after those who exercise pagan practices, employ magic arts, adore the genii of particular places, of tombs or rivers, who transport themselves by a diabolical mode of travelling through the air from place to place. In the extremity of the northern peninsula (amongst the Laplanders), where the light of science, or indeed of civilisation, has scarcely yet penetrated, witchcraft remains as flourishing as in the days of Odin; and the Laplanders at present are possibly as credulous in this respect as the old Northmen or the present tribes of Africa and the South Pacific. Before the introduction of the new religion (it is a curious fact), the Germans and Scandinavians, as well as the Jews, were acquainted with the efficacy of the rite of infant baptism. A Norsk chronicle of the twelfth century, speaking of a Norwegian nobleman who lived in the reign of Harald Harfraga, relates that he poured water on the head of his new-born son, and called him Hakon, after the name of his father. Harald himself had been baptized in the same way; and it is noted of the infant pagan St. Olaf that his mother had him baptized as soon as he was born. The Livonians observed the same ceremony; and a letter sent expressly by Pope Gregory III. to St. Boniface, the great apostle of the Germans, directs him how to act in such cases. It is probable, Mallet conjectures, that all these people might intend by such a rite to preserve their children from the sorceries and evil charms which wicked spirits might employ against them at the instant of their birth. Several nations of Asia and America have attributed such a power to ablutions of this kind; nor were the Romans without the custom, though they did not wholly confine it to new-born infants. A curious magical use of an initiatory and sacramental rite, ignorantly anticipated, it seems, by the unilluminated faith of the pagan world.
In reviewing the characteristics of sorcery which prevailed in the ancient world, it is obvious to compare the superstition as it existed in the nations of the East and West, of antiquity and of modern times. These natural or accidental differences are deducible apparently from the following causes:—(1) The essential distinction between the demonology of Orientalism—of Brahminism, Buddhism, Magianism, Judaism, Mohammedanism—and that of the West, of paganism and of Christianity, founded on their respective idealistic and realistic tendencies. (2) The divining or necromantic faculties have been generally regarded in the East as honourable properties; whereas in the West they have been degraded into the criminal follies of an infernal compact. The magical art is a noble cultivated science—a prerogative of the priestly caste: witchcraft, in its strict sense, was mostly abandoned to the lowest, and, as a rule, to the oldest and ugliest of the female sex. In the one case the proficient was the master, in the other the slave, of the demons. (3) The position of the female sex in the Western world has been always very opposite to their status in the East, where women are believed to be an inferior order of beings, and therefore incapable of an art reserved for the superior endowments of the male sex. The modern witchcraft may be traced to that perhaps oldest form of religious conception, Fetishism, which still prevails in its utmost horrors amongst the savage peoples in different parts of the world. The early practice of magic was not dishonourable in its origin, closely connected as it was with the study of natural science—with astronomy and chymistry.
The magic system—interesting to us as having influenced the later Jewish creed and mediately the Christian—referred like most developed creeds to a particular founder, Zerdusht (Zarathustra of the Zend), may have thus originated. Mankind, in seeking a solution for that most interesting but unsatisfactory problem, the cause of the predominance of evil on the earth, were obliged by their ignorance and their fears to imagine, in addition to the idea of a single supreme existence, the author and source of good, antagonistic influence—the source and representative of evil. Physical phenomena of every day experience; the alternations of light and darkness, of sunshine and clouds; the changes and oppositions in the outer world, would readily supply an analogy to the moral world. Thus the dawn and the sun, darkness and storms, in the wondering mind of the earlier inhabitants of the globe, may have soon assumed the substantial forms of personal and contending deities.32 Such seems to be the origin of the personifications in the Vedic hymns of Indra and Vritra with their subordinate ministers (the Ormuzd and Ahriman, &c., of the Zend-Avesta), and of the first religious conceptions of other peoples. After this attempt to reconcile the contradictions, the irregularities of nature, by establishing a duality of gods whose respective provinces are the happiness and unhappiness of the human race, the step was easy to the conviction of the superior activity of a malignant god. The benevolent but epicurean security of the first deity might seem to have little concern in defeating or preventing the malicious schemes of the other. All the infernal apparatus of later ages was easy to be supplied by a delusive and an unreasoning imagination.
1. That 'speculation has on every subject of human enquiry three successive stages; in the first of which it tends to explain the phenomena by supernatural agencies, in the second by metaphysical abstractions, and in the third or final state, confines itself to ascertaining their laws of succession and similitude' (System of Logic, by J. S. Mill), is a generalisation of Positive Philosophy, and a theory of the Science of History, consistent probably with the progress of knowledge among philosophers, but is scarcely applicable to the mass of mankind.
2. According to Dr. Sprenger (Life of Mohammed). Cicero's observation that there was no people either so civilised or learned, or so savage and barbarous, that had not a belief that the future may be predicted by certain persons (De Divinatione, i.), is justified by the faith of Christendom, as well as by that of paganism; and is as true of witchcraft as it is of prophecy or divination.
3. Dr. Balthazar Becker, Amsterdam, 1691, quoted in Mosheim's Institutes of Ecclesiastical History, ed. Reid.
4. Spectator, No. 117. The sentiments of Addison on a kindred subject are very similar. Writing about the vulgar ghost creed, he adds these remarkable words: 'At the same time I think a person who is thus terrified with the imagination of ghosts and spectres much more reasonable than one who, contrary to the reports of all historians, sacred and profane, ancient and modern, and to the traditions of all nations, thinks the appearance of spirits fabulous and groundless. Could not I give myself up to the general testimony of mankind, I should to the relations of particular persons who are now living, and whom I cannot distrust in other matters of fact.' Samuel Johnson (whose prejudices were equalled only by his range of knowledge) proved his faith in a well-known case, if afterwards he advanced so far as to consider the question as to the reality of 'ghosts' as undecided. Sir W. Scott, who wrote when the profound metaphysical inquiries of Hume had gained ground (it is observable), is quite sceptical.
5. The names of two of these magicians, Jannes and Jambres, have been preserved by revelation or tradition.
6. Sir W. Scott, Letters on Demonology.
7. Dean Stanley's Lectures on the Jewish Church.
8. Discoverie of Witchcraft, lib. viii. chap. 12. The contrivance of this illusion was possibly like that at Delphi, where in the centre of the temple was a chasm, from which arose an intoxicating smoke, when the priestess was to announce divine revelations. Seated over the chasm upon the tripod, the Pythia was inspired, it seems, by the soporific and maddening drugs.
9. Antiquities, book viii. 2. Whiston's transl.
10. Some ingenious remarks on the subject of the serpent, &c., may be found in Eastern Life, part ii. 5, by H. Martineau.
