Chapter II. Non-logical Conduct¹

145. So far we have stated our attitude in writing these volumes and the field in which we intend to remain. Now we are to study human conduct, the states of mind to which it corresponds and the ways in which they express themselves, in order to arrive eventually at our goal, which is to discover the forms of society. We are following the inductive method. We have no preconceptions, no a priori notions. We find certain facts before us. We describe them, classify them, determine their character, ever on the watch for some uniformity (law) in the relationships between them. In this chapter we begin to interest ourselves in human actions.¹

146. This is the first step we take along the path of induction. If we were to find, for instance, that all human actions corresponded to logico-experimental theories, or that such actions were the most important, others having to be regarded as phenomena of social pathology deviating from a normal type, our course evidently would be entirely different from what it would be if many of the more important human actions proved to correspond to theories that are not logico-experimental.

147. Let us accordingly examine actions from the standpoint of their logico-experimental character. But in order to do that we must first try to classify them, and in that effort we propose to follow the principles of the classificalion called natural in botany and zoology, whereby objects on the whole presenting similar characteristics are grouped together. In the case of botany Tournefort's classification was very wisely abandoned. It divided plants into "herbs" and "trees," and so came to separate entities that as a matter of fact present close resemblances. The so-called natural method nowadays preferred does away with all divisions of that kind and takes as its norm the characteristics of plants in the mass, putting like with like and keeping the unlike distinct. Can we find similar groupings to classify the actions of human beings?

148. It is not actions as we find them in the concrete that we are called upon to classify, but the elements constituting them. So the chemist classifies elements and compounds of elements, whereas in nature what he finds is mixtures of compounds. Concrete actions are synthetic—they originate in mixtures, in varying degrees, of the elements we are to classify.

149. Every social phenomenon may be considered under two aspects: as it is in reality, and as it presents itself to the mind of this or that human being. The first aspect we shall call objective, the second subjective (§§ 94 f.). Such a division is necessary, for we cannot put in one same class the operations performed by a chemist in his laboratory and the operations performed by a person practising magic; the conduct of Greek sailors in plying their oars to drive their ship over the water and the sacrifices they offered to Poseidon to make sure of a safe and rapid voyage. In Rome the Laws of the XII Tables punished anyone casting a spell on a harvest. We choose to distinguish such an act from the act of burning a field of grain.

We must not be misled by the names we give to the two classes. In reality both are subjective, for all human knowledge is subjective. They are to be distinguished not so much by any difference in nature as in view of the greater or lesser fund of factual knowledge that we ourselves have. We know, or think we know, that sacrifices to Poseidon have no effect whatsoever upon a voyage. We therefore distinguish them from other acts which (to our best knowledge, at least) are capable of having such effect. If at some future time we were to discover that we have been mistaken, that sacrifices to Poseidon are very influential in securing a favourable voyage, we should have to reclassify them with actions capable of such influence. All that of course is pleonastic. It amounts to saying that when a person makes a classification, he does so according to the knowledge he has. One cannot imagine how things could be otherwise.

150. There are actions that use means appropriate to ends and which logically link means with ends. There are other actions in which those traits are missing. The two sorts of conduct are very different according as they are considered under their objective or their subjective aspect. From the subjective point of view nearly all human actions belong to the logical class. In the eyes of the Greek mariners sacrifices to Poseidon and rowing with oars were equally logical means of navigation. To avoid verbosities which could only prove annoying, we had better give names to these types of conduct.¹ Suppose we apply the term logical actions to actions that logically conjoin means to ends not only from the standpoint of the subject performing them, but from the standpoint of other persons who have a more extensive knowledge—in other words, to actions that are logical both subjectively and objectively in the sense just explained. Other actions we shall call non-logical (by no means the same as "illogical"). This latter class we shall subdivide into a number of varieties.

151. A synoptic picture of the classification will prove useful:

The ends and purposes here in question are immediate ends and purposes. We choose to disregard the indirect. The objective end is a real one, located within the field of observation and experience, and not an imaginary end, located outside that field. An imaginary end may, on the other hand, constitute a subjective purpose.

152. Logical actions are very numerous among civilized peoples. Actions connected with the arts and sciences belong to that class, at least for artists and scientists. For those who physically perform them in mere execution of orders from superiors, there may be among them non-logical actions of our II-4 type. The actions dealt with in political economy also belong in very great part in the class of logical actions. In the same class must be located, further, a certain number of actions connected with military, political, legal, and similar activities.

153. So at the very first glance induction leads to the discovery that non-logical actions play an important part in society. Let us therefore proceed with our examination of them.

154. First of all, in order to get better acquainted with these non-logical actions, suppose we look at a few examples. Many others will find their proper places in chapters to follow. Here are some illustrations of actions of Class II:

Genera 1 and 3, which have no subjective purpose, are of scant importance to the human race. Human beings have a very conspicuous tendency to paint a varnish of logic over their conduct. Nearly all human actions therefore work their way into genera 2 and 4. Many actions performed in deference to courtesy and custom might be put in genus 1. But very very often people give some reason or other to justify such conduct, and that transfers it to genus 2. Ignoring the indirect motive involved in the fact that a person violating common usages incurs criticism and dislike, we might find a certain number of actions to place in genera 1 and 3.

Says Hesiod:¹ "Do not make water at the mouth of a river emptying into the sea, nor into a spring. You must avoid that. Do not lighten your bowels there, for it is not good to do so." The precept not to befoul rivers at their mouths belongs to genus 1. No objective or subjective end or purpose is apparent in the avoidance of such pollution. The precept not to befoul drinking-water belongs to genus 3. It has an objective purpose that Hesiod may not have known, but which is familiar to moderns: to prevent contagion from certain diseases.

It is probable that not a few actions of genera 1 and 3 are common among savages and primitive peoples. But travellers are bent on learning at all costs the reasons for the conduct they observe. So in one way or another they finally obtain answers that transfer the conduct to genera 2 and 4.

155. Granting that animals do not reason, we can place nearly all their so-called instinctive acts in genus 3. Some may even go in 1. Genus 3 is the pure type of the non-logical action, and a study of it as it appears in animals will help to an understanding of non-logical conduct in human beings.

Of the insects called Eumenes (pseudo-wasps) Blanchard writes that, like other Hymenoptera, they "suck the nectar of flowers when they are full grown [but that] their larvae feed only upon living prey; and since, like the larvae of wasps and bees, they are apodal and incapable of procuring food, they would perish at once if left to themselves. What happens, then, may be foreseen. The mother herself has to procure food for her young. That industrious little animal, who herself lives only on the honey of flowers, wages war upon the tribe of insects to assure a livelihood for her offspring. In order to stock its nest with victuals, this Hymenopteron nearly always attacks particular species of insects, and it knows how to find such species without any trouble, though to the scientist who hunts for them they seem very rare indeed. The female stings her victims with her dart and carries them to her nest. The insect so smitten does not die at once. It is left in a deep coma, which renders it incapable of moving or defending itself. The larvae are hatched in close proximity to the provisions that have been laboriously accumulated by the mother, and find within their reach a food adapted to their needs and in quantities sufficient for their whole life as larvae. Nothing is more amazing than this marvellous foresight; and it is altogether instinctive, it would seem. In laying her eggs every female prepares food for young whom she will never see; for by the time they are hatched she will long since have ceased to live."¹

Other Hymenoptera, the Cerceres, attack Coleoptera. Here the action, subjectively non-logical, shows a marvellous objective logic. Suppose we let Fabre speak for himself. He observes that, in order to paralyze its prey, the Hymenopteron has first to find Coleoptera either with three thoracic ganglia very close together, contiguous in fact, or with the two rear ganglia joined. "That, really, is the prey they need. These Coleoptera, with motor centres situated so close together as to touch, forming a single mass and standing in intimate mutual connexions, can thus be paralyzed at a single thrust; or if several stings are needed, the ganglia that require treatment will at least lie together under the point of the stinger." Further along: "Out of the vast numbers of Coleoptera upon which the Cerceres might inflict their depredations, only two groups, the weevils and the Buprestes, fulfil the indispensable conditions. They live far from infested and noisome places, for which, it may be, the fastidious huntress has an unconquerable repugnance. Their numerous representatives vary in size, proportionate to the sizes of the various pirates, who are thus free to select their victims at pleasure. They, more than all others, are vulnerable at the one point where the stinger of the Hymenopteron can penetrate with success: for at that point the motor centres of the feet and wings are concentrated in such a way as to be readily accessible to the stinger. These three thoracic ganglia of the weevil lie very close together, the last two touching. In the Buprestes the second and third ganglia blend in a single bulky mass a short distance from the first. Now it is the weevils and the Buprestes precisely, to the absolute exclusion of all other prey, that we find hunted by the eight species of Cerceres that lay in stores of Coleoptera."²

156. For that matter, a certain number of actions in animals evince reasoning of a kind, or better, a sort of adaptation of means to ends as circumstances change. Says Fabre, whom we quote at such length because he has studied the subject better than anybody else:¹ "For instinct nothing is difficult, so long as the act does not extrude from the fixed cycle that is the animal's birthright. For instinct also nothing is easy if the act has to deviate from the rut habitually followed. The insect that amazes for its high perspicacity will an instant later, when confronted with the simplest situation foreign to its ordinary practice, astound for its stupidity. . . . Distinguishable in the psychic life of the insect are two wholly different domains. The one is instinct proper, the unconscious impulse that guides the animal in the marvellous achievements of its industry. . . . It is instinct, and nothing but instinct, that makes a mother build a nest for a family she will never know, which counsels a supply of food for an unknowable posterity, which steers the dart toward the nerve-centre of the prey . . . with a view to keeping provisions fresh. . . . But for all of its unbending, unconscious cleverness, pure instinct, all by itself, would leave the insect disarmed in its perpetual battle with circumstance. . . . A guide is necessary to devise, accept, refuse, select, prefer this, ignore that—in a word, take advantage of the usables occasion offers. Such a guide the insect certainly has and even to a very conspicuous degree. It is the second domain of his psychic life. In it he is conscious and teachable by experience. Not daring to call that rudimentary aptitude intelligence, a title too exalted for it, I will call it discernment."

157. Qualitatively (§ 144¹), phenomena are virtually the same in human beings; but quantitatively, the field of logical behaviour, exceedingly limited in the case of animals, becomes very far-reaching in mankind. All the same, many many human actions, even today among the most civilized peoples, are performed instinctively, mechanically, in pursuance of habit; and that is more generally observable still in the past and among less civilized peoples. There are cases in which it is apparent that the effectiveness of certain rites is believed in instinctively, and not as a logical consequence of the religion that practises them (§ 952). Says Fabre:¹

"The various instinctive acts of insects are therefore inevitably linked together. Because a certain thing has just been done, another must unavoidably be done to complete it or prepare the way for its completion [That is the case with many human actions also.], and the two acts are so strictly correlated that the performance of the first entails the performance of the second, even when by some fortuitous circumstance the second may have become not only unseasonable, but at times even contrary to the animal's interests."

But even in the animal one detects a seed of the logic that is to come to such luxuriant flower in the human being. After describing how he tricked certain insects that obstinately persisted in useless acts, Fabre adds: "But the yellow-winged Sphex does not always let himself be fooled by the game of pulling his cricket away. There are chosen clans in his tribe, families of brainy wit, that, after a few disappointments, perceive the wiles of the trickster and find ways to checkmate them. But such revolutionaries, candidates for progress, are the small minority. The rest, stubborn conservators of the good old-fashioned ways, are the hoi polloi, the majority."

This remark should be remembered, for the conflict between a tendency to combinations, which is responsible for innovations, and a tendency to permanence in groups of sensations, which promotes stability, may put us in the way of explaining many things about human societies (Chapter XII).

158. The formation of human language is no whit less marvellous than the instinctive conduct of insects. It would be absurd to claim that the theory of grammar preceded the practice of speech. It certainly followed, and human beings have created most subtle grammatical structures without any knowledge of it.

Take the Greek language as an example. If one chose to go farther back to some Indo-European language from which Greek would be derived, our contentions would hold a fortiori, because the chance of any grammatical abstraction would be less and less probable. We cannot imagine that the Greeks one day got together and decided what their system of conjugation was to be. Usage alone made such a masterpiece of the Greek verb. In Attic Greek there is the augment, which is the sign of the past in historical tenses; and, for a very subtle nuance, besides the syllabic augment there is the temporal (quantitative) augment, which consists in a lengthening of the initial vowel. The conception of the aorist, and its functions in syntax, are inventions that would do credit to the most expert logician. The large number of verbal forms and the exactness of their functions in syntax constitute a marvellous whole.¹

159. In Rome, the general invested with the imperium had to take the auspices on the Capitol before he could leave the city. He could do that only in Rome. One cannot imagine that that provision had originally the political purpose that it eventually acquired.¹ "As long as the extension of existing imperia depended exclusively upon the will of the comitia, no new ones carrying full military authority could be established except by taking the auspices on the Capitol—consequently by performing an act that lay within urban jurisdiction. . . . To organize another [taking of auspices] in defiance of the constitution would have implied transgressing bounds held in awe even by the of the sovereign People. No constitutional barrier to extraordinary military usurpations held its ground anywhere near as long as this guarantee that had been found in the regulation as to a general's auspices. In the end that regulation also lapsed, or rather was circumvented. In later times some piece of land or other situated outside of Rome was 'annexed' by a legal fiction to the city and taken as though located within the pomerium, and the required auspicium was celebrated there."

Later on Sulla not only abolished the guarantee of the auspices, but even rendered it inapplicable by an ordinance whereby the magistrate was obligated not to assume command till after the expiration of his year of service [as a magistrate]—at a time, that is, when [being in his proconsular province] he could no longer take the urban auspices. Now Sulla, a conservative, obviously had no intention of providing for the overthrow of his constitution in that way, any more than the older Romans, in establishing the requirement of auspices taken in the Urbs, were anticipating attacks upon the constitution of the Republic. In reality, in their case, we have a nonlogical action of our 4α type; and in the case of Sulla a non-logical action of our 4β type.

In the sphere of political economy, certain measures (for example, wage-cutting) of business men (entrepreneurs) working under conditions of free competition are to some extent non-logical actions of our 4β type, that is, the objective end does not coincide with the subjective purpose. On the other hand, if they enjoy a monopoly, the same measures (wage-cutting) become logical actions.²

160. Another very important difference between human conduct and the conduct of animals lies in the fact that we do not observe human conduct wholly from the outside as we do in the case of animals. Frequently we know the actions of human beings through the judgments that people pass upon them, through the impressions they make, and in the light of the motives that people are pleased to imagine for them and assign as their causes. For that reason, actions that would otherwise belong to genera 1 and 3 make their way into 2 and 4.

Operations in magic when unattended by other actions belong to genus 2. The sacrifices of the Greeks and Romans have to be classed in the same genus—at least after those peoples lost faith in the reality of their gods. Hesiod, Opera et dies, vv. 735-39, warns against crossing a river without first washing one's hands in it and uttering a prayer. That would be an action of genus 1. But he adds that the gods punish anyone who crosses a river without so washing his hands. That makes it an action of genus 2.

This rationalizing procedure is habitual and very wide-spread. Hesiod says also, vv. 780-82, that grain should not be sown on the thirteenth of a month, but that that day is otherwise very auspicious for planting, and he gives many other precepts of the kind. They all belong to genus 2. In Rome a soothsayer who had observed signs in the heavens was authorized to adjourn the comitia to some other day.¹ Towards the end of the Republic, when all faith in augural science had been lost, that was a logical action, a means of attaining a desired end. But when people still believed in augury, it was an action of genus 4. For the soothsayers who, with the help of the gods, were so enabled to forestall some decision that they considered harmful to the Roman People, it belonged to our species 4α, as is apparent if one consider that in general such actions correspond, very roughly to be sure, to the provisions used in our time for avoiding ill-considered decisions by legislative bodies: requirements of two or three consecutive readings, of approvals by two houses, and so on.

Most acts of public policy based on tradition or on presumed missions of peoples or individuals belong to genus 4. William I, King of Prussia, and Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, both considered themselves "men of destiny." But William I thought his mission lay in promoting the welfare and greatness of his country, Louis Napoleon believed himself destined to achieve the happiness of mankind. William's policies were of the 4α type; Napoleon's, of the 4β.

Human beings as a rule determine their conduct with reference to certain general rules (morality, custom, law), which give rise in greater or lesser numbers to actions of our 4α and even 4β varieties.

161. Logical actions are at least in large part results of processes of reasoning. Non-logical actions originate chiefly in definite psychic states, sentiments, subconscious feelings, and the like. It is the province of psychology to investigate such psychic states. Here we start with them as data of fact, without going beyond that.

162. Thinking of animals, let us assume that the conduct B (I) in Figure 2, which is all we are in a position to observe, is connected with a hypothetical psychic state A (I). In human beings that psychic state is revealed not through the conduct B (II) alone, but also through expressions of sentiments, C, which often develop moral, religious, and other similar theories. The very marked tendency in human beings to transform non-logical into logical conduct leads them to imagine that B is an effect of the cause C. So a direct relationship, CB, is assumed, instead of the indirect relationship arising through the two relations AB, AC. Sometimes the relation CB in fact obtains, but not as often as people think. The same sentiment that restrains people from performing an act B (relation AB) prompts them to devise a theory C (relation AC). A man, for example, has a horror of murder, B, and he will not commit murder; but he will say that the gods punish murderers, and that constitutes a theory, C.

163. We are thinking not only of qualitative relations (§ 144¹), but of quantitative also. Let us assume, for a moment, that a given force impelling a man to perform an act B has an index equivalent to 10 and that the man either performs or refrains from performing the act B according as the forces tending to restrain him have an index greater or smaller than 10. We shall then get the following alternatives:

Case 1. The restraining force of the association AB has an index greater than 10. In that situation it is strong enough to keep the man from performing the act. The association CB, if it exists, is superfluous.

Case 2. The restraining force of the association CB, if it exists, has an index larger than 10. In such a case, it is strong enough to prevent the act B, even if the force AB is equivalent to zero.

Case 3. The force resulting from the association AB has, let us say, an index equal to 4; and the force resulting from the association CB an index equal to 7. The sum of the indices is 11. The act, therefore, will not be performed. The force resulting from the association AB has an index equal to 2, the other retaining its index 7. The sum is 9; the act will be performed.

Suppose the association AB represents a person's aversion to performing the act B. AC represents the theory that the gods punish persons who commit the act B. Some people will abstain from doing B out of mere aversion to it (Case 1). Others refrain from it only because they fear the punishment of the gods (Case 2). Others still will forbear for both reasons (Case 3).

164. The following propositions are therefore false, because too absolute: "A natural disposition to do good is sufficient to restrain human beings from doing wrong." "Threat of eternal punishment is sufficient to restrain men from doing wrong." "Morality is independent of religion." "Morality is necessarily dependent on religion."

Suppose we say that C is a penalty threatened by law. The same sentiment that prompts people to establish the sanction restrains them from committing B. Some refrain from B because of their aversion to it; others in fear of the penalty C; still others for both reasons.

165. The relationships between A, B, C that we have just considered are fundamental, but they are far from being the only ones. First of all, the existence of the theory C reacts upon the psychic state A and in many many cases tends to re-enforce it. The theory consequently influences B, following the line CAB. On the other hand, the check B, which keeps people from doing certain things, reacts upon the psychic state A and consequently upon the theory C, following the line BAC. Then again the influence of C upon B influences A and so is carried back upon C. Suppose, for instance, a penalty C is considered too severe for a crime B. The infliction of such a penalty (CB) modifies the psychic state A, and as a consequence of the change, the penalty C is superseded by another more mild.

Change in a psychic state is first disclosed by an increase in certain crimes B. The increase in crime modifies the psychic state A, and the modification is translated into terms of a change in C.

Up to a certain point, the rites of worship in a religion may be comparable to the conduct B, its theology to the theory C. The two things both emanate from a certain psychic state A.

166. Let us consider certain conduct D (Figure 3), depending upon that psychic state, A. The rites of worship, B, do not influence D directly, but influence A and consequently D. In the same way they influence C and, vice versa, C influences B. There can in addition be a direct influence CD. The influence of the theology C upon A is usually rather weak, and consequently its influence upon D is also feeble, since the influence CD is itself usually slight. In general, then, we go very far astray in assuming that a theology, C, is the motive of the conduct, D. The proposition so often met with, "This or that people acts as it does because of a certain belief," is rarely true; in fact, it is almost always erroneous. The inverse proposition, "People believe as they do because of this or that conduct," as a rule contains a larger amount of truth; but it is too absolute, and has its modicum of error. Beliefs and conduct are not, to be sure, independent; but their correlation lies in their being, as it were, two branches of one same tree (§ 267).¹

167. Before the invasion of Italy by the gods of Greece, the ancient Roman religion did not have a theology, C: it was no more than a cult, B. But the cult B, reacting upon A, exerted a powerful influence on the conduct, D, of the Roman people. Nor is that the whole story. The direct relation, BD, when it existed, looks to us moderns manifestly absurd. But the relation BAD may often have been very reasonable and very beneficial to the Roman people. Any direct influence of a theology, C, upon D is in general weaker even than its influence upon A. It is therefore a serious mistake to measure the social value of a religion strictly by the logical or rational value of its theology (§ 14). Certainly, if the theology becomes absurd to the point of seriously affecting A, it will for the same reason seriously affect D. But that rarely occurs. Only when the psychic state A has changed do people notice certain absurdities that previously had escaped them altogether.

These considerations apply to theories of all kinds.¹ For example, C is the theory of free trade; D, the concrete adoption of free trade by a country; A, a psychic state that is in great part the product of individual interests, economic, political, and social, and of the circumstances under which people live. Direct relations between C and D are generally very tenuous. To work upon C in order to modify D leads to insignificant results. But any modification in A may react upon C and upon D. D and C will be seen to change simultaneously, and a superficial observer may think that D has changed because C has changed, whereas closer examination will reveal that D and C are not directly correlated, but depend both upon a common cause, A.

168. Theoretical discussions, C, are not, therefore, very serviceable directly for modifying D; indirectly they may be effective for modifying A. But to attain that objective, appeal must be made to sentiments rather than to logic and the results of experience. The situation may be stated, inexactly to be sure, because too absolutely, but nevertheless strikingly, by saying that in order to influence people thought has to be transformed into sentiment.

In the case of England, the continuous practice of free trade B (Figure 3) over a long period of years has in our day reacted upon the psychic state A (interests, etc.) and intensified it, so increasing obstacles in the way of introducing protection. The theory of free trade, C, is in no way responsible for that. However, other facts, such as growing needs on the part of the Exchequer, are nowadays tending to modify A in their turn; and such modifications may serve to change B and so bring protection about. Meantime modifications in C will be observable and new theories favourable to protection will come into vogue.

A theory, C, has logical consequences. A certain number of them are to be found present in B. Others are absent. That would not be the case if B were the direct consequence of C, for if it were, all the logical implications of C would appear in B without exception. But C and B are simply consequences of a certain psychic state, A. There is nothing therefore to require perfect logical correspondence between them. We shall always be on the wrong road, accordingly, when we imagine that we can infer B from C by establishing that correspondence logically. We are obliged, rather, to start with C and determine A, and then find a way to infer B from A. In doing that very serious difficulties are encountered; and unfortunately they have to be overcome before we can hope to attain scientific knowledge of social phenomena.

169. We have no direct knowledge of A. What we know is certain manifestations of A, such as C and B; and we have to get back from them to A. The difficulties are increased by the fact that though B is susceptible of exact observation, C is almost always stated in obscure terms altogether devoid of exactness.

170. The theory we have been thinking of is a popular theory, or at least, a theory held by large numbers of people. The case where C is a theory framed by scientists is in some respects similar, yet in other respects different.

Unless the theory C is coldly scientific, C is affected by the psychic state of the scientists who frame it. If they belong to the group that has been performing the acts, B, their psychic state has—save in the very rare case of an individual not given to following the beaten path—something in common with the psychic state of the members of the group; and consequently A still influences C. That is all the case can have in common with the preceding case. If scientists are dealing with the conduct of people belonging to groups entirely different from their own—say with some foreign country, or some very different civilization, or with historical matters going back to a remote past—their psychic state, A' (Figure 4), is not identical with A. It may differ now more, now less, or even in some particular case be altogether different. Now it is the psychic state that influences C. So A may affect C very little, if at all. If we ignore all influences from A or A', we get interpretations of the facts, B, that are purely theoretical. If C is a strict and exact principle and is applied to B with faultless logic and without ambiguities of any kind, we get scientific interpretations.

171. But the class of theories that we are here examining includes others. C may be an uncertain principle, lacking in exactness, and sometimes even a principle of the experimental type. Furthermore, it may be applied to B with illogical reasonings, arguments by analogy, appeals to sentiment, nebulous irrelevancies. In such cases we get theories of little or no logico-experimental value, though they may have a great social value (§ 14). Such theories are very numerous, and we shall find them occupying much of our attention.¹

172. Let us go back to the situation in Figure 3, and to get better acquainted with that subject, which is far from being an easy one to master, let us put abstractions aside and examine a concrete case. In that way we shall be led to follow certain inductions which arise spontaneously from the exposition of facts. Then we can go back to the general case and continue the study of which we have just sketched the initial outlines.

There is a very important psychic state that establishes and maintains certain relationships between sensations, or facts, by means of other sensations, P, Q, R. . . . Such sensations may be successive, and that, probably, is one of the ways in which instinct manifests itself in animals. On the other hand they may be simultaneous, or at least be considered such; and their union constitutes one of the chief forces in the social equilibrium.

Let us not give a name to that psychic state, in order, if possible, to avoid any temptation to derive the significance of the thing from the name we give it (§ 119). Let us continue to designate it simply by the letter A, as we have done for a psychic state in general. We shall have to think of the state not only as static, but also as dynamic. It is very important to know how the fundamental element in the institutions of a people changes. Case 1. It may change but reluctantly, slowly, showing a marked tendency to keep itself the same. Case 2. It may change readily, and to very considerable extents, but in different ways, as for instance: Case 2α. The form may change as readily as the substance—for a new substance, new forms. The sensations P, Q, R . . . may be easily disjoined, whether because the force X that unites them is weak, or because, though strong, it succumbs to a still stronger counter-force. Case 2β. Substance changes more readily than forms—for a new substance, the old forms! The sensations P, Q, R . . . are disjoined with difficulty, whether because the force X that unites them is the stronger, or because, though weak, it does not meet any considerable counter-force.

The sensations P, Q, R . . . may originate in certain things and later on appear to the individual as abstractions of those things, such as principles, maxims, precepts, and the like. They constitute an aggregate, a group. The permanence of that aggregate, that group, will be the subject of long and important investigations on our part.¹

173. A superficial observer might confuse the Case 2β with Case 1 (§ 172). But in reality they differ radically. Peoples called conservative may be such now only with respect to forms (Case 2β), now only with respect to substance (Case 1). Peoples called formalist may now preserve both forms and substance (Case 1), now only forms (Case 2β). Peoples commonly said to have "fossilized in a certain state" correspond to Case 1.

174. When the unifying force, X, is quite considerable, and the force Y—the trend toward innovation—is very weak or non-existent, we get the phenomena of instinct in animals, and something like the situation in Sparta, a state crystallized in its institutions. When X is strong, but Y equally strong, and innovations are wrought upon substance with due regard to forms, we get a situation like that in ancient Rome—the effort is to change institutions, but disturbing the associations P, Q, R . . . as little as possible. That can be done by allowing the relations P, Q, R . . . to subsist in form. From that point of view, the Roman people may be called formalist at a certain period in its history, and the same may hold for the English. The aversion of those two peoples to disturbing the formal relations P, Q, R . . . may even tempt one to call them conservative. But if we fix our attention on substance, we see that they do not preserve but transform it. Among the ancient Athenians and the modern French, X is relatively feeble. It is difficult to assert that Y was more vigorous among the Athenians than among the Romans, more vigorous among the French than among the English from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. If the effects in question manifest themselves in different ways, the difference lies in the strength of X rather than in the strength of Y.

Let us assume that in the case of two peoples Y is identical in both and X different in both. To bring about innovations, the people among whom X is feeble wipes out the relations P, Q, R . . . and replaces them with other relations. The people among whom X is strong allows those relations to subsist as far as possible and modifies the significance of P, Q, R. . . . Furthermore, there will be fewer "relics from the past" in the first people than in the second. Since X is feeble, there is nothing to hinder abolition of the relations P, Q, R . . . now considered useless; but when X is strong, those relations will be preserved even if they are considered useless.

These inductions are obtainable by observing manifestations of the psychic state A. As regards Rome we have facts in abundance—to begin with, religion. There is now no doubt: (1) that the earliest Romans had no mythology, or at best an exceedingly meagre one; (2) that the classical mythology of the Romans was nothing but a Greek form given to the Roman gods, if not an actual naturalization of foreign deities. Ancient Roman religion consisted essentially of an association of certain religious practices with the conduct of life—it was the perfect type of the P, Q, R . . . associations. Cicero could well say¹ that "the whole religion of the Roman people comes down to cult and auspices (§ 361), with a supplement of prophecies originating in portents and prodigies as interpreted by the Sibyl and the haruspices."

175. Even in our day numerous and most variegated types of the associations P, Q, R . . . are observable. In his Au pays des Veddas, pp. 159-62, Deschamps says that in Ceylon "the astrologer plays a part in every act of the native's life. Nothing could be undertaken without his counsel; and . . . I have often seen myself refused the simplest favours because the astrologer had not been consulted as to the day and hour auspicious for granting them." When a piece of ground is to be cleared or brought under cultivation, the astrologer is first consulted, receiving offerings of betel leaves and betel nuts.¹ "If the forecast is favourable, gifts of the leaves and nuts are repeated on a specified day, and an 'auspicious hour' (nàkata) is chosen for cutting the first trees and bushes. On the appointed day, the cultivators of the plot selected partake of a repast of cakes, and rice and milk, prepared for the occasion. Then they go forth, their faces turned in the direction designated as propitious by the astrologer. If a lizard chirps at the moment of their departure or if they encounter along the way something of evil omen—a person carrying dead wood or dangerous weapons, a 'rat-snake' crossing the path, a woodpecker—they give up the idea of clearing that particular piece of land, or, more likely, the idea of visiting it that day, picking another nàkata and starting over again. On the other hand, if good omens—a milch cow, a woman nursing a child—are encountered, they proceed cheerily and in all confidence. Once on the ground, an auspicious moment is awaited, then the trees and brush are set on fire. Two or three weeks are allowed for the ground to cool, then another nàkata is set for the final clearing of the land. . . . On a nàkata designated by the same astrologer, a man sows a first handful of rice as a prelude." Birds and also rain may play havoc with the seeding. "To avert such mishaps a kéma or magic brew called navanilla (nine-herbs?) is made ready. . . . If the kéma proves ineffectual, a special kind of oil is distilled for another charm. . . . At weeding-time a nàkata is sought of the same fortune-teller. When the rice-blossoms have faded the ceremony of sprinkling with five kinds of milk takes place." They go on in the same way for each of the successive operations till the rice is finally harvested and barned.²

176. Similar practices are observable to greater or lesser extents in the primitive periods of all peoples.¹ Differences are quantitative not qualitative. Preller² observes that in Rome parallel with the world of the gods was a family of spirits and genii: "Everything that happened in nature, everything that was done by human beings from birth to death, all the vicissitudes of human life and activity, all mutual relationships between citizens, all enterprises . . . were under the jurisdiction of these little gods. Indeed they owe their existence to nothing but those thousands of social relationships with which they are to be identified."³ Originally they were mere associations of ideas, such as we find in fetishism. They constituted groups, and the groups were called divinities or something else of the sort. Pliny soundly remarks that the god population was larger than the population of men.⁴ When the tendency to give a coating of logic to non-logical conduct developed, people tried to explain why certain acts were associated with certain other acts. It was then that the rites of the cult were referred to great numbers of gods, or taken as manifestations of a worship of natural forces or abstractions. In reality we have the same situation here as in § 175. The psychic state of the Romans A (Figure 2) gave rise, through certain associations of ideas and acts, to the rites B. Later on, or even simultaneously in some instances, the same psychic state expressed itself through the worship C of abstractions, natural forces, attributes of certain divinities, and so on. Then, from the simultaneous existence of B and C came the inference, in most cases mistaken, that B was a consequence of C.

177. The view that acts of cult are consequences of a worship of abstractions, whether considered as "natural forces" or otherwise, is the least acceptable of all and must be absolutely rejected (§§ 158, 996).¹ Proofs without end go to show that human beings in general proceed from the concrete to the abstract, and not from the abstract to the concrete. The capacity for abstraction develops with civilization; it is very rudimentary among primitive peoples. Theories that assume it as fully developed in the early stages of human society fall under grave suspicion of error. The ancient Romans, a people still uncivilized, could not have had a very highly developed capacity for abstraction, as would have been necessary if they were to perceive in every concrete fact, sometimes an altogether insignificant fact, a manifestation of some natural power.

Had such a capacity for abstraction existed, it would have left some trace in language. In the beginning, probably, the Greeks did not possess it in any higher degree than the Romans. But they soon acquired it and brought it to remarkable development; and abstraction has left a very definite imprint on their language. Using the article, they are able to turn an adjective, a participle, a whole sentence, into a substantive. The Latins had no article. They could not have availed themselves of that device. But they would certainly have found some other had they felt the need of doing so. On the contrary, it is well known that the capacity for using adjectives substantively is more limited in Latin than in Greek or even in French.²

Probably there is some exaggeration in what St. Augustine says as to the multitude of Roman "gods"; but making all due allowances for overstatement, there are still plenty left who seem to have been created for the sole purpose of accounting logically for the association of certain acts with certain other acts.³

St. Augustine, loc. cit., says that Varro, speaking of the conception of man, gives a list of the gods. He begins with Janus; and, reviewing in succession all the divinities that take care of a man, step by step, down to his extreme old age, he closes with the goddess Nenia, who is naught but the mournful litany chanted at funerals of the aged. He enumerates furthermore divinities who were not concerned with a man's person directly, but rather with the things he uses, such as food, clothing, and the like.

178. Gaston Boissier says in this connexion:¹ "What first strikes one is the little life there is in these gods. No one has gone to the trouble of making legends about them. They have no history. All that is known of them is that they have to be worshipped at a given moment and that, at that time, they can be of use. The moment gone, they are forgotten. They do not have real names. The names they are given do not designate them in themselves, but merely the functions which they fulfil."

The facts are exact, the statement of them slightly erroneous, because Boissier is considering them from the standpoint of logical conduct. Not only did the gods in question have very little life—they had none at all. Once upon a time they were mere associations of acts and ideas. Only at a date relatively recent did they get to be gods (§ 995). "All that is known of them" is the little that need be known for such associations of acts and ideas. When it is said that they have to be "worshipped" at certain moments, a new name is being given to an old concept. One might better say that they were "invoked"; or better yet, that certain words were brought into play. When a person pronounces the number 2 (§ 182) to keep a scorpion from stinging, will anybody claim that he is worshipping the number 2 or invoking it? Are we to be surprised that the number 2 has no legend, no history?

179. In the Odyssey, X, vv. 304-05, Hermes gives Ulysses a plant to protect him from the enchantments of Circe—"black at the root, like milk in the flower. The gods call it moly. Difficult it is for mortals to tear from the ground, but the gods can do all things."

Here we have a non-logical action of the pure type. There can be no question of an operation in magic whereby a god is constrained to act. To the contrary, a god gives the plant to a mortal. No reason is adduced to explain the working of the plant. Now let us imagine that we were dealing not with a poetic fiction but with a real plant used for a real purpose. An association of ideas would arise between the plant and Hermes, and no end of logical explanations would be devised for it. The plant would be regarded as a means for constraining Hermes to action—and that really would be magic—or as a means of invoking Hermes, or as a form of Hermes or one of his names, or as a means of paying homage to "forces of nature." Homer designates the plant by the words φάρμακον ἐσθλόν, which might be translated "healing remedy." Is it not evident, one might argue, that there is a resort to natural forces to counteract the pernicious effects of a poison? And so on to all the rank tanglewood of notions that might be read into Homer's story!¹

180. The human being has such a weakness for adding logical developments to non-logical behaviour that anything can serve as an excuse for him to turn to that favourite occupation. Associations of ideas and acts were probably as abundant at one time in Greece as they were in Rome; but in Greece most of them disappeared, and sooner than was the case in Rome. Greek anthropomorphism transformed simple associations of ideas and acts into attributes of gods.

Says Boissier:¹ "Other countries no doubt felt the need of putting the principal acts of life under divine protection, but ordinarily for such purposes gods well known, powerful, tried and tested of long experience, were chosen, that there might be no doubt as to their efficacy. In Greece the great Athena or the wise Hermes was called upon that a child might grow up competent and wise. In Rome there was a preference for special gods, created for particular purposes and used for no others." The facts are exact, but the explanation is altogether wrong, and again because Boissier is working from the standpoint of logical conduct. His explanation is like an explanation one might make of the declensions in Latin grammar: "Other countries no doubt felt the need of distinguishing the functions of substantive and adjective in a sentence, but ordinarily they chose prepositions for that purpose." No, peoples did not choose their gods, any more than they chose the grammatical forms of their languages. The Athenians never came to any decision in the matter of placing their children under the protection of Hermes and Athena, any more than the Romans after mature reflection chose Vaticanus, Fabulinus, Educa, and Potina for that purpose.

181. It may be that what we see in Greece is merely a stage, somewhat more advanced than the one we find in Rome, in the evolution from the concrete to the abstract, from the non-logical to the logical. It may also be that the evolution was different in the two countries. That point we cannot determine with certainty for lack of documents. In any event—and that is the important thing for the study in which we are engaged—the stages of evolution in Greece and in Rome in historical times were different.

182. In virtue of a most interesting persistence of associations of ideas and acts, words seem to possess some mysterious power over things.¹ Even as late as the day of Pliny the Naturalist, one could still write:² "With regard to remedies derived from human beings there is a very important question that remains unsettled: Do magic words, charms, and incantations have any power? If so, it has to be ascribed to the human being. Individually, one by one, our wisest minds have no faith in such things; but in the mass, in their everyday lives, people believe in them unconsciously.³ [Pliny is an excellent observer here, describing a non-logical action beautifully.] In truth it seems to do no good to sacrifice victims and impossible properly to consult the gods without chants of prayer.⁴ The words that are used, moreover, are of different kinds, some serving for entreaty, others for averting evil, others for commendation.⁵ We see that our supreme magistrates pray with specified words. And in order that no word be omitted or uttered out of its proper place, a prompter accompanies from the ritual, another person repeats the words, another preserves 'silence,' and a flutist plays so that nothing else may be heard. The two following facts are deservedly memorable. Whenever a prayer has been interrupted by an invocation or been badly recited, forthwith, without hands being laid to the victim, the top of the liver, or else the heart, has been found either missing or double. Still extant, as a revered example, is the formula with which the Decii, father and son, uttered their vows,⁶ and we have the prayer uttered by the Vestal Tuccia when, accused of incest, she carried water in a sieve, in the Roman year 609. A man and a woman from Greece, or from some other country with which we were at war, were once buried alive in the Forum Boarium, and such a thing has been seen even in our time. If one but read the sacred prayer that the head of the College of the Quindecemviri is wont to recite ["on such occasions"—Bostock-Riley], one will bear witness to the power of the prayer as demonstrated by the eight hundred and thirty years of our continued prosperity [Bostock-Riley: "by the experience of eight hundred"]. We believe in our day that with a certain prayer our Vestals can arrest the flight of fugitive slaves who have not yet crossed the boundaries of Rome. Once that is granted, once we concede that the gods answer certain prayers or allow themselves to be moved by such words, we have to grant all the rest."⁷

Going on, loc. cit., 5(3), Pliny appeals to conscience, not to reason, that is, he emphasizes, and very soundly, the non-logical character of the acts in question: "I would appeal, too, for confirmation on this subject, to the intimate experience of the individual [Bostock-Riley translation]. . . . Why do we wish each other a happy new year on the first day of each year? Why do we select men with propitious names to lead the victims in public sacrifices? . . . Why do we believe that odd numbers are more effective than others⁸—a thing [Bostock-Riley] that is particularly observed with reference to the critical days in fever. . . . Attalus [Philometor] avers that if one pronounces the number duo⁹ at sight of a scorpion, the scorpion stops and does not sting."¹⁰

183. These actions, in which words act upon things, belong to that class of operations which ordinary language more or less vaguely designates as magic. In the extreme type, certain words or acts, by some unknown virtue, have the power to produce certain effects. Next a first coating of logic explains that power as due to the interposition of higher beings, of deities. Going on in that direction we finally get to another extreme where the action is logical throughout—the mediaeval belief, for instance, that by selling his soul to the Devil a human being could acquire the power to harm people. When a person interested strictly in logical actions happens on phenomena of the kind just mentioned, he looks at them contemptuously as pathological states of mind, and goes his way without further thought of them. But anyone aware of the important part non-logical behaviour plays in human society must examine them with great care.¹

184. Let us suppose that the only cases known to us showed that success in operations in magic depended on the activity of the Devil. Then we might accept the logical interpretation and say, "Men believe in the efficacy of magic because they believe in the Devil." That inference would not be substantially modified by our discovery of other cases where some other divinity functioned in place of the Devil. But it collapses the moment we meet cases that are absolutely independent of any sort of divine collaboration whatsoever. It is then apparent that the essential element in such phenomena is the non-logical action that associates certain words, invocations, practices, with certain desired effects; and that the presence of gods, demons, spirits, and so on is nothing but a logical form that is given to those associations.¹

The substance remaining intact, several forms may coexist in one individual without his knowing just what share belongs to each. The witch in Theocritus, Idyllia, II, vv. 14-17, relies both upon the contributions of gods and upon the efficacy of magic, without distinguishing very clearly just how the two powers are to function. She beseeches Hecate to make the philtres she is preparing deadlier than the potions of Circe, or Medea, or the golden-haired Perimede. Had she relied on Hecate alone, it would have been simpler for her to ask the goddess directly for results that she hoped to get from the philtres. When she repeats the refrain "Wry-neck, wry-neck (ἰνγή, a magic bird), drag this man to my dwelling!" she is evidently envisaging some occult relationship between the bird and the effect she desires.²

For countless ages people have believed in such nonsense in one form or another; and there are some who take such things seriously even in our day. Only, for the past two or three hundred years there has been an increase in the number of people who laugh at them as Lucian did. But the vogue of spiritualism, telepathy, Christian Science (§ 1695²), and what not, is enough to show what enormous power these sentiments and others like them still have today.³

185. "Your ox would not die unless you had an evil neighbour," says Hesiod (Opera et dies, v. 348); but he does not explain how that all happens. The Laws of the XII Tables deal with the "man who shall bewitch the crops"¹ and with the "man who shall chant a curse" without explaining exactly what was involved in those operations. That type of non-logical action has also come down across the ages and is met with in our day in the use of amulets. In the country about Naples hosts of people wear coral horns on their watch-chains to ward off the evil eye. Many gamblers carry amulets and go through certain motions considered helpful to winning.²

186. Suppose we confine ourselves to just one of these countless non-logical actions—to rites relating to the causation or prevention of storms, and to the destruction or protection of crops. And to avoid any bewilderment resulting from examples chosen at random here and there and brought together artificially, suppose we ignore anything pertaining to countries foreign to the Graeco-Roman world. That will enable us to keep to one phenomenon in its ramifications in our Western countries, with some very few allusions to data more remotely sought.¹ The method we adopt for the group of facts we are about to study is the method that will serve for other similar groups of facts. The various phenomena in the group constitute a natural family, in the same sense that the Papilionaceae in botany constitute a natural family: they can readily be identified and grouped together. There are huge numbers of them. We cannot possibly mention them all, but we can consider at least their principal types.

187. We get many cases where there is a belief that by means of certain rites and practices it is possible to raise or quell a storm. At times it is not stated just how the effect ensues—it is taken as a datum of fact. At other times, the supposed reasons are given; the effect is taken as the theoretically explainable consequence of the working of certain forces. In general terms, meteorological phenomena are considered dependent upon certain rites and practices, either directly, or else indirectly, through the interposition of higher powers.

188. Palladius gives precepts without comment. Columella adds a touch of logical interpretation, saying that custom and experience have shown their efficacy.¹ Long before their time, Empedocles, according to Diogenes Laertius, Empedocles, VIII, 2, 59 (Hicks, Vol. II, pp. 373-75), boasted that he had power over the rain and the winds. On one occasion when the winds were blowing hard and threatening to destroy the harvests, he had bags of ass's skin made and placed on the mountains and in that way, trapped in the bags, the winds abated (loc. cit., 60, quoting Timaeus). Suidas makes this interpretation a little less absurd by saying that Empedocles stretched asses' skins about the city. Plutarch, Adversus Colotem, 32 (Goodwin, Vol. V, p. 381), gives an explanation still less implausible (though implausible enough) by having Empedocles save a town from plague and crop-failure by stopping up the mountain gorges through which a wind swept down over the plain. In another place, De curiositate, 1 (Goodwin, Vol. II, p. 424), he repeats virtually the same story, but this time mentioning only the plague. Clement of Alexandria credits Empedocles with calming a wind that was bringing disease to the inhabitants and causing barrenness in the women—and in that a new element creeps in, for the feat would be a Greek counterfeit of a Judaic miracle; and so we get a theological interpretation.²

189. It is evident that here we have, as it were, a tree-trunk with many branches shooting off from it: a constant element, then a multitude of interpretations. The trunk, the constant element, is the belief that Empedocles saved a town from damage by winds; the ramifications, the interpretations, are the various conceptions of the way in which that result was achieved, and naturally they depend upon the temperaments of the writers advancing them: the practical man looks for a pseudo-experimental explanation; the theologian, for a theological explanation.

In Pausanias we get a conglomerate of pseudo-experimental, magical, and theological explanations. Speaking of a statue of Athena Anemotis erected at Motona, Pausanias writes, Periegesis, IV, Messenia, 35, 8: "It is said that Diomedes erected the statue and gave the goddess her name. Winds very violent and blowing out of season began devastating the country. Diomedes offered prayers to Athena; whereafter the country suffered no further ravages from the winds." Ibid., II, Corinth, 12, 1: "At the foot of the hill (for the temple is built on a hill) stands the Altar of the Winds, whereon, one night each year, the priest sacrifices to the winds. In four pits that are there he performs other secret ceremonies to calm the fury of the winds, and likewise chants magic words that are said to come down from Medea." Ibid., 34: "I record this fact also, whereat I marvelled greatly while among the Methanians. If the south-east wind ["the Lipz"] blows in from the Saronic Gulf when the vines are budding, it dries up the buds. So, as soon as the wind begins to blow, two men take a white-feathered cock, tear it in two, and run around the vineyards in opposite directions, each carrying half of the cock. Coming back to the point at which they started, they bury it. Such the remedy they have devised against that wind."

Pomponius Mela mentions nine virgins who dwelt on the "Isle of Sena" and who were able to stir up the winds and the sea with their chants.¹ In the Geoponicon, compiled by Cassianus Bassus, I, 14, several methods of saving the fields from hail are mentioned; but the compiler of that collection explains that he has transcribed them only to avoid seeming disrespectful to things that have come down from the forefathers. His own beliefs, in a word, are different.

190. One branch shooting off from this nucleus of interpretation overlying non-logical behaviour ends in a deification of tempests. Cicero, De natura deorum, III, 20, 51, has Cotta meet Balbus with the objection that if the sky, the stars, and the phenomena of weather were to be deified the number of the gods would be absurdly great. In this case the deification stands by itself; in other examples, it bifurcates and gives rise to numerous interpretations, personifications, explanations.¹

191. Capacity for controlling winds and storms becomes a sign of intellectual or spiritual power, as in Empedocles; or even of divinity, as in Christ quelling the tempest.¹ Magicians and witches demonstrate their powers in that fashion; and Greek anthropomorphism knows lords of winds, storms, and the sea.

192. Sacrifices were made to the winds. The sacrifice is just a logical development of a magical operation like the use of the white cock just described. In fact for that ceremony to become a sacrifice, it need simply be stated that the cock is torn in twain as a sacrifice to this or that divinity.

Virgil has a black sheep sacrificed to the Tempest, a white sheep to the fair Zephyr. Note the elements in his action: 1. Principal element: the notion that it is possible to influence the winds by means of certain acts. 2. Secondary element: logical explanation of such acts, by introducing an imaginary being (personified winds, divinities, and the like). 3. An element still more secondary: specification of the acts, through certain similarities between black sheep and storms, white sheep and fair winds.¹

193. The winds protected the Greeks against the Persian invasion and in gratitude the Delphians reared an altar to them at Pthios.¹ It is a familiar fact that Boreas, son-in-law to the Athenians by virtue of his marriage to Orithyia, daughter of Erechtheus, dispersed the Persian fleet, and therefore well deserved the altar that the Athenians reared in his honour on the shores of the Ilissus.²

Boreas, good fellow, looked after other people besides the Athenians. He destroyed the fleet of Dionysius, as the latter was voyaging to attack the Thurii (Tarentines). "The Thurii therefore sacrificed to Boreas and elected that wind to citizenship [in their city]; assigned him a house and a piece of land, and each year celebrated a festival in his honour."³ He also saved the Megalopolitanians when they were besieged by the Spartans; and for that reason they offered sacrifices to him every year and honoured him as punctiliously as any other god.⁴

The art of lulling the winds was known to the Persian Magi also. Herodotus relates, Historiae, VII, 191, in connexion with the tempest that Boreas raised to help the Athenians and which inflicted heavy losses on the Persian fleet: "For three days the storm raged. The Magi sacrificed victims and addressed magical incantations to the wind, and sacrificed further to Thetis and the Nereids. Whereupon the winds ceased on the fourth day—unless it be that they fell of their own accord." Interesting this scepticism on the part of Herodotus!⁵

194. The notion that winds, rains, tempests, can be produced by art of magic is a common one in ancient writers.¹ Seneca discusses the causes of weather at length and derides magic. He does not admit the possibility of forecasting the weather by observation, regarding observation as just a preparation for the rites commonly performed for averting storms.² He says that at Cleonae there were public officials known as "hail-observers." As soon as they gave warning of the approach of a storm, the inhabitants rushed to the temple and sacrificed some a ewe, others a fowl. Those who had nothing to sacrifice pricked a finger and shed a little blood, and the clouds moved on in another direction. "People have wondered how that happens. Some, as befits educated people, deny that it is possible to bargain with hail-stones and ransom oneself from storms by trifling gifts, granted that gifts sway even the gods. Others suspect that the blood may contain some property that is able to banish clouds. But how can so little blood contain a force of such magnitude as to work far up in the skies and be felt by clouds? How much simpler to say that it is stuff and nonsense. All the same the officials entrusted with forecasting storms at Cleonae were punished when through oversight on their part the vines and the crops were damaged. Our own XII Tables forbid anyone's laying an enchantment on another's crops. An ignorant antiquity believed that clouds could be compelled or dispelled by magic. But such things are so manifestly impossible that no great schooling is required to know as much."

Few writers, however, evince the scepticism of Seneca, and we have a long series of legends about storms and winds that come down to a day very close to our own.

195. The Roman legions led by Marcus Aurelius against the Quadi chanced to be caught by a shortage of water, but a storm came along just in time to save them. The fact seems to be well authenticated.¹ So then, the why and wherefore of the storm has to be explained; and everybody does so according to his individual sentiments and inclinations.

It may be a case of witchcraft. Even the name of the magician is known—in such cases one can be very specific at small cost! Suidas says he was one Arnuphis, "an Egyptian philosopher who, being in attendance on Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher, Emperor of the Romans, at the time when the Romans fell short of water, straightway caused black clouds to gather in the skies and a heavy rain to fall, wherewith thunder and frequent lightning; and those things he did of his science. Others say that the prodigy was the work of Julian the Chaldean."²

Then again pagan gods may have a hand in it—otherwise what are gods good for? Dio Cassius, Historia Romana, LXXII, 8 (Cary, Vol. IX, pp. 27-29), says that while the Romans were hard pressed by the Quadi and were suffering terribly from heat and thirst, "of a sudden many clouds gathered and much rain fell, not without divine purpose, and violently. And it is said of this that an Egyptian magician, Arnuphis by name, who was with Marcus, invoked a number of divinities³ by magic art, and chiefly Hermes Aërius, and so brought on the rain."

Claudian believes that the enemy was put to flight by a rain of fire. And the cause? Magic, or else benevolence of Jove the Thunderer.⁴ Capitolinus knows that Marcus Antoninus "with his prayers turned the thunderbolts of heaven against the war machines of the enemy and obtained rain for his soldiers who were suffering from thirst.⁵ With Lampridius the episode is further elaborated and assumes new garb. Marcus Antoninus has succeeded in making the Marcomanni friendly to the Romans by certain magical practices. The formulas are withheld from Elagabalus in fear lest he be desiring to start a new war.⁶

Finally the Christians claim the miracle for their God. On the passage from Dio Cassius (LXXII, 8) quoted above, Xiphilinus (Cary, Dio, Vol. IX, pp. 29-33) notes that Dio wittingly or unwittingly, but he suspects wittingly, misleads the reader. He surely knew—since he mentions it himself—all about the "Thundering Legion," the Fulminata, to which, and not to the magician Arnuphis, the rescue of the army was due! The truth is as follows: Marcus had a legion made up entirely of Christians. During the battle, the praetor's adjutant came and told Marcus that there was nothing which Christians were unable to obtain by prayer and that there was a legion of Christians in the army. "Hearing which, Marcus urged them to bestir themselves and pray to their God. They prayed, and God heard their prayer immediately and smote the enemy with lightning, whereas the Romans He comforted with rain." Xiphilinus adds that a letter of Marcus Aurelius on the incident was said to be in existence in his time. The letter, forged by people more distinguished for piety than veracity, is also alluded to by other writers; and Justin Martyr goes so far as to give its authentic text.⁷

196. So the legend expands, widening in scope and gradually approximating a veritable novel. But not only the external embellishments increase in number. Concepts multiply in the substance itself. The nucleus is a mechanical concept.¹ Certain words are uttered, certain rites are performed, and the rain falls. Then comes a feeling that that has to be explained. A first theory assumes the interposition of supernatural beings. But then the interference of such gods has also to be explained, and we get a second explanation. But that explanation too bifurcates according to the supposed reasons for the intervention, foremost among which stands the ethical reason, so introducing a new concept that was altogether absent in the magical operation proper. This new concept enlarges the scope of the whole procedure. Rain was once the sole objective of the rite. Now it becomes a means whereby the divine power rewards its favourites and punishes their enemies, and then, further, a means for rewarding faith and virtue. A final step is to move on from the particular case to the general. It is no longer a question of a single fact, but of a multiplicity of facts, all following a certain rule. This leap is taken by Tertullian. After telling the story of the rain secured by the soldiers of Marcus Aurelius, he adds: "How often have droughts not been stopped by our prayers and our fasts!"²

Other cases of the same kind could be adduced; which goes to show that the sentiments in which they originate are fairly common throughout the human race.³

197. In Christian writers it is natural that logical explanations of the general law of storms should centre about the Devil. Clement of Alexandria records the belief that wicked angels have a hand in tempests and other such calamities (§ 188²).¹ But, let us not forget, that is just an adjunct, by way of explanation, to the basic element— the belief that it is possible to influence storms and other calamities of the kind by certain rites. Victorious Christianity had to fight for its interpretations first with ancient pagan practices and later on with magical arts that in part continued the pagan and in part were new. But great the need of escaping storms! And powerful the thought that there were ways of doing so! So in one manner or another the need was covered and the thought carried out.²

198. In mediaeval times individuals endowed with such powers were known as tempestarii, and even the law took cognizance of them. Nevertheless the Church did not recognize this power of producing storms without a struggle. The Council of Braga in the year 563 (Labbe, Vol. VI, p. 518) anathematizes anyone teaching that the Devil can produce thunder, lightning, tempests, or drought. A celebrated ecclesiastical decree denies all basis in fact to fanciful tales about witches.¹

St. Agobard wrote an entire book "against idiotic notions current as to hail and thunder." Says he: "In these parts nearly all people, noble or villein, burgher or rustic, old or young, believe that hail and thunder can be produced at the will of men. They therefore exclaim at the first signs of thunder and lightning: 'Raised air!' Asked to explain what 'raised air' is, they will tell you, some shamefacedly as though conscious of sin, others with the wonted frankness of the ignorant, that the air has been stirred by the incantations of individuals known as 'tempestuaries' and that that is why they say 'raised air.' We have seen and heard many people possessed of such stupidity and out of their heads with such lunacy as to believe and say that there is a certain country called 'Magonie' whence ships sail out on the clouds and return laden with the grain which the hail mows and the storms blow down, and that the 'tempestuaries' are paid by such aerial mariners for the grain and other produce delivered to them. We have seen a great crowd of people—blinded by such great stupidity as to believe such things possible—drag four persons in chains before our court, three men and a woman, alleging that they had fallen from one of those ships. They had been held in chains for several days till the court convened; then they were produced, in our presence, as I said, as culprits worthy to be stoned to death. Nevertheless, after much parley the truth prevailing, the accusers were, in the prophet's words, confounded like thieves caught in the act."²

St. Agobard demonstrates from Holy Writ the error of believing that hail and thunder are at the beck and call of human beings. Others, on the contrary, will likewise show by Scripture that the belief is sound. Yes and no have at all times been produced from Scripture with equal readiness.

199. Doctrines recognizing the powers of witches were mistrusted by the Church for two reasons, at first because they looked like survivals of paganism, the gods of which were identified with devils; then because they were tainted with Manicheism, setting up a principle of evil against a principle of good. But owing to the pressure of the popular beliefs in which the non-logical impulses involved in magic expressed themselves, the Church finally yielded to something it could not prevent, and with little trouble found an interpretation humouring popular superstition and at the same time not incompatible with Catholic theology. After all, what did it want? It wanted the principle of evil to be subordinate to the principle of good. No sooner said than done! We can grant, to be sure, that magic is the work of the Devil—but we will add, "God permitting." That will remain the final doctrine of the Catholic Church.

200. Popular superstitions exerted pressure not only upon the Church but also upon secular governments; and they, without bothering very much to find logical interpretations, set out with a will to punish all sorts of sorcerers and witches, "tempestuaries" included.¹

201. Whenever a certain state of fact, a certain state of belief, exists, there is always someone on hand to try to take advantage of it; and it is therefore not surprising that Church, State, and individuals should all have tried to profit by the belief in witchcraft. St. Agobard reports that blackmail was paid to "tempestuaries,"¹ and Charlemagne, no less, admonishes his subjects to pay their tithes to the Church regularly if they would be surer of their crops.²

202. In the Middle Ages and the centuries following there was a veritable deluge of accusations against sorcerers for stirring up storms and destroying harvests. Humanity lived in terror of the Devil for generation after generation. Whenever people spoke of him, they seemed to go out of their heads, and, as might be expected of raving lunatics, spread death and ruin recklessly about.

203. The Malleus maleficarum (Hammer for Witches) of Sprenger and Kramer gives a good summary of the doctrine prevailing in the fifteenth century, though it was also the doctrine of periods earlier and later:

"That demons and their disciples can work such enchantments on lightning and hail, having received power therefor of God, and namely through His authorization of devils or their disciples, is attested by Holy Writ, Job 1 and 2 . . .whereof St. Thomas in a note on Job writes as follows:^a 'We must confess that, God permitting, demons may effect disturbances in the air, raise storms, and cause fire to fall from the sky. Though corporeal nature in assuming its forms does not obey the commands of angels, whether good or bad, but only God the Creator, nevertheless, as regards local motion, [corporeal] nature is susceptible of obedience to spiritual nature, as may be seen in human beings, who, by sole power of the will, which is subjective in the soul, are able to move their members to the end of performing desired actions. Therefore motion—which, by its nature, not only good but also wicked angels can effect—is alone possible, save it be forbidden of God.' "^b The disquisition on the power of demons runs on and finally the authors of the Malleus give an example: "In [Nider's] Formicarius, [V, 4, f. R2], we are told of a man who was seized by a judge and questioned touching his manner of procedure in raising storms and whether it were an easy matter to do that. He answered: 'It is easy enough to make it hail, but we cannot inflict damage at will because of the surveillance of good angels.' And he added: 'We can harm only those who are without succour of God. Those who take care to carry the sign of the Cross we cannot harm. Our procedure is as follows: First in the field [in question] we pray, by a magic formula, to the Prince of all the demons to send us one of his servants to smite whither we point. The demon comes. Thereupon at a cross-roads we sacrifice a black fowl to him, tossing it high in the air. The demon takes it and obeys. He brings on a storm and hurls hail-stones and lightning-bolts, but not always on the spots we have designated, but whither God permits.' "¹ The writer continues with other stories as plausible as they are marvellous. We will touch briefly here on just one of them which is told by another writer.

The daughters of witches often have the powers their mothers have.² "Hence it may happen and has been known to happen . . . that a girl under the age of puberty, eight or ten years old, has produced hail and tempests." And the author gives an example (Summers, p. 144): "In Swabia a peasant with his daughter, hardly eight years old, was once looking at the grain in the fields. And considering the drought, and sorrowful, he wished for rain, saying: 'Alas, when is it going to rain?' The child, hearing her father's words, said in the simpleness of her soul: 'Father, if you would have rain, I will make it rain right soon!' And the father: 'How in the world can you make it rain?' 'Certainly I can, and not only can I make it rain: I can also make it hail and storm.' 'And who taught you that?' 'Mama, but she told me not to tell anyone!' " The conversation continues; and finally "the father led his daughter to a brook. 'Make it rain,' he said, 'but only on our field.' The girl then put her hand into the water, and in the name of her master, according to her mother's teaching, stirred it about. And lo! the rain fell, and only upon her father's field! Seeing which her father said: 'Make it hail, but only upon one of our fields.' When the girl did that too, the father was convinced from what he had seen, and reported his wife to the judge. She was seized, convicted, and burned; and her daughter, baptized anew and consecrated to God, no longer had powers to work her art."

Though Del Rio quotes the Malleus, and another authority still, he tells the story somewhat differently, especially as to the way in which the rain was caused. Here we catch these legends in process of formation. Probably not all of this story was invented. Some such incident occurs. It is then amplified, commented upon, explained, and from it, as from a little seed, there comes an abundant harvest of fantastic and grotesque fiction.³

204. De Rio gives a long list of highly reputable writers who maintain that sorcerers can produce hail and storms; and whose names, supplemented by the authority of Scripture and by practical instances attested by people worthy of all credence, are surely calculated to vanquish the most obstinate incredulity!¹

205. Godelmann imparts various ways in which witches, schooled of the Devil, can produce hail:¹ "They toss pieces of flint behind them, towards the west. Sometimes they throw sand from riverbottoms into the air. Often they dip a broom in water and make a sprinkling motion at the sky. Or they dig a little ditch, fill it with water or urine, and stir the liquid with a finger. Then again they boil hog-bristles in kettles, or set boards or timbers criss-cross on a river-bank. . . . Thus they make believe that the hail comes through their doings, whereas really it comes of the Devil, God permitting."

206. Weier denies that witches have any powers, but he concedes that the Devil has, God permitting. Such the interpretation he devised in striving to save the unhappy women who were being sent to the stake. He may have taken it seriously himself, and such deviousness may have been required in an age when law and custom cramped free expression of thought.¹ Few people went as far as Tartarotti, who ascribes the phenomena of witchcraft to natural forces and leaves His High-and-Mightiness, the Devil, the mere credit of foreseeing them, so following a doctrine that had been current for centuries in the Christian Church (§ 213).² But he too appeals to the authority of Scripture, and judiciously balms the Holy Inquisition when he writes: "And here I could not, without blemish of grave injustice, dispense with paying a deserved tribute to the most revered and level-headed Tribunal of the Holy Inquisition of Rome, which on these matters is guided by such moderation and caution as unmistakably to manifest the spirit and motive by which it is inspired, regardless of the unjust insults and the groundless complaints that heretics keep hurling at it."³

207. In our time we may say what we please about witches, but not about sex; and just as in days gone by, whether out of conviction or from a desire to please people who in this connection can only be called ignorant fanatics, governments persecuted individuals who discussed the Bible freely, so in our day, and for similar reasons, governments prosecute individuals who discuss sex without due caution. Lucretius was free to speak his mind both on the religion of the gods and on the religion of sex.

208. In those days the heretic was called a criminal. So is the sex heretic today. To read what Bodin wrote of Weier is to read what Senator Bérenger and his brethren say today of people whose minds are not as narrow as their own.¹

209. There is another analogy that sheds light on the nature of non-logical behaviour. As we noted in § 199, interpretations had to adapt themselves to popular prejudices, and so did law and penal procedure. The records of many many trials for witchcraft show that what happens is this: public rumour first designates the witch; public frenzy then assails and persecutes her; finally public authority is compelled to interfere. Here is one example among the countless that might be mentioned: In the year 1546, in the barony of Viry, a certain Marguerite Moral, wife of Jean Girard, complains to the châtelain of the barony that certain women have attacked and beaten her, at the same time calling her a witch (hyrige). The châtelain proceeds against the defendants and learns from them that Marguerite is accused of having caused the deaths of certain children. Exactly as would be done today, he investigates in order to ascertain whether the charges made against Marguerite are true. At first the plaintiff, she is now the defendant! The charge next extends to Marguerite's husband. Many witnesses testify that the children died, presumably through practices by Marguerite. She and her husband are put to torture and of course say whatever they are asked to say. They confess to intercourse with the Devil, just as they would have confessed to administering poison, or anything else. Both accordingly are condemned to the stake and burned.¹

210. In this instance interpretations play a very minor rôle. In the forefront stands the notion that death can be inflicted in some mysterious manner; and that concept works primarily on the minds of the plain people. The judges accept it too; but had it not been for the other notion that the truth can be ascertained by torture, one could not be sure what the outcome of the trial would have been. In a word, it is clearly apparent that public opinion is influencing the judges and that except for it they would have taken no action. So in our day governments have never taken action against sex heresy until after persistent agitation by that pestilential breed of individuals that forgathers in societies for the promotion of morality and conventions for the suppression of pornography; and our modern legislators, like our modern judges, for the most part accede reluctantly, and do their best to mitigate at least the hysterical frenzies of the sex-reformers.

211. Witches were being burned as late as the eighteenth century, and in doing such things governments and the Church were abetting popular superstition and so contributed to strengthening it; but they certainly were not the authors of it. Far from enforcing belief in such non-logical actions in the beginning, the Church found that belief forced upon it and sought to find logical interpretations for it. Only later did the Church altogether accept it, with the correctives supplied by its interpretations.

A writer who cannot be suspected of partiality to the Catholic Church says: "The slight attention paid in the thirteenth century by the Church to a crime so abhorrent as sorcery is proved by the fact that when the Inquisition was organized it was for a considerable time restrained from jurisdiction over this class of offences. In 1248 the Council of Valence, while prescribing to inquisitors the course to be pursued with heretics, directs sorcerers to be delivered to the bishops, to be imprisoned or otherwise punished [Labbe, Vol. XIV, p. 115, cap. 12]. In various councils, moreover, during the next sixty years the matter is alluded to, showing that it was constantly becoming an object of increased solicitude, but the penalty threatened is only excommunication. In that of Treves, for instance, in 1310, which is very full in its description of the forbidden arts [Labbe, Vol. XIV, pp. 1450-51, cap. 79-84], all parish priests are ordered to prohibit them; but the penalty proposed for disobedience is only withdrawal of the sacraments, to be followed, in case of continued obduracy, by excommunication and other remedies of the law administered by the Ordinaries; thus manifesting a leniency almost inexplicable. That the Church, indeed, was disposed to be more rational than the people is visible in a case occuring in 1279 at Ruffach, in Alsace, when a Dominican nun was accused of having baptized a waxen image after the fashion of those who desired either to destroy an enemy or to win a lover. The peasants carried her to a field and would have burned her, had she not been rescued by the friars."¹

212. People who see logical actions everywhere are therefore in error when they blame Catholic theology for the persecutions of witches. Such persecutions, incidentally, were as common among Protestants as among Catholics. Belief in magic belongs to all ages and all peoples. Interpretations are the servants, not the masters, of the thing.¹

Other writers, such as Michelet in his Sorcière, find the cause of the witchcraft superstition in feudalism. But where was feudalism when the Roman Laws of the XII Tables were penalizing people who laid curses on harvests? When people were believing in the witches of Thessaly? When Apuleius was being accused of using love-philtres to win the favour of the lady he married—not to mention countless other cases? The truth is, Michelet's interpretation is an exact counterpart of the Christian, except that the "great enemy" has changed his name: he used to be Satan; now he is Feudalism!

213. But to go back to the Christian interpretations. Even granting that the Devil had no power to produce storms, there was no adequate reason for eliminating him altogether from such phenomena on that account. He could be brought in in another way by saying that he could foresee storms and therefore predict them. That explanation has been current from the earliest days of Christianity down to our own. The idea, in brief, is that devils have aerial bodies, that they can travel with great speed, that being immortal they have had long experience and can therefore know and predict many things in addition to predicting the things they are going to do themselves.¹

We still do not know why it is that certain rites happen to attract devils. Never fear! There will always be as many explanations as are asked for! St. Augustine imparts that devils are attracted to physical bodies "not as animals are by food, but as spirits are by signs compatible with their pleasure or by various sorts of stones, plants, woods, animals, chants, rites." And, with all his weighty authority, St. Thomas agrees that this is so.²

214. From the very earliest days of demoniacal interpretation one very grave question kept coming up: Could magic practised with evil intent be met with magic practised with good intent? Constantine would permit such things, but Godefroi, in his commentary, disapproves of them, on the ground that evil things are not to be done in order to achieve legitimate purposes. Such also has been the doctrine of the Church.¹

215. For that matter, there are plenty of legitimate recourses, quite apart from exorcisms and spiritual exercises, and all demonologists go into them at length. Sprenger and Kramer, for instance, give the following instructions (Summers, p. 190): "Against hail and storms the following remedy may be used in addition to the sign of the cross just mentioned. Throw three hail-stones into the fire, pronouncing the name of the Most Holy Trinity. Follow with the Lord's Prayer and the Angelic Salutation repeated two or three times. Then follow with In principio erat Verbum from the Gospel according to St. John, making the sign of the cross against the storm in all directions, backwards, forwards, and to the cardinal points; then, to conclude, repeat three times Verbum caro factum est, and say three times, 'In the name of this Gospel, let this storm cease.' Whereupon it subsides forthwith—provided it has been caused by witchcraft. These are held to be very sound practices and above suspicion [of heresy]. But if one throw hail-stones into the fire without invoking the divine Name, the action is held superstitious. If one should ask, 'Cannot the storm be quelled without hail-stones?' the answer is, 'Certainly, by using holy words in greater profusion.' In throwing the hail-stones into the fire the idea is merely to annoy the Devil while one is getting ready to undo his work by calling on the name of the Most Holy Trinity. It is better to throw them into fire than into water; for the sooner they melt, the sooner is his work undone. Nevertheless the outcome is all in the hands of the Divine Will."¹ More gibberish follows on the ways in which a hail-storm can be caused or prevented. Del Rio lists numberless remedies, natural and supernatural, legitimate and illegitimate, whereby the mischief of witchcraft can be averted.

216. Here we can stop, not for lack of material, for of that there is enough to fill a good-sized library; but because what we have so far said suffices to show the essential traits of the family of facts that we have been examining, just as a certain number of plants suffice to show the characteristics of the family of Papilionaceae.¹

217. The study just completed clearly shows the presence of the following characteristics in the family of facts considered (§ 514⁴):

1. There is a non-logical nucleus containing, in simple compound, certain acts, certain words, that have specified effects, such as hurricanes or destruction of crops.

2. From this nucleus a number of branches, a number of logical interpretations, radiate. It is impossible not to observe that in general interpretations are devised for no other reason than to account for the fact that storms can be raised or quelled, crops protected or destroyed. Only in cases altogether exceptional is the opposite observable—the case, that is, where the logical theory leads to the belief in the fact. Interpretations are not always clearly distinguished from one another; they often interlock, so that the person accepting them may not himself know exactly what share is to be credited to each.

3. Logical interpretations assume the forms that are most generally prevalent in the ages in which they are evolved. They are comparable to the styles of costume worn by people in the periods corresponding.

4. There is no direct evolution, such as is represented in Figure 5. Evolution takes the form shown in Figure 6. The pure non-logical action has not been transmuted into an action of logical form. It is carried along with the other actions that are derived from it. It is impossible to determine just how the transformation has taken place—for example, trying to establish that from the mere association of acts and facts (fetishism) people went on to a theological interpretation, then to a metaphysical interpretation, then to a positive interpretation. There is no such succession in time. Interpretations that might be called fetishistic, magical, experimental, or pseudo-experimental are moreover often mixed in together in such a way that they cannot be separated, and very probably the individual who accepts them would not be able to separate them either. He knows that certain acts must have certain consequences, and he does not care to go beyond that and see how it all comes about.

5. In the long run, to be sure, degrees of enlightenment in people generally have their influence on the non-logical conduct in question, but there is no constant correlation in that respect. The Romans burned neither witches nor magicians, yet they were undoubtedly inferior in scientific development to the Italians, the French, the Germans, and so on, of the seventeenth century, who killed sorcerers in large numbers. So, also, towards the end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth, those unfortunates were not persecuted at all, though beyond all doubt that age was far inferior to the seventeenth century in intellectual and scientific development.

6. Belief in the non-logical conduct was not imposed by logical device of the Church, of governments, or of anybody else. It was the non-logical conduct that forced acceptance of the logical theories as explanations of itself. That does not mean that such theories may not in their turn have stimulated the belief in the non-logical conduct, and even may have given rise to it in places where it had not existed previously. This last induction puts us in the way of understanding how other things of the kind may have come about and how we may be mistaken when, knowing non-logical actions only under their logical coating, we give the logical aspect an importance that it does not really possess.

218. All the many cases we have examined in connexion with storms had something in common, something constant: the feeling that there are certain means by which storms can be influenced. There is besides a differing, a variable, element—the means themselves, and the reasons given for using them. The first element is evidently the more important; so long as it is there, people experience little or no difficulty in finding the other. It might well be, therefore, that as regards determining the form of society, elements similar to the constant element just discovered are of greater importance than the other, the variable elements. For the present we cannot decide the matter. Induction is simply pointing out to us one road that we shall find it advisable to explore.

As often happens with the inductive method, we have found not only the thing we were looking for, but another thing that we were not in the least expecting. We set out to discover how non-logical actions come to assume logical forms, and by going thoroughly into a special case, we have seen how that happens. But we have seen, in addition, that such phenomena have an element which is constant, or almost constant, and another element which is very variable. Now science looks for constant elements in phenomena in order to get at uniformities. We shall therefore have to make a special study of these different elements—and that we shall do in chapters following (§ 182¹).

219. Meanwhile, other inductions loom before us, not yet as assertions, since they have been derived from too few facts, but rather as propositions that we must verify as we extend the scope of our researches:

1. If for a moment we consider the facts strictly from the logico-experimental standpoint, the policy of the Church with reference to magic is simply insane, and all those stories of devils are ridiculously childish. That much granted, there are people who infer from the premises that the religion of the Church is equally unsound and is therefore detrimental to society. Can we accept that inference? It is to be noted, in the first place, that the argument avails not only for Catholicism but for all religions, indeed for all systems of metaphysics—for everything, in fact, that is not logico-experimental science. It is impossible to concur in that opinion and regard as absurd the greater part of the lives of all human societies that have existed down to our time. Furthermore, if everything that is not logical is detrimental to society and therefore to the individual also, we ought not to find instances such as we have observed among animals (and are going to observe among human beings) in which certain non-logical behaviour proves beneficial, and even to a very high degree. Since the inferences are wrong, the reasoning must also be wrong. Where is the error?

The complete syllogisms would be: a. Any doctrine of which a part is absurd is absurd; that part of the Church's doctrine which deals with magic is absurd; therefore, etc. b. Any doctrine that is not logico-experimental is detrimental to society; the doctrine of the Church is not logico-experimental; therefore, etc. The propositions that probably falsify these syllogisms are: a. Any doctrine of which a part is absurd is absurd, b. Any doctrine that is not logico-experimental is detrimental to society. We must therefore examine those propositions closely and see whether they do, or do not, correspond to the facts. But in order to do that, we must first have a theory of doctrines and of their influence on individuals and society; and that is something that we are to attend to in the chapters next following (§ 14).

2. The questions just asked in connexion with doctrines also arise in connexion with individual human beings. If we consider the conduct of individuals from the logico-experimental standpoint, no name but "idiot" describes the man who wrote the absurdities with which Bodin stuffs his Démonomanie. And if we consider such conduct from the standpoint of the good or evil done to others, dictionaries supply only synonyms of "murderer" and "knave" for individuals who as a result of such idiocies have inflicted the cruelest sufferings upon many many human beings, and brought not a few of them to death.

But we at once observe that reasoning in that way we are extending to the whole what in reality applies only to the part. There are examples a-plenty to show that a man may be unbalanced in some things, level-headed in others; dishonest in some of his dealings, upright in others. From that conflict two errors arise, equivalent in origin, different in appearances. Both the following propositions are false—equally false: "Bodin has talked like a fool and done great harm to his fellow-men; therefore Bodin is an idiot and a rascal"; "Bodin was an intelligent and honest man; therefore the things he writes in his Démonomanie are sound and his conduct is exemplary." We see by that that we cannot judge the logico-experimental value and the utility of a doctrine by a facile consideration of the reputability of its author; that we must, instead, travel the rough and thorny path of studying it directly on the facts. And there we are back again at the conclusion that will be reached by an examination of doctrines themselves (§§ 1434 f.). All that we shall go into thoroughly later on. For the moment let us continue looking over the general field of non-logical conduct.

220. Worthy of some attention is the logical form that the Romans gave to their relations with the gods. In general it is the form of a definite and unequivocal contract that is to be interpreted according to the rules of law. If we stopped at that, we should see in the fact a mere manifestation of what has been called the legal-mindedness of the Romans. But similar facts are observable among all peoples. Even in our day the devout chambermaid who promises a few pennies to St. Anthony of Padua if he helps her to get back something she has lost is acting toward that saint exactly as the Romans acted towards their gods. What distinguishes the Romans, rather, is the wealth and precision of detail, the subordination of substance to form—in a word, the powerful cohesion of one act with other acts. And in that we glimpse a manifestation of the psychic state of the Romans.

221. The Athenian Plato takes no interest in these associations of ideas and facts which disincline people to separate facts logically. In the Euthyphro (17) he scorns the notion that sanctity can be regarded as the science of begging things of the gods.¹ For the Romans, and especially for Roman statesmen, the whole science of the relations of gods and men lay in just that. It was a difficult science. One had first to know to just what divinity to turn in a given emergency, and then to know its exact name. And since there might be doubts on such points, there were formulae for getting around the difficulty—for example, "Jupiter Optime Maxime, sive quo alio nomine te appelari volueris"—"Jupiter, Greatest and Best, or what ever you prefer to be called . . ."²

222. Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, II, 28, 2, remarks that no one knew what divinity to invoke in case of an earthquake—a most serious embarrassment. So "the ancient Romans, who in all the duties of life and especially in anything touching religious observance and the immortal gods were very scrupulous and circumspect, proclaimed public holidays whenever they experienced an earthquake or heard of one. But they refrained from naming the god, as their custom was, in whose honour the festivities were held in order that they might not bind the people to a mistaken rite by naming the wrong god."

223. When wine was offered to a divinity, one had to say, "Accept this wine which I hold in my hands." These last words were added to avoid any possible misunderstanding, and the mistake in particular of offering the divinity by inadvertence all the wine in one's cellar.¹ "It is one of the principles of augural doctrine that imprecations and auspices of whatever kind have no value for those who, in starting out on an enterprise, declare they attach no importance to them; the which is one of the greatest bounties of divine graciousness."² All that seems ridiculous if one is disposed to argue the substance in logical terms. But it becomes rational if we premise certain associations of acts and ideas. If the sting of a scorpion is really to be avoided by pronouncing the number 2 (§ 182), is it not evident that when one comes upon an insect and would avoid its sting, one must first know exactly whether it is a scorpion or not, and then the number that has to be pronounced? If it is the act more than anything else that counts, obviously when one is offering wine to a divinity one must do exactly the right thing and not some other thing. In any event all such ratiocination, whatever its value, occurred a posteriori to justify conduct in itself non-logical.

224. Systems of divination in Rome and Athens differed no less than religions, and the differences lay in the same direction. Roman divination¹ was confined to "a simple question, always the same, and relating strictly to the present or to the immediate future. The question might be formulated thus: 'Do the gods favour, or not favour, the thing that the consultant is about to do, or which is about to be done under his auspices?' The question admits only of the alternatives 'yes' or 'no' and recognizes only positive or negative signs. . . . As for the methods of divination prescribed by the augural ritual, they were as simple and as few in number as possible. Observation of birds was the basis of it; and it would have remained the only source of auspices had not the prestige of the fulgural art of the Etruscans influenced the Romans to 'observe the sky' and even to attribute a higher significance to the mysterious phenomena of lightning. Official divination knew neither oracles, nor lots, nor the inspection of entrails. It refused to become involved in the discussion and appraisal of fortuitous signs, taking account of them only as they occurred in the taking of auspices. With all the more reason it refrained from interpreting prodigies."

225. What the Romans could not find at home, they sought abroad in Greece and Etruria, where a freer imagination was creating new forms of divination. In the importance attached to the plain association of acts and ideas we must seek the explanation of one of the most extraordinary rules of Roman divination, the rule giving a counterfeit augury the same efficacy as a sign that had actually been observed. "He [the augur] could . . . rest content with the first sign, if it was favourable, or let unfavourable signs pass and wait for better ones. Then again, he could have the assistant augur 'renounce,' that is, 'announce,' that the expected birds were flying or singing in the manner desired—a practice, in fact, more trustworthy and which later became the regular procedure. This announcement, the renuntiatio, made according to a sacramental formula, created an 'ominal auspice' equivalent, for the purposes of the individual hearing it, to a real auspice."¹

226. The Romans dealt with substance according to their convenience, at the same time paying strict regard to forms, or better, to certain associations of ideas and acts. The Athenians modified both substance and forms. The Spartans were loath to change either. Before the Battle of Marathon the Athenians appealed to Sparta for assistance. "The Spartan authorities readily promised their aid, but unfortunately it was now the ninth day of the moon: an ancient law or custom forbade them to march, in this month at least, during the last quarter before the full moon; but after the full they engaged to march without delay. Five days' delay at this critical moment might prove the utter ruin of the endangered city; yet the reason assigned seems to have been no pretence on the part of the Spartans. It was mere blind tenacity of ancient habit, which we shall find to abate, though never to disappear, as we advance in their history."¹

The Athenians would have changed both substance and form. The Romans changed substance, respecting form. In order to make a declaration of war a member of the college of Heralds (Feciales) had to hurl a spear into the territory of the enemy. But how perform the rite and declare war on Pyrrhus when that king's states were so far away from Rome? Nothing simpler! The Romans had captured a soldier of Pyrrhus. They had him buy a plot of ground in the Flaminian Circus, and the herald hurled his spear upon that property. So the feeling in the Roman people that there was a close connexion between a hurled spear and a just war was duly respected.²

227. Ancient Roman law presents the same traits that are observable in religion and divination; and that tends to strengthen our impression that it must be a question of an intrinsic characteristic of the Roman mind asserting itself in the various branches of human activity. Furthermore, in Roman law, as in Roman religion and divination, there are qualitative differences that come out in any comparison with Athens. Says Von Jhering,¹ "The written word or the word pronounced under circumstances of solemnity—the formula—strikes primitive peoples as something mysterious, and faith itself ascribes supernatural powers to it. Nowhere has faith in the word been stronger than in ancient Rome. Respect for the word permeates all relationships in public and private life and in religion, custom, and law. For the ancient Roman the word is a power—it binds and it loosens. If it cannot move mountains, it can at least transfer a crop of grain from one man's field to a neighbour's. It can 'call forth' divinities (devocare) and induce them to abandon a besieged city (evocatio deorum)."

Von Jhering is only partly right; not words alone have such powers, but words plus acts, and in more general terms still, certain associations of words, acts, and effects that endure in time and are not easily disintegrated. In the often quoted example of Gaius,^a where a man loses his case by calling his vines vines instead of trees, as they were called in the Law of the XII Tables, one cannot see that the word had any decisive power. Certain associations of ideas had grown up and the Romans were loath to dissolve them, and worked out their law in deference to them. Anything new in jurisprudence had to respect forms in the various actiones legis.

"Theories² as to the methods of voluntary transfers of property were very different in Roman and in Attic law. In Rome there were formal ceremonies for acquiring property—the mancipatio, and the in iure cessio, which had a translative efficacy in themselves independently of any physical transmission. Nothing of the kind is to be found in Athens. If in some other places in Greece a sale is attended by formalities reminding one of the mancipatio, a sale in Attic law remains a purely consensual contract, which ipso iure effects transfer of title inter partes. In Rome, furthermore, the act of transmission is of great importance as a method of transferring property. In Attic law it figures as a mere fact, devoid of any translative significance whatsoever. It appears as a simple means of discharging obligations, the transfer of title having previously taken place by virtue of the contract. Nor did Attic law, either, make the validity of a contract dependent on the observance of certain solemn forms. . . . Athenian law did not require any of the formalities commonly practised in other countries, such as sacrifices, or witnessing by a magistrate or by neighbours. Transfer took place in virtue of the mutual agreement, and there was no requirement of witnessing or of stipulation by written deed."

228. But the most striking trait in ancient Roman law is not so much its strict observance of the word, of the form, but rather the progress that it makes in spite of its adherence to associations of ideas all the way along. The fact was clearly apparent to Von Jhering, though that scholar was primarily interested in another aspect of Roman law. After reciting several cases where ancient jurists sacrificed meaning to the literal expression he adds, Op. cit., Vol. II-2, § 44, pp. 458-59: "These examples seem to show that ancient jurisprudence adhered strictly to the letter in interpreting laws. Nevertheless, as I see the matter, that opinion is to be absolutely rejected; and in proof I will give a list of cases in which jurisprudence undoubtedly departed from the letter of the law."

Ancient Roman law was all form and mechanism and reduced freedom of choice on the part of litigants and magistrates to a minimum. Legal actions remind one of a grist-mill: grain was put in at one end and flour came out at the other. Says Girard:¹ "The rôle of the magistrate has to be clearly grasped. He does not judge. It would perhaps be an exaggeration to say that he formulates the complaint. His collaboration serves merely to lend an indispensable authenticity to the actions of the parties, especially to the action of the plaintiff. As in extra-judicial procedure, it is the plaintiff who is asserting his right in applying the legis actio. . . . As for the magistrate, his rôle is that of an assistant, and if it is not a purely passive role, it is at least almost mechanical.² He must be present, and he must pronounce the words that the law requires him to pronounce. But that is almost all. He cannot grant action when the law does not grant it, nor, in our sense, can he refuse it (denegare legis actionem) when the law accords it;³ and if there is a trial, it is not he who passes judgment . . . the issue, formulated in iure before the magistrate, is decided in iudicio by a different authority. The task of the magistrate ends with the naming of the judge, a nomination made to a far greater extent by the parties than by him."

229. We could continue marshalling such facts; for in all departments of Roman law one can detect manifestations of a psychic state A, that accepts progress while respecting associations of ideas. Detecting traces of it in the system of the legis actio, we also see traces of it in the formulary system, and it altogether controls in the whole department of so-called legal fictions. Legal fictions are to be noted among all peoples in certain stages of their history; but the extent of their development and their long survival are quite remarkable in the case of ancient Rome, as they are in the case of modern England.

230. Similar phenomena are observable in the various aspects of political life. As the result of an evolution common to the majority of Greek and Latin cities, the king was superseded by new magistrates in Athens, Sparta, and Rome. But in Athens both substance and forms were completely changed; in Sparta changes were less marked both in substance and in form; in Rome they were very considerable as regarded substance, and much less extensive as regarded forms.¹

In deference to certain associations of ideas and acts, the sacerdotal functions of the king passed, in Athens to the archon-king, and in Rome to the rex sacrorum; yet neither of those offices had any importance politically. From the political standpoint the king disappears entirely in Athens. In Sparta he is kept, but with greatly reduced powers. In Rome he is remodelled with the fewest possible changes in forms. The supreme magistracy becomes annual and is divided between two consuls of equal power, each of whom can act independently of the other and can halt action by the other.² "The constitution³ gave the consuls the right to expand their college, especially in time of war, by the addition of a third member exercising the more comprehensive powers of a dictator. Popular election of dictators did not come till a later date and by way of special exception. The dictator was named by one of the consuls, just as the king had probably been named in former times by the acting king [inter-rex]. This royal nomination had but one limitation—the fact, namely, that the consuls and their colleagues, the praetors, remained in office along with the dictator, although they deferred to him in cases of dispute."

231. It is a most surprising trait in the Roman constitution that the higher magistrates, though in reality named by the comitia, seem to be named by their predecessors. "The most ancient popular election was not a choice freely made from a number of eligible individuals. It was probably limited at first by the right of the magistrate directing the election to make nominations. It is likely that in the very beginning exactly as many names were submitted to the people as there were officers to elect, and that, in principle, the voters could do nothing beyond mere acceptance or rejection of a proposed person, exactly as was the case with a proposed law."¹

Even in days more recent, under the Republic, the magistrate superintending an election could accept a candidacy (nomen accipere) or reject one (nomen non accipere). And later on it was further necessary for the presiding magistrate to consent to announce ("renounce," renuntiare) the successful candidate, and if he refused, no one could oblige him to.²

232. We find nothing of that sort in Athens. There was, to be sure, an examination (δοκιμασία) to decide whether archons (who were chosen by lot), strategoi (generals who were elective magistrates) and senators were fit to perform their duties; but that certification of prerogative was something very different from the renuntiatio. Athens makes forms consistent with substance. Rome changed from kingdom to republic by dividing the functions of magistrates. She went back to monarchy under the Empire by recombining them anew. In the long series of constitutional changes which took place between those two extremes, forms were as far as possible preserved even though substance changed.

233. Towards the end of his life Caesar seemed inclined to depart from that rule. To a people like the Athenians such a desire would have been considered reasonable enough. The few Romans still cherishing old-fashioned notions were incensed at the dissociation of ideas and acts implied in it. Only by mistaking the part for the whole has it been possible to imagine Caesar's ruin as due to the extravagant honours that he arranged to have paid him. They were but one element in a whole array of things shocking to such Roman citizens as still lingered in the psychic state of the forefathers.¹ Augustus found ways to respect traditions better. He is prevaricating brazenly when he says in the Ancyra inscription: "In my sixth and seventh consulates, after ending the civil wars, I restored to the Senate and the Roman People the powers that I had received by universal consent; and in honour of that action a decree of the Senate gave me the name of Augustus. . . . Whereafter, though above all others in honours, I have held no greater powers than my colleagues."² Velleius Paterculus, who showers most lavish flattery on Augustus and Tiberius, says that Augustus "restored to the laws their former force, to the courts their old prestige, to the Senate its pristine majesty, and to the magistrates their time-honoured authority."³

234. There were still consuls and tribunes under the Empire, but those were no more than empty names. So under Augustus the comltia still met to elect public officials; and—what is more surprising still and still better demonstrates the attachment of the Romans to certain forms—even under Vespasian a law was passed by the comitia investing the Emperor with power! At first blush it would seem that those Romans must have had a deal of time to waste to be going through with such farces! "Just so¹ was Augustus made a tribune in the Roman year 718, and thereafter his successors. After a vote in the Senate, a magistrate, probably one of the consuls on duty, presented to the comitia a 'bill' (rogatio) designating the Emperor and specifying his powers and prerogatives. . . . So the Senate and the People both participated in the 'election.' . . . The form, therefore, was the form customary for extraordinary magistracies instituted under the Republic: first a special law, then a popular ratification. . . . The transfer of elections from the comitia to the Senate, effected in the year 14 of our era, changed nothing so far as the imperial comitia were concerned: it affected only nominations of ordinary magistrates, and had nothing to do with magistrates theoretically extraordinary."

235. In such things the fatuousness of some of the logical reasons human beings offer for their behaviour strikes the eye very forcibly. The Roman jurists were not joking, they were in earnest, when they said that "it has never been questioned that the will of the Emperor has force of law, since he himself receives his authority from a law."¹ But after all, the legions and the praetorians must have counted for something! The unlettered dame in the story was thinking straighter than the long-faced Ulpian when she said to Caracalla, "Knowest thou not that it is for an Emperor to give, and not to receive, laws?"²

236. It is a familiar fact that the Greeks had no term corresponding exactly to the word religio. Ignoring questions of etymology, which after all would not get us very far, we may simply remark that even in the classical period religio in one of its senses undoubtedly meant painstaking, conscientious, diligent attention to duties.¹ It is a state of mind in which certain ties (§§ 126 f.) wield a powerful influence over conscience. If, therefore, we feel absolutely compelled to designate the psychic state in question by a word in common use, the most appropriate term, without being strictly exact, would seem to be religio.²

237. An anecdote of Livy clearly brings out this scrupulous attachment to ties to the discomfiture of all other sentiments. A number of soldiers, not wishing to obey the consuls, began to consider whether they could be freed of the oath binding them to their obedience by killing them. After a time they came to the conclusion that a crime could not wipe out a sacred pledge, so they resorted to a sort of strike.¹ It matters little whether this be history or fiction. If it is fiction, the person who invented it knew that his hearers would consider it quite natural to wonder whether killing a person to whom one was bound by an oath were a means of getting rid of the oath; and natural also to answer in the negative, not from any aversion to homicide, but because homicide would not be the effective way of cancelling an oath. This whole discussion as to the way to escape the consequences of a vow belongs to religio in the Latin sense.

238. And as manifestations of the same religio we must regard the numberless facts that present the Romans as a conscientious, exact, scrupulous people, devoted—even too much so—to orderliness and regularity in their private lives. The head of every Roman family kept a diary, or ledger, in which he recorded not only income and expenditures, but everything of importance happening in the family circle—something similar to the day-books which Italian law requires merchants to keep, but also covering matters altogether foreign to the mere administration of the family property.¹

239. It might seem that the religion of the Greeks, in which reason and imagination played a more important rôle, should be more moral than the religion of the Romans, which comes down to a series of fictions in which reason played no part whatever. The contrary, however, was the case. We may ignore the scandalous adventures of the gods, and keep, rather, to the influence of religion on the conduct of daily life.¹ For the Romans the physical acts of the cult were everything, intentions nothing. The Greeks too passed through just such a stage in an archaic period of their history: a murder was expiated by an altogether external ceremony. But they, or more exactly their thinkers, soon outgrew this materialistic formalistic morality. "Even as there is no remedy for lost virginity," Aeschylus will cry, "so all the rivers of the world gathered into one avail not to wash the blood-stained hands of a murderer."² Certainly one might expect to find a rectitude of conduct corresponding to such exalted thoughts. What we actually find is the opposite. In the end Rome got to be as immoral as Greece; but originally, and even in the fairly recent day of the Scipios, Polybius could write, Historiae, VI, 56, 13 (Paton, Vol. III, pp. 395-97): "So, not to mention other things, if a mere talent is entrusted to those who have charge of public monies in Greece, though they give bond to ten times the amount and there be ten seals and twice that many witnesses, you will never see your talent again; whereas with the Romans, magistrates or provincial governors who have the handling of large sums of money respect their given word out of regard for their oath." The sacred chickens may have been ridiculous; but they never caused the Roman armies a disaster comparable to the defeat that the Athenians suffered in Sicily through fault of their soothsayers.

240. Rome had no prosecutions for impiety comparable to the trials for ἀσέβεια in Athens, and, much less, to the numberless religious persecutions with which the Christians were to afflict humanity. Had Anaxagoras lived in Rome, he could have asserted to his heart's content that the sun was an incandescent mass, and no one would have paid any attention to what he said.¹ In the year 155 B.C. the Athenians sent to Rome an embassy made up of three philosophers, Critolaus, Diogenes, and Carneades. Hellenophiles in Rome greatly admired the captious eloquence of Carneades; but Cato the Censor, mouthpiece for the spirit of the old Romans, viewed all such clever chatter as more than suspicious and urged the Senate to rush the business that had brought such individuals to Rome to the earliest possible close, "that they might go back to their schools and spout before the children of the Greeks, leaving young people in Rome to mind their magistrates and respect the laws as they had always done."²

Cato, mark well, does not care to discuss the doctrines of Carneades. He is not in the least interested in knowing whether or not their reasoning is sound. He is looking at them from the outside. All that captious hair-splitting seems to him to have no value. It can do no good and may do harm for young people in Rome to listen to it. Great would have been Cato's amazement had he known that some day people were going to kill each other to prove or disprove the consubstantiality of the Word or the second person of the Trinity—the Arian heresy; and rightly would he have thanked Jupiter Optimus Maximus for preserving the Romans from such folly (which, for that matter, in some instances, clothed a rational substance).

241. Athenian law, which was essentially logical and sought to settle questions on broad lines without embarrassments from a stupid formalism or too many fictions, should have been superior to Roman law. But everybody knows that the exact opposite was the case. "The Greek intellect,¹ with all its nobility and elasticity, was quite unable to confine itself within the strait waistcoat of a legal formula; and, if we may judge them by the popular courts of Athens, of whose working we possess accurate knowledge, the Greek tribunals exhibited the strongest tendency to confound law and fact. . . . No durable system of jurisprudence could be produced in this way. A community which never hesitated to relax rules of written law whenever they stood in the way of an ideally perfect decision on the facts of particular cases, would only, if it bequeathed any body of judicial principles to posterity, bequeath one consisting of the ideas of right and wrong which happened to be prevalent at the time.

So far we agree with Sumner Maine; but we cannot agree when, loc. cit., pp. 73-74, he ascribes the perfection of Roman law to the Roman theory of natural law. That theory was appended to the ancient fund of Roman law at a relatively recent date. Von Jhering comes closer to the crux of the problem. His description of the facts is excellent. As for the causes, what he calls "the rigorous logic of the conservative spirit" is nothing but the Roman psychic state, of which we have been speaking above, combining with logical and practical inferences that entail the fewest possible modifications in certain associations of ideas and acts.

I will transcribe Von Jhering's paragraph, putting in brackets the emendations that I consider appropriate:² "If Roman jurisprudence found a simple and logical law ready-made, it owes that advantage morally to the ancient Roman people, which, in spite of its spirit of liberty, had submitted for centuries to a relentless logic [to the logical consequences of associations—which they would not have anyone disturb—of ideas and acts]. . . . The truth of what we have just said is apparent in the peculiarly Roman manner—so familiar to all who know Roman law—of reconciling an embarrassing logic [certain associations of ideas and acts] with practical requirements by devices of all sorts: make-believe, roundabout detours, fictions. The moral aversion of the Romans to any violation of a principle once recognized [resulting from associations of ideas and acts] stimulates and, as it were, crowds their intelligence to exercise all its sagacity in discovering ways and means for reconciling logic and practical exigency. Necessity is the mother of invention. . . . The second national trait of the Romans mentioned above, their conservative spirit [conservative as regards forms, progressive as regards substance], worked in exactly the same direction, and it, too, was a powerful lever for their inventive talents in law. To reconcile the necessities of the present with the traditions of the past, to do justice to the former without breaking, either in form or in substance, with the latter, to discipline juridical intercourse and guide the progressive force of law into its proper channels—that for centuries was the truly noble and patriotic mission of Roman juridical science. [We can dispense with the mission, the nobility, and the patriotism.] Roman jurisprudence towered the greater in proportion to the difficulties that it encountered."

242. In statecraft there is better yet. We can only wonder how a system so absurd from the standpoint of logic could ever have survived. Magistrates with equal prerogatives, such as two consuls and two censors; tribunes able to halt the whole juridical and political process; comitia trying to work with the complication of the auspices; a Senate without any well-defined jurisdiction—such things seem to be loose parts of a ramshackle machine that could never have functioned. Yet it did function for century after century, and gave Rome dominion over the Mediterranean world; and when it finally broke down it broke down because it had been worn out by a new people that had lost the religio of the old. Thanks to ties of non-logical conduct and to forces of innovation, Rome found a way to reconcile discipline with freedom and strike a golden mean between Sparta and Athens.

243. The oration on the war-dead that Thucydides, Historiae, II, 35-46, ascribes to Pericles and Cicero's oration on the responses of the haruspices offer a striking contrast. The Athenian speaks like a modern. The prosperity of Athens is due to democracy, to just laws, to the good sense of her citizens, to their courage. These traits in the Athenians make Athens a better city than the other cities in Greece. The Roman does not bestow so much praise on the knowledge and courage of his fellow-citizens. "However highly we may esteem ourselves, O Conscript Fathers, we have not been superior in numbers to the Spaniards, in physique to the Gauls, in shrewdness to the Carthaginians, in the arts to the Greeks, nor even to the Italians and the Latins in the good sense native to our soil. But to all peoples and races we have been superior in piety, in religion, in that wisdom which has led us to understand that all things are ruled and directed by the immortal gods."¹ That seems to be the language of bigotry, and instead it is the language of reason, especially if the word "religion" be taken in the sense of the religio defined above. The cause of Roman prosperity was a certain number of ties, of religiones, which made the Romans a disciplined people. To be sure, Cicero was not thinking in just those terms—his theme was the power of the immortal gods—but the concept of the rule, of the tie, was not absent from his mind. He began by lauding the wisdom of the forefathers, "who thought that sacred rites and ceremonies were the affair of the pontiffs, and good auspices the affair of the augurs; that the ancient prophecies of Apollo were to be read in the Sibylline Books; and that the interpretation of prodigies belonged to Etruscan lore."² In truth, a genuinely Roman conception or order and regularity!

244. Among modern peoples, the English, at least down to the last years of the nineteenth century,¹ have more than any other people resembled the Romans in their psychic state. English law is still replete with fictions. The English political system keeps the same antiquated names, the same antiquated forms, whereas in substance it is constantly changing. England still has a king, as in the times of the Plantagenets, the Tudors, and the Stuarts; but he has less authority, less power, than the President of the United States. Under Charles I we see a civil war fought by the King in his Parliament against the King in his camp. No Roman ever devised a fiction so far-fetched! Even today the ceremonies connected with the opening of Parliament are archaic to the point of comedy. Before the Commons appears a pompous individual called the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, who invites them to proceed to the House of Lords to hear the Speech from the Throne. The Commons repair thither and then return to their own chamber, where the Speaker informs them with a perfectly straight face of something they have heard as distinctly as he. Immediately a bill has to be read, as a matter of mere form, to safe-guard the right of Parliament to be the first to discuss public business, without going into the reasons for the convocation. English political organization is adapted to the needs of the English people, just as the political organization of ancient Rome was adapted to the needs of the Roman people, and all modern peoples have sought to copy it more or less faithfully. That organization enabled England to issue victorious from the Napoleonic wars and has secured Englishmen greater liberties than the majority of European peoples have enjoyed. All this is now tending to change as a result of new customs and new habits that seem about to get a foothold in England.

245. In our discussion so far we have had to use terms of ordinary language, which are by nature not very strict in meaning. Keeping for the moment to the terms "Athenians," "Romans," and so on, used in the foregoing—exactly what do they represent? Among ancient peoples they designated citizens only, not slaves and not foreigners. But do our statements apply to all the citizens in question? From certain facts, acts, laws, customs, we have inferred the psychic state of the individuals who created those facts, performed those acts, accepted those laws and customs. Legitimate enough! But it would not be legitimate to pretend that they made up the whole nation, or even the numerical majority in the nation.

246. Every people is governed by an élite, by a chosen element in the population; and, in all strictness it is the psychic state of that élite that we have been examining.¹ We can, at the very most, go on and say that the remainder of the population followed the impulse given by it. An élite can change with changes in the individuals composing it or in their descendants, or even through the infiltration of extraneous elements, which may come from the same country or from some other country. When only children of Athenian citizens could be citizens in Athens, the Athenian élite could change only through changes occurring in its individual members, or through taking in new members from the Athenian citizenry at large.

247. Observable in Rome are not only changes of those same kinds, but also an infiltration of foreign peoples, now of Latins or Italians through an extension of the right of citizenship, now of miscellaneous elements of all sorts, even of Barbarians, by way of freed slaves and descendants of freedmen. Scipio Aemilianus was able to say to an unruly assembly of plebeians that they were not even Italians.¹ We must therefore be on our guard against drawing hasty conclusions from the examples we have been quoting. We have, to be sure, found the characteristics of certain élites, but we have not solved the problem of their composition.

248. These last considerations lead us to a point beyond which we begin to encounter a matter different in character from that so far examined. It would be premature to go farther than we have gone, and dangerous to do so before we have finished what we have begun. Let us, therefore, retrace our steps. Our little excursion has served, however, to acquaint us with at least the existence of those other problems, which we shall come to in our later chapters.

1. ¹ [Pareto, following Bentham, invariably uses the word "actions" (azioni) where ordinary English parlance uses "conduct" or "behaviour." Such phrases as "logical actions" and "non-logical actions" often lead to syntactical and other paradoxes in Pareto's text that have contributed not a little to his occasional obscurity. For mere convenience azioni is rendered here by "conduct," "behaviour," "acts," "actions," more or less interchangeably. The literally-minded reader can always recover the feel of the original Italian by understanding those words as "actions" with constructions in the plural. More troublesome still to the translator is Pareto's use of the phrase "non-logical actions" for "the sentiments (or "impulses" or "residues") underlying non-logical actions," or for "the principles of non-logical actions." There is no extricating him from that situation, and in it as a rule I leave him.—A. L.]

2. 145 ¹ Originally written in French, this chapter was in part translated into Italian by the Rivista italiana di sociologia, and published in that review, May-August, 1910.

3. 150 ¹ As we have already said (§§ 116 f.), it would perhaps be better to use designations that have no meanings in themselves, such as letters of the alphabet. On the other hand, such a system would impair the clarity of our argument. We must therefore resign ourselves to using terms of ordinary speech; but the reader must bear in mind that such words, or their etymologies, in no way serve to describe the things they stand for. Things have to be examined directly. Names are just labels to help us keep track of them (§ 119).

4. 154 ¹ Opera et dies, vv. 757-58.

5. 155 ¹ Histoire des insectes, Vol. I, p. 71. But there is something else. Fabre made interesting observations of these insects and others of the kind. He succeeded in determining that the number of caterpillars prepared to feed the larva varies from five to ten, according as the insect is to be female or male. Since the egg is laid after the provisions have been stored, Fabre believes that the mother knows beforehand the sex to which the egg is to belong (Souvenirs entomologiques, Ser. 2, pp. 72-73). He reverts to the matter of the sex of the egg in his third series (pp. 384 f.). Fabre managed to discover how the larva of the Eumenis is fed: Ibid., Ser. 2, pp. 78-79: "The egg is not laid on the food: it is hung from the ceiling of the dome by a filament rivalling the thread of a spider's web in fineness. . . . The larva has hatched and is already of some size. Like the egg, it hangs by the back from the ceiling of its home. . . . The worm is now at table! Head down, he feels about over the soft belly of one of the caterpillars. With a wisp of straw I touch the game gently, before it has been bitten. The caterpillars begin wriggling, and the larva beats a hasty retreat." It crawls back into a sort of sheath: "The covering of the egg is its tunnel of refuge. It still keeps its cylindrical form, prolonged a little perhaps by the special labours of the new-born larva. At the first signs of peril from the pile of caterpillars, the larva draws into its sheath and climbs back to the ceiling where the wriggling mob cannot reach it." Later on, when the worm has grown stronger and the caterpillars weaker, the worm drops to the floor.

6. 155 ² Ibid., Ser. 1, pp. 67-79. Another truly extraordinary example is supplied in Fabre's Ser. 4, pp. 253-54. The Callicurgus hunts a certain spider, the Epeiron. The Epeiron "has under his throat two exceedingly sharp needles with drops of poison on the points. The Callicurgus is lost if the spider pricks him, and meantime his operation in anaesthesia requires the unfailing precision of the surgeon's knife. What is he to do in a perilous situation that would ruin the composure of the coolest human operator? The patient has first to be disarmed and then dealt with! And, in fact, there is the stinger of the Callicurgus darting forward from the back and driving into the mouth of the Epeiron with minutest precautions and untiring persistence! Almost at once the poisonous hooks fold up lifeless and the dread prey is powerless to harm. The belly of the Hymenopteron then stretches its bow and drives the stinger home just behind the fourth pair of legs, on the median line, almost at the juncture of belly and cephalo-thorax. . . . The nerve ganglia controlling the movements of the legs are located a little higher than the point pricked, but the backward-forward thrust enables the weapon to reach them. This second stroke paralyzes the eight legs all at once. . . . First, to safeguard the operator, a prick in the mouth, a point terrifyingly armed and to be dreaded more than all else! Then, to safeguard the offspring, a second thrust into the nervous centres of the thorax, to end all movement!"

7. 156 ¹ Ibid., Ser. 1, pp. 165-66; Ser. 4, pp. 65-67.

8. 157 ¹ Ibid., Ser. 1, pp. 174-77.

9. 158 ¹ Albert Dauzat well says, La langue française d'aujourd'hui, pp. 238-39: "The whole field is today under the dominion of a principle that holds the allegiance of the vast majority of philologists, namely, that linguistic phenomena are unconscious. [Another way of expressing what we mean by "non-logical actions."] Almost universally accepted in the domain of phonology—transformations in sounds have long since ceased to be ascribed to individual caprice—the principle is nevertheless meeting the same opposition in the field of semantics that [phonetic] laws were generally arousing not so long ago. M. Bréal [Essai de sémantique, p. 311; Cust, pp. 279-81] assigns a very definite role to individual volition in the evolution of word-meanings. . . . This [Bréal's] theory, which would have found practically no adversaries fifty years ago, is today rejected with virtual unanimity by philologists, who readily subscribe to the axiom stated by V. Henry [Antinomies linguistiques, p. 78] that 'any explanation of a linguistic phenomenon which to any extent whatever assumes exercise of conscious activity on the part of a speaking subject must be a priori discarded and held null and void.' " But that is an exaggeration. Scientific terminology is nearly always a product of conscious activity, and some few terms in ordinary language may have similar origins. On the other hand, Bréal's objection does not disturb the fact that a large number of phenomena are conscious only in appearances, the activity of the subject resolving itself into nonlogical behaviour of our varieties 2 and especially 4. Darmesteter, La vie des mots, pp. 86, 133: "In all such changes [in the meanings of words] one finds, at bottom, two concurrent intellectual elements, the one principal, the other secondary. In the long run, as the result of an unconscious detour, the mind loses sight of the first and thinks only of the second. . . . So the mind passes from one idea to quite another under cover of one same physiological fact—the word. Now this unconscious development, which shifts the stress from the principal detail to the secondary, is the law, no less, of transformadons in the mental world. . . . So in spite of the family relationships that developments in a language may establish between words, words most often lead lives of their own and follow their respective destinies all by themselves. When human beings speak, they are by no means 'doing etymology.' " Nothing could be truer; and that is why people often go astray in trying to infer the meaning of a word from its etymology or, what is worse, trying to reconstruct the unknown history of a remote past on an etymological basis.

10. 159 ¹ Mommsen, Römisches Staatsrecht, Vol. I, p. 100.

11. 159 ² Pareto, Cours, § 719: ". . . while the business man aims at reducing costs of production, involuntarily he achieves the further effect of reducing selling prices [That is not the case with monopolies.], competition always restoring parity between the two prices." And cf. Ibid., §§ 151, 718. Pareto, Manuale, Chap. V, § 11. Ibid., Chap. V, § 74: "So competing enterprises get to a point where they had no intention of going. Each of them has been looking strictly to profits and thinking of the consumer only in so far as he can be exploited; but owing to the successive adjustments and readjustments required by competition their combined exertions turn out to the advantage of the consumer."

12. 160 ¹ Cicero, De legibus, II, 12, 31: "If we are thinking of prerogative, what prerogative more extreme than to be able to adjourn assemblies and councils called by the supreme authorities, the highest magistrates, or to annul their enactments if they have already been held? And what more important than that business in course should be postponed if a single augur cries, Alio diel?"

13. 166 ¹ This theme will be amply developed in Chapter XI.

14. 167 ¹ Pareto, Manuel, pp. 134-35, 520 (§ 62).

15. 171 ¹ Here we come by induction to many points beyond which we choose not to go for the present. We shall resume our advance from them in chapters to follow, and there devote ourselves specially to many things that are merely signboarded here.

16. 172 ¹ It will develop in Chapter VI, when induction has carried us some distance ahead, and we are in a position to replace it with deduction. For the present it would be premature to deal with the problem as it deserves.

17. 174 ¹ De natura deorum, III, 2, 5.

18. 175 ¹ Bell, Superstitious Ceremonies Connected with the Cultivation of Alvi or Hill Paddy, quoted by Deschamps, loc. cit. [Paddy is rice. I fail to find any record of just this article by H. C. P. Bell, who was secretary of the Royal Society of Ceylon, and wrote extensively on the rites of the rice cultivators in that colony during the '80's.—A. L.]

19. 175 ² In Greece and Rome also conduct was largely governed by oracles, presages, and the like. In course of time many such practices became purely formal. Cicero, De divinatione, I, 16, 28: "In olden times hardly any business of importance, even of a private nature, was transacted without consulting omens, as witness the 'nuptial auspices' even of our day, which have lost their old substance and preserve just the name (re omissa nomen tantum tenent). Nowadays auspices on important occasions are obtained, though somewhat less generally than was once the case, by inspections of entrails. In the old days they were commonly sought of birds."

20. 176 ¹ They still endure among half-civilized peoples, such as the Chinese, and they have not disappeared even in our western countries. Matignon, Superstition, crime et misère en Chine, pp. 4-8, 18-19: "Superstition, as I am about to describe it, has nothing to do with religion." Going on, Matignon explains the mysterious entity that the Chinese call fong-choué, literally, "wind-and-water": "One might in a general way regard it as a sort of topographical superstition. For the Chinese, any given point in the Middle Empire is a centre of forces, of spiritual influences, as to the nature of which they have very vague and ill-defined ideas, and which no one understands, but which are all the more respected and feared on that account. [Matignon then tries to explain the facts by the beliefs. He does not succeed, because the facts are not consequences of the beliefs (logical actions), but the beliefs consequences of the facts (non-logical actions)]. The fong-choué, accordingly, seems to be something vague, mysterious, obscure, difficult, not to say impossible, of interpretation [As was the case with divination in Greece and Rome]. And nevertheless, in Chinese eyes, that body of fiction becomes science. [Is, in other words, a logical veneer sprinkled lavishly over their non-logical conduct. As regards funerals:] the astrologer must have fixed on a propitious day and especially by long and sagacious investigation, have gone into all aspects of the engrossing problem of the fong-choué. . . . In building a house, the Chinaman must not only consider the fong-choué of his neighbours, but also of his own house. A millstone, a well, the junction of two walls or two streets, must not be on a line with the main entrance. . . . That is not all. The fong-choué may be satisfied with the site and alignment of a building; but how about the use to which it is to be put? X builds a house for a rice-shop. But it develops that the fong-choué was inclined to favour a tea-shop. There is no further doubt. X and his rice business will soon be in the hands of the receiver. . . . The fong-choué superstition is exceedingly tenacious [Merely because it is an expression of the psychic state A of the Chinese, and nothing else]. It is the one that holds out longest against Christianity. And then again, what Chinaman, even though considered a good Christian, has altogether abandoned his fong-choué?" The situation is a general one. See §§ 1002 f.

21. 176 ² Römische Mythologie, p. 66.

22. 176 ³ Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung: Sacralwesen, pp. 12-19, gives a list of these gods. It must be very incomplete, for we may reasonably assume that large numbers of names have failed to come down to us. For some of the gods in question see our § 1339. Just a sample here, pp. 12-13: "Potina and Educa, who teach the child to eat and drink; Cuba, who protects the child while it is being carried from cradle to bed; Ossipago, 'who hardens and strengthens the bones of little children'; Carna, who strengthens the muscles; Levana, 'who lifts the child from the floor'; Statanus, Statilinus, and the goddess Statina, who teach the child to stand upright; Abeona and Adeona, who hold him up when he first tries to walk; Farimus and Fabulinus, who help him to talk." Marquardt goes on to list the divinities protecting adolescence, matrimony, and other various circumstances of life, and he adds, p. 15: "The business of the gods just listed was to protect persons; but there was a whole series of other gods who watched over the manifold activities of men and the scenes of such activities." Marquardt is mistaken in asserting, p. 18, that "originally at least, as Ambrosch has shown [Ueber die Religionsbücher der Römer, rem. 121], the thousands of names registered in the indigitamenta [ritual catalogues and calendars] were mere designations for the various functions (potestates) of relatively few divinities." That is the old abstraction idea. The proofs adduced for it are inadequate. They are stated by Marquardt as follows, pp. 18-19: "1. Indigitare meant to offer a prayer to one or more divinities, not in general terms but with specific reference to the divine capacities of which help was asked. The god was addressed several times, each time one attribute or another being added to his name." The various attributes mentioned corresponded at times to a number of gods who had been fused into a single personality. At other times they may have been different aspects of the same god. But that does not prove that Potina, Educa, Cuba, and so on, were abstract capacities of one same divine person. "2. In the second place, pontifical law forbade offering one victim to two gods at the same time." M. Brissaud, Marquardt's French translator, himself shows that that argument is baseless, Le culte chez les Romains, Vol. I, p. 24: "There has been no doubt either that some of the names listed were surnames of well-known gods." The fact that some gods had surnames does not prove that all the names catalogued in the indigitamenta were surnames, and much less, as Marquardt suggests in a note, p. 18, that they "represented the various attributes of divine Providence." Otherwise one would have to conclude that the various surnames of the Roman Emperors represented various attributes of a single personality.

23. 176 ⁴ Historia naturalis, II, 5, 3 (7) (Bostock-Riley, Vol. I, p. 21): "Wherefore the population of celestials can be seen to be greater than the population of mortals, since individuals make gods for themselves, each one his own (totidem), adopting Junos and genii; and peoples [abroad] take certain animals as gods, and even obscene things and things that it is not the part of decency to mention, swearing by smelly onions, garlics, and the like."

24. 177 ¹ We cannot accept what Marquardt says, Op. cit., pp. 6-7: "The gods of the Romans were mere abstractions. In them they worshipped those forces of nature to which the human being feels himself at all times subject, but which he can manage to control by scrupulous observance of the altogether external prescriptions laid down by the state for honouring the gods." The terms have to be inverted. To assure success in their undertakings the Romans meticulously observed certain rules which, spontaneous at first, eventually came to be used by the state. When, in course of time, people wondered how the rules arose, they imagined they saw forces of nature worshipped in them. Marquardt himself, for that matter, stresses the preponderant importance of the material acts and the scant importance of the abstractions, p. 7: "Religious practice required material paraphernalia of the simplest sort; but the rites themselves bristled with difficulties and complications. The slightest irregularity in a ceremony deprived it of all effectiveness."

25. 177 ² Antoine, Syntaxe de la langue latine, p. 125: "The capacity for using adjectives substantively is much more restricted in Latin than in Greek and even than in French. Latin avoids the substantive even when it is available and tends to replace it with a paraphrase; for example, 'hearers': animi eoriun qui audiunt; instead of auditorum. For the adjective to be turned into a substantive, it must result distinctly from the arrangement of the words in a sentence and from the sentence as a whole that the adjective designates not the quality, but a definite person or thing possessing the quality." That is the exact opposite of the process which is alleged to have taken place in the little gods considered as qualifying abstractions. Riemann-Goelzer, Grammaire comparée du grec et du latin, p. 741, note: "In the beginning the adjective was not distinct from the substantive . . . the substantive derived from the adjective: before coming to substance, people first saw an object only in its modes, in its apparent and striking attributes: a ζῷον was a 'living thing,' an animal was a 'thing endowed with life.' Only at a comparatively late date, in an advanced state of civilization when the mind had become capable of conceiving of the object independently of its attributes, were substantives distinguished from adjectives." We cannot, therefore, assume the contrary: namely, that abstract beings, such as Providence, were first conceived, and that the modes whereby they manifested themselves were imagined later. Observation shows that people went from modes to beings—beings most often imaginary.

26. 177 ³ De civitate Dei, VI, 9: "If a man assigned two nurses to a child, the one just for giving him his food, the other his drink, the way two goddesses Educa and Potina were appointed to those offices, would we not say that he was mad and that in his own house he was acting like a clown? Some maintain that Liber is derived from liberare: quod mares in coëundo per eius beneficium emissis seminibus liberentur; and that Libera, whom they also say is Venus, performs the same service for women: quod et ipsas perhibeant semina emittere, and therefore the same male organ is set up in the temples to Liber, and the female likewise to Libera. . . . When the male unites with the female, the god Jugatinus presides. Be it so. But the bride has to be taken to the groom's house, and that is the business of the god Domiducus. There is the god Domitius to see that she stays there; and the goddess Maturna that she abide with her husband. What more is needed? Mercy, I pray, on decency! Let concupiscence of flesh and blood do the rest under the secret tutelage of modesty! Why crowd the bedchamber with a throng of gods, when even the 'best men' [paranymphs] have seen fit to withdraw? And yet it is so filled not that the thought of their presence may inspire higher regard for chastity, but to the end that through their concert the maiden, afraid as befits the weakness of her sex of what is in store, may be deprived of her maidenhood without mishap. And that is why the goddess Verginensis is there, and the father-god Subigo, and the mother-goddess Prema, and the goddess Pertunda, and Venus, and Priapus. And why all that? If the groom needed the help of the gods in everything he did, would not one of the gods or one of the goddesses be enough? Was not Venus enough all by herself? She was already there, summoned, they say, because without her influence a maid cannot cease to be a maid. . . . And, forsooth, if the goddess Verginensis is there that the maid's girdle be loosed; if the god Subigo is there ut viro subigatur; if the goddess Prema is there, ut subacta ne se commoveat comprimatur—what, pray, is the goddess Pertunda doing there? Shame on her! Out with her! Let the groom do something himself, I say! Valde inhonestum est ut quod vocatur ilia (the thing that takes the name from her) impleat qnisqiiam nisi ille! But that is perhaps tolerated because she is said to be a goddess not a god. For if the deity were believed a male and called Pertundus, out of respect for his bride the groom would cry for help against him in louder voice than woman in childbirth against Sylvanus. Sed quid hoc dicam, cum ibi sit et Priapus nimius masculuss, super cuius immanissimum et turpissimum fascinum sedere nova nupta iubebatur more honestissimo et religiosissimo matronarum?" St. Augustine is right, with plenty to spare, if such acts are to be judged from the logical standpoint; but he does not observe that they were originally nonlogical acts, mechanical formalities, which eventually found their place among ceremonies of divine worship.

27. 178 ¹ La religion romaine, Vol. I, p. 5.

28. 179 ¹ The idea is not altogether hypothetical. That blessed weed has a whole literature all its own! Eustathius, Commentarii ad Homeri Odysseam, Vol. I, p. 381, offers us our choice between two interpretations. The one is mythological. The giant Pikolous, in flight after his battle with Zeus, landed on Circe's island and attacked her. The Sun rushed to the rescue of his daughter and slew the giant. From the blood that was spilled on the ground there sprouted a plant which was named μῶλν after the terrible fight (μῶλος) the giant had offered. The blossom is milk-white because of the bright sun; and the root black because the giant's blood was black, or because of Circe's terror. Hephestion tells more or less the same story.

    If that interpretation is not to your liking, Eustathius has another ready—allegorical, this time [Op. cit., loc. cit.]: μῶλν is education; the root is black, to symbolize ignorance; the flowers milk-white, to symbolize the splendours of knowledge. The plant is difficult to pull up because learning is an arduous achievement. Now all we need is that some pupil of Max Müller shall bob up and tell us that that plant with the black root and the white blossoms, which mortals are unable to pull up, and which has beneficent effects, is the Sun, which rises from the darkness of the night, is brilliantly luminous, cannot be disturbed by any human act, and gives life to the earth.

    Pliny, Historia naturalis, XXV, 8 (4) (Bostock-Riley, Vol. V, pp. 87-88): "Most celebrated of plants, according to Homer, is the one that he believes was named moly [Allium magicum, "witch-garlic," according to Littré, in the notes to his translation of Pliny] by the gods themselves, the discovery of which he credits to Mercury and which he represents as efficacious against deadly poisons [Bostock-Riley: "Against the most potent spells of sorcery"]. It is said that a plant of that name still grows today about Lake Pheneus and at Cyllene in Arcady. It is like the plant mentioned by Homer. It has a round black root, about the size of an onion, with leaves like the squill. It is hard to pull up. [Bostock-Riley: "There is no difficulty experienced in taking it up"]. Greek writers say its blossom is yellow, but Homer describes it as pure white. I once met a physician whose hobby was botany, and he told me that the 'moly' also grew in Italy; and some few days later he brought me a specimen from Campania that he had pulled up with great difficulty from a rocky soil. The root was thirty feet long; and that was not the whole of it, for it had broken off." Theophrastus, Historia plantarum, IX, 15, 7 (Hort, Vol. II, pp. 294-95): "The moly is found at Pheneus and in the Cyllene region. They also say that it is like the plant Homer mentions. It has a round root, like an onion. The leaves are like the squill. It is used as an antidote and in magic rites. It is not as hard to pull up as Homer says." All of these writers take Homer's μῶλν for a real plant. [Littré's note identifying the moly as "witch-garlic" is not his own but derives from Antoine Laurent Fée, biographer of Linnaeus, who edited Pliny's botany for the French translation of Pliny that was published in 1826 by François Étienne Ajasson de Grandsagne.—A. L.]

    In the Middle Ages the mandrake enjoyed a very considerable prestige. Mercury has vanished, but Satan is on hand to replace him. O'Reilly, Les deux procès de condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc, Vol. II, pp. 164-65: "Jeanne was in the habit of carrying a mandrake on her person, hoping thereby to procure fortune and riches in this world. She believed, in fact, that the mandrake had the virtue of bringing good fortune. Q. What have you to say [about the charge] as to the mandrake? A. That is false, absolutely. (Abstract of examinations relative to Charge 7): Thursday, March 1. Questioned as to what she did with her mandrake, she answered that she had never had one, that she had heard that there was one near her house, without having seen it. It was, she had been told, a dangerous and wicked thing to keep. She did not know what it might be used for. Questioned as to the place where the mandrake of which she had heard was, she answered that she had heard it was on the ground near a tree, but she did not know where. She had heard that it was under a walnut-tree."

29. 180 ¹ La religion romaine, Vol. I, p. 4.

30. 182 ¹ Here we come by induction upon a matter that will be studied deductively and at length in Chapter VI—and we shall meet it in other places also. Other similar cases, which we need not specify, will occur in this present chapter. Just here we are exploring the material before us, now in one direction, now in another. In chapters to follow we shall complete investigations that are merely labelled here for future reference.

31. 182 ² Historia naturalis, XXVIII, 2 (3) (Bostock-Riley, Vol. V, pp. 278-80). This quotation will be of use to us elsewhere. We transcribe it therefore somewhat fully. [Translations of this passage present wide differences. I note in brackets important variations between Pareto's version and that of Bostock-Riley.—A. L.]

32. 182 ³ The Latin reads: "In universum vero omnibus horis credit vita, nec sentit. Dalechamps paraphrases (Leyden, 1669, Vol. III, p. 161): Credit vulgi opinio valere verba nec certa cognitione et rerum sensu id persuasum habet." Cicero too bars any rational process. De divinatione, I, 3, 3: "And the ancients, in my judgment, established such practices rather under admonition of experience than at the dictates of reason." Cf. § 296³.

33. 182 ⁴ The Latin reads: "Quippe victimas caedi sine precatione non videtur referre nec deos rite consuli." The difficulty lies in the verb referre. Gronov well paraphrases (Leyden, 1669, Vol. III, p. 798): " 'Sine precatione non videtur referre [Id est, nihil iuvare putatur, nihil prodesse vulgo creditur] caedi victimas, nec videtur deos rite consuli.' Quo significat necessario preces adhibendas." [Bostock-Riley follow Gronov: "It is the general belief that without a general form of prayer it would be useless to immolate a victim."—A. L.]

34. 182 ⁵ Text: "Praeterea alia sunt verba impetritis, alia depulsoriis, alia commentationis [commentationis for commendationis]." Impetritum is a technical term of augury and designates a request made of the gods according to ritual. Cicero, De divinatione, II, 15, 35: "How comes it that a person desiring to ask an omen of the gods (impetrire) sacrifices a victim appropriate to his need (rebus suis)?" Valerius Maximus, De dictis factisque memorabilibus, I, 1, 1: "Our forefathers provided that fixed and solemn ceremonies should be entrusted (explicari voluerunt) to the learning of pontiffs, assurances of success (bene gerendarum rerum auctoritates) to the observation of augurs, prophecy to the books of the soothsayers of Apollo, and exorcisms of unfavourable omens (portentorum depulsiones) to the lore of the Etruscans. By ancient custom, divine influences are invoked, in case of a commendation through a prayer; when something is requested, through a vow; when a favour is to be paid for, by a thanksgiving (gratidatione); when information is sought either of entrails or of lots, through a petition (impetrito, that is, by an observation of omens); when a solemn rite is called for (cum solemni ritu peragendum) by a sacrifice, wherewith also the significance of portents and lightning bolts is carefully observed."

35. 182 ⁶ Livy, Ab urbe condita, VIII, 9, 6-8; X, 28, 14-18.

36. 182 ⁷ The Latin reads: "Confitendum sit de tota coniectione." Gronov paraphrases (Leyden, 1669, Vol. III, p. 798): "Perinde est ac si dixisset: de tota lite, de tota quaestione (we have to surrender "on the whole issue")."

37. 182 ⁸ See §§ 960 f. for just a titbit from the endless amount of nonsense connected with numbers. Note Pliny's effort to justify a non-logical fancy—the influence of a day on a fever—by logic.

38. 182 ⁹ Such data are abundant. For example, Thiers, Traité des superstitions, I, 6, 2 (Avignon, Vol. I, p. 415; Amsterdam, Vol. I, p. 101): "To stop a snake by the following conjuration (Mizauld, Centuriae, II, no. 93): 'I abjure thee by Him who created thee to stop, and if thou dost not, I curse thee with the curse whereby the Lord God did exterminate thee.' " It is evident that the basic fact in the situation is the feeling that it is possible to act on certain animals by means of certain definite words (element a in § 798); the secondary fact is in the words themselves (element b in § 798). The basic fact belongs to a very populous class of facts comprising the sentiments which induce human beings to believe that things can be influenced by means of words (genus I-y of § 888). It is interesting that though Thiers considers certain superstitions absurd, he does not think of them all that way (Avignon, Vol. I, Preface, pp. viii-ix [Amsterdam, Vol. I, p. ii, publisher's note Au lecteur, quoting Thiers to the same general effect]): "I have quoted superstitions entire when I felt that there could be no harm in doing so and when it seemed in a way necessary not to abbreviate them if they were to be correctly understood. But I have often used dots and etc.'s for certain words, letters, signs, and other things, with which they have to be equipped in order to produce the effects desired of them, because I was afraid of inspiring evil in my effort to combat it."

39. 182 ¹⁰ Cicero, De divinatione, I, 45, 102: "The Pythagoreans noted the words not only of gods but also of men, calling such things 'omens.' And our forefathers thought words very important, and began everything they did by uttering the formula 'May it be good, fortunate, propitious, successful.' At ceremonies conducted in public there was always the request for silence (faverent linguis), and proclamations of religious festivals contained an injunction of abstinence from quarrels and brawls. When a colony was receiving the lustration from its head, an army from its general, the People from the Censor, the individuals who led the victims to sacrifice had to have auspicious names; and so in enlisting men for the army the consuls made sure that the first soldier taken had a good name."

40. 183 ¹ In this, as in other cases, induction has led us to the threshold of an investigation that we shall have to prosecute at length hereafter. Here we shall still go groping along trying to find some road that will take us to our destination—knowledge of the nature and forms of human societies.

41. 184 ¹ Here again we get one of the many situations considered in § 162. The logical form serves to connect C with B.

42. 184 ² Samples of the kind are available for all peoples and in any quantity desired—one has only the embarrassment of choice. The charms imparted by Cato seem to have nothing whatever to do with gods: they function all by themselves. De re rustica, 160: "In cases of sprain, a cure may be obtained by the following charm. Take a green stick four or five feet long. Split it in two down the middle, and have two men hold [the two pieces] at [your] hips. Then begin to chant: In alio s.f. motas vaeta daries dardaries astataries dissunapiter, and keep on till ["the free ends" (Harrison)] come together [in front of you]. Brandish a knife (ferrum) in the air over them. Take them in your hand at the point where they touch on coming together and cut them off, right and left. Bind [the pieces] to the sprain or fracture and it will heal." Pliny mentions this magic formula given by Cato and adds others; Historia naturalis, XXVIII, 4 (2) (Bostock-Riley, Vol. V, p. 283): "Cato has handed down to us a magic cure for sprained limbs, and M. Varro one for gout. They say that Caesar, the dictator, after a serious accident in a carriage, was accustomed, before taking his seat in one, to repeat a rigmarole three times to make sure of a safe ride, and we know that many people nowadays do the same."

43. 184 ³ Lucian, Philopseudes (Lover of Lies), 14-15 (Harmon, Vol. III, p. 343). A hyperborean magician summons a certain Chrysis to do the pleasure of her admirer, Glaucias. " 'At length the hyperborean moulded a clay Eros, and ordered it to go and fetch Chrysis. Off went the image, and before long there was a knock at the door, and there stood Chrysis! She came in and threw her arms about Glaucias's neck. You would have said she was dying for love of him; and she stayed on till at last we heard the cocks crowing. Away flew the Moon to Heaven, Hecate disappeared underground, all the apparitions vanished, and we saw Chrysis out of the house just about dawn.—Now, Tychiades, if you had seen that, it would have been enough to convince you that there was something in incantations.' 'Exactly,' I replied. 'If I had seen it, I should have been convinced: as it is, you must bear with me if I have not your eyes for the miraculous. But as to Chrysis, I know her for a most inflammable [and not very fastidious] lady. I do not see what occasion there was for the clay ambassador, and the Moon, no less, or for a wizard all the way from the land of the hyperboreans! Why, Chrysis would go that distance herself for the sum of twenty shillings. It is a form of incantation that she cannot resist. She is the exact opposite of an apparition. Apparitions, you tell me, take flight at the clash of brass or iron, whereas if Chrysis hears the chink of silver, she flies to the spot.' " (Fowler translation.)

44. 185 ¹ The text is given in Pliny, Historia naturalis, XXVIII, 4 (2): "Qui fruges excantassit . . . Qui malum carmen incantassit . . ." See also Seneca, Naturales quaestiones, IV, 6-7, and our § 194.

45. 185 ² Even nowadays love-philtres are still concocted by processes not materially different from the methods used of old. A court decision handed down at Lucera and examined by Attorney Vittorio Pasotti in the Monitore dei Tribunali, Milan, Aug. 9, 1913, recites that three women took human bones from a cemetery for the purpose of compounding a philtre that would induce a man to marry a certain woman. [From 1916 ed.]

46. 186 ¹ Quite deliberately we choose, for our first example, a group of facts that, in our day at least, have little social importance. For that reason they do not arouse any sentiments likely to disturb the scientifically objective work to which we are trying to apply ourselves. Sentiments are the worst enemies the scientific study of sociology has to fear. Unfortunately we shall not always be able to side-step them in just this way. Later on the reader will have to do his part in holding his sentiments in hand.

47. 188 ¹ Palladius, De re rustica, I, 35: "Many things are said [to be good] for hail. A millstone is covered with a red cloth. Also, an ax stained with blood may be shaken in threat at the sky. Also, whitevine [briony, alba vitis] may be strung about the whole garden, or an owl may be nailed up with outspread wings, or the working-tools may be greased with bear-fat. Some people keep a supply of bear-suet beaten (tusum) in olive-oil on hand, and grease the sickles with it at pruning-time; but this remedy must be applied in secret, so that no pruner will know of it. It is reported to be of such efficiency that no harm can be done by any storm or pest (neque nebula neque aliquo animali possit noceri, taking possit noceri as an impersonal construction). It is also important that nothing that has been profaned be used." Pliny, Historia naturalis, XXVIII, 23, 1: "In the first place hail-stones, they say, whirlwinds, and lightning even, will be scared away by a woman uncovering her body while her monthly courses are upon her [Bostock-Riley, Vol. V, p. 314]; and that so the violence of the heavens is averted; and out at sea tempests may be lulled in the same way, even though the woman is not menstruating at the time." Columella, De re rustica, I, 1 (Zweibrücken, Vol. I, p. 23).

48. 188 ² Stromata, VI, 3 (Opera, Vol. II, pp. 243-52; Wilson, Vol. II, pp. 321 f.). Clement mentions other cases also. The land of Greece suffering from a great drought, the Pythoness prescribed that the people should resort to prayers by Aeacus. Aeacus went up on a mountain and prayed, and soon it rained copiously. For the same incident, see Pindar's scholiast, Nemea, V, 17 (Abel, Vol. II, p. 155); Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica, IV, 61, 1-2 (Booth, Vol. I, pp. 272-73); Pausanias, Periegesis, I, Attica, 44, 9. In the same connexion Clement recalls that Samuel also made it rain (I Kings, 12:18). Going back to the Greeks, Clement relates how at Chios Aristeus obtained winds from Jove to temper the heat of the dog-days; and that fact is also vouched for by Hyginus, Poeticon astronomicon, II, 4, 5 (Chatelain, p. 17). Clement does not forget that at the time of the Persian invasion the Pythoness advised the Greeks to placate the winds (Herodotus, Historiae. VII, 178). Then comes the story of Empedocles; and Clement is back with his Bible again, quoting Ps., 83; Deut. 10:16, 17; Isa. 40:26. Then he remarks: "Some say that pestilences, hail-storms, wind-squalls, and other similar calamities are caused not only by natural perturbations, but also by certain demons, or by the wrath of wicked angels." He continues with the story of the officials appointed at Cleonae to prevent hail-storms, and discusses the sacrifices used for that purpose (§ 194). Then he tells about the purification of Athens by Epimenides and mendons other similar stories.

49. 189 ¹ De situ orbis, III, 6, 3: "On [the Isle of] Sena [Sizun, Léon] in the British sea off the shores of Brittany (Osismicis adversa litoribus) there is a celebrated oracle of a Gallic divinity, where the priestesses are said to be nine in number and sanctified by perpetual chastity. They are called 'Barrigenae' (variant, Gallicenae) and are supposed to be endowed with remarkable abilities to raise winds and high seas with their incantations, to turn into any animal they choose, cure diseases usually considered incurable, and see and predict the future; though they will perform such favours only for mariners who have made special voyages for the purpose of consulting them." Reinach deals with this text in Cultes, mythes et religions, Vol. I, p. 199, Les vierges de Sena. He thinks that Mela was repeating information derived from Greek traditions: "Whatever Mela's immediate source in what he says of the Isle of Sena, there is reason to suppose that the substance of his story is very ancient. I believe I detect traces of it in the Odyssey itself, that prototype, as Lucian was to say in his time, of all the geographical romances of antiquity." That may well be; or it may also be that both the stories in the Odyssey and the others had a common origin in the notion that it is possible to influence winds, a notion that was variously elaborated and explained as time went on.

50. 190 ¹ There are Latin inscriptions with invocations to the "divine" winds. Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum, Vol. III-I, nos. 2609-10, p. 308 (Orelli, Inscriptionum collectio, no. 1271): "Iovi O.M. tempestatum divinarum potenti leg. III Aug. dedicante." Maury, Histoire des religions de la Grèce antique, Vol. I, pp. 166-69: "The winds were also worshipped by the primitive peoples of Greece, but that cult, which plays such an important part in the Rig-Veda, had noticeably weakened among the Hellenes. The winds continue, of course, to be personified, but they are worshipped only on special occasions and in certain localities. . . . Among the Chinese, worship of winds and mountains was associated with worship of streams (Biot, Le Tchéou-li, Vol. II, p. 86). When the Emperor drove over a mountain in his chariot, the driver offered a sacrifice to the mountain's genius Ibid., Vol. II, p. 249). . . . The ancient Finns also addressed the winds as gods, especially north and south winds, the cold ones in formulas of disparagement."

51. 191 ¹ Matt. 8:23-27. The disciples, in wonder at the cessation of the storm, exclaim: "What manner of man is this that even the winds and the sea obey him!"

52. 192 ¹ Aeneid, III, 115: "Let us appease the winds, and strike out for the realms of Gnosus." And III, 118: "So saying, he made the due sacrifices on the altars: a bull to Neptune, and a bull to thee, fair Apollo; a black sheep to Hiems [god of storms] and a white sheep to the favouring Zephyrs." Servius annotates (Thilo-Hagen, Vol. I, pp. 364-65): "due [meritos]: appropriate to each god. . . . The kind of victim should correspond to the character of the divinity, for the victim is sacrificed either for its oppositeness to the gifts of the god, as, for instance, a pig to Ceres, the pig being destructive to crops; or a he-goat to Liber, the goat being harmful to grape-vines; or indeed by way of similitude, as black sheep to the nether gods, and white sheep to the gods of Heaven, black sheep to the Tempests and white to Fair Weather. . . . 'A black sheep to Hiems,' etc. Aeneas performed the sacrifices in the proper order, first averting evil influences, the more readily to allure the good ones."

    Aristophanes, Ranae, vv. 847-48, plays upon this custom and calls for a black lamb to sacrifice as a shelter from the hurricane which Aeschylus is about to stir up through his chaffing at Euripides: "Dionysus: Quick, boys, a black-fleeced ewe! A hurricane is upon us!" The scholiast notes (Dübner, pp. 299, 530, 701): "Black ewe: because that is the sacrifice offered to the storm, Typhon, that the hurricane may cease; a black ewe: since that is the sacrifice offered to Typhon when the storm is in the form of a tornado. . . . Black and not white because Typhon is black."

53. 193 ¹ Herodotus, Historiae, VII, 178.

54. 193 ² Herodotus, loc. cit., 189. At a later date one gets an interpretation that clears the episode of the supernatural element and explains it logically—a particular instance of a procedure that is general. Scholiast on Apollonius, Argonautica, I, v. 211 (Wellauer, Vol. II, p. 13): "Heragoras [read Hereas] says in his Megarica that Boreas, ravisher of Orithyia, was not the wind [of that name] but [a human being] son of Strymon." And cf. Carl Müller's note on this scholium in his Fragmenta historicorum Graecorum, Vol. IV, p. 427. Still to be found are similar interpretations for other similar cases in which, according to the Athenians, Boreas was of help to them. But that is very easy: there must have been no end of individuals named Boreas!

55. 193 ³ Aelian, De varia historia, XII, 61.

56. 193 ⁴ Pausanias, Periegesis, VIII, Arcadia, 36, 6 (Dindorf, p. 411).

57. 193 ⁵ Herodotus has some doubts also as to the aid lent by Boreas to the Athenians. He cautions that he does not know that Boreas really scattered the Barbarian fleet in answer to the prayers of the Athenians. He does know that the Athenians assert that Boreas helped them at that time and that he had done so on previous occasions: Historiae, VII, 189: οὶ δ'ὦν Αθηναῖοι σφίσι λέγουσι Βοηθήσαντα τὸν Βορέην πρότερον καὶ τότε ἐκεῖνα κατεπγάσασθαι.

58. 194 ¹ Tibullus, for example, Delia, 2, vv. 51-52, mentions a witch at whose pleasure clouds vanish from the sky and snow falls in summer:

    "Cum libet haec tristi depellit nubila caelo, cum libet aestivo convocat orbe nives."

    And Ovid, Amores, I, 8, vv. 5, 9-10: "She knows the arts of witchcraft and the chants of Circe (Aeaeaque carmina). . . . At her pleasure clouds gather over the whole sky, at her pleasure bright day shines forth from the whole orb of Heaven." In Ovid's Metamorphoses, VII, v. 201, Medea boasts: "The clouds I bring and drive away, the winds I raise and hush." And Seneca makes her say in Medea, vv. 754, 765: "Rain I called forth from dry clouds. . . . The waves began to moan, and wildly did the sea rage, though there was no wind." And see his Hercules Oetaeus, vv. 452 f. Lucan, Pharsalia, VI, vv. 440-61, describes the arts of a witch of Thessaly at length. It is noteworthy that her powers availed not through grace of the gods but against their will, compelling them. In Thessaly, says Lucan:

    ". . . plurima surgunt
    Vim factura deis . . ."

    (". . . many a plant grows that can force the hand of the gods.") At the command of the Thessalian witch, Ibid., vv. 467-77:

    "Cessavere vices rerum, dilataque longa haesit nocte dies; legi non paruit aether, torpuit et praeceps audito carmine mundus, axibus et rapidis impulsos Iuppiter urguens miratur non ire polos. Nune omnia conplent imbribus et calido praeducunt nubila Phoebo, et tonat ignaro caelum love; vocibus isdem umentes late nebulas nimbosque solutis excussere comis. Ventis cessantibus aequor intumuit; rursus vetitum sentire procellas conticuit turbante Noto . . ."

    ("The natural changes cease to function. Daylight lingers as night is lengthened; the atmosphere follows not its laws. Under the incantations of the witches the swiftwhirling firmament comes to a stop and Jupiter notes with surprise that the heavens cease to turn on their axes. Now they [the witches] drench the earth in rain and make clouds appear under a hot sun: there are peals of thunder that Jove knows nothing of. So with their magic words (vocibus) they dispel the canopy of watery vapour and cause the tresses of the storm-clouds to vanish. Now the sea lashes wild though there is no wind or lies smooth and calm under the blasts of Notus which it has been forbidden to heed.")

    Philostratus, Vita Apollonii, III, 14: Coming to the place where the Brahmans dwelt, Apollonius and his companions "beheld two jars of black stone, one the jar of rain and the other the jar of the winds. If India is suffering from a drought, the one containing the rain is opened, and it sends clouds and rains over all the land. If there is too much rain, the jar is closed, and the storm ceases. The jar of the winds works, I should say, something like the bag of Aeolus. If it is opened, one of the winds gets out, and it blows where it is needed and dries the land."

59. 194 ² Naturales quaestiones, IV, 6-7: "I cannot refrain from alluding to the plenteous idiocies of our own Stoics. They say that there are individuals who are expert at observing the clouds and predicting when it is going to hail, the which they are able to do by long experience in noting such colours in the clouds as hail quite frequently (totiens) follows."

60. 195 ¹ We need not inquire here whether the legion called the Fulminata got its name from that episode. The question is irrelevant to our present purposes. Even if the story of the storm were itself not true, the example would serve quite as well, since we are interested not in the historical fact but in the sentiments disclosed by the stories, true or false, that grew up around it.

61. 195 ² Lexicon, s.v. Αρνουφις.

62. 195 ³ Strictly "demons"; but the pagan δαίμωνες must not be confused with the Christian "demons" (§ 1613).

63. 195 ⁴ Panegyricus de sexto consulatu Honorii Augusti, vv. 342-49 (Carmina, Vol. II, p. 98):

    ". . . nam flammens imber in hostem decidit . . . tune contenta polo mortalis nescia teli pugna fuit, Chaldaea mago seu carmina ritu armavere deos, seu, quod reor, omne Tonantis obsequium Marci mores potuere mereri."

    ("For a storm of fire descended upon the enemy. . . . Then a battle knowing no mortal weapon was fought by Heaven alone: for either Chaldean chants by magic rite had armed the gods; or else, as I believe, the character (mores) of Marcus merited all deference from the Thunderer.") Note the ethical elaboration. Boreas interposes on the basis of a mere family relationship with the Athenians. The Thunderer intervenes here not as a favour to Marcus, but in view of his good character. Such transformations are general.

64. 195 ⁵ Marcus Antoninus Philosophus, 24, 4. The case of a storm favouring one of two belligerents as a result of magic or by divine goodwill is to be noted in countries widely separated and under such conditions as to preclude any suspicion of imitation. In The Chinese, Vol. II, 1806, p. 112; 1836, pp. 117-18, Davis transcribes a passage from the History of the Three Kingdoms: "Lew-pei took occasion to steal upon Chang-paou with his whole force, to baffle which the latter mounted his horse, and, with dishevelled hair and waving sword, betook himself to magic arts. The wind arose with loud peals of thunder, and there descended from on high a black cloud, in which appeared innumerable men and horses as if engaged. Lew-pei immediately drew off his troops in confusion, and giving up the contest, retreated to consult with Choo-tsien. The latter observed, 'Let him have recourse again to magic; I will prepare the blood of swine, sheep, and dogs.' . . . On the following day, Chang-paou, with flags displayed and drums beating, came forth to offer battle, and Lew-pei proceeded to meet him; but scarcely had they joined before Chang-paou put his magic in exercise; the wind and thunder arose, and a storm of sand and stone commenced. A dark cloud obscured the sky, and troops of horsemen seemed to descend. Lew-pei upon this made a show of retreating, and Chang-paou followed him; but scarcely had they turned the hill when the ambushed troops started up and launched upon the enemy their impure stores. The air seemed immediately filled with men and horses of paper or straw, which fell to the earth in confusion; while the winds and thunder at once ceased, and the sand and stones no longer flew about."

65. 195 ⁶ Antoninus Heliogabalus, 9, 1-2 (Magie, Vol. II, p. 125): "Desiring to make war upon the Marcomanni (Marchmen) whom Marcus (Aurelius) Antoninus had very handily (pulcherrime) subdued, he [Elagabalus] was told by certain individuals that Marcus had arranged through Chaldean magicians that the Marcomanni should for ever be friendly and devoted to the Roman People, and that that had been done by reciting certain chants, with a rite. When he asked what the chants were or where they could be found, he was not told; for it was certain that he was inquiring about the spell in order to undo it for the purpose of bringing on a war."

66. 195 ⁷ Apologia, I, 71 (Migne, p. 439A, Davie, p. 55). The Emperor Marcus is writing to the Senate, and the forger makes him say of the Christians: "They prayed to a god unknown to me, and straightway water fell from the sky and to us it was ice-cold, but to the enemies of the Romans it was a hail of fire." The miracle grows and grows and gets prettier and prettier! The incident and the letter are mentioned by Tertullian, Apologeticus, V, 6; and Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica, V, 1-6. Eusebius does not state that the Emperor requested the Christians to pray—they knelt and prayed of their own accord before the battle. The enemy was surprised at the spectacle. But a more astounding thing then occurred: a hurricane arose and put the enemy to flight, while a gentle rain refreshed the Romans. Zonaras, Epitome historiarum, XII, 2 (Migne, Vol. 134, pp. 1003-06), on the other hand, repeats by and large the story of the Pseudo-Justin. Orosius, Historiae adversas paganos, VII, 15 (Browne, p. 126), says: "The tribes had risen in insurrection, barbarous in their cruelties and countless in their multitudes, to wit: the Marcomanni, the Quadi, the Vandals, the Sarmatae, the Suebi—in fact almost all Germany. The army having advanced to the frontiers of the Quadi, it was there surrounded by the enemy, and found itself in imminent danger from thirst, but more in view of a shortage of water than because of the foe. Whereupon certain of the soldiers began to pray in great earnestness of faith and publicly to call upon the name of Christ; and straightway a rain fell in such abundance as to refresh the Romans bounteously and with out damage, whereas the Barbarians were terrified by a rapid succession of thunderbolts and large numbers of them were killed, so that he [Marcus Aurelius] put them to rout." See also Nicephorus Callistus, Ecclesiastica historia, IV, 12; Cedrenus, Historiarum compendium, I, 250, 15-22 (Bekker, Vol. I, p. 439); Gregory of Nyssa, Oratio II^a in laudem XL martirum (Opera, Vol. III, pp. 758-72).

67. 196 ¹ It appears in virtually naked form in the case of the "pluvial stone" in Rome, which needed only to be moved about the streets to produce rain. Festus, De verborum significatione, I, s.v. Aquaelicium (London, Vol. I, p. 84): "[This term] is used when rain-water is attracted by certain rites, such as dragging the 'pluvial stone' about the streets of the city as used to be done, according to legend, in days gone by." And Ibid., XI, s.v. Manalis lapis "flowing stone" (London, Vol. I p. 383): "The 'flowing stone,' so called, was a certain stone that lay outside the Porta Capena near the temple of Mars. In times of excessive drought this stone was carried about the streets inside the city, whereupon rain at once ensued. They called it the flowing stone because the water began flowing." So then, all that was required was to drag the stone about the city, and the rain came down at once. Cf. Nonius Marcellus, De compendiosa doctrina, 15, s.v. Trulleum (Mercier, p. 547); Fulgentius, Expositio sermonum antiquorum ad Chalcidium grammaticum (Müncker, Vol. II, pp. 169-70): "Labeo, who compiled and annotated the Etruscan rituals of the gods Tages and Bacitis, writes as follows: 'If the flesh of the liver is of a sandarac red, it is time for the flowing stones to be scraped and cleaned (verrere).' He means those cylinder-shaped stones which our forefathers used to drag about their properties to break a period of dry weather."

68. 196 ² Ad Scapulam, 4 (Opera, Vol. III, pp. 46-52; English, Vol. I, p. 51): "Marcus quoque Aurelius in Germanica expeditione Christianorum militum orationibus ad deum factis imbres in siti impetravit. Quando non geniculationibus et ieiunationibus nostris etiam siccitates sunt depulsae?"

69. 196 ³ Pausanias, Periegesis, VIII, Arcadia, 38, 4 (Dindorf, pp. 414-15). The author is speaking of the spring called Hagnus on Mount Lycaeus: "When a drought has lasted for a long time and the sown seed and the trees have begun to suffer, the priest of the Lycaean Zeus offers prayers and sacrifices to the water according to the established forms and then stirs the water in the spring with an oak-branch—on the surface, not deep down. As the water is stirred a mistlike vapour rises. Soon the vapour becomes a cloud, and attracting other clouds causes rain to fall on the land of the Arcadians." We shall see (§ 203) that witches caused rain and hail by somewhat similar means, the differences being as follows: 1. The Devil of the Christians takes the place of the pagan divinities (each people of course introducing the beings deified in its own religion). 2. In Pausanias the operation is primarily beneficent. It may be so among Christians; but in general it is a wicked thing. (Deified beings usually exert influences appropriate to their individual characters and the Devil is by nature wicked.) In the present case we see an imaginary fact explained in various ways. The sentiments corresponding to the fact are evidently the constant element, the explanations the variable element.

70. 197 ¹ Stromata, VI, 3 (Opera, Vol. II, p. 247B; Wilson, Vol. II, pp. 319-23). The Dominican Inquisitors, Sprenger and Kramer, who wrote the Malleus maleficarum, debate learnedly and at length as to whether the Devil must always work with the magician, or whether they can function separately. Pars I, quaestio 2 (Summers, p. 12): "Whether it is sound doctrine to hold that the Devil must always co-operate with the sorcerer in an act of witchcraft, or whether the one can produce that effect without the other, as the Devil without the sorcerer, or vice versa." As proof that the human being could do without the Devil or, in general terms, the "lower" without the "higher" power, some cited the fact vouched for by Albertus Magnus that sage-leaves when rotted in a certain manner and thrown into a well [Summers, "running water"] could bring on a storm. The Malleus has no doubts on the point, but explains it. It begins by distinguishing different effects, such as ministeriales, noxiales, maleficiales, et naturales [Summers, p. 14: "beneficial, hurtful, wrought by witchcraft, natural"]. The first are produced by good angels, the second by wicked angels, the third by the Devil with the help of sorcerers or witches, the last by influences from celestial bodies. That much clear, it is easy to see how the sage has the effects it has without the help of the Devil [Summers, p. 16]: "And thirdly, as to the sage that has been rotted and thrown into a well, it is to be said that a 'noxial' effect can ensue without the participation of the Devil but not apart from the influence of a celestial body."

71. 197 ² St. Gregory of Tours, De sancto Nicetio Treverorum episcopo, 5 (Vitae Patrum, XVII, Opera, p. 1083B), tells of an incident that happened to St. Nizier. One day a man called on the Saint to thank him for having saved his life at sea under very perilous circumstances, in the following terms: "A short time since, while in a ship on my way to Italy, I found myself amid a multitude of heathen, and in that great throng of uncouth individuals I was the only Christian. One day a tempest arose and I began to call on the name of God that by His intercession He should cause the tempest to abate. The heathen for their part were praying to their own gods, some beseeching Jove, some calling on Mercury, in loud voice, others begging help now of Minerva, now of Venus. Since we were in grave peril of death, I said to them: 'Gentlemen, pray not to those gods, for they are not gods but devils. If ye would save yourselves from this present perdition, call upon St. Nizier, that he secure you salvation of the mercy of God.' Whereupon with one loud voice they cried, 'God of Nizier, save us!' and straightway the sea subsided, the winds abated, the sun came out, and the ship sailed on whither we were bound."

72. 198 ¹ Decretum Gratiani, pars II, causa 26, quaestio 5, canon 12 (Friedberg. Vol. I, pp. 1030-31): The witches' sabbath is declared a fraud: "Wheretore the priests through the Churches entrusted to them shall preach to God's people in all urgency that they should know that all such things are altogether false and that such phantoms are inflicted upon the minds of the faithful not by a divine but by an evil spirit. . . . For who of us is not carried outside himself in dreams and nocturnal visions and does not see in his sleep things never seen while waking? And who could be so stupid and so weak of mind as to think that all such things which take place only in the spirit take place in the body also?" The decree was taken from Reginon, De disciplinis ecclesiasticis et religione Christiana, II, 364 (Opera, p. 352). It is possibly a fragment of a capitulary of Charles the Bald. Baronio, Annales ecclesiastici, anno 382, XX, quotes a decree of Pope Damasus: "Likewise to be excommunicated are all such as attend to spells, auguries, fortunetelling and all other superstitions; and under the same condemnation are especially to be punished women who by the Devil's deception imagine they are carried about at night on the backs of animals and go travelling in company with Herodias."

73. 198 ² Contra insulsam vulgi opinionem de grandine et tonitruis (Opera, pp. 147-48). In comment on the passage, Baluze writes: "Girard, Archbishop of Tours, mentions 'tempestuaries' by name in the third section of his statutes: 'Relative to spellbinders, enchanters, soothsayers, fortune-tellers, dream-readers, tempestuaries and rigmaroles against frosts (? brevibus pro frigoribus), and relative to witches and such females as deal in signs and portents of various kinds, that they may be prohibited and public punishment inflicted (publicae poenitentiae multentur).' "

74. 200 ¹ Eunapius relates, Vitae philosophorum ac sophistarum, Aedisius, Sopater, Wright, pp. 383-85, that one year it came to pass that, favourable winds failing, ships could not get to Byzantium with their grain. The famished inhabitants were being entertained in a theatre with scant success and loudly protested to the Emperor Constantine that the philosopher Sopater was the cause of the famine, since "he had shackled the winds with his transcendent science." Constantine was convinced, and ordered the man executed. Suidas, Lexicon, s.v. Σώπατρος Άπαμεύς, says that the philosopher in question was killed by Constantune "so as to make evident to all that he, Constantine, was no longer a devotee of the Hellenic religion." This version accords with the other, Suidas explaining the "convinced" of Eunapius! Codex Theodosianus, IX, 16, 5 (Haenel, p. 869): "Many individuals do not hesitate to disturb the elements by art of magic nor to upset the tranquillity (vitas) of innocent citizens and annoy them by fatuous talk (ventilare) about evoking ghosts of the dead (manibus accitis), on pretence that they can overcome their enemies by witchcraft. Since such individuals are unnatural monsters (naturae peregrini), may a deadly pest destroy them." The same law appears in the Codex Justiniani, IX, 18, 6 (Corpus iuris civilis, Vol. II, p. 596; Scott, Vol. XV, p. 33). And cf. Codex legis Wisigothorum, VI, 2, 3 (Canciani, Vol. IV, p. 133): "Sorcerers and storm-compellers who are said to bring hail upon vineyards and grain-fields by certain incantations, and those who disturb the minds of people by conjuring up devils, wheresoever discovered and arrested by a magistrate or by a local representative or attorney [of the Crown] shall be publicly lashed with two hundred lashes, and with their hair clipped in derision they shall be forced, if unconsenting, to march around the ten estates next adjoining, that others may profit by their example." Capitulare seculare anni 805: De incantoribus et tempestariis, 25: "As to enchantments, fortune-telling and divinations, and individuals who cause storms or practise other witchcraft, it is the pleasure of the Council that wherever such are arrested, the archbishop of that diocese shall provide for their subjection to a most searching examination to see whether, perchance, they confess to the crimes they have committed."

75. 201 ¹ Op. cit., 15: "Such idiocy is no small part of disloyalty to the Church, and meantime the evil has so spread abroad that in many places there are wretches who say they not only know how to cause storms but also how to protect the inhabitants of a locality from storms. They have a tariff (statutum) as to how much farmers shall give of their crops, and they call it their 'canon.' There are many people who never pay their tithes to the Church of their own accord, and never give alms to widows and orphans or the other poor; and no matter how often such things are preached and published to them, no matter how urgently they are exhorted, they still refuse. But what they call the 'canon' they pay to those who they think protect them from storms, without any preaching, admonition, or exhortation—strictly of their own accord, the Devil prompting, of course."

76. 201 ² Karoli Magni capitularia, 28, Synodus Francofurtensis, June 25, anno Christi DCCXCIV (Monumenta Germaniae historica, Legum, Vol. I, p. 76): ". . . and every man shall pay the legal tithe to the Church out of his property; for we learned of experience in the year of the great famine that abundant harvests came to naught because devoured by devils, and voices were heard in upbraiding." One of these wicked demons, who was possessing a maiden, was exorcized on relics of St. Marcellinus and St. Peter, and gave a clear explanation of the trouble: "I am," he said, "a satellite and disciple of Satan and was for a long time door-man in Hell. But for some years past, along with eleven companions, I have been ravag ing this kingdom of France. Grain and wine, and all the other fruits which come of the Earth for the use of mankind, we have destroyed as we were bidden." This intelligent demon expatiates at length on what was back of it all. The devastation was, he said, "due to the wickedness of this people and the many iniquities of its rulers." And, the tongue falling where the tooth scratched, he did not forget the tithes: "Rari sunt qui fidéliter ac devote decimas dent." Cf. Eginhard, Historia translationis sanctorum Christi martyrum Marcellini et Petri, V, 50 (Opera, Vol. II, pp. 284-86; Wendell, pp. 66-67).

77. 203 ^a [In librum beati Job expositio, I, lectio 4 (Opera, 1570 ed., Vol. III, p. 3, 2C).]

78. 203 ^b [So Pareto. Summers: "Therefore, whatever can be accomplished by mere local motion, this not only good but also bad spirits can by their natural power accomplish, unless God should forbid it."—A. L.]

79. 203 ¹ Pars II, quaestio I, cap. XV (Summers, pp. 147-48): "As to the manner in which sorcerers customarily raise tempests and hail-storms and hurl thunderbolts at human beings and cattle."

80. 203 ² Ibid., Pars II, quaestio I, cap. XIII (Summers, pp. 140-44): "As to the manner in which midwives who are witches do still greater harm, either killing children or pledging them to the Devil by enchantments."

81. 203 ³ Del Rio, Disquisitiones magicae, II, 11 (Louvain, Vol. I, p. 155; Cologne, p. 139): "Recentiora exempla nuperi scriptores protulerunt: Addam duo, unum lepidum [He calls "amusing" a story that ends in the death of two women at the stake!] horrendum alteram. In ditione Trevirensi rusticus fuit qui cum filiola sua octenni caules plantabat in horto. Filiolam forte collaudavit, quod apte hoc munus obiret. Ilia sexu et aetate garrula se nosse alia facere magis stupenda iactat. Pater quid id foret sciscitatur: 'Secede paullum,' inquit, 'et in quam voles horti partem subitum imbrem dabo.' Miratus ille: 'Age, secedam,' ait. Quo recedente, scrobem puella fodit, in eam de pedibus (ut cum Hebraeis loquar pudentius) aquam fundit, eamque bacillo turbidat, nescio quid submurmurans. Et ecce tibi stibito pluviam de nubibus in conditum locum. 'Quis,' inquit obstupefactus pater 'te hoc docuit?' 'Mater,' respondet, 'huius et aliorum similium peritissima.' Zelo incitatus agricola post paucos dies,invitatum se ad nuptias simulans, uxorem cum gnata festive nuptiali modo exornatas in carrum imponit, in vicinum oppidum devehit, et iudici tradit maleficii crimen supplicio expiaturas. Hoc mihi fide dignissimorum virorum narratio suggessit. Ubi notandus modus scrobiculam faciendi et quod in eam ieceris bacillo confutandi." Just for a comparison, I quote the passage in the Malleus which tells how the rain was obtained (Summers, p. 144): "Tunc pater puellam per manum ad torrentem deduxit. 'Fac,' inquit, 'sed tantummodo super agrum nostrum.' Tunc puella manum in aquam misit et in nomine sui magistri iuxta doctrinam matris movit. Et ecce tantummodo pluvia agrum illum perfudit. Quod cernens pater, 'Fac,' inquit, 'et grandinem, sed tantummodo super unum ex agris nostris,' " and so on.

    The other example reported by Del Rio is a story taken from Pontano, of a city besieged by the King of Naples, which ran short of water and obtained it by rains provoked by magic and sacrilege. Del Rio may have had before him other passages from the Formicarius or the Malleus: for example, as regards the latter, the incident recounted in Pars II, quaestio I, cap. III (Summers, pp. 104, 107): "As to the manner in which they [witches] are transferred physically from one place to another." A witch had not been invited to a wedding banquet. "Enraged and thinking to avenge herself, she conjured up the Devil, stated her grievance and asked him to be good enough to make a hail-storm and scatter the company at the dance. Consenting, he lifted her up and in full view of certain shepherds bore her through the air to [the top of] a hill near the town. As she afterwards confessed, there was no water there for pouring into her pit—a way they have, as will be seen, when they are getting hail. So she made a little hole and filled it with her urine in place of water, and stirred it with her finger, as her custom was, the Devil looking on. And straightway the Devil, raising the liquid high in the air, sent a violent storm with hail-stones, just upon the party at the dance and the people in the town. The guests were scattered. They were still talking together as to the cause of what had happened when the witch came home. That aroused their suspicions. But when the shepherds told what they had seen, the suspicion which had been strong became violent. [We laugh nowadays at such idiocy; but the sentiments it expresses have been the cause of untold sufferings to mankind, and countless deaths.] The woman was arrested and confessed that she had done those things for cause—probably because she had not been invited to the party. Then she was burned, in view also of many other acts of witchcraft [Probably as well authenticated as the above!] of which she had been guilty." Del Rio got this story from the Daemonolatreia of Remy, I, 25 (Lyons, pp. 158-62; Ashwin, pp. 74-75).

82. 204 ¹ Op. cit., V, 16 (Vol. III, p. 99). In II, 11 (Louvain, Vol. I, pp. 152-54; Cologne, p. 136) he writes: "Thirdly . . . sorcerers can abate tempests, cause lightning and thunder, provoke hail-storms and rain-storms and like weather, and they can send them upon such lands as they choose." He rebukes people who do not believe such things and claim that only God can do them: "To be sure, God does do them as the prime, independent, universal efficient-cause; but his creatures do them as particular, dependent, and secondary efficient-causes. Wherefore the common opinion of theologians and jurists, which I stated as my thesis, is to be followed. It is proved, firstly, by Most Holy Scripture: for there Satan causes fire to fall from Heaven and destroy the servants and the flocks of Job; and he also causes violent winds. . . . Most Holy Scripture expressly states that the hail whereby the Egyptians were punished was sent by wicked angels. . . . Why, finally, are the demons so many times called by the Apostle 'princes of the air'? Far rather because of their great power over the air! The same is confirmed [secondly] not only by the ancient Law of the XII Tables . . . but by the decrees of Emperors and Popes. It is confirmed [thirdly] by all those Fathers whom I have quoted. . . . And fourthly, it is proved by history and by examples. Herodotus bears witness to the abating of winds and a storm by magicians at the time of Xerxes. [Not a word about the qualifying remarks of Herodotus (§ 193).] . . . Of the Finns and Lapps Olaus [Magnus] writes as follows [Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus, III, 16, p. 119 (Streater, III, 15, p. 47)]: "In olden times they put the winds up for sale to merchants, offering three knots on which a spell had been cast: untying the first they [the merchants] would get gentle breezes; untying the second, stronger winds, and the third, a whole gale.' " Just earlier, II, 9 (Louvain, Vol. I, p. 137; Cologne, p. 124), Del Rio tells the story of "Eric, King of the Goths, who could get a fair wind from any direction in which he turned his fur cap: and for that reason he was nicknamed 'Windy-Cap' (Pileus Ventosus)'" [Magnus, Ibid., III, 15, p. 116; Streater, III, 13, p. 45. In reading these passages in Magnus, Streater arbitrarily changes "ventum venalem" to "vinum venalem," which gives a different cast to the anecdote, the game with the knots remaining a mere trick or curiosity.—A. L.]

83. 205 ¹ De magis, veneficis, et lamiis, II, 6, 21.

84. 206 ¹ Histoires, disputes et discours, III, 16 (Vol. I, pp. 357-58): "Furthermore, those poor old women are slyly tricked by the Devil. For as soon as he has seen and foreseen some tempest or change in the weather by watching the movements of the elements and the course of nature—a thing he does sooner and more readily than any human being could; or as soon as he has understood that someone is to receive some plague by the hidden will of God, whereof in such respects he is the executor, he besets the minds of those silly women, and fills them with all sorts of insane ideas, and shows them this or that opportunity for getting even with their enemies, as by clouding the sky, stirring up tempests, and making it hail." That rascal of a Bodin, however, has serious objections to Weier's theory: De la démonomanie, p. 235b: "As to what Wier says to the effect that witches cannot cause hail or thunder of themselves, I agree, and the same for killing people or causing them to die by means of wax images and incantations. But what cannot be denied, and Wier himself agrees on that score, is that Sathan causes people, animals, and crops to die, if God does not keep him from it, and that that he does by way of the sacrifices, 'wishes,' and prayers of sorcerers, with the just permission of God, who uses His enemies to get even with His enemies." Bodin certainly knew a great deal about other people's business!

85. 206 ² Del congresso notturno delle lammie, II, 16, 7 (pp. 189-90): "There seems to be somewhat more persuasive force in the fact that these individuals boast, for example, of raising tempests or of causing the death of this person or that, and that there are trustworthy witnesses to the fact that things afterwards take place exactly as they predict. But that too can easily be explained on the assumption of illusion, by saying that the Devil, in order to give his followers a high opinion of his powers, loves to ascribe natural happenings to himself, foresees them, and incites witches to produce them; and thereupon they occur, not of his power, much less by the power of the witches, but because they were destined to occur according to natural course of nature."

86. 206 ³ Ibid., I, 10, 1 (p. 63).

87. 208 ¹ Op. cit., p. 240b: "So then we are asked to condemn all antiquity as ignorant and mistaken, cancel all history, and draw a line through all laws human and divine as false, illusory, and based on false principles; and in place of all that set up the judgment of this man Wier and a few other sorcerers who are working hand in hand to establish and consolidate the empire of Sathan, as Wier cannot deny, if he has not lost all shame."

88. 209 ¹ Duval, Procès des sorciers à Viry, pp. 88-108: "Marguerite [Moral] . . . files complaint and criminal action before us, Claude Dupuis, châtelain of this barony, in due and proper form, against . . . [names of three women] alleging that on the twenty-ninth day of April at noontime, the said Marguerite coming from the fields from weeding her beans and being in her yard gathering greens, the said defendants came up each carrying a stick of wood in hand, and saying such words as 'Deceitful witch, you have got to go to Viry'; whereupon they began to beat the said plaintiff on her body with all their might and also tied her arms with a rope so that she could not move." The defendants are questioned and ". . . declare that they know nothing, that they did in no way beat the said Marguerite, and would not have thought of doing so. They confess nevertheless that they said and called her a witch to her face, because many others so called her and almost everybody who knew her, especially since, after the death of the child of Pierre Testu, otherwise known as Grangier, the said Marguerite had fled, because people said that she had killed it." The trial continues, the châtelain hearing several witnesses. Some of them know nothing. Others testify corroborating Marguerite's charge that she had been beaten. But the châtelain and his jury are not convinced. And since the defendants accused of the assault and battery "have confessed that they said and rebuked the said Marguerite that she was a witch, which is a very serious charge," they order an investigation by criminal procedure (torture) to ascertain what truth there may be in it. So Marguerite the plaintiff becomes Marguerite the defendant. Several witnesses are heard. They mention a number of children who have died, they allege, because of Marguerite. One of them testifies that she had a quarrel with a certain woman named Andrée "and a little after one of her children died and also a child of her brother, Claude, under mysterious circumstances." In our day, there would have been an inquest to determine whether any poison had been administered. In those days it was not considered necessary that a material cause of death be shown. "Before the said children fell ill, the said Marguerite walked into the house of the witness, took a seat in the middle between the cradles of the said children, asking the said Andrée if she had a place where she could leave certain linen. . . . The said Andrée refusing, the said Marguerite was angry and wroth, and immediately afterwards the said children fell ill and died"—and the witness believed for that reason that they had been killed by Marguerite. Other evidence of the same kind is brought against Marguerite. One witness avers "that that was her fame and reputation in the village of Vers and everywhere where she was known, and that many people had said and charged to her face that she was a witch without her making any objection or taking any [legal] action."

89. 211 ¹ Lea, History of the Inquisition, Vol. III, pp. 433-34. Pertile is also of the same opinion. Storia del diritto italiano, Vol. V, pp. 447-48: "And the Church proceeded mildly, excommunicating practitioners of magic, subjecting them to canonical penances. . . . Nor did it abandon that system even later, when, in the thirteenth century, faith had been weakened by the reversion to paganism, and the spread of a neo-Manicheism in the sects of the Catharists ["Perfects"] and the Patarins, and older superstitions were coming to life again stronger than ever." But at this point the author, a man writing in our day, feels called upon to pass judgment on beliefs that he terms superstitious: "They were in truth very wicked notions not only involving belief in commerce with the Devil, in compacts with him in exchange for one's soul, and in powers obtained from him by calling on his name, consecrating oneself to him, worshipping him; but also involving something much worse—abuse of most sacred things." What this good soul calls "very wicked," others regard as objectively ridiculous and subjectively pathological! But such the power of certain sentiments! Here we have a man who is not a churchman writing towards the end of the nineteenth century, but who seemingly takes pacts with the Devil seriously, and calls them "wicked"; whereas many modern theologians are at least very sceptical, as witness the Dictionnaire encyclopédique de la théologie catholique, s.v. Magie (Wetzer, s.v. Zauberei): "The main question . . . is to determine whether demons can enter the special service of a human being. That question cannot be answered in the negative a priori. . . . Then a secondary question arises as to the manner in which the relationship of service between demon and human being is established. Popular belief answers [both questions] by assuming that the Devil can be 'conjured up" and thereby constrained to serve the human being. But that commonplace fancy cannot have our assent. . . . The stories that were so readily abused in a day gone by in that connexion . . . undoubtedly originated in the boastings or in the unhealthy imaginations of self-styled possessors of powers, and not one of them deserves the slightest credence.

    "Another view, which was held by many theologians and played a part of some importance in the days of the prosecutions for witchcraft, held that the human being can strike a compact with the Devil and so bind him to certain services. The negotiation of the contract was regarded now as a literal objective procedure, now as subjective but no less literal, now as implicit, now as explicit. As for the objective reality, the contract may be thought of as made either by a person in possession of his right mind or by one in the sickly condition of the ecstatic. . . . As for direct commerce with the Devil . . . the notion is so vulgar that we may be excused from dwelling on it longer." The writer of this article recognizes that there may be such a compact in the ecstatic condition: "But it is readily apparent that such a pact could not be a contract in any ordinary sense. . . . Furthermore the alleged pact may be something altogether subjective, as is the case with the lunatics known as demonomaniacs. In such cases the patient imagines he has concluded a contract with the Devil, but there is absolutely nothing in reality corresponding to his illusion. . . . As for ways and means of binding a demon to the assistance of a human being in the exercise of magical powers, we assert that none such exist, and that if the demon enters the service of a person, he does so of his own accord under the lure of the elective affinity between his wickedness and the wickedness of the person. . . . The Devil, moreover, is not above the laws of nature. . . . He can do nothing that is not naturally possible in itself."

90. 212 ¹ Cauzons, La magie et la sorcellerie en France, Vol. III, pp. 63-65: "Of all Catholic publications, Del Rio's book was responsible for more victims than any other. . . . I say Catholic, for the Protestants had a generous share in prosecutions for witchcraft. If it might be hard to prove that they burned more witches than the Catholics, it would be just as hard to prove that they burned fewer. The certain thing is that persecution of unfortunates called witches raged violently in Germany and England, and more so than in Spain and Italy and even than in France, where witch-burnings were frequent, especially at certain times and in certain localities."

91. 213 ¹ St. Augustine, De divinatione daemonum (Opera, Vol. VI, p. 581), III, 7: "Demons are of such nature that with the senses of their aerial bodies they easily outstrip the senses of terrestrial bodies, and in view of the superior mobility of the same aerial bodies they incomparably excel in speed, let alone the legs of any human being or animal whatsoever, the very flight of birds. Endowed with those two things pertaining to the aerial body, to wit, sharpness of sense and swiftness of motion, they tell and foretell many things that are known to them before they are perceived by humans in view of the sluggishness of human senses. In view also of the long space of time over which their lives extend, demons acquire far greater experience than can be acquired in the short life of a human being." Ibid., V, 9: "It should also be pointed out, while we are on this matter of foresight in demons, that many times they merely predict things that they are going to do themselves." Just as the physician foretells from external symptoms what the course of a disease is to be, "so in the trends and situations in the atmosphere that are known to him but unknown to us, the demon foresees approaching storms." Tertullian, Apologeticus, XXII, 10: "From living in the air close to the stars and in intercourse with the clouds, they have ways of knowing celestial forecasts (habent . . . caelestes sapere paraturas), so that they predict rains that they already know about."

92. 213 ² St. Augustine, De civitate Dei, XXI, 6, 1; St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I^a, qu. 115, art. 5 (Opera, Vol. V, pp. 545-46: Utrum corpora caelestia possint imprimere in ipsos daemones).

93. 214 ¹ Codex Theodosianus, IX, 16, 3 (Haenel, p. 868): "To what extent enchantments are prohibited or permitted: The Law of Constantine the Great: Deservedly to be dealt with and punished by the severest laws is the science of those individuals who, armed with art of magic, are found to have worked (moliti, i.e., mohti esse) to the hurt of human beings or to have turned chaste minds to lechery. Not actionable by any prosecution, however, are remedies sought for human bodies, nor those rites which are practised (adhibita suffragia) in good intent in rural districts to allay fear of storms for the ripened vintage or damage from stoning by falling hail, such rites injuring no one in health or reputation and, if successful (quorum actus), serving only to prevent ruination of the gifts of God (divina munera) and the labours of men." The same law appears in the Codex Justintani, IX, 18, 4 (Corpus iuris civilis, Vol. II, p. 595; Scott, Vol. XV, p. 32). This enactment was abrogated by the Emperor Leo, Novellae, 65, Ad Stylianum, De incantatorum poena (Corpus iuris civilis accademicum Parisiense, p. 1151; Scott, Vol. XVII, p. 262).

94. 215 ¹ Malleus maleficarum, Pars II, quaestio 2, cap. 7 (Summers, p. 1S8): "As to remedies against hail and lightning, and for spells cast upon cattle." The Malleus mentions other remedies besides. On being asked by a judge (Summers, p. 190) "whether hail-storms caused by witchcraft could be abated in any way," a witch replied: "They can, and in the following manner: 'O hail, O winds, I abjure you by the five wounds of Christ, and by the three nails that pierced His hands and feet, and by the four Holy Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, that ye melt into water ere ye fall.' " The Malleus also mentions the time-honoured custom of ringing bells. In our time bells have been replaced by "hail-cannon," with quite as good results.

95. 216 ¹ We shall have to prosecute many other investigations of this kind; we shall, that is, be called upon to examine many families of facts in order to find in each the elements that are constant and the elements that are variable, and then to classify them, dividing them off into orders, classes, genera, species, precisely as the botanist does. In this case I have thought it wise to set before the reader by way of illustration by no means a large, but at the same time a fairly appreciable, fraction of the facts that I have examined in arriving at the conclusions stated. Lack of space will prevent me from continuing to do that for all of the other investigations we shall have to make. The reader must bear in mind that I mention in these volumes only a small, oftentimes a very very small, pordon of the evidence I have considered in making the inductions that I present.

96. 221 ¹ Socrates speaking (Fowler, p. 55): "According to that definition, holiness would be the science of asking and giving." That, substantially, was the opinion of a great number of Greeks. We have already said that the difference between Athens and Rome lies more in the intensity of certain sentiments than in their substance.

97. 221 ² Macrobius, Saturnalia, II, 9: "It seems that all cities are protected by certain gods; and it was a secret custom of the Romans, unknown to many, that when they besieged an enemy city and thought they were on the point of conquering it, they 'called forth' its tutelary gods with a certain ritual. For otherwise they did not think it possible to take the city, or, had it been, they thought it impious to make captives of gods. For the same reason, the Romans were careful that the name of the patron god of Rome should remain secret, and even the Latin name of the city." Macrobius then gives a formula for addressing the gods of a besieged city and another for consecrating cities and armies after worshipping such gods. But he cautions that only dictators and generals-in-chief could use them effectively: "Dis, the Father, Veiovis, Manes, or by whatever other name it is proper to address thee . . ." The words of the formula had to be punctuated by specified acts: "When he says 'Earth,' he touches the earth with his hands. When he says 'Jove,' he raises his hands towards heaven. When he is acknowledging a vow, he touches his breast with his hands." Such things would be ridiculous if the idea were merely to make the gods understand. They are rational if words and gestures have an efficacy of their own. Virgil, Aeneid, II, v. 351: "The shrines and altars were deserted, for all the gods had gone away." And Servius annotates (Thilo-Hagen, Vol. I, p. 277): "Because, before the storming [of a city] the gods were 'called forth' by the enemy that sacrilege might be avoided. That is why the Romans would never let it be known under the tutelage of just what god the Urbs abided and the law of the pontiffs cautioned that the Roman gods should not be addressed by name lest they be tampered with (exaugurari). And on the Capitol there was a consecrated shield with the inscription: Genio Urbis Romae sive mas sive foemina (whether male or female). And the pontiffs prayed as follows: 'Jupiter Optime Maxime—or whatever you prefer to be called; and he [Virgil] himself says, Aeneid, IV, vv. 576-77: 'Thee we follow, holiest of gods, whoever thou art.' "

98. 223 ¹ Arnobius, Disputationes adversus gentes, VII, 31 (Bryce-Campbell, p. 340). J. C. Orelli, the editor of Arnobius, annotates (Vol. II, p. 433): "In making an offering [to the gods] the ancients chose their words cautiously and exactly and always appended qualifications (leges) and conditions explicitly, lest they should bind themselves by some tacit obligation; and this is evident from not a few inscriptions." He gives an example.

99. 223 ² Pliny, Historia naturalis, XXVIII, 4 (2) (Bostock-Riley, Vol. V, p. 281). Cicero no longer understands these associations of ideas. In De divinatione, II, 36, 78, he says, speaking of Marcus Marcellus: "He used to say that whenever he was engaged on business of importance he made it his habit to travel in a covered litter, so as not to be interfered with by omens. That is very much like what we augurs do when we advise that all oxen about be ordered unyoked, in order to prevent 'marred omens' [by both oxen in a yoked pair dunging at the same time]."

100. 224 ¹ Bouché-Leclercq, Histoire de la divination dans l'antiquité, Vol. IV, p. 176.

101. 225 ¹ Ibid., p. 202. The same writer gives the following version of the ritual used at Iguvium, pp. 170-71: "The augur's assistant speaking from his station will propose as follows to the augur: 'I stipulate that you are to watch—a hawk on the right, a raven on the right, a woodpecker on the left, a magpie on the left, birds in flight on the left, birds singing on the left, being omens favourable to me.' The augur will stipulate as follows: 'I will watch—a hawk on the right, a raven on the right, a woodpecker on the left, birds in flight on the left and birds singing on the left, being favourable to me on behalf of the people of Iguvium in this particular temple.'" Cicero, De divinatione, II, 33, 71: "As regards fictitious signs taken as auspices (ut sint auspicia quae nulla sunt) those certainly which are customary with us, whether by the feeding of chickens or by lightning (de caelo), are mock-auguries (simulacra auspiciorum) and in no sense real ones." And condnuing, 34, 71: " 'Quintus Fabius, I beg you to be my augur.' And he answers: 'Gladly!' With our forefathers, an expert was used for such purposes—nowadays anybody will do. However, it does take an expert to know what 'silence' is—'silence' being the name given in the taking of auguries to the circumstance where there is no trace of blemish. It is the test of the perfect augur to be able to determine that. When the augur says to his assistant, 'Tell me whether there seems to be silence,' the assistant does not look up, he does not look around—he answers blithely (statim): 'There seems to be silence.' Then the augur: 'Tell me if they are eating.' 'They are eating.' " Livy, Ab urbe condita, X, 40, 11, records an instance where an augury, though invented, was taken as favourable from the simple fact of being "renounced." The consul Papirius is informed by his nephew, a pious lad, that his auspices have been fraudulently reported. Papirius replies: "Blessings on you for your conscientiousness and virtue! But if the augur makes a false announcement, the responsibility to the gods rests with him. I have the report that the corn danced [when the chickens refused to eat it] and that is a first-class omen for this army and for the Roman People!"

102. 226 ¹ Grote, History of Greece, Vol. IV, pp. 341-42. Ibid., Vol. VII, pp. 66-67: The Argives took advantage of these traits in their neighbours, the Spartans. At the time of the war against Epidaurus, while the Spartans were sitting inactive for the whole month called Karneios, the Argives arbitrarily decreed the month shortened by four days and opened hostilities (Thucydides, Historiae, V, 54, 3-4). [Smith, Vol. III, p. 107: "The Argives set out on the twenty-seventh of the month preceding the Carneion, and continuing to observe that day during the whole time, invaded Epidaurus and proceeded to ravish it."—A. L.] On another occasion, they instituted a fictitious month of Karneios to keep the Lacedaemonians quiet. Knowing that he was to lead the Spartan army against Argos, Agesipolis went to Olympia and Delphi for an opinion as to whether he was bound to grant a truce. He was told that he was at liberty to refuse one (Xenophon, Hellenica, IV, 7, 2; Brownson, Vol. I, pp. 347-49).

103. 226 ² Servius, In Vergilii Aeneidem, IX, v. 52 (Thilo-Hagen, Vol. II, pp. 315-16): "Thirty-three days after service of the demands upon the enemy, the College of Feciales sent their spear. But in the case of (temporibus) Pyrrhus the Romans were to make war on a power overseas, and they could find no place to celebrate the ceremony of a declaration of war by the Feciales. They accordingly arranged for a soldier of Pyrrhus to be captured, and caused him to buy a plot of ground in the Flaminian Circus, that they might comply with the rite of declaring war on hostile territory. Then a column was erected on the spot at the foot of the statue of Bellona and duly consecrated." The commander-in-chief of an army had to keep his auspices in order, and that could be done only on the Capitol. But how do that when he was in a distant land? A very simple matter! An imitation Capitol was built on foreign soil, and the auspices were taken there. Ibid., Aeneid, II, v. 178 (Thilo-Hagen, Vol. I, p. 250): "... Or a site was chosen for a tent in which the auspices should be taken. But this practice [of taking the urban auspices] was observed by the Roman generals so long as they were fighting in Italy, in view of the nearness. But as the Empire was extended far abroad, that the general might not be too long separated from the army by returning to Rome from long distances to take the auspices it was ordained that a plot of conquered territory should be 'made Roman' in the district where hostilities were in progress, and the general could repair thither if his auspices had to be renewed."

104. 227 ¹ Geist des römischen Rechts, Vol. II-2, § 44, p. 441.

105. 227 ^a Commentarii, IV, 11 (Poste, p. 494; Scott, Vol. I, p. 185).

106. 227 ² Beauchet, Histoire du droit privé de la république athénienne, Vol. III, pp. 104, 151.

107. 228 ¹ Manuel élémentaire de droit romain, pp. 973-74.

108. 228 ² The notion is Cicero's, Pro Lucio Murena, 12, 26.

109. 228 ³ This is a controversial point which we need not go into for the purposes we have in view—namely, to show, without entering upon details, that the Roman magistrate played a virtually mechanical rôle.

110. 230 ¹ Mommsen, Römische Geschichte, Vol. I-1, p. 244 (Dixon, Vol. I, pp. 254-55): "Everywhere, in Rome, among the Latins, the Sabellians, the Etruscans, the Apulians, in all the Italic cities, in a word, as well as in the Greek cities, magistrates holding office for life gave way to magistrates appointed annually. Among the Greek cities Sparta of course is an exception. It is interesting that Rome and the Italic cities did not have an age of tyrants as Greece did; and the absence of such a stage in Italy was probably due, at least in part, to the psychic state of the Italian peoples, a psychic state more conspicuously noticeable in Rome. In Sparta, the two kings owed their royal dignity to hereditary succession; they presided at councils, administered justice, commanded the army, and served as intermediaries between Sparta and the gods."

111. 230 ² Traditions are all unanimous in showing that the consuls inherited virtually all the powers of the kings. Livy, Ab urbe condita, II, 1, 7: "You may set down the origins of our liberty rather to the fact that the consular authority was limited to a year than to any diminution of the powers the kings had held. The first consuls kept all the prerogatives and all the ceremony of the kings." Cicero, De republica, II, 32, 56: "The Senate, accordingly, held the State in the same balance in that period. . . . Though the consuls had a merely annual authority, in character and prerogative it was a royal authority." Cf. also Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanae, IV, 73-75 (Spelman, Vol. II, pp. 277-81). It is unimportant, for our purposes, whether these traditions be more or less authentic. In any event they reveal the psychic state of those who gave them the form they have or in part invented them, and that psychic state is the thing we are trying to stress.

112. 230 ³ Mommsen, Römisches Staatsrecht, Vol. I, pp. 216-17.

113. 231 ¹ Ibid., Vol. I, p. 470.

114. 231 ² Valerius Maximus, De dictis factisque memorabilibus, III, 8, 3, tells how C. Piso refused to "renounce" M. Palicanus, a notorious trouble-maker whom he considered unworthy of the consulate: "In this situation, as lamentable as it was disgraceful, Piso was almost dragged to the rostrum by the tribunes; and they [the mob] crowded about him on all sides, demanding whether he intended to announce Palicanus as elected consul by the votes of the People. At first he answered that 'he did not think the Republic had so far lost its mind that things would ever come to such a shameful pass.' 'Well,' they pressed, insisting on an answer, 'if things do come to that pass?' 'I will not announce him!' he said." Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, VII, 9, 3: "But the aedile who was presiding over the assembly said he would not accept the nomination and that it was not his pleasure that a recorder (qui scriptum faceret: a scribe) should become an aedile." The same incident is mentioned in Livy, Ab urbe condita, IX, 46, 2. There are many other examples of the kind. Livy, Ibid., XXXIX, 39: "The consul, Lucius Porcius, was at first of the opinion that he [Fulvius Flaccus] should not be recognized as a candidate." The Lex Iulia municipalis, I, 132 (Girard, Textes de droit romain, p. 78), as reconstituted by Mommsen, expressly forbids "renouncement" of individuals reputed unfit: "Nor shall any of you take account of him from the comitia or the council, nor shall any of you announce anyone so elected by the comitia or the council against these things [i.e., principles]."

115. 233 ¹ Cicero, Philippicae, II, 34; Dio Cassius, Historia Romana, XLIV, 1-3. Velleius Paterculus, Historia Romana, II, 56, 4: "Marc Antony, his colleague in the consulship and a man altogether ready for any act of daring, had brought great unpopularity upon him by placing the emblem of royalty upon his head as he sat on the rostrum for the festival of the Lupercalia, since he had rejected the offer in such a way that he showed he had not been displeased by it."

116. 233 ² Text as constituted by Franz: "In consulatu sexto et septimo [postquam bella civili]a extinxcram, per consensum universorum [civium mihi tradita]m rem publicam ex mea potestate in Senatu[s populique romani a]rbitrium transtuli, quo pro merito meo Sena[tus consulto Augustus appel]l[at]u[s]sum, et laureis postes aedium mearum v[inctae sunt p]u[bli]c[e] su[pe]rque eas ad ianuam meam e[x]qu[erna fronde co]r[o]n[a ci]v[ic]a posi[ta ob servatos cive]s, qu[ique es] se[t pe]r [inscriptione]m [t]e[stis meae] virtutis, clementiae, iustitiae, pietatis, est p[osit]us clupe[us aureus in curia a Senatu populoque R]o[mano quo]d, quamquam dignitate omnibus praestarem, potestatem tamen nih[ilo] amplio [rem haberem quam] con[l]e[g]ae mei."

117. 233 ³ Historia Romana, II, 89, 3: "Restituta vis legibus, iudiciis auctoritas, senatui maiestas, imperium magistratuum ad pristinum rcdactum modum."

118. 234 ¹ Mommsen, Römisches Staatsrecht, Vol. II-2, pp. 874-76.

119. 235 ¹ Gaius, Commentarii, I, 5 (Poste, pp. 25-26; Scott, Vol. I, p. 82): "An imperial 'constitution' is something that the Emperor has ordained by decree, edict, or notification (epistula). Nor has it ever been questioned that it has status as law, since the Emperor himself acquires his authority by law." Ulpian, in Digesta, I, 4, 1 (Corpus iuris civilis, Vol. I, p. 66; Scott, Vol. II, p. 227): "The pleasure of the Emperor has the force of law, inasmuch as by the royal law ratifying his imperium the People confers to him and upon him all its power and authority." The Institutiones of Justinian, I, 2, 6 (Corpus iuris civilis, Vol. I, p. 4; Scott, Vol. II, p. 7), repeat the same thing; but by Justinian's time all that was archaeology.

120. 235 ² Aelius Spartianus, Antoninus Caracallus, 10, 2: "It may be of interest to know how he is said to have married his step-mother, Julia. She was a toothsome dame, and was sitting about with her body quite largely exposed as though by oversight. Said Antoninus: 'I would, if the law allowed.' And she is said to have answered: 'Si libet, licet. An nescis te imperatorem esse et leges dare non accipere?' " Aurelius Victor, De Caesaribus, XXI: "He [Caracalla] was like his father in his wealth and in the marriage he made; for enamoured of the beauty of Julia, his step-mother, whose crimes I have already recounted, he sought her for his wife. Frowardly she exposed her body to his gaze, as though unaware of his presence—he being very young; and when he said, 'Vellem si liceret uti!', she, saucily enough, in fact stripping her shame of every veil, replied: 'Libet? Then, by all means, licet!' " In this form the anecdote must be fictional in character. Actually Julia was Caracalla's mother, not his step-mother.

121. 236 ¹ Bréal-Bailly, Dictionnaire étymologique latin, s.v. Lego, derive religio from lego: "Religio meant 'conscientiousness,' and particularly conscientiousness in matters of piety. . . . From that first meaning all others are derived." Bréal's etymology is no longer accepted; but that is of scant importance, for neither in this case nor in any other do we intend to infer the character of a thing from the etymology of its name. Forcellini errs in representing as derived a meaning that more probably is primitive, but he states it very well: "Religio: . . . 10: figuratively, minute and scrupulous diligence and care: Italian esattezza. Cicero, Brutus, 82, 283: 'Eins oratio nimia religione attenuata [His style was cramped by too great conscientiousness]'; Idem, Orator ad Marcum Brutum, 8, 25: 'It was the wise and sound convicdon of the Athenians that they could listen to nothing that was not well-bred (elegans) and free from blemish; and if their orator was attentive to this fastidiousness on their part (quorum religioni cum serviret), he never dared utter a word that was insolent or distasteful': Italian delicatezza. 11: Iusta muneris functio [consciendous performance of duty]: Italian puntualità."

     One might caution, meantime, that the primitive meaning of superstitio was not at all what we mean by "superstition," but rather "excessive piety," something overstepping the orderliness, the regularity, so dear to the Romans. Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, IV, 9, 1-3, quotes a line from an ancient poem, "Religentem esse oportet, religiosus ne fuas," and the maxim means, he explains, that one should be "religious" (observant of one's pious duties) but not "superstitious" (not so observant to excess). And he cites Nigidius on the point: "That is the connotation of all words of the kind: vinosus, mulierosus, religiosus, nummosus ("overrich"), which suggest immoderate abundance of the quality alluded to. So a "religious" man was a man who had bound himself to an excessive, overconscientious observance of his pious duties (religione), so that the trait could be called a defect in him.' " Gellius continues: "But in addition to the sense mentioned by Nigidius, by another shade of meaning (diverticulo) a man of pure life scrupulously observing certain rules and keeping himself within certain limits may be called a 'religious' man."

122. 236 ² Even if we stick to the Latin form of the word, some people will insist on understanding it in a sense altogether different from the meaning we wish to give it, whether because of its similarity to the word "religion" or because of other senses that the word has in Latin. It is my sad experience that no precaution can prevent people from taking terms in their ordinary meanings, and that no attention is paid to the definitions a writer gives, no matter how explicit and clear he makes them (§ 119).

123. 237 ¹ Ab urbe condita, II, 32, 2: "At first, it is said, it was debated as to whether they could be freed of their oath by slaughtering the consuls; but when they were told that no vow was ever cancelled by a crime, at the suggestion of a certain Sicinius they withdrew to the Sacred Mount [three miles from the city, across the Anio] in defiance of consular orders."

124. 238 ¹ Cicero, In Caium Verrem, II, 23, 60: "We have heard of individuals not keeping books—that charge was made against Antony, but falsely, for his books were in the best of order. All the same there are some few examples of such reprehensible conduct. Then again we have heard of individuals whose books are missing for certain periods—and one might imagine reasons to justify that conduct. But what is unheard of and altogether ridiculous is the reply Verres made when we asked him to produce his books. He said that he had kept them up to the consulships of M. Terentius and C. Cassius, but had ceased doing so after that." On this passage Asconius annotates: "It was the custom for each Roman to keep his domestic accounts day by day over his whole life, so that it might be apparent for each day what he had laid aside from his income, what his earnings from trade, business, or money loaned, and what his expenditures or losses." To the demand on his client, M. Coelius, to produce his books, Cicero replies, Pro Marco Coelio, 7, 17: "A man who is still a junior in his family (qui in patris potestate est) is not required to keep books."

125. 239 ¹ Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanae, II, 19 (Spelman, Vol. I, p. 257): "One does not hear among the Romans of a Uranus castrated by his sons, of a Saturn devouring his children, of a Jove dethroning a Saturn and making him a prisoner in Tartarus; nor of divine wars and maimings, nor of gods in chains and made slaves of men. . . . (οὐδέ γε πόλεμοι καὶ τραύματα καὶ δεσμοὶ καὶ θητεῖαι θεῶν παρ᾽ἀνθρώποις)." According to Dionysius even rites of worship were more moral in Rome than in Greece.

126. 239 ² Choëphorae, vv. 71-74 (69-72):

     Οἴγοντι δ᾽οὔτι νυμφικῶν ἑδωλίων
     ἄκος, πόροι τε πάντες ἐκ μιᾶς ὁδοῦ
     βαίνοντες τὸν χερομυσῆ
     φόνον καθαίροντες ὶοῦσαν ἄτην.

     Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, vv. 1227-28 (Storr, Vol. I, pp. 114-15): "I do not believe that the waters of the Ister and the Phasis could wash away the crimes committed in this palace." An epigram in the Greek Anthology, XIV, 71 (7) (Paton, Vol. V, pp. 62-63), gives an oracle of the Pythoness: "Stranger, enter a pure temple with a pure heart after touching the water of the Nymphs. The virtuous need only a drop, but a wicked man could not be cleansed with all the Ocean."

127. 240 ¹ According to Plutarch, Nicias, 23, 2-3 (Perrin, Vol. III, p. 291), Anaxagoras disclosed his theories of eclipses only to a few individuals. But at that time such speculations were not tolerated in Athens. "Protagoras was exiled. Anaxagoras was thrown into prison and extricated by Pericles with great difficulty. Socrates did not deal with physical sciences, but was none the less put to death because of his philosophy." Idem, Pericles, 32, 2 (Perrin, Vol. III, p. 93): "A law proposed by Diopeithes made it an actionable offence to deny the existence of the gods and discuss celestial things; and that brought suspicion upon Pericles because of Anaxagoras." Diogenes Laertius, Anaxagoras, II, 3, 12 (Hicks, Vol. I, p. 143), says that Anaxagoras was accused of impiety by Cleon for having asserted that the sun was a molten mass. Plato, Apologia, 26, (14) (Fowler, p. 99), imagines Meletus as accusing Socrates of saying that the sun is a stone and the moon an earth. To which Socrates replies: "You must think you are accusing Anaxagoras, friend Meletus."

128. 240 ² Plutarch, Cato Maior, 22, 6 (Perrin, Vol. II, p. 371).

129. 241 ¹ Maine, Ancient Law, pp. 72-73.

130. 241 ² Geist des römischen Rechts, Vol. I, pp. 333-35 (Pt. I, § 20).

131. 243 ¹ Cicero, De haruspicum responsis, 9, 19: "Quam volumus licet, patres conscripti, ipsi nos amemus, tamen nec numero Hispanos, nec robore Gallos, nec calliditate Poenos, nec artibus Graecos, nec denique hoc ipso huius gentis ac terrae domestico nativoque sensu, Italos ipsos ac Latinos, sed pietate ac religione, atque hac una sapientia, quod deorum immortalium numine omnia regi gubernarique perspeximus, omnes gentes nationesque superavimus." In the De natura deorum, II, 3, 8, Cicero makes Balbus say: "And if we were to compare our national traits with those of other peoples, we would find ourselves their inferiors or at the best their equals in many things, but their superiors and by far in religio, which means worship of the gods." Note that religio is here defined as worship (cultu).

132. 243 ² Op. cit., 9, 18: ". . . qui statas solemnesque caerimonias pontificatu; rerum bene gerendarum auctoritates augiirio; fatorum veteres pracdictiones Apollinis vatum libris; portentorum explanationes Etruscorum disciplina contineri putarunt. . . ." And see our § 182⁵.

133. 244 ¹ This qualification is necessary, for with the first decade of the twentieth century the government of England fell into the hands of Welsh and Irish fanatics. If that is not just a passing fancy but indicates a change in the character of the country as a whole, the England of the future will be nothing like the England of the past. It is to the latter England, the only England very well known as yet, that I refer when I mention that country in these pages.

134. 246 ¹ The meaning of the term "élite" must not be sought in its etymology. It will be defined in Chapter XII.

135. 247 ¹ Velleius Paterculus, Historia Romana, II, 4, 4: "With all the assembly in an uproar he said: 'Many a time have I stood unmoved at the clamour of armed enemies! How then am I to be stirred by the clamour of men like you who have Italy for no more than a step-mother?' "