Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/73

Rh purposes which the doctrine of demons served in the philo sophy of the primitive and savage world, as well as its large contribution to civilized superstition. The authorities, when not mentioned, will mostly be found referred to in Tylor, Primitive Culture, chaps, xiv. xv. Other cases are given in Spencer, Principles of Sociology, vol. i., and every reader may supplement them with similar instances from the works of travellers and missionaries. Prof. Adolf Bastian s Der Mensch in der Geschichte and Beitrdge zur Vergleichenden Psychologic are of great value to students. Among races of low culture, the conception of a ghost- soul being made to account for the phenomena of life (see article ANIMISM) readily leads to a correspond ing theory of morbid states of body and mind. As the man s proper soul causes the functions of normal life by its presence, while its more or less continued absence induces sleep, trance, and at last death, so the abnormal phenomena of disease have a sufficient explanation at hand in the idea that some other soul or soul-like spirit is acting on or has entered into the patient. Among the cases which most strongly suggest this are first, such derangements as hysteria, epilepsy, and madness, where the raving and convulsions seem to bystanders like the acts of some other being in possession of the patient s body, and even the patient is apt to think so when he &quot; comes to himself,&quot; and, second, internal diseases where severe pain or wasting away may be ascribed to some unseen being wounding or gnawing within. The applicability of demoniacal possession as a theory to explain diseasa in general is best proved by the fact that it is so often thus ap plied by savage races. Especially, reasoning out the matter in similar ways, rucle tribes in different countries have repeatedly arrived at the conclusion that diseases are caused by the surviving souls or ghosts of the dead, who appear to the living in dreams and visions, thus proving at once their existence after death, and their continued concern with mankind. This notion being once set on foot, it becomes easy to the savage mind to identify the particular spirit, as when the Tasmanian ascribes a gnawing disease to his having unwittingly pronounced the name of a dead man, who thus summoned has crept into his body, and is consuming his liver; or when the sick Zulu believes that some dead ancestor he sees in a dream has caused his ailment, wanting to bs propitiated with the sacrifice of an ox ; or when the Samoan persuades himself that the ancestral souls, who on occasion reveal themselves by talking through the voices of living members of the family, are the same beings who will take up their abode in the heads or stomachs of living men and cause their illness and death. Here, then, the demon appears in what seems its original character of a human ghost. We may notice in the last example the frequent case of the man s mind being so thoroughly under the belief in a spirit possessing him that ho speaks in the person of that spirit, and gives its name ; the bearing of this on oracular possession will appear presently. In many, perhaps in most cases, however, the disease-demon is not specially described as a human ghost ; for instance, some Malay tribes in their simple theory of diseases are content to say that one kind of demon causes small-pox, another brings on swellings, and so on. The question is whether in such cases the human character has merely dropped away, and this seems likely from the very human fashion in which the demons are communicated tvith ; they are talked to with entreaties or threats, enticed out with offerings of food, or driven away with noises and blows, just as though they were human souls accessible to the same motives as when they were in the body. Thus the savage theory of demoniacal possession has for its natural result the practice of exorcism or banishment of the spirit as the regular means of cure, as where, to select these from hundreds of instances, the Antilles Indians in Columbus s time went through the pretence of pulling the disease off the patient and blowing it away, bidding it begone to the mountain or the sea., or where the Patagonians till lately, believing every sick person to be possessed by an evil demon, drove it away by beating at the bed s head a drum painted with figures of devils. That such modern savage notions fairly represent the doctrine of disease-possession in the ancient world is proved by the records of the earliest civilized nations. The very charms still exist by which the ancient Egyptians resisted the attacks of the wicked souls who, become demons, entered the bodies of men to torment them with diseases and drive them to furious madness. The doctrine of disease among the ancient Babylonians was that the swarming spirits of the air entered man s body, and it was the exorcist s duty to expel by incantations &quot; the noxious neck-spirit,&quot; &quot; the burning spirit of the entrails which devours the man,&quot; and to make the piercing pains in the head fly away &quot; like grasshoppers &quot; into the sky. (See Records of the Past, vols. i., iii., &c. ; Birch s trans, of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, see below ; Maspero, Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de V Orient, p. 41 ; Lenormant, La Magie chez les Chaldeens, &c.) The transition-stage of the ancient belief in the classical period of Greece and Rome is particularly interesting. The scientific doctrine of medicine was beginning to encroach upon it, but it was still current opinion that a fit was an attack by a demon (eTu A^ts = &quot; seizure,&quot; hence English epilepsy], that fury or madness was demoniacal possession (Sai/xovaw = to be possessed by an evil spirit, hence English dcemoniac, &c.), that madmen were &quot;larvati,&quot; i.e., inhabited by ghosts, &amp;lt;fec. No record shows the ancient theory more clearly than the New Testament, from the explicit way in which the symptoms of the various affections are described, culminat ing in the patient declaring the name of his possessing demon, and answering in his person when addressed. The similarity of the symptoms with those which in barbarous countries are still accounted for in the ancient way may be seen from such statements as the following, by a well- known missionary (Rev. J. L. Wilson, Western Africa, p. 217): &quot;Demoniacal possessions are common, and the feats performed by those who are supposed to be under such influence are certainly not unlike those described in the New Testament. Frantic gestures, convulsions, foam ing at the mouth, feats of supernatural strength, furious ravings, bodily lacerations, gnashing of teeth, and other things of a similar character, may be witnessed in most of the cases.&quot; Among the early Christians the demoniacs or energumens (&amp;lt;?vepyov/*evoi) formed a special class under the control of a clerical order of exorcists, and a mass of evidence drawn from such writers as Cyril, Tertullian, Chrysostom, and Minutius Felix, shows that the symp toms of those possessed were such as modern physi cians would class under hysteria, epilepsy, lunacy, &c. (See their works, and refs. in Bingham, Antiquities of the Christian Church ; Maury, La Magie et I Astrologie, part ii. ch. 2, &amp;lt;fec.) Some theologians, while in deference to advanced medical knowledge they abandon the primitive theory of demons causing such diseases in our own time, place themselves in an embarrassing position by maintain ing, on the supposed sanction of Scripture, that the same symptoms were really caused by demoniacal possession in the 1st century. A full statement of the arguments on both sides of this once important controversy will be found in earlier editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, but for our times it seems too like a discussion whether the earth was really flat in the ages when it was believed to be so, but became round since astronomers provided a different explanation of the same phenomena. It is more profitable 