Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/599

Rh Now, this constructive process becomes peculiarly obvious, in a comparison of narratives given by the believers in mesmerism, spiritualism, and similar "occult" agencies, when there has been time for the building-up of the edifice, with contemporary records of the events, made perhaps by the very narrators themselves. Every thing which tends to prove the reality of the occult influence is exaggerated or distorted; every thing which would help to explain it away is quietly (no doubt quite unintentionally) dropped out. And convictions thus come to be honestly entertained which are in complete disaccordance with the original facts. This source of fallacy was specially noticed by Bacon;

Of the manner in which this constructive process will build up a completely ideal representation of a personality (with or without a nucleus of reality), which shall gain implicit acceptance among a whole people, and be currently accepted by the world at large, we have a "pregnant instance" in the William Tell tradition. For the progressive narrowing-down of his claims, which has resulted from the complete discordance between the actions traditionally attributed to him and trustworthy contemporary history, leaves even his personality questionable; while the turning-up of the apple-story in Icelandic sagas and Hindoo myths seems to put it beyond doubt that this, at any rate, is drawn from far older sources. The reality of this process of gradual accretion and modification, in accordance with current ideas in regard to the character of an individual or the bearing of an event, cannot now be doubted by any philosophic student of history. And the degree in which such constructions involve ascriptions of supernatural power can be shown in many instances to depend upon the prevalent notions entertained as to what the individual might be expected to do.

No figure is more prominent in the early ecclesiastical history of Scotland than that of St. Columba, "the Apostle of the Scoto-Irish," in the sixth century. Having left Ireland, his native country, through having, by his fearless independence, been brought into collision with its civil powers, and been excommunicated by its Church-synods, he migrated to Scotland in the year 563, and acquired by royal donation the island of Iona, which was a peculiarly favorable centre for his evangelizing labors, carried on for more than thirty years among the