TWO BOOKS ON DEMONOLOGY.* How difficult it is, in an

age which is, in the narrower sense of the word, so strictly " scientific" as ours, to place ourselves in imagination in the position of those whose every thought was penetrated and modified by a sincere and living belief not merely in the existence, but in the multiplicity and perpetual agency, of beings, for the most part malignant, normally in- visible, but on exceptional occasions capable of being manifested to the human senses, and of holding communications of the most intimate nature with human beings ! In civilised com- munities such beliefs have perished, or only survive—and that in little more than words—in the professed creed of a few of the strictly orthodox, and in a quasi-scientific and most prosaic shape in the minds of that small clique of persons who are the cultivators of modern Spiritualism. Yet, how large a part this belief must have played in the daily lives, not only of our far back medireval ancestors, but of our cultivated forefathers of the sixteenth and a great part of the seventeenth centuries ! How it must have coloured their thoughts and directed many of their actions, seldom occurs to the minds of this generation, and occupies but a small place even in the pages of so-called philosophical historians. Every schoolboy knows that in the days of the successor of the great Elizabeth, thousands of persons were tried and put to death for having formed compacts with Satan ; but we fail to realise the thoughts and feelings of a society in which such crimes were every day dealt with as matters of undoubted occurrence, crimes of which one's nearest relatives might be the victims or the perpetrators, or of which they might be falsely accused, when such men as the learned and pious Sir Matthew Hale judicially announced his belief in their existence, as he sat in judgment upon the supposed offenders ; and when a Scotch presbytery ordered a day of solemn fasting and humiliation to be held on account of the bewitching of the daughter of the Laird of Balgarran, and proclaimed a day of thanksgiving when the sorcerers were con- victed, many of them on their own confession. Our education, apart from any special enlightenment on the part of most of us, has completely incapacitated us from sympathising with either those who persecuted or those who were their victims. We pass over the whole of this phase of human nature with a slight and .not very real shudder, or we look on it only on its grotesque or ludicrous side. It was no matter of jest to the great majority of the Elizabethans, who were no fools. England at that time contained as large a proportion even of educated people who were in daily terror of demons, as it now contains of

• (1.) Elizahethan Demonology. By Thomas Alfred Spalding. LL.B. (Lond.1, Itarrister.at-Law, Honorary Treasurer of the New Shakspere Society. London : Chatto and Windus. 1880. (2.) Demonology and Deril-lors. By Monoure Darld Conway, M.A., kc. London Chatto and Windus. 1879.

persons who take ordinary precautions against burglars. In the special form of witchcraft, the belief in the evil super- natural was, for reasons which are not far to seek, especially

rampant soon after the revival of letters and the reformation of the Church ; it was then an epidemic,— and across the ruddy dawn of modern knowledge we see the forms of Superstition and Persecution passing like black and distorted clouds, more dis-

tinctly than in the dark night of the previons centuries.

The little book by Mr. Spalding, the zealous treasurer of the new Shakspere Society, now before us, is a study of the super- stitions of the time of the great dramatist, as they are disclosed by allusions in his plays and by the modifications of his char- acters. It is only a very accurate and minute student of Shake- speare who is aware of the vast amount of Devil-lore to be found in the majority of his works. How necessary a knowledge, if

not of his personal beliefs, at least of the mental atmosphere iii which Shakespeare lived in reference to these things, is to a full

understanding of his works, it is almost needless to remark. Mr. Spalding attempts to follow the growth of Shakespearian thought through what is, of course, only an approximate chronological order of the dramas, or at least of those in which

their author was less under the trammels of actual history. lie holds that when he wrote _I M idsumin cc Night's Dream, he was still

imbued with rural beliefs hereditary in the scenes of his youth at Stratford. lie then produced those quaint and mischievous fairies familiar to his boyhood, a belief in which lie accepted joyously and without hesitation, and which he painted along with groups of those simple rustics who had told him innumer- able tales of fairy-lore, and who, in that play, are themselves so much more real than the aristocrats of Athens who are the ostensible heroes of the story.

In the earlier comedies, such as All's Well Thal Ends Wen and Measure for Measure, Mr. Spalding finds the beginning of the de- cline of youthful hilarity and easy half-belief, and a "drooping

down into a sadness of thought and expression that sometimes leaves us in doubt whether the plays should be classed as comedies

at all." Seeds of speculation and scepticism have been sown in his heart, from contact with a more cultured and a wider world, and prepared the way for the great tragedies. In Hamlet, Macbeth, and Othello, we have a fuller development of the struggles of

thought common at the time. The tricksy Puck has disappeared, and Shakespeare was beginuingto doubt the existence of those powerful and malignant beings who rejoiced in leading the human soul to destruction:—

" Questions arise thick and fast, that are easier put than answered. Can it be that evil influences have the upper band in this world ? that, be a man never so modest, never so pure, ii,. may, nevertheless, become the sport of blind chance or ruthless wickedness ? Muy ii Hamlet, patiently struggling after truth and duty, be put upon and abused by the darker powers? Mny Macbeth, who would fain do right, were not evil so ever present with him, he juggled with and led to destruction by fiends F Nay on undistinguishing fate sweep away at once the good with the evil—Hamlet with I,ncrtes; Desdemona with logo; Cordelia with Edmund ? And above the turmoil of this reign of terror is there no word uttered of a Supreme Good, guiding and con- trolling the unloosed ill,—no word of encouragement, none of hope ? If this be so, indeed, that man is but the puppet of malignant spirits, away with this life! It is not worth the living ; for what power has man against the fiends ? But at this point arises a further question to demand solution,—What shall be hereafter ? If evil is supreme here, shall it not be so in that undiscovered country,—tbe life to come ? The dreams that may come give him pause, and he either shuffles on, doubting, hesitating., and incapable of decision, or he hurls himself wildly against his fate."

After the ebb of this wave of scepticism on questions relating to spirit, there is a succeeding wave of cyn icism in regard to mundane things. In Lear, Troilus and Cressida, Antony and Cleopatra, and Timon of Athens, there is less of faith in human honour, purity, and justice. The heroines are no longer the Rosalinds, Violas, and Helenas of the earlier period, the angelic and yet womanly good genuises of their surroundings. These give place to Lady Macbeth, Goneril and Regan, Cressida and Cleo- patra, and manliness and honour have to give way to treachery and selfishness.

In his third period, according to our author, Shakespeare rallied from his transitory scepticism, and attained to a nobler conception of man and his destiny and of the unseen powers. In relation to this, he criticises severely, and we think with justice, the observation of Mr. Ruskin in "Sesame and Lilies ;" we say justly, if we are to look on the passage as containing Mr. Ruskin's deliberate estimate of Shakespeare, and not merely a criticism of certain plays of the middle period. Mr. Spalding admits in a note that a far different analysis has been written by Ruskin of The Tempest, which is the work which he

himself looks upon as typical of the last and best period of Shakespearian faith,—a faith of which farther developments would have appeared, had Shakespeare lived longer.

"The gross canaille are here represented, but no longer the most accurate in colour and most absorbing in interest of the characters of the play, or imperative to the evolution of the plot. They have a distinct importance in the movement of the piece, and represent the unintelligent, material resistance to the work of regeneration that Prospero seeks to carry out, and which must be controlled by him, just as Sebastian and Antonio form the intelligent, designing resist- ance. The spirit world is there, too, but they, like the former class, have no independent plot of their own, and no independent operation against mankind ; they only represent the invisible forces over which Prospero must assert control, if he would insure success for his schemes. Arid l is, perhaps, one of the most extraordinary of all Shakespeare's creations. He is, indeed, formed on a basis half-fairy, half-devil, because it was only through the current notions of demono- logy that Shakespeare could speak his ideas. But he is certainly not a fairy in the sense that Puck is a fairy."

In The Tempest, man is no longer the sport, but the master of his fate. He sees the possible triumph of good over evil, and

has no fear of the dreams that may haunt the sleep of death. All this, assuming the accuracy of Mr. Spalding's chronology of the plays (which, we may remark, is, to a great extent, that of Mr. Furuivall, in his introduction to the Leopold Shakespeare), seems to us true criticism,—very different from the almost barren disputes about individual words which characterise the great mass of Shakespearian discussion, on the one hand, and superior, on the other, to those fanciful analogies which attribute to the poet conscious abstract meanings of which he never dreamed.

A large part of the book is occupied with the witches of 3facbeth. Were they, in their creator's mind, the mere vulgar old-women-witches of the period, or were they intended to repre- sent the far more dignified and awful " Norua," or Fates, of Scandinavian mythology P Mr. Spalding decides in favour of the former opinion, but thinks that Shakespeare purposely added a portion of the attributes of the Norns to raise, by the magic of his art, the popular superstition from its natural degradation into the region of poetry. We believe he is right, but our space will not permit us to enter more deeply into this curious question.

The other book now before us is, in most respects, very dif- ferent. Perhaps we ought to have noticed it sooner, but being on a cognate subject with that of Mr. Spalding, they may be looked at together. Mr. Moncure Conway has produced a very bulky history of Diabolism, which, in his mind, means a history of the whole range of human belief in the unseen, from the most trivial fairy-lore to the highest theism. The work is ex- tremely elaborate, in so far as he has obviously ransacked a vast number of authorities. The subject is treated, as might be expected, on the principles of evolution ; and to this we, of course, can have no possible objection, in as far as it implies a consideration of phenomena in their historical sequence. The style, though often extremely inaccurate and slipshod, is read- able and often attractive, and the attempts at generalisation often bold and ingenious. The whole of Demonology—and, indeed, the whole of religion, in its widest sense—is, according to Mr. Conway, the result of the contemplation by the un- developed human mind of the irresistible and relentless natural forces, and of the anthropomorphic tendency to attribute all phe- nomena to an intelligence and will analogous to what we our- selves possess. The destructive and dangerous forces are the earliest to attract notice, and therefore the tribe of evil spirits are first invented, and have to be propitiated by gifts and oblations. Hence demons of hunger, of heat and cold, of tempest, of natural obstacles, of darkness, disease, and death. The early Dualism was that of "moral man" and "immoral nature." Then arose Demigods, or the idea of incarnation :—

" Theology has pronounced incarnation a mystery, but nothing is simpler. The demigod is man's appeal from the gods. It may also be, as Emerson says, that when the half-gods go, the gods arise,' but it is equally true that their coming signals the departure of deities whom men had long invoked in vain. The great Heraklian myth presents us with the ideal of godlike form united to human sympathy. Ra (the Sun) passing the twelve gates (Hours) of Hades (Night), is humanised into Herakles and his Twelve Labours. He is the son of Zeus by a human mother, Alcmene; and his labours for human welfare, as well as his miraculous conception, influenced Christianity. The divine Man assailing the monsters of divine crea- tion, represents human recognition of the fact that moral order in Nature is co-extensive with the control of mankind."

The whole history of religion, Mr. Conway holds, shows the evolution of demi-gods, semi-human and benevolent, in order to counteract the "gods,"—that is to say, the personified evil forces against which men have to contend :—

"All great religions were born in this grand atheism. As the worship of Herakles meant the downfall of Zeus, the worship of Christ meant the overthrow of both Jove and Jehovah. Every race adores the epoch when their fathers grew ashamed of their gods, and identified them as dragons—the supreme cruelties of Nature—wel- coming the man who first rose from his knees and defied them. But in the end, the Priests of the Dragon managed to secure a compro- mise, and, by labelling him with the name of his slayer, manage to. resuscitate and re-enthrone him. For, as we shall see, the Dragon never really dies."

This short extract gives the key to the author's whole theory of the genesis of religion, including Christianity. But as a sense of moral good and moral evil began to develope, and to take the place of physical pleasure and pain in the consideration of men, and as the tendency to unification grew apace, the demon or dragon, who only meditated outward harm, became the Devil, whose object was the corruption of the moral nature of his victims, —a spirit that makes for 'wickedness; and who might even confer bodily pleasures, for the sake of moral temptation. Though in the popular mind he often inherited the horns and tails of fossilised demons, he had no longer necessarily a repulsive or hideous outward form, but might appear as a polished Asmodeus, a philosophical Mephistopheles, or even as an angel of light. The cruel forces of Nature are still in his keeping, as they were in the keeping of the demonic gods whom be has succeeded, and who had been appealed to in vain ; while his rival, the more spiritual divinity that follows, "gains in security and beauty what he surrenders in empire and omnipotence." "Degraded deities are preserved to undergo a structural development, and fulfil a necessary part in every theological scheme which includes the conception of an eternal difference between good and evil."

Every religion which recognises moral distinction as essential and eternal is, therefore, according to Mr. Moncure Conway and the school to which he belongs, necessarily Manichaean. It may be, and indeed is, good philosophy to regard physical evil as merely subjective ; but that evolution of human nature in which the majority of men are to look upon moral distinctions in the same light is, we are confident, far off, and indeed impossible ; and though it might require an evil divinity to account for the obstructive and destructive natural forces, were they evil in themselves, it is difficult to see any real need for an Ahriman, in order to reconcile us to the possibility of essential evil in the thoughts and acts of free and responsible agents.

It is curious to observe how writers like the present occasion- ally forget their theories, and show as much horror at the con- templation of certain actions and the indulgence of certain feelings, as if moral evil were the reality which vulgar minds take it to be, and not merely "good in the making." They cannot shake off the universal moral instincts of humanity, any more than they can altogether help seeing the spiritual signifi- cance of all the natural glory of the universe, and putting forth unconscious feelers for something universal and permanent,—a personal cause, a unity of which all the phenomenal universe is a mere expression and symbol. Of this "survival," as he would doubtless call it, the present author affords many ex- amples throughout his work. There are spiritual intuitions common to the race, which will ever recur, though altered and developed in form ; and equally indelible with the intuitions themselves is the conviction that they represent objective realities, though often in a distorted shape. With all its erratic and unsound philosophy, its occasional disagreeable levity of tone, its too great discursiveness, and its frequent carelessness of style, this book will be found most useful as a repertory of the details of human beliefs, as well as suggestive of much thought in a region that is not only picturesque and- weird, but profoundly interesting. Many of its generalisationa are exceedingly good, especially those in relation to the gradual degradation of supposed spiritual powers. Some of the pictorial illustrations are very curious.