Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/74

Rh to notice how gradual the change of opinion has been from the doctrine of demon-possession to the scientific theory of disease, and how largely the older view still survives in the world. Not only in savage districts, but, in countries whose native civilization is below the European level, such as India and China, the curious observer may still see the exorcist expel the malignant ghost or demon from the patient afflicted with fever, dizziness, frenzy, or any unaccountable ailment. (See Ward, History of the Hindoos, vol. i. p. 155, vol ii. p. 183 ; Roberts, Oriental Illustrations of the Scriptures, p. 529 ; Doolittle, Social Life of the Chinese.} The unbroken continuance of the belief in mediaeval Europe may be gathered from such works as the excellent treatise by Maury, La Magie et VAstrologie dans I Antiquite et au Moyen Age, already referred to. Even in the 18th century was published with ecclesiastical approval a regular exorcist s manual, the Fustis et Flagellum Dcemonum, Auctore R.P.F. Ilieronimo Mengo (1727), which among its curious contents gives instructions how to get the better of those cunning demons who hide in the bodies of men and vex them with diseases, and which are apt when expelled to take refuge in the patient s hair. The gradual shifting of opinion is marked by the attempt to reconcile the older demonology with the newer medicine. This argument, which appears among the early Christian fathers, is worked out most elaborately in that curious museum of demonology, the Disquisitiones Magicoe of Martin Delrio, published as late as 1 720. While inveighing against those physicians who maintain that all diseases have natural causes, this learned Jesuit admits that men may be dumb, epileptic, or lunatic without being obsessed ; but what the demons do is that, finding the disposition of epileptics suitable, they insinuate themselves into them ; also they attack lunatics, especially at full moon, when their brains are full of humours, or they introduce diseases by stirring up the black bile, sending blacks into the brain and cells of the nerves, and setting obstructions in the ears and eyes to cause deafness and blindness. Looking at the date of this celebrated work, we cannot wonder that in benighted districts of Europe the old diabolical possession and its accompanying exorcism may still now and then be met with, as in 1861 at Morzine in Savoy. 1 (See A. Constans, Relation sur une Epidemic d Hi/stero-Demonopathie, Paris, 1863.) One of the last notable cases of this kind in England was that of George Lukins of Yatton, a knavish epileptic out of whom seven devils were exorcised by seven clergymen, at the Temple Church at Bristol, on June 13, 1788. (See Encyc. Brit. 3d to 6th editions, art. &quot; Possession &quot;). The derivation of the ideas of demons from the phantoms seen in dreams has already been instanced where the apparition is that of a dead man, but there are pecu liar kinds of demons which are to be considered specially from this point of view. T n savage animism, as among the Australians, what we call a nightmare is of course recognized as a demon ; and though we have long learnt to interpret it subjectively as arising from some action of the sleeper s brain, it is interesting to remember that its name remains proof of the same idea among our ancestors (Anglo- 1 The Times, in November 1876, contains an account in the casting out of devils by a priest in the Church of the Holy Spirit in Bar celona, during the preceding month. On one occasion the patient, a young woman of seventeen or eighteen, lay on the floor before the altar, writhing in convulsions with distorted features and foaming at the mouth, while the priest carried on a dialogue with the devil, whom he addressed by the name of Rusbel, the fiend s answers being of course spoken by the voice of the frantic girl herself. At last a number of demons were supposed to oome out of the patient s body, and such scenes were repeated for days in the presence of many spectators till a riot arose, and the civil authorities intervening put a top to the whole affair. Saxon mcer = spirit, elf, &c., compare old German mar = elf, demon, nahtmar = nightmare, see Grimm, Deutsche. Mythologie, p. 433). The vampires, or drinkers (Old Russian upir), well known in Slavonic regions, are a variety of the nightmare, being witch-souls or ghosts who suck the blood of living victims, thus accounting for their becoming pale and bloodless, and falling into decline. (See Grohmann, Aberglauben aus Bohmen, p. 24 ; Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 410.) From dreams are avowedly formed the notions of ina/bi and succuli, those nocturnal demons who consort with women and men in their sleep. From the apparent distinctness of their evidence, these beings are of course well known in savage demonology, and in connection with them there already arises among uncultured races the idea that children may be engendered between spirits and human mothers. (See Martin, Mariner s Tonga Islands, vol. ii. p. 119). For an ancient example of the general belief in this class of demons, no better could be chosen than that of the early Assyrians, whose name for a succubus, lilit, evidently gave rise to the Rabbinical tale of Adam s demon-wife Lilit h. (See Lenormant, op. cit. p. 36.) The literature of mediaeval sorcery abounds in mentions of this belief, of which the absurd pseudo-philosophical side comes well into view in the chapter of Delrio (lib. ii. quasst. 15), &quot;An smt unquarn daemones incubi et succubse, et an ex tali congressu proles nasci queat 1 &quot; But its serious side is shown by the accusation of consorting with such demons being one of the main charges in the infamous bull of Innocent VIII., which brought judicial torture and death upon so many thousands of wretched so-called witches. (See Roskoff, Geschichte des Teitfels, vol. ii. p. 222.) It further throws light on demonology that the frightful spectres seen in such affections as delirium tremens have of course been interpreted as real demons. It is needless to give instances from among savage tribes, for the connection between such phantoms and the doctrine of demoniacal possession is shown in its most primitive state in modern Europe. In the Fustis Dcemonum, p. 42, it is mentioned that demons before entering human bodies are apt to appear in some terrible form or deformity, human or bestial, and while they seem to the patients suddenly to vanish, then they enter into their bodies. By this supposition the disappearance of the phantom and the accompanying illness of the delirious patient are ingeniously accounted for at one stroke. Though the functions ascribed to demons in savage philosophy are especially connected with disease, they are by no means exclusively so, but the swarming host of spirits pervading the world is called on to account for anj events which seem to happen by some unseen but controlling influence. Some cause must lead the wild man to find game one day and come back empty another, to stumble and hurt himself in the dusk, to lose his way and become bewildered in the dark forest, where the cries of animals and other sounds seem to him spirit-voices misleading or mocking him. For all such events requiring explanation savages find personal causes in intervening demons, who are sometimes ghosts, as when an American Indian falling into the fire will say that an angry ancestral spirit pushed him in ; or they may be simply spirits of undefined origin, like those whom the Australians regard as lurking every where, ready to do harm to the poor black-fellow. To compare this state of thought with that of the classic world, we have but to remember the remark of Hippo crates about the superstitious who believed themselves infested day and night by malicious demons, or the Romans fear of those harmful ghost-demons the lemures, whom they got rid of by the quaint ceremonies of the annual Lemuralia. How permanent these demon-ideas

