Our own chief perplexity is the continuity and uniformity of the historical and anthropological evidence for certain marvels.  We have already shown the difficulty of attributing this harmony of evidence, first to savage modes of thought, and then to their survival and revival.  The evidence, in full civilisation, ancient and modern, of educated and even sceptical witnesses to phenomena, which are usually grotesque, but are always the same everywhere, in every age and land, and the constant attendance of these phenomena on persons of a peculiar temperament, are our stumbling-blocks on the path to absolute negation.  Epilepsy, convulsions, hysterical diseases are startling affairs, we admit.  It was natural that savages and the ignorant should attribute them to diabolical possession, and then look out for, and invent, manifestations of the diabolical energy outside the body of the patient, say in movements of objects, knocks, and so forth.  As in these maladies the patient may be subject to hallucinations, it was natural that savages or ignorant men, or polytheists, or ardent Catholics, or excitable Covenanters, should regard these hallucinations as ‘lucid’ or ‘clairvoyant’.  A few lucky coincidences would establish this opinion among such observers as we have indicated, while failures of lucidity would not be counted.  The professional epileptic medicine-man, moreover, would strengthen his case by ‘prophesying on velvet,’ like Norna of the Fitful Head, on private and early information.  Imposture would imitate the ‘spiritual’ feats of ‘raps,’ ’physical movements of objects,’ and ‘luminous forms’.  All this would continue after savagery, after paganism, after ‘Popery’ among the peasants who were for so long, and in superstition are even now, a conservative class.

All that ‘expectancy,’ hysterics, ‘the dominant idea’ and rude hypnotism, ‘the sleep of the shadow,’ could do, would be done, as witch trials show.  All these elements in folklore, magic and belief would endure, in the peasant class, under the veneer of civilisation.  Now and again these elements of superstition would break through the veneer, would come to the surface among the educated classes, and would ‘carry silly women captive,’ and silly men.  They, too, though born in the educated class, would attest impossible occurrences.

In all this, we might only see survival, wonderfully vivacious, and revival astonishingly close to the ancient savage lines.

We are unable to state the case for survival and revival more strenuously, and the hypothesis is most attractive.  This hypothesis appears to be Dr. Carpenter’s, though he does not, in the limits of popular lectures, unfold it at any length.  After stating (p. 1) that a continuous belief in ‘occult agencies’ has existed, he adds:—­

’While this very continuity is maintained by some to be an evidence of the real existence of such [occult] agencies, it will be my purpose to show you that it proves nothing more than the wide-spread diffusion, alike amongst minds of the highest and lowest culture, of certain tendencies to thought, which have either created ideal marvels possessing no foundation whatever in fact, or have, by exaggeration and distortion, invested with a preternatural character occurrences which are perfectly capable of a natural explanation’.