eddish, protruding
tongue, a long tail, and the hoof of a horse. In this latter attribute
we trace at once the Kentaur element of ancient times. Through nearly
one thousand three hundred years from Tertullian and Thaumaturgus down
to Luther, every one was accustomed to look upon life as one great
battle with tens of thousands of devils, assaulting, harassing,
annoying, and seducing humanity. All fought, quarrelled, talked, and
wrestled with the Devil. He was more spoken of in the pulpits of the
Christian Churches, written about in theological and scientific books,
than God or Christ. All misfortunes were attributed to him. Thunder and
lightning, hailstorms and the rinderpest, the hooping cough and
epileptic fits were all the Devil's work. A man who suffered from
madness was said to be possessed by a legion of Evil Spirits. The Devil
settled himself in the gentle dimples of a pretty girl with the same
ease and comfort as in the wrinkles of an old woman. Everything that
was inexplicable was evil. Throughout the Middle Ages the masses and the
majority of their learned theological teachers believed the Greek and
Latin classics were inspired by Evil Spirits; that sculptures or
paintings, if beautiful, were of evil; that all cleverness in
Mathematics, Chemistry, or Medicine proved the presence of the
corrupting Evil Spirit working in man. Any bridge over a chasm or a
rapid river was the work of the Devil; even the most beautiful Gothic
cathedrals, like those of Cologne and St. Stephen at Vienna were
constructed by architects who served their apprenticeship in the
infernal regions. The Devil sat grinning on the inkstands of poets and
learned men, dictating to the poor deluded mortals, as the price for
their souls, charming love-songs or deep theological and philosophical
essays. It was extremely dangerous during this period of man's
historical evolution to be better or wiser than the ignorant masses.
Learning, talent, a superior power of reasoning, love for truth, a
spirit of inquiry, the capacity of making money by clever trading, an
artistic turn of mind, success in life, even in the Church, were only so
many proofs that the soul had been sold to some dwarfish or giant
messenger from Lucifer, who could appear in a thousand different forms.
Man was, since his assumed Fall, the exclusive property of the coarse
and vulgar conception of the Evil Spirit. Luther was full of these
ideas, he was brought up in this belief, and though