' of
+so many German fables and of the mediæval miracle-plays. 'No greater
+proof,' says Dr. Dasent, 'can be given of the small hold which the
+christian Devil has taken of the Norse mind, than the heathen aspect
+under which he constantly appears, and the ludicrous way in which
+he is always outwitted.' [156] 'The Germans,' says Max Müller,
+'indoctrinated with the idea of a real devil, the Semitic Satan
+or Diabolus, treated him in the most good-humoured manner.' [157]
+A fair idea of the insignificance he and his angels reached may be
+gained from the accompanying picture (Fig. 18), with which a mediæval
+Missal now in possession of Sir Joseph Hooker is illuminated. It could
+not be expected that the masses would fear beings whom their priests
+thus held up to ridicule. It is not difficult to imagine the process
+of evolution by which the horns of such insignificant devils turned
+to the asinine ears of such devils as this stall carving at Corbeil,
+near Paris (Fig. 19), which represented the popular view of the mastery
+obtained by witches over devils. It must be remembered also that this
+power over devils was in accordance with the traditions concerning
+Solomon, and the subserviency of Oriental demons generally to the
+lamps or charms to which they were bound.
+
+What the popular christian devil had become in all the Northern
+nations is sufficiently shown in the figure he presented in most
+of the old miracle-plays and 'Moralities.' 'The Devill in his
+fethers all ragged and rent,' [158] had horns, wide mouth, long
+(sometimes up-turned) nose, red beard, cloven foot, and tail. He
+was attended by a buffoon called Vice. 'And,' says Harsenet, 'it
+was a pretty part in the old Church playes when the nimble Vice
+would skip up nimbly like a Jackanapes into the Devil's necke, and
+ride the Devil a course, and belabour him with a wooden dagger,
+till he made him roar, whereat the people would laugh to see the
+Devil so Vice-haunted.' [159] The two must have nearly resembled the
+clown and his unhappy victim Pantaloon in our pantomimes, as to their
+antics. It would seem that sometimes holy personages were caricatured
+in the make-up of the stage-devil. Thus in 'Gammer Gurton's Needle'
+we have this conversation:--
+
+
+ GAMMER. But, Hodge, had he no horns to push?
+
+ HODGE. As long as your two armes. Saw ye never fryer Rushe
+ Painted on cloth, with a side long cowe's tayle
+ And crooked cloven feet, and many a hooked nayle?
+ For all the world (if I should judge) should reckon him his brother;
+ Loke, even what face fryer Rushe had, the devil had such another.
+
+
+In the scene of Christ's delivering souls from purgatory, the Devil
+is represented as blowing lustily a horn to alarm his comrades,
+and crying, 'Out, out, aronzt!' to the invader. He fights with a
+three-pronged fork. He and his victims are painted black, [160] in
+contrast with the souls of the saved, which are white. The hair was
+considered very important. [161] When he went to battle, even his
+fiery nature was sometimes represented in a way that must have been
+more ludicrous than impressive. [162]
+
+The insignificance to which the priests had reduced the devil in the
+plays, where they were usually the actors, reflected their own petty
+routine of life. They could conceive of nothing more terrible than
+their own mean mishaps and local obstructions. One great office of the
+Devil was to tempt some friar to sleep when he should be at prayer,
+[163] make another drink too much, or a third cast warm glances at
+a village beauty. The Revelations of the Abbot Richalmus, written
+seven hundred years ago, shows the Devil already far gone in his
+process of diminution. The Devil here concentrates the energies
+which once made the earth tremble on causing nausea to the Abbot,
+and making the choir cough while he is preaching. 'When I sit down to
+holy studies,' he says, 'the devils make me heavy with sleep. Then I
+stretch my hands beyond my cuffs to give them a chill. Forthwith the
+spirits prick me under my clothes like so many fleas, which causes me
+to put my hands on them; and so they get warm again, and my reading
+grows careless.' 'Come, just look at my lip; for twenty years has an
+imp clung to it just to make it hang down.' It is ludicrous to find
+that ancient characteristic of the gods of Death already adverted
+to--their hatred of salt, the agent of preservation--descended from
+being the sign of Job's constancy to Jehovah into a mere item of the
+Abbot's appetite. 'When I am at dinner, and the devil has taken away my
+appetite, as soon as I have tasted a little salt it comes back to me;
+and if, shortly afterwards, I lose it again, I take some more salt,
+and am once more an hungered.' [164]
+
+One dangerous element was the contempt into which, by many causes,
+the infernal powers had been brought. But a more dangerous one lay in
+another direction. Though the current phrases of the New Testament
+and of the Fathers of the Church, declaring this world, its wealth,
+loves, and pleasures, to be all the kingdom of Satan, had become cant
+in the mouths of priests ruling over Europe, it had never been cant
+to the humble peasantries. Although they had degraded many devils
+imported by the priests, it had been in connection with the declining
+terrors of their native demonologies. But above these degraded and
+hated gnomes and elves, whose paternity had been transferred from
+Soetere to Satan, there was an array of beautiful deities--gentle
+gods and goddesses traditionally revered and loved as protectors of
+the home and the family--which had never really lost their hold on the
+common people. They might have shrunk before the aggressive victories
+of the Saints into little Fairies, but their continued love for the
+poor and the oppressed was the romance of every household. What did
+these good fairies do? They sometimes loaded the lowly with wealth,
+if summoned in just the right way; they sang secrets to them from
+trees as little birds, they smoothed the course of love, clothed
+ash-maidens in fine clothes, transported people through the air,
+enabled them to render themselves invulnerable, or invisible, to get
+out of prisons, to vanquish 'the powers that be,' whether 'ordained of
+God' or not. Now all these were benefits which, by christian theory,
+could only be conferred by that Prince of this World who ministered to
+'the pride of life.'
+
+Into homes which the priest and his noble had stripped of happiness
+and hope,--whose loving brides were for baptized Bluebeards, whose
+hard earnings were taken as the price of salvation from devils whose
+awfulness was departing,--there came from afar rumours of great wealth
+and splendour conferred upon their worshippers by Eastern gods and
+goddesses. The priests said all those were devils who would torture
+their devotees eternally after death; yet it could not be denied
+that the Moors had the secret of lustres and ornamentation, that
+the heathen East was gorgeous, that all Christendom was dreaming of
+the wealth of Ormus and of Ind. Granted that Satan had come westward
+and northward, joined the scurvy crew of Loki, and become of little
+importance; but what of Baal or Beelzebub, of Asmodeus, of the genii
+who built Solomon's temple, of rich Pluto, of august Ahriman? Along
+with stories of Oriental magnificence there spread through Christendom
+names of many deities and demons; many of them beautiful names, too,
+euphemism having generally managed to bestow melodious epithets alike
+on deities feared and loved. In Faust's 'Miraculous Art and Book of
+Marvels, or the Black Raven' (1469), the infernal heirarchy are thus
+named:--King, Lucifer; Viceroy, Belial; Gubernatores, Satan, Beelzebub,
+Astaroth, Pluto; Chief Princes, Aziel, Mephistopheles, Marbuel, Ariel,
+Aniguel, Anisel, Barfael. Seductive meanings, too, corresponding to
+these names, had filtered in some way from the high places they once
+occupied into the minds of the people. Lucifer was a fallen star that
+might rise again; Belial and Beelzebub were princes of the fire that
+rendered possible the arts of man, and the Belfires never went out in
+the cold North; Astarte meant beauty, and Pluto wealth; Aziel (Asael)
+was President of the great College of occult arts, from whom Solomon
+learned the secrets by which he made the jinni his slaves; Marbuel
+was the artist and mechanic, sometimes believed to aid artisans who
+produced work beyond ordinary human skill; Ariel was the fine spirit
+of the air whose intelligence corresponded to that of the Holy Ghost
+on the other side; Aniguel is the serpent of Paradise, generally
+written Anisel; Anizazel is probably a fanciful relative of Azazel,
+'the strong god;' and Barfael, who in a later Faust book is Barbuel,
+is an orientalised form of the 'demon of the long beard' who holds
+the secret of the philosopher's stone.
+
+In a later chapter the growth of favourable views of the devil is
+considered. Some of the legends therein related may be instructively
+read in connection with the development of Witchcraft. Many rumours
+were spread abroad of kindly assistance brought by demons to persons in
+distress. But even more than by hopes so awakened was the witch aided
+by the burning desire of the people for vengeance. They wanted Zamiel
+(Samaël) to help them to mould the bullet that would not miss its
+mark. The Devil and all his angels had long been recognised by their
+catechists as being utilised by the Deity to execute his vengeance
+on the guilty; and to serfs in their agony that devil who would not
+spare prince or priest was more desired than even the bestower of
+favours to their starving minds and bodies.
+
+Under the long ages of war in Europe, absorbing the energies of men,
+women had become the preservers of letters. The era of witchcraft in
+Europe found that sex alone able to read and write, arts disesteemed
+in men, among the peasantry at least. To them men turned when it had
+become a priestly lesson that a few words were more potent than the
+weapons of princes. Besides this, women were the chief sorcerers,
+because they were the chief sufferers. In Alsace (1615), out of
+seventy-five who perished as witches, sixty-two were women. The
+famous Malleus Maleficorum, which did more evil than any work ever
+published, derives femina from fide minus. Although in the Faust
+legend Mephistopheles objects to marriage, many stories represent
+diabolical weddings. Particular details were told of the marriage of
+Satan with the daughter of a Sorceress at Egnischen (1585), on which
+occasion the three towers of the castle there were said to have been
+illuminated, and a splendid banquet spread, the favourite dish being
+a ragout of bats. There was exquisite music, and a 'beautiful man'
+blessed the nuptials. How many poor peasant girls must have had such
+dreams as they looked up from their drudgery to the brilliant chateaux?
+
+In the illuminated manuscript known as 'Queen Mary's Psalter' (1553)
+there is a picture of the Fall of Man (Fig. 20) which possesses
+far-reaching significance. It is a modification of that idea,
+which gained such wide currency in the Middle Ages, that it was
+the serpent-woman Lilith who had tempted Adam to eat the forbidden
+fruit. In this picture, while the beautiful face and ample hair
+of Lilith are given, instead of the usual female bust she has the
+body of a cat. This nocturnal animal, already sacred to Freyja, the
+Teutonic Venus, whose chariot it drew, gained a new mythological
+career in the North by the large number of Southern and Oriental
+stones which related it to the lunar and amorous demonesses. When
+the gods fled before the Titans, Diana, as Ovid relates, changed
+herself to a cat, and as infernal Hecate that animal was still
+beside her. If my reader will turn to vol. i. p. 130, some of the
+vast number of myths which prepared the cat to take its place as
+familiar of the witch may be found. Whether the artist had Lilith in
+his mind or not, the illumination in 'Queen Mary's Psalter' represents
+a remarkable association of myths. For Lilith was forerunner of the
+mediæval mothers weeping for their children; her voice of perpetual
+lamentation at the cruel fate allotted her by the combined tyranny
+of God and man was heard on every sighing wind; and she was the
+richly dressed bride of the Prince of Devils, ever seeking to tempt
+youth. Such stories floated through the mind of the Middle Ages,
+and this infernal Madonna is here seen in association with the cat,
+beneath whose soft sparkling fur the goddess of Love and Beauty was
+supposed to be still lurking near the fireside of many a miserable
+home. Some fragrance of the mystical East was with this feline beauty,
+and nothing can be more striking than the contrast which the ordinary
+devils beside her present. Their unseductive ugliness and meanness is
+placed out of sight of the pair tempted to seek the fruit of forbidden
+knowledge. They inspire the man and woman in their evidently eager
+grasping after the fruit, which here means the consultation of fair
+fortune-tellers and witches to obtain that occult knowledge for which
+speculative men are seeking in secret studies and laboratories.
+
+Those who have paid attention to the subject of Witchcraft need not
+be reminded that its complexity and vastness would require a larger
+volume than the present to deal with it satisfactorily. The present
+study must be limited to a presentation of some of the facts which
+induce the writer to believe that, beneath the phenomena, lay a
+profound alienation from Christianity, and an effort to recall the
+banished gods which it had superseded.
+
+The first christian church was mainly Jewish, and this is also to say
+that it inherited the vast Angelolatry and the system of spells which
+that tribe had brought from Babylon. To all this was now superadded
+the accumulation of Assyrian and Egyptian lore which was re-edited
+in the form of Neoplatonicism. This mongrel mass, constituted of
+notions crumbled from many systems, acquired a certain consistency
+in Gnosticism. The ancient Egyptians had colleges set apart for
+astrological study, and for cultivation of the art of healing by
+charms. Every month, decade, day of the year had its special guardian
+in the heavens. The popular festivals were astronomic. To the priests
+in the colleges were reserved study of the sacred books in which
+the astrological secrets were contained, and whose authorship was
+attributed to the god Thoth, inventor of writing, the Greek Hermes,
+and, later, Egyptian Hermes Trismegistus. The zodiac is a memorial of
+the influence which the stars were supposed to exert upon the human
+body. Alchemy (the word is Egyptian, Kémi meaning 'black earth')
+was also studied in connection with solar, lunar, and stellar
+influences. The Alchemists dreamed of discovering the philosopher's
+stone, which would change base metals to gold; and Diocletian, in
+burning the Alchemists' books, believed that, in so doing, he would
+deprive the Egyptians of their source of wealth. [165]
+
+Imported into Greece, these notions and their cult had a twofold
+development. Among the Platonists they turned to a naturalistic
+and allegorical Demonology; among the uncultivated they formed a
+Diabolarchy, which gathered around the terrible lunar phantasm--Hecate.
+
+The astrological College of Egypt gave to the Jews their strange
+idea of the high school maintained among the devils, already
+referred to in connection with Asmodeus, who was one of its leading
+professors. The rabbinical legend was, that two eminent angels, Asa
+and Asael, remonstrated with the Creator on having formed man only
+to give trouble. The Creator said they would have done the same as
+man under similar circumstances; whereupon Asa and Asael proposed
+that the experiment should be tried. They went to earth, and the
+Creator's prediction was fulfilled: they were the first 'sons of God'
+who fell in love with the daughters of men (Gen. vi. 2). They were
+then embodied. In heaven they had been angels of especial knowledge in
+divine arts, and they now used their spells to reascend. But their sin
+rendered the spells powerless for that, so they repaired to the Dark
+Mountains, and there established a great College of Sorcery. Among the
+many distinguished graduates of this College were Job, Jethro, and
+Bileam. It was believed that these three instructed the soothsayers
+who attempted to rival the miracles of Moses before Pharaoh. Job
+and Jethro were subsequently converted, but Bileam continued his
+hostility to Israel, and remains a teacher in the College. Through
+knowledge of the supreme spell--the Shem-hammphorásch, or real name
+of God--Solomon was able to chain Professor Asmodeus, and wrest from
+him the secret of the worm Schámir, by whose aid the Temple was built.
+
+Traditions of the learning of the Egyptians, and of the marvels
+learned by Solomon from Asa and Asael by which he compelled demons to
+serve him, and the impressive story of the Witch of Endor, powerfully
+influenced the inquisitive minds of Europe. The fierce denunciations of
+all studies of these arts of sorcery by the early Church would alone
+reveal how prevalent they were. The wonderful story of Apollonius of
+Tyana, [166] as told by Philostratus, was really a kind of gospel to
+the more worldly-minded scholars. Some rabbins, following the outcry
+against Jesus, 'He casteth out devils by Beelzebub,' circulated at an
+early date the story that Jesus had derived his power to work miracles
+from the spell Shem-hammphorásch, which he found on one of the stones
+of the Temple where Solomon had left it. Though Eusebius cast doubt
+upon them, the christians generally do not appear to have denied the
+miracles of Apollonius, which precisely copy those of Jesus from the
+miraculous birth to the ascension, but even to have quoted them as
+an evidence of the possibility of miracles. Celsus having attributed
+the miracles of Jesus to sorcery, and said that magic influenced
+only the ignorant and immoral, Origen replies that, in order to
+convince himself of the contrary, he has only to read the memoirs
+of Apollonius by Mæragenes, who speaks of him as a philosopher and
+magician, who repeatedly exercised his powers on philosophers. Arnobius
+and the fathers of the fourth century generally believed in the
+Apollonian thaumaturgy and attributed it to magic. Aldus Manutius
+published the book of Philostratus in the fifteenth century, and the
+degree to which the fascinating and marvellous stories concerning
+Apollonius fired the European imagination just awaking under the
+breath of the Renaissance, may be estimated by the fury with which
+the 'magician' was anathematised by Pico della Mirandola, Jean Bodin,
+and Baronius. The book and the controversy attracted much attention,
+and while the priests still continued to charge Apollonius with being a
+'magician,' they appear to have perceived that it would have been more
+to the point, so far as their real peril was concerned, to have proved
+him an impostor. Failing that, Dr. Faustus and his fellow-professors
+in the 'black art' were left masters of the situation. The people
+had to digest the facts admitted, that a Pagan had learned, by
+initiations into the astrological schools of Egypt and India, the
+means of healing the sick, raising the dead, flying through the air,
+throwing off chains, opening locks, rendering himself invisible,
+and discerning the future.
+
+There was a call for some kind of Apollonius, and Faustus arose. Side
+by side flourished Luther and Faustus. To Roman Catholic eyes they
+were twin sons of the Devil; [167] that they were characteristic
+products of one moral age and force appears to me certain, even as
+to-day the negations of Science and the revival of 'Spiritualism'
+have a common root in radical disbelief of the hereditary dogmas
+and forms of so-called religion. It is, however, not surprising that
+Protestantism felt as much horror of its bastard brother as Science
+has of the ghostly seances. Through the early sixteenth century we
+can trace this strange Dr. Faustus ('auspicious,' he had chosen that
+name) going about Germany, not omitting Erfurth, and talking in taverns
+about his magic arts and powers. More is said of him in the following
+chapter; it is sufficient to observe here, and it is the conclusion
+of Professor Morley, who has sifted the history with his usual care,
+that about him, as a centre of crystallisation, tales ascribed in
+the first place to other conjurers arranged themselves, until he
+became the popular ideal of one who sought to sound the depths of
+this world's knowledge and enjoyments without help from the Church or
+its God. The priests did not doubt that this could be done, nor did
+the Protestants; they generally agreed that it could be accomplished
+at cost of the soul. As angels of the good God must answer to the
+formulas of invocation to those who had made a sacramental compact
+with their Chief, so was it possible to share a sacrament of Satan,
+and by certain invocations summon his infernal angels to obtain the
+pleasures of this world of which he is Prince. A thousand years'
+experience of the Church had left the poor ready to sign the compact
+if they could secure some little earthly joy. As for Heaven, if it
+were anything like what its ministers had provided for the poor on
+earth, Hell might be preferable after all.
+
+Dr. Wuttke, while writing his recent work on German superstitions, was
+surprised to learn that there still exist in France and in Wurtemberg
+schools for teaching the Black Art. A priest in the last-named country
+wrote him that a boy had confessed to having passed the lower grade of
+such a school, but, scared by the horrid ceremonies, had pronounced
+some holy words which destroyed the effect of the wicked practices,
+and struck the assembled Devil-worshippers with consternation. The
+boy said he had barely escaped with his life. I have myself passed an
+evening at a school in London 'for the development of Spirit-mediums,'
+and possibly Dr. Wuttke's correspondent would describe these also
+as Devil-worshippers. No doubt all such circles might be traced
+archæologically to that Sorcerers' College said by the rabbins to
+have been kept by Asa and Asael. But what moral force preserved
+them? They do but represent a turning of methods made familiar by
+the Church to coax benefits from other supernatural powers in the
+hope that they would be less dilatory than the Trinity in bestowing
+their gifts. What is the difference between St. Wolfram's God and King
+Radbot's Devil? The one offers a golden mansion on earth warranted to
+last through eternity, the other a like mansion in the skies receivable
+after death. The Saint agrees that if Radbot's Devil can build him such
+a house the king would be quite right to worship the architect. The
+question of the comparative moral merits of the two invisible Powers
+is not mentioned. This legend, related in a preceding chapter,
+is characteristic of the motives to which the priesthood appealed
+through the Middle Ages. It is no wonder that the people began to
+appeal to the gods of their traditional Radbots, nor that they should
+have used the ceremonial and sacramental formulas around them.
+
+But to these were added other formulas borrowed from different
+sources. The 'Compact with the Devil' had in it various elements. It
+appears to have been a custom of the Odinistic religion for men to sign
+acts of self-dedication to trusted deities, somewhat corresponding
+to the votive tablets of Southern religion. It was a legend of
+Odin that when dying he marked his arm with the point of a spear,
+and this may have been imitated. In the 'Mysteries' of pagan and
+christian systems blood played an important part--the human blood of
+earlier times being symbolised by that of animals, and ultimately,
+among christians, in wine of the Eucharist. The primitive history of
+this blood-covenant is given in another chapter. Some astrological
+formulas, and many of the deities invoked, spread through Europe with
+the Jews. The actual, and quite as often fabulous, wealth of that
+antichristian race was ascribed to Antichrist, and while christian
+princes thought of such gold as legitimate spoil, the honest peasants
+sought from their astrologers the transmitted 'key of Solomon,' in
+virtue of which the demons served him. The famous 'Compact' therefore
+was largely of christian-judaic origin, and only meant conveyance of
+the soul in consideration of precisely the same treasures as those
+promised by the Church to all whose names were written in the Lamb's
+Book,--the only difference being in the period when redemption of
+the respective issues of priest and astrologer should fall due. One
+was payable during this life, the other after death.
+
+The ceremonial performances of Witchcraft have also always existed
+in some form. What we are familiar with of late as Spirit-seances
+are by no means new. More than a hundred years ago, Mr. Wesley and
+various clergymen were sitting at a table in Cock Lane, asking the
+spirit 'Fanny' to rap twice if she were 'in a state of progressive
+happiness.' Nay, a hundred years before that (1661), Sir Thomas
+Chamberlain and others, sitting in a haunted house at Tedworth, Wilts,
+asked 'Satan, if the Drummer set thee to work, give three knocks,
+and no more, which it did very distinctly, and stopped.' [168] We
+also learn that, in another town and case (1654), 'a naked arm and
+hand appeared and beat the floor.' It would not be difficult to go
+further back and find that the dark circle of our Spiritualists with
+much of its apparatus has existed continuously through the Middle
+Ages. The dark seance which Goethe has represented in Faust, Part
+II., at which the spirits of Helen and Paris are evoked, is a very
+accurate picture of the 'materialisations' now exhibited by mediums,
+more than forty years after its publication. These outer resemblances
+are physiognomical. The seance of to-day has lost the darker features
+of its mediæval prototype, because the Present has not a real and
+temporal, but only a speculative and sentimental despair, and this is
+the kind that possesses chiefly the well-to-do and idle classes. It is
+not difficult to meet the eye of our everyday human nature amid those
+frenzied periods when whole districts seemed afflicted with epidemic
+madness, and look deep in that eye to the fathomless heart of humanity.
+
+In an old parish register of Fewston, Yorkshire, are the following
+entries:--'1621. Anne, daughter of Edward Fairfax, baptized the 12th
+June.' '1621. Edward Fairfax, Esq., a child named Anne, buried the
+9th October.' Then in the History of Knaresborough we read of this
+child, 'She was held to have died through witchcraft.' In what dreams
+did that child, supposed to have been snatched away by diabolic
+malice, return as a pure spirit uplifted in light, yet shadowed by
+the anxiety and pain of the bereaved family! A medium is at hand,
+one through whose mind and heart all the stormy electricities
+of the time are playing. The most distinguished representative
+of the Fairfax family is off fighting for Parliament against the
+King. Edward Fairfax is a zealous Churchman. His eldest daughter,
+Helen, aged twenty-one, is a parishioner of the Rev. Mr. Smithson, yet
+she has come under the strong influence of a Nonconformist preacher,
+Mr. Cook. The scholarly clergyman and his worldly Church on one side,
+and the ignorant minister with his humble followers on the other,
+are unconscious personifications of Vice and Virtue, while between
+them poor Helen is no Heraklea.
+
+Nineteen days after the burial of her little sister Anne, as mentioned
+above, Helen is found 'in a deadly trance.' After a little she begins
+to speak, her words showing that she is, by imagination, 'in the church
+at Leeds, hearing a sermon by Mr. Cook.' On November 3, as she lies on
+her bed, Helen exclaims, 'A white cat hath been long upon me and drawn
+my breath, and hath left in my mouth and throat so filthy a smell that
+it doth poison me!' Next we have the following in the father's diary:
+'Item. Upon Wednesday, the 14th of November, she saw a black dog by her
+bedside, and, after a little sleep, she had an apparition of one like
+a young gentleman, very brave, his apparel all laid with gold lace,
+a hat with a golden band, and a ruff in fashion. He did salute her
+with the same compliment as she said Sir Fernandino Fairfax useth when
+he cometh to the house and saluteth her mother.... He said he was a
+Prince, and would make her Queen of England and of all the world if
+she would go with him. She refused, and said, 'In the name of God,
+what art thou?' He presently did forbid her to name God; to which
+she replied, 'Thou art no man if thou canst not abide the name of
+God; but if thou be a man, come near, let me feel of thee;' which he
+would not do, but said, 'It is no matter for feeling.' She proceeded,
+'If thou wert a man, thou wouldst not deny to be felt; but thou art
+the devil, and art but a shadow.'
+
+It is possible that Helen Fairfax had read in Shakspere's 'Lear,'
+printed twelve years before, that
+
+
+ The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman;
+ Modo he's called, and Mahu. [169]
+
+
+But the reader will remark how her vision anticipates that of Faust,
+the transformation of the poodle to finely-dressed Mephistopheles. On
+the next apparition a bit from Patmos is interpolated, the Devil
+appearing as a beast with many horns; but the folklore of Yorkshire
+prevails, and 'presently he was like a very little dog, and desired
+her to open her mouth and let him come into her body, and then he
+would rule all the world.' Lastly, he 'filled the room with fire.'
+
+In the account thus far we have the following items of ancient
+mythology:--1, the Cat; 2, the Dog; 3, the Pride of Life (Asmodeus),
+represented in the fine dress and manners of the fiend; 4, the
+Prince of this World, offering its throne; 5, the Egyptian belief
+in potency of the Name; 6, the Hunger-Demon, who dares not be felt,
+because his back is hollow, and, though himself a shadow, casts none;
+7, the disembodied devil of the rabbins, who seeks to enter a human
+form, in order to enjoy the higher powers of which man is capable;
+8, the fiend of fire.
+
+The period in which Helen Fairfax lived supplied forms for the
+'materialisation' of these notions flitting from the ancient cemeteries
+of theology. The gay and gallant Asmodeus had been transformed into a
+goat under the ascetic eye of Europe; his mistress is a naked witch;
+her familiar and slave is a cat. This is the conventionalised theologic
+theory, as we find it in many examples, one of which is here shown
+(Fig. 21), as copied from a stone panel at the entrance of Lyons
+Cathedral. This is what Helen's visions end in. She and her younger
+sister of seven years, and a young neighbour, a girl of twelve, who
+have become infected with Helen's hysterics, identify six poor women
+as witches, and Edward Fairfax would have secured their execution
+had it not been for the clergyman Smithson.
+
+Cats played a large part in this as in other witch-trials. They
+had long been regarded as an insurance of humble households. In
+many regions still may be found beliefs that a three-coloured cat
+protects against fire; a black cat cures epilepsy, protects gardens;
+and in Bohemia a cat is the favourite bridal gift to procure a happy
+wedded life. One who kills a cat has no luck for seven years. The
+Yorkshire women called witches remembered these proverbs to their
+cost. Among the cats regarded by the Fairfaxes as familiars of the
+accused, some names are notable. One is called 'Gibbe.' This is the
+Icelandic gabba, to 'delude,' and our gibber; it is the 'Gib' cat of
+Reinicke Fuchs, and of the 'Romaunt of the Rose.' In 'Gammer Gurton'
+we read, 'Hath no man gelded Gyb, her cat;' and in Henry IV. i. 2,
+'I am as melancholy as a gib cat.' Another of the cats is called
+Inges. That is, ignis, fire--Agni maintaining his reign of terror.
+
+Helen's devil hates the dissenter, and says, 'Cook is a lying villain,'
+because Cook exorcises him with a psalm. On the other hand, the
+devil praises the clergyman, but Helen breaks out with 'He is not
+worthy to be a vicar who will bear with witches.' Amid the religious
+controversies then exciting all households, mourning for his dead
+child, humiliated by the suspicions of his best neighbours that
+his daughter was guilty of deception, Edward Fairfax, Gentleman,
+a scholar and author, lent an ear to the vulgar superstitions of
+his neighbourhood. Could he have stood on the shoulders of Grimm,
+he would have left us a very different narrative than that preserved
+by the Philobiblion Society. [170]
+
+It is hardly possible to determine now the value of the alleged
+confessions of witches. They were extorted by torture or by promises
+of clemency (the latter rarely fulfilled); they were shaped by
+cross-examiners rather than by their victims; and their worth is still
+more impaired where, as is usual, they are not given in detail, but
+recorded in 'substance,' the phraseology in such case reflecting the
+priest's preconceived theory of witches and their orgies. It is to be
+feared, for instance, that 'devil' is often written instead of some
+name that might now be interesting. Nevertheless, there seems to be
+ground for believing that in many cases there were seances held to
+invoke supernatural powers.
+
+Among the vast number of trials and confessions, I have found none
+more significant than the following. In February 1691 a daughter
+and niece of Mr. Parris, minister in Salem (Massachusetts), girls of
+ten or eleven years, and several other girls, complained of various
+bodily torments, and as the physicians could find no cause for them,
+they were pronounced bewitched. The Rev. Mr. Parris had once been
+in business at the Barbadoes, and probably brought thence his two
+slaves, Spanish Indians, man and wife. When the children were declared
+bewitched, the Indian woman, Tituba, tried an experiment, probably with
+fetishes familiar in the Barbadoes, to find out the witch. Whereupon
+the children cried out against the Indian woman as appearing to them
+and tormenting them. Tituba said her mistress, in her own country,
+had taught her how to find out a witch, but denied being one herself;
+but afterwards (urged, as she subsequently declared, by her master)
+she confessed; and the marks of Spanish cruelty on her body were
+assumed to be the Devil's wounds. The Rev. Mr. Parris in a calmer time
+might have vindicated poor Tituba by taking for text of his sermon on
+the subject Christ's saying about a house divided against itself, and
+reminding the colony, which held public fast against Satan, that the
+devil was too clever to cover his Salem agent with wounds; but instead
+of that he preached on the words, 'Have I not chosen you twelve, and
+one of you is a devil.' During this sermon a woman left the church;
+she was sister of a woman who had also been accused by the children,
+and, being offended by something Mr. Parris said, went out of meeting;
+of course, also to prison. There were three other women involved with
+Tituba, in whose fetish experiments a well-informed writer thinks the
+Salem delusion began. [171] The examination before the Deputy-Governor
+(Danforth) began at Salem, April 11, 1692, and there are several
+notable points in it. Tituba's husband, the Indian John, cunningly
+escaped by pretending to be one of the afflicted. He charged Goody
+Proctor, and said, 'She brought the book to me.' No one asked what
+book! Abigail Williams, also one of the accusers of Goody, was asked,
+'Does she bring the book to you? A. Yes. Q. What would she have you do
+with it? A. To write in it, and I shall be well.' Not a descriptive
+word is demanded or given concerning this book. The examiners are
+evidently well acquainted with it. In the alleged confessions preserved
+in official reports, but not in the words of the accused, the nature
+of the book is made clear. Thus Mary Osgood 'confesses that about
+eleven years ago, when she was in a melancholy state and condition,
+she used to walk abroad in her orchard, and, upon a certain time she
+saw the appearance of a cat at the end of the house, which yet she
+thought was a real cat. However, at that time it diverted her from
+praying to God, and instead thereof she prayed to the Devil; about
+which time she made a covenant with the Devil, who, as a black man,
+came to her, and presented her a book, upon which she laid her finger,
+and that left a red spot. And that upon her signing that book, the
+devil told her that he was her god.' This is not unlikely to be a
+paraphrase of some sermon on the infernal Book of Satan corresponding
+to the Book of Life, the theory being too conventional for the court
+to inquire about the mysterious volume. Equally well known was the
+Antichrist theory which had long represented that avatar of Satan
+as having organised a church. Thus we read:--'Abigail Williams,
+did you see a company at Mr. Parris's house eat and drink? A. Yes,
+sir; that was their sacrament. Q. What was it? A. They said it was
+our blood.' 'Mary Walcot, have you seen a white man? A. Yes, sir,
+a great many times. Q. What sort of man was he? A. A fine grave man,
+and when he came he made all the witches to tremble.' When it is
+remembered that Mary Osgood had described the Devil as 'a black man'
+(all were thinking of the Indians), this Antiblackman suggests Christ
+resisting Antichrist. Again, although nothing seems to have been said
+in the court previously about baptism, one of the examiners asks 'Goody
+Laccy how many years ago since they were baptized? A. Three or four
+years ago I suppose. Q. Who baptized them? A. The old serpent. Q. How
+did he do it? A. He dipped their heads in the water, saying they
+were his, and that he had power over them; ... there were six (who)
+baptized. Q. Name them. A. I think they were of the higher powers.'
+
+There are interspersed through the proceedings suggestions of mercy on
+condition of confession, which, joined to these theoretical questions,
+render it plain that the retractations which the so-called witches
+made were true, and that in New England, at least, there was little
+if any basis for the delusion beyond the experiment of the two Spanish
+Indians. The terrible massacre of witches which occurred there was the
+result of the decision of English judges and divines that witchcraft
+is recognised in the Bible, and there assigned the death-penalty.
+
+It will be observed here that ancient mythology to Salem is chiefly
+that of the Bible, modified by local conditions. White man and black
+man represent Christ and Antichrist, and we have the same symbols on
+both sides,--eucharists, baptisms, and names written in books. The
+survivals from European folklore met with in the New England trials
+are--the cat, the horse (rarely), and the dog. In one case a dog
+suffered from the repute of being a witch, insomuch that some who
+met him fell into fits; he was put to death. Riding through the air
+continues, but the American witches ride upon a stick or pole. The
+old-fashioned broom, the cloud-symbol of the Wild Huntsman, is
+rarely mentioned. One thing, however, survives from England, at
+least; the same sharp controversy that is reflected in the Fairfax
+case. Cotton Mather tried one of the possessed with the Bible, the
+'Assembly's Catechism,' his grandfather's 'Milk for Babes,' his
+father's 'Remarkable Providence,' and a book to prove there were
+witches. 'And when any of those were offered for her to read in,
+she would be struck dead and fall into convulsions.' But when he
+tried her with Popish and Quaker books, the English Prayer-Book,
+and a book to prove there were no witches, the devil permitted her
+to read these as long as she pleased. One is at a loss which most to
+admire, the astuteness of the accused witch in bearing testimony to
+the Puritan religion, or the phenomenon of its eminent representative
+seeking a witness to it in the Father of lies.
+
+If now we travel towards the East we find the survivals growing
+clearer, as in the West they become faint.
+
+In 1669 the people of the villages of Mohra and Elfdale in Sweden,
+believing that they were troubled by witches, were visited by a royal
+commission, the result of whose investigations was the execution of
+twenty-three adults and fifteen children; running of the gauntlet by
+thirty-six between the ages of nine and sixteen years; the lashing
+on the hand of twenty children for three Sundays at the church-door,
+and similar lashing of the aforesaid thirty-six once a week for a
+year. Portions of the confessions of the witches are given below
+from the Public Register as translated by Anthony Horneck, D.D.,
+and printed in London, anno 1700. I add a few words in brackets to
+point out survivals.
+
+'We of the province of Elfdale do confess that we used to go to a
+gravel-pit which lay hard by a cross-way (Hecate), and there we put
+on a vest (Wolf-girdle) over our heads, and then danced round, and
+after this ran to the cross-way, and called the Devil thrice, first
+with a still voice, the second time somewhat louder, and the third
+time very loud, with these words--Antecessor, come and carry us to
+Blockula. Whereupon immediately he used to appear, but in different
+habits; but for the most part we saw him in a grey coat and red and
+blue stockings: he had a red beard (Barbarossa), a high-crowned hat
+(Turn-cap), with linen of divers colours wrapt about it, and long
+garters upon his stockings.
+
+'Then he asked us whether we would serve him with soul and body. If we
+were content to do so, he set us upon a beast which he had there ready,
+and carried us over churches and high walls; and after all we came
+to a green meadow where Blockula lies. We must procure some scrapings
+of altars, and filings of church clocks; and then he gives us a horn
+with a salve in it, wherewith we do anoint ourselves (chrism); and a
+saddle with a hammer (Thor's), and a wooden nail, thereby to fix the
+saddle (Walkyr's); whereupon we call upon the Devil and away we go.'
+
+'For their journey, they said they made use of all sorts of
+instruments, of beasts, of men, of spits, and posts, according as they
+had opportunity: if they do ride upon goats (Azazel) and have many
+children with them, that all may have room, they stick a spit into
+the backside of the Goat, and then are anointed with the aforesaid
+ointment. What the manner of their journey is, God only knows. Thus
+much was made out, that if the children did at any time name the
+names (Egyptian spells) of those that had carried them away, they
+were again carried by force either to Blockula, or to the cross-way,
+and there miserably beaten, insomuch that some of them died of it.'
+
+'A little girl of Elfdale confessed that, naming the name of Jesus
+as she was carried away, she fell suddenly upon the ground, and got
+a great hole in her side, which the Devil presently healed up again,
+and away he carried her; and to this day the girl confessed she had
+exceeding great pain in her side.'
+
+'They unanimously confessed that Blockula is situated in a delicate
+large meadow, whereof you can see no end. The place or house they
+met at had before it a gate painted with divers colours; through
+this gate they went into a little meadow distinct from the other,
+where the beasts went that they used to ride on; but the men whom
+they made use of in their journey stood in the house by the gate in a
+slumbering posture, sleeping against the wall (castle of Waldemar). In
+a huge large room of this house, they said, there stood a very long
+table, at which the witches did sit down; and that hard by this
+room was another chamber where there were very lovely and delicate
+beds. The first thing they must do at Blockula was, that they must
+deny all, and devote themselves body and soul to the Devil, and
+promise to serve him faithfully, and confirm all this with an oath
+(initiation). Hereupon they cut their fingers (Odinism), and with
+their blood write their name in his book (Revelations). They added
+that he caused them to be baptized, too, by such priests as he had
+there (Antichrist's Sacraments).'
+
+'And he, the Devil, bids them believe that the day of judgment will
+come speedily, and therefore sets them on work to build a great house
+of stone (Babel), promising that in that house he will preserve them
+from God's fury, and cause them to enjoy the greatest delights and
+pleasures (Moslem). But while they work exceeding hard at it, there
+falls a great part of the wall down again.'
+
+'They said, they had seen sometimes a very great Devil like a Dragon,
+with fire round about him, and bound with an iron chain (Apocalyptic),
+and the Devil that converses with them tells them that if they confess
+anything he will let that great Devil loose upon them, whereby all
+Sweedeland shall come into great danger.
+
+'They added that the Devil had a church there, such another as in
+the town of Mohra. When the Commissioners were coming he told the
+Witches they should not fear them; for he would certainly kill them
+all. And they confessed that some of them had attempted to murther
+the Commissioners, but had not been able to effect it.
+
+'Some of the children talked much of a white Angel (Frigga as christian
+tutelary), which used to forbid them what the Devil had bid them do,
+and told them that those doings should not last long. What had been
+done had been permitted because of the wickedness of the people.
+
+'Those of Elfdale confessed that the Devil used to play upon an
+harp before them (Tannhauser), and afterwards to go with them that
+he liked best into a chamber, when he committed venerous acts with
+them (Asmodeus); and this indeed all confessed, that he had carnal
+knowledge of them, and that the Devil had sons and daughters by them,
+which he did marry together, and they ... brought forth toads and
+serpents (Echidna).
+
+'After this they sat down to table, and those that the Devil esteemed
+most were placed nearest to him; but the children must stand at the
+door, where he himself gives them meat and drink (Sacrament). After
+meals they went to dancing, and in the meanwhile swore and cursed
+most dreadfully, and afterwards went to fighting one with another
+(Valhalla).
+
+'They also confessed that the Devil gives them a beast about the
+bigness and shape of a young cat (Hecate), which they call a carrier;
+and that he gives them a bird as big as a raven (Odin's messenger),
+but white; [172] and these two creatures they can send anywhere, and
+wherever they come they take away all sorts of victuals they can get,
+butter, cheese, milk, bacon, and all sorts of seeds, whatever they
+find, and carry it to the witch. What the bird brings they may keep
+for themselves, but what the carrier brings they must reserve for the
+Devil, and that is brought to Blockula, where he doth give them of it
+so much as he thinks fit. They added likewise that these carriers fill
+themselves so full sometimes, that they are forced to spue ('Odin's
+booty') by the way, which spuing is found in several gardens, where
+colworts grow, and not far from the houses of these witches. It is
+of a yellow colour like gold, and is called butter of witches.
+
+'The Lords Commissioners were indeed very earnest, and took great pains
+to persuade them to show some of their tricks, but to no purpose;
+for they did all unanimously confess that since they had confessed
+all, they found that all their witchcraft was gone, and that the
+Devil at this time appeared to them very terrible, with claws on
+his hands and feet, and with horns on his head, a long tail behind,
+and showed to them a pit burning, with a hand put out; but the Devil
+did thrust the person down again with an iron fork; and suggested to
+the witches that if they continued in their confession, he would deal
+with them in the same manner.'
+
+The ministers of both Elfdale and Mohra were the chief inciters of
+this investigation, and both testified that they had suffered many
+tortures in the night from the witches. One was taken by the throat
+and so violently used that 'for some weeks he was not able to speak
+or perform divine service.'
+
+We have in this narrative the official and clerical statement, and can
+never know to what the victims really confessed. Blockula seems to be
+a Swedish edition of Blocksberg, of old considered a great resort of
+witches. But we may especially note the epithet by which the witches
+are said to have first appealed to the Devil--Antecessor. Dr. Horneck
+has not given us the Swedish term of which this is a translation,
+but we may feel assured that it was not a phrase coined by the class
+among whom reputed witches were found. In all probability it was a
+learned phrase of the time for some supposed power which preceded
+and was conquered by Christianity; and if we knew its significance it
+might supply a clue to the reality with which the Commissioners were
+dealing. There would seem to be strong probabilities that in Sweden
+also, as elsewhere, there had been a revival of faith in the old
+religion whose barbaric rites had still survived in a few holes and
+corners where they were practised by night. The Antecessor was still
+present to hold out promises where the Successor had broken all that
+his sponsors had made when the populace accepted his baptism. This
+probability is further suggested by the fact that some of these
+uncanny events happened at Elfdale, a name which hints at a region of
+especial sanctity under the old religion, and also by the statement
+that the Devil had a church there, a sort of travesty of the village
+church. About the same time we find John Fiene confessing in Scotland
+that the Devil appeared to him in 'white raiment,' and it is also
+testified that John heard 'the Devil preach in a kirk in the pulpit
+in the night by candlelight, the candle burning blue.' [173]
+
+The names used by the Scotch witches are often suggestive of
+pagan survivals. Thus in the trial at the Paisley Assizes, 1678,
+concerning the alleged bewitching of Sir George Maxwell, Margaret
+Jackson testified to giving up her soul by renouncing her baptism to
+a devil named Locas (Loki?); another raised a tempest to impede the
+king's voyage to Denmark by casting into the sea a cat, and crying
+Hola (Hela?); and Agnes Sampson called the Devil to her in the shape
+of a dog by saying, 'Elva (Elf?), come and speak to me!'
+
+It is necessary to pass by many of the indications contained in the
+witch-trials that there had been an effort to recur to the pleasures
+and powers traditionally associated with the pagan era of Europe, and
+confirmed by the very denunciations of contemporary paganism with its
+pomp and luxury by the priesthood. The promises held out by the 'Devil'
+to Elfdale peasants and puritanised Helen Fairfax are unmistakable. But
+it is necessary to remark also that the ceremonies by which, as was
+clearly proved in various cases, the fortune-tellers or 'witches'
+endeavoured to imitate the spells of Dr. Faustus were archæological.
+
+Around the cauldron, which was used in imitation of the Alchemists,
+a rude Zodiac was marked, some alchemic signs being added; and
+in the cauldron were placed ingredients concerning many of which
+the accounts are confused. It is, however, certain that the chief
+ingredients were plants which, precisely as in ancient Egypt, had
+been gathered at certain phases of the moon, or seasons of the year,
+or from some spot where the sun was supposed not to have shone on
+it. It was clearly proved also that the plants chiefly used by the
+sorceresses were rue and vervain. Vervain was sacred to the god of war
+in Greece and Rome, and made the badge of ambassadors sent to make
+treaties of peace. In Germany it was sacred to Thor, and he would
+not strike with his lightning a house protected by it. The Druids
+called it 'holy herb;' they gathered it when the dog-star rose, from
+unsunned spots, and compensated the earth for the deprivation with
+a sacrifice of honey. Its reputation was sufficient in Ben Jonson's
+day for him to write--
+
+
+ Bring your garlands, and with reverence place
+ The vervain on the altar.
+
+
+The charm which vervain had for the mediæval peasant was that it
+was believed, if it had first touched a Bel-fire, to snap iron; and,
+if boiled with rue, made a liquid which, being poured on a gunflint,
+made the shot as sure to take effect as any Freischütz could desire.
+
+Rue was supposed to have a potent effect on the eye, and to bestow
+second sight. So sacred was it once in England that missionaries
+sprinkled holy water from brushes made up of it, whence it was called
+'herb of grace.' Milton represents Michael as purging Adam's eyes
+with it. In the Tyrol it is believed to confer fine vision and used
+with agrimony (flowers of Argos, the many-eyed); in Posen it is said
+also to heal serpent-bites. By this route it came into the cauldron
+of the wizard and witch. In Drayton's incantation it is said--
+
+
+ Then sprinkles she the juice of rue,
+ With nine drops of the midnight dew
+ From lunary distilling.
+
+
+This association of lunary, or moon-wort, once supposed to cure lunacy,
+with rue is in harmony with the mythology of both. An old oracle,
+said to have been revealed by Hecate herself, ran thus:--'From a
+root of wild rue fashion and polish a statue; adorn it with household
+lizards; grind myrrh, gum, and frankincense with the same reptiles,
+and let the mixture stand in the air during the waning of a moon;
+then address your vows in the following terms' (the formula is not
+preserved). 'As many forms as I have, so many lizards let there be;
+do these things exactly; you will build me an abode with branches of
+laurel, and having addressed fervent prayers to the image, you will
+see me in your sleep.' [174]
+
+Rue was thus consecrated as the very substance of Hecate, the mother
+of all European witches. M. Maury supposes that it was because it was
+a narcotic and caused hallucinations. Hallucinations were, no doubt,
+the basis of belief in second sight. But whatever may be the cause,
+rue was the plant of witchcraft; and Bishop Taylor speaks of its being
+used by exorcists to try the devil, and thence deriving its appellation
+'herb of grace.' More probably it was used to sprinkle holy water
+because of a traditional sanctity. All narcotics were supposed to be
+children of the night; and if, in addition, they were able to cause
+hallucinations, they were supposed to be under more especial care of
+the moon.
+
+After reading a large number of reports concerning the ordeals and
+trials of witches, and also many of their alleged confessions, I have
+arrived at the conclusion that there were certainly gatherings held
+in secret places; that some of the ordinary ceremonies and prayers of
+the Church were used, with names of traditional deities and Oriental
+demons substituted for those of the Trinity and saints; that with
+these were mingled some observances which had been preserved from
+the ancient world by Gnostics, Astrologists, and Alchemists. That at
+these gatherings there was sometimes direct devil-worship is probable,
+but oftener the invocations were in other names, and it is for the
+most part due to the legal reporters that the 'Devil' is so often
+named. As to the 'confessions,' many, no doubt, admitted they had
+gone to witches' Sabbaths who had been there only in feverish dreams,
+as must have been the case of many young children and morbid pietists
+who were executed; others confessed in hope of escape from charges
+they could not answer; and others were weary of their lives.
+
+The writer of this well remembers, in a small Virginian village
+(Falmouth), more than thirty years ago, the terrible persecutions to
+which an old white woman named Nancy Calamese was subjected because
+of her reputation as a witch. Rumours of lizards vomited by her poor
+neighbours caused her to be dreaded by the ignorant; the negroes
+were in terror of her; she hardly dared pass through the streets
+for fear of being hooted by boys. One morning she waded into the
+Rappahannock river and drowned herself, and many of her neighbours
+regarded the suicide as her confession. Probably it was a similar
+sort of confession to many that we read in the reports of witch trials.
+
+The retribution that followed was more ferocious than could have
+visited mere attempts by the poor and ignorant to call up spirits
+to their aid. Every now and then the prosecutions disclose the
+well-known animus of heresy, persecution, and also the fury of
+magistrates suspicious of conspiracies. In England, New England,
+and France, particularly, an incipient rationalism was revealed
+in the party called 'Saducees,' who tried to cast discredit on
+the belief in witchcraft. This was recognised by Sir Mathew Hale
+in England and Cotton Mather in New England, consequently by the
+chief authorities of church and state in both countries, as an
+attack on biblical infallibility, since it was said in the Bible,
+'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.' The leading wizards and
+witches were probably also persons who had been known in connection
+with the popular discontent and revolutionary feeling displayed in
+so many of the vindictive conjurations which were brought to light.
+
+The horrors which attended the crushing out of this last revival
+of paganism are such as recall the Bartholomew massacre and the
+recent slaughter of Communists in Paris, so vividly that one can
+hardly repress the suspicion that the same sort of mingled panic and
+fanaticism were represented in them all. Dr. Réville has summed up the
+fearful history of three hundred years as follows:--'In the single
+year 1485, and in the district of Worms alone, eighty-five witches
+were delivered to the flames. At Geneva, at Basle, at Hamburg,
+at Ratisbon, at Vienna, and in a multitude of other towns, there
+were executions of the same kind. At Hamburg, among other victims,
+a physician was burnt alive, because he saved the life of a woman
+who had been given up by the midwife. In Italy, during the year
+1523, there were burnt in the diocese of Como alone more than two
+hundred witches. This was after the new bull hurled at witchcraft
+by Pope Adrian VI. In Spain it was still worse; there, in 1527,
+two little girls, of from nine to eleven years of age, denounced a
+host of witches, whom they pretended to detect by a mark in their
+left eye. In England and Scotland political influence was brought to
+bear upon sorcery; Mary Stuart was animated by a lively zeal against
+witches. In France the Parliament of Paris happily removed business
+of this kind from the ecclesiastical tribunals; and under Louis XI.,
+Charles VIII., and Louis XII. there were but few condemnations for
+the practice of magic; but from the time of Francis I., and especially
+from Henry II., the scourge reappeared. Jean Bodin, a man of sterling
+worth in other respects, but stark mad upon the question of witchcraft,
+communicated his mania to all classes of the nation. His contemporary
+and disciple, Boguet, showed how that France swarmed with witches and
+wizards. 'They increase and multiply on the land,' said he, 'even as do
+the caterpillars in our gardens. Would that they were all got together
+in a heap, so that a single fire might burn them all at once.' Savoy,
+Flanders, the Jura Mountains, Lorraine, Béarn, Provence, and in almost
+all parts of France, the frightful hecatombs were seen ablaze. In the
+seventeenth century the witch-fever somewhat abated, though it burst
+out here and there, centralising itself chiefly in the convents of
+hysterical nuns. The terrible histories of the priests Gaufridy and
+Urban Grandier are well known. In Germany, and particularly in its
+southern parts, witch-burning was still more frequent. In one small
+principality at least 242 persons were burnt between 1646 and 1651;
+and, horribile dictu, in the official records of these executions,
+we find that among those who suffered were children from one to six
+years of age! In 1657 the witch-judge, Nicholas Remy, boasted of having
+burnt 900 persons in fifteen years. It would even seem that it is to
+the proceedings against sorcery that Germany owes the introduction
+of torture as an ordinary mode of getting at the truth. Mr. Roskoff
+reproduces a catalogue of the executions of witches and wizards in
+the episcopal town of Würzburg, in Bavaria, up to the year 1629. In
+1659 the number of those put to death for witchcraft amounted, in
+this diocese, to 900. In the neighbouring bishopric of Bamberg at
+least 600 were burnt. He enumerates thirty-one executions in all,
+not counting some regarded by the compilers of the catalogue as not
+important enough to mention. The number of victims at each execution
+varies from two to seven. Many are distinguished by such surnames
+as 'The Big Hunchback, The Sweetheart, The Bridge-keeper, The Old
+Pork-woman,' &c. Among them appear people of all sorts and conditions,
+actors, workmen, jugglers, town and village maidens, rich burghers,
+nobles, students, magistrates even, and a fair number of priests. Many
+are simply entered as 'a foreigner.' Here and there is added to the
+name of the condemned person his age and a short notice. Among the
+victims, for instance, of the twentieth execution figures 'Little
+Barbara, the prettiest girl in Würzburg;' 'a student who could speak
+all manner of languages, who was an excellent musician, vocaliter et
+instrumentaliter;' 'the master of the hospice, a very learned man.' We
+find, too, in this, gloomy account the cruel record of children burnt
+for witchcraft; here a little girl of about nine or ten years of age,
+with her baby sister, younger than herself (their mother was burnt a
+little while afterwards); here boys of ten or eleven; again, a young
+girl of fifteen; two children from the poorhouse; the little boy of
+a councillor. The pen falls from one's hand in recapitulating such
+monstrosities. Cannot those who would endow Catholicity with the
+dogma of papal infallibility hearken, before giving their vote,
+to the cries that rise before God, and which history re-echoes,
+of those poor innocent ones whom pontifical bulls threw into
+flames? The seventeenth century saw the rapid diminution of trials
+and tortures. In one of his good moments, Louis XIV. mitigated greatly
+the severity of this special legislation. For this he had to undergo
+the remonstrances of the Parliament of Rouen, which believed society
+would be ruined if those who dealt in sorcery were merely condemned to
+perpetual confinement. The truth is, that belief in witchcraft was so
+wide-spread, that from time to time even throughout the seventeenth
+century there were isolated executions. One of the latest and most
+notorious was that of Renata Saenger, superior of the convent of
+Unterzell, near Würzburg (1748). At Landshut, in Bavaria, in 1756,
+a young girl of thirteen years was convicted of impure intercourse
+with the Devil, and put to death. Seville in 1781, and Glaris in 1783,
+saw the last two known victims to this fatal superstition.' [175]
+
+The Reformation swept away in Northern countries, for the upper
+classes, as many Christian saints and angels as priestcraft had
+previously turned to enemies for the lower. The poor and ignorant
+simply tried to evoke the same ideal spirit-guardians under the
+pagan forms legendarily associated with a golden age. Witchcraft
+was a pathetic appeal against a cruel present to a fair, however
+visionary, past. But Protestantism has brought on famine of another
+kind--famine of the heart. The saints of the Church have followed those
+of paganism; and although one result of the process has been a vast
+increase in enterprise, science, and wealth, man cannot live by these
+alone. Modern spiritualism, which so many treat with a superciliousness
+little creditable to a scientific age, is a cry of starved sentiment
+and affections left hopeless under faded heavens, as full of pathetic
+meaning as that which was wrung from serfs enticed into temples only
+to find them dens of thieves. Desolate hearts take up the burthen
+of desolate homes, and appeal to invisible powers for guidance;
+and for attestation of hopes which science has blighted, ere poetry,
+art, and philanthropy have changed these ashes into beauty. Because
+these so-called spirits, evoked by mediums out of morbid nerves,
+are really longed-for ideals, the darker features of witchcraft are
+not called about them. That fearful movement was a wronged Medea
+whose sorrows had made Hecate--to remember the dreadful phrase of
+Euripides--'the chosen assistant dwelling in the inmost recesses of
+her house.' Modern spiritualism is Rachel weeping for her children,
+not to be comforted if they are not. But the madness of the one is
+to be understood by the plaintive appeal of the other.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+FAUST AND MEPHISTOPHELES.
+
+ Mephisto and Mephitis--The Raven Book--Papal sorcery--Magic
+ seals--Mephistopheles as dog--George Sabellicus alias Faustus--The
+ Faust myth--Marlowe's Faust--Good and evil angels--El Magico
+ Prodigioso--Cyprian and Justina--Klinger's Faust--Satan's
+ sermon--Goethe's Mephistopheles--His German characters--Moral
+ scepticism--Devil's gifts--Helena--Redemption through Art--Defeat
+ of Mephistopheles.
+
+
+The name Mephistopheles has in it, I think, the priest's shudder at
+the fumes of the laboratory. Duntzer [176] finds that the original
+form of the word was 'Mephostophiles,' and conjectures that it was a
+bungling effort to put together three Greek words, to mean 'not loving
+the light.' In this he has the support of Bayard Taylor, who also
+thinks that it was so understood by Goethe. The transformation of it
+was probably amid the dreaded gases with which the primitive chemist
+surrounded himself. He who began by 'not loving the light' became the
+familiar of men seeking light, and lover of their mephitic gases. The
+ancient Romans had a mysterious divinity called Mephitis, whose grove
+and temple were in the Esquiliæ, near a place it was thought fatal
+to enter. She is thought to have been invoked against the mephitic
+exhalations of the earth in the grove of Albunea. Sulphur springs also
+were of old regarded as ebullitions from hell, and both Schwarz and
+Roger Bacon particularly dealt in that kind of smell. Considering how
+largely Asmodeus, as 'fine gentleman,' entered into the composition
+of Mephistopheles, and how he flew from Nineveh to Egypt (Tobit)
+to avoid a bad smell, it seems the irony of mythology that he should
+turn up in Europe as a mephitic spirit.
+
+Mephistopheles is the embodiment of all that has been said in preceding
+chapters of the ascetic's horror of nature and the pride of life,
+and of the mediæval priest's curse on all learning he could not
+monopolise. The Faust myth is merely his shadow cast on the earth,
+the tracery of his terrible power as the Church would have the
+people dread it. The early Raven Book at Dresden has the title:--'
+† † † D. J. Fausti † † † Dreifacher Höllen-Zwung und Magische
+(Geister-Commando) nebst den schwarzen Raaben. Romæ ad Arcanum
+Pontificatus unter Papst Alexander VI. gedruckt. Anno (Christi)
+MDI.' In proof of which claim there is a Preface purporting to be
+a proclamation signed by the said Pope and Cardinal Piccolomini
+concerning the secrets which the celebrated Dr. Faust had scattered
+throughout Germany, commanding ut ad Arcanum Pontificatus mandentur et
+sicut pupilla oculi in archivio Nostro serventur et custodiantur, atque
+extra Valvas Vaticanas non imprimantur neque inde transportentur. Si
+vero quiscunque temere contra agere ausus fuerit, Divinam maledictionem
+latæ sententiæ ipso facto servatis Nobis Solis reservandis se
+incursurum sciat. Ita mandamus et constituemus Virtute Apostolicæ
+Ecclesiæ Jesu Christi sub poena Excommunicationis ut supra. Anno
+secundo Vicariatus Nostri. Romæ Verbi incarnati Anno M.D.I.
+
+This is an impudent forgery, but it is an invention which, more than
+anything actually issued from Rome, indicates the popular understanding
+that the contention of the Church was not against the validity of
+magic arts, but against their exercise by persons not authorised
+by itself. It was, indeed, a tradition not combated by the priests,
+that various ecclesiastics had possessed such powers, even Popes, as
+John XXII., Gregory VII., and Clement V. The first Sylvester was said
+to have a dragon at his command; John XXII. denounced his physicians
+and courtiers for necromancy; and the whispers connecting the Vatican
+with sorcery lasted long enough to attribute to the late Pius IX. a
+power of the evil eye. Such awful potencies the Church wished to be
+ascribed to itself alone. Faust is a legend invented to impress on
+the popular mind the fate of all who sought knowledge in unauthorised
+ways and for non-ecclesiastical ends.
+
+In the Raven Book just mentioned, there are provisions for calling up
+spirits which, in their blending of christian with pagan formulas,
+oddly resemble the solemn proceedings sometimes affected by our
+spiritual mediums. The magician (Magister) had best be alone, but if
+others are present, their number must be odd; he should deliberate
+beforehand what business he wishes to transact with the spirits; he
+must observe God's commandment; trust the Almighty's help; continue
+his conjuration, though the spirits do not appear quickly, with
+unwavering faith; mark a circle on parchment with a dove's blood;
+within this circle write in Latin the names of the four quarters
+of heaven; write around it the Hebrew letters of God's name, and
+beneath it write Sadan; and standing in this circle he must repeat
+the ninety-first Psalm. In addition there are seals in red and black,
+various Hebrew, Greek, and Latin words, chiefly such as contain the
+letters Q, W, X, Y, Z,--e.g., Yschyros, Theos, Zebaoth, Adonay. The
+specimen (Fig. 22), which I copied from the book in Dresden, is there
+called 'Sigillum Telschunhab.' The 'Black Raven' is pictured in the
+book, and explained as the form in which the angel Raphael taught
+Tobias to summon spirits. It is said also that the Magician must in
+certain cases write with blood of a fish (Tobit again) or bat on
+'maiden-parchment,'--this being explained as the skin of a goat,
+but unpleasantly suggestive of a different origin.
+
+In this book, poorly printed, and apparently on a private press,
+Mephistopheles is mentioned as one of the chief Princes of Hell. He
+is described as a youth, adept in all arts and services, who brings
+spirit-servants or familiars, and brings treasures from earth and
+sea with speed. In the Frankfort Faust Book (1587), Mephistopheles
+says, 'I am a spirit, and a flying spirit, potently ruling under
+the heavens.' In the oldest legends he appears as a dog, that, as we
+have seen, being the normal form of tutelary divinities, the symbol
+of the Scribe in Egypt, guard of Hades, and psychopomp of various
+mythologies. A dog appears following the family of Tobias. Manlius
+reports Melancthon as saying, 'He (Faust) had a dog with him, which
+was the Devil.' Johann Gast ('Sermones Conviviales') says he was
+present at a dinner at Basle given by Faust, and adds: 'He had also
+a dog and a horse with him, both of which, I believe, were devils,
+for they were able to do everything. Some persons told me that the
+dog frequently took the shape of a servant, and brought him food.' In
+the old legends this dog is named Praestigiar. [177]
+
+As for the man Faust, he seems to have been personally the very
+figure which the Church required, and had the friar, in whose guise
+Mephistopheles appears, been his actual familiar, he could hardly
+have done more to bring learning into disgrace. Born at the latter
+part of the fifteenth century at Knittlingen, Wurtemberg, of poor
+parents, the bequest of an uncle enabled him to study medicine at
+Cracow University, and it seems plain that he devoted his learning and
+abilities to the work of deluding the public. That he made money by his
+'mediumship,' one can only infer from the activity with which he went
+about Germany and advertised his 'powers.' It was at a time when high
+prices were paid for charms, philtres, mandrake mannikins; and the
+witchcraft excitement was not yet advanced enough to render dealing
+in such things perilous. It seems that the Catholic clergy made haste
+to use this impostor to point their moral against learning, and to
+identify him as first-fruit of the Reformation; while the Reformers,
+with equal zeal, hurled him back upon the papists as outcome of their
+idolatries. Melancthon calls him 'an abominable beast, a sewer of
+many devils.' The first mention of him is by Trithemius in a letter
+of August 20, 1507, who speaks of him as 'a pretender to magic'
+('Magister Georgius Sabellicus, Faustus Junior'), whom he met at
+Gelnhaussen; and in another letter of the same year as at Kreuznach,
+Conrad Mudt, friend of Luther and Melancthon, mentions (Oct. 3, 1513)
+the visit to Erfurth of Georgius Faustus Hemitheus Hedebeyensis, 'a
+braggart and a fool who affects magic,' whom he had 'heard talking in
+a tavern,' and who had 'raised theologians against him.' In Vogel's
+Annals of Leipzig (1714), kept in Auerbach's Cellar, is recorded
+under date 1525 Dr. Johann Faust's visit to the Cellar. He appears
+therefore to have already had aliases. The first clear account of him
+is in the 'Index Sanitatis' of Dr. Philip Begardi (1539), who says:
+'Since several years he has gone through all regions, provinces, and
+kingdoms, made his name known to everybody, and is highly renowned
+for his great skill, not alone in medicine, but also in chiromancy,
+necromancy, physiognomy, visions in crystal, and the like other
+arts. And also not only renowned, but written down and known as
+an experienced master. Himself admitted, nor denied that it was
+so, and that his name was Faustus, and called himself philosophum
+philosophorum. But how many have complained to me that they were
+deceived by him--verily a great number! But what matter?--hin ist hin.'
+
+These latter words may mean that Faust had just died. He must have
+died about that time, and with little notice. The rapidity with which
+a mythology began to grow around him is worthy of more attention than
+the subject has received. In 1543 the protestant theologian Johann
+Gast has ('Sermones Convivialium') stories of his diabolical dog and
+horse, and of the Devil's taking him off, when his body turns itself
+five times face downward. In 1587 Philip Camerarius speaks of him as
+'a well-known magician who lived in the time of our fathers.' April
+18, 1587, two students of the University of Tübingen were imprisoned
+for writing a Comedy of Dr. Faustus: though it was not permitted to
+make light of the story, it was thought a very proper one to utilise
+for pious purposes, and in the autumn of the same year (1587) the
+original form of the legend was published by Spiess in Frankfort. It
+describes Faust as summoning the Devil at night, in a forest near
+Wittenberg. The evil spirit visits him on three occasions in his
+study, where on the third he gives his name as 'Mephostophiles,'
+and the compact to serve him for twenty-four years for his soul is
+signed. When Faust pierces his hand, the blood flows into the form
+of the words O homo fuge! Mephistopheles first serves him as a monk,
+and brings him fine garments, wine, and food. Many of the luxuries are
+brought from the mansions of prelates, which shows the protestant bias
+of the book; which is also shown in the objection the Devil makes to
+Faust's marrying, because marriage is pleasing to God. Mephistopheles
+changes himself to a winged horse, on which Faust is borne through
+many countries, arriving at last at Rome. Faust passes three days,
+invisible, in the Vatican, which supplies the author with another
+opportunity to display papal luxury, as well as the impotence of
+the Pope and his cardinals to exorcise the evil powers which take
+their food and goblets when they are about to feast. On his further
+aerial voyages Faust gets a glimpse of the garden of Eden; lives in
+state in the Sultan's palace in the form of Mohammed; and at length
+becomes a favourite in the Court of Charles V. at Innsbruck. Here he
+evokes Alexander the Great and his wife. In roaming about Germany,
+Faust diverts himself by swallowing a load of hay and horses, cutting
+off heads and replacing them, making flowers bloom at Christmas,
+drawing wine from a table, and calling Helen of Troy to appear to
+some students. Helen becomes his mistress; by her he has a son,
+Justus Faustus; but these disappear simultaneously with the dreadful
+end of Dr. Faustus, who after a midnight storm is found only in the
+fragments with which his room is strewn.
+
+Several of these legends are modifications of those current before
+Faust's time. The book had such an immense success that new volumes
+and versions on the same subject appeared not only in Germany but
+in other parts of Europe,--a rhymed version in England, 1588; a
+translation from the German in France, 1589; a Dutch translation,
+1592; Christopher Marlowe's drama in 1604.
+
+In Marlowe's 'Tragical History of Doctor Faustus,' the mass of
+legends of occult arts that had crystallised around a man thoroughly
+representative of them was treated with the dignity due to a subject
+amid whose moral and historic grandeur Faust is no longer the petty
+personality he really was. He is precisely the character which the
+Church had been creating for a thousand years, only suddenly changed
+from other-worldly to worldly desires and aims. What he seeks is what
+all the energy of civilisation seeks.
+
+
+ EVIL ANGEL. Go forward, Faustus, in that famous art
+ Wherein all Nature's treasure is contained:
+ Be thou on earth as Jove is in the sky,
+ Lord and commander of these elements.
+
+ FAUST. How am I glutted with conceit of this!
+ Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please,
+ Resolve me of all ambiguities,
+ Perform what desperate enterprise I will?
+ I'll have them fly to India for gold,
+ Ransack the ocean for orient pearl,
+ And search all corners of the new-found world
+ For pleasant fruits and princely delicates;
+ I'll have them read me strange philosophy,
+ And tell the secrets of all foreign kings;
+ I'll have them wall all Germany with brass,
+ And make swift Rhine circle fair Wertenberg;
+ I'll have them fill the public schools with silk,
+ Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad.
+
+
+For this he is willing to pay his soul, which Theology has so long
+declared to be the price of mastering the world.
+
+
+ This word damnation terrifies not him,
+ For he confounds hell in Elysium:
+ His ghost be with the old philosophers!
+
+
+The 'Good Angel' warns him:
+
+
+ O Faustus, lay that damned book aside,
+ And gaze not on it, lest it tempt thy soul,
+ And heap God's heavy wrath upon thy head!
+ Read, read the Scriptures:--that is blasphemy.
+
+
+So, dying away amid the thunders of the Reformation, were heard the
+echoes of the early christian voices which exulted in the eternal
+tortures of the Greek poets and philosophers: the anathemas on Roger
+Bacon, Socinus, Galileo; the outcries with which every great invention
+has been met. We need only retouch the above extracts here and there
+to make Faust's aspirations those of a saint. Let the gold be sought
+in New Jerusalem, the pearl in its gates, the fruits in paradise,
+the philosophy that of Athanasius, and no amount of selfish hunger
+and thirst for them would grieve any 'Good Angel' he had ever heard of.
+
+The 'Good Angel' has not yet gained his wings who will tell him that
+all he seeks is included in the task of humanity, but warn him that
+the method by which he would gain it is just that by which he has
+been instructed to seek gold and jasper of the New Jerusalem,--not
+by fulfilling the conditions of them, but as the object of some
+favouritism. Every human being who ever sought to obtain benefit
+by prayers or praises that might win the good graces of a supposed
+bestower of benefits, instead of by working for them, is but the Faust
+of his side--be it supernal or infernal. Hocus-pocus and invocation,
+blood-compacts and sacraments,--they are all the same in origin;
+they are all mean attempts to obtain advantages beyond other people
+without serving up to them or deserving them. To Beelzebub Faust will
+'build an altar and a church;' but he had probably never entered a
+church or knelt before an altar with any less selfishness.
+
+A strong Nemesis follows Self to see that its bounds are not overpassed
+without retribution. Its satisfactions must be weighed in the balance
+with its renunciations. And the inflexible law applies to intellect and
+self-culture as much as to any other power of man. Mephistopheles is
+'the kernel of the brute;' he is the intellect with mere canine hunger
+for knowledge because of the power it brings. Or, falling on another
+part of human nature, it is pride making itself abject for ostentation;
+or it is passion selling love for lust. Re-enter Mephistopheles with
+Devils, who give crowns and rich apparel to Faustus, dance, and then
+depart. To the man who has received his intellectual and moral liberty
+only to so spend it, Lucifer may well say, in Marlowe's words--
+
+
+ Christ cannot save thy soul, for he is just:
+ There's none but I have interest in the same.
+
+
+Perhaps he might even better have suggested to Faust that his soul
+was not of sufficient significance to warrant much anxiety.
+
+Something was gained when it was brought before the people in popular
+dramas of Faust how little the Devil cared for the cross which had so
+long been regarded as the all-sufficient weapon against him. [178]
+Faust and Mephistopheles flourish in the Vatican despite all the
+crosses raised to exorcise them. The confession of the cross which
+once meant martyrdom of the confessor had now come to mean martyrdom
+of the denier. Protestantism put its faith in Theology, Creeds, and
+Orthodoxy. But Calderon de la Barca blended the legend of Faust with
+the legendary temptation of St. Cyprian, and in 'El Magico Prodigioso'
+we have, in impressive contrast, the powerlessness of the evil powers
+over the heart of a pure woman, and its easy entrance into a mind fully
+furnished with the soundest sentiments of theology. St. Cyprian had
+been a worshipper of pagan deities [179] before his conversion, and
+even after this he had once saved himself while other christians were
+suffering martyrdom. It is possible that out of this may have grown the
+legend of his having called his earlier deities--theoretically changed
+to devils--to his aid; a trace of the legend being that magical 'Book
+of Cyprianus' mentioned in another chapter. In his tract 'De Gratia
+Dei' Cyprian says concerning his spiritual condition before conversion,
+'I lay in darkness, and floating on the world's boisterous sea,
+with no resting-place for my feet, ignorant of my proper life, and
+estranged from truth and light.' Here is a metaphorical 'vasty deep'
+from which the centuries could hardly fail to conjure up spirits,
+one of them being the devil of Calderon's drama, who from a wrecked
+ship walks Christ-like over the boisterous sea to find Cyprian on
+the sea-shore. The drama opens with a scene which recalls the most
+perilous of St. Anthony's temptations. According to Athanasius, the
+Devil having utterly failed to conquer Anthony's virtue by charming
+images, came to him in his proper black and ugly shape, and, candidly
+confessing that he was the Devil, said he had been vanquished by
+the saint's extraordinary sanctity. Anthony prevailed against the
+spirit of pride thus awakened; but Calderon's Cyprian, though he
+does not similarly recognise the Devil, becomes complacent at the
+dialectical victory which the tempter concedes him. Cyprian having
+argued the existence and supremacy of God, the Devil says, 'How can
+I impugn so clear a consequence?' 'Do you regret my victory?' 'Who
+but regrets a check in rivalry of wit?' He leaves, and Cyprian says,
+'I never met a more learned person.' The Devil is equally satisfied,
+knowing, no doubt, that gods worked out by the wits alone remain in
+their abode of abstraction and do not interfere with the world of
+sense. Calderon is artful enough to throw the trial of Cyprian back
+into his pagan period, but the mirror is no less true in reflecting
+for those who had eyes to see in it the weakness of theology.
+
+'Enter the Devil as a fine gentleman,' is the first sign of the
+temptation in Calderon's drama--it is Asmodeus [180] again, and the
+'pride of life' he first brings is the conceit of a clever theological
+victory. So sufficient is the doorway so made for all other pride
+to enter, that next time the devil needs no disguise, but has only
+to offer him a painless victory over nature and the world, including
+Justina, the object of his passion.
+
+
+ Wouldst thou that I work
+ A charm over this waste and savage wood,
+ This Babylon of crags and aged trees,
+ Filling its coverts with a horror
+ Thrilling and strange?...
+ I offer thee the fruit
+ Of years of toil in recompense; whate'er
+ Thy wildest dream presented to thy thought
+ As object of desire, shall be thine. [181]
+
+
+Justina knows less about the philosophical god of Cyprian, and more
+of the might of a chaste heart. To the Devil she says--
+
+
+ Thought is not in my power, but action is:
+ I will not move my foot to follow thee.
+
+
+The Devil is compelled to say at last--
+
+
+ Woman, thou hast subdued me,
+ Only by not owning thyself subdued.
+
+
+He is only able to bring a counterfeit of Justina to her lover.
+
+Like Goethe's Mephistopheles, Cyprian's devil is unable to perform
+his exact engagements, and consequently does not win in the game. He
+enables Cyprian to move mountains and conquer beasts, until he boasts
+that he can excel his infernal teacher, but the Devil cannot bring
+Justina. She has told Cyprian that she will love him in death. Cyprian
+and she together abjure their paganism at Antioch, and meet in a
+cell just before their martyrdom. Over their bodies lying dead on
+the scaffold the Devil appears as a winged serpent, and says he is
+compelled to announce that they have both ascended to heaven. He
+descends into the earth.
+
+What the story of Faust and Mephistopheles had become in the popular
+mind of Germany, when Goethe was raising it to be an immortal type of
+the conditions under which genius and art can alone fulfil their task,
+is well shown in the sensational tragedy written by his contemporary,
+the playwright Klinger. The following extract from Klinger's 'Faust'
+is not without a certain impressiveness.
+
+'Night covered the earth with its raven wing. Faust stood before
+the awful spectacle of the body of his son suspended upon the
+gallows. Madness parched his brain, and he exclaimed in the wild
+tones of dispair:
+
+'Satan, let me but bury this unfortunate being, and then you may take
+this life of mine, and I will descend into your infernal abode, where
+I shall no more behold men in the flesh. I have learned to know them,
+and I am disgusted with them, with their destiny, with the world,
+and with life. My good action has drawn down unutterable woe upon my
+head; I hope that my evil ones may have been productive of good. Thus
+should it be in the mad confusion of earth. Take me hence; I wish
+to become an inhabitant of thy dreary abode; I am tired of light,
+compared with which the darkness in the infernal regions must be the
+brightness of mid-day.'
+
+But Satan replied: 'Hold! not so fast--Faust; once I told thee that
+thou alone shouldst be the arbiter of thy life, that thou alone
+shouldst have power to break the hour-glass of thy existence; thou
+hast done so, and the hour of my vengeance has come, the hour for
+which I have sighed so long. Here now do I tear from thee thy mighty
+wizard-wand, and chain thee within the narrow bounds which I draw
+around thee. Here shalt thou stand and listen to me, and tremble;
+I will draw forth the terrors of the dark past, and kill thee with
+slow despair.
+
+'Thus will I exult over thee, and rejoice in my victory. Fool! thou
+hast said that thou hast learned to know man! Where? How and when? Hast
+thou ever considered his nature? Hast thou ever examined it, and
+separated from it its foreign elements? Hast thou distinguished
+between that which is offspring of the pure impulses of his heart,
+and that which flows from an imagination corrupted by art? Hast thou
+compared the wants and the vices of his nature with those which he
+owes to society and prevailing corruption? Hast thou observed him in
+his natural state, where each of his undisguised expressions mirrors
+forth his inmost soul? No--thou hast looked upon the mask that society
+wears, and hast mistaken it for the true lineaments of man; thou hast
+only become acquainted with men who have consecrated their condition,
+wealth, power, and talents to the service of corruption; who have
+sacrificed their pure nature to your Idol--Illusion. Thou didst at
+one time presume to show me the moral worth of man! and how didst
+thou set about it! By leading me upon the broad highways of vice,
+by bringing me to the courts of the mighty wholesale butchers of men,
+to that of the coward tyrant of France, of the Usurper in England! Why
+did we pass by the mansions of the good and the just? Was it for me,
+Satan, to whom thou hast chosen to become a mentor, to point them out
+to thee? No; thou wert led to the places thou didst haunt by the fame
+of princes, by thy pride, by thy longing after dissipation. And what
+hast thou seen there? The soul-seared tyrants of mankind, with their
+satellites, wicked women and mercenary priests, who make religion a
+tool by which to gain the object of their base passions.
+
+'Hast thou ever deigned to cast a glance at the oppressed, who, sighing
+under his burden, consoles himself with the hope of an hereafter? Hast
+thou ever sought for the dwelling of the virtuous friend of humanity,
+for that of the noble sage, for that of the active and upright father
+of a family?
+
+'But how would that have been possible? How couldst thou, the most
+corrupt of thy race, have discovered the pure one, since thou hadst
+not even the capacity to suspect his existence?
+
+'Proudly didst thou pass by the cottages of the pure and humble,
+who live unacquainted with even the names of your artificial vices,
+who earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, and who rejoice at
+their last hour that they are permitted to exchange the mortal for the
+immortal. It is true, hadst thou entered their abode, thou mightst
+not have found thy foolish ideal of an heroic, extravagant virtue,
+which is only the fanciful creation of your vices and your pride;
+but thou wouldst have seen the man of a retiring modesty and noble
+resignation, who in his obscurity excels in virtue and true grandeur
+of soul your boasted heroes of field and cabinet. Thou sayest that
+thou knowest man! Dost thou know thyself? Nay, deeper yet will I
+enter into the secret places of thy heart, and fan with fierce blast
+the flames which thou hast kindled there for thee.
+
+'Had I a thousand human tongues, and as many years to speak to thee,
+they would be all insufficient to develop the consequences of thy
+deeds and thy recklessness. The germ of wretchedness which thou
+hast sown will continue its growth through centuries yet to come;
+and future generations will curse thee as the author of their misery.
+
+'Behold, then, daring and reckless man, the importance of actions
+that appear circumscribed to your mole vision! Who of you can say,
+Time will obliterate the trace of my existence! Thou who knowest not
+what beginning, what middle, and end are, hast dared to seize with
+a bold hand the chain of fate, and hast attempted to gnaw its links,
+notwithstanding that they were forged for eternity!
+
+'But now will I withdraw the veil from before thy eyes, and then--cast
+the spectre despair into thy soul.'
+
+'Faust pressed his hands upon his face; the worm that never dieth
+gnawed already on his heart.'
+
+The essence and sum of every devil are in the Mephistopheles of
+Goethe. He is culture.
+
+
+ Culture, which smooth the whole world licks,
+ Also unto the Devil sticks.
+
+
+He represents the intelligence which has learned the difference
+between ideas and words, knows that two and two make four, and also how
+convenient may be the dexterity that can neatly write them out five.
+
+
+ Of Metaphysics learn the use and beauty!
+ See that you most profoundly gain
+ What does not suit the human brain!
+ A splendid word to serve, you'll find
+ For what goes in--or won't go in--your mind.
+
+ On words let your attention centre!
+ Then through the safest gate you'll enter
+ The temple halls of certainty. [182]
+
+
+He knows, too, that the existing moment alone is of any advantage;
+that theory is grey and life ever green; that he only gathers real
+fruit who confides in himself. He is thus the perfectly evolved
+intellect of man, fully in possession of all its implements, these
+polished till they shine in all grace, subtlety, adequacy. Nature
+shows no symbol of such power more complete than the gemmed serpent
+with its exquisite adaptations,--freed from cumbersome prosaic feet,
+equal to the winged by its flexible spine, every tooth artistic.
+
+From an ancient prison was this Ariel liberated by his Prospero,
+whose wand was the Reformation, a spirit finely touched to fine
+issues. But his wings cannot fly beyond the atmosphere. The ancient
+heaven has faded before the clearer eye, but the starry ideals have
+come nearer. The old hells have burnt out, but the animalism of man
+couches all the more freely on his path, having broken every chain of
+fear. Man still walks between the good and evil, on the hair-drawn
+bridge of his moral nature. His faculties seem adapted with equal
+precision to either side of his life, upper or under,--to Wisdom
+or Cunning, Self-respect or Self-conceit, Prudence or Selfishness,
+Lust or Love.
+
+Such is the seeming situation, but is it the reality? Goethe's 'Faust'
+is the one clear answer which this question has received.
+
+In one sense Mephistopheles may be called a German devil. The
+Christian soul of Germany was from the first a changeling. The ancient
+Nature-worship of that race might have had its normal development in
+the sciences, and alone with this intellectual evolution there must
+have been formed a related religion able to preserve social order
+through the honour of man. But the native soul of Germany was cut
+out by the sword and replaced with a mongrel Hebrew-Latin soul. The
+metaphorical terrors of tropical countries,--the deadly worms, the
+burning and suffocating blasts and stenches, with which the mind of
+those dwelling near them could familiarise itself when met with in
+their scriptures, acquired exaggerated horrors when left to be pictured
+by the terrorised imagination of races ignorant of their origin. It
+is a long distance from Potsdam and Hyde Park to Zahara. Christianity
+therefore blighted nature in the north by apparitions more fearful
+than the southern world ever knew, and long after the pious there
+could sing and dance, puritanical glooms hung over the Christians
+of higher latitudes. When the progress of German culture began the
+work of dissipating these idle terrors, the severity of the reaction
+was proportioned to the intensity of the delusions. The long-famished
+faculties rushed almost madly into their beautiful world, but without
+the old reverence which had once knelt before its phenomena. That may
+remain with a few, but the cynicism of the noisiest will be reflected
+even upon the faces of the best. Goethe first had his attention drawn
+to Spinoza by a portrait of him on a tract, in which his really noble
+countenance was represented with a diabolical aspect. The orthodox had
+made it, but they could only have done so by the careers of Faust,
+Paracelsus, and their tribe. These too helped to conventionalise
+Voltaire into a Mephistopheles. [183]
+
+Goethe was probably the first European man to carry out this scepticism
+to its full results. He was the first who recognised that the moral
+edifice based upon monastic theories must follow them; and he had in
+his own life already questioned the right of the so-called morality to
+its supreme if not tyrannous authority over man. Hereditary conscience,
+passing through this fierce crucible, lay levigable before Goethe, to
+be swept away into dust-hole or moulded into the image of reason. There
+remained around the animal nature of a free man only a thread which
+seemed as fine as that which held the monster Fenris. It was made
+only of the sentiment of love and that of honour. But as Fenris
+found the soft invisible thread stronger than chains, Faust proved
+the tremendous sanctions that surround the finer instincts of man.
+
+Emancipated from grey theory, Faust rushes hungrily at the golden
+fruit of life. The starved passions will have their satisfaction,
+at whatever cost to poor Gretchen. The fruit turns to ashes on
+his lips. The pleasure is not that of the thinking man, but of the
+accomplished poodle he has taken for his guide. To no moment in that
+intrigue can the suffrage of his whole nature say, 'Stay, thou art
+fair!' That is the pact--it is the distinctive keynote of Goethe's
+'Faust.'
+
+
+ Canst thou by falsehood or by flattery
+ Make me one moment with myself at peace,
+ Cheat me into tranquillity?--come then
+ And welcome life's last day.
+ Make me to the passing moment plead.
+ Fly not, O stay, thou art so fair!
+ Then will I gladly perish.
+
+
+The pomp and power of the court, luxury and wealth, equally fail
+to make the scholar at peace with himself. They are symbolised in
+the paper money by which Mephistopheles replenished the imperial
+exchequer. The only allusion to the printing-press, whose inventor
+Fust had been somewhat associated with Faust, is to show its power
+turned to the work of distributing irredeemable promises.
+
+At length one demand made by Faust makes Mephistopheles tremble. As a
+mere court amusement he would have him raise Helen of Troy. Reluctant
+that Faust should look upon the type of man's harmonious development,
+yet bound to obey, Mephistopheles sends him to the Mothers,--the
+healthy primal instincts and ideals of man which expressed themselves
+in the fair forms of art. Corrupted by superstition of their own
+worshippers, cursed by christianity, they 'have a Hades of their own,'
+as Mephistopheles says, and he is unwilling to interfere with them. The
+image appears, and the sense of Beauty is awakened in Faust. But he
+is still a christian as to his method: his idea is that heaven must
+be taken by storm, by chance, wish, prayer, any means except patient
+fulfilment of the conditions by which it may be reached. Helen is
+flower of the history and culture of Greece; and so lightly Faust
+would pluck and wear it!
+
+Helen having vanished as he tried to clasp her, Faust has learned
+his second lesson. When he next meets Helen it is not to seek
+intellectual beauty as, in Gretchen's case, he had sought the sensuous
+and sensual. He has fallen under a charm higher than that of either
+Church or Mephistopheles; the divorce of ages between flesh and spirit,
+the master-crime of superstition, from which all devils sprang, was
+over for him from the moment that he sees the soul embodied and body
+ensouled in the art-ideal of Greece.
+
+The redemption of Faust through Art is the gospel of the nineteenth
+century. This is her vesture which Helen leaves him when she vanishes,
+and which bears him as a cloud to the land he is to make beautiful. The
+purest Art--Greek Art--is an expression of Humanity: it can as little
+be turned to satisfy a self-culture unhumanised as to consist with a
+superstition which insults nature. When Faust can meet with Helen,
+and part without any more clutching, he is not hurled back to his
+Gothic study and mocking devil any more: he is borne away until he
+reaches the land where his thought and work are needed. Blindness
+falls on him--or what Theology deems such: for it is metaphorical--it
+means that he has descended from clouds to the world, and the actual
+earth has eclipsed a possible immortality.
+
+
+ The sphere of Earth is known enough to me;
+ The view beyond is barred immortality:
+ A fool who there his blinking eyes directeth,
+ And o'er his clouds of peers a place expecteth!
+ Firm let him stand and look around him well!
+ This World means something to the capable;
+ Why needs he through Eternity to wend?
+
+
+The eye for a fictitious world lost, leaves the vision for reality
+clearer. In every hard chaotic object Faust can now detect a slumbering
+beauty. The swamps and pools of the unrestrained sea, the oppressed
+people, the barrenness and the flood, they are all paths to Helen--a
+nobler Helen than Greece knew. When he has changed one scene of
+Chaos into Order, and sees a free people tilling the happy earth,
+then, indeed, he has realised the travail of his manhood, and
+is satisfied. To a moment which Mephistopheles never brought him,
+he cries 'Stay, thou art fair!'
+
+Mephistopheles now, as becomes a creation of the Theology of obtaining
+what is not earned, calls up infernal troops to seize Faust's soul,
+but the angels pelt them with roses. The roses sting them worse than
+flames. The roses which Faust has evoked from briars are his defence:
+they are symbols of man completing his nature by a self-culture
+which finds its satisfaction in making some outward desert rejoice
+and blossom like the rose.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+THE WILD HUNTSMAN.
+
+ The Wild Hunt--Euphemisms--Schimmelreiter--Odinwald--Pied
+ Piper--Lyeshy--Waldemar's Hunt--Palne Hunter--King Abel's Hunt
+ --Lords of Glorup--Le Grand Veneur--Robert le Diable--Arthur--
+ Hugo--Herne--Tregeagle--Der Freischütz--Elijah's chariot--Mahan
+ Bali--Déhak--Nimrod--Nimrod's defiance of Jehovah--His Tower--
+ Robber Knights--The Devil in Leipzig--Olaf hunting pagans--
+ Hunting-horns--Raven--Boar--Hounds--Horse--Dapplegrimm--Sleipnir
+ --Horseflesh--The mare Chetiya--Stags--St. Hubert--The White Lady
+ --Myths of Mother Rose--Wodan hunting St. Walpurga--Friar Eckhardt.
+
+
+The most important remnant of the Odin myth is the universal legend of
+the Wild Huntsman. The following variants are given by Wuttke. [184]
+In Central and South Germany the Wild Hunt is commonly called
+Wütenden Heere, i.e., Wodan's army or chase--called in the Middle
+Ages, Wuotanges Heer. The hunter, generally supposed to be abroad
+during the twelve nights after Christmas, is variously called Wand,
+Waul, Wodejäger, Helljäger, Nightjäger, Hackelberg, Hackelberend
+(man in armour), Fro Gode, Banditterich, Jenner. The most common
+belief is that he is the spectre of a wicked lord or king who
+sacrilegiously enjoyed the chase on Sundays and other holy days,
+and who is condemned to expiate his sin by hunting till the day of
+doom. He wears a broad-brimmed hat; is followed by dogs and other
+animals, fiery, and often three-legged; and in his spectral train
+are the souls of unbaptized children, huntsmen who have trodden down
+grain, witches, and others--these being mounted on horses, goats,
+and cocks, and sometimes headless, or with their entrails dragging
+behind them. They rush with a fearful noise through the air, which
+resounds with the cracking of whips, neighing of horses, barking of
+dogs, and cries of ghostly huntsmen. The unlucky wight encountered
+is caught up into the air, where his neck is wrung, or he is dropped
+from a great height. In some regions, it is said, such must hunt until
+relieved, but are not slain. The huntsman is a Nemesis on poachers or
+trespassers in woods and forests. Sometimes the spectres have combats
+with each other over battlefields. Their track is marked with bits
+of horseflesh, human corpses, legs with shoes on. In some regions,
+it is said, the huntsmen carry battle-axes, and cut down all who
+come in their way. When the hunt is passing all dogs on earth become
+still and quiet. In most regions there is some haunted gorge, hill,
+or castle in which the train disappears.
+
+In Thuringia, it is said that, when the fearful noises of the spectral
+hunt come very near, they change to ravishing music. In the same
+euphemistic spirit some of the prognostications it brings are not evil:
+generally, indeed, the apparition portends war, pestilence, and famine,
+but frequently it announces a fruitful year. If, in passing a house,
+one of the train dips his finger in the yeast, the staff of life will
+never be wanting in that house. Whoever sees the chase will live long,
+say the Bohemians; but he must not hail it, lest flesh and bones rain
+upon him.
+
+In most regions, however, there is thought to be great danger in
+proximity to the hunt. The perils are guarded against by prostration on
+the earth face downward, praying meanwhile; by standing on a white
+cloth (Bertha's linen), or wrapping the same around the head; by
+putting the head between the spokes of a wheel; by placing palm leaves
+on a table. The hunt may be observed securely from the cross-roads,
+which it shuns, or by standing on a stump marked with three crosses--as
+is often done by woodcutters in South Germany.
+
+Wodan also appears in the Schimmelreiter--headless rider on a white
+horse, in Swabia called Bachreiter or Junker Jäkele. This apparition
+sometimes drives a carriage drawn by four white (or black) horses,
+usually headless. He is the terrible forest spectre Hoimann, a giant
+in broad-brimmed hat, with moss and lichen for beard; he rides a
+headless white horse through the air, and his wailing cry, 'Hoi,
+hoi!' means that his reign is ended. He is the bugbear of children.
+
+In the Odinwald are the Riesenäule and Riesenaltar, with mystic marks
+declaring them relics of a temple of Odin. Near Erbach is Castle
+Rodenstein, the very fortress of the Wild Jäger, to which he passes
+with his horrid train from the ruins of Schnellert. The village of
+Reichelsheim has on file the affidavits of the people who heard him
+just before the battles of Leipzig and Waterloo. Their theory is
+that if the Jäger returns swiftly to Schnellert all will go well for
+Germany; but if he tarry at Rodenstein 'tis an omen of evil. He was
+reported near Frankfort in 1832; but it is notable that no mention
+of him was made during the late Franco-German war.
+
+A somewhat later and rationalised variant relates that the wild
+huntsman was Hackelberg, the Lord of Rodenstein, whose tomb--really
+a Druidical stone--is shown at the castle, and said to be guarded
+by hell-hounds. Hackelberg is of old his Brunswick name. It was the
+Hackelberg Hill that opened to receive the children, which the Pied
+Piper of Hamelin charmed away with his flute from that old town,
+because the corporation would not pay him what they had promised
+for ridding them of rats. It is easy to trace this Pied Piper,
+who has become so familiar through Mr. Robert Browning's charming
+poem, to the Odin of more blessed memory, who says in the Havamal,
+'I know a song by which I soften and enchant my enemies, and render
+their weapons of no effect.'
+
+This latter aspect of Odin, his command over vermin, connects him
+with the Slavonic Lyeshy, or forest-demon of the Russias. The ancient
+thunder-god of Russia, Perun, who rides in his storm-chariot through
+the sky, has in the more christianised districts dropped his mantle
+on Ilya (Elias); while in the greater number of Slavonic districts he
+has held his original physical characters so remarkably that it has
+been necessary to include him among demons. In Slavonian Folklore the
+familiar myth of the wild huntsman is distributed--Vladimir the Great
+fulfils one part of it by still holding high revel in the halls of
+Kief, but he is no huntsman; Perun courses noisily through the air, but
+he is rather benevolent than otherwise; the diabolical characteristics
+of the superstition have fallen to the evil huntsmen (Lyeshies),
+who keep the wild creatures as their flocks, the same as shepherds
+their herds, and whom every huntsman must propitiate. The Lyeshy is
+gigantic, wears a sheepskin, has one eye without eyebrow or eyelash,
+horns, feet of a goat, is covered with green hair, and his finger-nails
+are claws. He is special protector of the bears and wolves.
+
+In Denmark the same myth appears as King Volmer's Hunt. Waldemar was
+so passionately fond of the chase that he said if the Lord would only
+let him hunt for ever near Gurre (his castle in the north of Seeland),
+he would not envy him his paradise. For this blasphemous wish he is
+condemned to hunt between Burre and Gurre for ever. His cavalcade is
+much like that already described. Volmer rides a snow-white charger,
+preceded by a pack of coal-black hounds, and he carries his head
+under his left arm. On St. John the women open gates for him. It
+is believed that he is allowed brief repose at one and another of
+his old seats, and it is said spectral servants are sometimes seen
+preparing the ruined castle at Vordingborg for him, or at Waldemar's
+Tower. A sceptical peasant resolved to pass the night in this tower. At
+midnight the King entered, and, thanking him for looking after his
+tower, gave him a gold piece which burned through his hand and fell
+to the ground as a coal. On the other hand, Waldemar sometimes makes
+peasants hold his dogs, and afterwards throws them coals which turn
+out to be gold pieces.
+
+The Palnatoke or Palne Hunter appears mostly in the island of
+Fuen. Every New Year's night he supplies himself with three horse-shoes
+from some smithy, and the smith takes care that he may find them
+ready for use on his anvil, as he always leaves three gold pieces in
+their stead. If the shoes are not ready for him, he carries the anvil
+off. In one instance he left an anvil on the top of a church tower,
+and it caused the smith great trouble to get it down again.
+
+King Abel was interred after his death in St. Peter's Church in
+Sleswig, but the fratricide could find no peace in his grave. His
+ghost walked about in the night and disturbed the monks in their
+devotions. The body was finally removed from the church, and
+sunk in a foul bog near Gottorp. To keep him down effectively, a
+pointed stake was drove through his body. The spot is still called
+Königsgrabe. Notwithstanding this, he appears seated on a coal-black
+charger, followed by a pack of black hounds with eyes and tongues of
+fire. The gates are heard slamming and opening, and the shrieks and
+yells are such that they appal the stoutest hearts.
+
+At the ancient capital of Fuen, Odense, said to have been built
+by Odin, the myth has been reduced to a spectral Christmas-night
+equipage, which issues from St. Canute's Church and passes to the
+ancient manor-house of Glorup. It is a splendid carriage, drawn by
+six black horses with fiery tongues, and in it are seated the Lords
+of Glorup, famous for their cruelty to peasants, and now not able to
+rest in the church where they were interred. It is of evil omen to
+witness the spectacle: a man who watched for it was struck blind.
+
+In France Le Grand Veneur bears various names; he is King Arthur,
+Saint Hubert, Hugo. His alleged appearances within historic times
+have been so strongly attested that various attempts have been made
+to give them rational explanations. Thus Charles VI. of France,
+when going to war in Bretagne, is said to have been met by such a
+spectre in the Forest of Mans, and became insane; he believed himself
+to have been the victim of sorcery, as did many of his subjects. It
+has been said that the King was met by a disguised emissary of the
+Duc de Bretagne. More particular accounts are given of the apparition
+of the Wild Huntsman to Henry IV. when he was hunting with the Comte
+de Soissons in the Forest of Fontainebleau, an event commemorated by
+'La Croix du Grand Veneur.' According to Matthieu, [185] both the King
+and the Count heard the cries of the hunt, and when the Count went to
+discover their origin, the terrible dark figure stood forth and cried,
+'You wish to see me, then behold!' This incident has been explained
+variously, as a project of assassination, or as the jest of two fellows
+who, in 1596, were amusing Paris by their skill in imitating all
+the sounds of a hunt. But such phantoms had too long hunted through
+the imagination of the French peasantry for any explanation to be
+required. Robert le Diable, wandering in Normandy till judgment-day,
+and King Arthur, at an early date domesticated in France as a spectral
+huntsman (the figure most popularly identified at the time with the
+phantom seen by Henry IV.), are sufficient explanations. The ruins of
+Arthur's Castle near Huelgoat, Finistère, were long believed to hide
+enormous treasures, guarded by demons, who appear sometimes as fiery
+lights (ignes fatuui), owls, buzzards, and ravens--one of the latter
+being the form in which Arthur comes from his happy Vale of Avallon,
+when he would vary its repose with a hunt. [186]
+
+A sufficiently curious interchange of such superstitions is represented
+in the following extract from Surtees:--'Sir Anthon Bek, busshop of
+Dureme in the tyme of King Eduarde, the son of King Henry, was the
+maist prowd and masterfull busshop in all England, and it was com'only
+said that he was the prowdest lord of Christienty. It chaunced that
+emong other lewd persons, this sir Anthon entertained at his court
+one Hugh de Pountchardon, that for his evill deeds and manifold
+robberies had been driven out of the Inglische courte, and had come
+from the southe to seek a little bread, and to live by staylinge. And
+to this Hughe, whom also he imployed to good purpose in the warr of
+Scotland, the busshop gave the land of Thikley, since of him called
+Thikley-Puntchardon, and also made him his chiefe huntsman. And after,
+this blake Hughe died afore the busshop; and efter that the busshop
+chasid the wild hart in Galtres forest, and sodainly ther met with
+him Hugh de Pontchardon, that was afore deid, on a wythe horse; and
+the said Hughe loked earnestly on the busshop, and the busshop said
+unto him, 'Hughe, what makethe thee here?' and he spake never word,
+but lifte up his cloke, and then he showed sir Anton his ribbes set
+with bones, and nothing more; and none other of the varlets saw him
+but the busshop only; and ye said Hughe went his way, and sir Anton
+toke corage, and cheered the dogges; and shortly efter he was made
+Patriarque of Hierusalem, and he same nothing no moe; and this Hugh
+is him that the silly people in Galtres doe call le Gros Veneur,
+and he was seen twice efter that by simple folk, afore yat the forest
+was felled in the tyme of Henry, father of King Henry yat now ys.'
+
+Upon this uncanny fellow fell the spectral mantle of Hugo
+Capet; elsewhere as is probable, worn by nocturnal protestant
+assemblies--Huguenots.
+
+The legend of the Wild Huntsman tinges many old English stories. Herne,
+the Hunter, may be identified with him, and the demons, with ghostly
+and headless wish-hounds, who still hunt evil-doers over Dartmoor on
+stormy nights, are his relations. The withered look of horses grazing
+on Penzance Common was once explained by their being ridden by demons,
+and the fire-breathing horse has found its way by many weird routes
+to the service of the Exciseman in the 'Ingoldsby Legends,' or that
+of Earl Garrett, who rides round the Curragh of Kildare on a steed
+whose inch-thick silver shoes must wear as thin as a cat's ear,
+ere he fights the English and reigns over Ireland. The Teutonic myth
+appears very plainly in the story of Tregeagle. This man, traced to
+an old Cornish family, is said to have been one of the wickedest men
+that ever lived; but though he had disposed of his soul to the Devil,
+the evil one was baulked by the potency of St. Petroc. This, however,
+was on condition of Tregeagle's labouring at the impossible task of
+clearing the sand from Porthcurnow Cove, at which work he may still
+be heard groaning when wind and wave are high. Whenever he tries
+to snatch a moment's rest, the demon is at liberty to pursue him,
+and they may be heard on stormy nights in hot pursuit of the poor
+creature, whose bull-like roar passed into the Cornish proverb,
+'to roar like Tregeagle.'
+
+On a pleasant Sunday evening in July 1868, I witnessed 'Der Freischütz'
+in the newly-opened opera-house at Leipzig. Never elsewhere have I seen
+such completeness and splendour in the weird effects of the infernal
+scene in the Wolf's Glen. The 'White Lady' started forth at every step
+of Rodolph's descent to the glen, warning him back. Zamiel, instead
+of the fiery garb he once wore as Samaël, was arrayed in raiment
+black as night; and when the magic bullet was moulded, the stage
+swarmed with huge reptiles, fiery serpents crawled on the ground,
+a dragon-drawn chariot, with wheels of fire, driven by a skeleton,
+passed through the air; and the wild huntsman's chase, composed of
+animals real to the eye and uttering their distinguishable cries,
+hurried past. The animals represented were the horse, hound, boar,
+stag, chamois, raven, bat, owl, and they rushed amid the wild blast
+of horns.
+
+I could but marvel at the yet more strange and weird history of the
+human imagination through which had flitted, from the varied regions
+of a primitive world, the shapes combined in this apotheosis of
+diablerie. Probably if Elijah in his fire-chariot, preached about
+in the neighbouring church that morning, and this wild huntsman
+careering in the opera, had looked closely at each other and at their
+own history, they might have found a common ancestor in the mythical
+Mahan Bali of India, the king whose austerities raised in power till
+he excited the jealousy of the gods, until Vishnu crushed him with his
+heel into the infernal regions, where he still exercises sovereignty,
+and is permitted to issue forth for an annual career (at the Onam
+festival), as described in Southey's 'Curse of Kehama.' And they
+might probably both claim mythological relationship with Yami, lord of
+death, who, as Jami, began in Persia the career of all warriors that
+never died, but sometimes sleep till a magic horn shall awaken them,
+sometimes dwell, like Jami himself and King Arthur, in happy isles,
+and in other cases issue forth at certain periods for the chase or
+for war--like Odin and Waldemar--with an infernal train.
+
+But how did these mighty princes and warriors become demon huntsmen?
+
+In the Persian 'Desatir' it is related that the animals contested
+the superiority of man, the two orders of beings being represented by
+their respective sages, and the last animal to speak opposed the claim
+of his opponent that man attained elevation to the nature of angels,
+with the remark, 'In his putting to death of animals and similar acts
+man resembleth the beasts of prey, and not angels.'
+
+The prophet of the world then said, 'We deem it sinful to kill
+harmless, but right to slay ravenous, animals. Were all ravenous
+animals to enter into a compact not to kill harmless animals, we
+would abstain from slaying them, and hold them dear as ourselves.'
+
+Upon this the wolf made a treaty with the ram, and the lion became
+friend of the stag. No tyranny was left in the world, till man (Dehak)
+broke the treaty and began to kill animals. In consequence of this,
+none observed the treaty except the harmless animals. [187]
+
+This fable, from the Aryan side, may be regarded as showing the
+reason of the evil repute which gathered around the name of Dehak
+or Zohak. The eating of animal food was among our Aryan ancestors
+probably the provisional commissariat of a people migrating from
+their original habitat. The animals slain for food had all their
+original consecration, and even the ferocious were largely invested
+with awe. The woodcutters of Bengal invoke Kalrayu--an archer
+tiger-mounted--to protect them against the wild beasts he (a form of
+Siva) is supposed to exterminate; but while the exterminator of the
+most dangerous animals may, albeit without warrant in the Shastr,
+be respected in India, the huntsman is generally of evil repute. The
+gentle Krishna was said to have been slain by an arrow from the bow
+of Ungudu, a huntsman, who left the body to rot under a tree where
+it fell, the bones being the sacred relics for which the image of
+Jugernath at Orissa was constructed. [188]
+
+It is not known at what period the notion of transmigration arose,
+but that must have made him appear cannibalistic who first hunted
+and devoured animals. Such was the Persian Zohak (or Dehak). His
+Babylonian form, Nimrod, represented also the character of Esau,
+as huntsman; that is, the primitive enemy of the farmer, and of the
+commerce in grains; the preserver of wildness, and consequently of
+all those primitive aboriginal idolatries which linger in the heaths
+(whence heathen) and country villages (whence pagans) long after
+they have passed away from the centres of civilisation. Hunting is
+essentially barbarous. The willingness of some huntsmen even now,
+when this serious occupation of an early period has become a sport,
+to sacrifice not only animal life to their pleasure, but also the
+interests of labour and agriculture, renders it very easy for us to
+understand the transformation of Nimrod into a demon. In the Hebrew
+and Arabian legends concerning Nimrod, that 'mighty hunter' is shown
+as related to the wild elements and their worshipper. When Abraham,
+having broken the images of his father, was brought by Terah before
+Nimrod, the King said, 'Let us worship the fire!'
+
+'Rather the water that quenches the fire,' said Abraham.
+
+'Well, the water.'
+
+'Rather the cloud that carries the water.'
+
+'Well, the cloud.'
+
+'Rather the wind that scatters the cloud.'
+
+'Well, the wind.'
+
+'Rather man, for he withstands the wind.'
+
+'Thou art a babbler,' said Nimrod. 'I worship the fire and will cast
+thee into it.'
+
+When Abraham was cast into the fiery furnace by Nimrod, and on the
+seventh day after was found sitting amid the roses of a garden,
+the mighty hunter--hater of gardens--resolved on a daring hunt for
+Abraham's God himself. He built a tower five thousand cubits high, but
+finding heaven still far away, he attached a car to two half-starved
+eagles, and by holding meat above them they flew upward, until Nimrod
+heard a voice saying, 'Godless man, whither goest thou?' The audacious
+man shot an arrow in the direction of the voice; the arrow returned
+to him stained with blood, and Nimrod believed that he had wounded
+Abraham's God.
+
+He who hunted the universe was destroyed by one of the weakest of
+animated beings--a fly. In the aspiring fly which attacked Nimrod's
+lip, and then nose, and finally devoured his brain, the Moslem and
+Hebrew doctors saw the fittest end of one whose adventurous spirit
+had not stopped to attack animals, man, Abraham, and Allah himself.
+
+But though, in one sense, destroyed, Nimrod, say various myths, may
+be heard tumbling and groaning about the base of his tower of Babel,
+where the confusion of tongues took place; and it might be added,
+that they have, like the groan, a meaning irrespective of race or
+language. Dehak and Nimrod have had their brothers in every race, which
+has ever reached anything that may be called civilisation. It was the
+barbaric Baron and the Robber Knight of the Middle Ages, living by
+the hunt, who, before conversion, made for the Faithful Eckhardts of
+the Church the chief impediment; they might then strike down the monk,
+whose apparition has always been the legendary warning of the Demon's
+approach. When the Eckhardts had baptized these knights, they had
+already been transformed to the Devils which people the forests of
+Germany, France, and England with their terrible spectres. The wild
+fables of the East, telling of fell Demons coursing through the air,
+whispered to the people at one ear, and the equally wild deeds of the
+Robber Knights at the other. The Church had given the people one name
+for all such phantasms--Devil--and it was a name representative of
+the feelings of both priest and peasant, so long as the Robber Knights
+were their common enemy. Jesus had to be a good deal modified before he
+could become the model of this Teutonic Esau. It is after the tradition
+of his old relation to huntsmen that the Devil has been so especially
+connected in folklore with soldiers. In the 'Annals of Leipzig,' kept
+in Auerbach's Cellar, famous for the flight of Mephisto and Faust
+from its window on a wine-cask, I found two other instances in which
+the Devil was reported as having appeared in that town. In one case
+(1604), the fiend had tempted one Jeremy of Strasburg, a marksman,
+to commit suicide, but that not succeeding, had desired him to go with
+him to the neighbouring castle and enjoy some fruit. The marksman was
+saved by help of a Dean. In 1633, during a period of excessive cold
+and snow, the Devil induced a soldier to blaspheme. The marksman and
+the soldier were, indeed, the usual victims of the Wild Huntsmen's
+temptations; and it was for such that the unfailing magic bullets
+were moulded in return for their impawned souls.
+
+How King Olaf--whose name lingers among us in 'Tooley Street,' so
+famous for its Three Tailors! [189]--spread the Gospel through the
+North after his baptism in England is well known. Whatever other hunt
+may have been phantasmal, it was not Olaf's hunt of the heathen. To
+put a pan of live coals under the belly of one, to force an adder
+down the throat of another, to offer all men the alternatives of being
+baptized or burnt, were the arguments which this apostle applied with
+such energy that at last--but not until many brave martyrdoms--the
+chief people were convinced. Olaf encountered Odin as if he had been a
+living foe, and what is more, believed in the genuine existence of his
+former God. Once, as Olaf and his friends believed, Odin appeared to
+this devastator of his altars as a one-eyed man in broad-brimmed hat,
+delighting the King in his hours of relaxation with that enchanting
+conversation for which he was so famous. But he (Odin) tried secretly
+to induce the cook to prepare for his royal master some fine meat
+which he had poisoned. But Olaf said, 'Odin shall not deceive us,'
+and ordered the tempting viand to be thrown away. Odin was god of
+the barbarian Junkers, and the people rejoiced that he was driven
+into holes and corners; his rites remained mainly among huntsmen,
+and had to be kept very secret. In the Gulathings Lagen of Norway
+it is ordered: 'Let the king and bishop, with all possible care,
+search after those who exercise pagan rites, who use magic arts, who
+adore the genii of particular places, of tombs, or rivers, and who,
+after the manner of devils in travelling, are transported from place
+to place through the air.'
+
+Under such very actual curses as these, the once sacred animals of
+Odin, and all the associations of the hunt, were diabolised. Even
+the hunting-horn was regarded as having something præternatural
+about it. The howling blast when Odin consulteth Mimir's head [190]
+was heard again in the Pied Piper's flute, and passed southward
+to blend its note with the horn of Roland at Roncesvalles,--which
+brought help from distances beyond the reach of any honest horn,
+and even with the pipe of Pan.
+
+That the Edda described Odin as mounted on a mysterious horse,
+as cherishing two wolves for pets, having a roasted boar for the
+daily pièce de résistance of his table, and with a raven on either
+shoulder, whispering to him the secret affairs of the earth, was
+enough to settle the reputation of those animals in the creed of
+christian priests. The Raven was, indeed, from of old endowed with
+the holy awfulness of the christian dove, in the Norse Mythology. To
+this day no Swede will kill a raven. The superstition concerning it
+was strong enough to transmit even to Voltaire an involuntary shudder
+at its croak. Odin was believed to have given the Raven the colour of
+the night that it might the better spy out the deeds of darkness. Its
+'natural theology' is, no doubt, given correctly by Robert Browning's
+Caliban, who, when his speculations are interrupted by a thunderstorm,
+supposes his soliloquy has been conveyed by the raven he sees flying
+to his god Setebos. In many parts of Germany ravens are believed to
+hold souls of the damned. If a raven's heart be secured it procures
+an unerring shot.
+
+From an early date the Boar became an ensign of the prowess of the
+gods, by which its head passed to be the device of so many barbaric
+clans and ancient families in the Northern world. In Vedic Mythology
+we find Indra taking the shape of a Wild Boar, also killing a demon
+Boar, and giving Tritas the strength by which a similar monster is
+slain. [191] According to another fable, while Brahma and Vishnu are
+quarrelling as to which is the first-born, Siva interferes and cries,
+'I am the first-born; nevertheless I will recognise as my superior
+him who is able to see the summit of my head or the sole of my
+feet.' Vishnu, transforming himself to a Boar, pierced the ground,
+penetrated to the infernal regions, and then saw the feet of Siva,
+who on his return saluted him as first-born of the gods. De Gubernatis
+regards this fable as making the Boar emblem of the hidden Moon. [192]
+He is hunted by the Sun. He guards the treasure of the demons which
+Indra gains by slaying him. In Sicilian story, Zafarana, by throwing
+three hog's bristles on embers, renews her husband's youth. In
+Esthonian legend, a prince, by eating pork, acquires the faculty
+of understanding the language of birds,--which may mean leading on
+the spring with its songs of birds. But whether these particular
+interpretations be true or not, there is no doubt that the Boar,
+at an early period, became emblematic of the wild forces of nature,
+and from being hunted by King Odin on earth passed to be his favourite
+food in Valhalla, and a prominent figure in his spectral hunt.
+
+Enough has already been said of the Dog in several chapters of this
+work to render it but natural that this animal should take his place
+in any diabolical train. It was not as a 'hell-hound,' or descendant
+of the guardians of Orcus, that he entered the spectral procession of
+Odin, but as man's first animal assistant in the work of obtaining a
+living from nature. It is the faithful friend of man who is demoralised
+in Waldemar's Lystig, the spectre-hound of Peel Castle, the Manthe
+Doog of the Isle of Man, the sky-dogs (Cwn wybir or aunwy) of Wales,
+and Roscommon dog of Ireland.
+
+Of the Goat, the Dog, and some other diabolised animals, enough
+has been said in previous pages. The nocturnal animals would be
+as naturally caught up into the Wild Huntsman's train as belated
+peasants. But it is necessary to dwell a little on the relations of
+the Horse to this Wild Hunt. It was the Horse that made the primitive
+king among men.
+
+'The Horse,' says Dasent, 'was a sacred animal among the Teutonic
+tribes from the first moment of their appearance in history; and
+Tacitus has related how, in the shade of those woods and groves which
+served them for temples, white horses were fed at the public cost,
+whose backs no mortal crossed, whose neighings and snortings were
+carefully watched as auguries and omens, and who were thought to be
+conscious of divine mysteries. In Persia, too, the classical reader
+will remember how the neighing of a horse decided the choice for the
+crown. Here in England, at any rate, we have only to think of Hengist
+and Horsa, the twin heroes of the Anglo-Saxon migration--as the legend
+ran--heroes whose name meant horse, and of the Vale of the White Horse,
+in Berks, where the sacred form still gleams along the down, to be
+reminded of the sacredness of the horse to our forefathers. The Eddas
+are filled with the names of famous horses, and the Sagas contain many
+stories of good steeds, in whom their owners trusted and believed as
+sacred to this or that particular god. Such a horse is Dapplegrimm
+in the Norse tales, who saves his master out of all his perils, and
+brings him to all fortune, and is another example of that mysterious
+connection with the higher powers which animals in all ages have been
+supposed to possess.'
+
+It was believed that no warrior could approach Valhalla except on
+horseback, and the steed was generally buried with his master. The
+Scandinavian knight was accustomed to swear 'by the shoulder of a
+horse and the edge of a sword.' Odin (the god) was believed to have
+always near him the eight-legged horse Sleipnir, whose sire was the
+wonderful Svaldilfari, who by night drew the enormous stones for the
+fortress defending Valhalla from the frost-giants. On Sleipnir the
+deity rode to the realm of Hela, when he evoked the spirit of the
+deceased prophetess, Vala, with Runic incantations, to learn Baldur's
+fate. This is the theme of the Veytamsvida, paraphrased by Gray in
+his ode beginning--
+
+
+ Up rose the king of men with speed,
+ And saddled straight his coal-black steed
+
+
+The steed, however, was not black, but grey. Sleipnir was the foal of
+a magically-created mare. The demon-mare (Mara) holds a prominent place
+in Scandinavian superstition, besetting sleepers. In the Ynglinga Saga,
+Vanland awakes from sleep, crying, 'Mara is treading on me!' His men
+hasten to help him, but when they take hold of his head Mara treads
+on his legs, and when they hold his legs she tramples on his head;
+and so, says Thiodolf--
+
+
+ Trampled to death, to Skyta's shore
+ The corpse his faithful followers bore;
+ And there they burnt, with heavy hearts,
+ The good chief, killed by witchcraft's arts.
+
+
+All this is, of course, the origin of the common superstition of
+the nightmare. The horse-shoe used against witches is from the same
+region. We may learn here also the reason why hippophagy has been so
+long unknown among us. Odin's boar has left his head on our Christmas
+tables, but Olaf managed to rob us of the horse-flesh once eaten in
+honour of that god. In the eleventh century he proclaimed the eating
+of horse-flesh a test of paganism, as baptism was of Christianity,
+and punished it with death, except in Iceland, where it was permitted
+by an express stipulation on their embracing Christianity. To these
+facts it may be added that originally the horse's head was lifted,
+as the horse-shoe is now, for a charm against witches. When Wittekind
+fought twenty years against Charlemagne, the ensign borne by his
+Saxon followers was a horse's head raised on a pole. A white horse
+on a yellow ground is to-day the Hanoverian banner, its origin being
+undoubtedly Odinistic.
+
+The christian edict against the eating of horse-flesh had probably
+a stronger motive than sentimental opposition to paganism. A Roman
+emperor had held the stirrup for a christian pontiff to mount,
+and something of the same kind occurred in the North. The Horse,
+which had been a fire-breathing devil under Odin, became a steed of
+the Sun under the baptized noble and the bishop. Henceforth we read
+of coal-black and snow-white horses, as these are mounted in the
+interest of the old religion or the new.
+
+It is very curious to observe how far and wide has gone religious
+competition for possession of that living tower of strength--the
+Horse. In ancient Ceylon we find the Buddhist immigrants winning over
+the steed on which the aborigines were fortified. It was a white horse,
+of course, that became their symbol of triumph. The old record says--
+
+'A certain yakkhini (demoness) named Chetiya, having the form and
+countenance of a mare, dwelt near the marsh of Tumbariungona. A
+certain person in the prince's (Pandukabhayo) retinue having seen this
+beautiful (creature), white with red legs, announced the circumstance
+to the prince. The prince set out with a rope to secure her. She
+seeing him approach from behind, losing her presence of mind from
+fear, under the influence of his imposing appearance, fled without
+(being able to exert the power she possessed of) rendering herself
+invisible. He gave chase to the fugitive. She, persevering in her
+flight, made the circuit of the marsh seven times. She made three
+more circuits of the marsh, and then plunged into the river at the
+Kachchhaka ferry. He did the same, and (in the river) seized her
+by the tail, and (at the same time grasped) the leaf of a palmira
+tree which the stream was carrying down. By his supernatural good
+fortune this (leaf) became an enormous sword. Exclaiming, 'I put
+thee to death!' he flourished the sword over her. 'Lord!' replied
+she to him, 'subduing this kingdom for thee, I will confer it on
+thee: spare me my life.' Seizing her by the throat, and with the
+point of the sword boring her nostril, he secured her with his rope:
+she (instantly) became tractable. Conducting her to the Dhumarakkho
+mountain, he obtained a great accession of warlike power by making her
+his battle-steed.' [193] The wonderful victories won by the prince,
+aided by this magical mare, are related, and the tale ends with his
+setting up 'within the royal palace itself the mare-faced yakkhini,'
+and providing for her annually 'demon offerings.'
+
+Equally ambiguous with the Horse in this zoologic diablerie
+is the Stag. In the Heraklean legends we find that hero's son,
+Telephon, nursed by a hind in the woods; and on the other hand,
+his third 'labour' was the capture of Artemis' gold-antlered stag,
+which brought on him her wrath (it being 'her majesty's favourite
+stag'). We have again the story of Actæon pursuing the stag too far
+and suffering the fate he had prepared for it; and a reminiscence
+of it in the 'Pentamerone,' when the demon Huoreo allures Canneloro
+into the wood by taking the form of a beautiful hind. These complex
+legends are reflected in Northern folklore also. Count Otto I. of
+Altmark, while out hunting, slept under an oak and dreamed that he
+was furiously attacked by a stag, which disappeared when he called
+on the name of God. The Count built a monastery, which still stands,
+with the oak's stump built into its altar. On the other hand, beside
+the altar of a neighbouring church hang two large horns of a stag
+said to have brought a lost child home on its back. Thus in the old
+town of Steindal meet these contrary characters of the mystical stag,
+of which it is not difficult to see that the evil one results from its
+misfortune in being at once the huntsman's victim and scapegoat. [194]
+
+In the legend of St. Hubert we have the sign of Christ--risen
+from his tomb among the rich Christians to share for a little the
+crucifixion of their first missionaries in the North--to the huntsmen
+of Europe. Hubert pursues the stag till it turns to face him, and
+behold, between its antlers, the cross! It is a fable conceived in the
+spirit of him who said to fishermen, 'Come with me and I will make you
+fishers of men.' The effect was much the same in both cases. Hubert
+kneels before the stag, and becomes a saint, as the fishermen left
+their nets and became apostles. But, as the proverb says, when the
+saint's day is over, farewell the saint. The fishermen's successors
+caught men with iron hooks in their jaws; the successors of Hubert
+hunted men and women so lustily that they never paused long enough
+to see whether there might not be a cross on their forehead also.
+
+It was something, however, that the cross which Constantine could
+only see in the sky could be seen by any eye on the forehead of a
+harmless animal; and this not only because it marked the rising in
+christian hearts of pity for the animals, but because what was done to
+the flying stag was done to the peasant who could not fly, and more
+terribly. The vision of Hubert came straight from the pagan heart of
+Western and Northern Europe. In the Bible, from Genesis to Apocalypse,
+no word is found clearly inculcating any duty to the animals. So
+little, indeed, could the christians interpret the beautiful tales
+of folklore concerning kindly beasts, out of which came the legend
+of Hubert, that Hubert was made patron of huntsmen; and while, by
+a popular development, Wodan was degraded to a devil, the baptized
+sportsman rescued his chief occupation by ascribing its most dashing
+legends to St. Martin and their inspiration to the Archangel Michael.
+
+It is now necessary to consider the light which the German heart cast
+across the dark shadows of Wodan. This is to be discovered in the myth
+of the White Lady. We have already seen, in the confessions of the
+witches of Elfdale, in Sweden, that when they were gathering before
+their formidable Devil, a certain White Spirit warned them back. The
+children said she tried to keep them from entering the Devil's Church
+at Blockula. This may not be worth much as a 'confession,' but it
+sufficiently reports the theories prevailing in the popular mind of
+Elfdale at that time. It is not doubtful now that this White Lady and
+that Devil she opposed were, in pre-christian time, Wodan and his wife
+Frigga. The humble people who had gladly given up the terrible huntsman
+and warrior to be degraded into a Devil, and with him the barbaric
+Nimrods who worshipped him, did not agree to a similar surrender
+of their dear household goddess, known to them as Frigga, Holda,
+Bertha, Mother Rose,--under all her epithets the Madonna of the North,
+interceding between them and the hard king of Valhalla, ages before
+they ever heard of a jealous Jehovah and a tender interceding Mary.
+
+Dr. Wuttke has collected many variants of the myths of Frigga, some
+of which bear witness to the efforts of the Church to degrade her
+also into a fiend. She is seen washing white clothes at fountains,
+milking cows, spinning flax with a distaff, or combing her flaxen
+hair. She was believed to be the divine ancestress of the human
+race; many of the oldest families claimed descent from her, and
+believed that this Ahnenfrau announced to them good fortune, or,
+by her wailing, any misfortune coming to their families. She brought
+evil only to those who spoke evil of her. If any one shoots at her
+the ball enters his own heart. She appears to poor wandering folk,
+especially children, and guides them to spots where they find heaps
+of gold covered with the flower called 'Forget-me-not'--because her
+gentle voice is heard requesting, as the only compensation, that the
+flowers shall be replaced when the gold is removed. The primroses are
+sacred to her, and often are the keys (thence called 'key-blossoms')
+which unlock her treasures. The smallest tribute she repays,--even a
+pebble consecrated to her. Every child ascending the Burgeiser Alp
+places a stone on a certain heap of such, with the words, 'Here I
+offer to the wild maidens.' These are Bertha's kindly fairies. (When
+Frederika Bremer was with a picnic on the Hudson heights, which
+Washington Irving had peopled with the Spirits he had brought from
+the Rhine, she preferred to pour out her champagne as a libation to
+the 'good spirits' of Germany and America.) The beautiful White Lady
+wears a golden chain, and glittering keys at her belt; she appears at
+mid-day or in strong moonlight. In regions where priestly influence
+is strong she is said to be half-black, half-white, and to appear
+sometimes as a serpent. She often helps the weary farmer to stack
+his corn, and sorely-tasked Cinderellas in their toil.
+
+In pre-christian time this amiable goddess--called oftenest Bertha
+(shining) and Mother Rose--was related to Wodan as the spring
+and summer to the storms of winter, in which the Wild Huntsman's
+procession no doubt originated. The Northman's experience of seed-time
+and harvest was expressed in the myth of this sweet Rose hidden
+through the winter's blight to rise again in summer. This myth has
+many familiar variants, such as Aschenputtel and Sleeping Beauty;
+but it was more particularly connected with the later legends of
+the White Lady, as victim of the Wild Huntsman, by the stories of
+transformed princesses delivered by youths. Rescue of the enchanted
+princess is usually effected by three kisses, but she is compelled
+to appear before the deliverer in some hideous aspect--as toad or
+serpent; so that he is repelled or loses courage. This is the rose
+hid under the ugliness of winter.
+
+When the storm-god Wodan was banished from nature altogether and
+identified with the imported, and naturally inconceivable, Satan, he
+was no more regarded as Frigga's rough lord, but as her remorseless
+foe. She was popularly revered as St. Walpurga, the original May
+Queen, and it was believed that happy and industrious children
+might sometimes see her on May-day with long flowing flaxen hair,
+fine shoes, distaff in hand, and a golden crown on her head. But for
+the nine nights after May-day she was relentlessly pursued by the
+Wild Huntsman and his mounted train. There is a picture by G. Watts
+of the hunted lady of Bocaccio's tale, now in the Cosmopolitan Club
+of London, which vividly reproduces the weird impressiveness of this
+myth. The White Lady tries to hide from her pursuer in standing corn,
+or gets herself bound up in a sheaf. The Wild Huntsman's wrath extends
+to all her retinue,--moss maidens of the wood, or Holtzweibeln. The
+same belief characterises Waldemar's hunt. It is a common legend in
+Denmark that King Volmer rode up to some peasants, busy at harvest
+on Sobjerg Hill, and, in reply to his question whether they had
+seen any game, one of the men said--'Something rustled just now in
+yonder standing corn.' The King rushed off, and presently a shot was
+heard. The King reappeared with a mermaid lying across his horse, and
+said as he passed, 'I have chased her a hundred years, and have her at
+last.' He then rode into the hill. In this way Frigga and her little
+people, hunted with the wild creatures, awakened sympathy for them.
+
+The holy friar. Eckhardt (who may be taken as a myth and type of the
+Church ad hoc) gained his legendary fame by being supposed to go in
+advance of the Wild Huntsman and warn villagers of his approach; but
+as time went on and a compromise was effected between the hunting
+Barons and the Church, on the basis that the sports and cruelties
+should be paid for with indulgence-fees, Eckhardt had to turn his
+attention rather to the White Lady. She was declared a Wild Huntress,
+but the epithet slipped to other shoulders. The priests identified
+her ultimately with Freija, or Frau Venus; and Eckhardt was the holy
+hermit who warned young men against her sorceries in Venusberg and
+elsewhere. But Eckhardt never prevailed against the popular love
+of Mother Rose as he had against her pursuer; he only increased
+the attractions of 'Frau Venus' beyond her deserts. In the end it
+was as much as the Church could do to secure for Mary the mantle
+of her elder sister's sanctity. Even then the earlier faith was not
+eradicated. After the altars of Mary had fallen, Frigga had vitality
+enough to hold her own as the White Witch who broke the Dark One's
+spells. It was chiefly this helpful Mother-goddess to whom the wretched
+were appealing when they were burnt for witchcraft.
+
+At Urselberg, Wurtemberg, there is a deep hole called the
+'Nightmaidens' Retreat,' in which are piled the innumerable stones that
+have been cast therein by persons desiring good luck on journeys. These
+stones correspond to the bones of the 11,000 Virgins in St. Ursula's
+Church at Cologne. The White Lady was sainted under her name of Ursel
+(the glowing one), otherwise Horsel. Horselberg, near Eisenach, became
+her haunt as Venus, the temptress of Tannhaüsers; Urselberg became her
+retreat as the good fairy mother; but the attractions of herself and
+her moss-maidens, which the Church wished to borrow, were taken on a
+long voyage to Rome, and there transmuted to St. Ursula and her 11,000
+Virgins. These Saints of Cologne encountered their ancient mythical
+pursuers--the Wild Huntsman's train--in those barbarian Huns who are
+said to have slaughtered them all because they would not break their
+vows of chastity. The legend is but a variant of Wodan's hunt after
+the White Lady and her maidens. When it is remembered that before
+her transformation by Christianity Ursula was the Huntsman's own
+wife, Frigga, a quaint incident appears in the last meeting between
+the two. After Wodan had been transformed to the Devil, he is said
+to have made out the architectural plan for Cologne Cathedral, and
+offered it to the architect in return for a bond for his soul; but,
+having weakly allowed him to get possession of the document before
+the bond was signed, the architect drew from under his gown a bone of
+St. Ursula, from which the Devil fled in great terror. It was bone
+of his bone; but after so many mythological vicissitudes Wodan and
+his Horsel could hardly be expected to recognise each other at this
+chance meeting in Cologne.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+LE BON DIABLE.
+
+ The Devil repainted--Satan a divine agent--St. Orain's
+ heresy--Primitive universalism--Father Sinistrari--Salvation of
+ demons--Mediæval sects--Aquinas--His prayer for Satan--Popular
+ antipathies--The Devil's gratitude--Devil defending
+ innocence--Devil against idle lords--The wicked ale-wife--Pious
+ offenders punished--Anachronistic Devils--Devils turn to
+ poems--Devil's good advice--Devil sticks to his word--His love
+ of justice--Charlemagne and the Serpent--Merlin--His prison of
+ Air--Mephistopheles in Heaven.
+
+
+The phrase which heads this chapter is a favourite one in France. It
+may have had a euphemistic origin, for the giants dreaded by primitive
+Europeans were too formidable to be lightly spoken of. But within
+most of the period concerning which we have definite knowledge such
+phrases would more generally have expressed the half-contemptuous pity
+with which these huge beings with weak intellects were regarded. The
+Devil imported with Christianity was made over, as we have seen,
+into the image of the Dummeteufel, or stupid good-natured giant, and
+he is represented in many legends which show him giving his gifts and
+services for payments of which he is constantly cheated. Le Bon Diable
+in France is somewhat of this character, and is often taken as the
+sign of tradesmen who wish to represent themselves as lavishing their
+goods recklessly for inadequate compensation. But the large accession
+of demons and devils from the East through Jewish and Moslem channels,
+of a character far from stupid, gave a new sense to that phrase and
+corresponding ones. There is no doubt that a very distinct reaction
+in favour of the Devil arose in Europe, and one expressive of very
+interesting facts and forces. The pleasant names given him by the
+masses would alone indicate this,--Monsieur De Scelestat, Lord Voland,
+Blümlin (floweret), Federspiel (gay-plumed), Maitre Bernard, Maitre
+Parsin (Parisian).
+
+The Devil is not so black as he's painted. This proverb concerning the
+long-outlawed Evil One has a respectable antiquity, and the feeling
+underlying it has by no means been limited to the vulgar. Even the
+devout George Herbert wrote--
+
+
+ We paint the Devil black, yet he
+ Hath some good in him all agree.
+
+
+Robert Burns naively appeals to Old Nick's better nature--
+
+
+ But fare ye weel, auld Nickie-ben!
+ O wad ye tak a thought an' men'!
+ Ye aiblins might--I dinna ken--
+ Still ha'e a stake;
+ I'm wae to think upon yon den,
+ E'en for your sake!
+
+
+It is hard to destroy the natural sentiments of the human
+heart. However much they may be overlaid by the transient exigencies
+of a creed, their indestructible nature is pretty certain to reveal
+itself. The most orthodox supporters of divine cruelty in their
+own theology will cry out against it in another. The saint who is
+quite satisfied that the everlasting torture of Satan or Judas is
+justice, will look upon the doom of Prometheus as a sign of heathen
+heartlessness; and the burning of one widow for a few moments on
+her husband's pyre will stimulate merciful missionary ardour among
+millions of christians whose creed passes the same poor victim to
+endless torture, and half the human race with her.
+
+It is doubtful whether the general theological conception of the
+functions of Satan is consistent with the belief that he is in a state
+of suffering. As an agent of divine punishment he is a part of the
+divine government; and it is even probable that had it not been for
+the necessity of keeping up his office, theology itself would have
+found some means of releasing him and his subordinates from hell,
+and ultimately of restoring them to heaven and virtue. [195]
+
+It is a legend of the island Iona that when St. Columba attempted to
+build a church there, the Devil--i.e., the same Druid magicians who
+tried to prevent his landing there by tempests--threw down the stones
+as often as they were piled up. An oracle declared that the church
+could arise only after some holy man had been buried alive at the spot,
+and the saint's friend Orain offered himself for the purpose. After
+Orain had been buried, and the wall was rising securely, St. Columba
+was seized with a strong desire to look upon the face of his poor
+friend once more. The wall was pulled down, the body dug up; but
+instead of Orain being found dead, he sat up and told the assembled
+christians around him that he had been to the other world, and
+discovered that they were in error about various things,--especially
+about Hell, which really did not exist at all. Outraged by this heresy
+the christians immediately covered up Orain again in good earnest.
+
+The resurrection of this primitive universalist of the seventh century,
+and his burial again, may be regarded as typifying a dream of the
+ultimate restoration of the universe to the divine sway which has
+often given signs of life through christian history, though many times
+buried. The germ of it is even in Paul's hope that at last 'God may be
+all in all' (1 Cor. xv. 28). In Luke x. 17, also, it was related that
+the seventy whom Jesus had sent out among the idol-worshipping Gentiles
+'returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject
+unto us through thy name.' These ideas are recalled in various legends,
+such as that elsewhere related of the Satyr who came to St. Anthony to
+ask his prayers for the salvation of his demonic tribe. On the strength
+of Anthony's courteous treatment of that Satyr, the famous Consulteur
+of the Inquisition, Father Sinistrari (seventeenth century), rested
+much of his argument that demons were included in the atonement wrought
+by Christ and might attain final beatitude. The Father affirmed that
+this was implied in Christ's words, 'Other sheep I have which are not
+of this flock: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice;
+and there shall be one fold and one shepherd' [196] (John x. 16). That
+these words were generally supposed to refer to the inclusion of the
+Gentile world was not accepted by Sinistrari as impairing his argument,
+but the contrary. He maintained with great ingenuity that the salvation
+of the Gentiles logically includes the salvation of their inspiring
+demons, and that there would not be one fold if these aerial beings,
+whose existence all authorities attested, were excluded. He even
+intimates, though more timidly, that their father, Satan himself,
+as a participator in the sin of Adam and sharer of his curse, may
+be included in the general provision of the deity for the entire and
+absolute removal of the curse throughout nature.
+
+Sinistrari's book was placed on the 'Index Expurgatorius' at Rome in
+1709, 'donec corrigatur,' eight years after the author's death; it was
+republished, 'correctus,' 1753. But the fact that such sentiments had
+occupied many devout minds in the Church, and that they had reached
+the dignity of a consistent and scholarly statement in theology, was
+proved. The opinion grew out of deeper roots than New Testament phrases
+or the Anthony fables. The Church had been for ages engaged in the vast
+task of converting the Gentile world; in the course of that task it had
+succeeded only by successive surrenders of the impossible principles
+with which it had started. The Prince of this World had been baptized
+afresh with every European throne ascended by the Church. Asmodeus
+had triumphed in the sacramental inclusion of marriage; St. Francis
+d'Assisi, preaching to the animals, represented innumerable pious
+myths which had been impossible under the old belief in a universal
+curse resting upon nature. The evolution of this tendency may be
+traced through the entire history of the Church in such sects as the
+Paulicians, Cathari, Bogomiles, and others, who, though they again
+and again formulated anew the principle of an eternal Dualism, as
+often revealed some further stage in the progressive advance of the
+christianised mind towards a normal relation with nature. Thus the
+Cathari maintained that only those beings who were created by the
+evil principle would remain unrecovered; those who were created by
+God, but seduced by the Adversary, would be saved after sufficient
+expiation. The fallen angels, they believed, were passing through
+earthly, in some cases animal, bodies to the true Church and to
+heaven. Such views as these were not those of the learned, but of the
+dissenting sects, and they prepared ignorant minds in many countries
+for that revival of confidence in their banished deities which made
+the cult of Witchcraft.
+
+St. Thomas Aquinas, the 'Angelical Doctor,' in his famous work
+'Summa Theologiæ,' maintains that in the Resurrection the bodies of
+the redeemed will rise with all their senses and organs, including
+those of sex, active and refined. The authentic affirmation of that
+doctrine in the thirteenth century was of a significance far beyond
+the comprehension of the Church. Aquinas confused the lines between
+flesh and spirit, especially by admitting sex into heaven. The Devil
+could not be far behind. The true interpretation of his doctrine is to
+be found in the legend that Aquinas passed a night in prayer for the
+salvation and restoration of the Devil. This legend is the subject
+of a modern poem so fraught with the spirit of the mediæval heart,
+pining in its dogmatic prison, that I cannot forbear quoting it here:--
+
+
+ All day Aquinas sat alone;
+ Compressed he sat and spoke no word,
+ As still as any man of stone,
+ In streets where never voice is heard;
+ With massive front and air antique
+ He sat, did neither move or speak,
+ For thought like his seemed words too weak.
+
+ The shadows brown about him lay;
+ From sunrise till the sun went out,
+ Had sat alone that man of grey,
+ That marble man, hard crampt by doubt;
+ Some kingly problem had he found,
+ Some new belief not wholly sound,
+ Some hope that overleapt all bound.
+
+ All day Aquinas sat alone,
+ No answer to his question came,
+ And now he rose with hollow groan,
+ And eyes that seemed half love, half flame.
+ On the bare floor he flung him down,
+ Pale marble face, half smile, half frown,
+ Brown shadow else, mid shadows brown.
+
+ 'O God,' he said, 'it cannot be,
+ Thy Morning-star, with endless moan,
+ Should lift his fading orbs to thee,
+ And thou be happy on thy throne.
+ It were not kind, nay, Father, nay,
+ It were not just, O God, I say,
+ Pray for thy Lost One, Jesus, pray!
+
+ 'How can thy kingdom ever come,
+ While the fair angels howl below?
+ All holy voices would be dumb,
+ All loving eyes would fill with woe,
+ To think the lordliest Peer of Heaven,
+ The starry leader of the Seven,
+ Would never, never, be forgiven.
+
+ 'Pray for thy Lost One, Jesus, pray!
+ O Word that made thine angel speak!
+ Lord! let thy pitying tears have way;
+ Dear God! not man alone is weak.
+ What is created still must fall,
+ And fairest still we frailest call;
+ Will not Christ's blood avail for all?
+
+ 'Pray for thy Lost One, Jesus, pray!
+ O Father! think upon thy child;
+ Turn from thy own bright world away,
+ And look upon that dungeon wild.
+ O God! O Jesus! see how dark
+ That den of woe! O Saviour! mark
+ How angels weep, how groan! Hark, hark!
+
+ 'He will not, will not do it more,
+ Restore him to his throne again;
+ Oh, open wide that dismal door
+ Which presses on the souls in pain.
+ So men and angels all will say,
+ 'Our God is good.' Oh, day by day,
+ Pray for thy Lost One, Jesus, pray!'
+
+ All night Aquinas knelt alone,
+ Alone with black and dreadful Night,
+ Until before his pleading moan
+ The darkness ebbed away in light.
+ Then rose the saint, and 'God,' said he,
+ 'If darkness change to light with thee,
+ The Devil may yet an angel be.' [197]
+
+
+While this might be the feeling of devout philosophers whose minds
+were beginning to form a conception of a Cosmos in which the idea
+of a perpetual empire of Evil could find no place, the humble and
+oppressed masses, as we have seen in the chapter on Witchcraft,
+were familiarising their minds with the powers and glories of a
+Satan in antagonism to the deities and saints of the Church. It was
+not a penitent devil supplicating for pardon whom they desired, but
+the veritable Prince of the World, to whom as well as to themselves
+their Christian oppressors were odious. They invested the Powers which
+the priests pronounced infernal with those humanly just and genial
+qualities that had been discarded by ecclesiastical ambition. The
+legends which must be interpreted in this sense are very numerous,
+and a few of the most characteristic must suffice us here. The habit of
+attributing every mishap to the Devil was rebuked in many legends. One
+of these related that when a party were driving over a rough road
+the waggon broke down and one of the company exclaimed, 'This is a
+bit of the Devil's work!' A gentleman present said, 'It is a bit of
+corporation work. I don't believe in saddling the Devil with all the
+bad roads and bad axles.' Some time after, when this second speaker was
+riding over the same road alone, an old gentleman in black met him,
+and having thanked him for his defence of the Devil, presented him
+with a casket of splendid jewels. Very numerous are legends of the
+Devil's apparition to assist poor architects and mechanics unable
+to complete their contracts, even carving beautiful church pillars
+and the like for them, and this sometimes without receiving any
+recompense. The Devil's apparition in defence of accused innocence is
+a well-known feature of European folklore. On one occasion a soldier,
+having stopped at a certain inn, confided to the innkeeper some money
+he had for safe-keeping, and when he was about to leave the innkeeper
+denied having received the deposit. The soldier battered down the door,
+and the neighbours of the innkeeper, a prominent man in the town,
+put him in prison, where he lay in prospect of suffering death for an
+attempted burglary. The poor soldier, being a stranger without means,
+was unable to obtain counsel to defend him. When the parties appeared
+before the magistrate, a smart young lawyer, with blue hat and white
+feathers, unknown in the town, volunteered to defend the soldier,
+and related the whole story with such effect that the innkeeper in his
+excitement cried, 'Devil take me if I have the money!' Instantly the
+smart lawyer spread his wings, and, seizing the innkeeper, disappeared
+with him through the roof of the court-room. The innkeeper's wife,
+struck with horror, restored the money. In an Altmark version of
+this story the Devil visits the prisoner during the previous night
+and asks for his soul as fee, but the soldier refuses, saying he had
+rather die. Despite this the Devil intervened. It was an old-time
+custom in Denmark for courts to sit with an open window, in order
+that the Devil might more easily fly away with the perjurer.
+
+Always a democrat, the Devil is said in many stories to have interfered
+in favour of the peasant or serf against the noble. On one occasion he
+relieved a certain district of all its arrogant and idle noblemen by
+gathering them up in a sack and flying away with them; but unhappily,
+as he was passing over the town of Friesack, his sack came in collision
+with the church steeple, and through the hole so torn a large number
+of noble lords fell into the town--which thence derived its name--and
+there they remained to be patrons of the steeple and burthens on
+the people.
+
+The Devil was universally regarded as a Nemesis on all publicans and
+ale-wives who adulterated the beer they dealt out to the people, or
+gave short measures. At Reetz, in Altmark, the legend of an ale-wife
+with whom he flew away is connected with a stone on which they are said
+to have rested, and the villagers see thereon prints of the Devil's
+hoof and the woman's feet. This was a favourite theme of old English
+legends. The accompanying Figure (23), one of the misereres in Ludlow
+parish church, Shropshire, represents the end of a wicked ale-wife. A
+devil on one side reads the long list of her shortcomings, and on the
+other side hell-mouth is receiving other sinners. A devil with bagpipe
+welcomes her arrival. She carries with her only her fraudulent measure
+and the fashionable head-dress paid for out of its wicked gains.
+
+In a marionette performance which I witnessed at Tours, the accusations
+brought against the tradesmen who cheated the people were such as to
+make one wish that the services of some equally strict devil could
+be secured by the authorities of all cities, to detect adulterators
+and dealers in false weights and measures. The same retributive
+agency, in the popular interest, was ascribed to the Devil in his
+attitude towards misers. There being no law which could reach men
+whose hoarded wealth brought no good to themselves or others, such
+were deemed proper cases for the interposition of the Devil. There
+is a significant contrast between the legends favoured by the Church
+and those of popular origin. The former, made prominent in frescoes,
+often show how, at the weighing of souls, the sinner is saved by a
+saint or angel, or by some instance of service to the Church being
+placed in the scale against the otherwise heavier record of evil
+deeds. A characteristic legend is that which is the subject of the
+frescoes in the portico of St. Lorenzo Church at Rome (thirteenth
+century). St. Lawrence sees four devils passing his hermitage, and
+learns from them that they are going for the soul of Henry II. In
+the next scene, when the wicked Count is weighed, the scroll of his
+evil deeds far outweighs that of his good actions, until the Saint
+casts into the scale a chalice which the prince had once given to his
+church. For that one act Henry's soul ascends to paradise amid the
+mortification of the Devils. Though Charles Martel saved Europe from
+Saracen sway, he once utilised episcopal revenues for relief of the
+state; consequently a synod declares him damned, a saint sees him in
+hell, a sulphurous dragon issues from his grave. On the other hand,
+the popular idea of the fate of distinguished sinners may be found
+hid under misereres, where kings sometimes appear in Hell, and in
+the early picture-books which contained a half-christianised folklore.
+
+It has been observed that the early nature-deities, reflecting the
+evil and good of nature, in part through the progress of human
+thought and ideality, and through new ethnical rivalries, were
+degraded into demons. They then represented the pains, obstructions,
+and fears in nature. We have seen that as these apparent external
+evils were vanquished or better understood, the demons passed
+to the inward nature, and represented a new series of pains,
+obstructions, and fears. But these, too, were in part vanquished, or
+better understood. Still more, they so changed their forms that the
+ancient demons-turned-devils were no longer sufficiently expressive
+to represent them. Thus we find that the Jews, mohammedans, and
+christians did not find their several special antagonists impressively
+represented by either Satan, Iblis, or Beelzebub. Each, therefore,
+personified its foe in accordance with later experiences--an Opponent
+called Armillus, Aldajjail, Antichrist (all meaning the same thing),
+in whom all other devils were merged.
+
+As to their spirit; but as to their forms they shrank in size and
+importance, and did duty in small ways. We have seen how great dragons
+were engaged in frightening boys who fished on Sundays, or oppressive
+squires; how Satan presided over wine-casks, or was adapted to the
+punishment of profanity; how hosts of once tremendous fiends turned
+into the grotesque little forms which Callot, truly copying the popular
+notions around him, painted as motley imps disturbing monks at their
+prayers. Such diminutions of the devils correspond to a parallel
+process among the gods and goddesses, by which they were changed to
+'little people' or fairies. In both cases the transformation is an
+expression of popular disbelief in their reality.
+
+But revivals took place. The fact of evil is permanent; and whenever
+the old chains of fear, after long rusting, finally break, there
+follows an insurrection against the social and moral order which
+alarms the learned and the pious. These see again the instigations
+of evil powers, and it takes form in the imagination of a Dante,
+a Luther, a Milton. But when these new portraits of the Devil are
+painted, it is with so much contemporary colouring that they do not
+answer to the traditional devils preserved in folklore. Dante's Worm
+does not resemble the serpent of fable, nor does Milton's Satan
+answer to the feathered clown of Miracle Plays. Thus, behind the
+actual evils which beset any time, there stands an array of grand
+diabolical names, detached from present perils, on which the popular
+fancy may work without really involving any theory of Absolute Evil
+at all. Were starry Lucifer to be restored to his heavenly sphere,
+he would be one great brand plucked from the burning, but the burning
+might still go on. Theology itself had filled the world with other
+devils by diabolising all the gods and goddesses of rival religions,
+and the compassionate heart was thus left free to select such forms or
+fair names as preserved some remnant of ancient majesty around them,
+or some ray from their once divine halo, and pray or hope for their
+pardon and salvation. Fallen foes, no longer able to harm, can hardly
+fail to awaken pity and clemency.
+
+With the picture of Dives and Lazarus presented elsewhere
+(vol. i. p. 281) may be instructively compared the accompanying
+scene of a rich man's death-bed (Fig. 24), taken from 'Ars Moriendi,'
+one of the early block-books. This picture is very remarkable from
+the suggestion it contains of an opposition between a devil on the
+dying man's right and the hideous dragon on his left. While the
+dragon holds up a scroll, bidding him think of his treasure (Yntende
+thesauro), the Devil suggests provision for his friends (Provideas
+amicis). This devil seems to be a representative of the rich man's
+relatives who stand near, and appears to be supported by his ugly
+superior, who points towards hell as the penalty of not making such
+provision as is suggested. There would appear to be in this picture
+a vague distinction between the mere bestial fiend who tempts, and
+the ugly but good-natured devil who punishes, and whom rich sinners
+cannot escape by bequests to churches.
+
+One of the most notable signs of the appearance of 'the good Devil'
+was the universal belief that he invariably stuck to his word. In
+all European folklore there is no instance of his having broken a
+promise. In this respect his reputation stands far higher than that
+of the christians, seeing that it was a boast of the saints that,
+following the example of their godhead, who outwitted Satan in the
+bargain for man's redemption, they were continually cheating the
+Devil by technical quibbles. There is a significant saying found
+among Prussian and Danish peasants, that you may obtain a thing by
+calling on Jesus, but if you would be sure of it you must call on
+the Devil! The two parties were judged by their representatives.
+
+One of the earliest legendary compacts with the Devil was that made
+by St. Theophilus in the sixth century; when he became alarmed and
+penitent, the Virgin Mary managed to trick Satan out of the fatal
+bond. The 'Golden Legend' of Jacobus de Voragine tells why Satan was
+under the necessity of demanding in every case a bond signed with
+blood. 'The christians,' said Satan, 'are cheats; they make all sorts
+of promises so long as they want me, and then leave me in the lurch,
+and reconcile themselves with Christ so soon as, by my help, they
+have got what they want.'
+
+Even apart from the consideration of possessing the soul, the
+ancient office of Satan as legal prosecutor of souls transmitted,
+to the latest forms into which he was modified, this character for
+justice. Many mediæval stories report his gratitude whenever he is
+treated with justice, though some of these are disguised by connection
+with other demonic forms. Such is the case with the following romance
+concerning Charlemagne.
+
+When Charlemagne dwelt at Zurich, in the house commonly called 'Zum
+Loch,' he had a column erected to which a bell was attached by a
+rope. Any one that demanded justice could ring this bell when the
+king was at his meals. It happened one day that the bell sounded,
+but when the servants went to look no one was there. It continued
+ringing, so the Emperor commanded them to go again and find out the
+cause. They now remarked that an enormous serpent approached the rope
+and pulled it. Terrified, they brought the news to the Emperor, who
+immediately rose in order to administer justice to beast as well as
+man. After the reptile had respectfully inclined before the emperor,
+it led him to the banks of the river and showed him, sitting upon
+its nest and eggs, an enormous toad. Charlemagne having examined
+the case decided thus:--The toad was condemned to be burnt and
+justice shown to the serpent. The verdict was no sooner given than
+it was accomplished. A few days after the snake returned to court,
+bowed low to the King, crept upon the table, took the cover from a
+gold goblet standing there, dropped into it a precious stone, bowed
+again and crept away. On the spot where the serpent's nest had been,
+Charlemagne built a church called 'Wasserkelch.' The stone he gave
+to his much-loved spouse. This stone possessed the power of making
+the owner especially loved by the Emperor, so that when absent from
+his queen he mourned and longed for her. She, well aware that if
+it came into other hands the Emperor would soon forget her, put it
+under her tongue in the hour of death. The queen was buried with
+the stone, but Charlemagne could not separate himself from the body,
+so had it exhumed, and for eighteen years carried it about with him
+wherever he went. In the meantime, a courtier who had heard of the
+secret virtue of the stone, searched the corpse, and at last found
+the stone hidden under the tongue, and took it away and concealed it
+on his own person. Immediately the Emperor's love for his wife turned
+to the courtier, whom he now scarcely permitted out of his sight. At
+Cologne the courtier in a fit of anger threw the stone into a hot
+spring, and since then no one has succeeded in finding it. The love
+the Emperor had for the knight ceased, but he felt himself wonderfully
+attracted to the place where the stone lay hidden. On this spot he
+founded Aix-la-Chapelle, his subsequent favourite place of residence.
+
+It is not wonderful that the tradition should arise at Aix, founded
+by the human hero of this romance, that the plan of its cathedral
+was supplied by the Devil; but it is characteristic there should be
+associated with this legend an example of how he who as a serpent
+was awarded justice by Charlemagne was cheated by the priests of
+Aix. The Devil gave the design on condition that he was to have the
+first who entered the completed cathedral, and a wolf was goaded into
+the structure in fulfilment of the contract!
+
+In the ancient myth and romaunt of 'Merlin' may be found the mediæval
+witness to the diabolised religion of Britain. The emasculated
+saints of the South-east could not satisfy the vigorous race in the
+North-west, and when its gods were outlawed as devils they brought
+the chief of them back, as it were, had him duly baptized and set
+about his old work in the form of Merlin! Here, side by side with the
+ascetic Jesus, brought by Gatien and Augustin, was a Northern Christ,
+son of an Arch-incubus, born of a Virgin, baptized in the shrunken
+Jordan of a font, performing miracles, summoning dragons to his aid,
+overcoming Death and Hell in his way, brought before his Pilate but
+confounding him, throning and dethroning kings, and leading forth, on
+the Day of Pentecost, an army whose knights are inspired by Guenever's
+kisses in place of flaming tongues. How Merlin 'went about doing good,'
+after the Northman's ideal of such work; how he saved the life of his
+unwedded mother by proving that her child (himself) was begotten by
+a devil without her knowledge; how, as a child, he exposed at once
+the pretension of the magistrate to high birth and the laxity of his
+lady and his parson; how he humiliated the priestly astrologers of
+Vortigern, and prophesied the destruction of that usurper just as
+it came to pass; how he served Uther during his seven years' reign,
+and by enabling him to assume the shape of the Duke of Cornwall
+and so enjoy the embraces of the Duchess Igerna, secured the birth
+of Arthur and hope of the Sangréal; [198] how he defended Arthur's
+legitimacy of birth and assisted him in causing illegitimate births;
+and how at last he was bound by his own spells, wielded by Vivien,
+in a prison of air where he now remains;--this was the great mediæval
+gospel of a baptized christian Antichrist which superseded the imported
+kingdom not of this world.
+
+Merlin was the Good Devil, but baptism was a fatal Vivien-spell to
+him. He still dwells in all the air which is breathed by Anglo-Saxon
+men,--an ever-expanding prison! Whether the Briton is transplanted in
+America, India, or Africa, he still carries with him the Sermon on the
+Mount as inspired by his baptized Prince of the Air, and his gospel
+of the day is, 'If thine enemy hunger, starve him; if he thirst, give
+him fire; if he hate you, heap melted lead on his head!' Such remains
+the soul of the greatest race, under the fatal spell of a creed that
+its barbarism needs only baptism to be made holiness and virtue.
+
+In the reign of George II., when Lord Bute and a Princess of easy
+virtue were preying on England, and fanatical preachers were
+directing their donkeys to heaven beside the conflagration of
+John Bull's house, the eye of Hogarth at least (as is shown in our
+Figure 25, from his 'Raree Show') was able to see what the baptized
+Merlin had become in his realm of Air. The other worldly-Devil is
+serpent-legged Hypocrisy. The Nineteenth Century has replaced Merlin
+by Mephistopheles, the Devil who, despite a cloven foot, steps firmly
+on earth, and means the power that wit and culture can bring against
+the baptized giant Force. Him the gods fear not, even look upon with
+satisfaction. In the 'Prologue in Heaven,' of Goethe's 'Faust,' the
+Lord is even more gracious to Mephistopheles than the Jehovah of Job
+was to Satan. 'The like of thee have never moved my hate,' he says--
+
+
+ Man's active nature, flagging, seeks too soon the level;
+ Unqualified repose he learns to crave;
+ Whence, willingly, the comrade him I gave,
+ Who works, excites, and must create, as Devil.
+
+
+This is but a more modern expression of the rabbinical fable,
+already noted, that when the first man was formed there were beside
+him two Spirits,--one on the right that remained quiescent, another
+on the left who ever moved restlessly up and down. When the first
+sin was committed, he of the left was changed to a devil. But he
+still meant the progressive, inquiring nature of man. 'The Spirit I,
+that evermore denies,' says the Mephistopheles of Goethe. How shall
+man learn truth if he know not the Spirit that denies? How shall
+he advance if he know not the Spirit of discontent? This restless
+spirit gains through his ignorance a cloven hoof,--a divided movement,
+sometimes right, sometimes wrong. From his selfishness it acquires
+a double tongue. But both hoof and serpent-tongue are beneath the
+evolutional power of experience; they shall be humanised to the foot
+that marches firmly on earth, and the tongue that speaks truth; and,
+the baptismal spell broken, Merlin shall descend, bringing to man's
+aid all his sharp-eyed dragons transformed to beautiful Arts.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+ANIMALISM.
+
+ Celsus on Satan--Ferocities of inward nature--The Devil
+ of Lust--Celibacy--Blue Beards--Shudendozi--A lady in
+ distress--Bahirawa--The Black Prince--Madana Yaksenyo--Fair
+ fascinators--Devil of Jealousy--Eve's jealousy--Noah's wife--How
+ Satan entered the Ark--Shipwrights' Dirge--The Second Fall--The
+ Drunken curse--Solomon's Fall--Cellar Devils--Gluttony--The
+ Vatican haunted--Avarice--Animalised Devils--Man-shaped Animals.
+
+
+'The christians,' said Celsus, 'dream of some antagonist to God--a
+devil, whom they call Satanas, who thwarted God when he wished to
+benefit mankind. The Son of God suffered death from Satanas, but
+they tell us we are to defy him, and to bear the worst he can do;
+Satanas will come again and work miracles, and pretend to be God,
+but we are not to believe him. The Greeks tell of a war among the
+gods; army against army, one led by Saturn, and one by Ophincus; of
+challenges and battles; the vanquished falling into the ocean, the
+victors reigning in heaven. In the Mysteries we have the rebellion
+of the Titans, and the fables of Typhon, and Horus, and Osiris. The
+story of the Devil plotting against man is stranger than either of
+these. The Son of God is injured by the Devil, and charges us to
+fight against him at our peril. Why not punish the Devil instead of
+threatening poor wretches whom he deceives?' [199]
+
+The christians comprehended as little as their critic that story
+they brought, stranger than all the legends of besieged deities, of a
+Devil plotting against man. Yet a little historic perspective makes
+the situation simple: the gods had taken refuge in man, therefore
+the attack was transferred to man.
+
+Priestly legends might describe the gods as victorious over the
+Titans, the wild forces of nature, but the people, to their sorrow,
+knew better; the priests, in dealing with the people, showed that
+they also knew the victory to be on the other side. A careful writer
+remarks:--'When these (Greek) divinities are in any case appealed to
+with unusual seriousness, their nature-character reappears.... When
+Poseidon hesitates to defer to the positive commands of Zeus
+(Il. xix. 259), Iris reminds him that there are the Erinnyes to
+be reckoned with (Il. xv. 204), and he gives in at once. [200] The
+Erinnyes represent the steady supremacy of the laws and forces of
+nature over all personifications of them. Under uniform experience
+man had come to recognise his own moral autocracy in his world. He
+looked for incarnations, and it was a hope born of an atheistic view
+of external nature. This was the case not only with the evolution of
+Greek religion, but in that of every religion.
+
+When man's hope was thus turned to rest upon man, he found that
+all the Titans had followed him. Ophincus (Ophion) had passed
+through Ophiomorphus to be a Man of Sin; and this not in one, but
+by corresponding forms in every line of religious development. The
+ferocities of outward nature appeared with all their force in man, and
+renewed their power with the fine armoury of his intelligence. He must
+here contend with tempests of passion, stony selfishness, and the whole
+animal creation nestling in heart and brain, prowling still, though on
+two feet. The theory of evolution is hardly a century old as science,
+but it is an ancient doctrine of Religion. The fables of Pilpay and
+Æsop represent an early recognition of 'survivals.' Recurrence to
+original types was recognised as a mystical phenomenon in legends of
+the bandit turned wolf, and other transformations. One of the oldest
+doctrines of Eschatology is represented in the accompanying picture
+(Fig. 26), from Thebes, of two dog-headed apes ferrying over to Hades
+a gluttonous soul that has been weighed before Osiris, and assigned
+his appropriate form.
+
+The devils of Lust are so innumerable that several volumes would be
+required to enumerate the legends and superstitions connected with
+them. But, fortunately for my reader and myself, these, more than
+any other class of phantoms, are very slight modifications of the
+same form. The innumerable phallic deities, the incubi and succubæ,
+are monotonous as the waves of the ocean, which might fairly typify
+the vast, restless, and stormy expanse of sexual nature to which
+they belong.
+
+In 'The Golden Legend' there is a pleasant tale of a gentleman
+who, having fallen into poverty, went into solitude, and was there
+approached by a chevalier in black, mounted on a fine horse. This
+knight having inquired the reason of the other's sadness, promised
+him that, if he would return home, he would find at a certain place
+vast sums of gold; but this was on condition that he should bring his
+beautiful wife to that solitary spot in exactly a year's time. The
+gentleman, having lived in greater splendour than ever during the
+year, asked his wife to ride out with him on the appointed day. She
+was very pious, and having prayed to the Virgin, accompanied her
+husband to the spot. There the gentleman in black met them, but only
+to tremble. 'Perfidious man!' he cried, 'is it thus you repay my
+benefits? I asked you to bring your wife, and you have brought me
+the Mother of God, who will send me back to hell!' The Devil having
+vanished, the gentleman fell on his knees before the Virgin. He
+returned home to find his wife sleeping quietly.
+
+Were we to follow this finely-mounted gentleman in black, we should be
+carried by no uncertain steps back to those sons of God who took unto
+themselves wives of the daughters of men, as told in Genesis; and if
+we followed the Virgin, we should, by less certain but yet probable
+steps, discover her prototype in Eve before her fall, virginal as
+she was meant to remain so far as man was concerned. In the chapters
+relating to the Eden myth and its personages, I have fully given my
+reasons for believing that the story of Eve, the natural childlessness
+of Sarah, and the immaculate conception by Mary, denote, as sea-rocks
+sometimes mark the former outline of a coast, a primitive theory
+of celibacy in connection with that of a divine or Holy Family. It
+need only be added here that this impossible ideal in its practical
+development was effectual in restraining the sexual passions of
+mankind. Although the reckless proclamation of the wild nature-gods
+(Elohim), 'Be fruitful and multiply,' has been accepted by christian
+bibliolators as the command of Jehovah, and philanthropists are even
+punished for suggesting means of withstanding the effects of nuptial
+licentiousness, yet they are farther from even the letter of the Bible
+than those protestant celibates, the American Shakers, who discard
+the sexual relation altogether. The theory of the Shakers that the
+functions of sex 'belong to a state of nature, and are inconsistent
+with a state of grace,' as one of their members in Ohio stated it to
+me, coincides closely with the rabbinical theory that Adam and Eve,
+by their sin, fell to the lowest of seven earthly spheres, and thus
+came within the influence of the incubi and succubæ, by their union
+with whom the world was filled with the demonic races, or Gentiles.
+
+It is probable that the fencing-off of Eden, the founding of the
+Abrahamic household and family, and the command against adultery, were
+defined against that system of rape--or marriage by capture--which
+prevailed among the 'sons of Elohim,' who saw the 'daughters of men
+that they were fair,' and followed the law of their eyes. The older
+rabbins were careful to preserve the distinction between the Bene
+Elohim and the Ischim, and it ultimately amounted to that between
+Jews and Gentiles.
+
+The suspicion of a devil lurking behind female beauty thus begins. The
+devils love beauty, and the beauties love admiration. These are perils
+in the constitution of the family. But there are other legends which
+report the frequency with which woman was an unwilling victim of the
+lustful Anakim or other powerful lords. Throughout the world are
+found legends of beautiful virgins sacrificed to powerful demons
+or deities. These are sometimes so realistic as to suggest the
+possibility that the fair captives of savage chieftains may indeed
+have been sometimes victims of their Ogre's voracity as well as his
+lust. At any rate, cruelty and lust are nearly related. The Blue
+Beard myth opens out horrible possibilities.
+
+One of the best-known legends in Japan is that concerning the
+fiend Shudendozi, who derives his name from the two characteristics
+of possessing the face of a child and being a heavy drinker. The
+child-face is so emphasised in the stories that one may suspect either
+that his fair victims were enticed to his stronghold by his air of
+innocence, or else that there is some hint as to maternal longings
+in the fable.
+
+At the beginning of the eleventh century, when Ichijo II. was Emperor,
+lived the hero Yorimitsa. In those days the people of Kiyoto were
+troubled by an evil spirit which abode near the Rasho Gate. One night,
+when merry with his companions, Ichijo said, 'Who dare go and defy
+the demon of the Rasho Gate, and set up a token that he has been
+there?' 'That dare I,' answered Tsuma, who, having donned his mail,
+rode out in the bleak night to the Rasho Gate. Having written his
+name on the gate, returning, his horse shivers with fear, and a
+huge hand coming out of the gate seized the knight's helmet. He
+struggled in vain. He then cuts off the demon's arm, and the demon
+flies howling. Tsuma takes the demon's arm home, and locks it in a
+box. One night the demon, having the shape of Tsuma's aunt, came and
+said, 'I pray you show me the arm of the fiend.' 'I will show it to
+no man, and yet to thee will I show it,' replied he. When the box
+is opened a black cloud enshrouds the aunt, and the demon disappears
+with the arm. Thereafter he is more troublesome than ever. The demon
+carried off the fairest virgins of Kiyoto, ravished and ate them,
+no beauty being left in the city. The Emperor commands Yorimitsa to
+destroy him. The hero, with four trusty knights and a great captain,
+went to the hidden places of the mountains. They fell in with an
+old man, who invited them into his dwelling, and gave them wine to
+drink; and when they were going he presented them with wine. This
+old man was a mountain-god. As they proceeded they met a beautiful
+lady washing blood from garments in a valley, weeping bitterly. In
+reply to their inquiries she said the demon had carried her off
+and kept her to wash his clothes, meaning when weary of her to
+eat her. 'I pray your lordships to help me!' The six heroes bid
+her lead them to the ogre's cave. One hundred devils mounted guard
+before it. The woman first went in and told him they had come. The
+ogre called them in, meaning to eat them. Then they saw Shudendozi,
+a monster with the face of a little child. They offered him wine,
+which flew to his head: he becomes merry and sleeps, and his head is
+cut off. The head leaps up and tries to bite Yorimitsa, but he had
+on two helmets. When all the devils are slain, he brings the head
+of Shudendozi to the Emperor. In a similar story of the same country
+the lustful ogre by no means possesses Shudendozi's winning visage,
+as may be seen by the popular representation of him (Fig. 27), with
+a knight's hand grasping his throat.
+
+A Singhalese demon of like class is Bahirawa, who takes his name
+from the hill of the same name, towering over Kandy, in which he
+is supposed to reside. The legend runs that the astrologers told
+a king whose queen was afflicted by successive miscarriages, that
+she would never be delivered of a healthy child unless a virgin was
+sacrificed annually on the top of this hill. This being done, several
+children were borne to him. When his queen was advanced in years the
+king discontinued this observance, and consequently many diseases
+fell upon the royal family and the city, after which the annual
+sacrifice was resumed, and continued until 1815, when the English
+occupied Kandy. The method of the sacrifice was to bind a young girl
+to a stake on the top of the hill with jungle-creepers. Beside her,
+on an altar, were placed boiled rice and flowers; incantations were
+uttered, and the girl left, to be generally found dead of fright in the
+morning. An old woman, who in early years had undergone this ordeal,
+survived, and her safety no doubt co-operated with English authority
+to diminish the popular fear of Bahirawa, but still few natives would
+be found courageous enough to ascend the hill at night.
+
+One of the lustful demons of Ceylon is Calu Cumara, that is, the Black
+Prince. He is supposed to have seven different apparitions,--prince
+of fire, of flowers, of groves, of graves, of eye-ointments, of
+the smooth body, and of sexuality. The Saga says he was a Buddhist
+priest, who by exceeding asceticism and accumulated merits had gained
+the power to fly, but passion for a beautiful woman caused him to
+fall. By disappointment in the love for which he had parted with so
+much his heart was broken, and he became a demon. In this condition
+he is for ever tortured by the passion of lustful desire, the only
+satisfaction of which he can obtain being to afflict young and fair
+women with illness. He is a very dainty demon, and can be soothed if
+great care is taken in the offerings made to him, which consist of
+rice of finest quality, plantains, sugar-cane, oranges, cocoa-nuts,
+and cakes. He is of dark-blue complexion and his raiment black.
+
+In Singhalese demonolatry there are seven female demons of lust,
+popularly called the Madana Yaksenyo. These sisters are--Cama (lust);
+Cini (fire); Mohanee (ignorance); Rutti (pleasure); Cala (maturity);
+Mal (flowers); Puspa (perfumes). They are the abettors of seduction,
+and are invoked in the preparation of philtres. [201]
+
+'It were well,' said Jason to Medea, 'that the female race should
+not exist; then would there not have been any evil among men.' [202]
+The same sentiment is in Milton--
+
+
+ Oh why did God,
+ Creator wise, that peopled highest heaven
+ With spirits masculine, create at last
+ This novelty on earth, this fair defect
+ Of nature, and not fill the world at once
+ With men, as angels, without feminine? [203]
+
+
+Many traditions preceded this ungallant creed, some of which have
+been referred to in our chapters on Lilith and Eve. Corresponding
+to these are the stories related by Herodotus of the overthrow of
+the kingdom of the Heraclidæ and freedom of the Greeks, through
+the revenge of the Queen, 'the most beautiful of women,' upon her
+husband Candaules for having contrived that Gyges should see her
+naked. Candaules having been slain by Gyges at the instigation of the
+Queen, and married her, the Fates decreed that their crime should be
+punished on their fifth descendant. The overthrow was by Cyrus, and
+it was associated with another woman, Mandane, daughter of the tyrant
+Astyages, mother of Cyrus, who is thus, as the Madonna, to bruise
+the head of the serpent who had crept into the Greek Paradise. [204]
+The Greeks of Pontus also ascribed the origin of the Scythian race,
+the scourge of all nations, to a serpent-woman, who, having stolen
+away the mares which Herakles had captured from Gergon, refused to
+restore them except on condition of having children by him. From the
+union of Herakles with this 'half virgin, half viper,' sprang three
+sons, of whom the youngest was Scythes.
+
+Not only are feminine seductiveness and liability to seduction
+represented in the legends of female demons and devils, but quite as
+much the jealousy of that sex. If the former were weaknesses which
+might overthrow kingdoms, the latter was a species of animalism which
+could devastate the home and society. Although jealousy is sometimes
+regarded as venial, if not indeed a sign of true love, it is an outcome
+of the animal nature. The Japanese have shown a true observation of
+nature in portraying their female Oni (devil) of jealousy (Fig. 28)
+with sharp erect horns and bristling hair. The raising 'of the
+ornamental plumes by many birds during their courtship,' mentioned
+by Mr. Darwin, is the more pleasing aspect of that emotion which,
+blending with fear and rage, puffs out the lizard's throat, ruffles
+the cock's neck, and raises the hair of the insane. [205]
+
+An ancient legend mingles jealousy with the myth of Eden at every
+step. Rabbi Jarchi says that the serpent was jealous of Adam's
+connubial felicity, and a passage in Josephus shows that this was an
+ancient opinion. The jealousy of Adam's second wife felt by his first
+(Lilith) was by many said to be the cause of her conspiracy with
+the serpent. The most beautiful mediæval picture of her that I have
+seen was in an illuminated Bible in Strasburg, in which, with all
+her wealth of golden hair and her beauty, Lilith holds her mouth,
+with a small rosy apple in it, towards Adam. Eve seems to snatch
+it. Then there is an old story that when Eve had eaten the apple
+she saw the angel of death, and urged Adam to eat the fruit also,
+in order that he might not become a widower.
+
+It is remarkable that there should have sprung up a legend that Satan
+made his second attack upon the race formed by Jehovah, and his plan
+for perpetuating it on earth by means of a flirtation with Noah's
+wife, and also by awakening her jealousy. The older legend concerning
+Noah's wife is that mentioned by Tabari, which merely states that she
+ridiculed the predictions of a deluge by her husband. So much might
+have been suggested by the silence of the Bible concerning her. The
+Moslem tradition that the Devil managed to get into the ark is also
+ancient. He caught hold of the ass's tail just as it was about to
+enter. The ass came on slowly, and Noah, becoming impatient, exclaimed,
+'You cursed one, come in quick!' When Noah, seeing the Devil in the
+ark, asked by what right he was there, the other said, 'By your order;
+you said, "Accursed one, come in;" I am the accursed one!' This story,
+which seems contrived to show that one may not be such an ass as he
+looks, was superseded by the legend which represents Satan as having
+been brought into the ark concealed under Noria's (or Noraita's) dress.
+
+The most remarkable legend of this kind is that found in the Eastern
+Church, and which is shown in various mediæval designs in Russia. Satan
+is shown, in an early sixteenth century picture belonging to Count
+Uvarof (Fig. 29), offering Noah's wife a bunch of khmel (hops) with
+which to brew kvas and make Noah drunk; for the story was that Noah
+did not tell his wife that a deluge was coming, knowing that she
+could not keep a secret. In the old version of the legend given by
+Buslaef, 'after apocryphal tradition used by heretics,' Satan always
+addresses Noah's wife as Eve, which indicates a theory. It was meant
+to be considered as a second edition of the attack on the divine
+plan begun in Eden, and revived in the temptation of Sara. Satan not
+only taught this new Eve how to make kvas but also vodka (brandy);
+and when he had awakened her jealousy about Noah's frequent absence,
+he bade her substitute the brandy for the beer when her husband,
+as usual, asked for the latter. When Noah was thus in his cups she
+asked him where he went, and why he kept late hours. He revealed his
+secret to his Eve, who disclosed it to Satan. The tempter appears
+to have seduced her from Noah, and persuaded her to be dilatory when
+entering the ark. When all the animals had gone in, and all the rest
+of her family, Eve said, 'I have forgotten my pots and pans,' and went
+to fetch them; next she said, 'I have forgotten my spoons and forks,'
+and returned for them. All of this had been arranged by Satan in order
+to make Noah curse; and he had just slipped under Eve's skirt when he
+had the satisfaction of hearing the intended Adam of a baptized world
+cry to his wife, 'Accursed one, come in!' Since Jehovah himself could
+not prevent the carrying out of a patriarch's curse, Satan was thus
+enabled to enter the ark, save himself from being drowned, and bring
+mischief into the human world once more.
+
+This is substantially the same legend as that of the mediæval Morality
+called 'Noah's Ark, or the Shipwright's Ancient Play or Dirge.' The
+Devil says to Noah's wife:--
+
+
+ Yes, hold thee still le dame,
+ And I shall tell thee how;
+ I swear thee by my crooked snout,
+ All that thy husband goes about
+ Is little to thy profit.
+ Yet shall I tell thee how
+ Thou shalt meet all his will;
+ Do as I shall bid thee now,
+ Thou shalt meet every deal.
+ Have here a drink full good
+ That is made of a mightful main,
+ Be he hath drunken a drink of this,
+ No longer shall he learn:
+ Believe, believe, my own dear dame,
+ I may no longer bide;
+ To ship when thou shalt sayre,
+ I shall be by thy side.
+
+
+There are some intimations in the Slavonic version which look as if
+it might have belonged to some Paulician or other half-gnostic theory
+that the temptation of Noraita (Eve II.), and her alienation from
+her husband, were meant to prevent the repopulation of the Earth. [206]
+
+The next attempt of the Devil, as agent of the Elohistic creation,
+to ruin the race of man, introduces us to another form of animalism
+which has had a large expression in Devil-lore. It is related in
+rabbinical mythology that when, as is recorded in Gen. ix. 20, Noah
+was planting a vineyard, the Devil (Asmodeus) came and proposed to
+join him in the work. This having been agreed to, this evil partner
+brought in succession a sheep, a lion, and a hog, and sacrificed
+them on the spot. The result was that the wine when drunk first gave
+the drinker the quality of a sheep, then that of a lion, and finally
+that of a hog. [207] It was by this means that Noah was reduced to
+swinish inebriation. There followed the curses on those around him,
+which, however drunken, were those of a father, and reproduced on
+the cleansed world all the dooms which had been pronounced in Eden.
+
+If the date of this legend could be made early enough, it would appear
+to be a sort of revenge for this temptation of Noah to drunkenness
+that Talmudic fable shows Asmodeus brought under bondage to Solomon,
+and forced to work on the Temple, by means of wine. Asmodeus had
+dug for himself a well, and planted beside it a tree, so making for
+himself a pleasant spot for repose during his goings to and fro on
+earth. But Solomon's messenger Benaja managed to cover this with a
+tank which he filled with wine. Asmodeus, on his return, repeated
+to himself the proverb, 'Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging,
+and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise' (Prov. xx. 1); yet,
+being very thirsty, he drank, fell asleep, and when he awoke found
+himself loaded with chains.
+
+However, after working for a time for Solomon, he discovered that
+king's weaknesses and played upon them. Solomon was so puffed up with
+a sense of his power that he accepted a challenge from his slave
+(Asmodeus) to show his superiority without the assistance of his
+magic ring, and without keeping his competitor in bonds. No sooner
+was Asmodeus free, and in possession of the ring, than he transported
+Solomon four hundred miles away, where he remained for a long time
+among the seductive beauties of the Courts of Naamah, Rahab, and
+other she-devils. Meanwhile the Devil, assuming the form of Solomon,
+sat on his throne, and became the darling of his Queen and concubines.
+
+The Devil of Wine and strong drink generally has a wide representation
+in folklore. We find him in the bibulous Serpent of Japan, who first
+loses his eight heads metaphorically, and then literally from the first
+of Swords-men. The performances of Mephistopheles in Auerbach's Cellar
+are commemorated in its old frescoes, and its motto: 'Live, drink,
+carouse, remembering Faust and his punishment: it came slowly, but was
+in ample measure.' Thuringian legends relate that the Devil tries to
+stop the building of churches by casting down the stones, but this may
+be stopped by the builders promising to erect a winehouse in the same
+neighbourhood. An old English legend relates that a great man's cellar
+was haunted by devils who drank up his wine. On one occasion a barrel
+was marked with holy water, and the devil was found stuck fast on it.
+
+Gluttony, both in eating and drinking, has had its many
+personifications. The characteristics of the Hunger demons are
+travestied in such devils as these, only the diabolical, as
+distinguished from the demonic element, appears in features of
+luxuriousness. The contrast between the starveling saints of the
+early Church and the well-fed friars of later times was a frequent
+subject of caricature, as in the accompanying example (Fig. 30) from
+the British Museum, fourteenth century (MS. Arundel), where a lean
+devil is satisfying himself through a fattened friar. One of the most
+significant features of the old legend of Faust is the persistence of
+the animal character in which Mephistopheles appears. He is an ugly
+dog--a fit emblem of the scholar's relapse into the canine temper which
+flies at the world as at a bone he means to gnaw. Faust does not like
+this genuine form, and bids the Devil change it. Mephistopheles then
+takes the form of a Franciscan friar; but 'the kernel of the brute'
+is in him still, and he at once loads Faust's table with luxuries and
+wines from the cellars of the Archbishop of Salzburg and other rich
+priests. The prelates are fond of their bone too. When Mephistopheles
+and Faust find their way into the Vatican, it is to witness carousals
+of the Pope and his Cardinals. They snatch from them their luxuries and
+wine-goblets as they are about to enjoy them. Against these invisible
+invaders the holy men bring their crucifixes and other powers of
+exorcism; and it is all snarling and growling--canine priest against
+puppy astrologer. Nor was it very different in the history of the
+long contention between the two for the big bone of Christendom.
+
+The lust of Gold had its devils, and they were not different from
+other types of animalism. This was especially the case with such
+as represented money, extorted from the people to supply wealth to
+dissolute princes and prelates. The giants of Antwerp represent the
+power of the pagan monarchs who exacted tribute; but these were
+replaced by such guardians of tribute-money as the Satyr of our
+picture (Fig. 31), which Edward the Confessor saw seated on a barrel
+of Danegeld,
+
+
+ Vit un déable saer desus
+ Le tresor, noir et hidus.
+
+
+There are many good fables in European folklore with regard to the
+miser's gold, and 'devil's money' generally, which exhibit a fine
+instinct. A man carries home a package of such gold, and on opening it
+there drop out, instead of money, paws and nails of cats, frogs, and
+bears--the latter being an almost personal allusion to the Exchange. A
+French miser's money-safe being opened, two frogs only were found. The
+Devil could not get any other soul than the gold, and the cold-blooded
+reptiles were left as a sign of the life that had been lived.
+
+In the legends of the swarms of devils which beset St. Anthony we
+find them represented as genuine animals. Our Anglo-Saxon fathers,
+however, were quite unable to appreciate the severity of the conflict
+which man had to wage with the animal world in Southern countries and
+in earlier times. Nor had their reverence for nature and its forms
+been crushed out by the pessimist theory of the earth maintained by
+Christianity. Gradually the representation of the animal tempters was
+modified, and instead of real animal forms there were reported the
+bearded bestialities which surrounded St. Guthlac and St. Godric. The
+accompanying picture (Fig. 32) is a group from Breughel (1565),
+representing the devils called around St. James by a magician. These
+grotesque forms will repay study. If we should make a sketch of the
+same kind, only surrounding the saint with the real animal shapes
+most nearly resembling these nondescripts, it would cease to be a
+diabolical scene.
+
+For beastliness is not a character of beasts; it is the arrest of
+man. It is not the picturesque donkey in the meadow that is ridiculous,
+but the donkey on two feet; not the bear of zoological gardens that
+is offensive morally, but the rough, who cannot always be caged; it
+is the two-legged calf, the snake pretending to be a man, the ape in
+evening dress, who ever made the problem of evil at all formidable. It
+was insoluble until men had discovered as Science that law of Evolution
+which the ancient world knew as Ethics.
+
+A Hindu fable relates that the animals, in their migration, came to
+an abyss they could not cross, and that the gods made man as a bridge
+across it. Science and Reason confirm these ancient instincts of our
+race. Man is that bridge stretching between the animal and the ideal
+habitat by which, if the development be normal, all the passions pass
+upward into educated powers. Any pause or impediment on that bridge
+brings all the animals together to rend and tear the man who cannot
+convey them across the abyss. A very slight arrest may reveal to a
+man that he is a vehicle of intensified animalism. The lust of the
+goat, the pride of the peacock, the wrath of the lion, beautiful in
+their appropriate forms, become, in the guise of a man uncontrolled
+by reason, the vices which used to be called possession, and really
+are insanities.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+THOUGHTS AND INTERPRETATIONS.
+
+
+I lately heard the story of a pious negro woman whose faith in hell
+was sorely tried by a sceptic who asked her how brimstone enough could
+be found to burn all the wicked people in the world. After taking
+some days for reflection, the old woman, when next challenged by the
+sceptic, replied, that she had concluded that 'every man took his
+own brimstone.' This humble saint was unconscious that her instinct
+had reached the finest thought of Milton, whose Satan says 'Myself am
+hell.' Marlowe's Mephistopheles also says, 'Where we are is hell.' And,
+far back as the year 633, the holy man Fursey, who believed himself to
+have been guided by an angel near the region of the damned, related
+a vision much like the view of the African woman. There were four
+fires--Falsehood, Covetousness, Discord, Injustice--which joined to
+form one great flame. When this drew near, Fursey, in fear, said,
+'Lord, behold the fire draws near me.' The angel answered, 'That
+which you did not kindle shall not burn you.'
+
+Such association of any principle of justice, even in form so crude,
+has become rare enough in Christendom to excite applause when it
+appears, though the applause has about it that infusion of the
+grotesque which one perceives when gallery-gods cheer the actor who
+heroically declares that a man ought not to strike a woman. When we
+go back to the atmosphere of Paganism we find that retribution had
+among them a real meaning. Nothing can be in more remarkable contrast
+than the disorderly characterless hell of Christendom, into which the
+murderer and the man who confuses the Persons of the Godhead alike
+burn everlastingly in most inappropriate fires, and the Hades of Egypt,
+Greece, and Rome, where every punishment bears relation to the offence,
+and is limited in duration to the degree of the offence.
+
+'The Egyptians,' says Herodotus (ii. 123), 'were the first who asserted
+that the soul of man is immortal, and that when the body perishes it
+enters into some other animal, constantly springing into existence; and
+when it has passed through the different kinds of terrestrial, marine,
+and aerial beings, it again enters into the body of a man that is born,
+and that this revolution is made in three thousand years.' Probably
+Plato imported from Egypt his fancy of the return of one dead to
+relate the scenes of heaven and hell, Er the Armenian (Republic,
+x. 614) suggesting an evolution of Rhampsinitus (Herod. ii. 122),
+who descended to Hades alive, played dice with Ceres, and brought
+back gold. The vision of Er represents a terrible hell, indeed, but
+those punished were chiefly murderers and tyrants. They are punished
+tenfold for every wrong they had committed. But when this punishment
+is ended, each soul must return to the earth in such animal form
+as he or she might select. The animals, too, had their choice. Er
+saw that the choice was generally determined by the previous earthly
+life,--many becoming animals because of some spite derived from their
+experience. 'And not only did men pass into animals, but I must also
+mention that there were animals tame and wild who changed into one
+another, and into corresponding human natures, the good into the
+gentle, the evil into the savage, in all sorts of combinations.' Sly
+Plato! Such is his estimate of what men's selections of their paradises
+are worth!
+
+Orpheus chose to be a swan, hating to be born of woman, because women
+murdered him; Ajax became a lion and Agamemnon an eagle, because
+they had suffered injustice from men; Atalanta would be an athlete,
+and the jester Thersites a monkey; and Odysseus went about to find
+the life of a private gentleman with nothing to do. If Plutarch's
+friend Thespesius had pondered well this irony of Plato, he would
+hardly have brought back from his visit to Hades the modification
+that demons were provided to assign the animal forms in which souls
+should be born again on earth. They could hardly have done for the
+wicked anything worse than Plato shows them doing for themselves. But
+the meaning of Plutarch is the same. Thespesius sees demons preparing
+the body of a viper for Nero to be born into, since it was said the
+young of that reptile destroy their mother at birth.
+
+
+
+Among the Persians the idea of future rewards and punishments exceeds
+the exactness of the Koran--'Whoso hath done an atom of justice shall
+behold it, and whoso hath done an atom of injustice shall behold
+it.' The Persian Sufis will even subdivide the soul rather than that
+any good act should go down with the larger gross of wickedness. Sádi
+tells of a vision where a man was seen in hell, all except one foot,
+which was twined with flowers. With all his wickedness the man had
+with that foot shoved a bundle of hay within reach of a weary ox.
+
+But while Persian poets--Sufis, ennobling the old name
+Sophist--preserved thus a good deal of the universalism of Parsaism,
+a Mohammedanism hard as the Scythians who brought it turned the heart
+of the people in that country to stone. In the Dresden Library there
+is an illuminated Persian MS., thought to be seven hundred years
+old, which has in it what may be regarded as a portrait of Ahriman
+and Iblis combined. He is red, has a heavy beard and moustache, and
+there is a long dragon's crest and mane on his head. He wears a green
+and blue skirt about his loins. His tongue rolls thirstily between
+his cruel teeth. He superintends a number of fish-like devils which
+float in a lake of fire, and swallow the damned. Above this scene
+are the glorified souls, including the Shah sitting cross-legged
+on his rug, who look down on the tortures beneath with evident
+satisfaction. Apparently this is the only amusement which relieves
+the ennui of their heaven.
+
+If anything could make a rational man believe in a fiend-principle
+in the universe it would be the suggestion of such pictures,
+that men have existed who could conceive of happiness enjoyed in
+view of such tortures as these. This and some similar pictures in
+the East--for instance, that in the Temple of Horrors at Wuchang,
+China--are absolutely rayless so far as any touch of humanity is
+concerned. Are the Shah and his happy fellow-inspectors of tortures
+really fiends? In the light of our present intelligence they may seem
+so. Certainly no person of refined feeling could now expect to attain
+any heaven while others were in hell. But it would be possible, if
+persons could believe that many of those around them are not men and
+women at all, but fiends in human shape. These ferocious Hells are
+referable to a period when all who incurred the sentences of princes
+or priests were seen as mere masks of devils; they were only ascribed
+human flesh that they may suffer. The dogma of Hell was doomed from
+the moment that the damned were supposed to be really human.
+
+Were those who killed the martyrs of heresy, for instance, to return
+to the world and look upon those whom they pierced, they could never
+recognise them. Were they to see the statues of Bruno, Huss, Cranmer,
+Servetus, the names and forms would not recall to them the persons
+they slew. They would be shocked if told that they had burned great
+men, and would surely answer, 'Men? We burned no men. The Devil came
+among us calling himself Huss, and we made short work with him; he
+reappeared under several aliases--Bruno, Servetus, Spinoza, Voltaire:
+sometimes we burned him, at other times managed to make him miserable,
+thank God! But we were not hurting real men, we were saving them.'
+
+Around such ideas grew our yet uncivilised Codes of Law. In England,
+anno 1878, men are refused as jury-men if they will not say, 'So help
+me God!' on the ground that an atheist cannot have a conscience. Only
+let him really be without conscience, and call himself a christian when
+he is not, and courts receive the selfish liar with respect. The old
+clause of the death-sentence--'instigated thereto by the Devil'--has
+been dropped in the case of murderers, however; and that is some
+gain. Torture by fire of the worst murderer for one day would not
+be permitted in Christendom. Belief in hell-fire outlasts it for a
+little among the ignorant. But what shall be said of the educated
+who profess to believe it?
+
+
+
+The Venerable Bede relates that, in the year 696, a Northumbrian
+gentleman, who had died in the beginning of the night, came to life
+and health in the morning, and gave an account of what he had seen
+overnight. He had witnessed the conventional tortures of the damned,
+but adds--'Being thus on all sides enclosed with enemies and darkness,
+and looking about on every side for assistance, there appeared to me,
+on the way that I came, as it were, the brightness of a star shining
+amidst the darkness, which increased by degrees,'--but we need not
+go on to the anti-climax of this vision.
+
+This star rising above all such visions belongs to the vault of the
+human Love, and it is visible through all the Ages of Darkness. It
+cannot be quenched, and its fiery rays have burnt up mountains of
+iniquity.
+
+'In the year 1322,' writes Flögel, after the 'Chronicon Sampetrinum
+Erfurtense,' 'there was a play shown at Eisenach, which had a
+tragical enough effect. Markgraf Friedrich of Misnia, Landgraf also
+of Thuringia, having brought his tedious warfare to a conclusion,
+and the country beginning now to revive under peace, his subjects
+were busy repaying themselves for the past distresses by all manner
+of diversions; to which end, apparently by the Sovereign's order,
+a dramatic representation of the Ten Virgins was schemed, and at
+Eisenach, in his presence, duly executed. This happened fifteen days
+after Easter, by indulgence of the Preaching Friars. In the 'Chronicon
+Sampetrinum' stands recorded that the play was enacted in the Bear
+Garden (in horto ferarum) by the Clergy and their Scholars. But now,
+when it came to pass that the Wise Virgins would give the foolish no
+oil, and these latter were shut out from the Bridegroom, they began
+to weep bitterly, and called on the Saints to intercede for them;
+who however, even with Mary at their head, could effect nothing from
+God; but the Foolish Virgins were all sentenced to damnation. Which
+things the Landgraf seeing and hearing, he fell into a doubt,
+and was very angry; and said 'What then is the Christian Faith,
+if God will not take pity on us for intercession of Mary and all
+the Saints?' In this anger he continued five days; and the learned
+men could hardly enlighten him to understand the Gospel. Thereupon
+he was struck with apoplexy, and became speechless and powerless;
+in which sad state he continued, bedrid, two years and seven months,
+and so died, being then fifty-five.'
+
+In telling the story Carlyle remarks that these 'Ten Virgins at
+Eisenach are more fatal to warlike men than Æschylus' Furies at
+Athens were to weak women.' Even so, until great-hearted men rose up
+at Eisenach and elsewhere to begin the work destined to prove fatal
+alike to heartless Virgins and Furies. That star of a warrior's
+Compassion, hovering over the foolish Friars and their midnight
+Gospel, beams far. The story reminds me of an incident related of
+a mining district in California, where a rude theatre was erected,
+and a company gave, as their first performance, Othello. When the
+scene of Desdemona's suffocation approached, a stalwart miner leaped
+on the stage, and pulling out his six-shooter, said to the Moor,
+'You damned nigger! if you touch that woman I'll blow the top of your
+head off!' A dozen roughs, clambering over the footlights, cried,
+'Right Joe! we'll stand by you!' The manager met the emergency by
+crying, 'Don't shoot, boys! This play was wrote by Bill Shakespear;
+he's an old Californian, and it's all in fun!' Had this Moor proceeded
+to roast Desdemona in fire with any verisimilitude, it is doubtful
+if the manager could have saved him by an argument reminding the
+miners that such was the divine way with sinners in the region to
+which most of them were going. The top of that theologic hell's head
+is not very safe in these days when human nature is unchained with
+all its six-shooters, each liable to be touched off by fire from that
+Star revolving in the sphere of Compassion.
+
+
+
+Day after day I gazed upon Michael Angelo's 'Last Judgment' in the
+Sistine Chapel. The artist was in his sixtieth year when Pope Clement
+VII. invited him to cover a wall sixty feet high and nearly as wide
+with a picture of the Day of Wrath. In seven years he had finished
+it. Clement was dead. Pope Paul IV. looked at it, and liked it not:
+all he could see was a vast number of naked figures; so he said it
+was not fit for the Sistine Chapel, and must be destroyed. One of
+Michael Angelo's pupils saved it by draping some of the figures. Time
+went on, and another Pope came who insisted on more drapery,--so the
+work was disfigured again. However, popular ridicule saved this from
+going very far, and so there remains the tremendous scene. But Popes
+and Cardinals always disliked it. The first impression I received
+from it was that of a complete representation of all the physical
+powers belonging to organised life; though the forms are human, every
+animal power is there, leaping, crouching, crawling,--every sinew,
+joint, muscle, portrayed in completest tension and action. Then the
+eye wanders from face to face, and every passion that ever crawled or
+prowled in jungle or swamp is pictured. The most unpleasant expressions
+seemed to me those of the martyrs. They came up from their graves,
+each bringing the instrument by which he had suffered, and offering
+it in witness against the poor wretches who came to be judged; and
+there was a look of self-righteous satisfaction on their faces as
+they witnessed the persecution of their persecutors. As for Christ,
+he was like a fury, with hand uplifted against the doomed, his hair
+wildly floating. The tortured people below are not in contrast with
+the blessed above; they who are in heaven look rather more stupid
+than the others, and rather pleased with the anguish they witness,
+but not more saintly. But gradually the eye, having wandered over
+the vast canvas, from the tortured Cardinal at the bottom up to the
+furious Judge,--alights on a face which, once seen, is never to be
+forgotten. Beautiful she is, that Mary beside the Judge, and more
+beautiful for the pain that is on her face. She has drawn her drapery
+to veil from her sight the anguish below; she has turned her face
+from the Judge,--does not see her son in him; she looks not upon the
+blessed,--for she, the gentle mother, is not in heaven; she cannot have
+joy in sight of misery. In that one face of pure womanly sympathy--that
+beauty transfigured in its compassionateness--the artist put his soul,
+his religion. Mary's face quenches all the painted flames. They are at
+once made impossible. The same universe could not produce both a hell
+and that horror of it. The furious Jesus is changed to a phantasm;
+he could never be born of such a mother. If the Popes had only wished
+to hide the nakedness of their own dogmas they ought to have blotted
+out Mary's face; for as it now stands the rest of the forms are but
+shapes to show how all the wild forms and passions of human animalism
+gather as a frame round that which is their consummate flower,--the
+spirit of love enshrined in its perfect human expression.
+
+So was it that Michael Angelo could not serve two masters. Popes might
+employ him, but he could not do the work they liked. 'The passive
+master lent his hand to the vast soul that o'er him planned.' He
+could not help it. The lover of beauty could not paint the Day of
+Wrath without setting above it that face like a star which shines
+through its unreality, burns up its ugliness, and leaves the picture
+a magnificent interpretation of the forms of nature and hopes of the
+world,--a cardinal hypocrite at the bottom, an ideal woman at the top.
+
+
+
+Exhausted by the too-much glory of the visions of Paradise which he had
+seen, Dante came forth to the threshold opening on the world of human
+life, from which he had parted for a space, and there sank down. As
+he lay there angels caused lilies to grow beneath and around him,
+and myrtle to rise and intertwine for a bower over him, and their
+happy voices, wafted in low-toned hymns, brought soft sleep to his
+overwrought senses. Long had he slumbered before the light of familiar
+day stole once more into those deep eyes. The angels had departed. The
+poet awoke to find himself alone, and with a sigh he said to himself,
+'It is, then, all but a dream.' As he arose he saw before him a man
+of noble mien and shining countenance, habited in an Eastern robe,
+who returned his gaze with an interest equal to his own. Quickly the
+eyes of Dante searched the ground beside the stranger to see if he
+were shadowless: convinced thus that he was true flesh and blood,
+the Florentine thus addressed him:--
+
+'Pilgrim, for such thou seemest, may we meet in simple human
+brotherhood? If, as thy garb suggests, thou comest from afar, perchance
+the friendly greeting, even of one who in his native city is still
+himself a pilgrim, may not be unwelcome.
+
+'Heart to heart be our kiss, my brother; yet must I journey without
+delay to those who watch and wait for wondrous tidings that I bear.
+
+'Friend! I hear some meaning deeper than thy words. If 'twere but as
+satisfying natural curiosity, answer not; but if thou bearest a burden
+of tidings glad for all human-kind, speak! Who art thou? whence comest,
+and with what message freighted?
+
+'Arda Viráf is the name I bear; from Persia have I come; but by what
+strange paths have reached this spot know I not, save that through
+splendours of worlds invisible to mortal sense I have journeyed,
+nor encountered human form till I found thee slumbering on this spot.
+
+'Trebly then art thou my brother! I too have but now, as to my confused
+sense it seems, emerged from that vast journey. Thou clearest from
+me gathering doubts that those visions were illusive. Yet, as even
+things we really see are often overlaid by images that lurk in the
+eye, I pray thee tell me something thou hast seen, so that perchance
+we may part with mutual confirmation of our vision.
+
+'That gladly will I do. When the Avesta had been destroyed, and the
+sages of Iran disagreed as to the true religion, they agreed that
+one should be chosen by lot to drink the sacred draught of Vishtasp,
+that he might pass to the invisible world and bring intelligence
+therefrom. On me the lot fell. Beside the fire that has never gone
+out, surrounded by holy women who chanted our hymns, I drank the three
+cups--Well Thought, Well Said, Well Done. Then as I slept there rose
+before me a high stairway of three steps; on the first was written,
+Well Thought; on the second, Well Said; on the third, Well Done. By
+the first step I reached the realm where good thoughts are honoured:
+there were the thinkers whose starlike radiance ever increased. They
+offered no prayers, they chanted no liturgies. Above all was the
+sphere of the liberal. The next step brought me to the circle of
+great and truthful speakers: these walked in lofty splendour. The
+third step brought me to the heaven of good actions. I saw the souls
+of agriculturists surrounded by spirits of water and earth, trees and
+cattle. The artisans were seated on embellished thrones. Sublime were
+the seats of teachers, interceders, peace-makers; and the religious
+walked in light and joy with which none are satiated.
+
+'Sawest thou the fairest of earth-born ladies--Beatrice?
+
+'I saw indeed a lady most fair. In a pleasant grove lay the form
+of a man who had but then parted from earth. When he had awakened,
+he walked through the grove and there met him this most beautiful
+maiden. To her he said, 'Who art thou, so fair beyond all whom I
+have seen in the land of the living?' To him she replied, 'O youth,
+I am thy actions.' Can this be thy lady Beatrice?
+
+'But sawest thou no hell? no dire punishments?
+
+'Alas! sad scenes I witnessed, sufferers whose hell was that their
+darkness was amid the abodes of splendour. Amid all that glow one newly
+risen from earth walked shivering with cold, and there walked ever
+by his side a hideous hag. On her he turned and said, 'Who art thou,
+that ever movest beside me, thou that art monstrous beyond all that
+I have seen on earth?' To him she replied, 'Man, I am thy actions.'
+
+'But who were those glorious ones thou sawest in Paradise?
+
+'Some of their names I did indeed learn--Zoroaster, Socrates, Plato,
+Buddha, Confucius, Christ.
+
+'What do I hear! knowest thou that none of these save that last
+holy one--whom methinks thou namest too lightly among men--were
+baptized? Those have these eyes sorrowfully beheld in pain through
+the mysterious justice of God.
+
+'Thinkest thou, then, thy own compassion deeper than the mercy of
+Ormuzd? But, ah! now indeed I do remember. As I conversed with the
+sages I had named, they related to me this strange event. By guidance
+of one of their number, Virgil by name, there had come among them
+from the earth a most powerful magician. He bore the name of Dante. By
+mighty spells this being had cast them all into a sad circle which he
+called Limbo, over whose gate he wrote, though with eyes full of tears,
+'All hope abandon, ye who enter here!' Thus were they in great sorrow
+and dismay. But, presently, as this strange Dante was about to pass
+on, so they related, he looked upon the face of one among them so pure
+and noble that though he had styled him 'pagan,' he could not bear to
+abandon him there. This was Cato of Utica. Him this Dante led to the
+door, and gave him liberty on condition that he would be warder of his
+unbaptized brethren, and by no means let any of them escape. No sooner,
+however, was this done than this magician beheld others who moved
+his reverence,--among them Trajan and Ripheus,--and overcome by an
+impulse of love, he opened a window in the side of Limbo, bidding them
+emerge into light. He then waved his christian wand to close up this
+aperture, and passed away, supposing that he had done so; but the limit
+of that magician's power had been reached, the window was but veiled,
+and after he had gone all these unbaptized ones passed out by that
+way, and reascended to the glory they had enjoyed before this Dante
+had brought his alien sorceries to bear upon them for a brief space.
+
+'Can this be true? Is it indeed so that all the sages and poets of
+the world are now in equal rank whether or not they have been sealed
+as members of Christ?
+
+'Brother, thy brow is overcast. What! can one so pure and high of
+nature as thou desire that the gentle Christ, whom I saw embracing
+the sages and prophets of other ages, should turn upon them with
+hatred and bind them in gloom and pain like this Dante?'
+
+Thereupon, with a flood of tears, Dante fell at the feet of Arda Viráf,
+and kissed the hem of his skirt. 'Purer is thy vision, O pilgrim,
+than mine,' he said. 'I fear that I have but borne with me to the
+invisible world the small prejudices of my little Church, which hath
+taught me to limit the Love which I now see to be boundless. Thou who
+hast learned from thy Zoroaster that the meaning of God is the end of
+all evil, a universe climbing to its flower in joy, deign to take the
+hand of thy servant and make him worthy to be thy friend,--with thee
+henceforth to abandon the poor formulas which ignorance substitutes
+for virtue, and ascend to the beautiful summits thou has visited by
+the stairway of good thoughts, good words, good deeds.'
+
+
+
+In 1745 Swedenborg was a student of Natural Philosophy in London. In
+the April of that year his 'revelations' began amid the smoke
+and toil of the great metropolis. 'I was hungry and ate with great
+appetite. Towards the end of the meal I remarked a kind of mist spread
+before my eyes, and I saw the floor of my room covered with hideous
+reptiles, such as serpents, toads, and the like. I was astonished,
+having all my wits about me, being perfectly conscious. The darkness
+attained its height and then passed away. I now saw a Man sitting
+in the corner of the chamber. As I had thought myself alone, I was
+greatly frightened when he said to me, 'Eat not as much.'
+
+In Swedenborg's Diary the incident is related more particularly. 'In
+the middle of the day, at dinner, an Angel spoke to me, and told me
+not to eat too much at table. Whilst he was with me, there plainly
+appeared to me a kind of vapour steaming from the pores of my body. It
+was a most visible watery vapour, and fell downwards to the ground
+upon the carpet, where it collected and turned into divers vermin,
+which were gathered together under the table, and in a moment went
+off with a pop or noise. A fiery light appeared within them, and a
+sound was heard, pronouncing that all the vermin that could possibly
+be generated by unseemly appetite were thus cast out of my body,
+and burnt up, and that I was now cleansed from them. Hence we may
+know what luxury and the like have for their bosom contents.'
+
+Continuing the first account Swedenborg said, 'The following
+night the same Man appeared to me again. I was this time not at
+all alarmed. The Man said, 'I am God, the Lord, the Creator, and
+Redeemer of the world. I have chosen thee to unfold to men the
+spiritual sense of the Holy Scripture. I will myself dictate to
+thee what thou shalt write.' The same night the world of spirits,
+hell and heaven, were convincingly opened to me, where I found many
+persons of my acquaintance of all conditions. From that day forth I
+gave up all worldly learning, and laboured only in spiritual things,
+according to what the Lord commanded me to write.'
+
+He 'gave up all worldly learning,' shut his intellectual eyes,
+and sank under all the nightmares which his first vision saw burnt
+up as vermin. After his fiftieth year, says Emerson, he falls into
+jealousy of his intellect, makes war on it, and the violence is
+instantly avenged. But the portrait of the blinded mystic as drawn
+by the clear seer is too impressive an illustration to be omitted here.
+
+'A vampyre sits in the seat of the prophet and turns with gloomy
+appetite to the images of pain. Indeed, a bird does not more readily
+weave its nest or a mole bore in the ground than this seer of the
+souls substructs a new hell and pit, each more abominable than the
+last, round every new crew of offenders. He was let down through a
+column that seemed of brass, but it was formed of angelic spirits,
+that he might descend safely amongst the unhappy, and witness
+the vastation of souls; and heard there, for a long continuance,
+their lamentations; he saw their tormentors, who increase and strain
+pangs to infinity; he saw the hell of the jugglers, the hell of the
+assassins, the hell of the lascivious; the hell of robbers, who kill
+and boil men; the infernal tun of the deceitful; the excrementitious
+hells; the hell of the revengful, whose faces resembled a round,
+broad cake, and their arms rotate like a wheel.... The universe, in
+his poem, suffers under a magnetic sleep, and only reflects the mind
+of the magnetiser.... Swedenborg and Behmon both failed by attaching
+themselves to the christian symbol, instead of to the moral sentiment,
+which carries innumerable christianities, humanities, divinities, in
+its bosom.... Another dogma, growing out of this pernicious theologic
+limitation, is this Inferno. Swedenborg has devils. Evil, according
+to old philosophers, is good in the making. That pure malignity can
+exist, is the extreme proposition of unbelief.... To what a painful
+perversion had Gothic theology arrived, that Swedenborg admitted no
+conversion for evil spirits! But the divine effort is never relaxed;
+the carrion in the sun will convert itself to grass and flowers;
+and man, though in brothels, or jails, or on gibbets, is on his way
+to all that is good and true.'
+
+But even the Hell of Swedenborg is not free from the soft potency
+of our star. It is almost painful, indeed, to see its spiritual
+ray mingling with the fiery fever-shapes which Swedenborg meets
+on his way through the column of brass,--made, had he known it,
+not of angels but of savage scriptures. 'I gave up all worldly
+learning'--he says: but it did not give him up all at once. 'They
+(the damned) suffer ineffable torments; but it was permitted to
+relieve or console them with a certain degree of hope, so that they
+should not entirely despair. For they said they believed the torment
+would be eternal. They were relieved or consoled by saying that God
+Messiah is merciful, and that in His Word we read that 'the prisoners
+will be sent forth from the pit' (Zech. ix. 2). Swedenborg reports
+that God Messiah appeared to these spirits, and even embraced and
+kissed one who had been raised from 'the greatest torment.' He says,
+'Punishment for the sake of punishment is the punishment of a devil,'
+and affirms that all punishment is 'to take away evils or to induce a
+faculty of doing good.' These utterances are in his Diary, and were
+written before he had got to the bottom of his Calvinistic column;
+but even in the 'Arcana Celestia' there is a gleam:--'Such is the
+equilibrium of all things in another life that evil punishes itself,
+and unless it were removed by punishments the evil spirits must
+necessarily be kept in some hell to eternity.'
+
+Reductio ad absurdum! And yet Swedenborgians insist upon the dogma of
+everlasting punishments; to sustain which they appeal from Swedenborg
+half-sober to Swedenborg mentally drunk.
+
+
+
+In the Library at Dresden there is a series of old pictures said to be
+Mexican, and which I was told had been purchased from a Jew in Vienna,
+containing devils mainly of serpent characters blended with those of
+humanity. One was a fantastic serpent with human head, sharp snoutish
+nose, many eyes, slight wings, and tongue lolling out. Another had a
+human head and reptilian tail. A third is human except for the double
+tongue darting out. A fourth has issuing from the back of his head a
+serpent whose large dragon head is swallowing a human embryo. Whatever
+tribe it was that originated these pictures must have had very strong
+impressions of the survival of the serpent in some men.
+
+I was reminded of the picture of the serpent swallowing the human
+embryo while looking at the wall-pictures in Russian churches
+representing the conventional serpent with devils nestling at intervals
+along its body, as represented in our Figure (10). Professor Buslaef
+gave me the right archæology of this, no doubt, but the devils
+themselves, as I gazed, seemed to intimate another theory with their
+fair forms. They might have been winged angels but for their hair
+of flame and cruel hooks. They seemed to say, 'We were the ancient
+embryo-gods of the human imagination, but the serpent swallowed us. He
+swallowed us successively as one after another we availed ourselves
+of his cunning in our priesthoods; as we brought his cruel coils to
+crush those who dared to outgrow our cult; as we imitated his fang in
+the deadliness with which we bit the heel of every advancing thinker;
+as, when worsted in our struggle against reason, we took to the double
+tongue, praising with one fork the virtues which we poisoned with the
+other. Now we are degraded with him for ever, bound to him by these
+rings, labelled with the sins we have committed.'
+
+
+
+It was by a true experience that the ancients so generally took
+nocturnal animals to be types of diabolism. Corresponding to them
+are the sleepless activities of morally unawakened men. The animal is
+a sleeping man. Its passions and instincts are acted out in what to
+rational man would be dreams. In dreams, especially when influenced
+by disease, a man may mentally relapse very far, and pass through
+kennels and styes, which are such even when somewhat decorated by
+shreds of the familiar human environment. The nocturnal form of
+intellect is cunning; the obscuration of religion is superstition;
+the dark shadow that falls on love turns it to lust. These wolves
+and bats, on which no ideal has dawned, do not prowl or flit through
+man in their natural forms: in the half-awake consciousness, whose
+starlight attends man amid his darkness, their misty outlines swell,
+and in the feverish unenlightened conscience they become phantasms of
+his animalism--werewolves, vampyres. The awakening of reason in any
+animal is through all the phases of cerebral and social evolution. A
+wise man said to his son who was afraid to enter the dark, 'Go on,
+child; you will never see anything worse than yourself.'
+
+
+
+The hare-lip, which we sometimes see in the human face, is there
+an arrested development. Every lip is at some embryonic period a
+hare-lip. The development of man's visible part has gone on much longer
+than his intellectual and moral evolution, and abnormalities in it are
+rare in comparison with the number of survivals from the animal world
+in his temper, his faith, and his manners. Criminals are men living out
+their arrested moral developments. They who regard them as instigated
+by a devil are those whose arrest is mental. The eye of reason will
+deal with both all the more effectively, because with as little wrath
+as a surgeon feels towards the hare-lip he endeavours to humanise.
+
+
+
+It is an impressive fact that the great and reverent mind of Spinoza,
+in pondering the problem of Evil and the theology which ascribed
+it to a Devil, was unconsciously led to anticipate by more than a
+century the first (modern) scientific suggestions of the principle
+of Evolution. In his early treatise, 'De Deo et Homine,' occurs this
+short but momentous chapter--
+
+'De Diabolis. If the Devil be an Entity contrary in all respects to
+God, having nothing of God in his nature, there can be nothing in
+common with God.
+
+'Is he assumed to be a thinking Entity, as some will have it, who never
+wills and never does any good, and who sets himself in opposition to
+God on all occasions, he would assuredly be a very wretched being,
+and, could prayers do anything for him, his amendment were much to
+be implored.
+
+'But let us ask whether so miserable an object could exist even for an
+instant; and, the question put, we see at once that it could not; for
+from the perfection of a thing proceeds its power of continuance: the
+more of the Essential and Divine a thing possesses, the more enduring
+it is. But how could the Devil, having no trace of perfection in him,
+exist at all? Add to this, that the stability or duration of a thinking
+thing depends entirely on its love of and union with God, and that
+the opposite of this state in every particular being presumed in the
+Devil, it is obviously impossible that there can be any such being.
+
+'And then there is indeed no necessity to presume the existence of a
+Devil; for the causes of hate, envy, anger, and all such passions are
+readily enough to be discovered; and there is no occasion for resort
+to fiction to account for the evils they engender.'
+
+In the course of his correspondence with the most learned men of
+his time, Spinoza was severely questioned concerning his views upon
+human wickedness, the disobedience of Adam, and so forth. He said--to
+abridge his answers--If there be any essential or positive evil in men,
+God is the author and continuer of that evil. But what is called evil
+in them is their degree of imperfection as compared with those more
+perfect. Adam, in the abstract, is a man eating an apple. That is
+not in itself an evil action. Acts condemned in man are often admired
+in animals,--as the jealousy of doves,--and regarded as evidence of
+their perfection. Although man must restrain the forces of nature and
+direct them to his purposes, it is a superstition to suppose that God
+is angry against such forces. It is an error in man to identify his
+little inconveniences as obstacles to God. Let him withdraw himself
+from the consideration and nothing is found evil. Whatever exists,
+exists by reason of its perfection for its own ends,--which may or
+may not be those of men.
+
+Spinoza's aphorism, 'From the perfection of a thing proceeds its power
+of continuance,' is the earliest modern statement of the doctrine now
+called 'survival of the fittest.' The notion of a Devil involves the
+solecism of a being surviving through its unfitness for survival.
+
+
+
+Spinoza was Copernicus of the moral Cosmos. The great German who
+discovered to men that their little planet was not the one centre and
+single care of nature, led the human mind out of a closet and gave
+it a universe. But dogma still clung to the closet; where indeed
+each sect still remains, holding its little interest to be the aim
+of the solar system, and all outside it to be part of a countless
+host, marshalled by a Prince of Evil, whose eternal war is waged
+against that formidable pulpiteer whose sermon is sending dismay
+through pandemonium. But for rational men all that is ended, and its
+decline began when Spinoza warned men against looking at the moral
+universe from the pin-hole of their egotism. That closet-creation,
+whose laws were seen now acting now suspended to suit the affairs of
+men, disappeared, and man was led to adore the All.
+
+
+
+It is a small thing that man can bruise the serpent's head, if its
+fang still carries its venom so deep in his reason as to blacken
+all nature with a sense of triumphant malevolence. To the eye of
+judicial man, instructed to decide every case without bribe of his
+own interest as a rival animal, the serpent's fang is one of the most
+perfect adaptations of means to ends in nature. Were a corresponding
+perfection in every human mind, the world would fulfil the mystical
+dream of the East, which gave one name to the serpents that bit them
+in the wilderness and seraphim singing round the eternal throne.
+
+
+
+'Cursed be the Hebrew who shall either eat pork, or permit his son to
+be instructed in the learning of the Greeks.' So says the Talmud, with
+a voice transmitted from the 'kingdom of priests' (Exod. xix. 6). From
+the altar of 'unhewn stone' came the curse upon Art, and upon the
+race that represented culture raising its tool upon the rudeness
+of nature. That curse of the Talmud recoiled fearfully. The Jewish
+priesthood had their son in Peter with his vision of clean and unclean
+animals, and the command, 'Slay and eat!' Uninstructed is this heir
+of priestly Judaism 'in the learning of the Greeks,' consequently
+his way of converting Gentiles--the herd of swine, the goyim--is to
+convert them into christian protoplasm. 'Slay and eat,' became the
+cry of the elect, and their first victim was the paternal Jew who
+taught them that pork and Greek learning belonged to the same category.
+
+
+
+But there was another Jewish nation not composed of priests. While
+the priestly kingdom is typified in Jonah announcing the destruction
+of Nineveh, who, because the great city still goes on, reproaches
+Jehovah, the nation of the poets has now its Jehovah II. who sees the
+humiliation of the tribal priesthood as a withered gourd compared
+with the arts, wealth, and human interests of a Gentile city. 'The
+Lord repented.' The first Gospel to the Gentiles is in that gentle
+thought for the uncircumcised Ninevites. But it was reached too
+late. When it gained expression in Christ welcoming Greeks, and seeing
+in stones possible 'children of Abraham;' in Paul acknowledging debt
+to barbarians and taking his texts from Greek altars or poets; the
+evolution of the ideal element in Hebrew religion had gained much. But
+historic combinations raised the judaisers to a throne, and all the
+narrowness of their priesthood was re-enacted as Christianity.
+
+
+
+The column of brass in whose hollow centre the fine brain of Swedenborg
+was imprisoned is a fit similitude of the christian formula. The
+whole moral attitude of Christianity towards nature is represented in
+his first vision. The beginning of his spiritual career is announced
+by the evaporation of his animal nature in the form of vermin. The
+christian hell is present, and these animal parts are burnt up. Among
+those burnt-up powers of Swedenborg, one of the serpents must have been
+his intellect. 'From that day forth I gave up all worldly learning.'
+
+Here we have the ideal christian caught up to his paradise even while
+his outward shape is visible. But what if we were all to become like
+that? Suppose all the animal powers and desires were to evaporate out
+of mankind and to be burnt up! Were that to occur to-day the effect
+on the morrow would be but faintly told in that which would be caused
+by sudden evaporations of steam from all the engines of the world. We
+may imagine a band of philanthropists, sorely disturbed by the number
+of accidents incidental to steam-locomotion, who should conspire
+to go at daybreak to all the engine-houses and stations in England,
+and, just as the engines were about to start for their work, should
+quench their fires, let off their steam, and break their works. That
+would be but a brief paralysis of the work of one country; but what
+would be the result if the animal nature of man and its desires,
+the works and trades that minister to the 'pomps and vanities,'
+all worldly aims and joys, should be burnt up in fires of fanaticism!
+
+Yet to that fatal aim Christianity gave itself,--so contrary to that
+great heart in which was mirrored the beautiful world, its lilies
+and little children, and where love shed its beams on the just
+and the unjust! The organising principle of Christianity was that
+which crucified Jesus and took his tomb for corner-stone of a system
+modelled after what he hated. Its central purpose was to effect a
+divorce between the moral and the animal nature of man. One is called
+flesh and the other spirit; one was the child of God, the other the
+child of the Devil. It rent asunder that which was really one; its
+whole history, so long as it was in earnest, was the fanatical effort
+to keep asunder by violence those two halves ever seeking harmony;
+its history since its falsity was exposed has been the hypocrisy of
+professing in word what is impossible in deed.
+
+
+
+Beside the christian vision of Swedenborg, in which the judaic
+priest's curse on swinish Greek learning found apotheosis, let us set
+the vision of a Jewish seer in whom the humanity that spared Nineveh
+found expression. The seer is Philo,--name rightly belonging to that
+pure mind in which the starry ideals of his Semitic race embraced
+the sensuous beauty which alone could give them life. Philo (Præm. et
+Poenis, sec. 15-20) describes as the first joy of the redeemed earth
+the termination of the war between man and animal. That war will end,
+he says, 'when the wild beasts in the soul have been tamed. Then
+the most ferocious animals will submit to man; scorpions will lose
+their stings, and serpents their poison. And, in consequence of the
+suppression of that older war between man and beast, the war between
+man and man shall also end.'
+
+Here we emerge from Swedenborg's brass column, we pass beyond Peter's
+sword called 'Slay-and-eat,' we leave behind the Talmud's curse on
+swine and learning: we rise to the clear vision of Hebrew prophecy
+which beheld lion and lamb lying down together, a child leading the
+wild forces subdued by culture.
+
+
+
+'Why not God kill Debbil?' asked Man Friday. It is a question which
+not even Psychology has answered, why no Theology has yet suggested
+the death of the Devil in the past, or prophesied more than chains
+for him in the future. No doubt the need of a 'hangman's whip to
+haud the wretch in order' may partly account for it; but with this
+may have combined a cause of which it is pleasanter to think--Devils
+being animal passions in excess, even the ascetic recoils from their
+destruction, with an instinct like that which restrains rats from
+gnawing holes through the ship's bottom.
+
+
+
+In Goethe's 'Faust' we read, Doch das Antike find' ich zu lebendig. It
+is a criticism on the nudity of the Greek forms that appear in the
+classical Walpurgis Night. But the authority is not good: it is
+Mephistopheles who is disgusted with sight of the human form, and he
+says they ought in modern fashion to be plastered over. His sentiments
+have prevailed at the Vatican, where the antique statues and the great
+pictures of Michael Angelo bear witness to the prurient prudery of the
+papal mind. 'Devils are our sins in perspective,' says George Herbert.
+
+
+
+Herodotus (ii. 47) says, 'The Egyptians consider the pig to be an
+impure beast, and therefore if a man, in passing by a pig, should touch
+him only with his garments, he forthwith goes to the river and plunges
+in; and, in the next place, swineherds, although native Egyptians, are
+the only men who are not allowed to enter any of their temples.' The
+Egyptians, he says, do not sacrifice the goat; 'and, indeed, their
+painters and sculptors represent Pan with the face and legs of a
+goat, as the Grecians do; not that they imagine this to be his real
+form, for they think him like other gods; but why they represent
+him in this way I had rather not mention.' We need not feel the same
+prudery. The Egyptians rightly regarded the symbol of sexual desire,
+on whose healthy exercise the perpetuation of life depended, as a very
+different kind of animalism from that symbolised in the pig's love of
+refuse and garbage. Their association of the goat with Pan--the lusty
+vigour of nature--was the natural preface to the arts of Greece in
+which the wild forces were taught their first lesson--Temperance. Pan
+becomes musical. The vigour and vitality of human nature find in the
+full but not excessive proportions of Apollo, Aphrodite, Artemis,
+and others of the bright array, the harmony which Pan with his pipe
+preludes. The Greek statue is soul embodied and body ensouled.
+
+
+
+Two men had I the happiness to know in my youth, into whose faces I
+looked up and saw the throne of Genius illumined by Purity. One of
+them, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote, 'If beauty, softness, and faith in
+female forms have their own influence, vices even, in a slight degree,
+are thought to improve the expression.' The other, Arthur Hugh Clough,
+wrote, 'What we all love is good touched up with evil.' Here are two
+brave flowers, of which one grew out of the thorny stem of Puritanism,
+the other from the monastic root of Oxford. The 'vices' which could
+improve the expression, even for the pure eyes of Emerson, are those
+which represent the struggle of human nature to exist in truth,
+albeit in misdirection and reaction, amid pious hypocrisies. The
+Oxonian scholar had seen enough of the conventionalised characterless
+'good' to long for some sign of life and freedom, even though it must
+come as a touch of 'evil.' To the artist, nature is never seen in
+petrifaction; it is really as well as literally a becoming. The evil
+he sees is 'good in the making:' what others call vices are voices
+in the wilderness preparing the way of the highest.
+
+
+
+'God and the Devil make the whole of Religion,' said Nicoli--speaking,
+perhaps, better than he knew. The culture of the world has shown
+that the sometime opposed realms of human interest, so personified,
+are equally essential. It is through this experience that the Devil
+has gained such ample vindication from the poets--as in Rapisardi's
+'Lucifero,' a veritable 'bringer of Light,' and Cranch's 'Satan.' From
+the latter work ('Satan: A Libretto.' Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1874),
+which should be more widely known, I quote some lines. Satan says--
+
+
+ I symbolise the wild and deep
+ And unregenerated wastes of life,
+ Dark with transmitted tendencies of race
+ And blind mischance; all crude mistakes of will
+ And tendency unbalanced by due weight
+ Of favouring circumstance; all passion blown
+ By wandering winds; all surplusage of force
+ Piled up for use, but slipping from its base
+ Of law and order.
+
+
+This is the very realm in which the poet and the artist find their
+pure-veined quarries, whence arise the forms transfigured in their
+vision.
+
+
+
+To evoke Helena, Faust, as we have seen, must repair to the
+Mothers. But who may these be? They shine from Goethe's page in such
+opalescent tints one cannot transfix their sense. They seemed to me
+just now the primal conditions, by fulfilling which anything might be
+attained, without which, nothing. But now (yet perhaps the difference
+is not great) I see the Mothers to be the ancient healthy instincts
+and ideals of our race. These took shape in forms of art, whose
+evolution had been man's harmony with himself. Christianity, borrowing
+thunder of one god, hammer of another, shattered them--shattered our
+Mothers! And now learned travellers go about in many lands saying,
+'Saw ye my beloved?' Amid cities ruined and buried we are trying to
+recover them, fitting limb to limb--so carefully! as if half-conscious
+that we are piecing together again the fragments of our own humanity.
+
+
+
+'The Devil: Does he Exist, and what does he Do?' Such is the title of
+a recent work by Father Delaporte, Professor of Dogma in the Faculty
+of Bordeaux. He gives specific directions for exorcism of devils by
+means of holy water, the sign of the cross, and other charms. 'These
+measures,' says one of his American critics, 'may answer very well
+against the French Devil; but our American Beelzebub is a potentate
+that goeth not forth on any such hints.' Father Delaporte would
+hardly contend that the use of cross and holy water for a thousand
+years has been effectual in dislodging the European Beelzebub.
+
+On the whole, I am inclined to prefer the method of the Africans of
+the Guinea Coast. They believe in a particularly hideous devil, but
+say that the only defence they require against him is a mirror. If any
+one will keep a mirror beside him, the Devil must see himself in it,
+and he at once rushes away in terror of his own ugliness.
+
+No monster ever conjured up by imagination is more hideous than a
+rational being transformed to a beast. Just that is every human being
+who has brought his nobler powers down to be slaves of his animal
+nature. No eye could look upon that fearful sight unmoved. All man
+needs is a true mirror in which his own animalism may see itself. We
+cannot borrow for this purpose the arts of Greece, nor the fairy
+ideals of Germany, nor the emasculated saints of Christendom. These
+were but fragments of the man who has been created by combination of
+their powers, and their several ideals are broken bits that cannot
+reflect the whole being of man in its proportions or disproportions.
+
+The higher nature of man, polished by culture of all his faculties,
+can alone be the faithful mirror before his lower. The clearness of
+this mirror in the individual heart depends mainly on the civilisation
+and knowledge surrounding it. The discovered law turns once plausible
+theories to falsehoods; a noble literature transmutes once popular
+books to trash. When Art interprets the realities of nature, when
+it shows how much beauty and purity our human nature is capable of,
+it holds a mirror before all deformities. At a theatre in the city of
+London, I witnessed the performance of an actor who, in the course
+of his part, struck a child. He was complimented by a hurricane of
+hisses from the crowded gallery. Had those 'gods' up there never
+struck children? Possibly. Yet here each had a mirror before him and
+recoiled from his worst self. A clergyman relates that, while looking
+at pictures in the Bethnal Green Museum, he overheard a poor woman,
+who had been gazing on a Madonna, say, 'If I had such a child as
+that I believe I could be a good woman.' Who can say what even that
+one glance at her life in the ideal reflector may be worth to that
+wanderer amid the miseries and temptations of London!
+
+
+
+It is not easy for those who have seen what is high and holy to give
+their hearts to what is base and unholy. It is as natural for human
+nature to love virtue as to love any other beauty. External beauty
+is visible to all, and all desire it: the interior beauty is not
+visible to superficial glances, but the admiration shown even for its
+counterfeits shows how natural it is to admire virtue. But in order
+that the charm of this moral beauty may be felt by human nature it
+must be related to that nature--real. It must not be some childish
+ideal which answers to no need of the man of to-day; not something
+imported from a time and place where it had meaning and force to
+others where it has none.
+
+When dogmas surviving from the primitive world are brought to behold
+themselves in the mirror held up by Science, they cry out, 'That is not
+my face! You are caricaturing my beliefs!' This recoil of Superstition
+from its own ugliness is the victory of Religion. What priests bewail
+as disbelief is faith fleeing from its deformities. Ignorant devotion
+proves its need of Science by its terrors of the same, which are like
+those of the horse at first sight of its best friend, bearer of its
+burthens--the locomotive.
+
+
+
+Religion, like every other high feature of human nature, has its animal
+counterpart. The animalised religion is superstition. It has various
+expressions,--the abjectness of one form, the ferocity of another,
+the cunning of a third. It is unconscious of anything higher than
+animalism. Its god is a very great animal preying on other animals,
+which are laid on his altars; or pleased when smaller animals give
+up their part of the earthly feast by starving their passions and
+senses. Under the growth of civilisation and intelligence that pious
+asceticism is revealed in its true form,--intensified animalism. The
+asceticism of one age becomes the self-indulgence of another. The
+two-footed animal having discovered that his god does not eat the
+meat left for him, eats it himself. Learning that he gets as much
+from his god by a wafer and a prayer, he offers these and retains
+the gifts, treasures, and pleasures so commuted,--these, however,
+being withdrawn from the direction of the higher nature by the fact
+of being obtained through the conditions of the lower, and dependent
+on their persistence. In process of time the forms and formulas of
+religion, detached from all reality--such as no conceivable monarch
+could desire--not only become senseless, but depend upon their
+senselessness for continuance. They refuse to come at all within the
+domain of reason or common-sense, and trust to mental torpor of the
+masses, force of habit in the aggregate, self-interest in the wealthy
+and powerful, bribes for thinkers and scholars.
+
+
+
+Animalism disguised as a religion must render the human religion,
+able to raise passions into divine attributes of a perfect manhood,
+impossible so long as it continues. That a human religion can ever
+come by any process of evolution from a superstition which can only
+exist by ministry to the baser motives is a delusion. The only hope of
+society is that its independent minds may gain culture, and so surround
+this unextinct monster with mirrors that it may perish through shame
+at its manifold deformities. These are symbolised in the many-headed
+phantasm which is the subject of this work. Demon, Dragon, and Devil
+have long paralysed the finest powers of man, peopling nature with
+horrors, the heart with fears, and causing the religious sentiment
+itself to make actual in history the worst excesses it professed to
+combat in its imaginary adversaries. My largest hope is that from
+the dragon-guarded well where Truth is too much concealed she may
+emerge far enough to bring her mirror before these phantoms of fear,
+and with far-darting beams send them back to their caves in Chaos
+and ancient Night.
+
+
+
+The battlements of the cloisters of Magdalen College, Oxford, are
+crowned with an array of figures representing virtues and vices,
+with carved allegories of teaching and learning. Under the Governor's
+window are the pelican feeding its young from its breast, and the lion,
+denoting the tenderness and the strength of a Master of youth. There
+follow the professions--the lawyer embracing his client, the physician
+with his bottle, the divine as Moses with his tables of the Law. Next
+are the slayers of Goliath and other mythical enemies. We come to more
+real, albeit monstrous, enemies; to Gluttony in ecclesiastical dress,
+with tongue lolling out; and low-browed Luxury without any vesture,
+with a wide-mouthed animal-eared face on its belly, the same tongue
+lolling out--as in our figures of Typhon and Kali. Drunkenness has
+three animal heads--one of a degraded humanity, another a sheep, the
+third a goose. Cruelty is a werewolf; a frog-faced Lamia represents
+its mixture with Lust; and other vices are represented by other
+monsters, chiefly dragons with griffin forms, until the last is
+reached--the Devil, who is just opposite the Governor's symbols across
+the quadrangle.
+
+So was represented, some centuries ago, the conflict of Ormuzd
+and Ahriman, for the young soldiers who enlisted at Oxford for that
+struggle. A certain amount of fancy has entered into the execution of
+the figures; but, if this be carefully detached, the history which
+I have attempted to tell in these volumes may be generally traced
+in the Magdalen statues. Each represents some phase in the advance
+of the world, when, under new emergencies, earlier symbols were
+modified, recombined, and presently replaced by new shapes. It was
+found inadequate to keep the scholar throwing stones at the mummy of
+Goliath when by his side was living Gluttony in religious garb. The
+scriptural symbols are gradually mixed with those of Greek and German
+mythology, and by such contact with nature are able to generate forms,
+whose lolling tongues, wide mouths, and other expressions, represent
+with some realism the physiognomies of brutality let loose through
+admission to human shape and power.
+
+It may be that, when they were set up, the young Oxonian passed
+shuddering these terrible forms, dreaded these werewolves and
+succubæ, and dreamed of going forth to impale dragons. But now the
+sculptures excite only laughter or curiosity, when they are not
+passed by without notice. Yet the old conflict between Light and
+Darkness has not ceased. The ancient forms of it pass away; they
+become grotesque. Such was necessarily the case where the excessive
+mythological and fanciful elements introduced at one period fall upon
+another period when they hide the meaning. Their obscurity, even for
+antiquarians, marks how far away from those cold battlefields the
+struggle they symbolised has passed. But it ceases not. Some scholars
+who listen to the sweet vespers of Magdalen may think the conflict
+over; if so, even poor brother Moody may enter the true kingdom before
+them; for, when preaching in Baltimore last September, he said, 'Men
+are possessed of devils just as much now as they ever were. The devil
+of rum is as great as any that ever lived. Why cannot this one and
+all others be cast out? Because there is sin in the christian camp.'
+
+
+
+The picture which closes this volume has been made for me by the artist
+Hennessey, to record an incident which occurred at the door of Nôtre
+Dame in Paris last summer. I had been examining an ugly devil there
+treading down human forms into hell; but a dear friend looked higher,
+and saw a bird brooding over its young on a nest supported by that
+same horrible head.
+
+So, above the symbols of wrath in nature, Love still interweaves
+heavenly tints with the mystery of life; beside the horns of pain
+prepares melodies.
+
+Even so, also, over the animalism which deforms man, rises the animal
+perfection which shames that; here ascending above the reign of
+violence by a feather's force, and securing to that little creature
+a tenderness that could best express the heart of a Christ, when it
+would gather humanity under his wings.
+
+This same little scene at the cathedral door came before me again
+as I saw the Oxonian youth, with their morning-faces, passing so
+heedlessly those ancient sculptures at Magdalen. Over every happy
+heart the same old love was brooding, in each nestling faculties
+were trying to gain their wings. To what will they aspire, those
+students moving so light-hearted amid the dead dragons and satans
+of an extinct world? Do they think there are no more dragons to be
+slain? Know they that saying, 'He descended into hell;' and that,
+from Orpheus and Herakles to Mohammed and Swedenborg, this is the
+burthen felt by those who would be saviours of men?
+
+It is not only loving birds that build their nests and rear their young
+over the horns of forgotten fears, but, alas! the Harpies too! These,
+which Dante saw nestling in still plants--once men who had wronged
+themselves--rear successors above the aspirations that have ended in
+'nothing but leaves.' The sculptures of Magdalen are incomplete. There
+is a vacant side to the quadrangle, which, it is to be feared, awaits
+the truer teaching that would fill it up with the real dragons which
+no youth could heedlessly pass. Who can carve there the wrongs that
+await their powers of redress? Who can set before them, with all
+its baseness, the true emblem of pious fraud? When will they see in
+any stone mirror the real shape of a double-tongued Culture--one fork
+intoning litanies, another whispering contempt of them? The werewolves
+of scholarly selfishness, the Lamias of christian casuistry, the subtle
+intelligence that is fed by sages and heroes, but turns them to dust,
+nay, to venom, because it dares not be human, still crawls--these
+are yet to be revealed in all their horrors. Then will the old cry,
+Sursum Corda, sound over the ancient symbols whereon scholars waste
+their strength, by which they are conquered; and wings of courage shall
+bear them with their arrows of light to rescue from Superstition the
+holy places of Humanity.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+NOTES TO VOLUME I
+
+
+[1] Pausan. v. 14, 2.
+
+[2] Solin. Polyhistor, i.
+
+[3] Pliny, xxix. 6, 34, init.
+
+[4] Ezekiel xiv. 9.
+
+[5] As in the Bembine Tablet in the Bodleian Library.
+
+[6] See Sale's Koran, p. 281.
+
+[7] Pindar, Fragm., 270.
+
+[8] Tylor's 'Early Hist. of Mankind,' p. 358; 'Prim. Cult.,'
+vol. ii. p. 230.
+
+[9] The Gascons of Labourd call the devil 'Seigneur Voland,' and some
+revere him as a patron.
+
+[10] 'Myth. of the Aryan Nations,' vol. ii. p. 327.
+
+[11] 'Christian Iconography,' Bohn, p. 158.
+
+[12] 'Videbant faciem egredientis Moysis esse
+cornutam.'--Vulg. Exod. xxxiv. 35.
+
+[13] 'Myths and Marvels of Astronomy.' By R. A. Proctor. Chatto &
+Windus, 1878.
+
+[14] 'Scenes and Legends,' &c., p. 73.
+
+[15] 'Any Orientalist will appreciate the wonderful hotchpot of Hindu
+and Arabic language and religion in the following details, noted down
+among rude tribes of the Malay Peninsula. We hear of Jin Bumi, the
+earth-god (Arabic jin = demon, Sanskrit bhümi = earth); incense is
+burnt to Jewajewa (Sanskrit dewa = god), who intercedes with Pirman,
+the supreme invisible deity above the sky (Brahma?); the Moslem
+Allah Táala, with his wife Nabi Mahamad (Prophet Mohammed), appear in
+the Hinduised characters of creator and destroyer of all things; and
+while the spirits worshipped in stones are called by the Hindu term of
+'dewa' or deity, Moslem conversion has so far influenced the mind of
+the stone-worshipper that he will give to his sacred boulder the name
+of Prophet Mohammed.'--Tylor's 'Primitive Culture,' vol. ii. p. 230.
+
+[16] Yaçna, 32.
+
+[17] 'The Devil,' &c., from the French of the Rev. A. Réville, p. 5.
+
+[18] Tylor's 'Primitive Culture,' vol. ii. p. 299.
+
+[19] 'The Gnostics,' &c., by C. W. King, M.A., p. 153.
+
+[20] Those who wish to examine this matter further will do well to
+refer to Badger, 'Nestorians and their Rituals,' in which the whole
+of the 'Eulogy' is translated; and to Layard, 'Ninevah and Babylon,'
+in which there is a translation of the same by Hormuzd Rassam, the
+King of Abyssinia's late prisoner.
+
+[21] The significance of the gargoyles on the churches built on the
+foundations of pagan temples may be especially observed at York, where
+the forms of various animals well known to Indo-Germanic mythology
+appear. They are probably copies of earlier designs, surviving from
+the days when the plan of Gregory for the conversion of temples
+prevailed. 'The temples of the idols in that nation,' wrote the Pope,
+A.C. 601, 'ought not to be destroyed; but let the idols that are in
+them be destroyed; let holy water be made and sprinkled in the said
+temples, let altars be erected and relics placed. For if those temples
+are well built, it is requisite that they be converted from the worship
+of devils to the service of the true God.'--Bede, Eccl. Hist. ch. 30.
+
+[22] 'The Land of Charity,' by Rev. Samuel Mateer, p. 214.
+
+[23] London 'Times' Calcutta correspondence.
+
+[24] The Persian poet Sádi uses the phrase, 'The whale swallowed
+Jonah,' as a familiar expression for sunset; which is in curious
+coincidence with a Mimac (Nova Scotian) myth that the holy hero
+Glooscap was carried to the happy Sunset Land in a whale. The story
+of Jonah has indeed had interesting variants, one of them being
+that legend of Oannes, the fish-god, emerging from the Red Sea to
+teach Babylonians the arts (a saga of Dagon); but the phrase in the
+Book of Jonah--'the belly of Hell'--had a prosaic significance for
+the christian mind, and, in connection with speculations concerning
+Behemoth and Leviathan, gave us the mediæval Mouth of Hell.
+
+[25] Tablet K 162 in the British Museum. See 'Records of the Past,'
+i. 141.
+
+[26] London 'Times,' July 11, 1877.
+
+[27] 'Songs of the Russian People,' p. 409.
+
+[28] 'Primitive Culture.'
+
+[29] Cæsarius D'Heisterbach, Miracul. iii.
+
+[30] Lev. iii. 15.
+
+[31] Du Perron, 'Vie de Zoroastre.'
+
+[32] The principle similia similibus curantur is a very ancient one;
+but though it may have originated in a euphemistic or propitiatory
+aim, the homoeopathist may claim that it could hardly have lived
+unless it had been found to have some practical advantages.
+
+[33] Sonnerat's 'Travels,' ii. 38.
+
+[34] Deutsch, 'Literary Remains,' p. 178.
+
+[35] Isa. lvii. 5; Ezek. xvi. 20; Jer. xix. 5.
+
+[36] The 'Jewish World.'
+
+[37] 'Observations on Popular Antiquities,' &c., by John Brand. With
+the additions of Sir Henry Ellis. An entirely new and revised
+edition. Chatto & Windus, 1877. See especially the chapter on 'Summer
+Solstice,' p. 165.
+
+[38] 'Pyra, a bonefire, wherein men's bodyes were burned.'--Cooper's
+Thesaurus. Probably from Fr. bon; Wedgewood gives Dan. baun, beacon.
+
+[39] See Chapter i. Compare Numbers xxxi. 23.
+
+[40] Numbers xix. 17.
+
+[41] Ibid. xix. 2, seq.
+
+[42] 'Folklore of China,' p. 121.
+
+[43] In Russia the pigeon, from being anciently consecrated to the
+thunder god, has become emblem of the Holy Ghost, or celestial fire,
+and as such the foe of earthly fire. Pigeons are trusted as insurers
+against fire, and the flight of one through a house is regarded as
+a kindly warning of conflagration.
+
+[44] Tablet K 162 in Brit. Mus. Tr. by H. F. Talbot in 'Records of
+the Past.'
+
+[45] The Western Mail, March 12, 1874, contains a remarkable letter by
+the Arch-Druid, in which he maintains that 'Jesus' is a derivation from
+Hea or Hu, Light, and the Christian system a corruption of Bardism.
+
+[46] 'L'Enfer,' p. 5.
+
+[47] Dennys' 'Folklore of China,' p. 98.
+
+[48] Procopius, 'De Bello Gothico,' iv. 20.
+
+[49] 'Memorials of the Rev. R. S. Hawkes'.
+
+[50] 'La Magie chez les Chaldéens,' iii.
+
+[51] Lönnrot, 'Abhandlung über die Magische Medicin der Finnen.'
+
+[52] 'Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland.' Nimmo, 1876.
+
+[53] 'Rig-Veda,' ii. 33. Tr. by Professor Evans of Michigan.
+
+[54] 'Rig-Veda,' i. 114.
+
+[55] 'Jour. Ceylon R. A. Soc.,' 1865-66.
+
+[56] Welcker, 'Griechische Götterlehre,' vol. i. p. 661.
+
+[57] Moffat, p. 257.
+
+[58] Livingstone, p. 124.
+
+[59] Pöppig, 'Reise in Chile,' vol. ii. p. 358.
+
+[60] Eyre, vol. ii. p. 362.
+
+[61] Tylor, 'Early Hist.,' p. 359.
+
+[62] So confirming the conjecture of Wachsmuth, in 'Das alte
+Griechenland im neuen,' p. 23. Elias might also easily be associated
+with the name Æolus.
+
+[63] 'Rig-Veda,' x. (Muir).
+
+[64] John iii. 8.
+
+[65] 'The Wheel of the Law,' by Henry Alabaster, Trübner & Co.
+
+[66] 'Rig-Veda,' v. 83 (Wilson).
+
+[67] 'Major's Tr.,' ii. 26.
+
+[68] Wierus' 'Pseudomonarchia Dæmon.'
+
+[69] 'Songs of the Russian People,' by W. R. S. Ralston, M.A.
+
+[70] Isa. xxii. 22. It is remarkable that (according to Callimachus)
+Ceres bore a key on her shoulder. She kept the granary of the earth.
+
+[71] Rev. i. 18.; Matt. xvi. 19.
+
+[72] 'Journal N. C. B. R. A. S.,' 1853.
+
+[73] 'Folklore of China,' p. 124. The drum held by the imp in Fig. 3
+shows his relation to the thunder-god. In Japan the thunder-god
+is represented as having five drums strung together. The wind-god
+has a large bag of compressed air between his shoulders; and he has
+steel claws, representing the keen and piercing wind. The Tartars in
+Siberia believe that a potent demon may be evoked by beating a drum;
+their sorcerers provide a tame bear, who starts upon the scene, and
+from whom they pretend to get answers to questions. In Nova Scotian
+superstition we find demons charmed by drums into quietude. In India
+the temple-drum preserved such solemn associations even for the new
+theistic sect, the Brahmo-Somaj, that it is said to be still beaten
+as accompaniment to the organ sent to their chief church by their
+English friends.
+
+[74] Although the Koran and other authorities, as already stated, have
+associated the Jinn with etherial fire, Arabic folklore is nearer the
+meaning of the word in assigning the name to all demons. The learned
+Arabic lexicographer of Beirut, P. Bustani, says 'The Jinn is the
+opposite of mankind, or it is whatever is veiled from the sense,
+whether angel or devil.'
+
+[75] 'Cuneiform Ins.,' iv. 15.
+
+[76] Ib. ii. 27.
+
+[77] Job xli.
+
+[78] 'Records of the Past,' i.
+
+[79] Lenormant, 'La Magie.'
+
+[80] 'Records of the Past,' iii. 129.
+
+[81] The god of the Euphrates.
+
+[82] The Assyrian has 'of the high places.'
+
+[83] 'Records of the Past,' iii. 129, 130.
+
+[84] 'Henry IV.,' Part 1st, Act 2. 'Heart of Mid-Lothian,' xxv. An
+interesting paper on this subject by Mr. Alexander Wilder appeared
+in The Evolution, New York, December 16, 1877.
+
+[85] De Plancy.
+
+[86] An individual by this means saw his wife among the witches, so
+detecting her unhallowed nature, which gave rise to a saying there
+that husbands must not be star-gazing on St. Gerard's Eve.
+
+[87] London 'Times,' July 8, 1875.
+
+[88] This Protean type of both demon and devil must accompany us so
+continually through this volume that but little need be said of it
+in this chapter.
+
+[89] Canticles ii. 15.
+
+[90] De Gubernatis, II. viii.
+
+[91] 'Our Life in Japan' (Jephson and Elmhirst, 9th Regiment),
+Chapman & Hall, 1869.
+
+[92] London 'Times,' June 11, 1877.
+
+[93] Rep. 488.
+
+[94] Literally, goat-song. More probably it has an astrological sense.
+
+[95] E.g., the demon Huorco in the 'Pentamerone.'
+
+[96] See De Gubernatis' 'Zoological Mythology,' which contains further
+curious details on this subject.
+
+[97] 'Myths and Myth-makers.' Boston: Osgood & Co.
+
+[98] 'Zoological Mythology,' p. 64.
+
+[99] Koran, xviii.
+
+[100] Wagner. Behold him stop--upon his belly crawl.... The clever
+scholar of the students, he!
+
+[101] 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.' London: Chatto & Windus.
+
+[102] 'Spirit of the Beasts of France,' ch. i.
+
+[103] 'Rigv.' i. 105, 18, 42, 2; 'Vendidad,' xix. 108. Quoted by De
+Gubernatis ('Zoolog. Mythology,' ii. 142), to whose invaluable work
+I am largely indebted in this chapter.
+
+[104] 'Zoolog. Myth.,' ii. 7. Trübner & Co.
+
+[105] 'Zoolog. Myth.,' ii. 108 seq.
+
+[106] Afanasief, v. 28.
+
+[107] Ibid., v. 27.
+
+[108] ii. 6 (De Gubernatis, ii. 117).
+
+[109] Rather the devil of lust than of cruelty, according to Du Cange:
+"Occidunt ursum, occiditur diabolus, id est, temptator nostræ carnis."
+
+[110] De Plancy (Dict. Inf.), who also relates an amusing legend of
+the bear who came to a German choir, as seen by a sleepy chorister as
+he awoke; the naïve narrator of which adds, that this was the devil
+sent to hold the singers to their duty! The Lives of the Saints abound
+with legends of pious bears, such as that commemorated along with
+St. Sergius in Troitska Lavra, near Moscow; and that which St. Gallus
+was ungracious enough to banish from Switzerland after it had brought
+him firewood in proof of its conversion.
+
+[111] Max Müller, 'Science of Language,' i. 275.
+
+[112] The term is now used very vaguely. Mr. Talboys Wheeler,
+speaking of the 'Scythic Nagas' (Hist. of India, i. 147), says:
+'In process of time these Nagas became identified with serpents, and
+the result has been a strange confusion between serpents and human
+beings.' In the 'Padma Purana' we read of 'serpent-like men.' (See my
+'Sacred Anthology,' p. 263.)
+
+[113] 'Mahawanso' (Turnour), pp. 3, 6.
+
+[114] Ser. xxxiii. Hardly consistent with De Civ. Dei, xvi. 8.
+
+[115] 'Chips,' ii.
+
+[116] 'Sancti custos Soractis Apollo.'--Æn. xi. 785.
+
+[117] 'Treatise of Spirits,' by John Beaumont, Gent., London, 1705.
+
+[118] London 'Times,' June 11, 1877.
+
+[119] Wuttke, 'Volksaberglaube,' 402. Pliny (iv. 16) says: 'Albion
+insula sic dicta ab albis rupibus quas mare alluit.' This etymon of
+Albion from the white cliffs is very questionable; but, since Alb and
+Elf are generally related, it might have suggested the notion about
+English demons. Heine identifies the 'White Island,' or Pluto's realm
+of Continental folklore, as England.
+
+[120] Richardson's 'Borderer's Fable-Book,' vi. 97.
+
+[121] Martin, Appendix to Report on 'Ossian,' p. 310.
+
+[122] 'Scenes and Legends,' p. 13.
+
+[123] Dr. James Browne's 'History of the Highlands,' p. 113.
+
+[124] 'North American Review,' January 1871.
+
+[125] Dennys, p. 81 et seq.
+
+[126] Ezekiel xxxix.
+
+[127] 'Rig-Veda,' iv. 175, 5 (Wilson).
+
+[128] Ibid., i. 133, 6.
+
+[129] 'Rig-Veda,' vi. 14.
+
+[130] 'The Nineteenth Century,' November 1877. Article: 'Sun-Spots
+and Famines,' by Norman Lockyer and W. W. Hunter.
+
+[131] 'An Inquiry into the Nature and Place of Hell,' by Tobias
+Swinden, M.A., late Rector of Cuxton-in-Kent. 1727.
+
+[132] Carlyle, 'Past and Present,' i. 2.
+
+[133] 'Discoveries in Egypt,' &c. (Bentley.) 1852.
+
+[134] 'Legends of Old Testament Characters,' i. p. 83.
+
+[135] OEdip., 1. II. ii. See 'Mankind: their Origin and Destiny,'
+p. 699.
+
+[136] Compare Kali, Fig. 18.
+
+[137] Soc. of Heb. Literature's Publications. 2d Series. 'Legends
+from the Midrash,' by Thomas Chenery (Trübner & Co.). The same legend
+is referred to in the story of the Astrologer in Washington Irving's
+'Alhambra.'
+
+[138] Faust, ii. Act 4 (Hayward's Translation).
+
+[139] 'Emerson's Poems. Monadnoc.'
+
+[140] 'Modern Painters,' Part V. 19.
+
+[141] Bel's mountain, 'House of the Beloved,' is called 'high place'
+in Assyrian, and would be included in these curses ('Records of the
+Past,' iii. 129).
+
+[142] Jer. xiii. 16.
+
+[143] 'Our Life in Japan.' By Jephson and Elmhirst.
+
+[144] Another derivation of Elf (Alf) is to connect it with Sanskrit
+Alpa = little; so that the Elves are the Little Folk. Professor Buslaef
+of Moscow suggests connection with the Greek Alphito, a spectre. See
+pp. 160n. and 223.
+
+[145] Brinton, p. 85.
+
+[146] Ibid., p. 166.
+
+[147] 'Tales and Legends of the Tyrol.' (Chapman and Hall, 1874.)
+
+[148] Od. xii. 73; 235, &c.
+
+[149] London Daily Telegraph Correspondence.
+
+[150] John Sterling.
+
+[151] 'Rig-Veda,' ii. 15, 5. Wilson. 1854.
+
+[152] 'Du monstre qui m'avait tant ennuyé, il n'était plus question;
+il était pour jamais réduit au silence. Il n'avait plus forme de
+géant. Déjà en partie couvert de verdure, de mousse et de clématites
+qui avaient grimpé sur la partie où j'avais cessé de passer, il n'était
+plus laid; bientôt on ne le verrait plus du tout. Je me sentais si
+heureux que je voulus lui pardonner, et, me tournant vers lui:--A
+present, lui dis-je, tu dormiras tous tes jours et tous tes nuits sans
+que je te dérange. Le mauvais esprit qui était en toi est vaincu, je
+lui defends de revenir. Je t'en ai délivré en te forçant à devenir
+utile à quelque chose; que la foudre t'épargne et que la neige te
+soit légère! Il me sembla passer, le long de l'escarpement, comme un
+grand soupir de résignation qui se perdit dans les hauteurs. Ce fut
+la dernière fois que je l'entendais, et je ne l'ai jamais revu autre
+qu'il n'est maintenant.'
+
+[153] Von Spix and Von Martin's 'Travels in Brazil,' p. 243.
+
+[154] 'Anatomy of Melancholy.' Fifteenth Edition, p. 124.
+
+[155] 'Les Dieux en Exile.' Heinrich Heine. Revue des Deux Mondes,
+April, 1853.
+
+[156] 'Book of Songs.' Translated by Charles E. Leland. New York:
+Henry Holt & Co. 1874.
+
+[157] Dennys.
+
+[158] Bleek, 'Hottentot Fables,' p. 58.
+
+[159] Baring-Gould, 'Curious Myths,' &c.
+
+[160] Ibid., ii. 299.
+
+[161] 'Shaski,' vi. 48.
+
+[162] Hugh Miller, 'Scenes and Legends,' p. 293.
+
+[163] 'The Mirror,' April 7, 1832.
+
+[164] 'The Origin of Civilisation,' &c. By Sir John Lubbock.
+
+[165] Hildebrand in Grimm's 'Wörterbuch.'
+
+[166] Wisdom of Solomon, xvii. What this impressive chapter says of
+the delusions of the guilty are equally true of those of ignorance.
+'They sleeping the same sleep that night ... were partly vexed with
+monstrous apparitions, and partly fainted, their heart failing them
+... whosoever there fell down was straitly kept, shut up in a prison
+without iron bars.... Whether it were a whistling wind, or a melodious
+noise of birds among the spreading branches, or a pleasing fall of
+water running violently, or a terrible sound of stones cast down,
+or a running that could not be seen of skipping beasts, or a roaring
+voice of most savage wild beasts, or a rebounding echo from the hollow
+mountains: these things made them to swoon for fear. The whole world
+shined with clear light ... over them only was spread a heavy night,
+an image of that darkness which should afterward receive them: but
+yet were they to themselves more grievous than that darkness.'
+
+[167] Bayard Taylor's 'Faust.' Walpurgis-night.
+
+[168] i. 228.
+
+[169] North American Review. March 1877.
+
+[170] In his very valuable work, 'Northmen in Cumberland and
+Westmoreland.' Longmans. 1856.
+
+[171] 'Journal of Philology,' vi. No. II. On the Word Glamour and
+the Legend of Glam, by Professor Cowell.
+
+[172] 2 Chron. xvi. 12; 2 Kings xx.; Mark v. 26; James v. 14; &c.,
+&c. The Catholic Church follows the prescription by St. James of prayer
+and holy anointing for the sick only after medical aid--of which
+Asa died when he preferred it to the Lord--has failed; i.e. extreme
+unction. Castelar remarks that the Conclave which elected Pius
+IX. sat in the Quirinal rather than the Vatican, 'because, while
+it hoped for the inspirations of the Holy Spirit in every place, it
+feared that in the palace par excellence divine inspirations would
+not sufficiently counteract the effluvias of the fever.' The legal
+prosecutions of the 'Peculiar People' for obeying the New Testament
+command in case of sickness supply a notable example of the equal
+hypocrisy of the protestant age. England has distributed the Bible
+as a divine revelation in 150 different languages; and in London it
+punishes a sect for obedience to one of its plainest directions.
+
+[173] London 'Times,' June 11, 1877.
+
+[174] 'Mankind: their Origin and Destiny' (Longmans, 1872), p. 91. See
+also Voltaire's Dictionary for an account of the sacred dances in
+the Catholic Churches of Spain.
+
+[175] Deut. xxviii. 60.
+
+[176] 1 Sam. v. 6.
+
+[177] 1 Sam. xvi. 14. In chap. xviii. 10, this evil spirit is said
+to have proceeded from Elohim, a difference indicating a further step
+in that evolution of Jehovah into a moral ruler which is fully traced
+in our chapter on 'Elohim and Jehovah.'
+
+[178] Boundesch, ii. pp. 158, 188. For an exhaustive treatment of the
+astrological theories and pictures of the planispheres, see 'Mankind:
+their Origin and Destiny' (Longmans, 1872).
+
+[179] 'Catastrophe Magnatum: or the Fall of Monarchie. A Caveat
+to Magistrates, deduced from the Eclipse of the Sunne, March
+29, 1652. With a probable Conjecture of the Determination of
+the Effects.' By Nich. Culpeper, Gent., Stud. in Astrol. and
+Phys. Dan. ii. 21, 22: He changeth the times and the seasons: he
+removeth Kings, and setteth up Kings: he giveth wisdome to the Wise,
+and knowledge to them that know understanding: he revealeth the deep
+and secret things, he knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light
+dwelleth with him. London: Printed for T. Vere and Nath. Brooke,
+in the Old Baily, and at the Angel in Cornhil, 1652.'
+
+[180] See the Dictionary of Böhtlingk and Roth.
+
+[181] Heb. ii. 14.
+
+[182] 1 Cor. v. 5; xi. 30.
+
+[183] 2 Cor. xii. 7.
+
+[184] 'Records of the Past,' iii. p. 136. Tr. by Mr. Fox Talbot.
+
+[185] Ibid., iii. p. 143. The refrain recalls the lines of Edgar
+A. Poe:--
+
+
+ They are neither man nor woman,
+ They are neither brute nor human,
+ They are ghouls!
+
+
+[186] The Pahlavi Text has been prepared by Destur Jamaspji Asa,
+and translated by Haug and West. Trübner, 1872.
+
+[187] Cf. fig. 9.
+
+[188] Larousse's 'Dict. Universel.'
+
+[189] 'Records,' &c., iii. p. 141. Marduk is the Chaldæan Hercules.
+
+[190] Micah vii. 19.
+
+[191] See the excellent article in the Journal of the Ceylon Branch of
+the R.A.S., by Dundris De Silva Gooneratnee Modliar (1865-66). With
+regard to this sanctity of the number seven it may be remarked that
+it has spread through the world with Christianity,--seven churches,
+seven gifts of the Spirit, seven sins and virtues. It is easy therefore
+to mistake orthodox doctrines for survivals. In the London 'Times' of
+June 24, 1875, there was reported an inquest at Corsham, Wiltshire,
+on the body of Miriam Woodham, who died under the prescriptions of
+William Bigwood, herbalist. It was shown that he used pills made
+of seven herbs. This was only shown to be a 'pagan survival' when
+Bigwood stated that the herbs were 'governed by the sun.'
+
+[192] See p. 44.
+
+[193] 'Jour. Ceylon R. A. Soc.,' 1865-66.
+
+[194] This demoness is not to be connected with the Italian
+Mania, probably of Etruscan origin, with which nurses frightened
+children. This Mania, from an old word manus signifying 'good,' was,
+from the relation of her name to Manes, supposed to be mother of
+the Lares, whose revisitations of the earth were generally of ill
+omen. According to an oracle which said heads should be offered for
+the sake of heads, children were sacrificed to this household fiend
+up to the time of Junius Brutus, who substituted poppy-heads.
+
+[195] Phædrus, i. 549. Cf. Ger. selig and silly.
+
+[196] 'Lect. on Language,' i. 435.
+
+[197] Ralston's 'Songs of the Russian People,' p. 230.
+
+[198] 'Sagen der Altmark.' Von A. Kuhn. Berlin, 1843.
+
+[199] Wake's 'Evolution of Morality,' i. 107.
+
+[200] 'The Aborigines of Australia' (1865), p. 15.
+
+[201] 2 Chron. xxxiii. 6.
+
+[202] Published by Mozley and Smith, 1878.
+
+[203] Max Müller. 'Lectures on Language,' ii. p. 562, et seq.
+
+[204] See the beautifully translated funereal hymn of the Veda in
+Professor Whitney's 'Oriental and Linguistic Studies,' p. 52, etc.
+
+[205] 'The Avesta.' 'Oriental and Linguistic Studies,' p. 196.
+
+[206] 'Records of the Past,' i. 143.
+
+[207] Sale's 'Koran' (ed. 1836). See pp. 4, 339, 475.
+
+[208] 'Discoveries,' &c., p. 223.
+
+[209] 'Modern Painters,' Part V. xix.
+
+[210] The history of this tree which I use for a parable is told in the
+Rev. Samuel Mateer's 'Land of Charity.' London: John Snow & Co. 1871.
+
+[211] 'Studies in the History of the Renaissance.' Macmillan &
+Co. 1873.
+
+[212] Concerning which Mr. Wright says: 'It is taken from an oxybaphon
+which was brought from the Continent to England, where it passed into
+the collection of Mr. William Hope.... The Hyperborean Apollo himself
+appears as a quack-doctor, on his temporary stage, covered by a sort
+of roof, and approached by wooden steps. On the stage lies Apollo's
+luggage, consisting of a bag, a bow, and his Scythian cap. Chiron
+(ChIRÔN) is represented as labouring under the effects of age and
+blindness, and supporting himself by the aid of a crooked staff,
+as he repairs to the Delphian quack-doctor for relief. The figure
+of the centaur is made to ascend by the aid of a companion, both
+being furnished with the masks and other attributes of the comic
+performers. Above are the mountains, and on them the nymphs of
+Parnassus (NYMPhAI), who, like all the other actors in the scene, are
+disguised with masks, and those of a very gross character.... Even a
+pun is employed to heighten the drollery of the scene, for instead
+of PYThIAS, the Pythian, placed over the head of the burlesque
+Apollo, it seems evident that the artist had written PEIThIAS, the
+consoler.'--'History of Caricature,' p. 18. But who is the leaf-crowned
+figure, without mask, on the right hand? Was it some early Offenbach,
+who found such representation of the gods welcome at Athens where
+the attempt to produce our modern Offenbach's Belle Helène recently
+caused a theatrical riot?
+
+[213] Wuttke. 'Volksaberglaube,' 18.
+
+[214] Schleicher, 'Litauische Märchen,' 141-145. Mr. Ralston's
+translation abridged.
+
+[215] Of this latter kind of hungry werewolf a specimen still
+occasionally revisits the glimpses of the moonshine which, for too
+many minds, still replaces daylight. So recently as January 17, 1878,
+one Kate Bedwell, a 'pedlar, was sentenced in the Marylebone Police
+Court, London, to three months' hard labour for obtaining various
+sums of money, amounting to 9s. 10d., by terrorism, from Eliza Rolf,
+a cook. The pedlar came to the plaintiff's place of work and asked
+her if she would like to have her fortune told. Eliza replied, 'No,
+I know it; it is hard work or starving.' The fortune-teller asked her
+next time if she would have her planet ruled; the other still said no;
+but her nerves yielded when the 'Drud' told her 'she lived under three
+stars, one good the others bad, and that she could disfigure her or
+turn her into something else.' 'Thank God, she did not!' exclaimed
+the poor woman in court. However, she seemed to have trusted rather
+in her money than in any other providence for her immunity from an
+unhappy transformation. But even into this rare depth of ignorance
+enough light had penetrated to enable Eliza to cope with her werewolf
+in the civilised way of haling her before a magistrate. When Fenris
+gets three months with hard labour, he no doubt realises that he has
+exceeded his mental habitat, and that the invisible cords have bound
+him at last.
+
+[216] Elf has, indeed, been referred by some to the Sanskrit
+alpa=little; but the balance of authority is in favour of the
+derivation given in a former chapter.
+
+[217] Mannhardt, 'Götter,' 287.
+
+[218] Freia-Holda, the Teutonic goddess of Love. 'Cornhill Magazine,'
+May, 1872.
+
+[219] 'Records of the Past,' vi. 124.
+
+[220] See Cooper's 'Serpent-Myths of Ancient Egypt,' figs. 109 and
+112. Serapis as a human-headed serpent is shown in the same essay
+(from Sharpe), fig. 119.
+
+[221] 'Representative Men,' American edition of 1850, p. 108.
+
+[222] 'L'Oiseau,' par Jules Michelet.
+
+[223] A deadly Southern snake, coloured like the soil on which
+it lurks, had become the current name for politicians who, while
+professing loyalty to the Union, aided those who sought to overthrow
+it.
+
+[224] See his learned and valuable treatise, 'The Serpent Myths of
+Ancient Egypt.' Hardwicke, 1873.
+
+[225] 'Time and Faith,' i. 204. Groombridge, 1857.
+
+[226] 'The Epic of the Worm,' by Victor Hugo. Translated by Bayard
+Taylor from 'La Légende des Siècles.'
+
+[227] Bruce relates of the Abyssinians that a serpent is commonly kept
+in their houses to consult for an augury of good or evil. Butter and
+honey are placed before it, of which if it partake, the omen is good;
+if the serpent refuse to eat, some misfortune is sure to happen. This
+custom seems to throw a light on the passage--'Butter and honey shall
+he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good'
+(Isa. vii. 15).--Time and Faith, i. 60.
+
+Compare the apocryphal tale of Bel and the Dragon. Bel was a healing
+god of the Babylonians, and the Dragon whom he slew may have been
+regarded in later times as his familiar
+
+[228] 'Principles of Greek Etymology,' ii. 63. English translation.
+
+[229] See pp. 8 and 20.
+
+[230] 'Rig-veda,' v. (Wilson).
+
+[231] In a paper on the 'Origin of Serpent-worship,' read before the
+Anthropological Institute in London, December 17, 1872.
+
+[232] 'Science of Language,' i. 230.
+
+[233] 'Lectures on Language,' i. 435.
+
+[234] Grimm's 'Mythology,' p. 650 ff. Simrock, p. 440.
+
+[235] Roth, in the 'Journal of the German Oriental Society,'
+vol. ii. p. 216 ff., has elucidated the whole myth.
+
+[236] I have in my possession a specimen of the horned frog of America,
+and it is sufficiently curious.
+
+[237] Gesta Rom., cap. 68. Grimm's Myth., 650 ff. Simrock, p. 400.
+
+[238] Others derive the name from the ancient Borbetomagus.
+
+[239] Traditions, p. 44.
+
+[240] Loathely.
+
+[241] Pope's 'Homer,' Book xv.
+
+[242] See p. 59.
+
+[243] See p. 154.
+
+[244] Æsch. Prom. 790, &c.
+
+[245] Vol. i. p. 38.
+
+[246] 'North American Review,' January 1871.
+
+[247] 'Records of the Past,' x. 79.
+
+[248] Page 285.
+
+[249] 'Alcestis in England.' Printed by the South Place Society,
+Finsbury, London. 1877.
+
+[250] Eating meat was the process of incarnation.
+
+[251] 'Results of a Tour in Dardistan, Kashmir,' &c., by Chevalier
+Dr. G. W. Leitner, Lahore, vol. i. part iii. Trübner & Co.
+
+[252] Page 91.
+
+[253] In the Etruscan Museum at Rome there is a fine representation
+of this. The old belief was that a dragon could only be attacked
+successfully inside.
+
+[254] 'The Jewish Messiah,' &c. By James Drummond, B.A. Longmans &
+Co. (1877). See in this valuable work chapter xxi.
+
+[255] Matt. viii. 30.
+
+[256] Luke xxiii. 3.
+
+[257] Acts i. 25.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+NOTES TO VOLUME II
+
+
+[1] 'Treatise of Spirits.' By John Beaumont, Gent. London, 1705.
+
+[2] Luke x. 19.
+
+[3] Rev. xii.
+
+[4] Rev. xii. cf. verses 4, 9 and 14.
+
+[5] Rev. xii. 12.
+
+[6] 'Zendavesta,' Yaçna xxx.; Max Müller, 'Science of Religion,'
+p. 238.
+
+[7] Yaçna xliii.
+
+[8] 'Die Christliche Lehre von der Sünde.' Von Julius Müller, Breslau,
+1844, i. 193.
+
+[9] 'Ormazd brought help to me; by the grace of Ormazd my troops
+entirely defeated the rebel army and took Sitratachmes, and brought him
+before me. Then I cut off his nose and his ears, and I scourged him. He
+was kept chained at my door. All the kingdom beheld him. Afterwards I
+crucified him at Arbela.' So says the tablet of Darius Hystaspes. But
+what could Darius have done 'by the grace of Ahriman'?
+
+[10] Cf. Rev. v. 6 and xii. 15.
+
+[11] 'Prayer and Work.' By Octavius B. Frothingham. New York, 1877.
+
+[12] 'Lucifero, Poema di Mario Rapisardi.' Milano, 1877.
+
+[13] E quanto ebbe e mantiene a l'uom soltanto Il deve, a l'uom che
+d'oqui sue destino O prospero, o maligno, arbitro e solo.
+
+'Whatever he (God) had, he owed to man alone, to man who, for good
+or ill, is sole arbiter of his own fate.'--Rapisardi's Lucifero.
+
+[14] The following abridgment mainly follows that of James Freeman
+Clarke in his 'Ten Great Religions.'
+
+[15] White or Snowy Mountain. Cf. Alp, Elf, &c.
+
+[16] 'Elias shall first come and restore all things.'
+
+[17] That this satirical hymn was admitted into the Rig-Veda shows
+that these hymns were collected whilst they were still in the hands
+of the ancient Hindu families as common property, and were not yet
+the exclusive property of Bráhmans as a caste or association. Further
+evidence of the same kind is given by a hymn in which the expression
+occurs--'Do not be as lazy as a Bráhman.'--Mrs. Manning's Ancient and
+Mediæval India, i. 77. In the same work some particulars are given of
+the persons mentioned in this chapter. The Frog-satire is translated
+by Max Müller, A. S. L., p. 494.
+
+[18] 'Arichandra, the Martyr of Truth: A Tamil Drama translated into
+English by Mutu Coomâra Swâmy, Mudliar, Member of Her Majesty's
+Legislative Council of Ceylon,' &c. London: Smith, Elder, &
+Co. 1863. This drama, it must be constantly borne in mind, in nowise
+represents the Vedic legend, told in the Aitereya-Bráhmana, vii. 13-18;
+nor the puranic legend, told in the Merkandeya-Purána. I have altered
+the spelling of the names to the Sanskrit forms, but otherwise follow
+Sir M. C. S.'s translation.
+
+[19] Siva; the 'lord of the world,' and of wealth. Cf. Pluto, Dis,
+Dives.
+
+[20] Thes. Heb., p. 94.
+
+[21] Heb. Handw., p. 90.
+
+[22] Or Jahveh. I prefer to use the best known term in a case where
+the more exact spelling adds no significance.
+
+[23] This, the grandest of all the elohistic names, became the nearest
+Hebrew word for devils--shedim.
+
+[24] Even his jealous command against rivals, i.e., 'graven images,'
+had to be taken along with the story of Laban's images (Gen. xxxi.),
+when, though 'God came to Laban,' the idolatry was not rebuked.
+
+[25] It is not certain, indeed, whether this Brightness may not have
+been separately personified in the 'Eduth' (translated 'testimony'
+in the English version, Exod. xvi. 34), before which the pot of manna
+was laid. The word means 'brightness,' and Dr. Willis supposes it may
+be connected with Adod, the Phoenician Sun-god (Pentateuch, p. 186).
+
+[26] It is important not to confuse Satan with the Devil, so far as the
+Bible is concerned. Satan, as will be seen when we come to the special
+treatment of him required, is by no means invariably diabolical. In
+the Book of Job, for example, he appears in a character far removed
+from hostility to Jehovah or goodness.
+
+[27] Name ist Schall und Rauch, Umnebelnd Himmelsgluth.--Goethe.
+
+[28] 'Targum to the Prophets,' Jonathan Ben Uzziel. See Deutsch's
+'Literary Remains,' p. 379.
+
+[29] See pp. 46 and 255. The episode is in Mahábhárata, I. 15.
+
+[30] Related to the Slav Kvas, with which, in Russian folklore,
+the Devil tried to circumvent Noah and his wife, as related in
+chap. xxvii. part iv.
+
+[31] In Sanskrit Adima means 'the first;' in Hebrew Adam (given
+almost always with the article) means 'the red,' and it is generally
+derived from adamah, mould or soil. But Professor Max Müller (Science
+of Religion, p. 320) says if the name Adima (used, by the way, in
+India for the first man, as Adam is in England) is the same as Adam,
+'we should be driven to admit that Adam was borrowed by the Jews from
+the Hindus.' But even that mild case of 'driving' is unnecessary,
+since the word, as Sale reminded the world, is used in the Persian
+legend. It is probable that the Hebrews imported this word not knowing
+its meaning, and as it resembled their word for mould, they added
+the gloss that the first man was made of the dust or mould of the
+ground. It is not contended that the Hebrews got their word directly
+from the Hindu or Persian myth. Mr. George Smith discovered that Admi
+or Adami was the name for the first men in Chaldean fragments. Sir
+Henry Rawlinson points out that the ancient Babylonians recognised two
+principle races,--the Adamu, or dark, and the Sarku, or light, race;
+probably a distinction, remembered in the phrase of Genesis, between
+the supposed sons of Adam and the sons of God. The dark race was the
+one that fell. Mr. Herbert Spencer (Principles of Sociology, Appendix)
+offers an ingenious suggestion that the prohibition of a certain sacred
+fruit may have been the provision of a light race against a dark one,
+as in Peru only the Yuca and his relatives were allowed to eat the
+stimulating cuca. If this be true in the present case, it would still
+only reflect an earlier tradition that the holy fruit was the rightful
+possession of the deities who had won in the struggle for it.
+
+Nor is there wanting a survival from Indian tradition in the story
+of Eve. Adam said, 'This now is bone of my bone, and flesh of my
+flesh.' In the Manu Code (ix. 22) it is written: 'The bone of woman is
+united with the bone of man, and her flesh with his flesh.' The Indian
+Adam fell in twain, becoming male and female (Yama and Yami). Ewald
+(Hist. of Israel, i. 1) has put this matter of the relation between
+Hebrew and Hindu traditions, as it appears to me, beyond doubt. See
+also Goldziher's Heb. Mythol., p. 326; and Professor King's Gnostics,
+pp. 9, 10, where the historic conditions under which the importation
+would naturally have occurred are succinctly set forth. Professor
+King suggests that Parsî and Pharisee may be the same word.
+
+[32] Gen. vi. 1, 2, 4.
+
+[33] vi.-xi. pp. 3-6. See Drummond's 'Jewish Messiah,' p. 21.
+
+[34] See vol. i. p. 255.
+
+[35] Phil. Trans. Ab. from 1700-1720, Part iv. p. 173.
+
+[36] Gen. xxi. 6, 7. The English version has destroyed the sense by
+supplying 'him' after 'borne.' Cf. also verses 1, 2. The rabbins
+were fully aware of the importance of the statement that it was
+Jehovah who 'opened the womb of Sara,' and supplemented it with
+various traditions. It was related that when Isaac was born, the
+kings of the earth refused to believe such a prodigy concerning even
+a beauty of ninety years; whereupon the breasts of all their wives
+were miraculously dried up, and they all had to bring their children
+to Sara to be suckled.
+
+[37] Fortieth Parascha, fol. 37, col. 1. The solar--or more correctly,
+so far as Sara is concerned, lunar--aspects of the legend of Abraham,
+Sara, and Isaac, however important, do not affect the human nature with
+which they are associated; nor is the special service to which they
+are pressed in Jewish theology altered by the theory (should it prove
+true) which derives these personages from Aryan mythology. There seems
+to be some reason for supposing that Sara is a semiticised form of
+Saranyú. The two stand in somewhat the same typical position. Saranyú,
+daughter of Tvashtar ('the fashioner'), was mother of the first human
+pair, Yama and Yami. Sara is the first mother of those born in a new
+(covenanted) creation. Each is for a time concealed from mortals;
+each leaves her husband an illegitimate representative. Saranyú gives
+her lord Savarná ('substitute'), who by him brings forth Manu,--that
+is 'Man,' but not the original perfect Man. Sara substitutes Hagar
+('the fleeting'), and Ishmael is born, but not within the covenant.
+
+[38] Gen. iii. 14. Zerov. Hummor, fol. 8, col. 3. Parascha
+Bereschith. It is said that, according to Prov. xxv. 21, if thy
+enemy hunger thou must feed him; and hence dust must be placed for
+the serpent when its power over man is weakened by circumcision.
+
+[39] Parascha Bereschith, fol. 12, col. 4. Eisenmenger, Entdeckes
+Judenthum, ii. 409.
+
+[40] Hist. Arabûm.
+
+[41] Entdeckes Judenthum.
+
+[42] This legend may have been in the mind of the writer of the Book
+of Revelations when (xii. 14) he describes the Woman who received
+wings that she might escape the Serpent. Lilith's wings bore her to
+the Serpent.
+
+[43] Inferno, ix. 56-64.
+
+[44] She was a Lybian Queen beloved by Zeus, whose children were
+victims of Hera's jealousy. She was daughter of Belus, and it is
+a notable coincidence, if no more, that in Gen. xxxvi. 'Bela' is
+mentioned as a king of Edom, the domain of Samaël, who married Lilith.
+
+[45] The martial and hunting customs of the German women, as well
+as their equality with men, may be traced in the vestiges of their
+decline. Hexe (witch) is from hag (forest): the priestesses who carried
+the Broom of Thor were called Hagdissen. Before the seventeenth
+century the Hexe was called Drud or Trud (red folk, related to
+the Lightning-god). But the famous female hunters and warriors of
+Wodan, the Valkyries, were so called also; and the preservation of
+the epithet (Trud) in the noble name Gertrude is a connecting link
+between the German Amazons and the political power so long maintained
+by women in the same country. Their office as priestesses probably
+marks a step downward from their outdoor equality. By this route,
+as priestesses of diabolised deities, they became witches; but many
+folk-legends made these witches still great riders, and the Devil was
+said to transform and ride them as dapplegrey mares. The chief charge
+against the witches, that of carnal commerce with devils, is also
+significant. Like Lilith, women became devils' brides whenever they
+were not content with sitting at home with the distaff and the child.
+
+[46] Mr. W. B. Scott has painted a beautiful picture of Eve gazing up
+with longing at a sweet babe in the tree, whose serpent coils beneath
+she does not see.
+
+[47] 'Records of the Past,' iii. p. 83. See also i. p. 135.
+
+[48] 'Chaldean Genesis,' by George Smith, p. 70.
+
+[49] Copied in 'Chald. Gen.,' p. 91. As to the connection of this
+design with the legend of Eden, see chap. vii. of this volume.
+
+[50] 'Chaldean Genesis,' pp. 62, 63.
+
+[51] Ib., 97.
+
+[52] 'Records of the Past,' ix. 141.
+
+[53] Anu was the ruler of the highest heaven. Meteors and lightnings
+are similarly considered in Hebrew poetry as the messengers of the
+Almighty. (Psalm civ. 4, 'Who maketh his ministers a flaming fire,'
+quoted in Heb. i. 7.)
+
+[54] Im, the god of the sky, sometimes called Rimmon (the
+Thunderer). He answers to the Jupiter Tonans of the Latins.
+
+[55] The abyss or ocean where the god Hea dwelt.
+
+[56] The late Mr. G. Smith says that the Chaldean dragon was
+seven-headed. 'Chaldean Genesis,' p. 100.
+
+[57] 'Records of the Past,' vii. 123.
+
+[58] 'Records of the Past,' x. 127.
+
+[59] See i. pp. 46 and 255. Concerning Ketef see Eisenmenger,
+ii. p. 435.
+
+[60] Isaiah xiv. It may appear as if in this personification of a
+fallen star we have entered a different mythological region from that
+represented by the Assyrian tablets; but it is not so. The demoniac
+forms of Ishtar, Astarte, are fallen stars also. She appears in Greece
+as Artemis Astrateia, whose worship Pausanias mentions as coming from
+the East. Her development is through Asteria (Greek form of Ishtar),
+in whose myth is hidden much valuable Babylonian lore. Asteria was said
+to have thrown herself into the sea, and been changed into the island
+called Asteria, from its having fallen like a star from heaven. Her
+suicide was to escape from the embraces of Zeus, and her escape from
+him in form of a quail, as well as her fate, may be instructively
+compared with the story of Lilith, who flew out of Eden on wings
+to escape from Adam, and made an effort to drown herself in the Red
+Sea. The diabolisation of Asteria (the fallen star) was through her
+daughter Hecate. Hecate was the female Titan who was the most potent
+ally of the gods. Her rule was supreme under Zeus, and all the gifts
+valued by mortals were believed to proceed from her; but she was
+severely judicial, and rigidly withheld all blessings from such as
+did not deserve them. Thus she was, as the searching eye of Zeus, a
+star-spy upon earth. Such spies, as we have repeatedly had occasion
+to mention in this work, are normally developed into devils. From
+professional detectives they become accusers and instigators. Ishtar
+of the Babylonians, Asteria of the Greeks, and the Day-star of the
+Hebrews are male and female forms of the same personification: Hecate
+with her torch (hekatos, 'far-shooting') and Lucifer ('light-bringer'
+on the deeds of darkness) are the same in their degradation.
+
+[61] 'Paradise Lost,' i. 40-50.
+
+[62] And foremost rides Prince Rupert, darling of fortune and of war,
+with his beautiful and thoughtful face of twenty-three, stern and
+bronzed already, yet beardless and dimpled, his dark and passionate
+eyes, his long love-locks drooping over costly embroidery, his graceful
+scarlet cloak, his white-plumed hat, and his tall and stately form. His
+high-born beauty is preserved to us for ever on the canvas of Vandyck,
+and as the Italians have named the artist 'Il Pittore Cavalieresco,'
+so will this subject of his skill remain for ever the ideal of Il
+Cavaliere Pittoresco. And as he now rides at the head of this brilliant
+array, his beautiful white dog bounds onward joyously beside him,
+that quadruped renowned in the pamphlets of the time, whose snowy
+skin has been stained by many a blood-drop in the desperate forays of
+his master, but who has thus far escaped so safely that the Puritans
+believe him a familiar spirit, and try to destroy him 'by poyson and
+extempore prayer, which yet hurt him no more than the plague plaster
+did Mr. Pym.' Failing in this, they pronounce the pretty creature to be
+'a divell, not a very downright divell, but some Lapland ladye, once by
+nature a handsome white ladye, now by art a handsome white dogge.'--A
+Charge with Prince Rupert. Col. Higginson's 'Atlantic Essays.'
+
+[63] Isa. lxiii. 1-6.
+
+[64] Fol. 84, col. 1.
+
+[65] Maarecheth haëlahuth, fol. 257, col. 1.
+
+[66] Gesenius, Heb. Lexic.
+
+[67] Hairiness was a pretty general characteristic of devils;
+hence, possibly, the epithet 'Old Harry,' i.e., hairy, applied to
+the Devil. In 'Old Deccan Days,' p. 50, a Rakshasa is described as
+hairy:--'Her hair hangs around her in a thick black tangle.' But the
+beard has rarely been accorded to devils.
+
+[68] Buslaef has a beautiful mediæval picture of a devil inciting
+Cain to hurl stones on his prostrate brother's form.
+
+[69] Forty-one Eastern Tales.
+
+[70] The contest between the agriculturist and the (nomadic) shepherd
+is expressed in the legend that Cain and Abel divided the world between
+them, the one taking possession of the movable and the other of the
+immovable property. Cain said to his brother, 'The earth on which thou
+standest is mine, then betake thyself to the air;' but Abel replied,
+'The garments which thou wearest are mine, take them off.'--Midrash.
+
+[71] Sale's Koran, vii. Al Araf. Iblis, the Mussulman name for the
+Devil, is probably a corruption of the word diabolus.
+
+[72] Noyes' Translation.
+
+[73] Eisenmenger, Entd. Jud. i. 836.
+
+[74] Job. i. 22, the literal rendering of which is, 'In all this Job
+sinned not, nor gave God unsalted.' This translation I first heard
+from Dr. A. P. Peabody, sometime President of Harvard University, from
+whom I have a note in which he says:--'The word which I have rendered
+gave is appropriate to a sacrifice. The word I have rendered unsalted
+means so literally; and is in Job vi. 6 rendered unsavory. It may,
+and sometimes does, denote folly, by a not unnatural metaphor; but in
+that sense the word gave--an offertory word--is out of place.' Waltonus
+(Bib. Polyg.) translates 'nec dedit insulsum Deo;' had he rendered
+tiphlah by insalsum it would have been exact. The horror with which
+demons and devils are supposed to regard salt is noticed, i. 288.
+
+[75] Gesenius so understands verse 17 of chap. xiv.
+
+[76] The much misunderstood and mistranslated passage, xix. 25-27
+(already quoted), is certainly referable to the wide-spread belief
+that as against each man there was an Accusing Spirit, so for each
+there was a Vindicating Spirit. These two stood respectively on the
+right and left of the balances in which the good and evil actions of
+each soul were weighed against each other, each trying to make his
+side as heavy as possible. But as the accusations against him are
+made by living men, and on earth, Job is not prepared to consider a
+celestial acquittal beyond the grave as adequate.
+
+[77] 'The Kingdom of Heaven Taken by Prayer.' By William Huntington,
+S.S. This title is explained to be 'Sinner Saved,' otherwise one
+might understand the letters to signify a Surviving Syrian.
+
+[78] Num. xxii. 22.
+
+[79] 1 Sam. xxix. 4.
+
+[80] 2 Sam. xix. 22.
+
+[81] 1 Kings ii. 9.
+
+[82] 1 Kings v. 4.
+
+[83] 1 Kings xi. 14.
+
+[84] 1 Kings xi. 25.
+
+[85] Zech. iii.
+
+[86] Cf. Rev. vii. 3.
+
+[87] 'The Sight of Hell,' prepared, as one of a 'Series of Books for
+Children and Young Persons,' by the Rev. Father Furniss, C.S.S.R.,
+by authority of his Superiors.
+
+[88] M. Anquetil Du Perron's 'Zendavesta et Vie de Zoroastre.'
+
+[89] As given in Mr. Alabaster's 'The Wheel of the Law' (Trübner &
+Co., 1871). In the Apocryphal Gospels, some of the signs of nature's
+joy attending the birth of Buddha are reported at the birth of Mary
+and that of Christ, as the pausing of birds in their flight, &c. Anna
+is said to have conceived Mary under a tree, as Maia under a tree
+brought forth Buddha.
+
+[90] 'Mara, or Man (Sanscrit Màra, death, god of love; by some authors
+translated 'illusion,' as if it came from the Sanscrit Màya), the
+angels of evil, desire, of love, death, &c. Though King Mara plays
+the part of our Satan the tempter, he and his host were formerly
+great givers of alms, which led to their being born in the highest
+of the Deva heavens, called Paranimit Wasawatti, there to live more
+than nine thousand million years, surrounded by all the luxuries of
+sensuality. From this heaven the filthy one, as the Siamese describe
+him, descends to the earth to tempt and excite to evil.'--Alabaster.
+
+[91] Some say Djemschid, others Guenschesp, a warrior sent to hell
+for beating the fire.
+
+[92] Leben Jesu, ii. 54. The close resemblance between the trial
+of Israel in the wilderness and this of Jesus is drawn in his own
+masterly way.
+
+[93] A passage of the Pesikta (iii. 35) represents a conversation
+between Jehovah and Satan with reference to Messias which bears a
+resemblance to the prologue of Job. Satan said: Lord, permit me to
+tempt Messias and his generation. 'To him the Lord said: You could
+have no power over him. Satan again said: Permit me because I have
+the power. God answered: If you persist longer in this, rather would
+I destroy thee from the world, than that one soul of the generation
+of Messias should be lost.' Though the rabbin might report the trial
+declined, the Christian would claim it to have been endured.
+
+[94] In his fresco of the Temptation at the Vatican, Michael Angelo
+has painted the Devil in the dress of a priest, standing with Jesus
+on the Temple.
+
+[95] 'Idols and Ideals.' London: Trübner & Co. New York: Henry Holt &
+Co. In the Essay on Christianity I have given my reasons for this
+belief.
+
+[96] 'Paradise Regained,' ii.
+
+[97] 'Henry Luria; or, the Little Jewish Convert: being contained in
+the Memoir of Mrs. S. T. Cohen, relict of the Rev. Dr. A. H. Cohen,
+late Rabbi of the Synagogue in Richmond, Va.' 1860.
+
+[98] 'Heroes and Hero-worship,' iv.
+
+[99] 'Sartor Resartus.' London: Chapman & Hall, 1869, p. 160.
+
+[100] 'The American Scholar.' An Oration delivered before the Phi
+Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge (Massachusetts), August 31, 1837. By
+Ralph Waldo Emerson.
+
+[101] The relations of this system to those of various countries are
+stated by Professor King in his work 'The Gnostics and their Remains.'
+
+[102] In the Architectural Museum, Westminster, there is an old
+picture which possibly represents the hairy Adam.
+
+[103] Josephus; 'Wars of the Jews,' vi. 1.
+
+[104] Those who wish to pursue the subject may consult Plutarch,
+Philo, Josephus, Diog. Laertius; also Eisenmenger, Wetstein, Elsner,
+Doughtæi, Lightfoot, Sup. Relig., &c.
+
+[105] See 'Supernatural Religion,' vol. i. ch. 4 and 5, for ample
+references concerning these superstitions among both Jews and
+Christians.
+
+[106] 'Saducismus,' p. 53.
+
+[107] 'Eastern Morning News,' quoted in the 'National Reformer,'
+December 17, 1877.
+
+[108] Much curious information is contained in the work already
+referred to, 'L'Eau Benite au Dix-neuvième Siècle.' Par Monsignor
+Gaume, Protonotaire Apostolique. Paris, 1866. It is there stated that
+water escaped the curse; that salt produces fecundity; that devils
+driven off temporarily by the cross are effectually dismissed by
+holy water; that St. Vincent, interrupted by a storm while preaching,
+dispersed it by throwing holy water at it; and he advises the use of
+holy water against the latest devices of the devil--spirit-rapping. It
+must not, however, be supposed that these notions are confined to
+Catholics. Every element in the disquisition of Monsignor Gaume is
+represented in the region where his church is most hated. Mr. James
+Napier, in his recent book on Folklore, shows us the Scotch hastening
+new-born babes to baptism lest they become 'changelings,' and the
+true meaning of the rite is illustrated in a reminiscence of his
+own childhood. He was supposed to be pining under an Evil Eye, and
+the old woman, or 'skilly,' called in, carefully locked the door,
+now unlocked by her patient, and proceeded as follows:-- 'A sixpence
+was borrowed from a neighbour, a good fire was kept burning in the
+grate, the door was locked, and I was placed upon a chair in front of
+the fire. The operator, an old woman, took a tablespoon and filled
+it with water. With the sixpence she then lifted as much salt as it
+would carry, and both were put into the water in the spoon. The water
+was then stirred with the forefinger till the salt was dissolved. Then
+the soles of my feet and the palms of my hands were bathed with this
+solution thrice, and after these bathings I was made to taste the
+solution three times. The operator then drew her wet forefinger
+across my brow--called scoring aboon the breath. The remaining
+contents of the spoon she then cast right over the fire, into the
+hinder part of the fire, saying as she did so, 'Guid preserve frae a'
+skaith.' These were the first words permitted to be spoken during the
+operation. I was then put in bed, and, in attestation of the charm,
+recovered. To my knowledge this operation has been performed within
+these forty years, and probably in many outlying country places it
+is still practised. The origin of this superstition is probably to be
+found in ancient fire-worship. The great blazing fire was evidently an
+important element in the transaction; nor was this a solitary instance
+in which regard was paid to the fire. I remember being taught that
+it was unlucky to spit into the fire, some evil being likely shortly
+after to befall those who did so. Crumbs left upon the table after
+a meal were carefully gathered and put into the fire. The cuttings
+from the nails and hair were also put into the fire. These freaks
+certainly look like survivals of fire-worship.' It may be well here
+to refer the reader to what has been said in vol. i. on Demons of
+Fire. The Devil's fear of salt and consequently of water confirmed
+the perhaps earlier apprehension of all fiery phantoms of that which
+naturally quenches flame.
+
+[109] We here get a clue to the origin of various strange ceremonies by
+which men bind themselves to one another. Michelet, in his 'Origines
+du Droit Français,' writes: 'Boire le sang l'un de l'autre, c'etait
+pour ainsi dire se faire même chair. Ce symbole si expressif se trouve
+chez un grand nombre de peuples;' and he gives instances from various
+ancient races. But, as we here see, this practice is not originally
+adopted as a symbol (no practices begin as symbols), but is prompted
+by the belief that a community of nature is thus established, and a
+community of power over one another.
+
+[110] 'Principles of Sociology,' i. ch. xix. Origen says, that a
+man eats and drinks with demons when he eats flesh and drinks wine
+offered to idols. (Contra Cels. viii. 31.)
+
+[111] Dr. James Browne's 'History of the Highlands,' ed. 1855, i. 108.
+
+[112] 'Aurea Legenda.' The story, as intertwined with that of the
+discovery of the true cross by the Empress Helena, was a fruitful
+theme for artists. It has been painted in various versions by Angiolo
+Gaddi in S. Croce at Florence, by Pietro della Francesca at Arezzo,
+and in S. Croce in Ger. at Rome are frescoes celebrating Helena in a
+chapel named from her, but into which persons of her sex are admitted
+only once a year.
+
+[113] To the 'Secular Chronicle,' February 11, 1877.
+
+[114] Psalm lv.
+
+[115] Jer. xxv. 38; xlvi. 16; l. 16.
+
+[116] Isaiah xi. 2, 3.
+
+[117] The more fatal aspect of the dove has tended to invest the
+pigeon, especially wild pigeons, which in Oldenburg, and many other
+regions, are supposed to bode calamity and death if they fly round
+a house.
+
+[118] Sir Nathaniel Wraxall's Memoirs.
+
+[119] Matt. xii. 31.
+
+[120] Mark iii. 28.
+
+[121] I have before me an account by a christian mother of the death
+of her child, whom she had dedicated to the Lord before his birth,
+in which she says, 'A full breath issued from his mouth like an
+etherial flame, a slight quiver of the lip, and all was over.'
+
+[122] 'Serpent poison.' It is substantially the same word as the
+demonic Samaël. The following is from Colonel Campbell's 'Travels,'
+ii. p. 130:--'It was still the hot season of the year, and we were
+to travel through that country over which the horrid wind I have
+before mentioned sweeps its consuming blasts; it is called by the
+Turks Samiel, is mentioned by the holy Job under the name of the East
+wind, and extends its ravages all the way from the extreme end of the
+Gulf of Cambaya up to Mosul; it carries along with it flakes of fire,
+like threads of silk; instantly strikes dead those that breathe it,
+and consumes them inwardly to ashes; the flesh soon becoming black
+as a coal, and dropping off the bones. Philosophers consider it as
+a kind of electric fire, proceeding from the sulphurous or nitrous
+exhalations which are kindled by the agitations of the winds. The only
+possible means of escape from its fatal effects is to fall flat on the
+ground, and thereby prevent the drawing it in; to do this, however,
+it is necessary first to see it, which is not always practicable.'
+
+[123] The 'Sacred Anthology,' p. 425. Nizami uses his fable to
+illustrate the effect of even an innocent flower on one whom conscience
+has made a coward.
+
+[124] Nothing is more natural than the Triad: the regions which may
+be most simply distinguished are the Upper, Middle, and Lower.
+
+[125] Bhàgavàt-Gita.
+
+[126] Gulistan.
+
+[127] Acts ii.
+
+[128] Compare Gen. vi. 3. Jehovah said, 'My breath shall not always
+abide in man.'
+
+[129] Among the many survivals in civilised countries of these notions
+may be noticed the belief that, in order to be free from a spell it is
+necessary to draw blood from the witch above the breath, i.e., mouth
+and nostrils; to 'score aboon the breath' is a Scottish phrase. This
+probably came by the 'pagan' route; but it meets its christian kith and
+kin in the following story which I find in a (MS.) Memorial sent to the
+House of Lords in 1869 by the Rev. Thomas Berney, Rector of Bracon Ash,
+Diocese of Norwich:--'I was sent for in haste to privately baptize
+a child thought to be dying, and belonging to parents who lived 'on
+the Common' at Hockering. It indeed appeared to be very ill, and its
+eyes were fixed, and remarkably clouded and dull. Having baptized,
+I felt moved with a longing desire to be enabled to heal the child;
+and I prayed very earnestly to the Lord God Almighty to give me faith
+and strength to enable me to do so. And I put my hands on its head
+and drew them down on to its arms; and then breathed on its head
+three times, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And as I held
+its arms and looked on it anxiously, its face became exceedingly
+red and dark, and as the child gradually assumed a natural colour,
+the eyes became clear again; and then it gently closed its eyes in
+sleep. And I told the mother not to touch it any more till it awoke;
+but to carry it up in the cradle as it was. The next morning I found
+the child perfectly well. She had not touched it, except at four in
+the morning to feed it, when it seemed dead asleep, and it did not
+awake till ten o'clock.' This was written by an English Rector, and
+dated from the Carlton Club! The italics are in the original MS. now
+before me. The importance that no earthly hand should profanely touch
+the body while the spirit was at work in it shows how completely
+systematised is that insanity which consists of making a human mind
+an arena for the survival of the unfittest.
+
+[130] Luke xxii. 31.
+
+[131] Amos ix. 8, 9.
+
+[132] 1 Cor. v. 5.
+
+[133] 2 Cor. xi. 13.
+
+[134] 1 John iv. 2, 3.
+
+[135] Polycarp, Ep. to Philippians, vii.
+
+[136] 2 Thess. ii.
+
+[137] 2 Peter ii. 15.
+
+[138] John xvii. 12.
+
+[139] 'But,' says Professor King (Gnostics, p. 52), 'a dispassionate
+examiner will discover that these two zealous Fathers somewhat beg
+the question in assuming that the Mithraic rites were invented as
+counterfeits of the Christian Sacraments; the former having really been
+in existence long before the promulgation of Christianity.' Whatever
+may have been the incidents in the life of Christ connected with
+such things, it is certainly true, as Professor King says, that these
+'were afterwards invested with the mystic and supernatural virtues,
+in a later age insisted upon as articles of faith, by succeeding
+and unscrupulous missionaries, eager to outbid the attractions of
+more ancient ceremonies of a cognate character.' In the porch of
+the Church Bocca della Verita at Rome, there is, or was, a fresco of
+Ceres shelling corn and Bacchus pressing grapes, from them falling
+the elements of the Eucharist to a table below. This was described
+to me by a friend, but when I went to see it in 1872, it had just
+been whitewashed over! I called the attention of Signor Rosa to
+this shameful proceeding, and he had then some hope that this very
+interesting relic might be recovered.
+
+[140] Op. iv. 511. Col. Agrip. 1616.
+
+[141] For full details of all these superstitions see Eisenmenger
+(Entd. Jud. li. Armillus); D'Herbelot (Bib. Orient. Daggiel);
+Buxtorf (Lexicon, Armillus); Calmet, Antichrist; and on the same
+word, Smith; also a valuable article in M'Clintock and Strong's
+Cyc. Bib. Lit. (American).
+
+[142] Deutsch, 'Lit. Remains.' Islam.
+
+[143] Weil's 'Biblical Legends.'
+
+[144] Eisenmenger, ii. 60.
+
+[145] See vol. i. pp. 58 and 358.
+
+[146] 'Zoroastrische Studien,' pp. 138-147. With which comp. Spiegel,
+Transl. of Avesta, III. xlvii.
+
+[147] 'Studies in the Hist. of the Renaissance.' Macmillan.
+
+[148] 'Chald. Genesis,' by George Smith, p. 84.
+
+[149] This text was engraved by Mrs. Rose Mary Crawshay on a tomb
+she had erected in honour of her humble neighbour, Mr. Norbury, who
+sought knowledge for its own sake. Few ancient scriptures could have
+supplied an inscription so appropriate.
+
+[150] Mr. Baring-Gould, quoting this (from Anastasius Sinaita, Hodêgos,
+ed. Gretser, Ingolst. 1606, p. 269), attributes this shining face of
+Seth to his previous character as a Sun-god. ('Old Test. Legends,'
+i. 84.)
+
+[151] King's 'Gnostics,' p. 53, n.
+
+[152] Tertullian's phrase, 'The Devil is God's Ape,' became popular at
+one time, and the Ape-devil had frequent representation in art--as,
+for instance, in Holbein's 'Crucifixion' (1477), now at Augsburg,
+where a Devil with head of an ape, bat-wings, and flaming red legs
+is carrying off the soul of the impenitent thief. The same subject
+is found in the same gallery in an Altdorfer, where the Devil's face
+is that of a gorilla.
+
+[153] S. Cyp. ap. Muratori, Script. it. i. 295, 545. The
+Magicians used to call their mirrors after the name of this
+flower-devil--Fiorone. M. Maury, 'La Magie,' 435 n.
+
+[154] This whole subject is treated, and with ample references,
+in M. Maury's 'Magie,' p. 41, seq.
+
+[155] 'La Sorcière.'
+
+[156] Dasent's 'Norse Tales,' Introd. ciii.
+
+[157] 'Chips,' ii.
+
+[158] 'Chester Plays,' 1600.
+
+[159] 'Declaration of Popish Impostures,' 1603.
+
+[160] So Shakespere, 'The Devil damn thee black.'
+
+[161] In an account, 1568, we find:--'pay'd for iij li of heare
+ijs vjd.'
+
+[162] The Directions for the 'Castle of Good Perseverance,' say:
+'& he þt schal pley belyal, loke þt he have guñe powdr breñng in
+pypysih's hands & i h's ers & i h's ars whãne he gothe to batayle.'
+
+[163] This notion was widespread. I have seen an ancient Russian
+picture in which the Devil is dancing before a priest who has become
+drowsy over his prayer-book. There was once a Moslem controversy
+as to whether it was fair for pilgrims to keep themselves awake for
+their prayers by chewing coffee-berries.
+
+[164] 'Liber Revelationum de Insidiis et Versutiis Dæmonum adversus
+Homines.' See Reville's Review of Roskoff, 'The Devil,' p. 38.
+
+[165] See M. Maury's 'Magie,' p. 48.
+
+[166] The history has been well related by a little work by Dr. Albert
+Réville: 'Apollonius of Tyana, the Pagan Christ.' Chatto & Windus.
+
+[167] Sinistrari names Luther as one of eleven persons whom he
+enumerates as having been begotten by Incubi, 'Enfin, comme l'ecrit
+Codens, cité par Maluenda, ce damné Hérésiarque, qui a nom Martin
+Luther.'--'Démonialité,' 30.
+
+[168] Glanvil's 'Saducismus.'
+
+[169] King Lear, iii. 4. Asmodeus and Mohammed are, no doubt, corrupted
+in these names, which are given as those of devils in Harsenet's
+'Declaration of Popish Impostures.'
+
+[170] 'A Discourse of Witchcraft. As it was acted in the Family of
+Mr. Edward Fairfax, of Fuystone, in the county of York, in the year
+1621. Sibi parat malum, qui alteri parat.'
+
+[171] W. F. Poole, Librarian of Chicago, to whom I am indebted for
+a copy of Governor Thomas Hutchinson's account of 'The Witchcraft
+Delusion of 1692,' with his valuable notes on the same.
+
+[172] The delicacy with which these animals are alluded to rather
+than directly named indicates that they had not lost their formidable
+character in Elfdale so far as to be spoken of rashly.
+
+[173] Glanvil, 'Saducismus Triumphatus,' p. 170.
+
+[174] Porphyry, ap. Euseb. v. 12. The formula not preserved by
+Eusebius is supposed by M. Maury ('Magie,' 56) to be that contained
+in the 'Philosophumena,' attributed to Origen:--'Come, infernal,
+terrestrial, and celestial Bombo! goddess of highways, of cross-roads,
+thou who bearest the light, who travellest the night, enemy of the
+day, friend and companion of darkness; thou rejoicing in the baying
+of dogs and in shed blood, who wanderest amid shadows and over tombs;
+thou who desirest blood and bearest terrors to mortals,--Gorgo, Mormo,
+moon of a thousand forms, aid with a propitious eye our sacrifices!'
+
+[175] 'The Devil,' &c., p. 51.
+
+[176] Scheible's 'Kloster,' 5, 116. Zauberbücher.
+
+[177] Bayard Taylor's 'Faust,' note 45. See also his Appendix I. for
+an excellent condensation of the Faust legend from the best German
+sources.
+
+[178] Tertull. ad Marcion, iii. 18. S. Ignatii Episc. et Martyr ad
+Phil. Ep. viii. 'The Prince of this world rejoices when any one denies
+the cross, for he knows the confession of the cross to be his ruin.'
+
+[179] See his 'Acta,' by Simeon Metaphrastus.
+
+[180] I have been much struck by the resemblance between the dumpy
+monkish dwarf, in the old wall-picture of Auerbach's Cellar, meant for
+Mephistopheles, and the portrait of Asmodeus in the early editions
+of 'Le Diable Boiteux.' But, as devils went in those days, they are
+good-looking enough.
+
+[181] Shelley's Translation.
+
+[182] Bayard Taylor's Translation. Scene iv.
+
+[183] See Lavater's Physiognomy, Plates xix. and xx., in which
+some artist has shown what variations can be made to order on an
+intellectual and benevolent face.
+
+[184] 'Der deutsche Volksaberglaube der Gegenwart.' Von Dr. Adolf
+Wuttke, Prof. der Theol. in Halle. Berlin: Verlag von Wiegand &
+Grieben. 1869.
+
+[185] 'Histoire de France et des Choses Mémorables,' &c.
+
+[186] The universal myth of Sleepers,--christianised in the myth
+of St. John, and of the Seven whose slumber is traceable as far
+as Tours,--had a direct pagan development in Jami, Barbarossa,
+Arthur, and their many variants. It is the legend of the Castle of
+Sewingshields in Northumberland, that King Arthur, his queen and
+court, remain there in a subterranean hall, entranced, until some one
+should first blow a bugle-horn near the entrance hall, and then with
+'the sword of the stone' cut a garter placed there beside it. But
+none had ever heard where the entrance to this enchanted hall was,
+till a farmer, fifty years since, was sitting knitting on the ruins
+of the castle, and his clew fell and ran downwards through briars
+into a deep subterranean passage. He cleared the portal of its weeds
+and rubbish, and entering a vaulted passage, followed the clew. The
+floor was infested with toads and lizards; and bats flitted fearfully
+around him. At length his sinking courage was strengthened by a dim,
+distant light, which, as he advanced, grew gradually brighter, till all
+at once he entered a vast and vaulted hall, in the centre of which a
+fire, without fuel, from a broad crevice in the floor, blazed with a
+high and lambent flame, that showed all the carved walls and fretted
+roof, and the monarch and his queen and court reposing around in a
+theatre of thrones and costly couches. On the floor, beyond the fire,
+lay the faithful and deep-toned pack of thirty couple of hounds; and
+on a table before it the spell-dissolving horn, sword, and garter. The
+shepherd firmly grasped the sword, and as he drew it from its rusty
+scabbard the eyes of the monarch and his courtiers began to open,
+and they rose till they sat upright. He cut the garter, and as
+the sword was slowly sheathed the spell assumed its ancient power,
+and they all gradually sank to rest; but not before the monarch had
+lifted up his eyes and hands and exclaimed--
+
+
+ O woe betide that evil day
+ On which this witless wight was born,
+ Who drew the sword--the garter cut,
+ But never blew the bugle horn.
+
+
+Terror brought on loss of memory, and the shepherd was unable to give
+any correct account of his adventure, or to find again the entrance
+to the enchanted hall.--Hodgson's 'Northumberland.'
+
+[187] This great discussion between the animals and sages is given in
+'The Sacred Anthology' (London: Trübner & Co. New York: Henry Holt &
+Co.). It is a very ancient story, and was probably written down at
+the beginning of the christian era.
+
+[188] It is a strange proof of the ignorance concerning Hindu religion
+that Jugernath, raised in a sense for reprobation of cruelty to
+man and beast, should have been made by a missionary myth a Western
+proverb for human sacrifices!
+
+[189] St. Olaf = Stooley = Tooley.
+
+[190] High bloweth Heimdall His horn aloft; Odin consulteth Mimir's
+head; The old ash yet standing Yggdrasill To its summit is shaken,
+And loose breaks the giant.--Voluspa.
+
+[191] 'Rigveda,' x. 99.
+
+[192] 'Zoolog. Myth.,' ii. 8, 10, &c.
+
+[193] 'The Mahawanso.' Translated by the Hon. George Turnour, Ceylon,
+1836, p. 69.
+
+[194] It was an ancient custom to offer a stag on the high altar of
+Durham Abbey, the sacrifice being accompanied with winding of horns, on
+Holy Rood Day, which suggests a form of propitiating the Wild Huntsman
+in the hunting season. On the Cheviot Hills there is a chasm called
+Hen Hole, 'in which there is frequently seen a snow egg at Midsummer,
+and it is related that a party of hunters, while chasing a roe,
+were beguiled into it by fairies, and could never again find their
+way out.'--Richardson's 'Borderer's Table-Book,' vi 400. The Bridled
+Devil of Durham Cathedral may be an allusion to the Wild Huntsman.
+
+[195] In the pre-petrified era of Theology this hope appears
+to have visited the minds of some, Origen for instance. But by
+many centuries of utilisation the Devil became so essential to the
+throne of Christianity that theologians were more ready to spare God
+from their system than Satan. 'Even the clever Madame de Staël,'
+said Goethe, 'was greatly scandalised that I kept the Devil in
+such good-humour. In the presence of God the Father, she insisted
+upon it, he ought to be more grim and spiteful. What will she say
+if she sees him promoted a step higher,--nay, perhaps, meets him in
+heaven?' Though, in another conversation with Falk, Goethe intimates
+that he had written a passage 'where the Devil himself receives grace
+and mercy from God,' the artistic theory of his poem could permit
+no nearer approach to this than those closing lines (Faust, II.) in
+which Mephistopheles reproaches the 'case-hardened Devil' and himself
+for their mismanagement. To the isolated, the not yet humanised,
+intellect sensuality is evil when senseless, and its hell is folly.
+
+[196] 'Demonialite,' 60-62, &c. We may hope that this learned man,
+during his tenure of office under the Inquisition, had some mercy
+for the poor devils dragged before that tribunal.
+
+[197] 'Reverberations.' By W. M. W. Call, M.A., Cambridge. Second
+Edition. Trübner & Co., 1876.
+
+[198] The Holy Grail was believed to have been fashioned from the
+largest of all diamonds, lost from the crown of Satan as he fell
+from Heaven. Guarded by angels until used at the Last Supper, it was
+ultimately secured by Arthur's knight, Percival, and--such is the
+irony of mythology--indirectly by the aid of Satan's own son, Merlin!
+
+[199] See Mr. J. A. Froude's article in 'Fraser's Magazine,' Feb. 1878,
+'Origen and Celsus.'
+
+[200] Mr. W. W. Lloyd's 'Age of Pericles,' vol. ii. p. 202.
+
+[201] Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the R. A. S., 1865-6: Art. on
+'Demonology and Witchcraft in Ceylon,' by Dundris de Silva Gooneratne
+Modliar.
+
+[202] Euripides, 'Medea,' 574.
+
+[203] 'Paradise Lost,' x. 860.
+
+[204] Herodotus, 'Clio,' 7-14, 91.
+
+[205] 'Expression of the Emotions.' By Charles Darwin. London: Murray,
+1872. Chapter IV.
+
+[206] The giving of Eve's name to Noah's wife is not the
+only significant thing about this Russian tradition and its
+picture. Long-bearded devils are nowhere normal except in the
+representations by the Eastern Church of the monarch of Hell. By
+referring to p. 253 of this volume the reader will observe the
+influences which caused the infernal king to be represented as
+counterpart of the Deity. As this tradition about Noah's wife is
+suggestive of a Gnostic origin, it really looks as if the Devil in
+it were meant to act the part which the Gnostics ascribed to Jehovah
+himself (vol. ii. p. 207). The Devil is said in rabbinical legends to
+have seduced the wives of Noah's sons; this legend seems to show that
+his aim was to populate the post-diluvial world entirely with his own
+progeny, in this being an Ildabaoth, or degraded edition of Jehovah
+trying to establish his own family in the earth by the various means
+related in vol. i. chap. 8.
+
+[207] 'Nischamath Chajim,' fol. 139, col. 2.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Demonology and Devil-lore, by Moncure Daniel Conway
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40686 ***
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