Page:Primitive Culture Vol 2.djvu/202

185 yet there are some who retain to the full the angelology and demonology of Origen and Tertullian. These two views may be well contrasted by setting side by side the judgments of two ecclesiastics of the Roman Church, as to the belief in pervading demons prevalent in uncivilized countries. The celebrated commentator, Dom Calmet, lays down in the most explicit terms the doctrine of angels and demons, as a matter of dogmatic theology. But he is less inclined to receive unquestioned the narratives of particular manifestations in the mediæval and modern world. He mentions indeed the testimony of Louis Vivez, that in the newly discovered countries of America, nothing is more common than to see spirits which appear at noon-day, not only in the country but in towns and villages, speaking, commanding, sometimes even striking men; and the account by Olaus Magnus of the spectres or spirits seen in Sweden and Norway, Finland and Lapland, which do wonderful things, some even serving men as domestics and driving the cattle out to pasture. But what Calmet remarks on these stories, is that the greater ignorance prevails in a country, the more superstition reigns there. It seems that in our own day, however, the tendency is to encourage less sceptical views. Monsignor Gaume's book on 'Holy Water,' which not long since received the special and formal approval of Pius IX., appears 'at an epoch when the millions of evil angels which surround us are more enterprising than ever;' and here Olaus Magnus' story of the demons infesting Northern Europe is not only cited but corroborated. On the whole, the survey of the doctrine of pervading spirits through all the grades of culture is a remarkable display of intellectual continuity. Most justly does Ellis the missionary, depicting the South Sea Islanders' world crowded with its innumerable pervading spirits, point out the closeness of correspondence here between doctrines of the savage and the